Come Alive Ch. 34

Edith's single present contained a key and directions to a safety deposit box in Newport Beach; she slipped these into a pocket and smiled a little -- lest she give away her mounting disappointment. Anton opened his first present and Tracy looked on knowingly; the Bulgari chronograph left him speechless and almost in tears. Mike opened a similar box and found an Omega Speedmaster "Moonwatch" inside -- and he did burst out in tears. Dina and Tracy opened theirs and found modest Rolex Submariners inside, and Rolf opened a box and he found one for himself as well.

Then came the "gag" presents -- a parade of inside jokes that Henry had hoped might break the ice a little, maybe get his friends smiling again, and he was by and large spot on. At least until Rolf handed Edith one last envelope.

This contained a one-way ticket -- that evening -- back to Los Angeles, and both Mike and Anton were given explicit directions to get her to the airport and to personally put her on the flight. As the only way to do that was for Mike and Anton to board the aircraft with her, they each had round trip tickets on the same flight.

Completely demoralized, Edith went to her cabin in the forepeak and began packing her suitcase; a very subdued Tracy wasn't sure what to think of her mother's performance that afternoon -- beyond seeing her mother as seriously damaged goods -- at least as far as her past with Henry was concerned. Yet by that evening, she had seen the corroded decisions of her mother's teen years as recounted by Henry, and as she'd had no reason to doubt his veracity she'd had no reason not to believe his version of events. The portrait Henry had revealed over the past six weeks was not flattering, so much so that by the time her mother appeared on the scene Tracy wanted very little to do with her.

Mike and Anton knew Edith not in the least, yet their take on her was grounded in Henry's explicit directions to them. If Henry didn't trust her, neither would they. And Edith's narcissism simply didn't stand a chance when put up against Anton's and Mike's resolute desire to meet Henry's expectations. Maybe the checks in their pockets demanded no less, but in truth both felt nothing more or less than a real need to be true to their friend. Mike felt a profound loyalty that afternoon, and he had been surprised by the feeling.

With her Louis Vuitton suitcase in hand, Edith was escorted off Time Bandits; she hysterically demanded that Tracy come with her once again, and -- once again -- Tracy brushed aside her mother's histrionics and simply bade her farewell. There really wasn't anything left to say to her now, as her course was set now. Henry had reset all their courses that day, she realized, and now the greatest unknown imaginable lay ahead, if they had but the courage the moment required of them.

She knew Rolf well enough to know what he would do now, and even Anton, too. But Dina and this unknown Navy captain? What would they do?

There was real danger along the route Henry had charted for them, that much she understood. Her wounded shoulder was a potent enough reminder of all that lay ahead, and she understood all too well right now, but would their resolve stand up to what Henry was asking of them?

She felt Dina's stare and did her best to ignore her, but at length, she turned her gaze and met the other physician's eyes.

"Last night...where did you go? What happened there?" Dina asked.

But Tracy simply shrugged and shook her head before she spoke. "Whatever happens next, Dina, it has to be your choice."

The weight of Tracy's words hit Dina like a blow to the soul, and she seemed to wither under the weight of those words. "Tell me, if you can -- did you see my daughter?"

Tracy did not flinch, nor did she look away. "What does your heart tell you, Dina?"

"That you were with her. That you were with both Eva and my daughter."

"Then follow your heart," Tracy said, smiling. "And...Merry Christmas, Dina..."

Part II

Now that he was feeling a little better, Rupert was deep into The Godfather, Part III, his eyes glued to Al Pacino's Michael Corleone as he held onto Mary, his dying daughter -- Michael's silent howl of pure anguish a furious echo of all the infidelity and murder he had just celebrated inside Palermo's Teatro Massimo. Maybe, Henry thought, Rupert was unaware of the converging arcs Coppola had presented in the final moments of his trilogy; if so...too bad. He watched the coda with an eye on Rupert's reaction, with Michael sitting in a chair and passing away in utter loneliness, and again he wondered if Rupert made the connection -- to Don Vito Corleone's passing in the quiet loneliness of the garden in the backyard of his family's home. If so, Rupert gave no outward sign...he simply picked up the remote and turned the television off as the credits began rolling.

"You know, that's the first time I've seen Part III," Rupert said.

"Really?"

"Yeah. You know, the first one made sense to me. Even the second I could see, well, I don't know, maybe what the writers were trying to get at. But not this one."

