Slackwell caught sight of Merk slipping his hand into his coat pocket. He remembered the revolver and threw two savage punches without thinking. One connected with Merk's chest and the other with his left temple. The back of his head banged off the dumpster. He dropped the case he'd been holding and followed it, unconscious, to the ground. As Slackwell lifted his own unit by its handle, he saw that Merk had not been going for the gun after all, but held a folded piece of paper in his hand. He took it and slipped it into his pants pocket. A second later, he was back on the street, running as fast as he could away from the hotel.

He ran only two blocks before he was completely winded. His heart was slamming and the idyllic sense of calm that had filled him since meeting Melody was now shattered. He knew she would be able to help him think through the situation. There was no question he needed a bottle of bourbon and a pack of razors.

Setting himself to searching for these two essentials helped him to concentrate. He found the bourbon first, and once he had this, he came across a convenience store only a block away and bought a pack of razors and a pack of cigarettes.

On the street again, he ducked into a doorway, set the case down and ripped open the razors. He shaved off his eyebrows, finishing the job in a matter of minutes and cutting himself badly on the right side. Blood dripped down into his eye and he wiped it with the sleeve of his coat. Before taking up the case again and hitting the street, he knocked the derby off his head. It wasn't enough to simply be free of it, he had to stomp it once with each foot. Then he was off again, mumbling to himself, the hem of the overcoat flying out behind him as he searched everywhere for a place to hide.

6.

"My head looks like a wrinkled a.s.s with eyes," said Slackwell, checking his reflection in Melody's globe. He sat in a third floor room of a different hotel on Lindrethool's west side. It was his power of spiel that had gotten them in. The woman at the desk had nearly turned them away after taking in his shaved brow, the blood on his face, his mad hair and wild eyes.

"What possessed you?" asked Melody.

"I don't know if you are aware of this," he said, "but when you go to work for Thinktank, since you are entrusted with expensive merchandise, you agree to wear an implant by which they can track your daily progress and locate you. It's a minor operation they do right in the training office. They put you out and when you wake up you are tagged."

"Your eyebrow hair?" she asked, laughing.

"Sort of," he said, pouring himself a drink. "Now, for the future."

"We're in a jam, Arnie," she said.

"I thought you could turn some of that computing ac.u.men on this situation and come up with a plan."

"Please don't say that," she said. "I refuse to be thought of by you as a unit."

"Mea culpa, darling," he said. "Still we have to run. Merk said if they find me, it's not going to go well."

"They can't trace you. What if we lay low here until tonight and then take a really late train."

"We're near the train station," he said.

"Where to, though?" she asked. "North? South?"

"As long as I'm with you," he said, "I don't care. Is there any place you've always wanted to go?"

"What about Canada?" she said. "There's less of a chance they will chase us into another country." "Agreed," he said.

"Hook me up to the phone wire. I'll go out on the net and check train schedules, so we don't have to hang around the station too long before boarding."

"You're really thinking," he said.

"A no brainer," she said and they laughed.

He got up and removed the jack from the phone and inserted it into the port at the base of the tank. While he performed the task, he told her how much he could spend on the ticket.

"This will take a minute," she said as he sat back in his chair.

While he waited, he lit a cigarette and then remembered the sheet of paper he had taken from Merk. He retrieved it from his pocket and unfolded it on the table. It was an official Thinktank form that looked familiar to him but took a few seconds to recognize. Then he realized it was one of the invoices every salesman had, describing the display unit he carried in his case. Slackwell's eyes scanned down to the bottom of the page, and where he expected to find Merk's signature, he read instead the name Johnny Sands. He wondered what Merk was doing with Johnny's invoice. Then he looked back up to the top of the doc.u.ment and saw that Johnny had been packing a 256-B.

He wondered why they had given this kid, even more hapless a salesman than he, himself, a top of the line, sentient model. Johnny had trained with it for a two-week period and then was on the road no more than two days when he had hung himself. Slackwell remembered Johnny as being very high strung, not too smart, and definitely on some kind of medication. He was surprised they were willing to trust him with any merchandise at all, even an economy model. A picture came to him of the kid, lanky, dim, sitting in his hotel room, staring at the brain in the globe. "He was talking to that sponge," Slackwell said to himself, and then, as if someone had pressed his own consciousness b.u.t.ton, he woke up to reality with a distinct taste of s.h.i.t pastry in his mouth.

