Free Sleepwalker by Michael Cadnum Page B

blue to flesh pink. Peter put his hands on the young man’s chest.
    The whites of his eyes were a normal color again, and the eyes were blinking. A tremor passed through his arms. His lips parted. His broken voice asked, “What happened?”
    â€œYou’ll be fine,” said Peter.
    â€œYou were dead,” said Oliver. “But you came back to life.” He looked at Peter. “Didn’t he?”
    Peter didn’t answer.
    But the broken voice stayed with Peter as he surveyed the trench. The ambulance had come and gone, and Peter was thankful to have the world return to its rubble and mud. Muck and rock: this was what he understood.
    But what had happened? There had been a dead body here in the trench, killed by a violent accident. It had died and returned to life. More than that, the mattock head had seemed to move on its own, purposefully.
    Then his questions evaporated. Peter laughed. It was all, in a way, a bad joke. And, if one really thought about it, a fairly funny joke. This was not going to soothe the nervous workers. This was not going to help anyone work more calmly. This was not going to help Davis either. This was not going to help the grieving American sleep better at night.
    Because as he gazed at the empty trench, and at the head of the mattock as it lay in a puddle, Peter understood something. He understood how much he hated Davis. It was as though a genius of hatred blossomed within him, and he could see clearly all that had been a blur before now.
    He was going to make Davis regret coming back to York. He was going to frighten Davis, very badly. He was going to destroy Davis’s sanity.
    And then, Peter promised himself, there would be that most delicious task, a goal worth struggling to achieve. It would be entertaining. It would be great sport.
    He would not simply murder him—that would be too simple. He would frighten Davis out of his mind, and then, with the ease of a man controlling a distant airplane, he would destroy the man he hated above all else in the world.
    Even then, Peter tried to shake away this great hunger. Was it, he thought, just, really? Wasn’t it a return to the old times, those old, buried nights, when he thought only of killing?
    Don’t do it, he tried to tell himself, actually speaking the words through his teeth.
    Don’t do it. Don’t kill him.

9
    Irene’s new computer had arrived, and Davis dropped by in the evening to see it. Her flat was in the bottom of the building next to his, and it was a single very large room with a very small kitchen. They sat, drinking tea, and from time to time a person walked by above on the sidewalk, a flash of pant legs or the glitter of a dog chain.
    â€œI have already set up my computer, Davis. I did not need your help.”
    â€œI didn’t assume you needed help. I was curious. I like working with computers.”
    â€œNow I will be able to write my articles. I am contributing editor to two journals, Davis. I am very busy, you see, and do not often entertain a gentleman like this. In fact, I am very slightly embarrassed and I shall close the curtain—help me, please—lest people look down at us and think what people might well think.” She laughed when the curtain snagged and would not close at once.
    â€œYou are so continually happy that at times I resent you,” said Davis.
    â€œIt is because of your troubles, and your grief. You see me happy and you think I am detestable.”
    â€œNot detestable. In fact, I don’t know very much about you.”
    â€œMy résumé is all entirely accurate. If you read that carefully, then you know everything important about me.”
    â€œEven now, I think you are joking. You are incorrigibly flippant.”
    â€œI am sorry I trouble you.”
    â€œYou aren’t sorry at all.”
    â€œNo, indeed, although I am sorry that you have such deep sorrows, Davis, and that is the truth.”
    â€œIf I could