I've been a bit reluctant to drop a load of my fiction on unsuspecting web surfers--but as my friends point out, "Hey, you say you're a writer? So prove it! Put some fiction on your web site!" (Some friends I've got, eh?)
At any rate, I've come to the conclusion that my friends have a point. So here is a sample of my work. Not the best sample possible perhaps, as I've chosen a story which I like, yet I've been unable to sell. Which may tell you something. . . . But hey, you didn't have to shell out four bucks for a magazine. So for free, enjoy!
(Although, in the interest of protecting my own backside, I'd like to point out that by posting this story on my web site, I am technically self-publishing this story. Which means that it is copyrighted as of today, June 29, 1998. Which means you can't just download it and do any old thing you'd like with my story, at least not legally. Should you get all excited over the following story and decide that it would be just the thing to grace the next issue of your 'zine, give me a holler [via e-mail]--and I'll probably go for the idea, provided your 'zine isn't pornographic or otherwise objectionable. But please, in your own best interest, do not pirate my story. Remember, I'm just as litigation-hungry as the next bear. . . .)
Again. . . enjoy!
vvv
Shylock's Weight
by Ann Miller Jordan
You'll ask me why I rather choose to have
A weight of carrion flesh than to receive
Three thousand ducats.William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice
Act IV, sc. i
Donald Duggans was puffing as he threw open the door to the roof. The long, lumpy duffel bag under his arm swung back and forth on its shoulder strap, first gouging his belly, then getting caught in the door jamb. He eased the bag past the narrow opening and stepped onto the flat apartment building rooftop.
The fresh autumn wind blew sparse hairs down over his forehead. Donald smiled and left them there as he stared up into the cerulean sky. He liked it up here, this little red-brick oasis, with its potted trees in their Ali Baba urns and now the October bouquets of pungent chrysanthemums, fluffy white and rose and deepest king's purple. In the antique golden light of the autumn sun, it reminded him of Italy--well, pictures of Italy, anyway.
How was it the Indians said it? A phrase danced through his mind, elusive as the wispy clouds above. Donald set his bag carefully on a bench and stretched, making those coarse yawning noises Mother hated. Yes, he reflected. It was a good day to die.
Donald checked his watch, running a finger under the heavy gold band. The band dug into his thick wrist, but as Mother said, it would be silly to spend money on a new one when the old one was just fine. Fifteen minutes, he noted. Time enough.
He dragged three of the heavy potted trees over in front of the door, then wedged smaller clay pots of chrysanthemums in among them. Just luck no one was up here, thought Donald, puffing again from the exertion. But the seldom-used roof garden had been one of the things he'd liked about this apartment building, on his single apartment-hunting expedition. Of course, Mother's view had prevailed: Why spend money on an apartment, when he had a perfectly lovely home already?
"Why, indeed," muttered Donald. Stepping back from the vibrantly blooming barricade, he paused to admire his work. Beautiful, symbolic, and very, very functional: the best sort of art.
No time to contemplate it now. Donald hurried back to his bag, and withdrew the gem in its heart: the old Ruger M44. He ran a hand down the sleek barrel of the semi-automatic carbine, resisting the urge to open the bolt and check the chamber yet another time. His father's, it had been, and the only possession of his that Donald still owned. "Foolish sentiment," Mother had said. He'd kept it anyway.
Two minutes. Cradling the rifle, Donald strode to the waist-high brick wall around the roof. As he settled into a crouch, he glanced over the edge. A mistake--five stories seemed further looking down than up. He peered over again, preparing himself this time.
Yes--there was the little beauty salon across the street, the Cut 'n' Curle. Donald swallowed and wiped his hands again on his tropical wool pants. Past time now. Any second--
The door opened. A stocky figure in chocolate mink lumbered out to the sidewalk, and stopped short. It glanced up the street. Down the street. Down at its watch. The arms crossed, and a foot started tapping.
Donald leaned over the parapet. "Mother!" he bellowed. "Mother! Up here!"
It took several tries to get her attention. Finally she glanced up.
"Donnie!" Her piercing voice carried easily upward. "Donnie Duggans, what on earth are you doing up there, making me wait for hours in this freezing wind?" Donald grinned in silence, taking aim. Though she stared straight at him, obviously she couldn't comprehend what she saw. "Now you just march your sorry little self down here before I have to talk with you, young man--"
The first shot hit her square in the chest, knocking her back against the window of the Cut 'n' Curle. He'd longed to shoot right into that gaping mouth of hers. It was, after all, the aesthetically perfect target. But practicality ruled: he was no marksman, and the Ruger wasn't made for snipers. The torso was the easier target.
He pumped another couple of rounds into her chest--not that he could see much damage, with that brown furball obscuring the blood. He missed with the fourth shot and hit the plate glass window above. It shattered, raining in little pellets around her. Donald stopped for a moment, belatedly checking for bystanders. No--they must all have gone to cover. Good. He didn't want to hurt anyone.