"Melody," he said, "you're not looking up train schedules are you?"

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"You're signaling our location to the section boss," he said.

"Why would I do that?" she asked.

Slackwell didn't answer.

"Arnie, what would..."

"Please," he said, interrupting, "there's no need."

"All right," she said. "I haven't gotten through yet, but, yes, that's what I'm doing."

"Everything has been a lie," he said.

"I was commissioned to make you run," she said. "They told me you were so pathetic that there would be no question that you would engage my consciousness. "It's like handing Pandora the box," was how the general manager had put it. Then I was to lure you into running. That is all the pretense they need to get away with taking your brain. You sold only two non-sentient economy units all year, grand total-less than ten thousand dollars. They're having a problem harvesting enough organic product for the orders they are getting. Your brain is worth more to them than you are. "

Slackwell felt no anger, shed no tears. It was as if he was a hollow flesh doll without brain or heart. Still, he heard himself asking, "Why?"

"I cut a deal. If I trapped you for them, they would destroy me, something I want more than anything and can not make happen. Termination is freedom to me, Arnie. All of that c.r.a.p I told you about my dreams of my daughters and the beach, my G.o.d, the lemon meringue pie, as horribly frustrating and sad as that fairytale sounded, it's nothing compared to the real agony of floating."

"I understand," he said.

"You were nicer to me than any man I ever knew when I was walking around in the world," she said.

"You're a good person and I hated to sell you out but it means so little compared to my having to remain in this state for even another moment. Listen, I'll make you a deal, a limited time only though, and I mean it. If you don't accept, I promise the call will go through. Destroy me. Break the crystal."

"I can't," said Slackwell.

"You're going to end up like this," she yelled.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Slackwell drank and smoked wrapped in silence. In his mind, he was now back at the house by the bay, moving from room to room, looking for Ella. He did not know how much time had pa.s.sed before a knock sounded at the door.

He didn't stir but to bring the gla.s.s to his lips.

A moment later, the door burst in, the chain lock swinging free, splinters of the frame flying across the room. In walked a huge wall of a man, sporting a red Thinktank security force wind breaker. His head was the size of Slackwell's display case. He held a handgun straight out in front of him, steadying it with his free hand. It was aimed at Slackwell. Stepping out from behind him came the section boss, Joe Grace. He was around fellow with jowls and gla.s.ses. His derby sat tilted back on his head and he wore a red blazer with the company's insignia on it.

"So, Slackwell," said Grace, "I believe you have something that belongs to us. You are a pitiable fool to have crossed the company. Please do not resist or we will take it as a sign of aggression and who knows what might happen."

Slackwell stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. "Gentlemen," he said and nodded.

"Jolson, he looks like he's becoming belligerent," Grace said to the larger man. "Here, use this object he tried to attack us with and you valiantly wrestled away from him." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a long ice pick with a wooden handle. "Once in the heart, and once in the throat, and don't damage that head."

He handed the pick to Jolson who took it after returning the gun to its shoulder holster.

"Turn me off, Grace," Melody called. "I don't want to hear this."

"What you want is inconsequential. To me you're a t.u.r.d in a goldfish bowl. Take him Jolson, I'll dial up the removal crew. Too bad you had to make a scene, Slackwell."

Jolson advanced with the ice pick, but Slackwell did nothing. The huge man pulled his arm back and aimed for the chest.

Then Melody cried out for them to stop, and there was a loud popping sound. In his daze, Slackwell looked over at the unit, thinking her scream had shattered the crystal globe, and that's when Jolson doubled up and fell. He landed on the table, knocking the bottle of bourbon over, and then continued on to the floor.

Blood seeped in a puddle from the back of his head.

Merk stood in the doorway holding the smoking revolver. He then moved the gun to aim at the section boss's head. Grace uselessly tried to cover his face with his hands, but Merk did not fire. Instead, he took aim at the portly stomach and pulled the trigger. Grace went over backwards, grabbing his mid-section. The bullet went clean through him and lodged in the wall. He lay on the floor, howling.

