The Fate of Mice (18 page)

Rusty’s passions and loyalties were much more basic now.

He stood in the elegant office, rocking the paperweight as if it were a baby, crooning to it, sometimes holding it at arm’s length to admire it before bringing it back safely to his chest again. He had another two hours of revival left this time; the man behind the desk would revive him and the others again in a month, for another twenty-four hours. Rusty fully intended to spend every minute of his current two hours in contemplation of the paperweight. When he was revived again in a month, he’d fall in love with something else.

“You
idiot,”
said the man who had been sitting behind the desk. He wasn’t behind a desk now; he was in a refrigerated warehouse, a month after that meeting with Rusty. He was yelling at his aide. Around him were the revived dead, waiting to climb into refrigerated trucks to be taken to the rally site. It was a lovely, warm spring day, and they’d smell less if they were kept cool for as long as possible. “I don’t want
them.”
He waved at two of the dead, more mangled than any of the others, charred and lacerated and nearly unrecognizable as human bodies. One was playing with a paperclip that had been lying on the floor; the other opened and closed its hand, trying to catch the dust motes that floated in the shafts of light from the window.

The aide was sweating, despite the chill of the warehouse. “Sir, you said—”

“I know what I said, you moron!”

“Everyone who was there, you said—”

“Idiot.” The voice was very quiet now, very dangerous. “Idiot. Do you know why we’re doing this? Have you been paying
attention?”

“S-sir,” the aide stuttered. “Yes sir.”

“Oh, really? Because if you’d been paying
attention, they
wouldn’t be here!”

“But—”

“Prove to me that you understand,” said the dangerously quiet voice. “Tell me why we’re doing this.”

The aide gulped. “To remind people where their loyalties lie. Sir.”

“Yes. And where
do
their loyalties lie? Or where
should
their loyalties lie?”

“With innocent victims. Sir.”

“Yes. Exactly. And are those, those
things
over there”—an impassioned hand waved at the two mangled corpses—“are they innocent victims?”

“No. Sir.”

“No. They aren’t. They’re the monsters who were responsible for all these
other
innocent victims! They’re the
guilty
ones, aren’t they?”

“Yes sir.”

“They
deserve
to be dead, don’t they?”

“Yes sir.” The aide stood miserably twisting his hands.

“The entire point of this rally is to demonstrate that some people
deserve
to be dead, isn’t it?”

“Yes sir!”

“Right. So why in the name of everything that’s holy were those
monsters
revived?”

The aide coughed. “We were using the new technique. Sir. The blanket-revival technique. It works over a given geographical area. They were mixed in with the others. We couldn’t be that precise.”

“Fuck that,” said the quiet voice, succinctly.

“It would have been far too expensive to revive all of them individually,” the aide said. “The new technique saved us—”

“Yes, I know how much it saved us! And I know how much we’re going to lose if this doesn’t work! Get rid of them! I don’t want them on the truck! I don’t want them at the rally!”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

The aide, once his boss had left, set about correcting the situation. He told the two unwanted corpses that they weren’t needed. He tried to be polite about it. It was difficult to get their attention away from the paperclip and the dust motes; he had to distract them with a penlight and a Koosh ball, and that worked well enough, except that some of the other corpses got distracted too, and began crowding around the aide, cooing and reaching for the Koosh ball. There were maybe twenty of them, the ones who had been closest; the others, thank God, were still off in their own little worlds. But these twenty all wanted that Koosh ball. The aide felt like he was in a preschool in hell, or possibly in a dovecote of extremely deformed and demented pigeons.

“Listen to me!” he said, raising his voice over the cooing. “Listen! You two! You with the paperclip and you with the dust motes! We don’t want you, okay? We just want everyone else! You two, do
not
get on the trucks! Have you got that? Yes? Is that a nod? Is that a yes?”

“Yesh,” said the corpse with the paperclip, and the one who’d been entranced by the dust motes nodded.

“All right then,” said the aide, and tossed the Koosh ball over their heads into a corner of the warehouse. There was a chorus of happy shrieks and a stampede of corpses. The aide took the opportunity to get out of there, into fresh air. His Dramamine was wearing off. He didn’t know if the message had really gotten through or not, but fuck it: this whole thing was going to be a public-relations disaster, no matter who got on the trucks. He no longer cared if he kept his job. In fact, he hoped he got fired, because that way he could collect unemployment. As soon as the rally was over, he’d go home and start working on his resume.

