electrified.
He kicked in the door.
No one greeted him, but the place was neat, almost antiseptic, any government building foyer, from the Marine Corps to the Civil Conservation Corps. The swirls of a wax buffer on the green linoleum testified to the spic- and-span efficiency of whatever labor detail attended. From far off came a loony tune of music, though of the higher form, that orchestra stuff, that spoke to Earl only of balls and fancy snoots in fancy suits. He had no idea what it was and no curiosity.
He opened the door and walked down the hall, as the music rose, until at last he reached the room where he had been examined all those weeks ago.
He kicked it in.
It was empty. Whoever had staffed this place, they had fled, leaving almost nothing. A few papers and towels lay on the floor, evidence of a hasty retreat. Who knew where they went?
Then Earl heard soft music. It came from one more door.
Earl kicked it in.
Audie dug.
He was excavating an ever expanding hole halfway up the inside lip of the levee, where the ground was softest. Audie was young and strong, and his system was choked with the power that all his adrenaline and testosterone?considerable in both cases?had generated over the past few hours. He was also weirdly, fabulously happy. He could have whistled while he worked.
He had no idea how deep he should go, but after a furious forty minutes of work, he was a good five feet into the levee, and he figured that was enough.
He already had retrieved the bundled sticks of dynamite from the raft.
The stuff was waxy and had an unpleasant odor. It amounted to five bundles of ten sticks apiece and awkwardly, he planted them in the bottom of the hole. Then he took the detonating cap, opened the waxy paper at a central stick in the central bunch, and plunged it in, twisting it against the cake like consistency of the explosive itself.
He twisted till the cap nearly disappeared, leaving a residue of ground powder on his fingers.
Next came the fuse. That was neatly wedged into the well at the top of the cap and screwed tight itself, so that the connection was solid.
The long green waxy twine of fuse curled up out of the hole. Audie climbed out carefully, so as not to kick anything with a foot or bring down a rush of earth from the hole and disconnect things. He wanted to do this right the first time, and not have to come back. Filling was easier; ten minutes of easy shovel work at the hole filled it in again.
He pulled out his Zippo, flicked it once. It whooshed healthy flame, which he quickly cupped to the frazzled end of the fuse. That waxy twine glowed red once, and then at last sparked to life and began to sputter away toward detonation.
Audie raced up the levee and stood for just a second. The broad black flat river stood on one side, placid in the moonless night. On the other side, beyond the levee, stood the reclaimed fields with their drained swamps and okra crops.
He thought: the world is going to look a lot different in ten minutes.
He climbed into the raft and paddled to the center of the dark river. the music was sweet and sickly, full of tinkly piano passages.
The doctor sat at his table under a single-bulb lamp which bent on a curve to illuminate his work. He was writing with a fountain pen in a notebook, and Earl could see a piece of meat in a dish in front of him, uncooked. Then he realized it was human meat: it was a liver, with a kind of pale crust spotted with green at one end. The doctor was describing it in his ink scribbling.
Beyond him, on a morgue table, far in the darkness but clearly not quite indistinct, lay a black man. Earl didn't recognize him. His chest had been bisected surgically then splayed backward, so that all his innards lay before the world. Some of them had been removed.
The doctor said, 'Shubert.'
'What?'
'Shubert. On the Victrola. Shubert's 'Fantasie.' Do you like it?'
Earl put a bullet through the Victrola, smashing Herr Shubert's beautiful notes into a million pieces.
The doctor winced, for he was not used to such noise so close, so loud.
Then he said, 'I don't know what you think you're doing. But even a man like you will understand this.'
He pushed a document across the table.
'Go on, read it. You can read. You are or were military. You know the meaning of orders and the higher good. Read it. Go on.'
Earl seized it and noted the heavy embossment of the United States Department of Defense.
TO ALL LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES, it began.
The bearer of this document is a participant in an operation that is classified highest top secret and has been officially deemed In the National Interest. As such it?and the bearer of this document?fall under the full protection of the United States Government. It and the bearer of this document have been granted a priori immunity from all state, local and federal laws.
Any violation of this policy on the local level will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law by the United States Attorney's Office in your jurisdiction. You are hereby ordered to cease and desist all law enforcement or other activities involving the program at Thebes State Penal Farm (Colored) in Thebes County, Mississippi. You are ordered to release the bearer of this document and leave the area immediately.
For further clarification of this policy, call the duty officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency at WE-5-2433, Arlington, Virginia, using the code name blue tuesday for authentification purposes.
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND THOSE IN VIOLATION OF IT WILL BE CONSIDERED TRESPASSERS AND FACE ALL LEGAL SANCTIONS.
'You know what that means, don't you,' said the doctor. 'You are up the river in more ways than one. See, you have no idea how valuable this is, how important?'
Earl just stared at him. The moment seemed to go on and on.
'Suddenly you see your duty and you're brought up short. The best thing you can do is escape again, with whatever men you've brought, and leave us in peace. This is too important for a little man like you to destroy.
Too much is at stake, as that document?and you don't doubt it, do you??makes clear. You've killed all the rednecks who beat you, so you should be satisfied with your meaningless vengeance. Now, either you leave or I will make a phone call and in twenty minutes I can have the Marine Corps here.'
Earl held the document up to his gun muzzle, and fired. The flash ignited the paper; he let it fall from his hands to the floor, where it was devoured crisply in a quick spurt of flame.
'You are trespassing on a Top Secret government?'
'What you're doing is wrong,' said Earl.
'No, what we're doing is right,' said the doctor. 'You have no idea what this is all about.'
'I know exactly what this is all about, Dr. Stone,' said Earl. 'Or is it Dr. Goodwin, whatever the hell you're calling yourself these days?
You been injecting these colored men with syphilis. I believe it's called Treponema pallidum, or some such. But it ain't just any syphilis.
It's some kind of super syphilis You're trying to turn the clap into a germ warfare weapon. That's why the Los Alamos Plutonium lab and the people at Fort Dietrich in Maryland are involved. Dietrich is the Army's germ warfare installation. That's why the infected convicts are painted with big numbers, so your boys can watch them die or sicken through binoculars from a long way out and take notes. That's why the contaminated bodies have to go underwater. You're making atom powered syph to fight the commies, and you're testing how it kills on American Negroes.'
Now it was the doctor who could think of nothing to say.
After gibbering ineffectively for a second or two, he recovered enough to say, 'How did you know that? That
