Psychlone (15 page)

Despite the clarity of the air, this night he had a headache. He wasn't prone to headaches, not as bad as this at least, but a combination of meditation and sitting under the main pyramid in the front yard usually did the trick. He picked up his tobacco pouch, put on a sweater and walked out the front door.

When names flashed in and out of his head, he wasn't alarmed. He'd gone through Dianetics and est and knew the sources of many irrational things. No doubt the name that kept occurring to him had been heard by his mother many years ago, when he'd been an impressionable fetus. That name stuck with him now, called back by the energizing of some buried engram.

What had Corporal S.K. Percher to do with his mother? He shook his head and grinned. Best not to inquire, sometimes. That was the good part about being cleared of the hangups of the past—past lives, parental lives, and the past of the current life. He hadn't gone far enough in any discipline to achieve that state. He admired those who had—but for him, there hadn't been enough financial incentive. He hadn't found the right wave to ride. No central figure controlled the sale of pyramids or pyramid literature—no franchise interrupted the flow of profits. Pyramids were something he could dedicate himself to completely.

He pulled out a plastic cushion and placed it on the cold concrete base of the open pyramid. He took out a key, unlocked the light switch and flicked it. Neon tubes on the metal piping flickered, then steadied into a bright blue glow. That was better. He squatted on the pad, pulled his feet and knees into a lotus position and tamped his pipe onto the cement.

He sucked in a breath and released it with a resonant, loud, “Auooooooommmmm..."

A dark room, tiny windows

“What?” His concentration was broken. He frowned and took up the mantra again.

Exercise detail. In the yard of a concrete building

“Auooo ... darn!” He stopped and rearranged himself to face north. The sweater was usually enough under the big pyramid, but now he was shivering. Best to raise the heat from the center of his energy-being. Best to concentrate and—

Tiny drone, high above

“God damn!” He stood up and grasped the poles of the pyramid, almost ready to shake it down. He'd never had this much trouble before. The headache was worse. He was feeling very depressed now, worse than he'd felt in a long while. “Bad vibes tonight, very bad vibes.” He looked to the west and saw that the ripply patch was gone. Then he felt his shoulders tingle, as though someone were watching him. Not someone—a crowd.

Incineration

He just had time to see the stars above waver as if distorted by rising heat. Then his hands were glued to the bars of the pyramid. To his horror he saw it was because the skin was charred and the joints were cooked solid. The neon lights shattered and sprayed powdered glass across the lawn. All the other pyramids were glowing with something like St. Elmo's fire, but it was red, and it was melting them as he watched. They crumpled into slag, more like wax than iron or aluminum.

His shoulders began to smoke.

Before he could scream, he was done clear through.

The trees in the yard began to squirm, then to blacken, like burning hands grabbing for the sky. In the house, potted plants wilted and fell away in brown shards.

Quietly, mildew began to grow along the inner walls, on the bedclothes in the upstairs room, and up and down the curtains across the plate-glass windows.

The sky stopped shimmering, and the blight moved on.

In downtown Haverstock, Mrs. Lenora McCarthy, a widow, sat in her modest apartment, reading a new Ladies’ Home Journal and waiting for a quiche to cook in the small, chipped oven. She heard a scream downstairs and did nothing—there were always noises in the old building, and unless they kept up for minutes at a stretch, it was best to ignore them. She had lived in the apartment for five years, and had adapted. Her husband had left her enough money to get along, and in another year she would be eligible for social security.

She looked up from her reading and scratched her shoulder absently. An old memory was returning, not an unpleasant one now, but she hadn't thought about the war years for a long time. Why the memories should press on her at this moment was unaccountable.

“Stanley,” she murmured. Then she saw him, far off in the living-room mirror. He looked worried.

She stood up and let the magazine drop to the floor. The figure in the mirror was trying to say something to her: Go away, leave.

She became frightened. Stanley was dead, had died—the memory of the government telegram came to her, Missing in action, presumed dead—thirty-three years before, destroying their dream, ending that stage of her life. She had subdued all these pains. Now they came back to her. If those disastrous days had never been, she would now be Mrs. Percher.

Go away, leave

She heard a sound like airplanes, high above—no, a single airplane, faint as a mosquito. Then she saw that Stanley was no longer alone in the mirror.

This confirmed the dream she had had, thirty-five years ago—a dream of Stanley in a gray little room, with a tiny window, leaving to exercise in a gray-concrete yard, and flowers blooming along the top of the wall, beginning to burn, becoming bright and painful. He had not died when his plane went down.

“What happened to them, Stan?” she asked. The screams were louder and more insistent. Stanley was crying. She looked down at her arms and hands. She could see the bones in them. The glare was intolerable for a moment. Then she saw the skin was burned and scarred, but it didn't hurt. Her hands began to glow, lighting up the little room. She couldn't leave now. It was too late.

They—and their pain, their hell—were in the room with her, and would not let her go.

An hour later, the police sirens began to wail.

