12 Monkeys

6

That night Kathryn slept fitfully, her dreams all of struggle and flight, the horizon filled with burning clouds and the figure of a muscular man, hair shorn and face bloodied, fleeing across a ravaged landscape. When the phone rang she sat up with a gasp, immediately wide awake.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Railly? Jim Halperin, Philly PD. Sorry to call so early but—”

She clutched the phone eagerly to her face. “You found him? Is he all right?”

A beat. Then, “Au contraire, Doctor. No sign of you good friend the kidnapper. However, the plot thickens. I have a report on my desk that says the bullet you claim you removed from Mr. Cole’s thigh is an antique, and…”

Halperin paused, Kathryn’s heart began to thump dangerously fast. “… and all indications are it was fired sometime prior to 1920.”

Kathryn stiffened, stared at her rumpled bed.

“So what I was thinking, Dr. Railly, was how ‘bout I take a little spin down there and maybe we could have a bite to eat and maybe you might wanna revise or amplify your statement… Hello? Hello? Dr. Railly?”

Kathryn held the phone at arm’s length, still gazing at it in horror, then very slowly replaced it in the cradle. She sat for a minute, trying to slow her racing heart, then abruptly stood and hurried into her study. She went to the bookcase that held all of her research for The Doomsday Syndrome and frantically began pulling down the neatly arranged piles of papers and books, throwing them across the floor. Finally she found what she was searching for: a manila folder crammed with old photographs. With shaking hands she rummaged through it, spilling negatives and faded 8 X 10s, until her fingers closed on a sepia-toned print.

“No!”

The room’s silence shattered as she held up the photograph, an uncropped shot of a young Latino man being carried on a stretcher through the trenches of World War I France. In the corner of the photo, with no helmet, no gas mask, and just a bit of bare shoulder showing, crouched James Cole.

In the scientist’s conference room, Cole met his masters: the microbiologist with the hidden eyes; the zoologist, even now staring at him with pity, her hands neatly clasped in her lap; the earnest silver-haired astrophysicist, nervously tugging his single gold earring. At the far end of the conference table were the other scientists, silent and grim. Cole stood in front of them all, clean-shaven, clear-eyed, gazing unabashed into the microbiologist’s scowling face.

“The food, the sky, the certain, uh — sexual temptations—” The microbiologist tapped his pencil against one finger. “You haven’t become addicted, have you, Cole? To that dying world?”

Cole shook his head. His mouth was dry; he could already feel sweat trickling down his neck, but his voice was steady as he replied.

“No, sir! I just want to do my part. To get us back on top in charge of the planet. And I have the experience, I know who the people are—”

“He really is the most qualified,” the zoologist said softly.

The microbiologist leaned back in his rickety chair, tilting his head so that his black glasses caught the light. But all that — behavior.”

The astrophysicist nodded. “You said we weren’t real, Cole.” He sounded a little hurt.

Cole thrust his shoulders back. “Well, sir, I don’t think the human mind was built to exist in two different — whatever you call it — dimensions. It’s stressful. You said it yourselves: it gets you confused. You don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”

Behind his dark glasses, the microbiologist’s expression was unreadable. “But you know what’s real now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can’t trick us, you know. It wouldn’t work.”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, I understand that. I want to help.”

The three scientists looked at each other, then at Cole. After a moment the microbiologist stood and walked over to the wall covered with fading photos and newspaper clippings. In the middle of these a worn, much-creased map of the world was held in place with tacks and curling tape.

“Let’s consider again our current information,” he began, using his pencil as a pointer to indicate various spots on the map. “If the symptoms were first detected in Philadelphia on December 27, 1996, that makes us now that…” He turned questioningly to Cole.

“That it was released in Philadelphia, probably on December 13, 1996.”

The microbiologist allowed himself a small nod of approbation. “And it appeared sequentially after that in?”

Cole shot a quick glance at the others staring at him from the long table, then answered in the dutiful tones of a prize student.

“San Francisco, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi, Bangkok, then Peking.”

The microbiologist raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“That the virus was taken from Philadelphia to San Francisco, then to New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Rom, Kinshasa, Karachi, Bangkok, then Peking.”

“And your only goal is…?”

“To find out where the virus is so a qualified scientist can travel back into the past and study the original virus.”

“So that?”

Cole frowned. “Uh, so that a vaccine can be developed that will, uh, allow mankind to reclaim the surface of the earth.”

Murmurs of the scientists turned to each other, nodding as they assessed Cole’s performance. Cole allowed himself a small sigh of relief, then let his eyes drift across the mélange of clues spread across the walls: magazine covers, newspapers, obituaries, charts. Among them was an 8 X 10 photo of graffiti on a wall, crudely painted letters that spelled out an urgent message.

His gaze lingered on the photo, trying to figure if he recognized it, when he heard a voice saying, “Cole — Mr. Cole—”

He turned and saw the silver-haired astrophysicist, his earnest face creased by a smile repeated in the faces of the other scientists who were now crowding around him.

“That was very well done, Cole. Very well done.”

Standing in front of a glass wall in his office, Leland Goines paced angrily back and forth, cordless phone to his ear. The wall overlooked a vast sterile lab where workers in white, hooded suits, like astronauts or surreal ghosts, scurried among stainless steel vats and freezers, peering into cages and withdrawing tubes and bottles and trays. In the office behind him, Goines’ assistant, a man in black T-shirt and jeans, his lank red hair pulled back in a ponytail, flipped idly through the latest issue of Lancet.

“You have reason to believe my son may be planning to do what?”