Now she lay still on the sidewalk, a mud-brown island in a crimson sea. He lifted the rifle again. He could just see her mouth, red with old-lady lipstick and blood, speechless at last--
A lucky, perfect shot. Donald glanced away, breathing hard, barely registering the sirens in the distance. He hadn't expected the head to really--well, explode in quite that way.
The police arrived in force, screeching to a halt on the street below. Then came the ambulance crew, scurrying out beneath some sort of shield device to retrieve Mother. He watched them hover over her, then return to the ambulance, sans Mother. Not their business now. They'd leave her for Forensics.
Donald smiled grimly. Mission accomplished--almost. He retrieved a bullhorn from the bag. Leaning over the wall, he flicked on the power.
"Now hear this--" His amplified voice boomed and crashed in the canyon between the buildings. Small, scared faces glanced up, then disappeared as their owners sprinted for cover. "Now hear this. I don't plan to hurt anyone else, but I have a gun, and I will shoot if you try to get me down before I'm ready."
There was a flurry of activity, and another amplified voice answered him. He couldn't see the speaker. "So what is it you want--uh, Donnie?"
"The name," he replied, "is Donald. And if you'll bear with me, I have a few remarks I've prepared for this occasion."
vvv
". . . She threw away my entire postcard collection. And they weren't dirty pictures, they were Art." Donald waved a trembling hand. He was getting tired; the wall was too high to sit on, even if he'd had the nerve, and the benches were all bolted in place. "Renoir, Picasso, Fragonard, Titian, Gaugin--the most beautiful, significant treasures of the human spirit, and she could only see them as trash!"
"Man, your mom sure gave you a hard time." The police sergeant's voice was rough with sympathy. "Now, was this postcard incident before or after you had that bad date?"
"Before, when I was in high school. She said accountants didn't need to be interested in art." Donald glanced down at the street. A crowd had gathered, despite the police's half-hearted attempts to shoo them away. Sure, the police had been scared of him at first--they all had--but now they understood. They could see what hell his life had been. "And it wasn't a date," he went on, "it was a disaster! Did I tell you what Mother told Judy?"
"About the--uh--"
"The potty-training, yeah." And so what if he'd taken a couple of extra years to master potty-training? It was probably her nagging that made him so stubborn.
Some of the women in the crowd had their heads down, tissues to their eyes. Weeping for him? No one had ever cried for him before. Donald leaned on the wall, the bullhorn heavy in his hand. "Did I tell you," he asked the sergeant, "about my dog?"
"Your dog?"
"Yeah--I had a dog once, this little runty mutt. Mother let me keep him for a while, until he started peeing on the rugs." Hell, Shrimpy had probably been as tired of her nagging as he was. "And then she not only took him to the pound--she made me take him in and abandon him there! You should have seen his big dark eyes, wondering why I was leaving him, and his little tail, wagging away--"
He broke off, unable to go on. From the crowd below, a little girl ran over to the body on the sidewalk, now hidden beneath a tarp, and gave it a solid kick. The crowd laughed and applauded, hooting their approval.
Their response warmed Donald, but it also made him realize he'd done what he set out to do. He glanced up at the wide sky, graying with the first signs of sunset. And what now? Could he bear life in a jail cell or a hospital, after this moment of supreme freedom?
No. There was only one way to end this. Donald hoisted his backside up onto the wall, and threw one leg over, straddling it. The crowd gasped, and he lifted his bullhorn again.
"Please, dear friends, we all know that there is no going back for me."
"Donald! No, don't--!" The sergeant's voice was ragged with despair.
"No, no--do not grieve for me." Tears streamed down Donald's face, and he raised a hand to the sky: a figure of redemption. It made him wobble on the wall, and he quickly put the hand back down. "For you have given me something I've never known before--the knowledge that, at long last, someone really understands. Now I can forgive my mother her petty insults, her lack of unconditional love, the craven bullying that made my life miserable. And I pray," he added--more for artistic effect than out of hope--"that when we meet in Heaven, Mother will forgive me as well."
Yes, that struck just the right note. Anything further would ruin the aesthetics of the moment. Donald threw his other leg over the wall and perched there for long seconds, readying himself. With a last gulp of air, he raised both arms and flung himself into the void.
He seemed to float, extended in a perfect swan dive toward his destiny. He squinted against the rushing wind in the long descent, but his serene smile remained in place--until the moment he realized the crowd was still scattering, falling over one another in their haste to escape. The first friends he had ever known, and he was about to come down among them like a bomb!