Back in the warehouse, Rusty had a firm grip on the Koosh ball. He had purposefully stayed at the back of the crowd. He knew what he had to do, and he had been concentrating very hard on staying focused, although it was difficult not to be distracted by all the wonderful things around him: the aide’s tie, a piece of torn newspaper on the floor, the gleaming hubcaps of the trucks. His mind wasn’t working as well as it had been during his first revival, and it took all his energy to concentrate. He stayed at the back of the crowd and kept his eyes on the Koosh ball, and when the aide tossed it into the corner, Rusty was the first one there. He had it. He picked it up, thrilling at its texture, and did the hardest thing he had ever done: he sacrificed the pleasure of the Koosh ball. He forced himself to let go of it for the greater good. He tossed it into the back of the nearest truck and watched his twenty fellows rush in joy up the loading ramp. Were the two unwanted corpses there? Yes, they were. In the excitement, they had forgotten their promise to the aide.

Rusty ran to the truck. He climbed inside with the others, fighting his longing to join the exuberant scramble for the Koosh ball. But instead, Rusty Kerfuffle, who was not a hero and had not been a very nice man, pulled something from his pocket. He had a pocket because the man with the quiet voice had given him a new blue blazer to wear, so he’d be more presentable, and inside the pocket was the glass paperweight with a purple flower inside. Rusty had been allowed to keep the paperweight last time, because no one else wanted to touch it now. “It has fucking corpse germs all over it,” the man with the quiet voice had told him, and Rusty had trembled with joy. He wouldn’t have to fall in love with something else after all; he could stay in love with this.

Rusty used the paperweight now to distract the two unwanted corpses, and several of the others closest to him, from the Koosh ball. And then he started talking to them—although it was very, very hard for him to stay on track, because all he wanted to do was fondle the paperweight—and waited for the truck doors to be closed.

Outside the warehouse, it was spring: a balmy, fragrant season. The refrigerated trucks rolled past medians filled with cheerful flowers, past sidewalks where pedestrians strolled, their faces lifted to the sun, past parks where children on swings pumped themselves into the air in ecstasies of flight. At last the convoy of trucks pulled into a larger park, the park at the center of the city, and along tree-lined roads to a bandstand in the very center of that park. The man with the quiet voice stood at the bandstand podium, his aide beside him. One side of the audience consisted of people waving signs in support of the man with the quiet voice. The other side consisted of people waving signs denouncing him. Both sides were peppered with reporters, with cameras and microphones. The man with the quiet voice stared stonily down the center aisle, and read the speech prepared by his aide.

“Four months ago,” he said, “this city suffered a devastating attack. Hundreds of innocent people were killed. Those people were your husbands and wives, your children, your brothers and sisters, your friends. They were cut down in the prime of their lives by enemies to whom they had done no harm, who wanted nothing more than to destroy them, to destroy all of us. They were cut down by pure evil.”

The man with the quiet voice paused, waiting for the crowd to stir. It didn’t. The crowd waited, watching him. The only thing that stirred was the balmy spring wind, moving the leaves. The man at the podium cleared his throat. “As a result of that outrageous act of destruction, the brave leaders of our great nation determined that we had to strike back. We could not let this horror go unanswered. And so we sent our courageous troops to address the evil, to destroy the evil, to stamp out the powers that had cut down our loved ones in their prime.”

Again he paused. The audience stirred now, a little bit. Someone on one side waved a sign that said, W
E
W
ILL
N
EVER
F
ORGET!
Someone on the other side waved a sign that said, A
N
E
YE FOR
A
N
E
YE
M
AKES THE
W
HOLE
W
ORLD
B
LIND
. The cameras whirred. The birds twittered. The refrigerated trucks rolled up to the edge of the bandshell, and the man at the podium smiled.

“I supported the courageous decision of our brave leaders,” he said. His voice was less quiet now. “There was only one way to respond to this devastating grief, this hideous loss, this violation of all that we hold dear and sacred. This was the principled stance taken by millions of people in our great nation. But certain others among us, among you”—here he glared at the person who had waved the second sign—“have claimed that this makes me unworthy to continue to hold office, unworthy to continue to be your leader. If that is true, then many of the leaders of this country are also unworthy.”