"Oh?"

"Well, yeah, I mean the point of the first story is to establish the hierarchy of the Family in Sicilian life, and how that structure spread to Little Italy...you know, after the whole Ellis Island thing. To me the point of the whole thing is when Michael tells Kay she's being naive, you know? That the Family is just another form of government, I guess, with a system of justice all its own. What more is there to say, I guess? To me, Part II was almost unnecessary."

Henry nodded. "Ever read Buddenbrooks?"

"Budden-who?"

Henry shrugged. "Another novel about the decline of a family. A patrician merchant banking family in Lübeck, Germany. A lot of stories like The Godfather and Buddenbrooks focus on the path of a family's decline, usually as a metaphor of civilizational or cultural decay or collapse."

"And you think that's what's going on in The Godfather?"

Henry nodded. "Yup."

"What about your family, Henry? You never talk about them much..."

"Not a whole lot to say, Rupert. I'm the end of the line, which -- as metaphors go -- pretty much sums up this point in time...for me, at least."

"No cousins, aunts or uncles or that kind of thing?"

"Oh, there might be someone in France, but if so they're a complete unknown as far as I'm concerned."

"France? What's the connection?"

"Oh, the usual cliché. My dad flew B-17s in the war. His aircraft got shot up pretty bad but he nursed it back to French airspace; he was the last to bail-out and resistance fighters picked him up and hid him for a while. He met my mom then and went back after the war and found her, and that was that."

"Jesus, Henry! And you haven't kept in touch with all that family?"

"My mom was an orphan, Rupert. At least that's the story she passed on, that she lived with, and that her dad was supposedly a physician and her mom a nurse. She had no trouble getting into med school, by the by. Guess that much was in her DNA, too."

"Too? What's that supposed to mean?"

"She was dutiful, a good mom I guess you could say, but all I remember is she was never around when I needed her. Always at the hospital, nights, weekends. I have to struggle to remember her, ya know?"

"Your dad didn't have family anywhere?"

"Nope. Only child, no known relatives, so I am what I am...the end of the line."

Rupert sighed. "You know, I might as well be. My son is little more than the proverbial dilettante -- right out of the Old Testament, so I'm pretty much guaranteed there are no kids in my future. That's the end of my line, too, isn't it?"

Henry shrugged. "You never can tell, Rupert. Anyway...you look like you're feeling a little better today."

"I am. A lot better, actually. Do you know what happened?"

"What happened? What do you mean?"

"Well, weren't they having trouble coming up with some kind of treatment?"

Henry nodded. "Yeah, well, turns out they've been having trouble synthesizing certain types of proteins they needed to work out their treatment plan. Another scientist who's been studying us told them where they could find a supply of the stuff..."

"Which is?" Rupert asked.

"Orcas."

"No kidding?"

"Yup. Pinky and I went back to Friday Harbor and harvested some. Brought it back and here you are, feeling fit as a fiddle."

"You...harvested some? Just what exactly does that mean...you harvested some...what?"

"It's a liver protein found in their digestive system, found in their bile and gall bladders."

"So, you mean you killed an orca?"

"No, not at all. Remember the one I swam with off the back of the Swan, that night we were anchored south of Friday Harbor, in North Bay?"

"You mean...you found the same whale?"

"Not exactly. Pinky asked him to meet us there."

Rupert shook his head. "Shit, man, you gotta stop pullin' my leg like that..."

"Yeah? Well, anyway, she made me ask him, ya know, for permission to give it an injection, and that made him sick. One of the Blues with me, a guy called Bob, collected the specimens and we brought it back to their lab."

"Wait one. You're sayin' you asked this whale for permission?"

"Yup?"

"So...now you can talk to whales?"

"Not whales in general, but to this pod of orcas, yes."

"Taggart...you're so full of shit your eyes are turning brown."

"And guess what, Rupert...you're alive right now. And here's another news flash for you... without that whale's help, you'd be in an urn over your son's fireplace."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

Henry nodded. "Yup. As a heart attack."

"You'll pardon me if I don't believe you?"

"No skin off my nose, Rupert. I know the score, I know what happened, because I was there, and I saw it go down. And you weren't."

Rupert turned away and thought about that for a few minutes, then he turned back to Henry. "So...this cure? It works -- in general, I take it?"

