The Illearth War t1cotc-2, Page 2

  At times like that, he found bitter consolation in psychological studies where a subject was sealed off from all sensory input, made blind, deaf, silent, and immobile, and as a result began to experience the most horrendous hallucinations. If conscious normal men and women could be placed so much at the mercy of their own inner chaos, surely one abject leper in a coma could have a dream that was worse than chaos — a dream specifically self-designed to drive him mad. At least what had happened to him did not altogether surpass comprehension.

  Thus in one way or another he survived the days for nearly three weeks after the fire. At times he was almost aware that the unresolved stress within him was building toward a crisis; but repeatedly he repressed the knowledge, drove the idea down with anger. He did not believe he could endure another ordeal; he had handled the first one so badly.

  But even the concentrated vitriol of his anger was not potent enough to protect him indefinitely. One Thursday morning, when he faced himself in the mirror to shave, the crisis abruptly surged up in him, and his hand began to shake so severely that he had to drop the razor in the sink in order to avoid cutting his jugular.

  Two: Halfhand

  BUT that decision itself was full of fear, and he did not act on it until evening. He spent most of the day cleaning his house as if he did not expect to return to it. Then, late in the afternoon, he shaved with the electric razor and showered meticulously. For the sake of prudence, he put on a tough pair of jeans, and laced his feet into heavy boots; but over his T-shirt he wore a dress shirt, tie, and sports coat, so that the informality of his jeans and boots would not be held against him. His wallet-generally so useless to him that he did not carry it-he placed in his coat pocket. And into a pocket of his trousers he stuffed a small, sharp penknife-a knife which he habitually took with him in case he lost control of his defensive concentration, and needed something dangerous to help him refocus himself. Finally, as the sun was setting, he walked down his long driveway to the road, where he extended his thumb to hitch a ride away from town.

  The next place down the road was ten miles from Haven Farm, and it was bigger than the town where he had had his accident. He headed for it because he was less likely to be recognized there. But his first problem was to find a safe ride. If any of the local motorists spotted him, he was in trouble from the beginning.

  In the first few minutes, three cars went by without stopping. The occupants stared at him in passing as if he were some kind of minor freak, but none of the drivers slowed down. Then, as the last sunlight faded into dusk, a large truck came toward him. He waved his thumb, and the truck rode to a halt just past him on the loud hissing of air brakes. He climbed up to the door, and was gestured into the cab by the driver.

  The man was chewing over a black stubby cigar, and the air in the cab was thick with smoke. But through the dull haze, Covenant could see that he was big and burly, with a distended paunch, and one heavy arm that moved over the steering wheel like a piston, turning the truck easily. He had only that one arm; his right sleeve was empty, and pinned to his shoulder. Covenant understood dismemberment, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the driver.

  “Where to, buddy?” the big man asked comfortably.

  Covenant told him.

  “No problem,” he responded to a tentative inflection in Covenant's tone. “I'm going right through there.” As the automatic transmission whined upward through its gears, he spat his cigar out the window, then let go of the wheel to unwrap and light a new smoke. While his hand was busy, he braced the wheel with his belly. The green light of the instrument panel did not reach his face, but the glow of the cigar coal illuminated massive features whenever he inhaled. In the surging red, his face looked like a pile of boulders.

  With his new smoke going, he rested his arm on the wheel like a sphinx, and abruptly began talking. He had something on his mind.

  “You live around here?”

  Covenant said noncommittally, “Yes”

  “How long? You know the people?”

  “After a fashion.”

  “You know this leper-this Thomas something-or-other Thomas Covenant?”

  Covenant flinched in the gloom of the cab. To disguise his distress, he shifted his position on the seat. Awkwardly, he asked, “What's your interest?”

  “Me? I got no interest. Just passing through-hauling my ass where they give me a load to go. I never even been around here before. But where I et at back in town I heard talk about this guy. So I ask the broad at the counter, and she damn near yaks my ear off. One question-and I get instant mouth with everything I eat. You know what a leper is?”

