Black (33 page)

Five minutes of silence passed without another word. They only walked, a man and a boy, hand in hand. But it wasn't that. Not at all.

And then Tom remembered his question about the dreams.

“What about my dreams?”

“Maybe it's the same with your dreams.”

“That both are real?”

“You'll have to figure that out.”

They walked on. It might have been a cloud, not sand, that they walked on, and Thomas wasn't sure he'd know the difference. His mind was reeling. His hand was by his side, moving as he walked. In it was this boy's hand. A tremble had set into his fingers, but the boy didn't show he noticed.

Clearly he did.

“What about the black forest?” Tom asked. “I've been in it. I may have taken a drink of the water. Is that why I'm dreaming about the histories?”

“If you'd chosen Teeleh's water, everyone would know.”

Yes, that made sense.

“Then maybe you can tell me something else. How is it that Elyon can allow evil to exist in the black forest? Why doesn't he just destroy the Shataiki?”

“Because evil provides his creation with a choice,” the child said as though the concept was very simple indeed. “And because without it, there could be no love.”

“Love?” Tom stopped.

The boy's hand slipped out of his. He turned, brow raised.

“Love is dependent on evil?” Tom asked.

“Did I say that?” A mischievous glint filled the boy's eyes. “How can there be love without a true choice? Would you suggest that man be stripped of the capacity to love?”

This was the Great Romance. To love at any cost.

The child turned back to the sea and gazed out.

“Do you know what would happen if anyone did choose Teeleh's water instead of Elyon's water?” the boy asked.

“Michal said the Shataiki would be freed. That they would bring death.”

“Death. More than death. A living death. Teeleh would own them; this is the agreement. Their minds and their hearts. The smell of their death would be intolerable to Elyon. And his jealousy will exact a terrible price.” The boy's green eyes flashed as though strobes had been ignited behind them. “The injustice will be against Elyon, and only blood will satisfy him. More blood than you can possibly imagine.”

He said it so plainly that Tom wondered if he'd misspoken. But the boy wasn't the kind who misspoke.

“If they become Teeleh's ,is there a way to win them back?” he asked.

No response.

“Anyway, I can't imagine anyone ever changing or leaving this place,” Tom said.

“You don't have to leave, you know.”

“Except when I dream.”

“Then don't dream,” the boy said.

The idea suddenly sounded like such a simple solution. If he stopped dreaming, Bangkok would be no more!

“I can do that?”

The boy hesitated. “You could. There is a fruit you could eat that would stop your dreams.”

“Just like that, no more histories?”

“Yes. But the question is, do you really want to? You'll have to decide. The choice is yours. You will always have that choice. I promise.”

It was early in the morning when the boy finally led Tom back to the cliff, and after a great big bear hug, Tom descended the red tree, made his way back to the village, and quietly sneaked into bed in the house of Palus.

He might have been mistaken, but he was sure that he could hear the sound of a boy's voice singing as he drifted off to sleep.

23

T
homas.”

A sweet voice. Calling his name. Like honey.
Thomas.

“Thomas, wake up.”

A woman's voice. Her hand was on his cheek. He was waking, but he wasn't sure if he was really awake yet. The hand on his cheek could be part of a dream. For a moment he let it be a dream.

He relished that dream. This was Rachelle's hand on his cheek. The strong-headed woman who kept showing him up with her fighting moves
.

“Thomas?”

His eyes snapped open. Kara. He gasped and jerked up.

“Thomas, are you okay?” Kara, face white, stood back staring at the bed. “What is this?” But Tom's eyes were on the air conditioner where rolled white sheets had been cut and Monique had been freed. She was gone.

“Thomas! Talk to me!”

“What?” He looked at her. “What's —” The sheets were wet. Soaked in red. Blood?

Tom scrambled out of the bed. He'd been lying on sheets soaked in his blood. He grabbed his chest and belly as visions of the attacker shooting into his body flashed through his mind. Two silenced shots.
Phewt! Phewt!

Yes, there was that, but, more important, there was the lake and the boy. He looked up at Kara.

“God is real,” he said.

“What?”

“God. He's . . . wow.” His head spun with the memory of the lake. He could feel a wild grin tempt his face, but his mind wasn't working in full cooperation with all of his muscles yet.

“Well, at least I dreamed that he's real,” he said. “Not just real, like wow he exists, but . . . real, like you can talk to him. I mean, maybe touch him.”

“Very nice,” she said. “In the meantime, here, where I live, we're standing next to a bed covered in your blood!”

“I was shot,” he said.

She stared at him, unbelieving. “Are you sure? Where?”

“Right here. And here.” He showed her. Chest and gut. “I swear I was shot. Someone broke in; we fought; he shot me. And then he must have taken Monique.”

“I called you. Was that before or after?”

“You called before. He was here when you called.” Suddenly Bangkok was making more sense than the lake. “Actually, I think your call unnerved him. The point is . . .” Yes, what was the point?

“The point is what?”

“I'm not dead.”

Kara looked at his stomach. Then his eyes. “I don't get it. You're saying that you were healed in your dreams?”

“It's not the first time.”

“But you were shot, right? You were shot and killed. How's that possible?”

“I don't know that I was killed. I lost consciousness. But there, in my dreams, I was lying on the shores of the lake. The air was full of mist from the waterfall. Water. The water is what heals. I was probably healed before I could die.”