Goines waited impatiently as the woman on the other end of the telephone went on, “Yes, I do understand, Dr. Goines, I know it sounds insane but—”

Goines waved a hand dismissively and broke in. “I’m afraid this doesn’t seem very professional to me, Dr. Railly. In fact, it’s distressingly unprofessional! I don’t know anything about “monkey armies,” Doctor. Nothing whatsoever. If my son ever was involved in—”

He paused, then went on angrily. “Well, it would be doubly inappropriate to discuss matters of security with you, Dr. Railly, but if it will put you at ease, neither my son nor any other unauthorized person has access to any potentially dangerous organisms in this laboratory. Thank you for your concern.”

He slammed the phone down and glared across the room at his assistant. Seeing Goines’ expression, the red-haired man tossed the magazine aside and stood.

“Dr. Kathryn Railly?” he asked casually.

Goines nodded and raised his hands in exasperation. “The psychiatrist who was kidnapped by that man who broke into my house. She seems to have been suddenly struck by the most preposterous notion about Jeffrey.”

His assistant rolled his eyes. “I attended a lecture of hers once. Apocalyptic visions.” He stretched and walked over to a coat rack, took down a white lab jacket with DR. PETERS embroidered on the pocket. “Has she succumbed to her own theoretical ‘Cassandra Complex’?”

But Leland Goines stood lost in thought at the glass wall, staring down at the white-suited lab workers in their glass-and-steel city. “Given the nature of our work, we can’t ever be careful enough,” he said last. “I think we should review our security procedures, perhaps upgrade them.”

At the door Dr. Peters stopped, nodding obediently, and waited for further instructions. When there were none, he said, “Of course. I’ll notify Hudson and Drake immediately.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Goines said absently. Long after Peters was gone he remained where he stood, his face impassive as he gazed at his kingdom below.

Inside Iacono’s abandoned butcher shop, five nervous animal activists crouched motionless amidst cardboard cartons and topples stacks of brochures. After a few minutes Fale took a deep breath, pushed a strand of pale hair from his pale face, then scuttled across the floor to the front window. He pressed his eye to a slit between posters and peered outside.

“Who is it?” whispered Bee.

Fale shook his head in disbelief. “It’s that kidnap woman — the one who was with the guy who tied us up.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s drawing attention to us, that’s what she’s doing!” Fale glared over his shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re up to this time, Goines, but you’re gonna get us in deep shit!”

Jeffrey Goines yawned and leaned back, pillowing his head on a stack of MEAT IS MURDER flyers. “Whine, whine, whine. What about walkie-talkies? We used to have walkie-talkies.”

Fale and the rest looked at each other blankly.

“Well?” demanded Jeffrey. “Didn’t we?”

Outside, Kathryn Railly pounded futilely at the door. Further down the littered sidewalk, several derelicts watched with interest as she furiously stalked back and forth.

“I know you’re in there!” she yelled, rattling the handle for the hundredth time. “I saw you! I saw someone moving!”

“Secret experiments!” someone whispered in a hoarse voice.”

Kathryn whirled, fists drawn defensively to her chest. If front of her stood the same toothless street person she had seen there days before.

“That’s what they do!” he explained triumphantly. “Secret weird stuff!”

“You! I know you!”

The bum shuffled past her, studying the pictures of tortured animals on the storefront. “Not just on ‘em,” he said thoughtfully, poking at one poster with a scabby finger. “Do ‘em on people, too — down at the shelters. I know,” he added in a conspiratorial aside. “Feed ‘em chemicals and take pictures of ‘em.”

Kathryn nodded her head quickly, agreeing with him. “Have you seen James Cole? The man who—”

“They’re watchin’ you,” the bum whispered. His eyes moved toward the street. “Takin’ pictures.”

Kathryn followed his look. Across the street, beside an overflowing trash can, was parked the familiar old Ford with Detective Dalva slouched behind the wheel, pretending to read a newspaper.

“The police. I know.” Kathryn brushed her hair from her eyes and took a step toward the derelict. “Listen, I need to talk to James, but he has to be careful how he contacts me. He mustn’t get caught. Do you understand me?”

The weather-beaten man eyed her warily through red-rimmed eyes. “Uh, yeah, sure. Who’s James?”

“He was with me, he spoke to you,” said Kathryn, her voice growing agitated. “Several weeks ago. He said you were from the future — watching him.”

The man sucked his cheeks in, eyebrows raised, and started to back away from her. “Uh, I don’t think so,” he said nervously. “I think maybe you got the wrong—”

Just then, two skinhead boys on skateboards slammed around the corner, tagging their way along the filthy sidewalk with cans of spray paint. Kathryn watched, then without a word raced toward them. The derelict turned and fled.

At the window of the Freedom For Animals Association headquarters, one intense brown eye blinked, then turned away.

“You get the bolt cutters?” called Jeffrey, reading from a checklist.

“One dozen. They’re in the van,” answered Teddy.

“Hey!” Bee excitedly beckoned the others to the window. “Do you know what she’s doing?”

Teddy and Fale hurried to the window and peered out. Barely three feet away stood Kathryn Railly, spray-painting the front of the store.

“What’s it say?” wondered Teddy.

Bee shook her head. “I can’t see it.”

Jeffrey slammed down his checklist and shouted, “WHY DON’T WE FORGET MY GODDAMN PSYCHIATRIST AND DEAL WITH THE TASK AT HAND! THIS IS IMPORTANT!”

Fale spun around. “Your psychiatrist?

Jeffrey looked at him balefully and retrieved his list. “Ex-psychiatrist! Now, what about flashlights? How many flashlights?”

Fale shook his head, pointing at the window. “That woman is — was — your psychiatrist? And now she’s spray-painting our building?”

Jeffrey shrugged. “Rent a fucking life, Fale. And while you’re at it, find our goddamn flashlights.”

