F Paul Wilson - Novel 05 (19 page)

 
          
Then
the plane rocked, a jittery rattle more appropriate to a heap of a car coughing
out its last gasp. Then another sickening bounce.

 
          
Julie
heard a discreet chime above the rattle as the seat-belt light came on.

 
          
Only
turbulence, she thought.

 
          
Her
modus operandi when flying was to ignore any potential threat to the flight:
rain, snow, storms, whatever. The only way to fly: You go up and you come down.
That was all she needed to know. Statistics were on her side.

 
          
Another
rattle. Somewhere a baby started wailing. Julie heard the pilot's voice through
her headset, the English accent calm, reassuring.

 
          
"Folks,
er, we appear to have hit a bit of that storm front. Not much we can do about
it, I'm afraid, since it's with us all the way to
—
"

 
          
Another
rattle, worse than before. Julie saw a flash at the window.
Was that a
lightning bolt out there? We're smack in the middle of the damn storm
system.

 
          
She
shifted in her seat, grabbed an armrest. The portly executive sitting next to
her was as perfectly upright as he could be, as if he could somehow guide the
plane that way. His bulbous eyes were locked on the back of the seat in front
of him.

 
          
Julie
didn't like this.

 
          
She
liked to think she was in control of her life. But in a plane you were an egg
in a flying carton. And you never get to see who's carrying the eggs.

 
          
"..
. all the way to
Manchester
," the pilot continued.
"We'll try to find some quiet altitude but I think we're in for a bumpy
flight. So please stay in your seats
—
"

 
          
An
even brighter flash lit the window.

 
          
Julie
heard the gasps and "ooh"s of the passengers as they saw the
lightning.

 
          
The
baby was crying louder now.

 
          
The
reassuring pilot's voice had disappeared.

 
          
The
plane tilted right. We're just a hitting a thermal, Julie cold herself. We're a
little speedboat bobbing up and down on the choppy surf. That's all that's
happening.

 
          
But
the more she struggled to fight back the uneasiness, the stronger it became,
feeding on the brilliant flashes at the window, growing with the lurches left
and right. Julie now had a sickening, giddy, weightless feeling each time the
plane dipped.

 
          
A
dozen call lights were on, people searching for a stewardess or the lone male
steward.

 
          
But
they weren't around.

 
          
The
plane tilted sharply left
—
whee
—
and some passengers moaned. They were getting their money's
worth.

 
          
And
Julie, as much as she tried to avoid it, was forced to think of what...
mattered to her.

 
          
If
I die now, what would be
lost?

 
          
Who'd
miss me? Dr. S.? Yes, he'd be very sad.

 
          
And
Eathan. Julie never questioned his love.

 
          
How
about Sam? Well, even if her twin were functioning, no real loss for Sam.

 
          
That
kind of love had never existed between them.

 
          
The
plane went up another invisible roller-coaster hill, then down.

 
          
No,
the real loss for Julie would be that she never would find out what happened to
Samantha.

 
          
"Shit,"
she whispered. She felt the fleshy businessman looking at her, his bulbous
eyes fixed in their horror.

 
          
If
she was going to put up with this bouncing, heaving crap, the least the flight
crew could do was hand out those nifty little bottles of Glenfiddich.

 
          
She
grinned at her gallows humor.

 
          
Would
the staff at the memoryscape project miss her? Not right away, maybe, but after
a week or two ...

 
          
Would
Dr. S. be able to land the Bruchmeyer grant without her? Good question.

 
          
She
closed her eyes, and in the rattling freight car of the plane's cabin, she
waited for the landing, or whatever the hell fate was going to throw at her.

 
          
It
seemed like an eternity, but twenty minutes later the plane touched down,
miraculously, out of the rainy
England
night sky onto a
slick-black runway.

           
People walked off on wobbly legs to
waiting relatives and faceless taxi drivers.

 
          
Julie
wasn't going far. She'd made arrangements to sleep at the local Hilton. She'd
rented a Ford Fiesta at the airport for the next day's drive to Oakwood.

 
          
She
was so glad she didn't have to face that tonight.

 
          
And
glad too that the hotel room had a well-stocked mini-bar.

 
          
But
despite a couple of stiff scotches, sleep wouldn't come.

 
          
Just
as well. She didn't want to dream again.

