Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 13 Read online

  "Atavistic bastards."

  "Now, Jack, Silas's parents love him in their way."

  "Sure, sure. Say, what do they think poor Silas is guilty of this time?"

  "Self abuse. They consider it killing the unconceived."

  "Dear God, if any, please just let me get through this day with my sanity. Hey—they haven't been messing around near the sheds?"

  "Not that I know of—"

  "Don't let them near the sheds. Don't let the kids go in there either. If Silas got in there and then his folks found out . . ."

  "I do wish you'd find another place for that teleport sludge."

  "It's only temporary, Helen."

  "That's what you said last month. Here's your Kuke—"

  "—Don't say it."

  "Why not?"

  "Let's wait until the kids get up, so we can make a little extra off their hearing the jingle."

  "You're absolutely right. My heart and brains!"

  "I love you, Helen."

  "Right back at you! How's the Kuke?"

  "Yummilicious!"

  Gabe stopped ringing and commenced to hammer. I ran downstairs to the front door before realizing that he was at the back door, and then, when I opened the back door, I discovered that the reason he was hammering so loudly was that he was really they. Gabe and Sarah Tyvil, the both of them, were standing on the back porch with their four fists clenched and their four eyes blazing and their twenty toes dug in and their two faces just as white as a couple of snow drifts before the dogs hit. They said two words. They said it in perfect unison: “Where's Silas?"

  "Would you like a couple of Kukes while I—"

  Gabe interrupted: “Don't waste your breath, Helen. Your kind has spoiled many things—"

  "Gabriel,” the Mrs. whispered, “it's pearls before swine—"

  "I will have my say, Sarah. Helen, Kukla Boogie may have printed their corporate logo in mile-high letters on the face of the Good Lord's moon, but they have not, Helen, and will not, defile my heart."

  "Is somebody getting their heart defiled on my back porch?” Jack picked that moment to come tripping down the stairs. “Because, as the householder, I get a percentage of any action back there—oh, Gabe, Sarah, what a delight to see you. Honey, aren't you going to get our neighbors a couple of yummilicious Kukla Boogies?” Jack squeezed past me onto the porch. I stayed back in the doorway. Truth is, I felt a little embarrassed that Jack was bare-chested and still in his pajama bottoms.

  Mr. Tyvil, blackly: “We know everything."

  Mrs.: “The sludge."

  I could see my Jackie's face tighten up like a dish rag when you twist out the water. “Have you been nosing around my property, Gabe?"

  "The crime site, you mean? This yard is strewn with corpses."

  "Corpses? Whose corpses? Every one of the people who teleported out of the capsules in this yard is walking the earth today, hale and hearty, with pockets full of cash."

  Gabe was one of those shorter men who try to gain altitude by waxing ferocious. His golden-haired Sarah stood by him like a pillar of salt, holding his arm in her arm with a look of angelic righteousness. Gabe set his jaw. “It's not them, Jack, and you know it. They died in those cans of yours. They were murdered."

  "Murdered! I tell you, they are alive and well. Damn it, Gabe, do I have to give you a physics lesson?"

  "No."

  I've never known that syllable to stop my Jack. He charged on:

  "When one of those high hats teleports somewhere, and it's always the high hats, of course, except for your medical emergencies and whatnot,"—trying for some prole camaraderie there, but Gabe wasn't buying any—"they do it through ‘entangled particles,’ with the old Einstein-Podelski-Rosen Effect."

  "I know this,” Gabe Tyvil groaned.

  "EPR particles are perfect twins, y'see: if one sneezes the other goes, ‘Atchoo!’ even if they are a gazillion miles apart. They've got two tubs of them, one here and one at the destination."

  "I know the theory."

  Me, I rolled my eyes. “Particle by particle,” Jack went on, “a supercomputer aligns the home-side tub with your body. It's like pressing your face into a pin board.” Instantly, particle by particle, he was going to say. “Instantly, particle by particle, the destination tub takes on your looks. But here's the thing . . ."

  "I know."

  Your original body, the old you, turns to sludge.

  ” . . . Your original body, the old you, turns to sludge. You can't have two of a person because it would violate the Uncertainty Principle; between the two, y'see, you could measure everything at once. So the teleportee has to turn to sludge.” He grinned like a cracked melon. He turned to me. Men. “You gonna throw your arms around me and kiss me now or what?"

