Quicksilver(67)

Now, as we set off for the only other building in the Republic of Beebs, she walked beside Erskine, out onto the porch and down the steps, engaged in some quiet conversation that I, in the company of the garrulous Wallace, could not quite hear. More than once, she put a hand on the Nihilim’s shoulder, as if she had developed a degree of affection for him.

Saddle shoes clopping on the steps, my companion handed me a small pressurized can with a spray top. “This will help with your throat. It’s the desert air that does it. This stuff has zinc plus emollient substances that really soothe inflammation.” I assured him that I was fine, but he would not accept the little can when I tried to return it to him. “You think it’s cleared up, the throat thing, but then it comes back. It’s the desert air. I have to buy that stuff by the case.”

The night was calm at ground level, but high-altitude wind had entirely stripped the mask of clouds off the face of the sky. The night was moonlit and moon shadowed.

As Wallace and I followed Erskine and Bridget toward the large single-story storage building, he said, “I buy books I can’t read for a few reasons. For one thing, each copy I add to my collection is a copy that no one else can read. The fewer people reading books, the better off the world will be.”

“I see your point,” I said.

“For another thing, I like the homey look of a library, but I never want to risk polluting my mind with the thoughts of writers who disagree with me. You never know until you get into a book just what wrong thinking it might contain.”

“Every book,” I said, “is potentially a rattlesnake in your hands.”

“That’s an excellent analogy!” he exclaimed, and he clapped me on the back.

Erskine was a Nihilim whose real name was probably something like Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth, but my best guess was that Wallace was nothing more than what he appeared to be: an ignorant, misanthropic, wardrobe-challenged psychopath whom the Nihilim could use to further the destruction of civilization; a useful idiot. Somehow he’d fallen under the insidious influence of the monster, had allowed himself to be convinced that he was related to it. He now filled the role of Czar Nicholas II to his so-called uncle’s Rasputin, although in a venue less elegant than the palace in Saint Petersburg.

“Then,” Beebs said, “I also have the books so that when the Day of Blood and Change arrives, I can celebrate by burning them.”

“Won’t that be a day?” I said. “The war of all against all.”

“I can hardly wait,” Beebs agreed.

“Well,” I said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to wait awhile yet. There are still too many people who don’t understand why Utopia can grow only out of an ocean of blood.”

“Too true,” he said sadly. “So many people just don’t get it. You’re a truth teller, Bill Torgenwald. You’re a wise young man.”

He was talking about the kind of wisdom that is expressed in clichés, so I gave one to him. “We have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

“We must break millions!” he agreed. “Millions and millions!”

The storage building had a steel frame and corrugated walls. Erskine instructed us to wait outside with his “nephew,” while he went inside to fetch our purchase. He let himself in through a man-size entrance next to a big garage door.

Instead of turning to me, Bridget stretched her arms high and rolled her head as if working a stiffness out of her neck.

When I cleared my throat again, she didn’t react to me, but Wallace Beebs said, “The spray will fix that in a jiffy. Just aim three squirts at the back of your throat. Give me the aerosol can, Bill, and I’ll do it for you. What have you got to lose by trying it? Jeez, don’t tell me you’re some natural-remedy fanatic, you think everything can be cured with green tea. Gimme the can.”

Even if Beebs wasn’t a monster, but merely a bloody-minded psychopath, I didn’t want the guy medicating me. Call me squeamish. To prevent his frustration with me escalating into suspicion, I opened my mouth and directed three squirts at my throat. The stuff tasted as vile as Satan’s bathwater. I gagged on the second squirt and again on the third, which gave me the idea to gag a few more times to get Bridget’s attention.

Just then the segmented door began to clatter upward in its tracks, and Bridget stopped rolling her head to focus intently on the imminent appearance of the Mercury Mountaineer.

In response to my strenuous gagging, Wallace Beebs seemed about to perform the Heimlich maneuver, so I stopped. “Hey, man, I’m sorry about that, but this stuff tastes as vile as . . .” Lest he might be an admirer of Satan, I edited my original simile to avoid causing offense. “As vile as possum piss. Not that I would know what possum piss tastes like. I’m only supposing it must be vile.”

Puzzled by my reaction, Beebs said, “I’ve always thought the spray is kind of sour strawberry but minty,” and I was then spared from further conversation by the arrival of the Mercury Mountaineer.

It was agreed that we would leave the key in the ignition of the Explorer. Later Wallace and Erskine would abandon the vehicle elsewhere in the county, far from their autonomous zone.

Bridget drove out of the Republic of Beebs, and I rode in the front passenger seat, where I said, “Did you realize, did you see, Erskine is a Nihilim.”