same elation.
MY mother, who destroyed the world, had also helped to bring marvels
and wonders into it.
I had wanted Orson’s cooperation not only to confirm my story but to
lift our spirits and give us reason to hope that there might be life
after Wyvern. Even if humanity was now faced with dangerous new
adversaries like the members of the original troop that escaped the
labs, even if we were swept by a mysterious plague of genejumping from
species to species, even if few of us survived the coming years without
fundamental changes of an intellectual, emotional, and even physical
nature-perhaps there was nevertheless some chance that when we, the
current champions of the evolutionary game, stumbled and fell out of
the race and passed away, there would be worthy heirs who might do
better with the world than we did.
Cold comfort is better than none.
“Do You think Sasha’s pretty?” I asked the dog.
Orson studied her thoughtfully for long seconds. Then he turned to me
and nodded.
“That could have been a little quicker,” Sasha complained.
“Because he took his time, checked You out good, You know he’s being
sincere,” I assured her.
“I think You’re pretty, too,” Sasha told him.
Orson wagged his tail across the back of his chair.
“I’m a lucky guy, aren’t I, bro?” I asked him.
He nodded vigorously.
“And I’m a lucky girl,” she said.
Orson turned to her and shook his head: No.
“Hey,” I said.
The dog actually winked at me, grinning and making that soft wheezing
sound that I swear is laughter.
“He can’t even talk,” I said, “but he can do put-down humor.”
We weren’t just doing cool now. We were being cool.
If You’re genuinely cool, You’ll get through anything. That’s one of
the primary tenets of Bobby Halloway’s philosophy, and from my current
vantage point, post-Wyvern, I have to say that Philosopher Bob offers a
more effective guide to a happy life than all of his big-browed
competitors from Aristotle to Kierkegaard to Thomas More to
Schelling-to Jacopo Zabarella, who believed in the primacy of logic,
order, method.
Logic, order, method. All important, sure. But can all of life be
analyzed and understood with only those tools? Not that I’m about to
claim to have met Bigfoot or to be able to channel dead spirits or to
be the reincarnation of Kahuna, but when I see where diligent attention
to logic, order, and method have at last brought us, to this genetic
storm . . .
well, I think I’d be happier catching some epic waves.
For Sasha, apocalypse was no cause for insomnia. As always, she slept
deeply.
Although exhausted, I dozed fitfully. The bedroom door was locked, and
a chair was wedged under the knob. Orson was sleeping on the floor,
but he would be a good early-warning system if anyone entered the
house. The Glock was on my nightstand, and Sasha’s Smith & Wesson
.38
Chiefs Special was on her nightstand.
Yet I repeatedly woke with a start, sure that someone had crashed into
the bedroom, and I didn’t feel safe.
My dreams didn’t soothe me. In one of them, I was a drifter, walking
alongside a desert highway under a full moon, thumbing a ride without
success. In my right hand was a suitcase exactly like my father’s. It
couldn’t have been heavier if it had been filled with bricks. Finally,
I put it down, opened it, and recoiled as Lewis Stevenson rose out of
it like a cobra from a basket, golden light shimmering in his eyes, and
I knew that if something as strange as the dead chief could be in my
suitcase, something even stranger could be in me, whereupon I felt the
top of my head unzipping A and woke up.
An hour before sundown, I telephoned Bobby from Sasha’s kitchen.
“How’s the weather out there at monkey central?” I asked.
“Storm coming in later. Big thunderheads far out to sea.”
“Did You get some sleep?”
“After the jokesters left.”
“When was that?”
“After I turned the tables and started mooning them.”
“They were intimidated,” I said.
“Damn right. I’ve got the bigger ass, and they know it.”