Gwendy’s Final Task

41

“DON’T TELL ME YOU actually believed that cock-and-bull story about ruling your own private world,” Gwendy says. “You’re one of the most successful businessmen in history. I can’t believe you’d take a few moments of … I don’t know … hypnosis, as reality.”

Winston gives her an odd, knowing smile. “Do you believe it?”

Gwendy actually does. She can believe in other worlds because she cannot believe the button box came from hers. Before she can open her mouth to tell a lie that might not sound very convincing, there’s a beeeep sound.

“Ah!” Gareth says. “I believe the safe has a new code and can now be opened. So why don’t we—”

Before he can finish, both of their phones give off the distinctive double-tone that means an incoming text from the station rather than a message from the down-below. They both take out their phones, Gwendy from the center pocket of her coveralls, Winston from the back pocket of his chinos. Gwendy thinks, and not without sour amusement, We’re like Pavlov’s dogs when it comes to these things. The fate of the earth may be at stake, but when the bell rings we salivate. Or in this case, read the text.

The identical messages are from Sam Drinkwater: Joining us for breakfast?

“Text him back,” Winston says. “Say we’re in a serious conversation … no, negotiation … about the future of the space program, and they should eat without us.”

Gwendy is on the verge of telling Mr. Billionaire Businessman Gareth Winston to stuff it … but doesn’t.

This has to end, here and now.

That thought sounds like Mr. Farris. Whether it is or isn’t doesn’t matter. Either way it’s true.

She moves closer to Winston (ugh) so he can read the text she’s preparing to send. It’s exactly what he told her to say, with one addition: Important we not be disturbed until 1100 hours.

“Excellent. I’m going to open the safe. I can’t wait to see what Bobby was so excited about. You, my dear, should sit right where you are like a good little Gwendy.” He shows her the green lipstick tube. “Unless, that is, you want to find out what it feels like to die with your guts melting inside you.”

He starts to rise, but she takes his arm and pulls him back down. In zero-g, it’s easy. “Help me get my head around this. One hypnotic trance and you just fall into line? I don’t believe it. You’re not that stupid. In fact, you’re not stupid at all.”

Winston probably knows she’s just trying to buy time, but he preens at the compliment anyway. Gwendy gives him her best wide-eyed tell-me-more look. It usually works in Senate committees (at least with men), and it works now.

“I have been back to Genesis many times,” he says. “That’s what I call my world. Nice, eh?”

“Very,” Gwendy says, doing the wide-eyed thing for all she’s worth.

“It’s real enough. Bobby—he says I’d never be able to pronounce his real name—has given me certain instructions for going there. I could go there now, if I liked. My visits are necessarily short, but once I give him—and his controllers—this box of yours, I’ll go there for good.” He gives her a goony smile that makes her doubt his sanity. “It’s going to be great.”

“A hallucination,” Gwendy persists. “Had to’ve been. This Bobby sold you a grander version of the Brooklyn Bridge.” She shakes her head. “I still can’t believe you fell for it.”

He smiles indulgently and reaches inside his shirt. He brings out a pendant on a silver chain. In the gold setting is a huge diamond. “From my mine,” he says. “I have others at my home in the Bahamas, some even bigger. This one is 40 karat. I had one of similar size appraised, first to make sure it was real and second to determine its worth. The Swiss jeweler who looked at it almost had a heart attack on the spot. He offered me a hundred and ninety thousand dollars, which means it’s probably worth twice or three times as much.”

He drops the pendant back inside his shirt. “Genesis is real enough, and when I’m there I’m young and virile. The women …” He wets his fat lips.

“No more panty stealing, I take it,” Gwendy says.

He gives her a glowering look, then actually laughs. “I suppose I deserve that. Don’t know why I told you. No—no more panty stealing.” He looks away from Gwendy, and she thinks that while he’s distracted she might be able to grab something and whack him on the head. Except everything is fastened down, and the idea of clonking someone hard enough to knock them out in zero-g conditions is ridiculous.

When he looks back at her, he’s wearing a rueful smile that’s almost likeable … or would be if he were not threatening her life and planning to steal the button box she’s been charged with guarding and ultimately disposing of.

“When Bobby took me that first time, I remembered something a teacher said in an Ancient History class I took in college. I didn’t want to take the damn thing, cut most of the classes and hired some grind to do my final paper, but that one thing stuck in my head. It was from an old Greek—I think he was a Greek—named Plutarch. Or maybe he was a Roman.”

“Greek,” Gwendy says. “Although he became a Roman.”

Winston looks annoyed at the interruption. “Whatever. This Plutarch wrote something about a conqueror named Alexander. I can’t remember the exact wording, but—”

Gwendy interrupts again. She likes interrupting him, and why not? He has not only interrupted her task, he’s threatening to permanently interrupt her life. “‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’”

Instead of looking pissed off, Winston smiles so widely that the bottom half of his face almost disappears, and Gwendy thinks again that he’s insane. The prospect of having his own world, one where he can rule forever, has driven him over the edge. Maybe it would anybody.

“That’s it! Exactly! And I was like Alexander, Senator Peterson! I had no more worlds to conquer! I had reached my limit! And what did I have to look forward to? Growing older? Watching helplessly as I grew fatter, as my face began to wrinkle, as my body began to deteriorate? And my mind!” The smile becomes a nasty grin. “You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”

Gwendy doesn’t take the bait. “For the sake of argument, let’s say that world exists, Gareth. Even if it does, you won’t get it. Not if you give them the button box.”

Winston’s grin fades. What replaces it is a look of narrow distrust. “What do you mean?”