A cry escaped him, and he flapped his arms futilely, trying somehow to affect his trajectory. Suddenly the feeling changed, and he was no longer falling, but had control. He raised his chin, aiming up, toward the gleaming, setting sun--
He was flying! Donald arced through the air, wind rippling his garments, barely hearing the cheers of his friends below. By his actions today, he had untied himself from the past, he had allied himself with the regions of the air. He shot up and up, leaving the earth behind, into the gray-blue sky--
vvv
"Dear God." Senator Willis ripped off her headset and stared at it like a captive viper.
Dr. Manfield removed his virtual set with more deliberation, but favored it with a disdainful version of the same look. "And how ridiculously Freudian."
Rich removed his own headset, carefully--they were damned expensive things--and shoved his dark hair back from his eyes. You knew this would be a hard sell, he reminded himself. "Are you referring to the mother-son aspect? But Oedipus killed his father, not his mother."
The elder doctor gazed blandly back, his lined face unreadable. "I am referring, Dr. Redhawk, to the patient's flight at the end of his fantasy. As you should know"--he lingered on "should" just an instant too long--"neurotic patients are frequently earthbound in their dreams. Once the neurosis is resolved, they often find themselves flying." Manfield shrugged disdainfully. "Though of course this is a guided fantasy, not a dream, it holds many of the same elements. The flight at the end is rather a vulgar resolution of the subject's anxieties."
"And yet effective, don't you think?" Rich countered. Oh, God--how could he have forgotten Manfield's dream-therapy research? Of course, that had been twenty years ago, before Manfield's current gatekeeper post for the Big Three insurance conglomerate.
But still--Rich's fingers stuttered with nerves as he removed the recording from its slot, placing it back in its case. Brilliant afternoon sun skittered off his rings, both the Notre Dame and the ruby, before glimmering lightly on the pale raw silk of his jacket sleeve. Rich gritted his teeth. Vanitas, vanitas --he should have dressed down, should have looked the role of the proper university doctor, not this dark-skinned peacock beside Manfield's pigeon-gray properness--
"Effective?" Senator Willis's sharp, high voice cut in. She raked a hand through the graying strands of her sandy-blonde pageboy, settling it behind her ears. "At what, Dr. Redhawk? At teaching people they can wreak whatever havoc they please in the name of mental health? You claim this treatment is aimed directly at the subconscious. How do you know the patients aren't going to recreate these scenes of violence as soon as they're released?" She sat back, crossing arms and legs. "Unless you've got something better to show me, I have no intention of taking this mumbo-jumbo to the Appropriations Committee. And the next time old Jim Stein needs a favor, he can damned well turn over some other rock to find it."
"Please, Senator--one thing at a time." Good going, Rich told himself. Beg President Stein to exercise his little bit of pull, and then blow it for him. That'll really help you with the department budget next year. And tenure's two years away--
Rich gave the Senator his best smile. That had always worked with Daphne, his combination of Cherokee-dark skin and hair and a set of white-white choppers. Well--it had worked for a while, anyway. And, he reflected, it wasn't as though Jessica Willis was hard to smile at. She might be ten years his senior, but her eyes were like cinnamon chocolate, arresting with that blonde hair.
She didn't smile back. Hastily, Rich dropped his. "Um. At any rate, let me relieve your mind, Senator. We tried this treatment with two dozen grad students before trying it on anyone else, and not one ran amok through the streets."
"Two dozen?" Manfield pursed his lips. "That's a small sample."
"As much as we could afford. This set-up isn't cheap." Sweeping the headsets from the center of the table, Rich touched a button. The glass table-top bloomed into a four-color chart. "But let's review the purpose of this treatment, shall we? To be blunt, it's a last-ditch effort, aimed at patients who have been treated with conventional psychotherapy--for decades, in some cases--drugs, electro-convulsive therapy, and the like, and still have not been cured of an obsessive desire for revenge."
"Revenge for what?" The senator's arms were still crossed.
"Some patients, as in the recording you saw, obsess about trivial matters. Other patients have--ah, more understandable vendettas. Though of course," Rich answered a look from Manfield, "obsession of any sort is injurious to mental health."
They weren't buying it. Six years of his life down the drain. . . . Rich tapped the table for another file, ignoring the jittering in his stomach. "Here are the grad student records--names changed, of course. Each of them underwent the prototype treatment: two days of tandem counseling with a university therapist and their own doctor, then another couple of days setting up the model for their fantasy. Finally, the experience of the fantasy itself--"
"Which is what we saw?" Manfield frowned at the table.
"Right, though that was a university clinic patient, not a grad student. The fantasy experience, as you might imagine, is usually a cathartic moment. It may leave the patient disoriented for a short period."
Manfield nodded. "So there is danger?"
"To others? Not an appreciable amount, in my opinion. The patients are confined to the lab's infirmary for the entire ten-day treatment, and must sign papers giving us the authority to detain them until we believe them fit to be released." Rich touched the table for another chart. "Now, here's the fun part, and the core of the treatment: the re-living of the fantasy a second time. But this time, the fixation object--or the revenge-ee, if you will--answers back."
