The Forest
After the drive had grown long and monotonous, Partridge shut his eyes and the woman was waiting. She wore a cold white mask similar to the mask Bengali woodcutters donned when they ventured into the mangrove forests along the coast. The tigers of the forest were stealthy. The tigers hated to be watched; they preferred to sneak up on prey from behind, so natives wore the masks on the backs of their heads as they gathered wood. Sometimes this kept the tigers from dragging them away.
The woman in the cold white mask reached into a wooden box. She lifted a tarantula from the box and held it to her breast like a black carnation. The contrast was as magnificent as a stark Monet if Monet had painted watercolors of emaciated patricians and their pet spiders.
Partridge sat on his high, wooden chair and whimpered in animal terror. In the daydream, he was always very young and powerless. The woman tilted her head. She came near and extended the tarantula in her long, gray hand. “For you,” she said. Sometimes she carried herself more like Father and said in a voice of gravel, “Here is the end of fear.” Sometimes the tarantula was a hissing cockroach of prehistoric girth, or a horned beetle. Sometimes it was a strange, dark flower. Sometimes it was an embryo uncurling to form a miniature adult human that grinned a monkey’s hateful grin.
The woman offered him a black phone. The woman said, “Come say goodbye and good luck. Come quick!” Except the woman did not speak. Toshi’s breathless voice bled through the receiver. The woman in the cold white mask brightened then dimmed like a dying coal or a piece of metal coiling into itself.
Partridge opened his eyes and rested his brow against window glass. He was alone with the driver. The bus trawled through a night forest. Black trees dripped with fog. The narrow black road crumbled from decades of neglect. Sometimes poor houses and fences stood among the weeds and the ferns and mutely suggested many more were lost in the dark. Wilderness had arisen to reclaim its possessions.
Royals hunted in woods like these. He snapped on the overhead lamp and then opened his briefcase. Stags, wild boar, witches. Convicts. The briefcase was nearly empty. He had tossed in some traveler’s checks, a paperback novel and his address book. No cell phone, although he left a note for his lawyer and a recorded message at Kyla’s place in Malibu warning them it might be a few days, perhaps a week, that there probably was not even phone service where he was going. Carry on, carry on. He had hopped a redeye jet to Boston and once there eschewed the convenience of renting a car or hiring a chauffeur and limo. He chose instead the relative anonymity of mass transit. The appeal of traveling incognito overwhelmed his normally staid sensibilities. Here was the first adventure he had undertaken in ages. The solitude presented an opportunity to compose his thoughts—his excuses, more likely.
He’d cheerfully abandoned the usual host of unresolved items and potential brushfires that went with the territory—a possible trip to the Andes if a certain Famous Director’s film got green-lighted and if the Famous Director’s drunken assertion to assorted executive producers and hangers-on over barbecued ribs and flaming daiquiris at the Monarch Grille that Richard Jefferson Partridge was the only man for the job meant a blessed thing. There were several smaller opportunities, namely an L.A. documentary about a powerhouse high school basketball team that recently graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, unless the documentary guy, a Cannes Film Festival sweetheart, decided to try to bring down the governor of California instead, as he had threatened to do time and again, a pet crusade of his with the elections coming that fall, and then the director would surely use his politically savvy compatriot, the cinematographer from France. He’d also been approached regarding a proposed documentary about prisoners and guards at San Quentin. Certainly there were other, lesser engagements he’d lost track of, these doubtless scribbled on memo pads in his home office.
He knew he should hire a reliable secretary. He promised himself to do just that every year. It was hard. He missed Jean. She’d had a lazy eye and a droll wit; made bad coffee and kept sand-filled frogs and fake petunias on her desk. Jean left him for Universal Studios and then slammed into a reef in Maui learning to surf with her new boss. The idea of writing the want-ad, of sorting the applications and conducting the interviews and finally letting the new person, the stranger, sit where Jean had sat and handle his papers, summoned a mosquito’s thrum in the bones behind Partridge’s ear.
These details would surely keep despite what hysterics might come in the meanwhile. Better, much better, not to endure the buzzing and whining and the imprecations and demands that he return at once on pain of immediate career death, over a dicey relay. He had not packed a camera, either. He was on vacation. His mind would store what his eye could catch and that was all.
The light was poor. Partridge held the address book close to his face. He had scribbled the directions from margin to margin and drawn a crude map with arrows and lopsided boxes and jotted the initials of the principles: Dr. Toshi Ryoko; Dr. Howard Campbell; Beasley; and Nadine. Of course, Nadine—she snapped her fingers and here he came at a loyal trot. There were no mileposts on the road to confirm the impression that his destination was near. The weight in his belly sufficed. It was a fat stone grown from a pebble.
Partridge’s instincts did not fail him. A few minutes before dawn, the forest receded and they entered Warrenburgh. Warrenburgh was a loveless hamlet of crabbed New England shop fronts and angular plank and shingle houses with tall, thin doors and oily windows. Streetlights glowed along Main Street with black gaps like a broken pearl necklace. The street itself was buckled and rutted by poorly tarred cracks that caused sections to cohere uneasily as interleaved ice floes. The sea loomed near and heavy and palpable beneath a layer of rolling gloom.
Partridge did not like what little he glimpsed of the surroundings. Long ago, his friend Toshi had resided in New Mexico and Southern California, did his best work in Polynesia and the jungles of Central America. The doctor was a creature of warmth and light. Rolling Stone had characterized him as “a rock star among zoologists” and as the “Jacques Cousteau of the jungle,” the kind of man who hired mercenaries to guard him, performers to entertain his sun drenched villa, and filmmakers to document his exploits. This temperate landscape, so cool and provincial, so removed from Partridge’s experience of all things Toshi, seemed to herald a host of unwelcome revelations.
Beasley, longstanding attendant of the eccentric researcher, waited at the station. “Rich! At least you don’t look like the big asshole Variety says you are.” He nodded soberly and scooped Partridge up for a brief hug in his powerful arms. This was like being embraced by an earth mover. Beasley had played Australian rules football for a while after he left the Army and before he came to work for Toshi. His nose was squashed and his ears were cauliflowers. He was magnetic and striking as any character actor, nonetheless. “Hey, let me get that.” He set Partridge aside and grabbed the luggage the driver had dragged from the innards of the bus. He hoisted the suitcases into the bed of a ’56 Ford farm truck. The truck was museum quality. It was fire engine red with a dinky American flag on the antenna.
They rumbled inland. Rusty light gradually exposed counterchange shelves of empty fields and canted telephone poles strung together with thick, dipping old-fashioned cables. Ducks pelted from a hollow in the road. The ducks spread themselves in a wavering pattern against the sky.
“Been shooting?” Partridge indicated the .20 gauge softly clattering in the rack behind their heads.
“When T isn’t looking. Yeah, I roam the marshes a bit. You?”
“No.”
“Yah?”
“Not in ages. Things get in the way. Life, you know?”
“Oh, well, we’ll go out one day this week. Bag a mallard or two. Raise the dust.”
Partridge stared at the moving scenery. Toshi was disinterested in hunting and thought it generally a waste of energy. Nadine detested the sport without reserve. He tasted brackish water, metallic from the canteen. The odor of gun oil and cigarette smoke was strong in the cab. The smell reminded him of hip waders, muddy clay banks and gnats in their biting millions among the reeds. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Forget it, man.”
They drove in silence until Beasley hooked left onto a dirt road that followed a ridge of brambles and oak trees. On the passenger side overgrown pastures dwindled into moiling vapors. The road was secured by a heavy iron gate with the usual complement of grimy warning signs. Beasley climbed out and unlocked the gate and swung it aside. Partridge realized that somehow this was the same ruggedly charismatic Beasley, plus a streak of gray in the beard and minus the spring-loaded tension and the whiskey musk. Beasley at peace was an enigma. Maybe he had quit the bottle for good this time around. The thought was not as comforting as it should have been. If this elemental truth—Beasley the chronic drunk, the lovable, but damaged brute—had ceased to hold, then what else lurked in the wings?
