Glimmering

“At the same time as the telecommunications system is introduced, The Golden Family will launch its remarkable Fouga™/SunTerminus™ configuration known as the Solar Universal Nucleo-Radial Array (SUNRA™). By first polarizing particulates and toxins in the earth’s atmosphere, SUNRA™ can then ‘attract’ unwanted compounds much as a magnet attracts iron filings, and so take the first step toward repairing the ozone layer…”

“Yeah, yeah, save the ozone. Very nice,” muttered Jack. “But what about me?” He turned the prospectus’s last few pages, and finally found there what he was looking for.

“The Golden Family International, henceforth known as GFI, lets it be known that of this date, April 19,1999, it has made to John Chanvers Finnegan II, editor in chief and owner of the periodical known as The Gaudy Book, an offer in the amount of $3,000,000 for purchase of said periodical. GFI would then become sole proprietors of…”

He closed the prospectus. Around him the room was silent, save for the tapping of rain at the windows.

Three million dollars. It was more money than his family had possessed in over twenty years. Illness and bad investments had shorn Jack’s father’s share of the Finnegan fortune. The bulk of his grandfather’s money had, of course, gone to Keeley; but it had long since been squandered on Lazyland’s upkeep, as well as gifts to various Finnegan children and great-grandchildren.

Three million dollars…

But what was that worth, nowadays? He could hear Leonard’s mocking voice—“Three million bucks’ll buy you a latte in Uzbekistan!”

But GFI was certainly solvent, at least right now. One of the world’s biggest corporations, after Disney and Matsushita; he could be fairly certain that the check wouldn’t bounce. He would use the money on the house; put in a stairlift for Grandmother and Mrs. Iverson, repair the damage left by ice dams and flooding. He could afford some of the medications he had stopped taking, if he could find a source for them. He could stop pretending to save his family’s dying literary legacy, and retire—his brothers had been telling him to do that ever since he became ill. He could travel.

He could buy time.

“Jesus,” he said aloud. He tapped the prospectus gently against his chin, and smiled. “Well—”

Quickly he turned and crossed to his battered desk, fished around until he found the telephone beneath a heap of unpaid bills. He grinned triumphantly when he heard a dial tone, then punched in Jule Gardino’s number.

“—I guess I need a lawyer.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Death by Water

He went home to die. It took him two days from Boston, and by the time he got there he was so sick and exhausted he might as well be dead already. Innocent that he was, Trip didn’t know that IZE was more addictive than crack or heroin: that it had been deliberately manufactured so that the brain’s receptors for the drug, once activated, would continue to crave it, even after a single dosage. He felt nauseated and almost frantic with anxiety; his head ached, and in the corners of his eyes he saw faint flickerings that mirrored the sky overhead.

Now Roque Beach stretched before him, glittering in the greenish sunlight. Maine was one of those places where rich people fled when the world fell apart. The small population base meant there were fewer viral outbreaks (though more militias), fewer attempts to impose quarantines and environmental interdictions—although the atmospheric effects of the glimmering were, if anything, intensified in the northern latitude. And not even the end of the world could temper the Maine winter. But Moody’s Island was too raw and remote to attract refugees from the Hamptons. Only people like Trip Marlowe called it home. And only a Marlowe would return to Hell Head to die.

He staggered to the huge rocky outcropping that overlooked the whirlpool and stared down into its vast turning eye. Expecting perhaps to see something there—his father’s battered face staring up at him; his mother with her long hair aswarm with tiny crabs. Instead there was only churning water, marbled black and green, the peeping cry of storm petrels as they fluttered above waves farther down the shore.