  Covenant squirmed. “After a fashion.”

  “Well, it's a mess, let me tell you. My old lady reads about this stuff all the time in the Bible. Dirty beggars. Unclean. I didn't know there was creeps like that in America. But that's what we're coming to. You know what I think?”

  “What do you think?” Covenant asked dimly.

  “I think them lepers ought to leave decent folks alone. Like that broad at the counter. She's okay, even with that motor mouth, but there she is, juiced to the gills on account of some sick bastard. That Covenant guy ought to stop thinking of his self. Other folks don't need that aggravation. He ought to go away with every other leper and stick to his self, leave decent folks alone. It's just selfishness, expecting ordinary guys like you and me to put up with that. You know what I mean?”

  The cigar smoke in the cab was as thick as incense, and it made Covenant feel light-headed. He kept shifting his weight, as if the falseness of his position gave him an uncomfortable seat. But the talk and his vague vertigo made him feel vengeful. For a moment, he forgot his sympathy. He turned his wedding ring forcefully around his finger. As they neared the city limits, he said, “I'm going to a nightclub just up the road here. How about joining me for a drink?”

  Without hesitation, the trucker said, “Buddy, you're on. I never pass up a free drink.”

  But they were still several stoplights from the club. To fill the silence, and satisfy his curiosity, Covenant asked the driver what had happened to his arm.

  “Lost it in the war.” He brought the truck to a stop at a light while adjusting his cigar in his lips and steering with his paunch. "We was on patrol, and walked right into one of them antipersonnel mines. Blew the squad to hell. I had to crawl back to camp. Took me two days-I sort of got unhinged, you know what I mean? Didn't always know what I was doing. Time I got to the doc, it was too late to save the arm.

  “What the hell, I don't need it. Least my old lady says I don't-and she ought to know by now.” He chuckled. “Don't need no two arms for that.”

  Ingenuously, Covenant asked, “Did you have any trouble getting a license to drive this rig?”

  “You kidding? I can handle this baby better with my gut than you can with four arms and sober.” He grinned around his cigar, relishing his own humour.

  The man's geniality touched Covenant. Already he regretted his duplicity. But shame always made him angry, stubborn-a leper's conditioned reflex. When the truck was parked behind the nightclub, he pushed open the door of the cab and jumped to the ground as if he were in a hurry to get away from his companion.

  Riding in the darkness, he had forgotten how far off the ground he was. An instant of vertigo caught him. He landed awkwardly, almost fell. His feet felt nothing, but the jolt gave an added throb to the ache of his ankles.

  Over his moment of dizziness, he heard the driver say, “You know, I figured you got a head start on the booze.”

  To avoid meeting the man's stony, speculative stare, Covenant went ahead of him around toward the front of the nightclub.

  As he rounded the corner, Covenant nearly collided with a battered old man wearing dark glasses. The old man stood with his back to the building, extending n bruised tin cup toward the passersby, and following their movements with his ears. He held his head high, but it trembled slightly on his thin neck; and he was singing “Blessed Assurance” as if it we
re a dirge. Under one arm he carried a white-tipped cane. When Covenant veered away from him, he waved his cup vaguely in that direction.

  Covenant was leery of beggars. He remembered the tattered fanatic who had accosted him like an introduction or preparation just before the onset of his delusion. The memory made him alert to a sudden tension in the night. He stepped close to the blind man and peered into his face.

  The beggar's song did not change inflection, but he turned an ear toward Covenant, and poked his cup at Covenant's chest.

  The truck driver stopped behind Covenant. “Hell,” he growled, “they're swarming. It's like a disease. Come on. You promised me a drink.”

  In the light of the streetlamp, Covenant could see that this was not that other beggar, the fanatic. But still the man's blindness affected him. His sympathy for the maimed rushed up in him. Pulling his wallet out of his jacket, he took twenty dollars and stuffed them in the tin cup.

  “Twenty bucks!” ejaculated the driver. “Are you simple, or what? You don't need no drink, buddy. You need a keeper.”