Manfield nodded thoughtfully. Senator Willis winced. "But how--?"
Rich grinned. "Oh, it's usually pretty disgusting." Body-parts slithering themselves back together, croaking out answers to long-held questions. . . and just as importantly, asking their own hard questions right back. "Which is part of why it works: the patients are simultaneously satisfied and repulsed by the carnage. The voice of the fixation object is provided by the patient's own doctor and a staff psychologist, working together. Role-playing therapy at its most effective, believe me. We then repeat this cycle, the fantasy with the revenge-ee dialogue, until the patient begins to resolve his crisis."
Manfield appeared bemused, while the senator seemed puzzled. Time for the 'two' in the one-two punch, decided Rich. He handed them their headsets. "I have another recording that should illustrate some of the points I've been talking about."
Both Manfield and Willis frowned, and she thrust the headset back toward him. "I don't think--"
Rich pushed it back. "You can't judge this technique from a single experience."
With a black look, she accepted the headset. "Fine, turn the damned thing on. But it's not going to make me like it any better."
"Of course not," Rich soothed. "You don't have to like it."
Just buy it. . . .
vvv
The afternoon sun streamed in ribbons down to the narrow, dusty path, golden benedictions of light among the glossy-dark foliage of the Indian jungle. Secure in her vantage point behind a tangle of thorn bushes, Haley stretched out a massive paw, extending her stiletto-pointed two-inch claws to their fullest, and yawned.
The indolent yawn, with its slight touch of a roar, made the clamorous jungle go suddenly silent. After a few moments, Haley heard distant peacocks pick up their raucous refrain, and some of the more adventurous monkeys begin again their annoying screeching. But she had made her point. They knew she was there.
Oh, for the life of a tiger! Haley would have giggled if she could, nearly tipsy with the realization of her long-held dream. My, my, the things they did with genetic engineering these days. . . . She shook her great head in wonderment, and brought a forepaw to her mouth to nibble her claws into even more perfect points.
A sound in the distance, the scuffle of bare feet in the dust, drew her attention. Haley flattened herself behind the thorn bushes, peering out between the tangles. But scents gave the quarry away long before she could see it clearly. Cinnamon-musky perfume and soiled rag diaper: a native woman with a baby.
Haley relaxed, letting them proceed unmolested. Lazily she flipped an ear at flies as the woman--young, in a ragged sarong, basket on her head and baby on her back--shuffled down the pathway. The woman's dark gaze never left the ground, but as she turned her back, the baby's wide black eyes spotted Haley. He squalled with fear, and Haley grinned. The woman walked faster.
Oh, to be Mistress of the Jungle. . . . Haley closed her huge golden eyes in sleepy contentment, ignoring the taunts of the gray apes, concentrating on the plethora of odors hanging in the dusty air. Never had she known there were so many smells . . . cool green leaf-smells, some sweet and spicy, others with the bitter edge that promised pain if one chewed upon them. Reptilian musk from a shed snake skin. Feathery bird-smells that tickled her nose, from the fluttery things flying beneath the forest canopy. Her own tiger-spoor, rich and redolent, marking her territory for all to beware. Heavy, bitter man-smell--
Man. Haley's ears flattened, and her eyes slitted open. Again she scented what she could not yet see: sharp whiff of gun-powder, reeking cologne, oniony-stale sweat. Men.
Quickly she settled behind the thorn bushes, eyes mere glowing slits, body nestled to the ground. She could not stop her tail swishing, but she did tuck it out of sight. Voices along the pathway--
Three men. Two unarmed natives, in dusty white English-style shorts, bowing beneath huge packs. And a white man.
No--a pink man, sweating in white safari shorts with dark socks, moon-face pink as a boiled piglet beneath his ridiculous pith-helmet. Haley's hackles rose, and she growled softly with satisfaction. Dear Uncle Earl--what a surprise.
Her tail had worked itself free. It twitched a rattling rhythm on the dead leaves of the jungle floor as she watched the exhausted men stumble down the path. You would think, Haley mused, that Uncle Earl would be in better shape, being as great a hunter as he purported to be. But the swaying of his gut as he lumbered along made it plain why the native men carried the packs. The load of the heavy gun and his own swinish self was all Uncle Earl could manage.
Shifting sunbeams shone suddenly in her eyes, giving everything a golden hue. Haley blinked, clearing her vision as she moved back into shade. Yet she was unable to forget the image the golden light had brought to her. A tiny girl, running in delight through the tall golden grass on her parents' farm, her huge, pink-faced playmate close behind. "I'm going to get yoooouuu!" he cried, grabbing at her with rough hands, as she giggled and spun away. "Yes, I am!" he giggled back, catching hold of her with hands that pinched and hurt and went where they should never, ever have gone. "I've got you now, little girl! And I'm going to eat--you--right--up!"