 
          
The
ultimate horror,
I
think, would be having no memories and no ability to
form them. You'd have no past, no data to use as reference points. You wouldn't
know who you were, where you were, or why you were there. You'd have no sense
of time because that requires memory of a previous event. You'd be a person
without a past, without a future, lacking even rudimentary self-awareness,
existing only in the moment in an endlessly alien environment peopled entirely
with strangers.

—
Random
notes: Julia Gordon

1

 
          
A
crisp, blue October sky domed the morning
—
about
as un-British as Julie could imagine. The countryside seemed alive with the
pulse-quickening chill of fall.

 
          
Cramped
in her Fiesta, Julie headed east, aiming for the
North Sea
through the heart of
Yorkshire
. She felt pangs of
nostalgia as she passed giant, empty fields of recently cut corn and rape, and
bundles of harvested hay, ancient signs of people preparing for winter. Sheep
and cattle dotted the rolling hills. And then she was flying through
Fylingdales Moor, its heather all dry and brown now, but she remembered Augusts
when it was alive with mauve blossoms as far as the eye could see.

 
          
Oakwood
stood on a high sea cliff between
Whitby
and
Scarborough
. The elegant gentleman's
estate was testimony to Eathan's financial acumen. He'd taken the keen mind
that had made him such an excellent diagnostician and applied it to the
financial markets with enviable success. His professorship at
Edinburgh
University
was for the soul rather
than for sustenance.

 
          
Picturesque
Robin Hood's Bay was nearby, though its charm was lost on Julie ... a bit too
determinedly quaint for her taste. She remembered when Sam threw a tantrum in
the dining room of the Bay Hotel and had to be carried out by an embarrassed
Uncle Eathan.

 
          
Then
she had a thought about Sam. She was getting ideas about what she wanted to do
once she went back inside her sister's memoryscape.

 
          
She
picked up her micro tape recorder.

 
          
"Keep
watching for fever... maybe get some more blood work done." She clicked
the Off button. She had an idea, not something to put a lot of faith in, but
there was the possibility that Samantha had picked up some kind of unknown slow
virus that attacked the brain's reticular activating system. If that was the
case, other symptoms might manifest themselves soon.

 
          
If
Sam's problem was due to infection instead of trauma or toxin, she'd find no
meaning in the chaos of the memoryscape
—
no
hidden memories, no traumatic secrets.

 
          
She
doubted that was the case, but it was worth a check.

 
          
She
drove a few more miles, then she scooped up the recorder again.

 
          
"Ask
Eathan to contact the
Paris
police.... Have them talk
to Madame DuPont's daughter."

 
          
The
girl had said she hadn't seen what the man looked like, but maybe something
might come back to her. Memory could be funny that way.

 
          
The
road grew narrower, barely two lanes now as Julie passed through Robin Hood's
Bay
—
just "Bay" to the
locals
—
with its stone and brick
houses stacked higgledy-piggledy along the cliff edge. Oakwood wasn't far.

 
          
The
ideas, the memos, stopped.

 
          
Strange
to be coming home like this ...

 
          
To
a place that had never felt like home.

 
          
Trees
lined the long, winding lane that left the road and climbed to where Oakwood
crouched near the cliffs overlooking the
North Sea
. The lane swerved left and
right, each time providing a glimpse of the manor through the trees.

 
          
The
trees had always seemed like a fence when she was a little girl, a wall sealing
them off from the rest of the world.

 
          
And
here we are again.

 
          
Then
the trees ended and the house hove into view: a large, very straightforward
Georgian manor, a rectangular block of a building, built of dressed stone laid
in a herringbone pattern.

 
          
Julie
instinctively looked left, to the sunken gardens, once a favored place to play.
The luxuriant flowers and herbs there were Eathan's pride and joy. Sam
especially had taken pleasure in playing there, paying no attention to Eathan's
warnings to watch out for this flower, don't step on that delicate plant.

 
          
Always
too tolerant of her.

 
          
A
small circular driveway curved in front of the house, then wound around to a
parking area in the back near the toolshed and garage. But since Julie felt
like a guest, she pulled to a stop in front of the house, grabbed her small
bag, and got out.

 
          
Was
anyone here? Sam already should be settled inside, silent and immobile, unaware
that her mind, her memories, were a
South Bronx
of the cerebrum. Where was Eathan? Over by his flowers,
planting bulbs for next spring?

 
          
"Julia."

 
          
The
voice from behind startled her.

 
          
She
turned and saw Eathan striding toward her.