On the sidewalk, Kathryn darted back and froth, shaking and waving the can of spray paint as she wrote in sweeping letters across the walled-up storefront. A small crowd of street people inched up behind her, their amazement mirrored by that of Detective Dalva in his old Ford.

“I don’t fucking believe this,” he murmured. He grabbed his clipboard and scribbled something on a sheet of paper, never moving his eyes from Kathryn. “She really is a fruitcake.”

A white-haired drunk swayed beside Kathryn, pronouncing each letter aloud. The two punks who’d sold her the spray paint buzzed past on their boards, shouting derisively. She never glanced back, just continued like a woman possessed, heedless of black paint spattering her clothes and face. And so she didn’t see the newcomer shambling through the knot of onlookers, a broad-shouldered white man in shabby clothes and close-cropped hair, blinking as though the feeble winter sunlight hurt his eyes. When he was a few feet away from Kathryn he stopped, shading his eyes with his hands, and stared at her in astonishment.

“Kathryn!”

She whipped around, the crowd scattering as flacks of paint sprayed across them.

“James!”

He started toward her, arms outstretched piteously. But before he reached her, Kathryn looked past him to where Detective Dalva sat watching the two of them with renewed interest.

“James!” she hissed urgently, cocking a thumb at the worn-out car. “That’s a policeman! Pretend you don’t know me. If he sees you…”

“No.” Cole turned and stared directly at the car. “I want to turn myself in! Where is he?”

He placed his hands on his head and gave Kathryn an earnest look. “Don’t worry — it’s all okay now. I’m not crazy anymore! I mean, I am crazy, mentally divergent actually, but I know it now, and I want you to help me. I want to get well.”

Kathryn grabbed his hands, trying desperately to pull them from his head as she sought to block the detective’s view of Cole.

“James! Put your hands down and listen to me. Things have changed!” She glanced back frantically at the car, saw Dalva reach for his clipboard and hold up a photograph. He checked the image against Cole standing on the sidewalk, then reached for his radio mike. Kathryn fought back a cry, tossed aside her spray can and grabbed Cole, trying to pull him after her.

“James, come on! We have to get out of here now—”

But Cole didn’t move. Instead he looked from the spray can rolling on the sidewalk to the wall that Railly had painted. Shaky black letters covered plywood and taped-up glass and old brick.

“I’ve — I’ve seen that before,” he whispered.

Kathryn shook her head. “James, trust me. We’re in terrible trouble. We have to run—”

She dragged him along the sidewalk past several bemused onlookers. Cole’s eyes remained fixed on the wall but Kathryn stumbled along like a madwoman, her hair disheveled, black paint flecked on her clothes. As they turned the corner, the Ford suddenly shot from it’s space. It made a sharp U-turn, nearly colliding with a passing delivery van in a harsh squeal of brakes and blaring horns.

Inside the storefront, Fale stood behind Bee, frowning. “Now what’s happening?” he demanded.

Bee shook her head in amazement. “Wow. Some guy in a Ford is chasing her and some other guy I can’t see.”

From outside came shouted curses and another peal of brakes. Turning from the window, Fale threw up his hands in disgust.

“Hey, no problem!” he cried. “It’s probably just another kidnapping featuring Jeffrey’s shrink, pardon me, make that ex-shrink—”

The others stopped what they were doing to look up at him, standing now in the middle of the room and pointing at Jeffrey. “This is your leader,” yelled Fale, “a certifiable lunatic who told his former psychiatrist all his plans for God knows what wacko irresponsible schemes, and now who knows what she’s painted out there on our wall?”

Jeffrey crossed the room to Fale and jabbed him in the stomach with his finger. “WHO CARES WHAT PSYCHIATRISTS WRITE ON WALLS?” Bee and Teddy backed away as he went on, “You think I told her about the Army of the Twelve Monkeys? Impossible! Know why, you pathetically ineffectual and pusillanimous pretend-friend-to-animals? I’ll tell you why — because when I had anything to do with her six years ago, there was no such thing — I hadn’t even thought of it yet!”

“Oh, yeah?” Fale shouted back triumphantly. “Then who come she knows what’s going on?”

Jeffrey tossed his head back. His rage suddenly melted into supercilious good humor.

“Here’s my theory on that,” he said in a patronizing tone. “While I was institutionalized, my brain was studied exhaustively in the guise of mental health. I was interrogated, X-rayed, examined thoroughly. Then, everything about me was entered into a computer where they created a model of my mind.”

The others watched, mesmerized, as Jeffrey preened and gestured grandly. “Then,” he continued, “using the computer model, they generated every thought I could possibly have in the next, say, ten years, which they then filtered through a probability matrix to determine everything I was going to do in that period.”

He paused, beaming condescendingly at his audience. “So, you see, she knew I was going to lead the Army of the Twelve Monkeys in the pages of history before it ever even occurred to me. She knows everything I’m ever going to do before I know it myself. How about that?”

He smiled smugly at the flabbergasted Fale, then fastidiously bent to pick up a stray flyer. “Now I have to get going,” he ended lightly. “Do my part. You guys check all this stuff out and load up the van. Make sure you get everything,” he called back in a singsong voice as he paraded to the back door. “I’m outta here.”

Fale and Teddy and Bee stared after him, watching the door slam closed. When Jeffrey’s footsteps finally died away, Fale turned to the others, his eyes wide.

“He’s seriously crazy. You know that.”

“Oh, duh,” said Bee. She gave Fale a disgusted look, then followed Jeffrey through the back room.

Several blocks away, Kathryn Railly and James Cole crouched in a heap of garbage, their heads covered with the remains of a cardboard box. Behind them loomed a once-lovely art nouveau building, its ornate façade now slashed with graffiti and shattered windows. At the base of the building spread a squalid cardboard shantytown, men and women and children huddled beneath bits of broken plywood, or warming themselves by a small bonfire.