When they had begun to jounce along the washboard lane, Partridge said, “Did T get sick? Somebody—I think Frank Ledbetter—told me T had some heart problems. Angina.”
“Frankie… I haven’t seen him since forever. He still working for Boeing?”
“Lockheed-Martin.”
“Yah? Good ol’ L&M. Well, no business like war business,” Beasley said. “The old boy’s fine. Sure, things were in the shitter for a bit after New Guinea, but we all got over it. Water down the sluice.” Again, the knowing, sidelong glance. “Don’t worry so much. He misses you. Everybody does, man.”
Toshi’s farm was more of a compound lumped in the torso of a great, irregular field. The road terminated in a hard pack lot bordered by a sprawl of sheds and shacks, gutted chicken coops and labyrinthine hog pens fallen to ruin. The main house, a Queen Anne, dominated. The house was a full three stories of spires, gables, spinning iron weathercocks and acres of slate tiles. A monster of a house, yet somehow hunched upon itself. It was brooding and squat and low as a brick and timber mausoleum. The detached garage seemed new. So too the tarp and plastic-sheeted nurseries, the electric fence that partitioned the back forty into quadrants and the military drab shortwave antenna array crowning the A-frame barn. No private security forces were in evidence, no British mercenaries with submachine guns on shoulder slings, nor packs of sleek, bullet-headed attack dogs cruising the property. The golden age had obviously passed into twilight.
“Behold the Moorehead Estate,” Beasley said as he parked by slamming the brakes so the truck skidded sideways and its tires sent up a geyser of dirt. “Howard and Toshi bought it from the county about fifteen years ago—guess the original family died out, changed their names, whatever. Been here in one form or another since 1762. The original burned to the foundation in 1886, which is roughly when the town—Orren Towne, ’bout two miles west of here—dried up and blew away. As you can see, they made some progress fixing this place since then.”
Partridge whistled as he eyed the setup. “Really, ah, cozy.”
There were other cars scattered in the lot: a Bentley; a Nixon-era Cadillac; an archaic Land Rover that might have done a tour in the Sahara; a couple of battered pickup trucks and an Army surplus jeep. These told Partridge a thing or two, but not enough to surmise the number of guests or the nature of Toshi’s interest in them. He had spotted the tail rotor of a helicopter poking from behind the barn.
Partridge did not recognize any of the half-a-dozen grizzled men loitering near the bunkhouse. Those would be the roustabouts and the techs. The men passed around steaming thermoses of coffee. They pretended not to watch him and Beasley unload the luggage.
“For God’s sake, boy, why didn’t you catch a plane?” Toshi called down from a perilously decrepit veranda. He was wiry and sallow and vitally ancient. He dressed in a bland short sleeve button-up shirt a couple of neck sizes too large and his ever present gypsy kerchief. He leaned way over the precarious railing and smoked a cigarette. His cigarettes were invariably Russian and came in tin boxes blazoned with hyperbolic full-color logos and garbled English mottos and blurbs such as “Prince of Peace! and “Yankee Flavor!”
“The Lear’s in the shop.” Partridge waved and headed for the porch.
“You don’t drive, either, eh?” Toshi flicked his hand impatiently. “Come on, then. Beasley—the Garden Room, please.”
Beasley escorted Partridge through the gloomy maze of cramped halls and groaning stairs. Everything was dark: from the cryptic hangings and oil paintings of Mooreheads long returned to dust, to the shiny walnut planks that squeaked and shifted everywhere underfoot.
Partridge was presented a key by the new housekeeper, Mrs. Grant. She was a brusque woman of formidable brawn and comport; perhaps Beasley’s mother in another life. Beasley informed him that “new” was a relative term as she had been in Campbell’s employ for the better portion of a decade. She had made the voyage from Orange County and brought along three maids and a gardener/handyman who was also her current lover.
The Garden Room was on the second floor of the east wing and carefully isolated from the more heavily trafficked byways. It was a modest, L-shaped room with a low, harshly textured ceiling, a coffin wardrobe carved from the heart of some extinct tree, a matching dresser and a diminutive brass bed that sagged ominously. The portrait of a solemn girl in a garden hat was centered amidst otherwise negative space across from the bed. Vases of fresh cut flowers were arranged on the windowsills. Someone had plugged in a rose-scented air freshener to subdue the abiding taint of wet plaster and rotting wood; mostly in vain. French doors let out to a balcony overlooking tumbledown stone walls of a lost garden and then a plain of waist-high grass gone the shade of wicker. The grass flowed into foothills. The foothills formed an indistinct line in the blue mist.
“Home away from home, eh?” Beasley said. He wrung his hands, out of place as a bear in the confined quarters. “Let’s see if those bastards left us any crumbs.”
Howard Campbell and Toshi were standing around the bottom of the stairs with a couple of other elder statesmen types—one, a bluff, aristocratic fellow with handlebar mustaches and fat hands, reclined in a hydraulic wheelchair. The second man was also a specimen of genteel extract, but clean-shaven and decked in a linen suit that had doubtless been the height of ballroom fashion during Truman’s watch. This fellow leaned heavily upon an ornate blackthorn cane. He occasionally pressed an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and snuffled deeply. Both men stank of medicinal alcohol and shoe polish. A pair of bodyguards hovered nearby. The guards were physically powerful men in tight suit-jackets. Their nicked-up faces wore the perpetual scowls of peasant trustees.
Toshi lectured about a so-called supercolony of ants that stretched six thousand kilometers from the mountains of Northern Italy down along the coasts of France and into Spain. According to the reports, this was the largest ant colony on record; a piece of entomological history in the making. He halted his oration to lackadaisically introduce the Eastern gentlemen as Mr. Jackson Phillips and Mr. Carrey Montague and then jabbed Campbell in the ribs, saying, “What’d I tell you? Rich is as suave as an Italian prince. Thank God I don’t have a daughter for him to knock up.” To Partridge he said, “Now go eat before cook throws it to the pigs. Go, go!” Campbell, the tallest and gravest of the congregation, gave Partridge a subtle wink. Meanwhile, the man in the wheelchair raised his voice to demand an explanation for why his valuable time was being wasted on an ant seminar. He had not come to listen to a dissertation and Toshi damned-well knew better…Partridge did not catch the rest because Beasley ushered him into the kitchen whilst surreptitiously flicking Mr. Jackson Phillips the bird.
The cook was an impeccable Hungarian named Gertz, whom Campbell had lured, or possibly blackmailed, away from a popular restaurant in Santa Monica. In any event, Gertz knew his business.
Partridge slumped on a wooden stool at the kitchen counter. He worked his way through what Gertz apologetically called “leftovers.” These included sourdough waffles and strawberries, whipped eggs, biscuits, sliced apples, honey dew melon and chilled milk. The coffee was a hand-ground Columbian blend strong enough to peel paint. Beasley slapped him on the shoulder and said something about chores.
Partridge was sipping his second mug of coffee, liberally dosed with cream and sugar, when Nadine sat down close to him. Nadine shone darkly and smelled of fresh cut hayricks and sweet, highly polished leather. She leaned in tight and plucked the teaspoon from his abruptly nerveless fingers. She licked the teaspoon and dropped it on the saucer and she did not smile at all. She looked at him with metallic eyes that held nothing but a prediction of snow.
