Relentless Page 0,109
from Milo a terrible cry, and I tried to reach out to him, but I had no strength.
As my vision left me, in the same way so did my hearing, diminishing until the silence of a perfect vacuum took me one step farther from the world of sensual delights. I wanted one more time to hear their voices, her laughter and his giggle, but a veil had fallen between me and them, a veil more imposing than a stone wall.
The last smell I remember was the odor of my blood, which at first seemed repellent but then in some way became so sweet that it moved me to tears.
About then the strange thing began to happen. My sense of smell swiftly returned to me, as did my hearing, and then my vision. I saw Zazu’s black blood spurt into her through her wounds, and she rose off the floor to a regal height once more. Her dropped gun flew back into her hand.
As I had fallen, so I rose to my feet again. The bullets that had torn through me now retreated from my flesh and raveled backward through the air to the muzzle of Zazu’s pistol.
The hunchback, too, had been reborn, standing with the dripping butcher knife displayed as if it were a precious talisman. He spoke his announcement of murder backward, and reversed out of the room.
And then time flowed forward once more.
“Not madmen,” Zazu said. “Intellectuals. They form the opinions of the elite…”
From the way that Penny and Milo looked at me, I knew that we three were the only people in the room who were conscious of what had happened. Even Lassie was clueless.
Because we were carrying the saltshakers that were no longer salt-shakers.
“—carry the message of their superiors to the masses. Which you have not done, Mr. Greenwich.”
Because Zazu went on in this vein for another minute, we had the power to guide events as they best served us.
I had been to the razor’s edge of death, balanced between this world and the next, and now Penny and Milo looked more precious to me than ever before. My heart labored, and I had to struggle against a great tide of sentiment that would have disabled me.
We let Zazu babble until, as before, Milo said, “Don’t put down my dad. He’s the best dad in the world.” This time, instead of adding “and soooo patient,” the boy said, “and nobody’s gonna kill him on my watch.”
Ignoring Milo, Zazu Waxx said to me, “With your books, you are pushing the pendulum in the wrong direction, which is why you must be broken, made to renounce your heresy, and purged.”
Gasping, weeping, the hunchback returned to the room with the dripping knife to announce the murder of Shearman Waxx.
Zazu straightened her shoulders, lifted her head. “What have you done? You idiot, you disgusting lump, what have you done?”
“That was my only chance,” said the hunchback. “He’s never been helpless before. He’d never be helpless again. That was my only chance, and I took it, I took it, I took it.”
Zazu repeated her speech about Shearman being a pioneer in the post-humanity movement.
“Dad,” Milo said. “The thing is, for some reason, you can’t replay the same moment more than once.”
“Okay.”
Zazu finished addressing her grandchild: “You were destined to be the first of a super-race.”
The weeping hunchback regarded her with bafflement. “But I’m not, Zazu.”
“That wasn’t Shearman’s fault.”
“But it wasn’t my fault, Zazu.”
“At least Shearman made the effort.”
This time, expecting it, I saw her draw the pistol from under her beautifully tailored jacket.
She shot the hunchback in the head, and as she turned toward me, Penny and I shot her, oh, maybe twelve times.
Once more, Zazu collapsed onto the black-granite floor. She blinked at us in disbelief, as if we had done the impossible and killed an immortal.
Her last words were: “You can’t escape. Twelve thousand of us … in the agency. The work … goes on … without me.”
We, too, went on without her.
Penny and I spent a while just staring at Milo, until he became embarrassed, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “See why it would have been so hard to explain when you don’t know the science? It’s a thing you just have to experience.”
Penny and I spent a while longer staring at each other.
Finally, she said, “You know, suddenly a teleporting dog doesn’t seem like such a big deal. She’s as cute as ever, and she’s too smart to teleport into the middle of a forest fire or