Gwendy’s Final Task

Reggie Black—who, Gwendy believes, would have sided with Doubting Thomas in the Bible—shakes his head. “I’m willing to accept that it’s all very strange. I’m not willing to accept that pushing that black button could destroy the whole world.” Gwendy almost expects him to add, Let’s try it and see, shall we? But he doesn’t. Which is good. If he even made a move toward the button box, Gwendy would have leaped across the table to stop him.

“It doesn’t matter,” Adesh says. “Surely you all see that?”

They turn puzzled looks on him, Gwendy included.

“We send the box away in the device we call the Pocket Rocket. Whether it’s a thing of supernatural evil or just a box that gives out chocolates and silver dollars …” He shrugs and smiles. It’s a very sweet smile. “Either way, it’s gone. The Pocket Rocket won’t even be orbiting the earth with the rest of the space junk we have been charting.” The smile becomes dreamy. “It will be off to the stars, never to come back.”

This logic is irrefutable.

Kathy Lundgren turns to Gwendy. “We’ll do it tomorrow. You and me. My ninth spacewalk, your first. The one that’s televised back home to your constituents will be your second, but no one has to know that, do they?”

“No,” Gwendy says.

Kathy nods. “We’ll watch the Pocket Rocket heading out toward the moon, and Mars, and the great beyond. With its cargo on board.”

“It sounds fine. What about Winston?”

“For the time being, until we can decide how he died, Mr. Winston is okay. Just suffering a touch of zero-g space sickness and holed up in his cabin. Not feeling well enough to communicate with the down-below. Or do you disagree?”

“No,” Gwendy says. “That’s fine for now.”

She’s still sorry about what happened in Jonestown, even though she guesses much of it was the fault of the Reverend Jim Jones. She’s sorry about the destruction of the Great Pyramid, and sorrier about the lives lost when it disassembled. But she’s not sorry about Gareth Winston.

“Which one of the levers dispenses the chocolates?” Reggie Black asks.

“That one.” Gwendy points.

“May I?”

Gwendy doesn’t want him to touch the box, but she nods.

Reggie pulls the lever. The slot opens and the shelf comes out. It’s empty.

Gwendy turns to Adesh. “You try.”

The tiny shelf has gone back in. Adesh hooks his pinky around the lever and pulls gently. Out comes the shelf, this time bearing a small chocolate weasel. He looks at it, but gives it to Bern. The biologist examines it, then puts it in his mouth, fingers ready to take it out if it’s nasty. Instead, his eyes half-close in an expression of ecstasy.

“Oh my God! Delicious!”

Reggie Black looks put out. “Why didn’t it work for me?”

“Maybe,” Gwendy says, “the box doesn’t like physicists.”

46

THAT NIGHT.

Gwendy is walking the outer rim of the Many Flags space station. It makes its usual creaks and groans, haunted house sounds that the other man, the bad man, didn’t like, but Gwendy doesn’t mind them. She can’t remember the bad man’s name, although she’s sure she could come up with it using Dr. Ambrose’s chain of association. I’d just start with cigar, she thinks.

The man walking beside her doesn’t seem to mind the creaking sounds either. His face is serene and he’s very beautiful. Except his beauty is a mask. Sometimes his features waver like water in a pond blown by a strong breeze and she can see his real face and head. He’s some sort of weasel, like the chocolate treat the biologist got. Gwendy can’t remember his name, either. That’s all right. She can remember the name of the man-who-isn’t-a-man, though: it’s Bobby. That’s what the bad man called him. She thinks: Cigar. She thinks, Who smoked cigars? Winston Churchill did. And there it is.

“The bad man’s name was Garin Winston,” she says.

“Close enough,” Bobby says. “It doesn’t matter, he’s dead.”

“Melted,” Gwendy says. “Like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Ooze.”

“Close enough,” Bobby says again. “What matters is this: there are other worlds than these.”

“I know,” Gwendy says. “Someone told me, but I don’t remember who. Maybe Mr. Farris.”

“That meddler,” Bobby says.

They walk. The space station creaks. They see no one, because this is sleep time on MF. Except for the Chinese, holed up in their spoke, they are alone in the haunted house.

“There are twelve worlds,” Bobby says. “Six beams, twelve worlds, one at each end of each beam. And in the center is the Tower. We call it Black Thirteen.”

“Who is we?”

“The taheen.”

This means nothing to Gwendy.

“The beams hold the worlds and the Tower powers the beams,” Bobby says in a lecturely tone. “Only one thing can destroy it, now that the Crimson King is dead.”