“And…action,” Nadine said in a soft, yet resonant voice that could have placed her center stage on Broadway had she ever desired to dwell in the Apple and ride her soap and water sex appeal to the bank and back. She spoke without a trace of humor, which was a worthless gauge to ascertain her mood anyhow, she being a classical Stoic. Her mouth was full and lovely and inches from Partridge’s own. She did not wear lipstick.
“You’re pissed,” Partridge said. He felt slightly dizzy. He was conscious of his sticky fingers and the seeds in his teeth.
“Lucky guess.”
“I’m a Scientologist, Grade Two. We get ESP at G-2. No luck involved.”
“Oh, they got you, too. Pity. Inevitable, but still a pity.”
“I’m kidding.”
“What… even the cultists don’t want you?”
“I’m sure they want my money.”
Nadine tilted her head slightly. “I owe the Beez twenty bucks, speaking of. Know why?”
“No,” Partridge said. “Wait. You said I wouldn’t show—”
“—because you’re a busy man—”
“That’s the absolute truth. I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”
“I’m sure. Anyway, I said you’d duck us once again. A big movie deal, fucking a B-list starlet in the South of France. It’d be something.”
“—and then Beasley said something on the order of—”
“Hell yeah, my boy will be here!—”
“—come hell or high water!”
“Pretty much, yeah. He believes in you.”
Partridge tried not to squirm even as her pitiless gaze bore into him. “Well, it was close. I cancelled some things. Broke an engagement or two.”
“Mmm. It’s okay, Rich. You’ve been promising yourself a vacation, haven’t you? This makes a handy excuse; do a little R&R, get some you time in for a change. It’s for your mental health. Bet you can write it off.”
“Since this is going so well… How’s Coop?” He had noticed she was not wearing the ring. Handsome hubby Dan Cooper was doubtless a sore subject, he being the hapless CEO of an obscure defense contractor that got caught up in a Federal dragnet. He would not be racing his classic Jaguar along hairpin coastal highways for the next five to seven years, even assuming time off for good behavior. Poor Coop was another victim of Nadine’s gothic curse. “Condolences, naturally. If I didn’t send a card…”
“He loves Federal prison. It’s a country club, really. How’s that bitch you introduced me to? I forget her name.”
“Rachel.”
“Yep, that’s it. The makeup lady. She pancaked Thurman like a corpse on that flick you shot for Coppola.”
“Ha, yeah. She’s around. We’re friends.”
“Always nice to have friends.”
Partridge forced a smile. “I’m seeing someone else.”
“Kyla Sherwood—the Peroxide Puppet. Tabloids know all, my dear.”
“But it’s not serious.”
“News to her, hey?”
He was boiling alive in his Aspen-chic sweater and charcoal slacks. Sweat trickled down his neck and the hairs on his thighs prickled and chorused their disquiet. He wondered if that was a massive pimple pinching the flesh between his eyes. That was where he had always gotten the worst of them in high school. His face swelled so majestically people thought he had broken his nose playing softball. What could he say with this unbearable pressure building in his lungs? Their history had grown to epic dimensions. The kitchen was too small to contain such a thing. He said, “Toshi said it was important. That I come to this…what? Party? Reunion? Whatever it is. God knows I love a mystery.”
Nadine stared the stare that gave away nothing. She finally glanced at her watch and stood. She leaned over him so that her hot breath brushed his ear. “Mmm. Look at the time. Lovely seeing you, Rich. Maybe later we can do lunch.”
He watched her walk away. As his pulse slowed and his breathing loosened, he waited for his erection to subside and tried to pinpoint what it was that nagged him, what it was that tripped the machinery beneath the liquid surface of his guilt-crazed, testosterone-glutted brain. Nadine had always reminded him of a duskier, more ferocious Bettie Page. She was thinner now; her prominent cheekbones, the fragile symmetry of her scapulae through the open-back blouse, registered with him as he sat recovering his wits with the numb intensity of a soldier who had just clambered from a trench following a mortar barrage.
Gertz slunk out of hiding and poured more coffee into Partridge’s cup. He dumped in some Schnapps from a hip flask. “Hang in there, my friend,” he said drolly.
“I just got my head beaten in,” Partridge said.
“Round one,” Gertz said. He took a hefty pull from the flask. “Pace yourself, champ.”
Partridge wandered the grounds until he found Toshi in D-Lab. Toshi was surveying a breeding colony of cockroaches: Pariplenata americana, he proclaimed them with a mixture of pride and annoyance. The lab was actually a big tool shed with the windows painted over. Industrial-sized aquariums occupied most of the floor space. The air had acquired a peculiar, spicy odor reminiscent of hazelnuts and fermented bananas. The chamber was illuminated by infrared lamps. Partridge could not observe much activity within the aquariums unless he stood next to the glass. That was not going to happen. He contented himself to lurk at Toshi’s elbow while a pair of men in coveralls and rubber gloves performed maintenance on an empty pen. The men scraped substrate into garbage bags and hosed the container and applied copious swathes of petroleum jelly to the rim where the mesh lid attached. Cockroaches were escape artists extraordinaire, according to Toshi.
“Most folks are trying to figure the best pesticide to squirt on these little fellas. Here you are a cockroach rancher,” Partridge said.
“Cockroaches…I care nothing for cockroaches. This is scarcely more than a side effect, the obligatory nod to cladistics, if you will. Cockroaches…beetles…there are superficial similarities. These animals crawl and burrow, they predate us humans by hundreds of millions of years. But…beetles are infinitely more interesting. The naturalist’s best friend. Museums and taxidermists love them, you see. Great for cleaning skeletal structures, antlers and the like.”
“Nature’s efficiency experts. What’s the latest venture?”
“A-Lab—I will show you.” Toshi became slightly animated. He straightened his crunched shoulders to gesticulate. His hand glimmered like a glow tube at a rock concert. “I keep a dozen colonies of dermestid beetles in operation. Have to house them in glass or stainless steel—they nibble through anything.”
This house of creepy-crawlies was not good for Partridge’s nerves. He thought of the chair and the woman and her tarantula. He was sickly aware that if he closed his eyes at that very moment the stranger would remove the mask and reveal Nadine’s face. Thinking of Nadine’s face and its feverish luminescence, he said, “She’s dying.”
Toshi shrugged. “Johns Hopkins…my friends at Fred Hutch…nobody can do anything. This is the very bad stuff; very quick.”
“How long has she got.” The floor threatened to slide from under Partridge’s feet. Cockroaches milled in their shavings and hidey holes; their tick-tack impacts burrowed under his skin.
“Not long. Probably three or four months.”
“Okay.” Partridge tasted breakfast returned as acid in his mouth.
The technicians finished their task and began sweeping. Toshi gave some orders. He said to Partridge, “Let’s go see the beetles.”
A-Lab was identical to D-Lab except for the wave of charnel rot that met Partridge as he entered. The dermestid colonies were housed in corrugated metal canisters. Toshi raised the lid to show Partridge how industriously a particular group of larvae were stripping the greasy flesh of a small mixed-breed dog. Clean white bone peeked through coagulated muscle fibers and patches of coarse, blond fur.
Partridge managed to stagger the fifteen or so feet and vomit into a plastic sink. Toshi shut the lid and nodded wisely. “Some fresh air, then.”
Toshi conducted a perfunctory tour, complete with a wheezing narrative regarding matters coleopteran and teuthological, the latter being one of his comrade Howard Campbell’s manifold specialties. Campbell had held since the early ’70s that One Day Soon the snail cone or some species of jellyfish was going to revolutionize neurology. Partridge nodded politely and dwelt on his erupting misery. His stomach felt as if a brawler had used it for a speed bag. He trembled and dripped with cold sweats.