  Without a break in his song, the blind man put out a gnarled hand, crumpled the bills, and hid them away somewhere in his rags. Then he turned and went tapping dispassionately away down the sidewalk, secure in the private mysticism of the blind-singing as he moved about “a foretaste of glory divine.”

  Covenant watched his back fade into the night, then swung around toward his companion. The driver was a head taller than Covenant, and carried his bulk solidly on thick legs. His cigar gleamed like one of Drool Rockworm's eyes.

  Drool, Covenant remembered, Lord Foul's mad, Cavewightish servant or pawn. Drool had found the Staff of Law, and had been destroyed by it or because of it. His death had released Covenant from the Land.

  Covenant poked a numb finger at the trucker's chest, trying vainly to touch him, taste his actuality. “Listen,” he said, “I'm serious about that drink. But I should tell you”-he swallowed, then forced himself to say it “I'm Thomas Covenant. That leper.”

  The driver snorted around his cigar. “Sure, buddy. And I'm Jesus Christ. If you blew your wad, say so. But don't give me that leper crap. You're just simple, is all.”

  Covenant scowled up at the man for a moment longer. Then he said resolutely, “Well, in any case, I'm not broke. Not yet. Come on.”

  Together, they went on to the entrance of the nightclub. It was called The Door. In keeping with its name, the place had a wide iron gate like a portal into Hades. The gate was lit in a sick green, but spotlighted whitely at its centre was a large poster which bore the words:

  Positively the last night

  America's newest singing sensation

  SUSIE THURSTON

  Included was a photograph which tried to make Susie Thurston look alluring. But the flashy gloss of the print had aged to an ambiguous grey.

  Covenant gave himself a perfunctory VSE, adjured his courage, and walked into the nightclub, holding his breath as if he were entering the first circle of hell.

  Inside, the club was crowded; Susie Thurston's farewell performance was well attended. Covenant and his companion took the only seats they could find-at a small table near the stage. The table was already occupied by a middle-aged man in a tired suit. Something about the way he held his glass suggested that he had been drinking for some time. When Covenant asked to join him, he did not appear to notice. He stared in the direction of the stage with round eyes, looking as solemn as a bird.

  The driver discounted him with a brusque gesture. He turned a chair around, and straddled it as if bracing the burden of his belly against the chair back. Covenant took the remaining seat and tucked himself close to the table, to reduce the risk of being struck by anyone passing between the tables.

  The unaccustomed press of people afflicted him with anxiety. He sat still, huddling into himself. A fear of exposure beat on his pulse, and he gripped himself hard, breathing deeply as if resisting an attack of vertigo; surrounded by people who took no notice of him, he felt vulnerable. He was taking too big a chance. But they were people, superficially like himself. He repulsed the urge to flee. Gradually, he realized that his companion was waiting for him to order.

  Feeling vaguely ill and defenceless, he raised his arm and attracted the waiter's attention. The driver ordered a double Scotch on the rocks. Apprehension momentarily paralyzed Covenant's voice, but then he forced himself to request a gin and tonic. He regretted the order at once; gin and tonic had been Joan's drink. But he did not change it. He could hardly help sighing with relief when the waiter moved away.

  Through the clutch of his tension, he felt that the order came with almost miraculous promptitude. Swirling around the table, the waiter deposited three drinks, including a glass of something that looked like raw alcohol for the middle-aged man. Raising his glass, the driver downed half his drink, grimaced, and muttered, “Sugar water.” The solemn man poured his alcohol past his jumping Adam's apple in one movement.

  A part of Covenant's mind wondered if he were going to end up paying for all three of them.

  Reluctantly, he tasted his gin and tonic, and almost gagged in sudden anger. The lime in the drink reminded him intensely of aliantha. Pathetic! he snarled at himself. For punishment, he drank off the rest of the gin, and signalled to the waiter for more. Abruptly he determined to get drunk.