Haley blinked again, and tensed behind the tangled bushes. Now all she could see of them--all she needed to see--was Uncle Earl's rotund back, receding down the pathway like a ponderous white whale on its last voyage. She felt her eyes grow huge, her tail lash itself to frenzy, her hindquarters tread in rhythm as she readied for the charge. Her black cat-lips peeled back, revealing the immense ivory canines.
Not, she thought, if I eat you first.
vvv
"What's this genetic engineering nonsense?" Dr. Manfield was staring at his headset again. "We can't turn this woman into a tiger. We haven't even cured the common cold virus."
"I believe you miss the point, doctor." Senator Willis wore an odd little smile. "This is, after all, a fantasy." Got her! Rich exulted silently. The smile fell from his face as she glanced at him. "All right, Dr. Redhawk," said the senator. "Let's cut to the chase."
"Um, certainly--"
"We have two questions here, not one." The senator leaned back in her chair, tenting her fingers. Some of that tiger's rubbed off on her, Rich thought sourly. "The first is whether this treatment works. That can be answered by further inquiry. The second is whether the success of this potentially dangerous treatment can justify the millions--tens of millions, is it not? --in short, the appallingly large amount of money you wish to appropriate for further research. Ree-search." She smiled at Rich, teeth bared. "Without proven results. In addition, you wish Dr. Manfield to authorize insurance coverage for this experimental treatment, which will bring in further millions. Do you"--he could hear the steely undertones in her voice--"believe this treatment can possibly be worth the cost?"
Of course it's worth it, you ironclad--Rich took a deep breath, dredged up an answering smile from somewhere. He punched at the table and brought up a graph. "I can't deny that this program has a high start-up. But the cost is expected to lower substantially as we go along. The chief programmers on this project receive only the industry standard, and we have a number of student programmers assisting them at--ah, rather a frugal wage. As for the lab's financial records, they stand open to your inspection." He looked at the senator. "My own financial records are open to inspection as well."
"Dr. Redhawk," cut in Manfield, "no one's accusing you of graft. What we want to know is why this thing costs so god-awful much, and whether it works."
Rich drew a shaky breath, feeling himself warming to the older doctor. "Right. The reason it costs more than Cinderella's diamond slipper is twofold: the manpower and the machines. We're grown up with the virtual reality arcades, and so we figure we should pay a five-spot per play, right? What we don't see is the millions the VR companies put into developing those games. Now, this program is thousands of times more sophisticated than those games, and requires thousands more details, all entered in one by one. Remember that crowd in the first recording? Each of the 'people' in that crowd required its own separate virtual model. They were similar, but they had to be produced separately to prevent what we call 'cookie-cutter syndrome.' However, we can use that crowd again in someone else's fantasy at a negligible cost."
"So it's the up-front cost that gets you," said Manfield.
Rich nodded. "Once we have a library of settings, smells, sounds, characters, it will be--not cheap. But reasonable."
"And the machines?" The senator's voice was cool.
"Today you viewed recordings, not real-time simulations." Rich patted the headset under his hand. "Felt you were right there, didn't you? To run those recordings took virtually all the memory in a desktop Cray. To run the real-time simulation takes two human operators to oversee it, and a hundred times more memory." He chuckled at the boggled looks on their faces. "In short, until we have another computer revolution, this will not be on the home market. It takes the resources of either a university such as ours, or a major medical center."
"All right." Senator Willis steepled her fingers again. "Let's assume the cost will eventually level out. Also, we'll assume the treatment is helpful--more helpful than conventional, less expensive treatments." Rich nodded warily. Where was she going with this? "Tell me this, doctor," she answered him. "Why should we pauper ourselves to help such a small percentage of the population? Won't we be shortchanging other, more curable illnesses? Frankly, there aren't enough voters in that tiny group to make it worth my political while."
Rich closed his eyes. After all, the question made sense from her point of view. "When I started this project," he said quietly, "I also believed it would help only a small group--though you must remember that 'small' group consists of thousands of individuals, each locked in his own repetitive hell.
"But as we analyzed the trial results--remember those grad students?--we found interesting things. Psych students are popularly assumed to be flaky. And"--he flashed a smile at Manfield, who grimaced wryly in reply--"some are. But most are mentally stable.
"Because we had no known neurotics in the sample, I didn't expect much in the way of results." Rich stabbed his forefinger at the table. "But every last one of the subjects reported a change in their attitudes, their lifestyles, their thinking patterns, as a result of the treatment."
"All of them?" Manfield frowned.
"All. Two dropped out of the psych program to pursue other lines of work. One asked his girlfriend to marry him; another divorced her husband. One decided he was heterosexual after all. Several reported changes in relations with their parents."
"Better or worse?"