“Shh!” Kathryn whispered as Cole moved slightly beneath their protection, sending a shower of crumbled safety glass onto their heads. A few yards away, Detective Dalva’s unmarked Ford crawled slowly down the desolate alley. Behind its windshield she could clearly see Dalva’s eyes, carefully scrutinizing each rusted garbage can, every suspicious face peering at him from their pathetic hovels. After an interminable time, the car passed from view, disappearing into the next burnt-out city block. Gasping, Kathryn scrambled from the refuse, ignoring the glares of the shantytown residents.

“James! Come on—”

Shaking his head in confusion, Cole crawled out after her. He brushed sawdust from his hair, then said, “I don’t understand what we’re doing Kathryn.”

Kathryn looked around uneasily. “We’re avoiding the police until I can — talk to you.”

Cole’s eyes lit up. “You mean, treat me? Cure me?”

Almost immediately, the hope drained from him. He stared back down the way they’d come and said in a lower voice, “Kathryn — those words on the wall back there — I’ve seen them before. I — I dreamed them. When I was sick.”

Kathryn stopped and stared t him. “I — I know,” she said at last. She shivered, pulling her jacket closed and for the first time noticing James’ thin cotton shirt and faded trousers. Her tone grew soft. “James — you must be freezing. Here—”

She looked around, her eyes falling on a rundown skid row hotel across the street. Broken plastic letters spelled out: THE GLOBE: ROOMS WEEKLY, DAILY.

“Come on,” she said, taking James by the hand and leading him to the door.

Inside, an ancient hotel clerk with tremulous hands and a vulture’s glassy stare eyed them suspiciously from behind a cracked Formica counter.

“Thirty-five bucks an hour,” he wheezed.

Kathryn looked at him in disbelief. “An hour?”

The clerk scowled. “You want quarter hours, go someplace else.”

Just then, a dazed-looking woman teetered down the stairs, resplendent in a beaded wig, platform shoes, and rubber dress. James watched her curiously, but Kathryn quickly turned away and began counting out bills.

“Here’s twenty, twenty-five, twenty-seven.” She held up the last dollar bill and gazed coldly at the clerk. “For one hour. Deal?”

The clerk squinted warily at the money, finally scooped it and turned to get a key.

“One hour, honey-babe.” He looked Kathryn up and down, taking in her soiled clothes, the bits of paper and sawdust still clinging to her hair. He grimaced. “Number forty-four. Fourth floor. Up the stairs, enda the hall. Elevator’s busted.”

As Kathryn grabbed the key and turned, Cole leaned across the Formica counter and hissed, “She’s not ‘honey-babe.’ She’s a doctor. She’s my psychiatrist. You got that?” Cole pounded the counter, then followed Kathryn upstairs.

“Whatever gets it up for you, Jack,” the clerk muttered when Cole was safely out of earshot. He waited until the tow disappeared upstairs. Then, making faces and mumbling to himself, he picked up a battered phone and dialed a number.

“Tommy? This is Charlie over at the Globe. Listen, you know if Wallace has a new girl? Sort of a rookie type? A little weird — does fantasy acts…”

The four flights of stairs were narrow and foul-smelling, strewn with empty malt liquor bottles and cigarette butts. In the fourth floor hallway, two tired-looking women in their underwear shared a cigarette and fifth of something pink. When Kathryn reached Room 44 she jabbed the key into the lock, felt the particleboard door shudder as she twisted the key. After a moment it sprang open, and they went inside.

The room looked no better or worse than its neighbors: dingy gray walls with a filigree of silverfish and crushed cockroaches, lumpy double bed, an ashtray that had not been emptied. Water trickled disconsolately from the bathroom tap, and the toilet ran. Cole walked over to the bed and sat down, exhausted. He closed his eyes and started to lean back onto the threadbare pillow, but Kathryn immediately began pacing back and forth, stopping every now and then to regard him with a sort of breathless wonder, as though still amazed to see him there.

“Okay, James — the last time I saw you, you were standing there looking at the moon, you were eating leaves — then what?”

Cole blinked, rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. “I thought — I thought I was in prison again.”

Kathryn halted, regarding him through slitted eyes. “Just like that? You were in prison?”

Cole’s brow furrowed. “No, not really.” He looked as though he were in pain. “It’s — it’s in my mind. Like you said.”

Kathryn shook her head furiously and began pacing again. “No! You disappeared! One minute you were there, the next minute you were gone. Did you run through the woods?”

“I don’t know. I — I don’t remember.”

Kathryn walked to the far wall and stared out a grimy window to the alley below. “The boy in the well.” She turned, her pale eyes practically incandescent. “How did you know that was just a hoax?”

Cole frowned. “It was? I didn’t — know.”

“James, you said he was hiding in the barn.” Kathryn’s voice rose in exasperation.

Cole bit his lip, frowned and stared intently at the ceiling. “I think I saw a TV show like that when I was a kid. Where a boy—”

“It wasn’t a TV show! It was real!”

Cole sat up, surprised. With her ruined clothes and tangled hair and rabid expression, Kathryn Railly looked positively demented. He stared at her for a minute.

“Well, maybe that kid saw the same TV show and copied it,” he said at last, slowly and with great care. He moved to the edge of the bed, his voice rising eagerly. “Because listen — you were right. It’s all in my head. I’m mentally ill; I imagine all that stuff. I know they’re not real. I can trick them, make them do what I want—” He snapped his fingers, then waved dismissively. “I just worked on them in my head and I got back here. I can get better. I can stay here.”

He looked up at her with wide anxious eyes, willing himself to be calm, to be well. Kathryn gazed back at him, suddenly stood and got her purse. She pulled out a manila envelope, and handed a large photo to Cole.

