Briseis surprised him greatly by leading him on his favorite path, down behind the bear cages. Unpaved, too narrow for trucks or the alligator train, it was used more as a shortcut by the zoo staff than by visitors. Farrell liked it for its rough coolness and silence, and for the smell of the bears in the shadows. Briseis was waiting for him at a bend where the path broadened briefly to make room for a low stone fountain, which had become a birdbath by default long ago. The tiny silver hiccup of the water was the only sound Farrell could hear, except for Briseis’ deep panting.
Ben’s own breath was so shallow as to be inaudible in the clearing. He was hunched over the fountain, propping himself with his hands in the concrete bowl, his head sunken and turned away, like an animal too sick to drink. Farrell recognized his suit first—the shabby gray corduroy that Ben treasured obstinately for the elbow-patched stereotype it was and wore to work whenever Sia got up too late to protest. Except for the water-soaked cuffs, the coat was unstained, and the rucked-up shirt, missing three buttons, still showed the dry-cleaner’s creases. But what was inside the familiar clothes was not Farrell’s friend. He knew that before he saw the face, even before the alien flesh, rigid beyond bearing, howled under his hand. He said, “Ben,” to it anyway, because he could not make himself call it by the other name.
The stranger replied in a voice that was higher and sharper than Ben’s voice, speaking words like the rattling of oarlocks and anchor chains. It was the voice Farrell had heard outside Sia’s door on the night when Ben came home, the same voice that had chanted Norse battle songs or nursery rhymes while she and Nicholas confronted each other across their ravaged battlefield, Aiffe. But then Ben—Egil, Egil Eyvindsson, say it in your head at least—had been hurt, helpless, unable to stand, or to do much else but glare through Ben’s eyes like a madman through steel mesh, monstrously afraid. Now he was facing Farrell with two feet of bird-limed concrete and rusty water between them, testing his strength against the boundaries of this body, making it move. The little, dim scar was stretched dark, and a grin had begun to dance on the clenched mouth, fire along a knife blade. Farrell was afraid for his life then, but he kept his hand on the stranger’s arm, for no reason he could ever name, and felt the creature trembling in slow, aching, hideous waves. He held on tight, letting the terrible shivering pass into him.
There is not a chance in that world that you would have known what to do, Sia said. Farrell glanced quickly around for Briseis, but the dog was gone. The stranger was speaking to him directly now; it sounded savagely questioning, probably something about my executor, or which afterlife program I’m signed up for. He fell back on his oldest schoolyard gambit, a shrugging, smiling face meant to indicate simultaneous incomprehension and absolute agreement, combined with utter nonaggressiveness. He had never known it to fail, except with Lidia Mirabal’s boyfriend Paco, and with Julie.
The next thing he was sure about was being on the ground, unable to breathe. A raging, hammering weight was aboard him, a crowbar forearm crushed his throat, and a sound like trees splitting in a great storm was going on somewhere quite near. Dazed, frantic, he got a knee up into the center of the sound, and the strangling pressure eased slightly. As loudly as he could under the circumstances, he yelled, “Ben!”
A hand scrabbled over his face, feeling for his eyes. Farrell knocked it away, grabbing out wildly himself. His mouth and nostrils were full of musty corduroy, and he felt as though Mr. Ngugi were using him for a fly-switch, but he dug and twisted and worried, still coughing Ben’s name, until the stranger grunted and reared up astride him. The wide, rather flashy green tie, the one I gave him for his birthday, dangled askew, yanked loose from the torn collar into a knot the size and shape of a Brazil nut, surely never to be undone again. Absurdly, the tie terrified Farrell completely, in a place where the insane assault itself could not go, but it also wrenched him at last to understanding. Poor sonofabitch couldn’t get it off, just panicked. Must have thought it was witchcraft, a curse, poor sonofabitch.
“Egil, goddamn it!” he cried, but the berserker only mumbled to himself, turning his head to left and right. Farrell saw where he was looking, heaved wildly with the free upper half of his body, and lunged for the stone lying between two redwood roots. His hand closed on it, but the other took it away from him, almost gently, poising it over him, cocking it so far back that it disappeared behind the corduroy shoulder. Raising his own arms to ward it off, he shouted his old high-school nickname for Ben straight into this empty and blazing hero’s face. “Rubberlips! Hey, Rubberlips!”
The stone faltered, started down again, then hung in the air, quaking daintily, like a wind chime. Farrell said, “Rubberlips?” and saw the face begin to buckle and slip, melting into the face of their childhood, soft and wise and secret, the scar dissolving like a star at sunrise. Farrell closed his eyes, out of pity and a kind of numbing propriety—I shouldn’t see this, it’s not right—but even then, he felt Ben’s return to the body that still pinioned him, in the same way that he could always feel morning moving up across his blankets, warming his dreams.
“Joe.” The voice was small and parched.
A root was grinding into Farrell’s back, and he became aware of sweat sliding out of his hair, delicately maddening as fly feet. He sat up as Ben got clumsily off him, swiped at his forehead, and said mildly, “Seizures, my ass.”
In the same unfamiliar voice, Ben said, “I’m sorry.” Farrell had begun to brush off his uniform, but found himself tidying Ben’s torn, dusty clothes, even trying to do something about the hopelessly jammed tie. “Could have goddamn killed me,” he said, muttering like an irritated nanny as he worked. “Seizures. He could have goddamn killed me.”
“He didn’t know you,” Ben said. “Egil doesn’t know anybody in this world. Except Sia.” Now, suddenly, he was insubstantial, a figure of slowly pulsing ash; the wild power out of time that had answered Farrell’s touch a few minutes before seemed to have abandoned Ben completely, taking the marrow of his bones away with it.
Farrell said, “This is Tuesday. You’ve got a one o’clock class.”
“I do? How’m I doing?” It was the punch line of an ancient vaudeville joke, as much a part of their shared history as music or the Staff Suit they had taken turns wearing on dates long ago. Ben said, “I think I was looking for you. I never remember. How did you find me?”
Farrell told him, and he nodded. “You figure it out about Briseis yet?” He appeared to take silence for affirmation. “Sia used to have griffins for her familiars—panthers, phoenixes. Hell of a comedown to a hysterical dog with a morale problem, but Briseis does all right. In the house, she’s just a hassock with fleas—outside, she’s Sia’s eyes and legs, more than that sometimes. Old Briseis. I belong to Sia, like her, and she has to help me, but she is scared absolutely shitless of Egil. Makes things hard for her, poor old bunny.”
Farrell came across the forgotten bag of peanuts in his pocket and offered them diffidently. Ben tore the bag out of his hands and then tried very hard to eat the peanuts slowly. Farrell said, “Jesus. Wait, I’ve got some more loose ones somewhere.”
Ben looked up when the peanuts were gone, saw Farrell watching him, and smiled amost cheerfully. He said, “Egil will not eat in this world. One of those things you never anticipate.”
“I’ll buy you lunch,” Farrell said. “We have a cafeteria, everyone calls it the Elephants’ Graveyard.”
But Ben shook his head, saying, “No, let’s walk. Please, let’s just walk a little.”