Fever Dream

June Brodie made a move to protest, but Slade, with a flick of the gun, gestured Pendergast through the doorway. 'Guests first,' he said.

Pendergast shot a warning glance at Hayward, then disappeared through the dark rectangle.

The hallway was paneled with cedar, painted over in gray. Recessed lights in the ceiling cast low, regular pools of light onto neutral carpeting, its weave tight and plush. Slade walked slowly behind Pendergast, the wheels of his IV making no noise as they turned. 'Last door on the left,' he said.

The room that served as Slade's office had once been the game room of the lodge. A dartboard hung on the wall, and there were a couple of chairs and two tables shoved up against the walls, tops inlaid for backgammon and chess. A snooker table near the back apparently served as Slade's desk: its felt surface was empty save for carefully folded tissues, a crossword magazine, a book on advanced calculus, and several additional flails, their tips tattered from constant use. A few ancient snooker balls, crazed with craquelure, still lay forlornly in one pocket. There was little other furniture: the big room was remarkably bare. Gauzy curtains were drawn tightly over the windows. The space had the stillness of a tomb.

Slade closed the door with exquisite care. 'Sit down.'

Pendergast dragged a cane chair out and set it on the thick carpet before the table. Slade wheeled his IV rack behind the table and sat down very slowly and carefully in the lone easy chair. He pressed the bulb on the IV line, eyes fluttering as the morphine hit his bloodstream, sighed, then trained the gun again on Pendergast. 'Okey- dokey,' he said, his voice remaining whispery and slow. 'Say what you have to say so that I can get on with shooting you.' He smiled faintly. 'It'll make a mess, of course. But June will clean it up. She's good at cleaning up my messes.'

'Actually,' Pendergast said, 'you're not going to shoot me.'

Slade emitted a careful little cough. 'No?'

'That's what I wanted to speak to you about. You're going to shoot yourself.'

'Now, why would I want to do that?'

Instead of replying, Pendergast stood up and walked over to a cuckoo clock that stood on a side wall. He pulled up the counterweights, set the time to ten minutes before twelve, then gave the pendulum a flick with his fingernail to start it.

'Eleven fifty?' Slade said. 'That's not the correct time.'

Pendergast sat down again. Slade waited. The tick of the now-active cuckoo clock began to fill the silence. Slade seemed to stiffen slightly. His lips began to move.

'You are going to kill yourself because justice demands it,' Pendergast said.

'To satisfy you, I suppose.'

'No. To thwart me.'

'I won't kill myself,' Slade said out loud, the first words he had spoken above a papery whisper.

'I hope you won't,' Pendergast said, plucking two snooker balls from the corner pocket. 'You see, I want you to live.'

Slade said, 'You're making no sense. Even to a madman.'

Pendergast began rolling the pool balls back and forth in one hand, Queeg-like, clacking them together.

'Stop that,' Slade hissed, wincing. 'I don't like it.'

Pendergast clacked the balls together a little more loudly. 'I had planned to kill you. But now that I've seen the condition you're in, I realize the cruelest thing I could do would be to let you live. There's no cure. Your suffering will go on, only increasing with old age and infirmity, your mind sinking ever deeper into misery and ruin. Death would be a release.'

Slade shook his head slowly, his lips twitching, the muttered sounds of broken words tumbling from his lips. He groaned with something very much like physical pain, and then gave the morphine drip another pump.

Pendergast reached into his pocket, took out a small test tube half full of black granules. He tipped out a small line of the granules along the edge of the pool table.

The action seemed to bring Slade back around. 'What are you doing?'

'I always carry a little activated charcoal. It's useful in so many field tests--as a scientist, you must know that. But it has its own aesthetic properties, as well.' From another pocket Pendergast pulled out a lighter, swiftly lit one end of the granules. 'For example, the smoke it emits tends to curl upward in such beautiful gossamer patterns. And the smell is far from unpleasant.'

Slade leaned backward sharply. He trained the gun, which had sagged to the floor, toward Pendergast again. 'You put that out.'

Pendergast ignored him. Smoke curled up in the still air, looping and coiling. He leaned back in his chair, forcing it to rock slightly, the old canework creaking. He rolled the pool balls together as he went on. 'You see, I knew--or at least guessed at--the nature of your affliction. But I never stopped to think just how awful it would be to endure. Every creak, click, tap, and squeak intruding itself into your brain. The chirping of the birds, the brightness of the sun, the smell of smoke... To be tormented by every little thing carried into your brain by the five senses, to live at the edge of being overwhelmed every minute of every hour of every day. To know that nothing can be done, nothing at all. Even your, ah, unique relationship with June Brodie can provide nothing but temporary diversion.'

'Her husband lost his apparatus in Desert Storm,' Slade said. 'Blown off by an IED. I've stepped in to fill the breach, so to speak.'

'How nice for you,' said Pendergast.

'Go stuff your conventional morality. I don't need it. Anyway, you heard June.' The mad sheen to his eyes seemed to fade somewhat, and he looked almost serious. 'We're working on a cure.'