“What does this mean to you?”

It was the uncropped photo of the Latino boy in WWI, with Cole a fuzzy shadow a the edge of the frame. Cole stared at it bleakly. His expression changed from hope to confusion to genuine fear.

“I — I had a dream about — about something like that,” he said at last, his voice breaking.

Kathryn took the photo back, nodding grimly. “You had a bullet from World War One in your leg, James. How did it get there?”

Cole began shaking his head, slowly at first, then faster and faster. “You said I had delusions — that I created a world — you said that you could explain everything.”

Kathryn looked at him, white-faced. “Well, I can’t. I mean, I’m trying to. I can’t believe that everything we do or say has already happened, that we can’t change what’s going to happen — that I’m one of the five billion people who are going to die… soon.”

Cole stood, moved closer to her. His eyes were bright with tears as he opened his arms, embracing the scuffed floor, the stained bedclothes, the leaden square of window with its slab of dull sky, Kathryn herself.

“I want to be here,” he whispered. “In this time. With you. I want to become — to become a whole person. I want this to be the present. I want the future to be unknown.”

He lifted his face. She saw in it more desperation than she had ever seen before; desperation and an almost frantic need to hope, to believe in something — to believe in her. She felt her heart clench inside her, fear like a poison spurting through her entire body. Unthinkingly she bunched her hands into fists and looked away from him, anything to not see his face pleading with her, begging her to save him.

Her eyes fell on the telephone.

“James,” she said. Like a sleepwalker she pointed at the nightstand. “Do you remember — six years ago? You had a phone number? You tried to call and—”

Cole nodded slowly. “A lady answered.”

“It was a wrong number in 1990,” Kathryn said. She stared at the cheap plastic phone, as though willing it to ring. “But it should be the right number now. Do you — do you remember it? The number?”

Bam! A splintering crash as the door flew open. A looming figure half fell, half lunged into the room — a tall man with long hair and cracked leathers, his wiry arms and hands covered with jailhouse tattoos. He stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily as he looked Kathryn up and down with cold ice-pale eyes.

“This is my territory, bitch!” he sneered, moving menacingly toward her.

Confused, Cole turned to Kathryn. “Is this real? Or is this one of my delusions?”

Shaking her head, Kathryn backed away. “This is definitely real.” She looked at Wallace. “Excuse me, I think we have a little misunderstanding here—”

The biker smashed her in the face. With a moan Kathryn flew back against the wall, sliding to the floor as the biker spun around to face Cole.

“What’re you — some kind of tough guy?” Grinning, the biker raised his hand. In it glinted a knife. “You wanna be a hero? You gonna try and mess with me? Come on…”

Cole hesitated, then raised his hands placatingly. He backed around Wallace and moved to where Railly leaned against the wall. She stared at him in dazed disbelief, gingerly touching an eye already as bruised and swollen as spoiled fruit.

“Now that’s a smart boy.” The biker nodded, tracing a circle in the air with his knife. His grin faded as he looked at Railly. “But you, honey — you think you can go round me and peddle your fancy ass in this part of town, you bet your life we got what you call a major goddamn understanding.”

He started for her, knife extended. Kathryn cried out and reached for Cole. He pushed her hand away and snatched up her purse, swinging it so that it smashed into the biker’s face. As the man staggered backward Cole grabbed his arm and pulled it straight up, then back. There was a straining sound, as if heavy cloth was being pulled apart, then a sharp crack. The man screamed, staring in horror at a jutting rim of bone protruding from his elbow. With a hollow clatter his knife fell to the floor.

“James,” whispered Kathryn, her eyes wide.

Cole said nothing. Instead he lunged for the biker and pinned him to the floor, straddling his chest as he snatched up the knife and pressed it against the biker’s neck.

Kathryn’s stunned expression turned to horror. “James — don’t!”

Cole hesitated.

“You — heard — her,” the biker gasped, his eyes bulging. “Don’t do it, man.”

Shakily, Kathryn got to her feet. She ran a trembling hand across her face and looked around, focusing at last on a particleboard alcove with a warped door. She looked at Cole.

“Put him in the closet,” she said. “But get his money first.”

Cole stared at her in amazement. “You want me to rob him?”

Kathryn swallowed, then nodded. “I — I — we need cash, James.”

She turned sharply as a shadow fell against the wall. For an instant the doorway framed a white slack face, its mouth a perfect O. Then the face disappeared, and shouts echoed in the hallway.

“They’re killing him! Call the cops!”

Cole moved slightly where he straddled the biker, adjusted the knife so that it edged closer to the man’s jugular. The man’s eyes rolled wildly. Then, very carefully, so as not to disrupt the careful balance between knife and neck, his good arm twitched. Slowly he reached into his pocket and withdrew a thick wad of bills. Kathryn grabbed them and crossed quickly to the bed.

“You two are crazy,” the biker said in a hoarse voice. His face contorted with pain. “I got friends — you put me in a closet, they’re gonna be really pissed.”

In one fluid motion Cole stood, holding the knife threateningly in one hand as with the other he yanked the biker to his feet. The biker cried out, clutching at his limp arm. Kathryn rushed to the window and looked down. A rusted fire escape led down into an alley choked with old newspapers and beer cans.

“James—” she began. She glanced back in time to see Cole disappearing into the bathroom with Wallace. There was a small click as the door locked behind them.

“James!” she cried. Desperately she rattled the knob. Put all her weight against the door. “Please—”

She could hear the biker’s ugly voice, still refusing to plead with Cole. “I have friends, man — if you cut me—”

“James! Don’t hurt him! Please!”

“I mean it, man, they’ll— Jesus Christ! What the fuck are you doing?”