Then, as they ambled along a fence holding back the wasteland beyond the barn, he spotted a cluster of three satellite dishes. The dishes’ antennas were angled downward at a sizable oblong depression like aardvark snouts poised to siphon musty earth. These were lightweight models, each no more than four meters across and positioned as to be hidden from casual view from the main house. Their trapezoidal shapes didn’t jibe with photos Partridge had seen of similar devices. These objects gleamed the yellow-gray gleam of rotting teeth. His skin crawled as he studied them and the area of crushed soil. The depression was over a foot deep and shaped not unlike a kiddy wading pool. This presence in the field was incongruous and somehow sinister. He immediately regretted discarding his trusty Canon. He stopped and pointed. “What are those?”
“Radio telescopes, obviously.”
“Yeah, what kind of metal is that? Don’t they work better if you point them at the sky?”
“The sky. Ah, well, perhaps later. You note the unique design, eh? Campbell and I…invented them. Basically.”
“Really? Interesting segue from entomological investigation, doc.”
“See what happens when you roll in the mud with NASA? The notion of first contact is so glamorous, it begins to rub off. Worse than drugs. I’m in recovery.”
Partridge stared at the radio dishes. “UFOs and whatnot, huh. You stargazer, you. When did you get into that field?” It bemused him how Toshi Ryoko hopscotched from discipline to discipline with a breezy facility that unnerved even the mavericks among his colleagues.
“I most assuredly haven’t migrated to that field—however, I will admit to grazing as the occasion warrants. The dishes are a link in the chain. We’ve got miles of conductive coil buried around here. All part of a comprehensive surveillance plexus. We monitor everything that crawls, swims or flies. Howard and I have become enamored of astrobiology, crypto zoology, the occulted world. Do you recall when we closed shop in California? That was roughly concomitant with our lamentably over-publicized misadventures in New Guinea.”
“Umm.” Partridge had heard that Campbell and Toshi disappeared into the back country for three weeks after they lost a dozen porters and two graduate students in a river accident. Maybe alcohol and drugs were involved. There was an investigation and all charges were waived. The students’ families had sued and sued, of course. Partridge knew he should have called to offer moral support. Unfortunately, associating with Toshi in that time of crisis might have been an unwise career move and he let it slide. But nothing slides forever, does it?
“New Guinea wasn’t really a disaster. Indeed, it served to crystallize the focus of our research, to open new doors…”
Partridge was not thrilled to discuss New Guinea. “Intriguing. I’m glad you’re going great guns. It’s over my head, but I’m glad. Sincerely.” Several crows described broad, looping circles near the unwholesome machines. Near, but not too near.
“Ah, but that’s not important. I imagine I shall die before any of this work comes to fruition.” Toshi smiled fondly and evasively. He gave Partridge an avuncular pat on the arm. “You’re here for Nadine’s grand farewell. She will leave the farm after the weekend. Everything is settled. You see now why I called. ”
Partridge was not convinced. Nadine seemed to resent his presence—she’d always been hot and cold when it came to him. What did Toshi want him to do? “Absolutely,” he said.
They walked back to the house and sat on the porch in rocking chairs. Gertz brought them a pitcher of iced tea and frosted glasses on trays. Campbell emerged in his trademark double-breasted steel-blue suit and horn-rimmed glasses. For the better part of three decades he had played the mild, urbane foil to Toshi’s megalomaniacal iconoclast. In private, Campbell was easily the dominant of the pair. He leaned against a post and held out his hand until Toshi passed him a smoldering cigarette. “I’m glad you know,” he said, fastening his murky eyes on Partridge. “I didn’t have the nerve to tell you myself.”
Partridge felt raw, exhausted and bruised. He changed the subject. “So…those guys in the suits. Montague and Phillips. How do you know them? Financiers, I presume?”
“Patrons,” Campbell said. “As you can see, we’ve scaled back the operation. It’s difficult to run things off the cuff.” Lolling against the post, a peculiar hybrid of William Burroughs and Walter Cronkite, he radiated folksy charm that mostly diluted underlying hints of decadence. This charm often won the hearts of flabby dilettante crones looking for a cause to champion. “Fortunately, there are always interested parties with deep pockets.”
Partridge chuckled to cover his unease. His stomach was getting worse. “Toshi promised to get me up to speed on your latest and greatest contribution to the world of science. Or do I want to know?”
“You showed him the telescopes? Anything else?” Campbell glanced at Toshi and arched his brow.
Toshi’s grin was equal portions condescension and mania. He rubbed his spindly hands together like a spider combing its pedipalps. “Howard…I haven’t, he hasn’t been to the site. He has visited with our pets, however. Mind your shoes if you fancy them, by the way.”
“Toshi has developed a knack for beetles,” Campbell said. “I don’t know what he sees in them, frankly. Boring, boring. Pardon the pun—I’m stone knackered on Dewar’s. My bloody joints are positively gigantic in this climate. Oh—have you seen reports of the impending Yellow Disaster? China will have the whole of Asia Minor deforested in the next decade. I imagine you haven’t—you don’t film horror movies, right? At least not reality horror.” He laughed as if to say, You realize I’m kidding, don’t you, lad? We’re all friends here. “Mankind is definitely eating himself out of house and home. The beetles and cockroaches are in the direct line of succession.”
“Scary,” Partridge said. He waited doggedly for the punch line. Although, free association was another grace note of Campbell’s and Toshi’s. The punch line might not even exist. Give them thirty seconds and they would be nattering about engineering E. coli to perform microscopic stupid pet tricks or how much they missed those good old Bangkok whores.
Toshi lighted another cigarette and waved it carelessly. “The boy probably hasn’t the foggiest notion as to the utility of our naturalistic endeavors. Look, after dinner, we’ll give a demonstration. We’ll hold a séance.”
“Oh, horseshit, Toshi!” Campbell scowled fearsomely. This was always a remarkable transformation for those not accustomed to his moods. “Considering the circumstances, that’s extremely tasteless.”
“Not to mention premature,” Partridge said through a grim smile. He rose, upsetting his drink in a clatter of softened ice cubes and limpid orange rinds and strode from the porch. He averted his face. He was not certain if Campbell called after him because of the blood beating in his ears. Toshi did clearly say, “Let him go, let him be, Howard... She’ll talk to him…”
He stumbled to his room and crashed into his too-short bed and fell unconscious.
Partridge owed much of his success to Toshi. Even that debt might not have been sufficient to justify the New England odyssey. The real reason, the motive force under the hood of Partridge’s lamentable midlife crisis, and the magnetic compulsion to heed that bizarre late-night call, was certainly his sense of unfinished business with Nadine. Arguably, he had Toshi to thank for that, too.
Toshi Ryoko immigrated to Britain, and later the U.S., from Okinawa in the latter ’60s. This occurred a few years after he had begun to attract attention from the international scientific community for his brilliant work in behavioral ecology and prior to his stratospheric rise to popular fame due to daredevil eccentricities and an Academy Award-nominated documentary of his harrowing expedition into the depths of a Bengali wildlife preserve. The name of the preserve loosely translated into English as “The Forest that Eats Men.” Partridge had been the twenty-three-year-old cinematographer brought aboard at the last possible moment to photograph the expedition. No more qualified person could be found on the ridiculously short notice that Toshi announced for departure. The director/producer was none other than Toshi himself. It was his first and last film. There were, of course, myriad subsequent independent features, newspaper and radio accounts—the major slicks covered Toshi’s controversial exploits, but he lost interest in filmmaking after the initial hubbub and eventually faded from the public eye. Possibly his increasing affiliation with clandestine U.S. government projects was to blame. The cause was immaterial. Toshi’s fascinations were mercurial and stardom proved incidental to his mission of untangling the enigmas of evolutionary origins and ultimate destination.
