Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa(71)

The note itself was simple.


THERE ARE 6

“Six,” Jack mused. “Yep. Half a dozen,” Kahn chimed in. “Of what? — People? Eggs? Geese a-laying?”





#139


After half an hour’s more waffling, note-taking and cross-refer-encing, Jack went directly to Louise’s apartment — couldn’t care less if it was five in the morning. He had to be sure she was okay.

The Professor answered the door and didn’t look like his visitor had woken him.

“Jack. Either you’re an early-riser, or you have important business with our girl,” he breezed, as he showed the man in without further ado.

Jack apologized repeatedly, until the older man cut him off.

“Nonsense, there’s no need to say that. I was up anyway, pottering with my Vita-Rays — and, I say, you missed all the excitement!”

“I did?” Frankly, Jack was feeling like he’d had sufficient excitement to last him into his sunset years.

“Oh, very much so.”

The elderly man swept up a pipe and began packing it as they stood in the middle of the room. He peered at Jack with a rascally grin.

“Yesterday, Louise clocked her employer — laid the man out on the showroom floor, so to speak — and she then handed in her resignation to leave that financial doss house! She finishes up at the end of this week and I, for one, could not be happier. Last night, Mister Winkle dropped by to pass on his respects and hearty congratulations. He told me that our girl broke Henry Holland’s jaw. Not much chin there to fracture, to be sure, but bravo, what?”

It was possible Jack appeared stressed, flustered, or both, and the Prof silenced his patter. He led the younger man to a settee and urged him to sit.

“Stay here, my boy. I will go to get Louise.”

The Professor hadn’t yet lit his pipe but puffed away on it as he left the room.

Minutes later, his daughter-in-law appeared in the loungeroom. Alone. The girl’s hair was in disarray and she was wrapped only in an oversized men’s tuxedo shirt that must’ve belonged to her husband, but she looked prettier than ever. There was concern and apprehension all over her face. She came before the man and took his hands.

“What is it, Jack? What’s happened? Are you all right?”

Jack stood and hugged the girl to him. “Thank crap, you’re okay.”

“Course I am, aside from morningitis,” she whispered in his ear. “What’s going on?”

“I — I had a nightmare,” he said. “Sorry for barging in like this, I just needed to be sure you were safe.”

“I think I’ll always be safe — now.”

Her arms tightened, and there was no mistaking the relief ricocheting about inside Jack’s head. He returned the strength and found himself smiling.

“From what I hear,” he mused into her shoulder, “you can handle yourself pretty damned well, regardless.”

Louise leaned back a fraction and pretended not to look pleased. “The Prof mentioned yesterday.”

“He did.”

“I’ve been dying to slap Henry Holland for days.”

“Did you really deck him?”

“Exaggerations. It was nothing more than a light tap.”

“That so? I pray I never give you cause to ‘tap’ me.”

“Impossible.”





#140


Louise lightly snored beside him. The girl was lying on her front without the white shirt, arms thrown over the pillow, face turned his way. She looked angelic.

Jack parked himself on one elbow to gaze. God, he loved her, even as it dawned upon him that this wouldn’t — couldn’t — last. One day soon, they’d fix the Reset and everything’d go back to square one.

“Louise,” he said. “Louise, are you awake?”

Silence, aside from the sound of sleep.

Then he kicked himself.

What was he going to say? ‘There’s something I need to tell you about. It’s called the Reset.’ Sure. Would he end up confessing everything about Heropa — including her own intransience? So that she would sit there, desolate, and say, ‘That’s it? I’ll forget everything? Go on working at the bank, putting up with Henry Holland, smoking cigarettes thereafter, on a twenty-four-hour cycle forever? My whole world is a sham, a game?’

And what would Jack do in return? Protest, ‘You don’t understand. This world has so much more than mine. Mine is a place on its last legs, one single city left, and we can’t see it surviving long. People have no rights, oppression is everywhere, and we have no heroes. Nothing, aside from ever-present rain and a daily grind of death, dying, loss — and of trying to find scraps of food in rubbish skips.’