In the Ocean of Night (46 page)

“I had a similar thing once,” Nikka said. “Did you check for water in the fuel?”

Mr. Ichino nodded and lifted his lukewarm cup, the coffee swaying like a black coin within it. “I rechecked everything and then set her against the alley wall and fired her up. She ran smoothly for as long as I’d wait. So I jumped on and went two blocks and she throttled down and died on me again.”

“Irritating.”

“Yes. There’s that old joke—‘Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.’ So did this.”

“You looked for an intermittent electrical fault?” “Yes, all the conventional diagnostics.”

“And?”

“It wasn’t any of them.”

—yet Snark had a piece of it, they all had a sliver of detail seven blind men and a melting elephant Snark must’ve known in ancient ferrite cores that he/it/she came from the computer civilizations that smashed the Icarus vessel, broke the eggshell now lying in Marginis, cut off that attempt to transfer knowledge to the beings that would/could become man. Those ancient living beings who made the Marginis wreck and Icarus—flitting image of reptiles, of gleaming claws that closed like hands—did they collapse into war? Were their home worlds destroyed by the machine intelligences? Life swarmed in the galaxy. The computer civilizations could not wipe out all biospheres, they must’ve triggered an inherent instability, something that reached to this outpost swinging around Sol and snuffed out Icarus, immense starship, ponderous and certain, and the Marginis wreck, all when the reptiles were so close, so near to some connection with Bigfoot. So the machine societies knew the ancient reptilian call signals, felt the tremor that the Icarus hulk spewed out, its death rattle triggered by bumbling Nigel, Snark arrowing in on the electromagnetic scream, its circuits only numbly remembering what to look for, perhaps a dim wanting to erase Icarus and the moon wreck, but the Snark was confused deep within, whimpering in that great night that enclosed it, a wolf let in from the cold swinging in for a pass by the moon to drop a fusion capsule, make a fresh sun bloom over Marginis if the wreck responded, but then unable to approach, Nigel a gnat in its eye, Nigel dumb to eternity washing up a gray sea on the lunar shore—

He pauses. Sinks the blade into a securing log and turns, walks to the bare hillside nearby, lungs whooshing the dry air, legs clenching snow crunching prickly pine scent tickling at his nose as enameled light flickers through tall evergreens, trees stretched tall by cruel competition, a thin whisper of a breeze churning them and stirring a tiny whirlwind a few meters away, a circular presence outlined by its cargo of whirled bits, dirt, flakes, a swirl of ice. It sucked at the ground and he entered it, felt the brush of its wind and by so measuring its tiny world destroyed it, churned it forever into minor eddies, the circle consumed and reborn.

At the brow of the hill he felt the full chilling lance of the wind and abruptly, across the crystal gap of the valley, caught a microscopic movement in a far clearing, a dark dot framed in the ellipse of trees, the speck now freezing as he watched, head turning, the two of them pinned to each other along the line of sight as across the millennia an eternal wash of light encased them and fleeting dabs of perception spattered over him, of rank fresh clods of dirt on forest floors, of hymns sung below the edge of human hearing amid the cathedral trees, a grunting ample life plucked from the flooding embracing forest, and through it the curve of the newborn moon speaking of other underlying senses, the same framing order as darted into being along the descending parabolic lines of a tossed stone, of flickering emerging structure that, seen for an instant, ached inside and thrust Bigfoot forward into man, and as this spark passed between them the shaggy troubled dot raised a hand, hesitantly groping upward in the layered air and paused, the timid fears seeping back into the gesture, for one suspended moment, the hand came down and the old being skittered away, angling into the sheltering tree line, Nigel’s filmed eyes following the shadow and knowing this new facet and face of the world—

—which, now absorbed and altering him— —melted—

“In time I eventually understood,” Mr. Ichino said. “The seat had springs under it for cushioning. The springs were too soft. They let the seat ride down too far. The rubber fuel line was under it, on top of the carburetor. By sitting on the seat, I pressed the fuel line down and kinked it off, eventually.”

“With no fuel the cycle stopped,” Nikka concluded. “Yes. There wasn’t anything wrong with the cycle itself—only in my relation to it.”