"Better, for the most part. The point is, these changes were effected in people who felt they had no need to change." Rich found himself clenching his hands, made himself relax. "The need for revenge, and the sublimation of that anger into other avenues, is a more powerful force than ever we realized before. This tool, the nearly-complete virtual representation, is one of the most effective ever devised. You understand, Manfield--uh, doctor--you can talk, talk, talk till you're blue and gasping, but until you've convinced the subconscious to believe new ideas, you'll never have real closure." Rich had begun to sweat, under his expensive jacket. Couldn't they see he was right? "Now at last, we have a tool to make the subconscious believe what we want it to believe."
The senator smiled sardonically. "A high-tech way to fool yourself?"
"If you like. Here--" He handed them their headsets. "My final demonstration."
Manfield accepted his with hesitation. "It's not necessary--"
"Trust me, doctor." Rich donned his own headset. "This one's unique."
vvv
The brilliant jewels making up the wing-like sweep of the sanctuary's stained-glass windows were dull now, faded to mere glass pebbles in the darkness of evening. Beatrice gazed up at their muted splendor, motionless on her bench as she traced the story of Saint Lucia in the windows. The artist had rendered the story not in Tiffany-glass detail, but in a mosaic of thousand upon thousand tiny round pieces of glass, each one a flaming jewel with the sun behind it. Now the jewels glittered darkly back at Beatrice, a hive of watchful insect eyes.
Eyes. . . Her gaze came back to the eyes, young Lucia extending a golden platter, her eyes two bloody orbs resting upon it. Beatrice frowned. Had Lucia plucked out her own eyes, or had them removed as punishment for refusing to marry? She couldn't recall. But virgin Lucia had kept her vows.
She checked her watch. Nearly nine. Nearly time to leave, to trudge the couple of blocks through the dark and the slushy snow to her bus stop. And then to her silent, cold apartment. But Beatrice refused to rush this little time she allowed herself, this time of silence after her eight--or ten, or twelve --hours battling computers and parishioners in the cramped, windowless church office. This was her time, alone with the candles, the windows, and God.
Stepping to the altar rail, she selected her quarter's worth of candle. Its tiny warmth was a pleasure against her hand as she set it flaming beside its sisters.
Forgive those who trespass against you. Beatrice knelt and bent her head, hiding the tears from any passersby. She had tried, so hard. But she hadn't been the only victim, she thought with a touch of rebelliousness. Father Tim had broken his vows to her, but first he'd broken his vows to God. And God would not be mocked.
"Oh, Tim--" The whisper spilled from her, hissing in the silence. She'd never meant to sin, to steal from God, but seeing Tim day after day in the office, blond hair thick as wheat, that sympathetic grin, had taken her reason completely away. And they had planned to make it up to God: a lifetime of service together, working with ghetto children, or maybe as missionaries in Africa, their love and happiness spilling over to all around them--
Plans. Promises. Beatrice knew the truth now. A man that would break an oath to God would never honor one to her. She smiled bitterly. Did Jeannette know about her? Or did she think she was the first, the woman that had made a man of God forget himself utterly? And Tim--how could he have thought Beatrice believed his tawdry lie? Breaking off with her to reconcile with the Lord, indeed. Would the church board believe that sham? Now, there was a thought: gorgeous, pious Tim sweating at a board of inquiry--
Elbows on the prayer rail, she rested her forehead on clasped hands. "Dear, dear Lord, forgive me my own trespasses, and make me worthy to know Thy love. Help me to remember Thy will, not mine. Thy vengeance, Thy justice, not mine." A soft chorus began in the background, the words indistinct, the tone heavenly. Choir practice? Beatrice forced herself to concentrate. "Humble me to Thy will, O Lord. Let me be always a servant to Thee."
"Beatrice."
Glancing up, she choked back a shriek. The altar had vanished--as had, apparently, that entire wall of the church. She gazed into a vast black sky, stars glittering like crystals in the stillness. And against it, far, far away--yet close enough to see the tiniest of details, every feather tip--
The Heavenly Host. Beatrice moaned softly. Hovering in the forefront, the others spread in a fluttering wedge behind him, was an Angel of angels. An Archangel, certainly--Michael?
Her heart thundered in her ears, drowning the unearthly music. The Archangel floated closer, closer, until she could see the perfect peace written on his unlined brow, the sublime love and acceptance in his fathomless golden eyes.
"Beatrice." His voice, a perfect instrument, resounded in the sanctuary. "Thou hast been chosen."
"M-me?" As he reached for her hand, she braced herself. His fingers enveloped hers, like the warmest of blankets on the coldest of nights. His hand felt like marble, like silk, like a soft summer fog. It felt like nothing at all.