  Nothing doing.

  Back to Gabe: “All those cylinders full of teleport detritus, they stack them up in a warehouse somewhere. They were just waiting for a guy with some spunk to come along and offer to take the problem off their hands. Well, here I am—Acme Teleport Sludge Removal Service."

  "Look, I know all this."

  "Honestly, what's your beef, Gabe? It's not like it's radioactive or toxic or some damn thing. It's just TP sludge, for pity's sake. And as to your teleported person, he is particle-for-particle identical with the original.” Jack flashed me another of his kiss-me-now smirks, but me, I only wanted the thing to be over.

  "There is no original to compare it to,” Gabe put in, “and I do mean it. In your so-called teleport process, Jack, as you well know, the original is murdered. The difference between the actual original human being and your golem on the receiving end is one you science types don't seem to care about: the original had an immortal soul."

  "Come on, Gabe. How do you know the immortal soul isn't teleported right along with the rest of him?"

  The two men were pitched and tight as a couple of hissing alley cats. Gabe let peal a derisive laugh. “What, through the Uncertainty Principle? Einstein said it, Jack. ‘God does not play dice . . . ‘"

  "Pity,” Jack put in. “A person could win some pretty big pots—if he could make the ante."

  "You people are replacing divine law with your own private roulette wheel."

  "Jack,” I said, “let it go."

  But he just spat back: “We are using God's law. We got our methods from a study of nature—God's creation, right?"

  "You are a ghoul employed by murderers. I pray for your immortal soul nightly. Bring us the boy."

  "Go up and get him, you Neanderthal Muddite."

  "God will forgive you your sins, Jack,” Sarah Tyvil said, “if you but repent."

  I was cowering at the back door when Silas sidled next to me. “I want to stay here."

  There was a thunderous silence.

  Sarah's lower lip trembled a bit, I thought. Then Gabe gave her a hard tug at the elbow. “I told you all along what it was, Sarah.” He turned her around, and the two of them walked away.

  My dear husband was about to laugh. “Don't,” I said, and he swallowed it.

  I pulled Silas closer. “I'll talk to them for you, Silas."

  "No. Wouldn't do any good. You mind having me?"

  "No, it's fine, Silas dear. For a while."

  Apollo poked his head out and squealed, “Yummilicious!” He tugged Silas up to his room for God knows what monkeyshines.

  Jack clucked his tongue. “Benighted Muddites. How do they get that way?” He trudged over to the port-a-shed to stack his “corpses."

  I called after him, “Jack, have you figured out what to do with the stuff yet?"

  "I'll get to it."

  "I'm worried, Jack. As long as the sludge is in our back yard, there's bound to be trouble. The Tyvils are mild compared to some of those Modern Luddites."

  "Relax, hon, it's on my list. And I've lined up a buyer for the canisters, too, as soon as I can get rid of the stuff inside them. Teleportation is our golden goose."

  * * * *

  Apollo and Silas go
t along like nobody's business. They showed up for meals and Kukes and bed. You'd see one of them scamper by yelling “Help! Help!” with a Fay Wray grimace; then the other, Silas usually, would shamble after him on his gimp leg: “The vengeance of the zombies be upon you, mortal. Die! Die! Die!” Their laughter spread like boogie fizz all over the house and yard.

  The night after Gabe and Sarah's retreat, with Apollo fast asleep on his side of the bed, I tucked in Silas at the other. I could see the bump and the pucker of skin where his head had cracked open on the marquis of the KB Theater in Brockport.

  He opened his eyes. “Mrs. Earl . . ."

  "Yes, Silas?"

  In a whisper: “Do I seem dead to you?"

  "Dead? Of course not. What would give you an idea like that?"

  "I fell off the roof of the KB Theater."

  "I heard."

  "It was a long way down.” His little brow furrowed and his eyes began to tear. “I shouldn't have been up there. I knew it could kill you."

  "They got you straight to the hospital, thank God."

  "They had to, Mrs. Earl."

  "Silas honey, of course they had to."

  "The leg didn't matter so much, but my head, Mrs. Earl—that hospital down in Manhattan was the only place that could fix me."

  "They saved your life, Silas honey."