 
          
He
was dressed in the relaxed garb of a country squire, all tweed and expensive
leather boots. Every time they'd spoken since she left for the States, he'd
asked her to come and visit. Do
the holidays at Oakwood, spend some summer
vacation there.
She always found an excuse to put him off.

 
          
Now
she was here.

 
          
She
shifted the bag in her hand. "I'd forgotten how beautiful it was."

           
Eathan turned and looked around at
the house. "Oakwood? I haven't done much inside, of course. Kept it clean.
Kept your rooms pretty much as they were."

 
          
Eathan
had never married. The very idea of her uncle Eathan married seemed strange. He
was perhaps the most self-sufficient of men. No room for a woman in
this
picture.

 
          
But
that was before she had left. Had things changed?

 
          
He
reached out and took her bag, and started walking toward the house.

 
          
"Is
Sam
—
?"

 
          
"Yes,
I had an ambulance bring her here yesterday afternoon. She's in her old
bedroom. Dr. Evans thinks it best she be in familiar surroundings."

 
          
"Who's
Dr. Evans?"

 
          
"Samantha's
psychiatrist."

 
          
"Psychiatrist?
I didn't know
—
"

 
          
"You'll
learn all about it later. I had to move some things out of Samantha's room to
make space for the monitoring equipment. I hired a trio of nurses who are
rotating coverage, plus physical therapists... all very good people."

 
          
Julie
nodded. They were on the steps that led to the giant oak doors.

 
          
"I'd
like to start right away," she said. "I thought I saw some further
deterioration before we left. I'd hate to think that's continuing."

 
          
"Yes.
Well, anything you want I'll arrange for. Oh
—
I've
already had the satellite dish installed on the roof, and they tell me our
present phone line will handle the
—
what's
it called?"

 
          
"Modem?"

 
          
Eathan
smiled. "Right. A modem."

 
          
Julie
knew he preferred old-fashioned forms of communication. Her descriptions of
the wonders of the Internet had always fallen on politely deaf ears.

 
          
"Anyway,
the lines are all set. You should be able to connect to your Dr. Siegal in
New York
."

 
          
Eathan
pushed open the front door. Julie entered the foyer, all polished wood
—
the oak from which the manor took its name
—
and saw the staircase leading to the second floor. It still
seemed terribly large.

           
She thought of the scene she'd
relived in Sam's memory-scape, the two of them playing right here. And she
remembered that the memory had been altered. Why had the nonexistent Perseus
sculpture been substituted for the real-life microscope? It bothered her that
she couldn't find an answer.

 
          
"Would
you like to freshen up, perhaps some lunch?"

 
          
Julie
smiled at Eathan. She saw his concern for her, always worried that she didn't
get enough rest, that she didn't eat enough food.

 
          
She
shook her head. "No. Let me get started."

 
          
"Very
well. I'll put your bag in your old room. You know where Samantha's room is.
The nurse is there...."

 
          
Julie
reached out and touched Eathan's arm. "Thanks. I'll be fine."

 
          
Julie
walked up the great carpeted staircase, her hand trailing on the smooth
grooves of the walnut handrail. She knew those grooves, remembered chasing Sam
up and down these stairs countless times.

 
          
Ten
years since she'd lived here, and with each step, more memories of her
childhood seeped from the walls and stalked her all the way to her room.

2

 
          
Her
bedroom looked more like a guest room. She'd pretty much cleaned it out when
she moved to the States, leaving no sign that anyone had grown up here. As she
dropped her bags next to the bed she realized she was hungry after all.

 
          
Downstairs
in the large, anachronistically modern kitchen she found some sliced turkey and
Diet Coke in the fridge. The cook, an apple-cheeked matron with a warm,
friendly smile, came in and insisted on making her a turkey sandwich on heavy
whole-wheat bread from the bakery in Bay. She remembered this bread, dark,
heavy, a meal by itself. She wolfed it down and headed for Sam's room.

 
          
On
the way she stopped off in the library. It looked much the same as it had
during her school days when she used to come here to check out something in the
encyclopedia. Smelled the same too
—
that
rich mixture of old paper in good leather bindings. She inhaled and sighed.
This had always been her favorite place, with its bookshelves stretching all
the way up to the ceiling, crammed with tomes of all shapes, colors, sizes, and
bindings. The old
Britannica
set still occupied its spot on the shelves
immediately to the right. Julie moved to her left, found the library's book on
Greek mythology, and looked up Perseus.