Tears running down her face, Kathryn pounded on the door. Suddenly it opened. She fell backward, catching herself against the wall as Cole stepped out. In his hand he gripped the knife. Blood dripped from it in slow strands, stained his hand all the way to the wrist. Kathryn covered her mouth.

“Oh, my God, James. Did you kill him?”

He shook his head. “Just — just in case,” he said thickly. Blood oozed from his mouth as he spoke. “In case I’m not crazy…”

He held up two bloody prongs half as long as his thumb. It was a moment before Kathryn realized she was staring at two of his molars.

“That’s how they find us,” he explained. Blood spotted the floor beneath him. “By our teeth.”

He lifted his face and stared at her. And in spite of the blood and grime, his bloodshot eyes, the knife, and all the other madness, she saw him as if for the first time. Not a psychotic ex-con who had pursued her for six years, but another man entirely, a man who could weep at the rising moon and not seem pathetic, someone who still believed the old songs he heard on the radio, someone whose depths of feeling was not bound by time or space or even the subtle convolutions of the mind itself…

Someone who loved her.

For a long moment they stood there. And somehow Kathryn knew that this was it, the closest she would ever come to something she had long ago given up any hope of having: a thirty-five-dollar-an-hour room in a skid row flophouse, a pimp moaning in pain in the next room, and a bloodstained man gazing at her as though she were the Pieta. And somehow, somehow it was enough.

Abruptly the room shook. From the corridor cam the thunder of booted feet thudding up the stairs.

“POLICE! THROW YOUR WEAPONS OUT AND COME OUTTA THERE!”

Silently Cole reached for her. She took his hand and followed him to the window, waited as he shoved it open and slid outside, pulling her gently after him onto the fire escape.

“Hey! That the police? I’m an innocent victim in here!” the biker shrieked from the bathroom. A uniformed cop charged into the room in a crouch, pistol extended in both hands. He panned the gun around an empty room. “Get me the fuck outta here! I was attacked by a coked-up whore and a crazy dentist!”

More policemen rushed in, kicking aside furniture as they raced for the open window and stared down into an alley where blood glowed like petals on the drifting piles of newsprint.

Holiday shoppers hurried toward the curb as a city bus pulled up, angling for the door with armfuls of bright shopping bags. The doors whooshed open, disgorging a late-afternoon crush on the avenue. Overhead streamers of gold and green arced from one streetlight to the next, gleaming in the faint sunlight. White lights glittered from bare tree limbs in the first shadows of twilight. Along the avenue, canopies flapped in the wind and holiday crowds surged past expensive storefronts: Wanamaker’s, Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus. There was music, the heady brazen burst of a Salvation Army band vying with the genteel tinkle of handbells playing The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies.

The bus pulled away, leaving a haze of bluish exhaust. As the shoppers dispersed, Kathryn Railly moved furtively to the relative shelter of the crowded sidewalk. Sunglasses hid her bruised eye. Behind her Cole moved more slowly, a bloody handkerchief pressed to his mouth. He gazed at the hundreds of people, the shining store windows and laughing children with the stunned expression of a man waking from a troubled dream.

“Keep your head down and try to blend in,” Kathryn whispered. She grabbed his hand and pulled him close to her. “We’ll stick with the crowd. There’s got to be a phone around here— There!” she said excitedly, pointing to a corner booth. “In there.”

She hurried him past a chorus of blue-uniformed Salvation Army volunteers circling a shining scarlet kettle. Cole stopped and stared at them, shaking his head slowly.

Kathryn tugged at Cole’s hand, but he refused to budge. The cold breeze brought with it the smell of fir trees and wood smoke, mingling with the music to prod at him with some faint memory almost within reach. He lifted his head, the music washing over him like rain, and gazed upward. His mouth fell open and his eyes widened, trapped somewhere between wonder and terror.

It was the building from his dream: the ornate and crumbling structure he had reached after emerging from the sewer, the building where he had seen snow and hear the distant baying of wolves. As he stared he saw silhouetted against its rococo roof a regal figure, gold-maned, its head thrown back so that the sun set its corona of hair aflame.

“James! Listen—”

He started, turned to see Kathryn dropping her hand from his, “I’m going to try that phone number you had. Let’s hope it’s nothing—”

Disoriented, he watched her hurry off, her dark hair disappearing and then popping into view again as the flow of Christmas shoppers streamed past. Some of them were close enough now that he could see their faces, their smiles and cheerfully generic holiday greetings suddenly frozen as they took in the dazed man standing there like the survivor of a car wreck. Cole pressed the handkerchief more tightly to his mouth and backed away. Someone jostled him and he fell against a shop window. Turning he recoiled in terror: inches from his face a bear reared on its hind legs, jaws bared in a snarl.

“James! James—”

Kathryn’s voice filtered to him through the music and laughter. He shook his head, saw that the bear was only part of an elaborate display involving toy train trestles laden with fake snow, a mountainside where Lilliputian skiers slalomed through glittering powder.

“It’s okay, James! We’re insane! We’re crazy!”

Laughing, Kathryn ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and hugged him clumsily. A passerby gave them an odd look, then shrugged and hurried on. “It’s a carpet cleaning company.”

Cole let her lead him back into the crowded sidewalk. “A carpet cleaning company?”

“No superiors! No scientists!” Kathryn threw her head back joyously. “No people from the future. It’s just a carpet cleaning company. They have voice mail — you leave a message telling them when you want your carpet cleaned.”

Cole shook his head slowly. “You… you left them a message?”

Kathryn grinned impishly. Her cheeks glowed bright red; she looked like a schoolgirl on the first day of winter vacation.

