“Hey.”
The next thing he knew, Nader had spoken to Ladd.
“What? Didja decide to take the dough?”
“Uh… Just for reference, lemme ask… You said something the first time you saw me. You said I was a coward. Twitchy. Scared of dying.”
“Yeah. And you still are, fella.”
“How does a guy forget about dying? How can I stop being scared of death?”
This guy was one of the toughest men Nader had ever seen.
If it was a one-on-one fight, Ladd Russo might even manage to hold his own against Chané.
As Nader jumped from organization to organization, he had picked up the ability to identify the tough guys. It was one of the few unique traits he’d acquired in life, and he was confident he could size up strong men in a variety of ways.
How could he become like them? It was a question Nader had asked for the first time—but because he’d been too roundabout when he asked it, he ended up getting a blunt answer.
“That’s easy. You just have to die.”
“…”
“See, whenever I see people with no sense of danger, folks who think they’re never gonna die, I like to tell ’em this: ‘A second from now, you might meet with an unfortunate accident and bite the big one. And that accident is me.’ Then I beat ’em to death. If you ever forget how easy it is to die, I’ll remind you with a personal demonstration. So don’t worry about that.”
Even as he thought he’d really picked the wrong guy to ask, Nader took it a step further. “So you hate heroes who aren’t afraid of death?”
Ladd heaved a big sigh, shaking his head. “Nah, you’ve got that all wrong. Listen up: Not being afraid of death is a whole ’nother thing from thinking you’re not gonna die! Most bastards who think they couldn’t die are just running from it. They’re refusing to see the truth. The ones who ain’t scared of dying accept death and keep on fighting anyway. Killing them is boring. It’s pointless.”
Somewhere in there, the focus had shifted to the relative entertainment values of murders, but Ladd kept going.
“The guys who manage to live to the end are the cowards. They’re the type who see me and run like rabbits. You won’t even find ’em in the same room as me.”
“…What if one of those cowards wanted to change something? What should he do? If he told you he wanted to stay a coward but save somebody, that he wanted to be a hero, what advice would you give him?”
“That’s one heck of a question. A guy like you or Who, a hero? That ain’t gonna happen… Well, it would be easy to say that, but I’m kinda curious about it myself. Kid Graham, what do you think?”
Before Nader could stop him, Ladd passed the ball to somebody who was even worse at giving advice.
“Let me tell you a sad, sad story. A coward becoming a hero…? Is that allowed? Say Martians attacked Earth, and all the brave fellas ran in swinging and got themselves killed off, and this one guy was screaming ‘I’m scared, I don’t want to die, please spare me, dear God, help me…’ You think anyone’s ever gonna call that guy a hero?! No way! And mankind can’t beat the Martians… That means the coward’s just going to draw out his own suffering! It’s so sad…! What a sad story! Earth is done for!”
Graham’s advice really was the absolute worst.
Of the people Nader had met so far, Chané and Ladd had a few screws loose, but when it came to utterly unhinged sequences of words, this guy Graham won hands down. Since he swung that enormous wrench around, he probably had loose screws, too, but his rambling speeches made it impossible to tell whether he was smart or stupid.
Just as Nader was worrying about how to turn the conversation away from the man’s rapid-fire talk, one of the car’s rear windows opened and Ladd’s girl, Lua Klein, poked her head out. With impeccable timing, she slipped a remark of her own into a gap in Graham’s long speech.
“No, Graham, Earth isn’t doomed quite yet.”
“Miz Lua?!”
As far as Graham was concerned, Ladd was his sworn older brother, and Lua was Ladd’s fiancée. Even in simple human terms, he respected her incredible composure.
Lua almost never joined Graham’s conversations, but every so often, she’d make an apt remark and change the flow. In that sense as well, he was no match for her.
“Earth’s still got a chance…?!”
“If he managed to live all the way to the end, enduring the fear and the pain…that coward would be the last member of our race. He’d stay human until the very last moment, continuing his resistance against the Martians just by living. That’s impressive.”
“What?!” Graham was astounded.
With a tranquil smile, Lua continued expanding on her theory. “He’d be utterly alone, suffering in his solitude until the day he died—and all that time, he’d be constant proof that humanity hadn’t yet been destroyed. There wouldn’t be anyone to record his story. No one would praise him, but I…I think that man would be a hero.”
“I tell ya, Lua’s the type who keeps going forward while she’s looking back. Ain’t she sharp?”
Ladd seemed to be bragging about his girl, which meant the only response Nader could give was “Uh…huh… Yes.”
Meanwhile, Graham had begun shouting excitedly again.
“Whoa… Whoooooaaaa! This is fun! Let me tell you a fun story! And so it was that Earth was saved! Everything’s two sides of the same coin, infinitely varied, and to each his own! If you change your perspective, a guy who shoulda been a coward running and running and running from the Martians does a quick-change into a hero! Three cheers for heroes! Now Earth belongs to us! He really is a hero! It’s a happy ending; he saved everybody! Three cheers for mankind!”
“He’s the last man alive. Who’s he gonna save?” Shaft asked, apparently on instinct.
Poking him sharply with his wrench, Graham answered confidently. “The last woman alive, of course! He could even save the Martians! Yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend!”
“…”
Shaft was going to retort, but then he noticed that Nader was being very quiet next to him. “Oh, you can just ignore this,” he hastened to say.
But in fact, ever since Nader had heard Lua and Graham’s exchange, he’d been deep in thought.
✦ ✦ ✦
Change…your perspective, huh?
Then…do I just have to get the people around me…to change their perspectives?
Was he capable of that?
The doubt did occur to him, but he understood there was no space in this situation for calculations about whether he could do it.
✦ ✦ ✦
I’m a con man. I can’t change my past.
In that case, I’ll just have…to use it.
Not to help myself survive. As long as I save her, that’s enough.
If I manage to trick her into thinking heroes exist on my way out, then I’m good.
✦ ✦ ✦
And so Nader’s metamorphosis began.
Yeah, that’s right. That’s good enough.
I’ll trick ’em all. I’ll make them believe I’m somebody incredible.
He wasn’t becoming a butterfly. He was turning into a moth, drawn to the faintest hope.
Could a moth on a dark night fool others into thinking it was a butterfly?
Before he tried to find out, Nader quietly came to a resolution.
He’d been wavering ever since he heard Sonia’s name. He did think it was weird that he’d gotten that last push from the absurd ravings of a guy with a wrench, but in a way, Nader thought it was a good fit: He was about to wade into a crazy situation.
✦ ✦ ✦
I guess I’ll start by tricking myself.
✦ ✦ ✦
The small-time crook got his breathing under control.
He remembered his past self, a guy who had very little in common with heroes.
He thought about who he’d been before Huey had gotten his claws in him. About the guy who’d been on his way up the ladder of success.
By the time he’d emptied his lungs, the small-time crook was gone, and a man with the eyes of a con artist was standing there.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Hmm…?”
For just a moment, Ladd was a little bewildered.
Nader was still scared, but for a second, he’d seemed like a completely different person.
“You’re…Nader, right?”
“…Yeah.”
However, when Ladd heard what he said next, his doubt was blotted out by delight.
“All right… I’m taking this money.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I’ll see you after the party tonight.”