From across the table, Jergen regards the twins and says, “Uncle Ira is not Uncle Ira.”
He doesn’t know who chose these new key words. The sentence is from Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, a 1955 novel, twice filmed well, about an alien life form that perfectly mimics specific people, takes their place, and disposes of them. The analogy is not as apt as is the reference to the Condon novel, but not every Arcadian is as keen of wit as the late Dr. Shenneck.
Sanjay responds a fraction of a second before Tanuja, but both say, “Yes, all right,” which is the correct programmed response.
The brain implant has self-assembled, and the twins now possess only the illusion of free will.
“Lovely,” says Jergen, pleased that after the long pursuit and so much inconvenience, the conversion of the Shuklas into adjusted people has ended well.
Brother and sister appear to be as alert as ever, but they are in a kind of trance, where they will remain until Jergen or Dubose releases them with the words Auf Wiedersehen, which in German mean “until we meet again.”
Jergen says, “You must do precisely as you’re told. Do you understand?”
The twins reply—“Yes”—in unison.
Dubose releases them from their collars and leashes.
As instructed by Carter Jergen, the Shuklas wash the dishes and glassware they used for their dinner and put everything away. They neither speak to each other nor exchange a glance, as efficient as two ants operating according to genetically prescribed roles.
“We’re going to drive you home now,” Jergen tells them.
“All right,” they reply.
One of the candles gutters out. Jergen extinguishes the other two, and the Shuklas carry the warm glasses out of the building, so that nothing too unusual will be found in the morning, thus focusing the attention of the police largely on the rectory, where Reverend Gordon M. Gordon’s material body lies in the absence of his soul.
52
Dressed more demurely in jeans and a sweater, Petra Quist was once more graceful, her brief regression to childlike awkwardness behind her.
She wheeled the Rimowa bag with her right hand and carried the attaché case in her left, preceding Jane into the garage and to the Cadillac Escalade, the least attention-getting vehicle in Simon’s collection. She loaded the suitcase through the tailgate but put the money on the front passenger seat.
“Use the Cadillac only for a few hours,” Jane advised, “until you’re where you can rent a car. You should be safe then. I’ll make sure Simon doesn’t even think about looking for you. His brother and the people the brother’s involved with—they don’t have a reason to be interested in Simon’s ex-girlfriend. They’re no threat to you.”
Petra regarded Jane for a long moment, her expression that of someone puzzling over the meaning of a line spoken in a foreign language. “I tried to slash you with a broken bottle.”
“You were drunk.”
“But I would have…”
“I more than paid you back. How’s your jaw?”
Petra touched the bruise with her fingertips. “Not too bad. But the thing is, like, I don’t know how to say thank you.”
Jane smiled. “Yes, you do. Don’t backslide. Find a new way. Be truly happy. If I were you, I’d stay away from the glamorous places, the glamorous businesses you’ve been in. That’s not life. It’s only an imitation of life. Find a place that’s real, some town that looks like it came out of a fifties sitcom, with people who might even be who they seem to be.”
“Never before in my whole life did anyone do something for me without wanting something bigger in return.”
As Petra walked around to the driver’s door and opened it, Jane followed. “You don’t mean never in your life.”
“I do, I mean it, and it’s true.”
Hearing a trace of melancholy in the girl’s voice, Jane found it necessary to say, “None of my business, but do you know…when it all started going bad for you?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know the year. I know the day, the hour. A long, long time ago.”
“Maybe it’s good that you know. If it was a mystery, if it was forgotten…well, you can’t exorcise a demon if you don’t know its name.”
“And even then, maybe you can’t exorcise it.”
“Maybe you can’t. But you don’t know till you try.”
Petra nodded. She started to speak, stopped herself. Then in a voice thick with emotion that she was clearly intent on repressing, she said, “Nice shoes.”
“They’re nothing special. Just Rockport walkers.”
“Yeah, I know. But they’re tough, they last, they do the job.”
Jane said, “All you can ask of a shoe.”
Looking up from the Rockports, Petra said, “I’ll never forget this. This, right now.”
“Neither will I,” Jane said.
Petra got in the Escalade and closed the door and started the engine. Using a remote control, she raised the segmented roll-up.
With the engine noise racketing off the low concrete ceiling and the walls, Jane watched the Cadillac cruise out into the night.
53
In a trance state, the twins are told by Radley Dubose to sleep until they are awakened by their names. They sit in the backseat of the Range Rover, in their safety harnesses, eyes closed. Her head is tipped slightly to the right. His chin rests on his chest. Although they must be exhausted after such a long and stressful night, theirs is a most unnatural sleep, commanded upon them, and perhaps their dreams, if any, are of a kind that no one but adjusted people can experience.
Jergen drives east, out of the more populated cities of west county, toward the rural hills and canyons in the east, taking the Shuklas home.
Their Hyundai Santa Fe Sport, which they had abandoned at the burned-out ruins of Honeydale Stables, had earlier been returned to the garage at their house. A crew had removed every trace of the events in their kitchen, including the liberal splashes of hornet-killing insecticide that the girl had used to free her brother from Lincoln Crossley and the others.
Soon the twins will begin the final chapter of their lives, a murderous frenzy that will make big news and imprint their names on the public mind as the names of monsters. Tanuja’s recent novel, which is not a bestseller yet but has generated buzz and has the potential—according to the Hamlet-list program—to shape an entire generation’s moral perspective, will be forever anathema, despised and unread.
Jergen glances at Dubose. “You mind telling me something?”
“She was good. Lubricious, you would say at Harvard.”
“I assumed she was good.”
“So why ask?”
“Why not wait for her control mechanism to be operative?”
“Spare me the phony New England gentility.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Son of a Boston Brahmin, so refined that he’s mystified by the crude behavior of the backwoods boy.”
“Once she was adjusted, she would’ve obeyed your every command. You could have avoided the struggle.”
Dubose turns and tilts his bearish head and regards Jergen from under a ledge of brow, his expression so rich with sarcasm that no words are necessary to convey his meaning.
“So I guess I’m to infer,” says Jergen, “that the struggle made it better for you.”
“There you go.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“You never had it that way? Don’t bullshit me.”
“Never,” says Jergen. “I like things easy.”
“But the way she is now, it’d be like doing it with a robot.”
“A very attractive robot.”
“Then when we get them back to their place, go for it.”
“No offense, Radley, but not just after you’ve been in there.”
This elicits from Dubose a rare laugh, low and sour. “Isn’t it a little weird to be so fastidious after everything we did tonight?”
“Well, just the same, I’ll pass. Anyway, we only did our job.”
Dubose says, “Making the world a better place.”
54