Fever Dream

"Carlton and I are taking care of him," Brodie went on hastily. "Keeping him alive... It's very difficult to keep the ravages of the disease at bay... Don't question him further, you're disturbing him--"

"This disease," Pendergast said, cutting her off with a flick of his wrist. "Tell me about it."

"It affects the inhibitory and excitatory circuits of the brain," Brodie whispered eagerly, as if to distract him. "Overwhelms the brain with physical sensations--sight, smell, touch. It's a mutant form of flavivirus. At first it presents almost as acute encephalitis. Assuming he lives, the patient appears to recover."

"Just like the Doanes." Slade giggled. "Oh, dear me, yes--just like the Doanes. We kept a very close eye on them."

"But the virus has a predilection for the thalamus," Brodie continued. "Especially the LGB."

"Lateral geniculate body," Slade said, slapping himself viciously with the whip.

"Not unlike herpes zoster," Brodie went on rapidly, "which takes up residence in the dorsal root ganglion and years, or decades, later resurfaces to cause shingles. But it eventually kills its host neurons."

"End result--insanity," Slade whispered. His eyes began to defocus and his lips began moving silently, faster and faster.

"And all this--" Pendergast gestured with the gun. "The morphine drip, the flail--are distractions from the continuous barrage of sensation?"

Brodie nodded eagerly. "So you see, he's not responsible for what he's saying. We might just be able to get him back to where he was before. We've been trying--trying for years. There's still hope. He's a good man, a healer, who's done good works."

Pendergast raised the gun higher. His face was as pale as marble, his torn suit hanging off his frame like rags. "I have no interest in this man's good works. I want only one thing: the name of the final person on Project Aves."

But Slade had slid off again into his own world, jabbering softly at the blank wall, his fingers twitching. He gripped the IV stand and his whole body began to tremble, the stand shaking. A double press of the bulb brought him back under control.

"You're torturing him!" Brodie whispered.

Pendergast ignored her, faced Slade. "The decision to kill her: it was yours?"

"Yes. At first the others objected. But then they saw we had no choice. She wouldn't be appeased, she wouldn't be bought off. So we killed her, and most ingeniously! Eaten by a trained lion." He broke into another carefully contained spasm of silent laughter.

The gun began to shake more visibly in Pendergast's hands.

"Crunch, crunch!" Slade whispered, his eyes wide with glee. "Ah, Pendergast, you have no idea what sort of Pandora's box you've opened up with this investigation of yours. You've roused the sleeping dog with a kick in the ass."

Pendergast took aim.

"You promised," Hayward said in a low, insistent voice.

"He must die," whispered Pendergast, almost to himself. "This man must die."

"The man must die," Slade said mockingly, his voice rising briefly above a whisper before falling again. "Kill me, please. Put me out of my misery!"

"You promised," Hayward repeated.

Abruptly, almost as if overcoming an invisible opponent in a physical struggle, Pendergast lowered the pistol with a jerk of his hand. Then he took a step toward Slade, twirled the gun around, and offered him the grip.

Slade seized it, yanked it from Pendergast's grasp.

"Oh, my God," Brodie cried. "What are you doing? He'll kill you for sure!"

Slade, with an expert motion, retracted the slide, snapped it back, then slowly raised the gun at Pendergast. A crooked smile disfigured his gaunt face. "I'm going to send you to the same place I sent your bitch of a wife." His finger curled around the trigger and began to tighten.

77

JUST A MOMENT," PENDERGAST SAID. "BEFORE YOU shoot, I'd like to speak to you a minute. In private."

Slade looked at him. The big handgun looked almost like a toy in his gnarled fist. He steadied himself against the IV rack. "Why?"

"There's something you need to know."

Slade looked at him a moment. "What a poor host I've been. Come into my office."

June Brodie made a move to protest, but Slade, with a flick of the gun, gestured Pendergast through the doorway. "Guests first," he said.

Pendergast shot a warning glance at Hayward, then disappeared through the dark rectangle.

The hallway was paneled with cedar, painted over in gray. Recessed lights in the ceiling cast low, regular pools of light onto neutral carpeting, its weave tight and plush. Slade walked slowly behind Pendergast, the wheels of his IV making no noise as they turned. "Last door on the left," he said.

The room that served as Slade's office had once been the game room of the lodge. A dartboard hung on the wall, and there were a couple of chairs and two tables shoved up against the walls, tops inlaid for backgammon and chess. A snooker table near the back apparently served as Slade's desk: its felt surface was empty save for carefully folded tissues, a crossword magazine, a book on advanced calculus, and several additional flails, their tips tattered from constant use. A few ancient snooker balls, crazed with craquelure, still lay forlornly in one pocket. There was little other furniture: the big room was remarkably bare. Gauzy curtains were drawn tightly over the windows. The space had the stillness of a tomb.

Slade closed the door with exquisite care. "Sit down."

Pendergast dragged a cane chair out and set it on the thick carpet before the table. Slade wheeled his IV rack behind the table and sat down very slowly and carefully in the lone easy chair. He pressed the bulb on the IV line, eyes fluttering as the morphine hit his bloodstream, sighed, then trained the gun again on Pendergast. "Okey-dokey," he said, his voice remaining whispery and slow. "Say what you have to say so that I can get on with shooting you." He smiled faintly. "It'll make a mess, of course. But June will clean it up. She's good at cleaning up my messes."

"Actually," Pendergast said, "you're not going to shoot me."

Slade emitted a careful little cough. "No?"

"That's what I wanted to speak to you about. You're going to shoot yourself."

"Now, why would I want to do that?"

Instead of replying, Pendergast stood up and walked over to a cuckoo clock that stood on a side wall. He pulled up the counterweights, set the time to ten minutes before twelve, then gave the pendulum a flick with his fingernail to start it.

"Eleven fifty?" Slade said. "That's not the correct time."

Pendergast sat down again. Slade waited. The tick of the now-active cuckoo clock began to fill the silence. Slade seemed to stiffen slightly. His lips began to move.

"You are going to kill yourself because justice demands it," Pendergast said.

"To satisfy you, I suppose."

"No. To thwart me."

"I won't kill myself," Slade said out loud, the first words he had spoken above a papery whisper.

"I hope you won't," Pendergast said, plucking two snooker balls from the corner pocket. "You see, I want you to live."