"Thee." He drew her up, and they rose together, higher and higher. "Thou shalt be glorified, the Lord's Chosen. Thou art the perfect vessel, clear and unblemished, through which the Light shall shine." He stopped, and she looked down, hundreds of feet. But they hadn't risen in the air: they had grown! The church rose to her knees, part of a child's toy village. A traffic jam had erupted around it, as terrified dolls the size of mice abandoned their cars for cover. She looked at the angel, and he smiled. "Thou, Beatrice, art now an avatar of the Lord God, to wreak his vengeance."
"But--" Her whisper echoed among the toy buildings. "I'm not worthy!"
"The Lord knows otherwise. Seek ye the guilty, and let them despair."
The guilty. . . "Are--are you sure--?" But when she glanced back, all the angels, including Michael, had disappeared. She stood alone, a giant among women, the Fist of God.
Well. First things first. Carefully she stepped from the shattered ruins of the sanctuary--thank goodness no one else had been there!--into the empty side yard of the church. She had room for her feet, if she kept them close together. And now, if she turned, she could just reach the rectory at the back of the church--
The roof of the rectory came off easily. Beatrice set it to one side; perhaps they could put it back on later. She peered down at the ant hill she'd ripped open, trying to see through the dust and minuscule fires the tortured wiring had set off. Tim's room was on the top floor, wasn't it?
She found him cowering beneath his desk. Too bad, she thought, he's not with that cow Jeannette. Oh, well. Beatrice tapped on the desk. The wood shivered at her touch. "Tim?"
Only a thin scream for answer. Beatrice sighed and pulled at his protruding legs, only to release them hurriedly when he screamed even louder. She hadn't meant to hurt him--at least, not yet. Carefully she picked up the desk, and trapped him beneath one hand as he dashed for the door.
The toy figure howled and punched at his prison as she cupped him in both hands. Clearly, he wasn't hurt badly. His struggles reminded her of an uncooperative gerbil she'd once owned.
"Father Tim, the Lord has sent me--" She had to speak loudly, to hear herself over his screaming. "Excuse me, do you suppose you could stop that for a moment? Thank you. As I--"
"Beatrice?" The tiny face squinted up at her, red from shrieking and crying. "Good Lord, what happened to you?"
"The Lord's hand is upon me." Hah! Let him chew on that for a minute. "As I was saying, the Lord has empowered me to bring His message to you. His message"--Beatrice smiled primly--"of justice."
"Justice? But Beatrice, I never--Jeannette was never--oh, God, really, you don't understand--!" The doughy little blob beneath the shock of wheat-blond fuzz went pale, and Beatrice felt a sudden wetness in her hand. Was it blood? Had she killed him before she'd given him the message? As she brought him closer to look for injuries, a telltale smell informed her of the truth. Her Tim, her blond angel, the man she had prayed would be father of her children, had just wet his pants in her hand.
She had wanted him, hadn't she? Looking down at the bawling, messy creature in her palm, it was hard for Beatrice to recall that emotion with certainty.
"Listen, Tim." She shook him, not roughly. "You must hear the Lord's message."
"I just--oh, God, oh, please Beatrice, give me a minute to pray, will you? I'm not ready--"
"There is no time left. Listen, Father Timothy McCurrach, for this is the Lord our God's message to you--"
As his screams mounted to hysteria, his mouth opening and closing in a tiny black O, Beatrice raised a godlike forefinger. She waggled it back and forth before his face, and grinned.
"Naughty, naughty!"
vvv
Rich chuckled at the smirks on Manfield's and the senator's faces. Not, of course, that a patient's sufferings were ever funny, but still--
"Very entertaining, Dr. Redhawk." Rich composed himself as Manfield turned a suddenly humorless gaze upon him. "I'm sure you and your grad students got a good laugh out of this one."
"Thank you, Dr. Manfield," Rich replied as smoothly. And here he'd thought the old fart had a sense of humor. "But I'm sure you're aware that the derivation of innocent amusement in the course of treatment is a healthy sign. The patient herself found her fantasy hilarious--as well as healing."
"Good for her!" Senator Willis was still tickled. She leaned close to Rich, pageboy bobbing in her face. "All right, you've got me. I'll support this before the Appropriations Committee--if you can give me ammunition." She nodded at the headsets. "How do these patients' stories come out?"
"Better than I'd hoped--though not exactly as I expected." Rich unloaded the recording. "Beatrice, for example, has suffered from periods of depression since childhood, and never held better than a clerical job, though she has an MBA. When she fixated on the failed affair with the priest, she became suicidal.
"We treated her about eight months ago. Soon after, Beatrice had a chat with her bishop. She persuaded him to terminate her job with the church office without prejudice, and with a healthy bonus. She's since opened up a small temp agency of her own. I understand her therapist expects Beatrice to conclude therapy soon."
"Mmmmm." Senator Willis smiled. "And--what was her name--Haley?"