  "I had to get there fast too, didn't I? A plane wouldn't have been fast enough, not even a jet."

  "Not even a jet. Must be five hundred miles from the KB Theater to Manhattan Neurological. Shh! Shh!” I wiped the tears from his cheeks with my fingers.

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Earl. I'm going to sleep now. You can go. I don't want to wake up Apollo."

  "Would you like a goodnight Kuke?"

  "No. I'm okay. Just go now. I'm sleepy. Just go, please."

  "Sure, Silas. We'll talk some more tomorrow, huh?"

  "If you want to."

  What could I do for the poor kid? I went to the porch out back and boogied down on the glider. Jack was still digging. I could hear his shovel hit the gravel back behind the sheds. In some ways, men have it easy.

  Next day Silas seemed as normal as an open Kuke, prancing about and making mischief with Apollo. Turns out, Apollo talked him into getting an implant. Of course, it's perfectly legal for children to be implanted without their parents’ consent—the Kukla Boogie lobby took care of that, and why not? Like everybody says, There's Nothing Like A Good Boogie, And Kukla Is The Boogie With The Rune On The Moon. You can get implanted at most grocery stores nowadays, it only takes a minute, and there's that flow of pocket money forever after. Still, I wanted to keep peace with Gabe and Sarah, as well as a person could. I figured, they weren't going to stay mad at me forever.

  This was three days after they had stormed out of our back yard. I fixed my hair and put on something simple and nice. It was hard finding a blouse without the KB logo, but I was afraid the sight of it would get the Tyvils’ gander up, so I made do with some respectable old thing. I had me a Kukla Boogie, I took a deep breath, and I went over to Gabe and Sarah's and knocked on their door. Gabe opened the door; the missus was right there behind him. He held her by one wrist while she stared at the floor. Looked like I had caught them in the middle of a scrap.

  "What exactly is it that you want, Helen?"

  "Well, it's about Silas . . ."

  Gabe interrupted: “Our son Silas is dead.” Sarah started to whimper, and he yanked her to make her shut up.

  "You can't cut him off that way,” I said. “You're his mother and father, for pity sakes."

  "It's not a matter of cutting off."

  "I just came over to tell you that the boys went down to the UltraMart this morning, without anybody's permission, and Silas got a boogie chip put in. Now, we can get it taken right out, Gabe . . ."

  "What that thing does is no concern of ours."

  He slammed the door. I stood there staring at the jambs and mumbling. “Thing? He's your son. You can't just dump him with a neighbor . . ."

  Apparently, they could.

  * * * *

  Silas tossed and turned and mumbled in his sleep. Sometimes Apollo would come in and complain to me about it, and I'd let him snuggle in with Jack and me, while Silas tossed by his lonesome, poor thing. I kept thinking that Gabe and Sarah would soften up, but it was nothing doing. Like they say, there are some stains even a Kuke won't bleach. They flat-out ignored the child.

  Then came the sleepwalking. At least, that's what I thought it was. In the dead of the night I heard the door open and close downstairs, and there was a scratching and shoveling sound out back. At first I figured it was Jack, but I rolled over, and there he was beside me, sleeping like a baby. I peeked out the bedroom window. It was Silas, of course, roaming about the yard, poking every few feet, turning up earth, then piling it back, or disappearing into one or the other of the sheds.

  I didn't tell Jack, because I was afraid he'd get mad. So I went down and cleaned up after Silas before Jack woke. I filled in the holes he hadn't finished filling, and I tidied the disordered cylinders.

  Next night the same. Silas dug, and I filled. I didn't know what to say or do. Maybe Silas had gotten a screw turned wrong when he fell from the KB Theater. Probably he didn't even remember what he did in his sleep. Why add to his sorrows?

  But the morning after that I was slow getting up, and Jack beat me to the yard. When he saw the state of things, he let out a yelp that you could hear all the way to Syracuse in one direction and Niagara Falls in the other. It was enough to scare the bubbles out of a Kuke. It woke up my Apollo, I can tell you, who had been sleeping with us in bed again, and he clung to me so hard I got red marks where his little fingers had been.

  Well, I pushed my head out between the curtains, and Jack yelled up, “Would you just look at this? This is the work of those bleeping Muddites."

