Cats come and go without ever leaving.
- Martha Curtis
There are moments when you can feel the tension in a room rising, and you are just waiting for the burst that releases the pent up energy. It is sometimes dissipated by the right word spoken at the right time. A laugh, or even a look, can serve to refocus the tension.
The tension in the loading bay was palpable. Markham looked like she had gone into shock. Fred was staring horrified at Mr. Jones, realizing for the first time, I think, that she was truly insane.
Mr. Jones was still holding the knife turning it over in her left hand. She turned to Fred and I, clearly trying to decide which of us would be next to suffer under her kind ministrations.
"No." It was a quiet word. I looked over to Markham. She was staring at Joy.
"No." Her entire frame was trembling.
"No!" She said again, turning to Mr. Jones' back, who continued to ignore her.
Then the tension broke. And so did Markham's bonds. She leapt from her chair and caught Mr. Jones around the waist and pushed her to the floor.
There was no time to waste. I was hoping that Markham had sufficiently distracted Matsen so I attempted my chair tipping trick again, and apparently none too soon. I collided with Matsen just as a shot rang out, but it ricocheted harmlessly off the ceiling and into some crates. This produced a cry from that general vicinity, revealing Gregson's location.
I waited for Matsen to struggle from under my chair, but he lay motionless. I craned my head up and was rewarded with a painful reminder of my own injuries. Behind me were smaller crates, and as luck would have it, one of them had conveniently placed itself where it could best connect with the back of Matsen's skull. I have noted that Matsen's family had consistently bad luck when it came to chairs.
Fred was struggling futilely against his bonds, and I tried to flip myself onto my side. This was a terrible idea as it turned out. My shoulder wound opened again, and the blood began to soak the floor. My focus began to wane, due in equal parts to the pain and to the blood loss.
Through vignettes, I was aware of some of the events that followed. Mr. Jones was no match for Markham when it came to sheer physical strength. From her position on Mr. Jones' back, Markham had been attempting to choke her victim from behind. What Mr. Jones lacked in size though, she made up for in flexibility. She was starting to twist herself around to face her attacker when I blacked out.
The next scene saw Markham and Jones facing off, circling each other. Markham had a new gash across her arm and it was bleeding profusely. She was ignoring it, her face a mask of rage. Mr. Jones' left arm was hanging limply at her side, either broken or dislocated.
Mr. Jones still had her knife but was now holding it in her damaged right hand. She quickly darted in under Markham's good arm to slide the knife into her side. Mr. Jones' mistake was thinking that the Markham's cut arm was as useless as her left. The blow that landed on her face literally spun her around. As Mr. Jones was completing her pirouette, I passed out again.
When I came to again, Mr. Jones was nowhere to be seen. However there was a lot of blood. I craned my head around and could see Markham in her chair next to Joy's body. She was wrapping a tourniquet around her left wrist, using her teeth to tighten it. From this angle, it looked like she was missing a couple of fingers.
I tried to speak, but just ended up coughing. She didn't look up or even acknowledge my presence. I tried again.
"Markham!" Nothing. "Barbara." I said quietly.
She paused for a moment. "That's what you used to call me, wasn't it, Susan? Back then, before. I can call you Susan again, can't I?"
She was in her own world. Nothing I said would break through that barrier now.
"It's no use, Josh, I have been trying for five minutes," Fred said. "I don't think she knows we are here anymore."
Having finished her work, Markham rose and knelt in the blood pool that had gathered around Joy. With her right hand, she carefully closed Joy's shirt, covering her nakedness. Then she reached over and closed her wife's eyes.
She stood, blood dripping down her pant legs.
"I will see you soon my love. Then we can have that new beginning you wanted." Markham leaned over and kissed Joy's cold lips, then walked purposefully to the door.
"Markham! MARKHAM!" I was screaming now. "For heaven's sake, at least cut us loose! MARKHAM!"
Suddenly, my chair started to tilt up again. Maybe Matsen wasn't dead after all. I was being lifted back into a sitting position.
Once I was repositioned, Gregson came back into my field of vision. Fred was staring angrily at him. Apparently, I had missed something.
"You see, Fereydoon, I am not entirely without heart. I have gone so far as to upright my horror of a son-in-law. I could have easily killed him where he lay."