"Yup, they've already started distributing this new protein via domestic water supplies in Siberia and northeast China. Pinky thinks within a few years the mutation will burn itself out."

"So...end of problem?"

"Probably. But not for us."

"The radiation exposure? Alpha particles? I was afraid of that..."

"Yup. There's nothing Pinky and her team can do about that."

Rupert sighed. "You said 'probably?' What the hell does that mean?"

"It means there are some bad apples out there, Rupert. Other -- beings -- that aren't so benevolent where things like us are concerned."

"You mean...beings other than Pinky's people?"

"Yup."

"Henry, you'll excuse the fuck out of me, but all this is getting a little..."

"Complicated, Rupert, is the word you're looking for."

"Not really, but it'll do...for now."

+++++

"If I make a big enough scene they won't let me on the airplane," Edith snarled -- just after the Air France announcer made the final call for boarding the flight to LAX.

Mike looked at her, taking the measure of the moment before he spoke. "You know, I don't know you from Adam but I'm here right now because this is something Henry asked me to do. And guess what? Here you are claiming to be one of Henry's closest friends yet you've been acting like anything but...so tell me? Just what am I supposed to make of someone like you?"

"Frankly, I don't care what you make of me."

"Okay. Fair enough. So, let me be equally clear. If you fuck this up, if you make a scene or make a run for it, let me tell you what I'm going to do..."

"Again," Edith growled, "I don't give a flying fuck what you do..."

"Oh? Okay, well, just for the sake of clarity then, here's what's going to happen. We're going to get you in a taxi and head out into the country, and in a few weeks the police will find your body face down in a ditch somewhere out there. Got it? We clear enough for a flying fuck, maybe?"

Edith looked at this Captain Lacy for a moment, then she pulled out her boarding pass and walked to the gate.

Anton didn't know what to think right about then, not after his own less than friendly encounter with Mike's friends in the local intelligence services, so he walked along quietly and boarded the flight, not quite sure if this was the right thing to do, or not....

'But anyway,' he thought, 'I've never been to America, and California has always like a kind of dream to me.' And for some reason, he thought of Disneyland and smiled as he walked out the Jetway.

+++++

Pinky came to their room with several Blues and a Green. Henry thought she looked a little upset.

"Hey!" Henry said, with a little more enthusiasm than he felt. "It's the Mod Squad! What's up, guys? Run out of Afro-sheen?"

The Blue called Bob came closer and spoke first. "Protein synthesis is complicated but our distribution models are accurate, yet simulations indicate that we will simply slow progression of the mutagen...by perhaps two hundred years."

"Okay. So...maybe we'll teach the horse to sing by then."

"What?" Bod cried, bug-eyed again. Pinky leaned over and whispered in Bob's ear, and he nodded understanding. "Oh? Okay."

"Well, Bob, you look like you just took a bite out of a shit sandwich, so why don't you tell us the good news now."

Bob looked at Pinky -- who simply shrugged -- before he resumed. "Where you are concerned, we estimate the development of fatal tumors within two years and death in three."

Rupert looked at Bob when he heard that: "Come again?"

"Three years," Bob repeated. "You have a life expectancy of two years, so a normative life span with treatment of, again, possibly three years. Our modeling indicates a 98 percent certainty for that figure, and a less than one percent chance of longer duration. I am sorry."

Henry Taggart looked at Bob, then at Pinky, his eyes blinking like semaphores. "Well fuck me in the ass," he said at last, perhaps a bit more merrily than he felt. "Ain't you full of all kinds of good news?"

"This is good news?" Bob asked.

"Hell, yes, it's good news!" Henry grinned. "That's twenty, maybe thirty years I'm not going to have to deal with these hemorrhoids -- or buy Christmas cards, for that matter! Hallelujah Jesus!"

Rupert Collins was not quite as amused, so he picked up the little black Sony remote and found his way back into The Godfather, Part I -- and there he disappeared inside the snuggly warmth of the moral relativism it offered.

+++++

Rolf watched Anton and Mike escort Edith away from Time Bandits while sitting behind the wheel, sitting in the cockpit while his grandmother cleared away the remains of the day down in the galley. Tracy had kept to herself most of the day, yet everyone had noticed how out of it she seemed. She'd lost Henry, and while that obviously had a lot to do with her growing funk there was more to it than that, and even Rolf could see that much -- despite his youth.