  When the second round came, the waiter again brought three drinks. Covenant looked stiffly at his companions. Then the three of them drank as if they had tacitly engaged each other in a contest.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the driver leaned forward and said, “Buddy, I got to warn you. It's your dough. I can drink you under the table.”

  To give the third man an opening, Covenant replied, “I think our friend here is going to last longer than both of us.”

  “What, a little guy like him?” There was humour in the trucker's tone, an offer of comradeship. “No way. No way at all.”

  But the solemn man did not recognize the driver's existence with even a flick of his eyes. He kept staring into the stage as if it were an abyss.

  For a while, his gloom presided over the table. Covenant ordered again, and a few minutes later the waiter brought out a third round-three more drinks. This time, the trucker stopped him. In a jocose way as if he were assuming responsibility for Covenant, he jerked his thumb at the middle-aged man and said, “I hope you know we ain't payin' for him.”

  “Sure.” The waiter was bored. “He has a standing order. Pays in advance.” Disdain seemed to tighten his face, pulling it together like the closing of a fist around his nose. “Comes here every night just to watch her and drink himself blind.” Then someone else signalled to him, and he was gone.

  For a moment, the third man said nothing. Slowly, the houselights went down, and an expectant hush dropped like a shroud over the packed club. Then into the silence the man croaked quietly, “My wife.”

  A spotlight centred on the stage, and the club MC came out of the wings. Behind him, musicians took their places-a small combo, casually dressed.

  The MC flashed out a smile, started his spiel. “It makes me personally sad to introduce our little lady tonight, because this is the last time she'll be with us for a while, at least. She's going on from here to the places where famous people get famouser. We at The Door won't soon forget her. Remember, you heard her here first. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Susie Thurston!”

  The spotlight picked up the singer as she came out, carrying a hand microphone. She wore a leather outfit — a skirt that left most of her legs bare and a sleeveless vest with a fringe across her breasts, emphasizing their movement. Her blond hair was bobbed short, and her eyes were dark, surrounded by deep hollow circles like bruises. She had a full and welcoming figure, but her face denied it; she wore the look of an abandoned waif. In a pure, frail voice that would have been good for supplication, she sang a set of love ballads defiantly, as if they were protest songs. The applause after each number was thunderous, and Covenant
quaked at the sound. When the set was over and Susie Thurston retired for a break, he was sweating coldly.

  The gin seemed to be having no effect on him. But he needed some kind of help. With an aspect of desperation, he signalled for another round. To his relief, the waiter brought the drinks soon.

  After he had downed his Scotch, the driver hunched forward purposefully, and said, “I think I got this bastard figured out.”

  The solemn man was oblivious to his tablemates. Painfully, he croaked again, “My wife.”

  Covenant wanted to keep the driver from talking about the third man so openly, but before he could distract him, his guest went on, “He's doing it out of spite, that's what.”

  “Spite?” echoed Covenant helplessly. He missed the connection. As far as he could tell, their companion — doubt happily or at least doggedly married, no doubt childless — had somehow conceived a hopeless passion for the waif-woman behind the microphone. Such things happened. Torn between his now-grim fidelity and his obdurate need, he could do nothing but torment himself in search of release, drink himself into stupefaction staring at the thing he wanted and both could not and should not have.

  With such ideas about their tablemate, Covenant was left momentarily at sea by the driver's comment. But the big man went on almost at once. “Course. What'd you think, being a leper is fun? He's thinking he'll just sort of share it around. Why be the only one, you know what I mean? That's what this bastard thinks. Take my word, buddy. I got him figured out.” As he spoke, his cobbled face loomed before Covenant like a pile of thetic rubble. “What he does, he goes around where he ain't known, and he hides it, like, so nobody knows he's sick. That way he spreads it; nobody knows so they don't take care, and all of a sudden we got us an epidemic. Which makes Covenant laugh hisself crazy. Spite, like I tell you. You take my word. Don't go shaking hands when you don't know the guy you're shaking with.”

  Dully, the third man groaned, “My wife.”