Survival Of The Fittest

said. “He and all those other limpy, loopy defectoids, day after day.”

He turned to Baker. “It's a perfect metaphor for what's wrong with society, isn't it, Sarge? They shit on us, we clean up.”

“So you killed him in the bathroom,” I said.

“Where else?”

“And the bloody shoes-”

“Think!” said Tenney. “Think what he did to my shoes!”

I gave the closest thing to a shrug the bonds would allow. On my own- what to do-

“I got tired of stepping in it!” Tenney was shouting now, raining saliva. “They didn't pay me for that!”

His fingers touched my neck again, then he reversed himself suddenly and walked away and I heard footsteps, a door opening and closing.

Alone with Baker.

“My neck hurts,” I said, throwing out another cue, but my faith was dying. “Can these restraints be loosened?”

Baker shook his head. The needle was back in his hand.

“Potassium chloride,” I repeated. “Same as Ponsico.”

Baker didn't answer.

“Raymond's shoes,” I said. “Nothing random, everything had a reason. Irit Carmeli's murder simulated a sex crime. Her mother read you as a sexual aggressor, so the payback had to have sexual overtones. But you needed to differentiate yourself from just another pervert. You and Nolan. He got off on dominating little girls.”

Baker showed me his back again.

“Was Irit mostly Nolan, or both of you? Because I think you shared Nolan's tastes. Young girls- dark girls. Girls like Latvinia. Did you do her yourself or with Tenney's help? Or someone else I haven't had the pleasure of meeting?”

He didn't budge.

“Like Ponsico,” I said, “Nolan lacked the will eventually. More important, he had some sort of conscience, what he did eventually got to him. You sent him to Lehmann but it didn't help. How'd you prevent him from bringing you down?”

No answer.

“The sister,” I said. “You told him what you'd do to her if he destroyed anyone but himself. And if his will had failed again and he didn't eat his gun, you'd have taken care of him?”

His left shoulder twitched. “Think of it as euthanasia. He was suffering from a terminal disease.”

“Which one?”

“Malignant regrets.” I heard him laugh. “Now we'll have to get the sister, anyway. Because you might have educated her.”

“I didn't.”

“Who else knows besides Sturgis?”

“No one.”

“Well,” he said. “We'll see about that… I've always liked North Carolina, the horse country. Spent some time years ago, raising Thoroughbreds.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me?”

He turned around and smiled. “Horses are immensely strong. Horses kick hard.”

“More killing, more fun.”

“You're right about that.”

“So ideology- eugenics- had nothing to do with it.”

He shook his head. “Strip away what passes for motives and motivation, Alex, and the sad truth remains: For the most part, we simply do things because we can.”

“You killed people to prove you were able to get-”

“No, not to prove it. Simply because I could. Same reason you pick your nose when you think no one's watching.”

The silencing finger touched my lips. “How many ants have you stepped on during your lifetime? Millions? Tens of millions? How much time have you spent regretting the fact that you committed ant genocide?”

“Ants and people-”

“It's all tissue, organic material- jumbles of carbon. So simple, until we elevated apes come along and complicate things with superstition. Remove God from the equation and you're left with a reduction as rich and delicious as the finest sauce: It's all tissue, it's all temporary.”

He righted his glasses. “Which is not to say I don't create my own excuses. Everyone does, everyone has a cutoff point. For you, it's ants, perhaps you'd spare a snake. Someone else might not. Others draw the line at vertebrates, mammals with fur, whichever arbitrary criterion defines lovable or cute or sacred.”

He straightened, looked wistful. “You can't really understand unless you travel and expose yourself to different ways of thinking. In Bangkok- a beautiful, putrid, very scary city- I met a man, a master chef, artist with a Chinese cleaver. He was working in a luxury hotel, preparing banquets for tourists and politicians, but before that he ran his own restaurant in a harbor district where tourists never go. His forte was cutting- slicing, cubing, julienning at unbelievable speed. We smoked opium together several times and eventually I gained his trust. He told me he'd trained as a child, working his way up to sharper and sharper knives. Over thirty years he'd cut everything- sea slugs, grasshoppers, shrimp, frogs, snakes, beef, lamb, monkeys, baboons, chimpanzees.”

Smile. “You know the punch line. Under the knife, it all splits apart.”

“Then why even bother picking targets?” I said. “If it's a game, why not just strike randomly?”

“Deconditioning takes time.”

“The troops need a rationale.”

“The troops,” he said, amused.

“So you gave them one: inferior tissue. Your ants.”

“I didn't give anyone anything,” he said. “Deafness is inferior to hearing, retardation is inferior to an adequate intellect, not being able to wipe your own anus is inferior to studying philosophy. There is intrinsic value in cleaning house.”

“New Utopia,” I said, fighting to speak clearly, calmly. Was anyone listening? “Survival of the fittest.”

He shook his head again, Mr. Scoutmaster showing a dull scout how to tie a complex knot for the fiftieth time. “Spare me the sloppy compassion. Without the fittest there will be no survival. Retardates don't discover cures for diseases. Spastics don't steer jumbo jets. Too many of the unfit, and we'll all be enduring, not living. The way Willy was forced to endure that bathroom.”

He removed his glasses, cleaned them with a tissue. The house was silent.

“A nice mix,” I said. “Pop philosophy and sadistic fun.”

“Fun is good,” he said. “What else do we have to show for our time on this planet?”

He raised the syringe again. No help coming, but play for time, time was all I had.

“Melvin Myers,” I said. “A blind man trying to live a normal life. What was his sin? Learning something about Lehmann while fooling with the computers? Embezzlement? Shunting grant money to New Utopia?”

Big smile. “Ah, the irony,” he said. “Money allocated for the inferior finally used productively. Myers, that place- pathetic.”

“Myers was intelligent.”

“It's all the same.”

“Damaged tissue.”

“Spoiled meat can be gussied up and sautEed, but it remains unfit for consumption. The blind don't lead the blind. The blind get led around like barnyard animals.”

He aimed the needle at the ceiling, squirting liquid. A toilet flushed. Footsteps, again.

I heard Tenney's voice. “Whew, no more Mexican for me.”

Baker tapped the syringe.