  "Shh!” I said. “No, Jack, no it isn't. Come back upstairs."

  "The hell it isn't.” He stood near the back porch and surveyed what you could see of the neighborhood from there, all those sleepy folks peering out of their bedroom windows. He brandished his shovel like a battleaxe. “And as for you busybodies, I've got one thing to say . . .” He flashed me a wicked smile, and then he shouted, “Drink Kukla Boogie—it's the beverage with leverage."

  I planted Apollo in our bed and ran down the stairs while Jack tramped up, the shovel still in his hand. “Jack, Jack,” I tried to whisper, “it wasn't any Muddites. It was poor Silas, in his sleep."

  "Wha . . . ?"

  Before Jack could finish one word, Silas himself appeared on the landing: “I wasn't sleeping.” By this time Apollo was standing next to Silas in his pajamas, screwing up his eyes and cocking his head. Silas went on: “I was looking for something."

  "What on earth for?” Jack said.

  "For me, Mr. Earl. I was looking for me. I thought I might be buried out there."

  I could see the lemons line up in Jack's eyeballs. Silas's crying at night. His folks disowning him. Jack looked at me, and I nodded.

  Apollo draped an arm around Silas and gave his shoulders a squeeze. “You dope.” Then to us: “Silas thinks he's a zombie because he was teleported to the hospital in New York after he fell off the roof of the KB Theater."

  "Shut up. I can say it myself."

  "He thinks his real self is in a can somewhere."

  "Shut up.” Silas said it the way people do who want you to go on talking.

  "I told him, Pop only has the juice of KB execs and big shots, not some kid from a 911, but he keeps up, anyway."

  "Is it true, Mr. Earl?” Silas gazed at us with little lemur eyes. “Is that all you have is that kind of people? Couldn't I be back there too?"

  Jack didn't say a word. He turned on his heels and shot down the stairs, knocking a fine divot out of the wallboard with the business end of that shovel. He bounded for the door.

  "Jack, what are you going to do?"

  Next thing I knew, his shovel rang against the Tyvils’ doo
r. “Come on out of there, you snarl-brained Muddite throwbacks."

  The way the door slammed open, I expected Gabriel Tyvil to come out loaded for bear. Instead, he stepped out in his PJs, arms at his sides. He lifted his chin, turned his head sideways, and said as calmly as you please, “Here's my one cheek, Jack, and when you're done with that one, why, I'll give you the other. That's the way of us ‘throwbacks.’”

  Jack sputtered for a minute, then threw down his shovel. “Dammit, Gabe, what kind of a ‘way’ is it to treat your own son as if he were dead? You think some teleport sludge deserves your affection more than that sweet live child looking out at us this very minute from my porch door?"

  Gabe worked his face so, you could tell he had a lot of things that popped into his head to say, but all that finally came out was, “You wouldn't understand."

  "You're probably right. I wouldn't. Your boy has been crying nights and plowing up my yard looking for his buried soul, while you lie snug in your bed, cuddling and snoring. What's it to you, huh? Hell, you ought to be . . . teleported."

  Sarah pushed out past her husband. “It's a lot to us, Jack. More than you can know."

  "Quiet, Sarah,” Gabe said, “it's pearls before . . .” His voice choked off into a sob.

  "We loved our boy,” Sarah went on. “This is the hardest thing I've ever done. It's like a nightmare to see him playing right outside my window and not to be able to call to him or make him lunch or hold him in my arms or tuck him in at night."

  My Jack said, “Dammit, then, why don't you?"

  "Don't you think we tried? We flew to Manhattan to pick Silas up, I mean, it, to pick it up. He was so sweet—I mean, it was so sweet. You're a father; you know how they are when they're sick, Jack. And we brought it home. It slept in Silas's bed, and it ate from Silas's plate. It talked with Silas's voice, and it kissed me, Jack, it kissed me with Silas's lips. But it wasn't Silas.

  "Oh, I couldn't tell. I might have just held onto him like he was my little boy, but Gabriel knew. Gabriel could see. He told me the truth. And all the time, Gabriel was hunting for our real son, the one they killed, that was still in that cylinder at County Emergency—but nobody could find that cylinder, Jack. They must have done away with it, with him, with our son, like he was some kind of sewage."