His voice had risen to something like a crescendo. The woman standing next to the man who had waved the second sign cupped her hands around her mouth and called out cheerfully, “No argument there, boss!” A few people laughed; a few people booed; the cameras whirred. The man at the podium glared, and spoke again, now not quietly at all.

“But it is
not
true! The leaders of this city, of this state, of this nation must be brave! Must be principled! Must be ready to fight wrong wherever they find it!”

“Must be ready to send innocent young people to kill other innocent young people,” the same woman called back. The booing was louder now. The man at the podium smiled, grimly.

“Let us remember who is truly innocent. Let us remember who was truly innocent four months ago. If they could speak to us, what would they say? Well, you are about to find out. I have brought them here today, our beloved dead, to speak to us, to tell us what they would have us do.”

He gave a signal. The truck doors were opened. The corpses shambled out, blinking in the glorious sunshine, gaping at trees and flowers and folding chairs and whirring cameras. The crowd gave a gratifying gasp, and several people began to sob. Others began to retch. Additional aides in the audience, well prepared for all eventualities, began handing out packets of tissues and barf bags, both imprinted with campaign slogans.

Rusty Kerfuffle, doggedly ignoring the trees and flowers and folding chairs and cameras, doggedly ignoring the knowledge that his beloved paperweight was in his pocket, moved towards the podium, dragging the unwanted corpses with him. In the van, he had accomplished the very difficult task of removing certain items of clothing from other corpses and outfitting these two, so maybe the man with the quiet voice wouldn’t realize what he was doing and try to stop him. At least for the moment, it seemed to be working.

The man with the quiet voice was saying something about love and loss and outrage. His aides were trying to corral wandering corpses. More people in the audience were retching. Rusty, holding an unwanted corpse’s hand in each of his—the three of them like small children crossing a street together—squinted his eyes almost shut, so he wouldn’t see all the distracting things around him. Stay focused, Rusty. Get to the podium.

He got to the podium. Three steps up and he was on the podium, the unwanted corpses beside him. The man with the quiet voice turned and smiled at him. “And now, ladies and gentleman, I give you Rusty Kerfuffle, the heroic husband of Linda Kerfuffle, whom you’ve all seen on television. Linda, are you here?”

“Darling!” gasped a woman in the crowd. She ran towards the podium, but was overtaken by retching halfway there. Rusty wondered how much she was being paid.

An aide patted Linda on the back and handed her a barf bag. The aide on the platform murmured, “public relations disaster,” too softly for the microphones. The quiet man coughed and cleared his throat and poked Rusty in the back.

Rusty understood that this was his cue to do something. “Hi, Linda,” said Rusty. He couldn’t tell if the microphones had picked that up, so he waved. Linda waved back, took a few steps closer to the podium, and was overcome with retching again.

The aide on the platform groaned, and the man with the quiet voice forged grimly ahead. “I have brought back Rusty and these other brave citizens and patriots, your lost loved ones, to tell you how important it is to fight evil, to tell you about the waste and horror of their deaths, to implore you to do the right thing, since some of you have become misled by propaganda.”

Rusty had just caught a glimpse of a butterfly, and it took every ounce of his will not to turn to run after it, to walk up to the microphone instead. But he did his duty. He walked up to the microphone, pulling his two companions.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Rusty. Wait, you know that.”

The crowd stared at him, some still retching. Linda was wiping her mouth. Some people were walking away. “Wait,” Rusty called after them. “It’s really important. It really is.” A few stopped and turned, standing with their arms folded; others kept walking. Rusty had to say something to make them stop. “Wait,” he said. “This guy’s wrong. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t patriotic. I cheated on my wife. Linda, I cheated on you, but I think you knew that. I think you were cheating on me too. It’s okay; it doesn’t matter now. I cheated on other stuff, too. I cheated on my taxes. I was guilty of insider trading. I was a morally bankrupt shithead.” He pointed at the man with the quiet voice. “That’s his phrase, not mine, but it fits.” There: now he couldn’t be blackmailed.