"Haley. . . had one of the more unexpected results. The recording gives you little information about her, but she was a successful corporate lawyer, a partner in a well-known firm. About two months after her fantasy therapy, she resigned from the firm and opened an office of her own in a disadvantaged part of the city. About half of her case load now is pro bono work for a battered spouse's shelter."
Manfield blinked. "Does she consider her therapy successful?"
"Her therapist says so. Although she isn't Haley's therapist any more, really--Haley just checks in with her from time to time. Haley's even begun a steady relationship with a man. Something of a first for her, I understand."
The senator murmured into her pocketcomp, and smiled at Rich. "Just making sure it's recording. Can you send me copies of those charts, by the way?" Rich nodded. "Now, what about Donald?"
"And why," put in Manfield, "was his last name not edited from the recording?"
"Oh, yes. Mr. Duggans." Leaning back in his chair, Rich swayed thoughtfully back and forth. "Donald Duggans did not request, he insisted we leave his full name on the recording, and expressed the hope that we would show it to as many people as possible."
"And his results?" asked Manfield.
"You may have noticed certain unfulfilled artistic leanings in Donald," said Rich. "I believe we can consider them fulfilled now. At the time of his recording, Mr. Duggans was a successful CPA, with his own office and a junior partner. He is now a mediocre artist in Tahiti, and from what little his former therapist has heard, blissfully happy."
Manfield frowned. "But what did he do?"
"He sold out to his junior partner, cleaned out the accounts he held jointly with Mama, and left her a note instructing her to perform a--ah, rude, if not impossible--function upon herself. Now he's playing Gaugin, and living off his investments in tropical splendor."
"Oh, lucky him!" The senator's laugh broke out even as Manfield's expression became darker.
"I believe, Senator," said the older doctor, "we're gliding over a key point here. Certainly, in Beatrice's case, the change was for the better. But can we say that in the other two cases? Haley and Duggans both left prestigious positions for lesser ones."
"More prestigious, yes," answered Rich. "But better?" He shrugged. "They're no longer driven by revenge. Now they're doing what makes them happy."
"But what about Duggans' break with his mother? You can't call that healthy."
"Can't I? Why not?" asked Rich. "We in the mental health profession have placed far too high a value on reconciliation, in my opinion. Donald didn't 'need' to make up with his mother; he needed to live his own life, which in his case, he couldn't do around her." Rich shrugged. "Not the best of all possible solutions, but one that works for him. Ditto for Haley."
"I still think you're over-simplifying--"
"And I think," the senator broke in as she stood up, "you've made some excellent points. Sorry to break this up, but I have a dinner engagement, and you've convinced me as much as you're going to in one day." Rich stood, accepting her hand. He took a deep breath as her chocolate eyes glowed at him. "I'll have my secretary call to transfer those charts. Or better--I'll call you myself, shall I?"
"Please--please do." He found himself shaking his head as she swept out the door. She could have simply transferred the charts to her pocketcomp. After a moment, Rich realized Dr. Manfield was still with him.
The older doctor stood, with a tiny smile. "Watch out for that one. I've seen her leave scars." Rich's ears grew hot, but the other doctor swept on, ignoring him. "However, I concur that all this is worth looking into. For the time being, I will authorize payment for ten treatments a year, with each case to be approved by my office in advance."
"Ten?" Joy leapt up in him. More than he had dreamed--
Manfield glowered. "Ten per company; that makes thirty altogether. Don't get greedy."
"Uh--no, sir, I won't." Rich followed, trying not to hover, as Manfield moved to the door.
Suddenly Manfield turned back. "I do have one question. Have you undergone your own treatment?" Rich shook his head. "Why not?"
"I don't need it."
"So? Neither did your grad students. I thought this thing was a panacea?"
Rich realized in time that Manfield was baiting him. "Nothing cures everything."
"Of course--but wouldn't it make your life better? Let you get rid of your petty grudges, your vengeful drives?"
Rich frowned. Funny, he really hadn't considered taking the treatment himself. Would it be worth it, to lift from his back the dead weight of all those wrongs--or simply a re-hash of old griefs? To release his rage at Daphne--why hadn't she understood his commitment to his work? And all those idiots back in Oklahoma--not that all whites were bigots, but somehow Indian-despisers seemed to migrate to the top of any power structure there. And all his terrible grade-school teachers--no "commitment to excellence" for them, no, they simply assumed any Cherokee boy with a little trouble learning to read had to be retarded, not worth teaching--well, he guessed he'd shown them--
He had shown them. The smallest of thrills ran up Rich's spine and down his arms, lifting the downy hairs there. Yeah . . . he sure had shown them, hadn't he?
With an effort Rich brought himself back, realizing Manfield was watching. The elder doctor held out his hand, and Rich shook it. "Well?"
Rich smiled ruefully. "I think," he replied, opening the door, "I'll hold onto my revenge."
vvvvv
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This page was last updated on 06/29/98.