“What I say. Give it to them and the world ends. If this Tower is as powerful as you say it is, all worlds end. Including yours, diamonds and all.”

He gives a scornful laugh. “Why would these people—Bobby’s people—do that? They’d die along with everyone and everything else.”

“I think … because Bobby’s people, those who pull his strings like he pulled yours, are the lords of chaos.” And then, in a voice she doesn’t recognize as her own, Gwendy cries, “Let the Tower fall! Rule, Discordia!”

Winston recoils as if that voice were a hand that had struck him. “Are you insane?”

It was Farris’s voice, Gwendy thinks. I don’t know how or why—he must be dead by now—but it was. Then she remembers the last time she saw him, on her porch in Castle Rock. I’ll help if I can, he said that night.

“Think about what you’re doing, Winston. For God’s sake, think.”

“I have. And I know when someone is trying to fuck with my head. Let’s get a look at this fabled button box. Sit where you are, Senator. You won’t get a second warning.”

Of course not, Gwendy thinks. The only reason I’m still alive is because he needs to make sure he has it. Once he does, he’ll point that tube at me and—

“Ah,” Winston says. He’s peering at the safe, which puts him between Gwendy and the door. “The reset combo is 1111. I believe even someone who’s losing her mind could remember that one.”

He removes the LockMaster and pushes the combo—beep-beep-beep-beep. She hopes the gadget didn’t work, that the safe will remain shut, but the door swings open when Winston pulls the handle. Out comes the steel case with CLASSIFIED MATERIAL stamped on it. “I don’t need to consult your little notebook again for the code to this one,” Winston says. “One look was enough. Unlike yours, my memory is in perfect working order. People are amazed at my recall.”

“Don’t sprain your shoulder patting yourself on the back,” Gwendy says coldly.

Winston laughs. Now that he has the case Gwendy swore to protect with her life, he seems quite cheerful. Perhaps he’s thinking of his diamond mine. Or having a ménage à trois with two beautiful young women. Or a tickertape parade in one of his fine new cities with thousands of people shouting his name. Gwendy could tell him about the black button—the Cancer Button that supposedly ends everything—but would he listen? No. He is Alexander, with a new world to conquer.

“1512253 … and presto!” He opens the steel box. He looks inside. His eager smile dissolves. “What … the fuck … is this?”

He takes out a white feather. When he lets it go, it floats in front of his face. Winston bats it away. He turns the security case so she can see inside. With the feather now out of it, the case is completely empty.

“Surprise, Mr. Winston,” Gwendy says, and the slack-jawed shock on his face makes her laugh. But then shock is replaced by a look of fury Gwendy hasn’t seen before. Suddenly she can see the Gareth Winston who lives inside, and he’s no laughing matter.

I’m looking at a human wolf, she thinks.

Then he grins, which is even worse.

He lets go of the CLASSIFIED case, leaving it to float near the longtime talisman she calls her magic feather. He glides across to her. She shrinks back involuntarily and raises her hands to protect her throat.

“Oh, I’m not going to choke you,” he says, still smiling. “I might kill you …” He raises the green cylinder. “… but it won’t be a hands-on affair. And it will be very unpleasant.”

Gwendy thinks, The black button is the Cancer Button and that green thing is the Tube of Death. I’ve wandered into a fucking comic book.

He shows her the ring on the bottom of the tube. “If I twist this all the way while it’s pointed at you, the disintegration of your organs will be instantaneous. I know, because I’ve tried it.”

“On one of your subjects,” Gwendy says. Her voice sounds far away. “In Genesis.”

“You are a bright one, at least when you’re in your right mind. Too bright for your own good. The point is, my dear, that if I twist the ring slowly … a teeny tiny bit at a time … you’ll die in excruciating agony. You may actually feel your heart come loose from its moorings and drop into your stomach while it’s still beating. Wouldn’t that be something to experience!”

Yes, it’s a comic book, all right, she thinks. Too bad I can’t just shut it and toss it in the UV waste disposal. Too bad it’s actually happening.

“You see,” he says, as if speaking to a child, “I’ve come too far to turn back now, Senator. I have burned my bridges. Which is all right because, unlike you, I have an escape hatch. One that will take me to another world. A world I’ve already come to love. Let me tell you what’s going to happen if you don’t get with the program, you smartass bitch. You die—miserably, screaming through your disintegrating vocal cords—and then the rest of our Eagle Heavy compatriots die. Once the killing’s done I will call in my Chinese allies and we will search this place until I find what I came for. When I do, I will exit my current abode in a kind of space taxi provided by a corporation you may have heard of—”

“Sombra.”

“Yes! Good for you! I’ll turn over the box to those who want it so badly, and exit this reality for a much more pleasant one. Do you understand?”

“I believe the smartass bitch is following you,” Gwendy says.

“None of that has to happen, Gwendy. You can live. The rest of the crew can live, which will please me. You might not believe it, but I’ve come to like them. I will take the button box and go.”

Given a choice between believing that and believing in the Tooth Fairy, I’d opt for the Fairy, Gwendy thinks, but she nods as if she believes him. He’s pointing the tube at her and fiddling with the ring on the bottom in a way that makes her very nervous. Only nervous is too mild a word for it. She’s scared to death.

“Now we come to the Final Jeopardy question,” Winston says. He’s still grinning, but Gwendy can see beads of perspiration on his forehead. He’s scared, too. That gives her at least some comfort. “Where is it?”

She opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again.

“You’re not going to believe this, Gareth, and I know you won’t like it, but it’s true. I can’t remember.”