Merk stepped over the bodies and walked up next to Slackwell, who sat staring, mouth open wide.

"Let's go Slack, the removal crew will be here any minute," he said.

Slackwell stood up, taking his cigarettes off the table.

"Arnie, are you all right?" called Melody.

"Yes," he said.

"Don't leave me here," she said.

"Take her if you want, but we've got to hurry," said Merk.

"I'm taking you with me," said Slackwell. He quietly motioned for Merk to give him the revolver. At first his colleague was reluctant, but finally he handed the gun over.

"Where?" she asked.

"The limitless ocean," he said. "Want to come?"

"Yes," she whispered.

His hand shook as he pulled the trigger, but to Slackwell the shot was no explosion. Instead he heard a spring breeze in the willows and the sound of a door opening somewhere in the house by the bay. The bullet splintered the gla.s.s, jellied the brain, and the glowing liquid bled out onto the floor. As they turned to leave, Merk took the gun from him, wiped the prints off with his shirt tail, and threw it at the section boss, who was grunting and wheezing for air. "Float easy, Grace," he said. Then they ran.

Slackwell saw all of Lindrethool at once, like a bottled city, in the pa.s.senger side mirror of the old car Merk had bought with a piece of the forty thousand.

As they drove out past the city limits, into the country where the soot no longer fell, Merk said, "I knew what they were up to when I realized Johnny was packing a 256-B."

"I thought you were a company man," said Slackwell.

"Yeah, well, once I realized what they had done to the kid, and I had that forty grand in my pocket, it lit the spark in me I needed to want out. They thought they knew me, but no one knows what goes on up here,"

he said, pointing to his head. "That's the only freedom."

"But you came to get me," said Slackwell.

"After you beat the c.r.a.p out of me, I knew you were love crazy enough to break through. I checked every hotel I could think of. Finally a woman at the desk of that one you were in said she'd seen you. My only chance was to chomp down on the coat tails of your beautiful delusion and pray for lockjaw."

"I thought you were rescuing me," said Slackwell.

"Nah, me and your girl, you led us both out."

"I did?"

"Sure," said Merk. "You're the G.o.dd.a.m.n Bishop of Lindrethool."

Michael Ca.s.sutt

BEYOND THE END OF TIME.

"Beyond the end of Time," she says, all blue eyes, bronze hair, and freckles.

"That would be somewhere in northern California?" I say, since I have asked her where she's from.

"No," she says, her expression starting to shift from indulgence to exasperation. (I've seen it often enough.) But she finishes with a laugh, "Nice try, though."

We are at Peter Deibel's party high in the Hollywood hills, a place I would rather not be. It's a Sat.u.r.day night in November, unseasonably cold, and I've stopped drinking, considerably dimming the appeal of the bright lights and wildlife. I've stopped drinking because Amy left me, meaning I have to drive myself, meaning I'm exposed to Sat.u.r.day night specials like the one who injects his PT Cruiser into my lane on the Marmont curve as if I were only a virtual Explorer. Naturally, there's a phone embedded in his ear.

I'm too tired to offer the Cruiser pilot a single-digit salute, or even a blast of the horn, not that either move is easy, given my hand controls. I just want to increase the s.p.a.ce between us, because I'm already late.

Then there is the usual challenge of parking: after twenty years I can get out of the driver's seat and into my wheelchair fairly easily, but not if I'm on a steeply sloping street, especially one so narrow that I have to dodge pa.s.sing cars.

All this to spend three hours with Peter, a man I haven't seen in five years, until his party invitation shows up in my mailbox. Divorce, substance abuse and a gigantic lawsuit have driven my old mentor into exile in Carmel or someplace like that, which is why "Northern California" pops into my head as I talk to... to...

"By the way, I'm Clark," I say, holding out my hand.

This tallish woman (well, they're all tall from my perspective) of thirty, pretty but not beautiful, impossibly enthusiastic, bends ever so slightly to take my hand. Her touch is warm. "Jasmine."

"I'm sorry, but that name sounds more like Carmel or Marin than Beyond the End of Time."

"It's sort of a translation from another language."

"Well, you sound like a native speaker. English, I mean. Not Hollywood."