The chart plotter started chirping, and because Henry's phone was still synced to it Rolf wasn't too surprised to see it was Henry's phone ringing. Not knowing what else to do, he leaned over and answered the call...

"Hello?" Rolf said, yet the first thing he heard was music playing in the background.

"Yes. Hello. Is Henry there?"

"No, he's not. May I ask who's calling, please?"

"Is this Rolf?"

"Yes it is. And you are?"

"An old friend. Rupert Collins, from America. I just wanted to wish Henry a Merry Christmas."

"I see."

"Tell me, Rolf, is he gone?"

"He passed last night, sir."

"Yes. I think I knew that. Some kind of disturbance while I was asleep last night. Are you doing alright, young man?"

"Yessir. Fine."

"Well okay. I'm sure you have a lot on your mind, but Henry and I became somewhat close over the last few years and I was just hoping to speak to him one more time."

"I understand, sir."

"There's a lesson here, son. Don't put off the important things, because time gets away from us in the end. We leave too many things unsaid, and important things left to do."

"Yessir."

"Well, goodbye Rolf. Take care."

"Yessir. Goodbye to you as well."

He broke the connection, but Rolf smiled when he finally recognized the music he'd heard playing in the background. Henry's old friend had been watching The Godfather -- though he thought that was a strange film to be watching on Christmas Day. But something caught his eye just then, and he saw an Old Man in a Cape, along with a young boy, and they were walking up to the boat. The Old Man had a very strange-looking cane in hand, too, and for some reason Rolf had a hard time not staring at it.

Part III

Henry looked out over the space station, for that was exactly what it was, and he felt a little in awe of the sheer scale of the thing. If, as Bob had told him, the thing was 1500 kilometers long, he was looking at a ship that was close to a thousand miles from end to end. He and Pinky were in a tower near the docking platforms at one end of the station, and though the tower appeared to be hundreds of meters tall he couldn't even begin to see the far end of the station. What was weird, however, was the spinning cylinder below.

The tower they were in was decoupled from the main body of the station and up here, looking out on the station, he and Pinky were floating around in complete weightlessness -- and Henry thought the sensation was exhilarating!

"Man, what a blast! I could do this forever!" he said to Pinky as he somersaulted and ricocheted off a wall.

"I thought you might enjoy it out here," she said, casually smiling at him.

He caught something in the tone of her voice and reached for a handhold, but his momentum was simply too great and he bounced along until he finally grabbed hold of one and stopped. Then he looked at her, trying to get a read of the expression on her face.

"You okay?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, are you feeling alright?" The question seemed odd to her, at least it did if he was reading her reaction correctly, so he pushed himself away from the wall and on a trajectory towards her.

Then the look on her face turned to one of growing alarm -- as she made a quick calculation of his mass and velocity -- yet she was wearing a belt that appeared to allow her to move about in weightless space with ease. "What are you doing?" she asked as Henry approached.

"I wanted to talk without shouting," he said as he sailed past her, suddenly aware that the next wall he might grab hold of was over a hundred meters away. "Well...fuck-a-doodle-doo..." he sighed -- as Pinky receded into the distance. "That was smart."

Yet Pinky sailed past him and met him at the far wall; when he arrived she helped him stop and grab a wall anchor. "You want to talk? To me?"

"Yes, I do."

"Why?"

"I told you..."

"Ah, yes, you told me that you love me. Don't you find that a little silly?"

"Silly? I haven't heard that one in years."

"Well then, how about impetuous?"

"Not to me. Is that what you felt?"

"No, not really, but I have no frame of reference, Henry. We do not pair bond the way you do, and our associations are more -- structured -- than yours appear to be. When you tell me that you love me it is as though I understand the words, yet the importance is lost to me."

"You don't -- love anyone?"

"Not in the way you speak of."

"Well, in what way, then?"

Pinky shrugged. "I am more interested in why you felt it important to tell me that."

"Because I do."

"But we cannot pair bond. We cannot produce offspring. We cannot cohabitate."

Henry laughed. "Pinky, you may not know it, but you're describing the perfect marriage to me. Love, without all the messy complications..."

"Messy complications? Do you not mean responsibilities?"

Henry scowled and looked towards his feet. "Yeah. I guess I do."

"So, do you feel any sense of responsibility to me...or is it for me?"