Partridge profited greatly from that tumultuous voyage into the watery hell of man-eating tigers and killer bees. He emerged from the crucible as a legend fully formed. His genesis was as Minerva’s, that warrior-daughter sprung whole from Jupiter’s aching skull. All the great directors wanted him. His name was gold—it was nothing but Beluga caviar and box seats at the Rose Bowl, a string of “where are they now” actresses on his arm, an executive membership in the Ferrari Club and posh homes in Malibu and Ireland. Someday they would hang his portrait in the American Society of Cinematography archives and blazon his star on Hollywood Boulevard.
There was just one glitch in his happily-ever-after: Nadine. Nadine Thompson was the whip-smart Stanford physiologist who had gone along for the ride to Bangladesh as Toshi’s chief disciple. She was not Hollywood sultry, yet the camera found her to be eerily riveting in a way that was simultaneously erotic and repellant. The audience never saw a scientist when the camera tracked Nadine across the rancid deck of that river barge. They saw a woman-child—ripe, lithe and lethally carnal.
She was doomed. Jobs came and went. Some were comparative plums, yes. None of them led to prominence indicative of her formal education and nascent talent. None of them opened the way to the marquee projects, postings or commissions. She eventually settled for a staff position at a museum in Buffalo. An eighty-seven-minute film shot on super-sixteen millimeter consigned her to professional purgatory. Maybe a touch of that taint had rubbed off on Partridge. Nadine was the youthful excess that Hollywood could not supply, despite its excess of youth, the one he still longed for during the long, blank Malibu nights. He carried a load of guilt about the whole affair as well.
Occasionally, in the strange, hollow years after the hoopla, the groundswell of acclaim and infamy, she would corner Partridge in a remote getaway bungalow, or a honeymoon seaside cottage, for a weekend of gin and bitters and savage lovemaking. In the languorous aftermath, she often confided how his magic Panaflex had destroyed her career. She would forever be “the woman in that movie.” She was branded a real-life scream queen and the sex pot with the so-so face and magnificent ass.
Nadine was right, as usual. “The Forest that Eats Men” never let go once it sank its teeth.
He dreamed of poling a raft on a warm, muddy river. Mangroves hemmed them in corridors of convoluted blacks and greens. Creepers and vines strung the winding waterway. Pale sunlight sifted down through the screen of vegetation; a dim, smoky light full of shadows and shifting clouds of gnats and mosquitoes. Birds warbled and screeched. He crouched in the stern of the raft and stared at the person directly before him. That person’s wooden mask with its dead eyes and wooden smile gaped at him, fitted as it was to the back of the man’s head. The wooden mouth whispered, “You forgot your mask.” Partridge reached back and found, with burgeoning horror, that his skull was indeed naked and defenseless.
“They’re coming. They’re coming.” The mask grinned soullessly.
He inhaled to scream and jerked awake, twisted in the sheets and sweating. Red light poured through the thin curtains. Nadine sat in the shadows at the foot of his bed. Her hair was loose and her skin reflected the ruddy light. He thought of the goddess Kali shrunk to mortal dimensions.
“You don’t sleep well either, huh,” she said.
“Nope. Not since Bangladesh.”
“That long. Huh.”
He propped himself on his elbow and studied her. “I’ve been considering my options lately. I’m thinking it might be time to hang up my spurs. Go live in the Bahamas.”
She said, “You’re too young to go.” That was her mocking tone.
“You too.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “Rich, you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
“Like when you snuck in here while I was sleeping? Funny you should mention it…”
“Rich.”
He saw that she was serious. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“Well you are. Always. I want you to keep that in mind.”
“Okay. Will it help?”
“Good question.”
The room darkened, bit by bit. He said, “You think you would’ve made it back to the barge?” He couldn’t distance himself from her cry as she flailed overboard and hit the water like a stone. There were crocodiles everywhere. No one moved. The whole crew was frozen in that moment between disbelief and action. He had shoved the camera at, who? Beasley. He had done that and then gone in and gotten her. Blood-warm water, brown with mud. He did not remember much of the rest. The camera caught it all.
“No,” she said. “Not even close.”
He climbed over the bed and hugged her. She was warm. He pressed his face into her hair. Her hair trapped the faint, cloying odor of sickness. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said.
She didn’t say anything. She rubbed his shoulder.
That night was quiet at the Moorehead Estate. There was a subdued dinner and afterward some drinks. Everybody chatted about the good old days. The real ones and the imaginary ones too. Phillips and Montague disappeared early on and took their men-at-arms with them. Nadine sat aloof. She held onto a hardback—one of Toshi’s long out of print treatises on insect behavior and ecological patterns. Partridge could tell she was only pretending to look at it.
Later, after lights out, Partridge roused from a dream of drowning in something that wasn’t quite water. His name was whispered from the foot of the bed. He fumbled upright in the smothering dark. “Nadine?” He clicked on the lamp and saw he was alone.
It rained in the morning. Toshi was undeterred. He put on a slicker and took a drive in the Land Rover to move the radio telescopes and other equipment into more remote fields. A truckload of the burly, grim laborers followed. The technicians trudged about their daily routine, indifferent to the weather. Campbell disappeared with Phillips and Montague. Nadine remained in her room. Partridge spent the morning playing poker with Beasley and Gertz on the rear porch. They drank whiskey—coffee for Beasley—and watched water drip from the eaves and thunderheads roll across the horizon trailing occasional whip-cracks of lightning. Then it stopped raining and the sun transformed the landscape into a mass of illuminated rust and glass.
Partridge went for a long walk around the property to clear his head and savor the clean air. The sun was melting toward the horizon when Beasley found him dozing in the shade of an oak. It was a huge tree with yellowing leaves and exposed roots. The roots crawled with pill bugs. Between yawns Partridge observed the insects go about their tiny business.
“C’mon. You gotta see the ghost town before it gets dark,” Beasley said. Partridge didn’t bother to protest. Nadine waited in the jeep. She wore tortoise shell sunglasses and a red scarf in her hair. He decided she looked better in a scarf than Toshi ever had, no question. Partridge opened his mouth and Beasley gave him a friendly shove into the front passenger seat.
“Sulk, sulk, sulk!” Nadine laughed at him. “In the garden, eating worms?”
“Close enough,” Partridge said, and hung on as Beasley gunned the jeep through a break in the fence line and zoomed along an overgrown track that was invisible until they were right on top of it. The farm became a picture on a stamp and then they passed through a belt of paper birches and red maples. They crossed a ramshackle bridge that spanned an ebon stream and drove into a clearing. Beasley ground gears until they gained the crown of a long, tabletop hill. He killed the engine and coasted to a halt amid tangled grass and wildflowers and said, “Orren Towne. Died circa 1890s.”
Below their vantage, remnants of a village occupied the banks of a shallow valley. If Orren Towne was dead its death was the living kind. A score of saltbox houses and the brooding hulk of a Second Empire church waited somberly. Petrified roofs were dappled by the shadows of moving clouds. Facades were brim with the ephemeral light of the magic hour. Beasley’s walkie-talkie crackled and he stepped aside to answer the call.
Nadine walked partway down the slope and stretched her arms. Her muscles stood forth in cords of sinew and gristle. She looked over her shoulder at Partridge. Her smile was alien. “Don’t you wish you’d brought your camera?”
The brain is a camera. What Partridge really wished was that he had gone to his room and slept. His emotions were on the verge of running amok. The animal fear from his daydreams had sneaked up again. He smelled the musk of his own adrenaline and sweat. The brain is a camera and once it sees what it sees there’s no taking it back. He noticed another of Toshi’s bizarre radio dishes perched on a bluff. The antenna was focused upon the deserted buildings. “I don’t like this place,” he said. But she kept walking and he trailed along. It was cooler among the houses. The earth was trampled into concrete and veined with minerals. Nothing organic grew and no birds sang. The subtly deformed structures were encased in a transparent resin that lent the town the aspect of a waxworks. He thought it might be shellac.