“I couldn’t resist!” she went on breathlessly. “I was so relieved. Wait’ll they hear this nutty woman telling them — they better watch out for the Army of the Twelve Monkeys — I told them Freedom for Animals Association—”

Cole gazed in horror at her rosy face. In a voice taut with dread he began reciting along with her.

“The Freedom for Animals Association on Second Avenue is the secret headquarters of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. They’re the ones who are going to do it. I can’t do anything more. I have to go now. Have a Merry Christmas.”

Kathryn broke off and stared at Cole in confused disbelief. She looked over her shoulder at the phone booth twenty yards away. “You — you couldn’t have heard me.”

Cole gazed at her numbly. “They got your message, Kathryn,” he said. He no longer saw her, only a circle of scowling faces, the tail-end of an audio tape flapping off its reel. “They played it for me. It was a bad recording… distorted. I didn’t recognize your voice.”

Kathryn’s expression grew terrified as she suddenly grasped his meaning. “My God,” she whispered.

From the street behind them a horn blared. Shaken, Kathryn turned to see a uniformed cop staring from the window of a police cruiser as it inched along in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. The policeman squinted at something, his brow furrowing, then reached for his radio.

“Come on,” Kathryn grabbed Cole and began hurrying to where a red canopy heralded the entrance to Bloomingdale’s. They ran inside, nearly tripping over a woman holding a glass tray heavy with perfume flagons.

“Hey—!”

Kathryn went on, heedless of the looks they were getting from well-dressed customers. Cole followed her, blood spotting his shirt as he dabbed at his mouth with the soaked handkerchief. Kathryn pulled up in front of a startled clerk in an oversized cashmere sweater and bow tie.

“Men’s clothing?” she demanded.

The clerk stared at her, then frowned and pointed to an escalator. “Second floor. To the right. But — can I help you?”

“No!” Kathryn called over her shoulder. She dragged Cole toward the escalator. He stumbled, clutching at the rail as the steps moved upward through billows of gossamer angel’s hair and tinsel garlands.

When they reached the top, Kathryn plowed on without hesitation, until they reached a display of haughty male mannequins in paisley flannel briefs.

“Here,” she said. She began pacing through rows of shirts and sweaters and trousers, stopping momentarily at a sale table to toss several things in Cole’s direction. He caught them clumsily, still following her blindly. A few yards away, behind a register, a clerk with the offended mien of a recent Harvard grad watched them with growing suspicion.

At a display for resort wear Kathryn tore a Hawaiian shirt from its hanger, grabbed the other things from Cole, and strode to the counter.

“… and this.” She glanced at the clerk, started to venture a smile, but thought better of it. Instead she turned to Cole. Anything else?”

But Cole wasn’t there. He stood several yards away, staring with huge frightened eyes at an immense Christmas tree. It loomed above the aisles of clothes and eager shoppers, branches laden with blown-glass globes and translucent crystal birds, delicate chains of gold and green, and crimson stars. At its very top was an angel with the pure face and spun-gold hair of a Renaissance painting, her outstretched arms shadowed by a pair of silvery wings. Cole’s mouth parted as he gazed into her face, watching in resigned dread as her porcelain features crumbled and fell like snow upon his upturned cheeks, while overhead pigeons flapped noisily into the gloom of a disintegrating building.

“James.”

Cole turned, still not seeing Kathryn where she stood at the counter with clothes heaped before her. Apologetically, miming annoyance, she looked back up at the clerk.

“I guess that’s it,” she said with false cheeriness.

The clerk flashed her a chilly smile. “Shall I put that on your account, ma’am?”

“No.” She thrust her hand into her purse. “I’ll pay cash.” The clerk gaped as she began peeling bills from a huge wad. “What floor are the wigs on, please?”

The clerk rang everything up and began folding it neatly into sheets of tissue.

“That won’t be necessary,” Kathryn said, shoving the clothes into the waiting shopping bag. She turned and fled across the floor to Cole.

“Merry Christmas,” the clerk called after her with a grimace. As they stepped onto another escalator, he reached for the telephone.

Night. The waning moon cast golden streaks upon the bare brown lawn in front of a warehouse, momentarily ignited a torn magazine cover lifted by the wind. Shadows gathered in empty windows covered with steel mesh and cardboard. In the parking lot sat a dirty white van, painted with grotesquely large silverfish and cockroaches and what looked like gigantic crabs, their antennae waving.

Inside the van, light flared as a flashlight played across a small circle of excited faces. Moonglow sifted through he window, gilded the smooth curve of Teddy’s shaven scalp, the ankh tattooed on his cheek. In the near-darkness the ghostly faces of the other five activists hovered above their black-clad torsos.

“So then he goes into this incredible riff about how his shrink, like, replicated his brain while he was in the nuthouse. Turned it into a computer.”

Teddy laughed, delighted at his own incredible tale, and leaned back on his haunches. A heavy leather belt circled his hips, weighted down with socket wrenches, hammers, and a heavy welding torch. The others were freighted with similar paraphernalia: pipe cutters, flares, rock-climbing gear.

“And Fale believed it?”

Teddy threw his hands up. “Oh, you know Fale! He’s like, ‘If you guys get nailed — and I’m sure you will — I never saw you before in my life!’”

Laughter all around, cut short by a sharp, rhythmic series of raps on the side door.

“Whoa, Nellie,” one of the women whispered, and quickly slid the door open.

In the moonlight stood Jeffrey, grinning broadly. “Good morning, campers!” Behind him, three more activists staggered out of the darkness, lugging a huge, squirming black garbage bag.

“Awwwrighhht!”

“Far out, man…”

Teddy leaned out, helped pick up the writhing bag and maneuvered it into the van. It lay quivering on the floor, like a gigantic pupa. Jeffrey and the other activists scrambled through the door, pushing their way to the front.