Nikka furrowed her brow.

“The same is true of the way most of us look at the world,” Mr. Ichino went on. “We can’t solve problems because we are disconnected from the world, always manipulating it as though we were using tongs to stir a fire.”

“And you think what’s happened to Nigel…”

“It’s no accident that he has done so much original work at the Marginis wreck. He has learned to merge with the cycle.”

—he makes his way back to the woodpile, rough fabric of his work clothes rub and scratch at his skin, and judges that he has been right about the chattering in the sky, it swoops closer now angling downslope toward the valleyward face where the bristling trees thin and now as he turns his head it looms over the ridgeline, tilted slightly forward moving at top speed to gain surprise, a plump gorged shape in a looping descending gyre now banking into a smoothed cycloid as Nigel stamps through clinging snow toward the clearing pressing down tightly after breathing in the brisk air that binds and combines, then whoosh, out, loosens and completes.

The hammering sound from above broke through their words. Nikka sprang up and whirled about, seeking its source. Mr. Ichino reached the window first. In the rectangular framing he picked out the whirring dot, a point that seemed like an angry fly trapped in a box as it lowered and was swallowed by the tree line.

“Graves,” he said. “He has come back. There is another man with him.”

Nikka bit her lip. They began to struggle into their coats.

Nigel reaches the clearing, an upward tunnel in a lapping sea of trees, he steps from the evergreen shelter into the open tube of air that connects earth to the chattering voice above, cranes his neck back and imagines how Big-foot saw it, a mad beating of spinning wings, Graves firing down from the hovering fury, the remnant band scattering in panic, eyes wide, Graves and machine grinding after them above the densely packed trees until he could no longer see them, then Graves following on foot yes and Nigel feels something tick over inside him as the whirring rotors near and the shiny skin of metal splits to show its maw, a man appearing at the mouth and jumping in one fluid motion into the snow, an arm coming up stiffly as his knees bend with impact, arm and rifle together swiveling left right, catching sight of Nigel, coming around, the man running forward in a crouch beneath the slowing blades whose shadows fan, fan across him and Nigel stops, sensing something more as another figure appears from behind the fat sheen of the copter, older man bundled against the cold stepping into view while the young man stalks forward holding the rifle easily, his smooth features focused on the line that connects the rifle bore to Nigel’s chest, heavy black eyebrows knotted in concentration, boots squeaking in the compacted snow “Keep it on ’im” as the older man strides closer. “He’s not the one but, I dunno—” grizzled face twisted in puzzlement, stops and hands on hips studies Nigel “Seem to know this fella from som’ere” as Nigel feels himself piercing the sky in readiness, feet rooted to the earth so he hangs threadlike through the space between “maybe Ichino called him in to” the wand of the rifle drifting in slow circles as the younger man’s face flushes with excited angry patches, hand pressing at the steelblue metal to coax roaring life from it “help him out” rotors grinding to a stop “Look fella, aren’t you a little old to be foolin’ aroun’ out here, you and your friend Ichino? Might be nice if you’d just kinda” Nigel catching the first shred of a distant exclamation, Nikka’s thin high voice, he says “Old? I’ve already outlived Mozart and Anne Frank, yes, but we’re all old here” as he sees the young man’s next step will take him within range but now triangulates the position of the silvery voice behind him and senses that if the rifle spoke as he snatched it the bullet would go in that direction, toward the cabin, so slides back into breathing, breathing and being breathed, Graves shaking his head grimacing “You’re not gonna talk your—hey—”

Nikka and Mr. Ichino came around the stand of evergreens together and Graves caught sight of them. They stopped, puffing clouds, and surveyed the clearing. When Mr. Ichino noticed the rifle his first impulse was to leap back into the shelter of the trees, but at that instant Graves shouted brusquely, “Hey, you two. Come over here.” A pause. “No foolin’ aroun’, now.” He glanced at Nikka, and she at him. Slowly they walked the last fifty meters to where Graves and a sallow-faced man stood confronting Nigel. The younger man appeared edgy and yet he did not move jerkily. Rather, he kept the rifle weaving in a steady progression from Nigel to Nikka to Ichino and back. Ichino recognized this as a dangerous pattern for them all, should one of the three make an unexpected move while the rifle was pointed elsewhere; a reflex yank of the trigger could—

“I didn’t get much satisfaction last time I was here,” Graves said, hands still on hips. “So I brought a little persuasion. I know you’ve got that film of mine.”