Shadows fell across Partridge’s path. Open doorways and sugar-spun windows fronted darkness. These doors and windows were as unwelcoming as the throats of ancient wells, the mouths of caves. He breathed heavily. “How did Toshi do this? Why did he do this?”
Nadine laughed and took his hand playfully. Hers was dry and too-warm, like a leather wallet left in direct sunlight. “Toshi only discovered it. Do you seriously think he and Howard are capable of devising something this extraordinary?”
“No.”
“Quite a few people spent their lives in this valley. Decent farming and hunting in these parts. The Mooreheads owned about everything. They owned a brewery and a mill down the road, near their estate. All those busy little worker bees going about their jobs, going to church on Sunday. I’m sure it was a classic Hallmark. Then it got cold. One of those long winters that never ends. Nothing wanted to grow and the game disappeared. The house burned. Sad for the Mooreheads. Sadder for the people who depended on them. The family circled its wagons to rebuild the mansion, but the community never fully recovered. Orren Towne was here today, gone tomorrow. At least that’s the story we hear told by the old-timers at the Mad Rooster over cribbage and a pint of stout.” Nadine stood in the shade of the church, gazing up, up at the crucifix. “This is how it will all be someday. Empty buildings. Empty skies. The grass will come and eat everything we ever made. The waters will swallow it. It puts my situation into perspective, lemme tell you.”
“These buildings should’ve fallen down. Somebody’s gone through a lot of trouble to keep this like—”
“A museum. Yeah, somebody has. This isn’t the only place it’s been done, either.”
“Places like this? Where?” Partridge said. He edged closer to the bright center of the village square.
“I don’t know. They’re all over if you know what to look for.”
“Nadine, maybe…Jesus!” He jerked his head to peer at a doorway. The darkness inside the house seemed fuller and more complete. “Are there people here?” His mind jumped to an image of the masks that the natives wore to ward off tigers. He swallowed hard.
“Just us chickens, love.”
A stiff breeze rushed from the northwest and whipped the outlying grass. Early autumn leaves skated across the glassy rooftops and swirled in barren yards. Leaves fell dead and dry. Night was coming hard.
“I’m twitchy—jet lag, probably. What do those weird-looking rigs do?” He pointed at the dish on the hill. “Toshi said they’re radio telescopes he invented.”
“He said he invented them? Oh my. I dearly love that man, but sometimes he’s such an asshole.”
“Yeah. How do they work?”
Nadine shrugged. “They read frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum.”
“Radio signals from underground. Why does that sound totally backwards to me?”
“I didn’t say anything about radio signals.”
“Then what did you say?”
“When we get back, ask Toshi about the node.”
“What are you talking about?” Partridge’s attention was divided between her and the beautifully grotesque houses and the blackness inside them.
“You’ll see. Get him to show you the node. That’ll clear some of this stuff up, pronto.”
Beasley called to them. He and the jeep were a merged silhouette against the failing sky. He swung his arm overhead until Nadine yelled that they would start back in a minute. She removed her shades and met Partridge’s eyes. “You okay, Rich?” She refused to relinquish her grip on his hand.
“You’re asking me?”
She gave him another of her inscrutable looks. She reached up and pushed an unkempt lock from his forehead. “I’m not mad, in case you’re still wondering. I wanted you to see me off. Not like there’re any more weekend rendezvous in the stars for us.”
“That’s no way to talk,” he said.
“Just sayin’.” She dropped his hand and walked away. In a moment he followed. By the time they made the summit, darkness had covered the valley. Beasley had to use the headlights to find the way home.
Gertz served prawns for dinner. They ate at the long mahogany table in the formal dining room. Jackson Phillips begged off due to an urgent matter in the city. Beasley packed him and one of the muscle-bound bodyguards into the helicopter and flew away. That left six: Toshi; Campbell; Nadine; Carrey Montague and the other bodyguard; and Partridge. The men wore suits and ties. Nadine wore a cream-colored silk chiffon evening gown. There were candles and elaborate floral arrangements and dusty bottles of wine from the Moorehead cellar and magnums of top-dollar French champagne from a Boston importer who catered to those with exclusive tastes and affiliations. Toshi proposed a toast and said a few words in Japanese and then the assembly began to eat and drink.
Somewhere in the middle of the third or fourth course, Partridge realized he was cataclysmically drunk. They kept setting them up and he kept knocking them down. Toshi or Campbell frequently clapped his back and clinked his glass and shouted “Sic itur ad astra!” and another round would magically appear. His head was swollen and empty as an echo chamber. The winking silverware and sloshing wineglasses, the bared teeth and hearty laughter came to him from a sea shell. He caught Nadine watching him from across the table, her eyes cool, her mouth set inscrutably. He poured more liquor down his throat to break their moment of recognition, and when he checked again she’d left the table, her untouched meal, and sailed from the room.
Dinner blurred into a collage of sense and chaos, of light and dark, and he gripped his glass and blinked dumbly against the shattering flare of the low-slung chandelier and laughed uproariously. Without transition, dinner was concluded and the men had repaired to the den to relax over snifters of Hennessy. They lounged in wing-backed leather chairs and upon opulent leather divans. Partridge admired the vaulted ceiling, the library of towering lacquered oak bookcases and the impressive collection of antique British rifles and British cavalry sabers cached in rearing cabinets of chocolate wood and softly warped glass. Everything was so huge and shiny and far away. When the cigar and pipe smoke hung thick and the men’s cheeks were glazed and rosy as the cheeks of Russian dolls, he managed, “I’m supposed to ask you about the node.”
Campbell smiled a broad and genial smile. “The node, yes. The node, of course, is the very reason Mr. Phillips and Mr. Montague have come to pay their respects. They hope to buy their way into Heaven.”
“He’s right, he’s right,” Mr. Carrey Montague said with an air of merry indulgence. “Jack had his shot. Didn’t he though. Couldn’t hack it and off he flew.”
“I was getting to this,” Toshi said. “In a roundabout fashion.”
“Exceedingly so,” Campbell said.
“Didn’t want to frighten him. It’s a delicate matter.”
“Yes,” Campbell said dryly. He puffed on his pipe and his eyes were red around the edges and in the center of his pupils.
“Shall I. Or do you want a go?” Toshi shrugged his indifference.
“The node is a communication device,” Campbell said through a mouthful of smoke. “Crude, really. Danforth Moorehead, the Moorehead patriarch, developed the current model. Ahem, the schematic was delivered to him and he effected the necessary modifications, at any rate. Admittedly, it’s superior to the primitive methods—scrying, séances, psychedelic drugs, that nonsense. Not to mention some of the more gruesome customs we’ve observed in the provincial regions. Compared to that, the node is state of the art. It is a reservoir that filters and translates frequency imaging captured by our clever, clever radio telescopes. It permits us to exchange information with our…neighbors.”
Partridge dimly perceived that the others were watching him with something like fascination. Their eyes glittered through the haze. “With who? I don’t—”
“Our neighbors,” Campbell said.
“Oh, the things they show you.” Carrey Montague sucked on his oxygen mask until he resembled a ghoul.
Partridge swung his head to look from face to face. The men were drunk. The men seethed with restrained glee. No one appeared to be joking. “Well, go on then,” he said dreamily. His face was made of plaster. Black spots revolved before him like ashen snowflakes.
“I told you, Richard. Mankind can’t go on like this.”
“Like what?”