“Let’s do it!”

The van shuddered to life, lumbered out of the parking lot and up onto a nearby entrance ramp to the freeway. The garbage bag continued to squirm and groan as Jeffrey crouched by the front seat, using a penlight to trace a route on a city map.

“Okay, that’s stage one,” he announced dramatically, pointedly ignoring the bag behind him. “In stage two, Monkey Four is over here—”

Teddy and several of the others watched the twitching bag with growing dismay. “What’s the harm of opening it?” Teddy asked, once they were safely on the highway. “His eyes are taped, right?”

Jeffrey looked up, shrugged cheerfully. He thrust his map into the driver’s lap and leaned back over the bag, grabbing it with both hands and ripping it open. Black plastic fell away to reveal the trussed figure of Dr. Leland Goines, his mouth and eyes covered with silvery duct tape.

Jeffrey grinned wickedly. “Want the full effect?”

Before anyone could reply, he ripped the tape from his father’s mouth. Dr. Goines moaned, his blind head tossing back and forth, then cried out hoarsely.

“Jeffrey? I know it’s you, Jeffrey. I recognize your voice.”

Jeffrey put a finger to his lips and looked around, commanding the others to silence.

“Jeffrey?” Dr. Goines’ tongue flicked out over his dry mouth. His body shook with a spasm of coughing. “Very well. I know all about your insane plan. That woman — your psychiatrist — she told me.”

Jeffrey raised his eyebrows in surprise, fought to keep his dismay from showing as his father went on, his blinded face eerie in the dimness.

“I didn’t believe her — it seemed too crazy even for you. But, just in case, I took steps to make sure you couldn’t do it. I don’t have the code anymore. — I don’t have access! I took myself out of the loop! I don’t have access to the virus. So go ahead — torture me, kill me, do whatever you want. It won’t do any good.”

Above his now-still figure the other activists drew together, exchanging puzzled, even frightened, looks. Jeffrey turned to them, throwing his hands up in mock horror.

“The loop?” he cried. “The loopy scientist takes himself out of the loop?” He laughed, loudly and incredulously, as Teddy and the others moved to the other side of the van.

Dr. Goines’ head spun, following the sound of Jeffrey’s voice. “I would never let myself believe it,” he said, his voice as thin and shrill as an old woman’s. “I mean, I could never truly believe it — my own son — but I know it now…”

He spat the final words, to that even Jeffrey’s face grew pinched to hear him.

“Jeffrey… you are completely insane.”

“Shut up,” Jeffrey said, kicking at his father’s bound form. “Shut up, shut up…”

The others cowered in the corner as Jeffrey ranted on and on, his voice rising dangerously as the van lurched onto the turnoff for the zoo.

Eerie music filled the theater where scarcely a dozen people sat, refugees from the cold or the holidays or even worse. On screen, vast redwoods soared skyward, dwarfing two tiny figures strolling through the forest.

“I know that guy,” James Cole said, his voice momentarily drowning out Stewart’s. He craned his neck as Kathryn tugged at the collar of his new shirt. “And her too.”

“Shhhh!” whispered someone behind them.

“Here’s a cross section of one of the old trees that’s been cut down.” Stewart sidled up in front of a huge slab of wood. Beside him Kim Novak gazed at the cards indicating the tree’s age at various points during its eons-long life.

Kim Novak pointed, her voice deeply melancholy. “Somewhere in here I was born. And here — I die. There’s only a moment for you. You don’t notice.”

“Here, James — let me help you.”

Kathryn pulled something from her purse and began rubbing it on Cole’s upper lip. He fidgeted like a child, trying to see the screen. “I think I’ve seen this movie before. When I was a kid. It was on TV.”

Kathryn frowned, still fussing with his lip. “Sssh — don’t talk. Hold still.”

“I have seen it, but I don’t remember this part. Funny, it’s like what’s happening to us, like the past.”

For a moment he sat still, staring raptly at the screen. “The movie never changes — it can’t change — but every time you see it, it seems to be different because you’re different. You notice different things.”

Kathryn stopped, let her hands fall into her lap. She looked at his boyish face, entranced by the film, and slowly lifted one hand and let it rest upon his cheek.

“If we can’t change anything,” she whispered, “because it’s already happened, then we ought to at least smell the flowers.”

“Flowers?” Cole turned and looked at her, surprised. “What flowers?”

“SHHHH!”

Kathryn glanced apologetically behind them, then reached for the shopping bag at her feet. “It’s just an expression. Here—”

She pulled something from the bag and placed it on Cole’s head, frowning as she adjusted it. Cole looked at her, no longer childlike, merely exhausted.

“Why are we doing this?”

Kathryn took his hands in hers and spoke fiercely. “So we can stick our heads out the window and feel the wind and listen to the music. So we can appreciate what we have while we have it.” Her voice broke and she turned away. “Forgive me. Psychiatrists don’t cry.”

The wash of light from the movie screen made her eyes glow, bright with tears. Cole watched her, discomfited; finally he shook his head.

“But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe we’re both crazy.”

Kathryn stared resolutely at the seat in front of them, hands clutching at her knees. “In a few weeks, it will have started or it won’t. If there are still football games and traffic jams, armed robberies and boring TV shows, — we’ll be so happy, we’ll be glad to turn ourselves in to the police.”

“SHHHH!”

Cole slumped down in his seat, whispering, “But where can we hide for a few weeks?”

On the screen above them, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak paused. The sounds of waves echoed through the theater, and wind tossed Novak’s pale hair. Kathryn lifted her fact to Cole’s.

“You said you’d never seen the ocean.”

He took her in his arms, then, burying his face in her hair and saying her name, over and over again, heedless of the hushed protests behind them.