The Body Human by Nancy Kress Page B

wary. “Yes.”
    “What is it?” I couldn’t find the right tone. I was grilling him as if he were under arrest and I were still a cop.
    “It’s a drug that Vince’s company was working on. To make people bond to each other, merge together in perfect union.” His voice was bitter.
    “What else did he tell you?”
    “Not much. What should he have told me?”
    You never see enough, not even in the streets, to really prepare you. Each time you see genuine cruelty, it’s like the first time. Damn you, Bucky. Damn you to hell for em o tional greed.
    I said, “He didn’t tell you that the clinical subjects who took J-24…the people who bonded…he didn’t tell you they were all elderly?”
    “No,” Tom said.
    “The same elderly who have been committing suicide all over the city? The ones in the papers?”
    “Oh, my God.”
    He got up and walked the length of the waiting room, maybe four good steps. Then back. His handsome face was gray as ash. “They killed themselves after taking J-24? Because of J-24?”
    I nodded. Tom didn’t move. A long minute passed, and then he said softly, “My poor Vince.”
    “Poor Vince ? How the hell can you…don’t you get it, Tommy boy? You’re next! You took the bonding drag with poor suffering Vince, and your three weeks or whatever of joy are up and you’re dead, kid! The chemicals will do their thing in your brain, super withdrawal, and you’ll kill yourself just like Bucky! Only you’ll probably be better at it and actually succeed!”
    He stared at me. And then he said, “Vince didn’t try to kill himself.”
    I couldn’t speak.
    “He didn’t attempt suicide. Is that what you thought? No, he’s in a catatonic state. And I never took J-24 with him.”
    “Then who…”
    “God,” Tom said, and the full force of bitterness was back. “He took it with God. At some church, Our Lady of Everlasting Something. Alone in front of the altar, fasting and praying. He told me when he moved out.”
    When he moved out. Because it wasn’t Tommy that Bucky really wanted, it was God. It had always been God, for thirteen solid years. Tell Father Healey I can’t touch God anymore.…Have you ever thought what it would be like to be really merged, to know him to be him? …No. To know Him. To be Him. What are you waiting for, your Prince?
    Yes .
    Tom said, “After he took the damned drug, he lost all interest in me. In everything. He didn’t go to work, just sat in the corner smiling and laughing and crying. He was like…high on something, but not really. I don’t know what he was. It wasn’t like anything I ever saw before.”
    Nor anybody else. Merged with God. They knew each other, they almost were each other. Think, Gene! To have an end to the terrible isolation in which we live our whole tiny lives .…
    “I got so angry with him,” Tom said, “and it did no good at all. I just didn’t count anymore. So I told him to get out, and he did, and then I spent three days looking for him but I couldn’t find him anywhere, and I was frantic. Finally he called me, this afternoon. He was crying. But again it was like I wasn’t even really there, not me, Tom. He sure the hell wasn’t crying over me .”
    Tom walked to the one small window, which was barred. Back turned to me, he spoke over his shoulder. Carefully, trying to get it word-perfect.
    “Vince said I should call you. He said, ‘Tell Gene—it wears off. And then the grief and loss and a n ger… especially the anger that it’s over. But I can beat it. It’s different for me. They couldn’t.’ Then he hung up. Not a word to me.”
    I said, “I’m sorry.”
    He turned. “Yeah, well, that was Vince, wasn’t it? He always came first with himself.”
    No, I could have said. God came first. And that’s how Bucky beat the J-24 withdrawal. Human bonds, whether forged by living or chemicals got torn down as much as built up. But you don’t have to live in a three-room apartment with God, fight about money