Toshi chuckled. “Assuming we don’t obliterate ourselves, or that a meteorite doesn’t smack us back to the Cambrian, if not the Cryptozoic, this planet will succumb to the exhaustion of Sol. First the mammals, then the reptiles, right down the line until all that’s left of any complexity are the arthropods: beetles and cockroaches and their oceanic cousins, practically speaking. Evolution is a circle—we’re sliding back to that endless sea of protoplasmic goop.”
“I’m betting on the nuclear holocaust,” Campbell said.
Partridge slopped more brandy into his mouth. He was far beyond tasting it. “Mmm hmm,” he said intelligently and cast about for a place to inconspicuously ditch his glass.
“NASA and its holy grail—First Contact, the quest for intelligent life in the universe…all hogwash, all lies.” Toshi gently took the snifter away and handed him a fresh drink in a ceramic mug. This was not brandy; it was rich and dark as honey in moonlight. “Private stock, my boy. Drink up!” Partridge drank and his eyes flooded and he choked a little. Toshi nodded in satisfaction. “We know now what we’ve always suspected. Man is completely and utterly alone in a sea of dust and smoke. Alone and inevitably slipping into extinction.”
“Not quite alone,” Campbell said. “There are an estimated five to eight million species of insects as of yet unknown and unclassified. Hell of a lot of insects, hmm? But why stop at bugs? Only a damned fool would suppose that was anything but the tip of the iceberg. When the time of Man comes to an end their time will begin. And be certain this is not an invasion or a hostile occupation. We’ll be dead as Dodos a goodly period before they emerge to claim the surface. They won’t rule forever. The planet will eventually become cold and inhospitable to any mortal organism. But trust that their rule will make the reign of the terrible lizards seem a flicker of an eyelash.”
“You’re talking about cockroaches,” Partridge said in triumph. “Fucking cockroaches.” That was too amusing and so he snorted on his pungent liquor and had a coughing fit.
“No, we are not,” Campbell said.
“We aren’t talking about spiders or beetles, either,” Toshi said. He gave Partridge’s knee an earnest squeeze. “To even compare them with the citizens of the Great Kingdom…I shudder. However, if I were to make that comparison, I’d say this intelligence is the Ur-progenitor of those insects scrabbling in the muck. The mother race of idiot stepchildren.”
Campbell knelt before him so they were eye to eye. The older man’s face was radiant and distant as the moon. “This is a momentous discovery. We’ve established contact. Not us, actually. It’s been going on forever. We are the latest…emissaries, if you will. Trustees to the grandest secret of them all.”
“Hoo boy. You guys. You fucking guys. Is Nadine in on this?”
“Best that you see firsthand. Would you like that, Rich?”
“Uhmm-wha?” Partridge did not know what he wanted except that he wanted the carousel to stop.
Campbell and Toshi stood. They took his arms and the next thing he knew they were outside in the humid country night with darkness all around. He tried to walk, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate much. They half dragged him to a dim metal door and there was a lamp bulb spinning in space and then steep, winding concrete stairs and cracked concrete walls ribbed with mold. They went down and down and a strong, earthy smell overcame Partridge’s senses. People spoke to him in rumbling nonsense phrases. Someone ruffled his hair and laughed. His vision fractured. He glimpsed hands and feet, a piece of jaw illumed by a quivering fluorescent glow. When the hands stopped supporting him, he slid to his knees. He had the impression of kneeling in a cellar. Water dripped and a pale overhead lamp hummed like a wasp in a jar. From the corner of his eye he got the sense of table legs and cables and he smelled an acrid smell like cleaning solvents. He thought it might be a laboratory.
—Crawl forward just a bit.
It was strange whatever lay before him. Something curved, spiral-shaped and darkly wet. A horn, a giant conch shell, it was impossible to be certain. There was an opening, as the external os of a cervix, large enough to accommodate him in all his lanky height. Inside it was moist and muffled and black.
—There’s a lad. Curl up inside. Don’t fight. There, there. That’s my boy. Won’t be long. Not long. Don’t be afraid. This is only a window, not a doorway.
Then nothing and nothing and nothing; only his heart, his breathing and a whispery static thrum that might’ve been the electromagnetic current tracing its circuit through his nerves.
Nothingness grew very dense.
Partridge tried to shriek when water, or something thicker than water, flowed over his head and into his sinuses and throat. Low static built in his ears and the abject blackness was replaced by flashes of white imagery. He fell from an impossible height. He saw only high-velocity jump-cuts of the world and each caromed from him and into the gulf almost instantly. Fire and blood and moving tides of unleashed water. Bones of men and women and cities. Dead, mummified cities gone so long without inhabitants they had become cold and brittle and smooth as mighty forests of stone. There loomed over everything a silence that held to its sterile bosom countless screams and the sibilant chafe of swirling dust. Nadine stood naked as ebony in the heart of a ruined square. She wore a white mask, but he knew her with the immediacy of a nightmare. She lifted her mask and looked at him. She smiled and raised her hand. Men and women emerged from the broken skyscrapers and collapsed bunkers. They were naked and pallid and smiling. In the distance the sun heaved up, slow and red. Its deathly light cascaded upon the lines and curves of cyclopean structures. These were colossal, inhuman edifices of fossil bone and obsidian and anthracite that glittered not unlike behemoth carapaces. He thrashed and fell and fell and drowned.
Nadine said in his ear, Come down. We love you.
The cellar floor was cool upon his cheek. He was paralyzed and choking. The men spoke to him in soothing voices. Someone pressed a damp cloth to his brow.
—Take it easy, son. The first ride or two is a bitch and a half. Get his head.
Partridge groaned as gravity crushed him into the moldy concrete.
Someone murmured to him.
—They are interested in preserving aspects of our culture. Thus Orren Towne and places, hidden places most white men will never tread. Of course, it’s a multifaceted project. Preserving artifacts, buildings, that’s hardly enough to satisfy such an advanced intellect…
Partridge tired to speak. His jaw worked spastically. No sound emerged. The concrete went soft and everyone fell silent at once.
Partridge stirred and sat up. He tried to piece together how he ended up on the back porch sprawled in a wooden folding chair. He was still in his suit and it was damp and clung to him the way clothes do after they have been slept in. The world teetered on the cusp of night. Parts of the sky were orange as fire and other parts were covered by purple-tinted rain clouds like a pall of cannon smoke. Partridge’s hair stood in gummy spikes. His mouth was swollen and cottony. He had drooled in his long sleep. His body was stiff as an old plank.
Beasley came out of the house and handed him a glass of seltzer water. “Can’t hold your liquor anymore?”
Partridge took the glass in both hands and drank greedily. “Oh, you’re back. Must’ve been a hell of a party,” he said at last. He had slept for at least sixteen hours according to his watch. His memory was a smooth and frictionless void.
“Yeah,” Beasley said. “You okay?”
Partridge was not sure. “Uh,” he said. He rolled his head to survey the twilight vista. “Beasley.”
“Yeah?”
“All this.” Partridge swept his hand to encompass the swamped gardens and the decrepit outbuildings. “They’re letting it fall down. Nobody left from the old days.”
“You and me. And Nadine.”
“And when we’re gone?”
“We’re all gonna be gone sooner or later. The docs…they just do what they can. There’s nothing else, pal.” Beasley gave him a searching look. He shook his shaggy head and chuckled. “Don’t get morbid on me, Hollywood. Been a good run if you ask me. Hell, we may get a few more years before the plug gets pulled.”
“Is Montague still here?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I heard someone yelling, cursing. Earlier, while I slept.”
“Huh. Yeah, there was a little fight. The old fella didn’t get his golden ticket. He wasn’t wanted. Few are. He shipped out. Won’t be coming back.”
“I guess not. What was he after?”