He pulled the sheets from the bed, grabbed the mattress. Flipped it over. Kara hadn't removed her stare.

“You're dead serious.”

“No, not dead.”

She looked away, paced to the end of the bed. Turned back. “Do you understand the implications?”

“I don't know, do I?” He quickly untied the homemade ropes from the air conditioner. “There's a lot I'm not clear on. But one thing I am sure of is that Monique is gone. The guy who took her wasn't your everyday thug.”

She was still preoccupied with his healing. Tom stopped.

“Look, I'm not indestructible, if that's what you're thinking. There's no way.”

“And how would you know?”

“Because I think you're right—both realities are real, at least in some ways. Evidently, if I get shot here and then fall asleep and get water poured on me there before I die, I get healed. But if I get killed here and there's no water around to heal me, I just might die.”

“You're like Wolverine or somebody now? You get hit in the head or shot in the chest, and there's not a mark on you! That's incredible!”

It
was
incredible. But there was more, wasn't there? A simple bit of information that had nagged at him since he'd talked to Teeleh, that bat in the other place. The details began to buzz in his brain, and he felt the first hints of panic.

“Well, that's not all,” he said. “For starters, I'm pretty sure that the guy who shot me and took Monique is the guy who's going to blackmail the world with the Raison Strain.”

Tom began to pace. He'd bundled up the bloody sheets and now held them in his right hand.

“Or at least the guy works for whoever is planning this. That's not all. I'm pretty sure that the only way they even
know
the Raison Vaccine has the potential to mutate into a deadly virus is because
I
spilled the beans to someone who told them.”

“That can't be. That would mean without you the mutation wouldn't happen? You're saying you're the
cause
of this thing?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. I learn about the Raison Strain as a matter of history in my dreams, I tell someone, ‘Hey, such and such is going to happen,'and they decide to make such and such actually happen. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I'd kept my mouth shut and not told the State Department or the CDC, no one would even know the Raison Strain was possible.”

She chewed on that for a moment. “So You've caused the very virus you're trying to stop? That's a trip.”

“Where can we stash these sheets?”

“Under the bed.” They stuffed the bedding under the frame.

“But if that's true,” Kara said, “can't you change something now that would ruin the rest of what happens? You go back to the histories, find out that X-Y-Z happened, then return and make sure that doesn't happen.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I can't get information about the histories that easily anymore.”

“What about the black forest?”

“I went to the black forest! I'm not going back again, no way!”

“What if it's a dream? And it saves us here?”

“There's more.” Tom turned slowly, remembering his conversation with Teeleh. But there was something he was missing from it, he was sure. He'd gone to prove himself to Monique, and he'd done that. But he'd also learned about the antivirus.

He'd repeated the antivirus.

“What if . . .” A chill snaked down his spine. He turned back to Kara, stunned by the thought. “What if I inadvertently told them how to do it?”

“To make the virus?”

“No, they know that. Intense heat. They can figure it out. But that doesn't do anyone any good. You put the virus in the air and three weeks later, everyone's dead. Including the person who releases it. But if you have an antivirus, a cure or a vaccine to the virus, you can—”

“Control it,” Kara finished. “The threat of force. Like having the only nuclear arsenal in the world.”

“And I think I might have given it to them.”

“How?”

“Teeleh. He
tricked me. Just before he gave me the information, he cut me.” He was speaking through a daze, as if to himself. “I could swear I heard myself saying it out loud.”

“So then you also have it. What good is the virus to them, if you have the antivirus?”

“Do I?” He cocked his head. He couldn't remember it. “I . . . can't think of it right now.”

“I'm not going to pretend to understand all of this, but we have to get out of here. The police bought my story, and I talked to Monique's father. I called because he agreed to hold the shipments. I nearly killed myself getting here unseen when you didn't pick up. I think I can get us in to see Raison, but he's pretty bent out of shape. When he finds out that Monique's gone again . . .”

She sighed.

They left the room looking lived in but not massacred.

“You what?”

The sharp nose on Jacques de Raison's angular face was red, and for good reason. He'd just lost, then found, then lost his daughter, all within eight hours.

“I didn't lose her,” Tom objected. “She was taken from me. You think I would take her just to lose her?” He glanced from the dark-haired Raison to Kara and then back. He had to get the situation back in hand. Or at the very least back in mind.

“Please, if you'll have a seat, I'll try to explain.”

Jacques glared at him, tall and commanding, the kind of man who had grown accustomed to getting what he wanted. He sat in a wing chair by his desk, eyes fixed on Tom.

“I'll give you five minutes. Then I call the authorities. Three governments are looking for you, Mr. Hunter. I'm quite sure they'll make quick work of you.”

Tom had driven from the hotel to Raison Pharmaceutical. Kara wanted to know what had happened in the colored forest, so, with only a little encouraging, he told her. He told her about meeting Teeleh at the Crossing. About the lake. About the boy. They finally agreed that none of it proved God really did exist, but Tom was having trouble reconciling the reasoning with his experience. He changed the subject and told her about Rachelle.

The world was facing a crisis inadvertently caused by Tom, and he was off learning the fine points of romancing Rachelle. It didn't seem right, Kara had said.

Getting past the gates and in to see Jacques de Raison required no fancy footwork on Tom's part this time. Three ambitious guards nearly took off both their heads in the courtyard before Raison Pharmaceutical's prestigious founder marched in and suggested they lower their rifles. They dipped their heads and backed off.