Page 84 of The Bad Weather Friend

“This is a time-out, Benjamin, a chance to step out of who you have been and into who you can become. A time when even the nicest of nice men must do a hard thing that his heart doesn’twant to do but that his mind knows is therightthing. As your paladin, I have the power to exempt only you from this spell, not Harper. If you try to move her, you will find you can’t alter her position by even as much as a thousandth of an inch. She stands there now, embodying all the weight of the life she has lived and all the weight of the life she might still be able to live if this terrible situation can be well resolved. I can’t wind time backward, Benjamin. How I wish I could. But that’s beyond my power. Neither can I kill a human being, not even a cold-blooded murderer like Urnfield. That violates sacred craggle protocols. It is forbidden. I can intimidate and terrify and mortify and break a few bones, even have fun doing it, but never kill. I can only sideline the principals in this awful drama, the shooter and the shot, and in fact the entire world, because every human fate impacts every other, so you are all principals in every such drama. Now there’s no potential hero here but you.”

Although Benny was cold to the bone, sweat beaded on his brow. His hands were clammy. His mind raced; it seemed to be hurtling toward a cliff, an abyss of despair.

He leaned against the kitchen island and reached out with his right hand, as if to block the bullet.

“Think, Benjamin. If the round smashes through your hand, it might be deflected enough to miss Harper—or not. Given the fierce velocity of a bullet leaving the barrel, you are likely to lose your hand. At the very least, you’ll never again have full use of it.”

“I can live with that if she’s spared.”

“But she might not be spared. The bullet could pass through your hand and still kill Harper. And whether she is spared or not, you’ll never play the piano again. When you were twelve, youfound that you were a piano prodigy. That’s not a gift to throw away.”

“I haven’t played a piano in eleven years. I’ve never had one since Jubal’s music room. No time for that with houses to sell.”

“Look. Think about this.” Spike reached across the island and picked up the book that Urnfield had been reading. He put it down in a different place.

Benny stared at the book.

“You can’t move people like dolls, likethings,” Spike said. “People have physical weight but also moral weight. But inanimate objects are of a different order.”

Benny turned his attention to the bullet suspended in midair. Hesitantly, he reached for it.

“Think,” Spike warned. “Angle it toward the ceiling, and when the instant time-out ends, Urnfield squeezes off another shot, another, another, before even I can reach her and seize the gun.”

Benny looked at Llewellyn Urnfield.

“The pistol is fixed in her hand. When she’s in a time-out, you can’t take it from her any more than you can lift her and move her. This is not a mere sidelining.”

The book. The empty dish. The fork. The wineglass. None of them offered Benny an advantage that he could see.

He felt as if he were in a vise invisible, the steel jaws being cranked tighter, tighter. Pressure stressing his skull, compacting his chest. Pain around the heart. Lungs compressed, every inhalation harder to draw than the one before it.

He looked from the wineglass to Spike. “Please.”

“This is your turning point, Benjamin. It’s not mine. This is the moment where your wisdom matures to equal the other best quality you possess—or doesn’t.”

“The laws of physics,” Benny protested feebly.

“The velocity is in the bullet. So it will remain, even if to a degree diminished.”

Reaching uncertainly toward the projectile, Benny said, “This is as much magic as science.”

“Hasn’t your life shown you that’s the truth of the world? The known and forever unknowable are entwined. Quantum mystery lies at the base of all things. Scientists tell us that, down in the quantum level, there is no such thing as matter. It all appears to be as ephemeral as thought waves. This is your moment.”

His hand trembled. The adjustment had to be precise. He looked at Harper. So vulnerable. Like everyone. He stilled his hand.

The 9 mm round should have been blistering hot when he pinched it between thumb and forefinger, but it was so cold that he feared it would freeze to his skin when he tried to let go of it. With exquisite care, he turned the slug so that the nose was directed toward Urnfield. He adjusted it ever so slightly, trying to set it on a trajectory above the muzzle of the pistol.

When fate perhaps had been foiled, if ever it could be, Benny looked at Llewellyn Urnfield, horrified by what was about to happen, unsettled by the satisfaction of impending retribution that freed him from the feeling of being crushed in a vise. Retribution was not the same as revenge. It was impersonal and righteous. He understood the difference. And yet ... Looking at her, though he knew her to be evil, he also knew that she wasn’t a monster from another world. She was human, as human as he was, although certainly not humane. “Wait, wait,” he said, lest Spike might revoke the spell. Benny tried to imagine what he’d feel and do if Urnfield’s face hadn’t been contorted in a sneer of hatred andcontempt. What if she had looked distraught, anguished about what she was doing? And what if Harper hadn’t been precious to Benny? What if Harper had been a stranger or even someone he disliked? But Harper was an innocent, and Urnfield was not. Benny could find no refuge in what-if, no reason to back off from the responsibility that he had shouldered. In the end, the choice to murder an innocent was an inhuman act, and the murderer of an innocent forfeited her or his human rights. How many others had Urnfield murdered either herself or by proxy? There was no virtue in granting mercy to such murderers, and nothingniceabout anyone who failed to protect the innocent. He put his hands on Harper’s shoulders and said to Spike, “Okay, all right, do it.”

The instant the spell was broken, as echoes of the gunshot rattled the kitchen, Benny thrust Harper aside, not because he feared the first bullet, but in expectation that another would be fired as the first left the muzzle. Too close to seem other than simultaneous, glass panes shattered in a cabinet door behind him, a consequence of the second shot, even as he saw Llewellyn Urnfield’s face implode as she pitched backward with the barstool and fell out of sight.

Harper staggered, kept her balance, and said, “What thehell?”

The last green number in the oven-clock readout changed. Time goes on.

Still aboard its barstool, the shivering whippet made a thin sound of distress.Lifegoes on.

Spike’s expression conveyed a knowing compassion that combined the tenderness of pity with the dignity of sympathy and the active quality of mercy. He gave Benny one thumb up.

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