“Same thing as everybody else, I suppose. People think Toshi is the Devil, that he can give them their heart’s desire if they sign on the dotted line. It ain’t so simple.”
Partridge had a wry chuckle at that. “Damned right it’s not simple, partner. I’m still selling my soul to Tinsel Town. No such luck as to unload the whole shebang at once.” Partridge shook with a sudden chill. His memory shucked and jittered; it spun off the reel in his brain and he could not gather it fast enough to make sense of what he had seen in the disjointed frames. “Lord, I hate the country. Always have. I really should get out of here, soon.”
“My advice—when you get on that bus, don’t look back,” Beasley said. “And keep your light on at night. You done with that?”
“Um-hmm.” He could not summon the energy to say more right then. The strength and the will had run out of him. He put his hand over his eyes and tried to concentrate.
Beasley took the empty glass and went back into the house. Darkness came and the yard lamps sizzled to life. Moths fluttered near his face, battered at the windows and Partridge wondered why that panicked him, why his heart surged and his fingernails dug into the arm rests. In the misty fields the drone of night insects began.
He eventually heaved to his feet and went inside and walked the dim, ugly corridors for an interminable period. He stumbled aimlessly as if he were yet drunk. His thoughts buzzed and muttered and were incoherent. He found Toshi and Campbell crouched in the den like grave robbers over a stack of shrunken, musty ledgers with hand-sewn covers and other stacks of photographic plates like the kind shot from the air or a doctor’s X-ray machine. The den was tomb-dark except for a single flimsy desk lamp. He swayed in the doorway, clinging to the jam as if he were in a cabin on a ship. He said, “Where is Nadine?”
The old men glanced up from their documents and squinted at him. Toshi shook his head and sucked his teeth. Campbell pointed at the ceiling. “She’s in her room. Packing. It’s Sunday night,” he said. “You should go see her.”
“She has to leave,” Toshi said.
Partridge turned and left. He made his way up the great central staircase and tried a number of doors that let into dusty rooms with painters cloths draping the furniture. Light leaked from the jamb of one door and he went in without knocking.
“I’ve been waiting,” Nadine said. Her room was smaller and more feminine than the Garden Room. She sat lotus on a poster bed. She wore a simple yellow sun dress and her hair in a knot. Her face was dented with exhaustion. “I got scared you might not come to say goodbye.”
Partridge did not see any suitcases. A mostly empty bottle of pain medication sat on the night stand beside her wedding ring and a silver locket she had inherited from her great grandmother. He picked up the locket and let it spill through his fingers, back and forth between his hands.
“It’s very late,” she said. Her voice was not tired like her face. Her voice was steady and full of conviction. “Take me for a walk.”
“Where?” He said.
“In the fields. One more walk in the fields.”
He was afraid as he had been afraid when the moths came over him and against the windows. He was afraid as he had been when he pulled her from the water all those years ago and then lay in his hammock bunk dreaming and dreaming of the crocodiles and the bottomless depths warm as the recesses of his own body and she had shuddered against him, entwined with him and inextricably linked with him. He did not wish to leave the house, not at night. He said, “Sure. If you want to.”
She climbed from the bed and took his hand. They walked down the stairs and through the quiet house. They left the house and the spectral yard and walked through a gate into the field and then farther into heavier and heavier shadows.
Partridge let Nadine lead. He stepped gingerly. He was mostly night blind and his head ached. Wet grass rubbed his thighs. He was soaked right away. A chipped edge of the ivory moon bit through the moving clouds. There were a few stars. They came to a shallow depression where the grass had been trampled or had sunk beneath the surface. Something in his memory twitched and a terrible cold knot formed in his stomach. He whined in his throat, uncomprehendingly, like a dog.
She hesitated in the depression and pulled her pale dress over her head. She tossed the dress away and stood naked and half-hidden in the fog and darkness. He did not need to see her, he had memorized everything. She slipped into the circle of his arms and he embraced her without thinking. She leaned up and kissed him. Her mouth was dry and hot. “Come on,” she muttered against his lips. “Come on.” Her hands were sinewy as talons and very strong. She grasped his hair and drew him against her and they slowly folded into the moist earth. The soft earth was disfigured with their writhing and a deep, resonant vibration traveled through it and into them where it yammered through their blood and bones. She kissed him fiercely, viciously, and locked her thighs over his hips and squeezed until he gasped and kissed her back. She did not relinquish her fistful of his hair and she did not close her eyes. He stared into them and saw a ghost of a girl he knew and his own gaunt reflection which he did not know at all. They were sinking.
Nadine stopped sucking at him and turned her head against the black dirt and toward the high, shivering grass. There was no breeze and the night lay dead and still. The grass sighed and muffled an approaching sound that struck Partridge as the thrum of fluorescent lights or high-voltage current through a wire or, as it came swiftly closer, the clatter of pebbles rolling over slate. Nadine tightened her grip and looked at him with a sublime combination of glassy terror and exultation. She said, “Rich—”
The grass shook violently beneath a vast, invisible hand and a tide of chirring and burring and click-clacking blackness poured into the depression from far-flung expanses of lost pasture and haunted wilderness, from the moist abyssal womb that opens beneath everything, everywhere. The cacophony was a murderous tectonic snarl out of Pandemonium, Gehenna and Hell; the slaughterhouse gnash and whicker and serrated wail of legion bloodthirsty drills and meat-hungry saw teeth. The ebony breaker crashed over them and buried them and swallowed their screams before their screams began.
After the blackness ebbed and receded and was finally gone, it became quiet. At last the frogs tentatively groaned and the crickets warmed by degrees to their songs of loneliness and sorrow. The moon slipped into the moat around the Earth.
He rose alone, black on black, from the muck and walked back in shambling steps to the house.
Partridge sat rigid and upright at the scarred table in the blue-gray gloom of the kitchen. Through the one grimy window above the sink, the predawn sky glowed the hue of gun metal. His eyes glistened and caught that feeble light and held it fast like the eyes of a carp in its market bed of ice. His black face dripped onto his white shirt which was also black. His black hands lay motionless on the table. He stank of copper and urine and shit. Water leaked in fat drops from the stainless steel gooseneck tap. A grandfather clock ticked and tocked from the hall and counted down the seconds of the revolutions of the Earth. The house settled and groaned fitfully, a guilty pensioner caught fast in dreams.
Toshi materialized in the crooked shadows near the stove. His face was masked by the shadows. He said in a low, hoarse voice that suggested a quantity of alcohol and tears, “Occasionally one of us, a volunteer, is permitted to cross over, to relinquish his or her flesh to the appetites of the colony and exist among them in a state of pure consciousness. That’s how it’s always been. These volunteers become the interpreters, the facilitators of communication between our species. They become undying repositories of our civilization…a civilization that shall become ancient history one day very soon.”
Partridge said nothing.
Toshi said in his hoarse, mournful voice, “She’ll never truly die. She’ll be with them until this place is a frozen graveyard orbiting a cinder. It is an honor. Yet she waited. She wanted to say goodbye in person.”
Partridge said nothing. The sun floated to the black rim of the horizon. The sun hung crimson and boiling and a shaft of bloody light passed through the window and bathed his hand.
“Oh!” Toshi said and his mouth was invisible, but his eyes were bright and wet in the gathering light. “Can you imagine gazing upon constellations a hundred million years from this dawn? Can you imagine the wonder of gazing upon those constellations from a hundred million eyes? Oh, imagine it, my boy…”
Partridge stood and went wordlessly, ponderously, to the window and lingered there a moment, his mud-caked face afire with the bloody radiance of a dying star. He drank in the slumbering fields, the distant fog-wreathed forests, as if he might never look upon any of it again. He reached up and pulled the shade down tight against the sill and it was dark.