“I don’t—” Ichino began.

“No lyin’ now.”

“I destroyed it, as I told you.”

“You’re gonna tell.”

“There is nothing—”

as though sprung from nowhere feelings and desires forked like summer lightning across the unmoving vault of him and to dispel them growing like fresh corn he entered into mersion with them, sucked them into himself to see them for what they were and integrated the flickering so that it became a drowsy blur which faded into the continuing murmur of the world, a place absolutely blank and waiting for each moment to write upon it, time like water molding itself to event “—nothing—” as Graves takes a step forward and his arm comes up, hand growing rigid in flight to crack across Ichino’s face backhanded, the small man jerking backward at the last moment and taking it full on the left cheek, feet losing their purchase and the body turning as it falls to cushion the impact, white crystals leaping up where it broke the crusted snow and Graves following through, head turned to watch Ichino’s fall, the young man keeping the rifle steady on Nigel as the moment passes Nikka gasps Nigel sees the rifleman turn steady and on guard leaving no opening

Mr. Ichino squinted up at Graves and tasted blood.

“Y’know, you think I’m so dumb I don’t see what’s goin’ on here. You and your”—casual wave—“friends here are gonna make a bundle outta this. That’s what you’re thinkin’, isn’t it? Or else you figure these things that damn near killed me deserve to live.” Graves’s pinched face seemed to fill the sky above him.

“They do. Please try to understand. I simply do not want them destroyed by the attention you would bring. In time they can be studied. But not by the methods you will bring about.”

Graves’s voice narrowed to a rasp. “You’re lyin’ again.”

time squeezes down to infinitesimal frozen moments, the rifle bears to the left as Ichino struggles up to lean on one hand braced behind him, the movement covered and Graves stepping back making a flicking gesture with a finger to the other man, the rifle butt rising as the sight focuses on Ichino’s left kneecap and the clearing is cloaked in layers of filled silence, waiting waiting “I think you’re in the wrong fairy tale” Nigel says for distraction, the first word beginning to register on the trigger finger which clenches slightly in the clear light, the man bracing his bones working like a lattice of calcium rods each muscle straining, as Nigel whips his right foot up into the man’s elbow feeling his bootheel catch the tip as his weight comes forward, the man’s hands clench at the sacred metal and momentum collapses his form, breath whistling from him through dry pipes as the rifle deflects in a scatter of light, Nigel’s heel slipping from the elbow and onto the gleaming brown wooden rifle stock as the man’s stem of a neck jerks to the side and his hands clutch for a last redeeming moment with the trigger which lurches back under the slipping finger and the muzzle spits a clap of bright noise into the crystalline space exhaling a blue cloud toward the trampled snow, burying a node of lead in the receiving earth

By the time Mr. Ichino had scrambled to his feet Nigel had the rifle and Graves was backing away, blinking, palms cupped toward Nigel.

The younger man was still face down in the snow, where he had fallen after Nikka tripped him. If she had not leaped forward, Nigel might not have had time to recover the rifle. Nigel cradled the weapon now, worked the bolt and left the breech open. The man got up on his hands and knees in the snow and looked around him, somewhat dazed, as though still unable to accept where he was. No one had spoken.

“I’d like a word,” Nigel said to Graves. He took the man by the arm and led him off a few meters.

They spoke, their words inaudible. Mr. Ichino watched Nigel, wondering at a facet he could not quite define. There was no hint of tension in Nigel, and in his relaxed manner was the very essence of his power. When Graves turned back from the conversation, Ichino was shocked by the change in the man’s expression. There was a new calm in the heavy-lidded eyes and at the same time the face carried a distant sadness, as though Graves had learned something he would rather have not known. Mr. Ichino knew they would not meet again. Nigel clapped the man on the back. Graves spoke haltingly to the younger man and together they trudged back to the copter. They climbed aboard and in a moment the rotors began to turn.