S= They Ate the Truth part 19

We don't talk too much as we drive to the lab. I guess we're still
both mad with each other, though we're pretending we're not. Though our
kisses are still passionate, they aren't tender anymore. They are hard
jabbing kisses, pecks in the real sense of the word, of lips being used
forcefully.

She tells me that she did it for my own good, that she was worried
about me. That I'd told her that the only reason the bugs wouldn't come
for me is because I'd made myself hard and dead inside.

She says, "I just didn't see that in you anymore. You'd changed, you
just didn't know it. "

So she killed the bugs to protect me, so that I wouldn't inadvertently
open the box thinking that I was free of all guilt and find them
chewing out every dark secret I ever had. I think she means it, but I
don't care.

Doing this is much, much easier if I'm angrier with her.

"It wasn't your choice to make, " I say, "If you were concerned, you
should have said something. I would have taken care. I managed to look
after myself fine before you came along. "

"Fine, " she says, and there's an end to it.

I don't have the heart to go with the original plan, which is to
separate her from her gun before we get to the lab. For one thing, I
feel like I deserve whatever is coming to me, if she shoots me, then
that's the way it goes. For another, she's a better shot than me, so
she may as well have the gun. I have mine, tucked into the back of my
trousers, the jacket concealing it badly. And finally, the mood we were
both in, in that hotel room, I didn't think it was a good idea for guns
to be brought into the whole equation.

If you're thinking I have a plan, you're wrong. I have no plan. I have
no scheme to save both of them. This is the deal. It is a choice. I
want to walk away from the lab with both of them, and hopefully the
Queen too, but it isn't going to happen. You must know that.

The lab. It is pretty hi-tec. I don't know what I was expecting, not
coiled burnt-orange rubber piping connected between gas taps and bunsen
burners, but probably test tubes. Microscopes at least.

Instead, it is mostly computers. Huge banks of computers, making the
ones in my office that my lover had smashed up in order to protect me
seem insignificant. There's probably a bunch of stuff connected with
DNA sequencing and gene manipulation, but I don't know anything about
that, so I wouldn't have a clue what I'm looking at. It is very clean,
and with a sort of apple-green tinge to the whole place, what with the
computer screens and the cool green work surfaces. The room is pretty
large, two doors. We had to get in using a keypad, Lorrie remembered
the number, I remembered not to make a snide comment about her
memory.

She runs a palm along the workbench. "I remember this, " she says, "I
was a lab assistant. That's how I met Johann. "

I nod. "Chesterton would have got you the job, put you under Johann's
nose. He was a one for the ladies. "

She flashes me a look and says, "Still jealous?"

I think, he can have you. If you want him, I don't want you. But it is
a false thought, screwed up out of self-preservation and fear. This
isn't how I feel at all.

"I'm looking forward to seeing Chesterton again, " she says, "I don't
remember much, but I feel like he was very kind to me. Gallant. "

Odd word. I wonder if Chesterton ever drew his swordstick in defence of
my Lorrie. I rather hope he did. The old bastard deserves some dignity,
some heroics.

"What's in there ? " I ask, pointing towards a thick steel door with
what looks like a microscope-cum-binocular affair attached to it.

"The vault, " she says, "Don't think Johann ever kept anything in
there. "

We can't go out like this, with tension and bitterness. I want us to
die, if we have to, like Butch and Sundance, resonating with
possibilities and wisecracks on our lips.

I take her by the arms and say, "Hush. "

I hold her and tell her that I'm sorry about everything and that
nothing matters, not really. That maybe she was right about the bugs,
that I wasn't safe to handle them anymore, that maybe she was right to
kill them.

In between kisses, I can hear the squeak of something, a noise like a
wheelchair being rolled over the tiled floor.

Reason being, there is a wheelchair being wheeled across the tiled
floor. Sat in the wheelchair, which is an old-fashioned black ugly one
of the type that you might see in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, is
my good friend Bill, cuffed to the arms of the chair to prevent quick
getaway and with some damn uncomfortable-looking scotch tape over his
mouth. One end of the tape is neat, the other ragged, it has been
bitten from the roll. The chair is far too heavy for him to move it
unaided, it is a stiff scaffold rather than the type you see people
race with in the London marathon.

Pushing it, and I'm glad to note slightly out of breath, is Johann van
Gibt. He's made something of an effort, he has a shirt with diagonal
stripes of blue and cream on a white background, the shirt has double
cuffs which he has left unfastened to flap around his wrists. He has
spent time on his hair and I am certain that he smells better than I
do. I really should have gone to pick up that fragrance Alastair
recommended.

He stands by the wheelchair holding what looks like a bell-jar, inside
which are about fifty bugs, all looking perky and hungry. He takes a
small wedge of wood from his pocket and tucks it under the left wheel
of the chair, making sure it isn't going anywhere.

"Thanks for coming, " he says, in the smug tones I'm growing less and
less fond of.

Lorrie looks at me, "What is this? You told me we were meeting
Chesterton."

"He has Bill, " I say to her, sadly, not able to return her gaze.

"Who the fuck is Bill? " she asks, not unreasonably, "You never told me
anything about a Bill. You sold me out for a guy I never heard
of?"

Probably should have told her more about Bill in the hotel room,
stressed what a good bloke he is, how he's always been there for me, et
cetera et cetera. If you're being traded for someone, it really is
important to have some idea as to who that someone is, and why it
seemed a fair trade at the time.

"He loves you, " I say, half-heartedly, "It's up to you. Nobody can
make you go with him. "

"Of course he loves me, " she says, angrily, "That was my job, wasn't
it?"

Johann gives a little theatrical cough, "Ahem? Sorry to interrupt. Not
actually in love with this woman. Thought I was. Thought she was.
Thought I could trust her. Turns out not. "

Now I'm lost. What the hell, pull the gun.

Johann looks at the gun I'm pointing at him, and shrugs, with no care
at all.

"Jar, " he says. "Bugs, " he says. "Very thin glass, " he says.

I could take the chance. I keep the gun pointing at him.

He breathes out heavily, with irritation. "Bill will die. Lorrie will
die. You will die. He has secrets, she feels bad for killing your bugs
- thanks for letting me know that. You surely feel bad for selling her
out to save your friend. Shoot me, we all die. Nobody wins. "

It is still a little tempting.

"Chesterton is coming, right? " Lorrie says to me, and now she has her
gun out as well, although she is not pointing it at Johann so much as
wavering between the two of us, "You've faked this to bring him here,
and now Chesterton'll come in and resolve this. "

I press the heel of my left hand against my forehead, maybe I'm getting
a migraine. "Sorry, " I tell her, "Chesterton isn't coming. "

Johann moves the jar over, so that he is holding it in the crook of his
arm, fumbles in his pocket for something.

"Well, " he says, "He sort of is. "

He puts a glass box down on the floor, it is not too much bigger than a
large box of matches, and slides it over the floor to us. I crouch down
gently, not taking my eye off Johann.

You think you know someone, even a bit. You think you'd recognise them,
their face, their strongest features. But then you see a pair of
eyeballs in a small glass box and you realise that nothing lasts.

Chesterton's eyes are in that box, and they barely look real to me.