He looked at her. “Are you angry at me, too?”
“You are a good man—your heart is good. But you don’t understand the human heart. I’m sure you could perform bypass surgery on the heart if you had to, but you don’t understand it. What you did may have been right objectively, but to Sarah it will always be wrong. Do you really want me to become Michael’s wife?” “That’s part of why I did what I did, allowed the children to age while we slept.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” He had looked away again, and he felt her hands on his arms now and he turned around to face her—her eyes. “Do you want me to be some other man’s wife? Even if the other man is your son? Do you?” He didn’t answer her. “I was always certain of one thing since I first met you, I think. That I love you and that you love me. Do you want to think about your son loving me? Do you want to come to hate us both, or to hate yourself?” “From what Sarah said, I should hate myself already, shouldn’t I?”
“Do you want me as someone else’s wife? Do you?”
It was very cold in the fresh air after so long. “No.” “I looked to you like a god,” she whispered, barely audible as the wind rose from the northwest. “My uncle, he told me that you were not a god, that you would never consider yourself a god.”
Rourke looked away. “All I tried to do—“ he began. “I think the reason I felt what I felt, what my uncle spoke about—I have never met a human being so perfect.”
He looked at her. “I’m not—“
“But you are—and the perfection is your flaw, John.”
“You sound like you’re analyzing a tragedy.”
“Perhaps I am, John. You were always able to subordinate your humanity to your logic. And you did it one time too often. You wanted to love me— physically. But you would never allow yourself to. But because of your humanity, your perfect logic hurt you. In trying to do what you logically deduced was the impartial, the correct thing, you made the most subjective decision any man has ever made.”
Rourke laughed—a short laugh. “I kinda
Ql
screwed up, huh?”
“I love you with all of my heart. I’ll always love you that way. And I’ll do your will if that is what you choose.”
“Michael.” Rourke smiled. “He’s, ahh—“
“Not you. He couldn’t be. No matter how like you he is—no matter what he looks like, Annie said he looks just like you. No matter what is in his heart or his mind—he’s not you.”
He raised his eyes—he’d been studyjng the toes of his combat boots in detail, the added coats of polish he’d given them before the last sleep had preserved them perfectly. Some of the spare pairs of combat boots in storage—he should look to them, he reminded himself.
“I never planned for falling in love with you,” he told her simply. “It changed so—it—“ “Sarah will be so happy when she sees Michael, when she gets to know Annie.
She’ll—“
He closed his eyes. “No, she won’t. He’s a man now—I took her little boy. I took her little girl.”
“You and Sarah, you can have—“
“I don’t think so,” Rourke answered, lighting one of his new cigars in the blue-yellow flame of his battered Zippo. “I don’t think so.”
“But she loves you—“
“If we’re going to make any time while there’s still daylight—“ “John-“ Rourke looked away from her. He didn’t know what to say and there wasn’t much point in saying anything at all, he felt. “No point at all,” he told the wind.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rather than going back to where he had hidden the Harley, they had walked, the girl—she was very pretty—telling him the Place was less than a day’s journey from the spot where they had spent the night. The snow and the cold made more permanent shelter imperative, Michael Rourke had reasoned—and his curiosity at finding the nature of her people was something he realized to be insatiable. She had had no clothes and from his things and with his help she had fashioned some. His spare pair of Levi’s was too hopelessly large for her; but with a cut of rope she had fashioned a belt and the Thermos blanket had become an ankle-length skirt. She wore one of his spare shins and his sweater against the cold, his sleeping bag like a coat. With part of the butchered Thermos blanket and a little more of the rope, she had fashioned coverings for her feet, and in addition to these wore two pairs of his boot socks. She seemed physically fit, healthy—the pace she set was a quick one as they moved out of the woods, widely circumventing the clearing where the cannibals had held her and nearly killed her.
He watched her hair as it caught in the wind—it was a golden blond color, like the yellow of the sun and cascaded in waves to the middle of her back. She turned around suddenly—he guessed she somehow knew he was watching her. She smiled and the pale blue of her eyes struck him. “You’re very beautiful,” he told her.
She laughed. “The Archangel Michael is very kind, but I am not beautiful.” Her face was thin, but not unpleasantly so—it was youth, he decided. “How old are you?”
“I have nineteen years—that is why it was my time.”
“Your time?”
“To be sacrificed to Them.”
Michael had no idea what she was talking about. He suddenly realized that he had never asked her name. “What’s your name?”
She laughed again. “Only the Families have names.”
“You have to have a name. What do they call you?”
“Who?”
“Your friends—the other people?”
“Oh, I am Madison. But then so are many others. The numbers change when one goes.”
“What do you mean—goes?”
She stopped walking, putting her tiny, long-fingered hands on her hips. “The Archangel Michael must know what it means when some person goes. You laugh at me.”
They were coming into some rocks. They had been walking for two hours by the position of the sun. He glanced at the Rolex on his left wrist—it was two hours and fifteen minutes. “Let’s rest for a few minutes before we go on,” he decided, starting toward the rocks, talking to her still. “And I told you—I’m not an archangel, my name is Michael, but it’s Michael Rourke.” She laughed. “That must be why you do not know what it means when someone goes. In the language of heaven, Rourke must mean Archangel. In the language of the Place, goes is like— well, whatever it would be in the language of heaven.” He found a flat rock and sat on it, the girl dropping to a slightly lower rock beside him, tucking her knees up almost to her chin, gathering the improvised skirt around her legs.
“When someone goes,” he persisted. “What happens?”
“You joke with me again, Archangel Michael.”
“I’m—“ He started to tell her he was not an archangel. Instead, he said, “For convenience sake, just call me Michael.”
“Like, ohhh, like you called the other angel Pilate. I feel this is disrespectful for me not to call you Archangel Michael.” “It isn’t disrespectful, believe me.”
“Michael—Michael,” she repeated, smiling. “I like the sound of Michael.”
“What do they call you?”
“When I learned that Madison twenty-four goes I became Madison fifteen.”
“Madison fifteen?”
“One is born a Madison and assigned an immaturity number, but then at the age of eight one is given a maturity number. I was Madison twenty-nine, then I was Madison nineteen, then I was Madison four. I am now Madison fifteen. But I am probably not Madison fifteen anymore. When someone is sacrificed to Them, the person goes and their number is reassigned.”
“Then you’re just Madison.” Michael Rourke smiled.
She appeared to consider this. “Yes, Michael. I am Madison.”
“What are some of the other names at the Place?”
“Among the Families or among the people like myself?”
“Like yourself, for openers.”
“There are Hutchins, Greeleys, Cunninghams —many like that. There are many Cunninghams but they work in direct contact with the Families.” “Madison—who are the Families?”
“The Families own the Place.”
“What are some of their names?”
“One of the Families is called the Vandivers. Another is called the Cambridges.
Another is—“
He cut her off. “And these people have first names. I mean like Michael is a first name.”
“Oh, yes, Michael—once I served Elizabeth Vandiver in her suite. I carried in her wedding dress along with several of the other Madisons.” He puzzled over this a moment. “What do the Madisons do?” She laughed. “What Madisons always do. Make the clothing, clean the clothing, repair the clothing, take the wrinkles from the clothing, fit the clothing. But only two of the Madisons do this—fitting.”