"No you couldn't," I said in a hoarse whisper, my breath now coming in short gasps. I had lost a lot of blood. "You would never stoop to get your hands dirty."
"He is as one who whispers out of the dust! It would seem that there is some life in him yet. At least there is something left for me to take from you."
"Just let us go, Gregson," Fred cut in. "It's over now. Your employer is fleeing for her life, and you know now that Leena was never here. There is nothing to be gained by our deaths."
"Of course there is." I said. "Our silence. Oh, and his 'vengeance' on me."
"You're not helping," Fred said, looking at me sharply.
"There's no point." I replied. "He is planning to have us killed anyhow, and if we are here, it would be easier for him to send someone to us rather than hunt us down on the station."
"Precisely!" Gregson said quietly, as if we were still students in his school. "But you have missed one point, young Fereydoon. Can you spot it, Joshua?"
Of course I could. If we were still free, we would still be available to follow up on leads and Find.
"Leena," I said quietly, not trusting myself to remain conscious if I spoke too loudly.
"Once again, young Joshua has it. Leena indeed. I am afraid that neither of you boys know how important she is. You don't know who she is, or what she represents. She cannot be allowed to escape. If she does return to her people, the Great Collapse will be a mere footnote in the history of an extinct race. There is the slightest possibility that she will join us, but I am prepared for the most likely outcome."
I looked at Fred, who rolled his eyes at me.
"D'you know something, Gregson?" Fred asked ". Since there is little chance of us getting out of here whole, or at all, I thought I might take a few minutes for some final words."
Gregson turned to him. "By all means."
"Let me start by saying that you are a pompous ass, far too fond of the sound of your own voice. You invent this system of Finding from scraps from the past and set yourself up as a Sage to try to get the rest of us to be as broken as you are. But here's the problem. I never got that vortex thing. I think the lot of you would have been better off with THERAPY." He was shouting by this time, straining against his bonds.
During all of this, Gregson was impassive "Are you quite finished?" He took a step towards Fred and slapped him hard.
"You little ingrate. I picked you up off the damned streets when your useless parents abandoned you. I was the one who took care of you. I was the one who raised you! And this is how you repay me?"
"For the last time, my parents didn't abandon me! They died! They were old and old people die! Stop trying to twist things to make it seem like the world is against us! Do you want to know what I really learned, old man? You either adapt to the way the universe really works, or you will get dragged along anyway! People die! Sometimes it is tragic," he said this last part more quietly, looking over to where Joy sat, still bound. "But it is never unnatural."
"Then you will be pleased that your death will be swift. And soon. And natural."
Gregson turned to me. "I hope you live for at least the next few minutes, because I want to be the one who causes your 'natural' expiration to come about."
With that he turned and headed for the door. I looked over at Fred.
"That wasn't terribly helpful," I echoed.
"What's the point?" he smiled at me. I loved how, even after the horror we had experienced together, we could find the humor in our friendship. For however long that was to last.
I heard the door close and seal behind me.
"Fred," I said, "I have a bad feeling about this. Is your chair clipped into the floor?"
"Yeah, sorry, buddy."
"You won't be in a second."
"What do you mean?"
I didn't answer. I was busy trying to work my feet around the chair legs so that I could just clip my own to the floor. I managed to get one down before the telltale hiss started.
"Aw, you have GOT to be kidding me," Fred said.
"Don't forget to exhale," I said.
The bay door started lifting and the air whooshed out in a brief hurricane, carrying out the lighter boxes, and for an added bit of entertainment, the body of Matsen and his gun.
In one of those weird twists of fate, most of the smaller boxes and bins were piled up near Fred and, of course, several of them hit him on their way out into space. It only took one though to render him unconscious. Insult was added to injury as he was pelted with several other boxes after he had lost his sense of this world.
The rest of the unsecured boxes, loosened by the movement of the air, were still held in place by the centrifugal spin of the station. It was the cold and the lack of oxygen that would take us.
What little blood I had left was pounding slowly in my ears. Once again, I lost consciousness. On my way out, I heard the sounds of doors and of purring.
A brief window of clarity. Around my legs, I could feel the passing of a large cat, and reaching out to me were two long black arms. And a voice, like rich leather and smoke.
"I understand that you have been looking for me."
Then, nothing.