Trumbauer leafed through the paper, concentrating on each story, trying to calm his nerves. Jacobs looked out the window, which opened on a fair view of the north side of Lorobu.

“You notice something?” Jacobs asked.

“Notice what?” Trumbauer murmured.

“All the trees are dead. All the plants and bushes. This morning, when we went for a walk with that soldier, all the bushes in front of the inn were brown."

“And?"

“Just musing out loud,” Jacobs said. “Maybe they haven't been watered—but there's a cactus garden around the side, by the pool and patio, and it's all brown and gray, too.” He looked at his watch. “Two days we've been here. This is an important project. You'd think they could cut through the red tape and decide whether we're spies or not."

“Sure,” Trumbauer said. “It's important, but it's not getting anywhere. The Army and the FBI and everybody else can't begin to accept what's happened here. They're blind, as it were, and can't see the elephant that just stomped on them."

“Colorful turn of phrase, there. You're a poet, Arnold."

“No need for sarcasm, Franklin.” Trumbauer dropped the top of his paper and peered over it at Jacobs.

“My patience is wearing thin and I get irritable. So you should put up with me. I put up with your poetry, you put up with my criticism. Edmund Wilson I'm not."

“Yeats I'm not,” Trumbauer said, grinning.

“You're so agreeable I may not be able to stand you. What do you think is holding them up?"

Trumbauer's grin vanished and he turned back to the paper. “How should I know? You're the one who's had military experience."

A light rap on the door made him sit up and fold his paper. “Mr. Trumbauer, Mr. Jacobs?” It was the staff sergeant who manned the desk in the lobby.

“Yes?” Jacobs said.

The sergeant opened the door and stepped in. “Colonel Silvera would like to see you and Miss Unamuno."

“Then let's go,” Jacobs said, standing slowly. “We don't want to keep the Colonel waiting."

Miss Unamuno was already in the Colonel's office, sitting stiffly in the room's desk chair. Silvera greeted the men without a smile and motioned them to sit on a couch, newly imported from the lobby.

“We've had some difficulty,” he began, riffling file folders on his desk.

“And?” Jacobs prompted.

“You've been cleared, Mr. Jacobs. You've done nothing to nullify your security rating. But Mr. Trumbauer..."

Trumbauer dropped his gaze, then raised it almost defiantly.

“What about Arnold?” Jacobs asked.

“Mr. Trumbauer participated in potentially subversive activities in 1959."

“I was a member of the Communist Party for two years,” he said.

“You didn't mention it in your affidavit,” Silvera said.

“I'm a private citizen. I offered to help you in your investigation, not to reveal my whole life."

“And you've had a record of ... unusual sexual preference."

“I have been celibate for fifteen years."

“But weren't you active in recent homosexual political groups?"

“Not in any immoral capacity, Colonel Silvera. I am a good citizen and there is no reason you should doubt my good faith."

Jacobs looked back and forth between Silvera and Trumbauer. Suddenly he slammed his open palm on the couch arm and leaned forward. “In the name of God, Colonel, are you telling me that Arnold's political or sexual inclinations have anything to do with what's happened in Lorobu?"

“No,” Silvera said. “But our investigation is being conducted under tight security. We haven't eliminated the possibility of enemy action—"

Janet Unamuno stood up. “Colonel, you and your Army and your investigation can go straight to hell. We already know more about Lorobu than you do."

“That is not strictly true,” Silvera said defensively.

“Arnold Trumbauer is one of the most decent human beings on God's earth,” Miss Unamuno said. “And if he is to be excluded for such ridiculous reasons—Colonel, he is no longer a Communist, and his sexual affiliations are not important as far as Lorobu is concerned."

“Exactly,” Jacobs said.

“I said there were difficulties—"

“Do you need our help, or are we to be treated as interfering lackeys?” Jacobs said.

“I have never been accused of treason or lack of faith in this country,” Trumbauer said. “I became a Communist out of sympathy for friends who were being repressed by the government in the fifties. My attitudes changed during the Cuban missile crisis. My leaning is still toward the left, but in my dotage I've become very conservative. I am interested in human beings, not nations."

“All right, all right,” Silvera said. “I understand your point of view, Mr. Trumbauer, and I sympathize. I have no doubt you approached us in good faith. But my superiors are more hard-line than I am, personally. And there is precedent for their convictions."

Jacobs shook his head. “Colonel, politics has nothing to do with what happened in Lorobu. Something terrible is loose—"

The door to Silvera's office opened and a black woman in the standard green uniform entered carrying a newspaper. “Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt. It's on the networks, radio and TV, sir, too. General Machen has been trying to get through to Washington."

She dropped the newspaper on his desk and stepped back stiffly. Silvera unfolded it and looked at the headlines. Jacobs craned his neck to read them.

“It's in Chicago now,” Miss Unamuno said without looking at the paper.

“Have Mr. Rittenhouse and Colonel Harrison meet me in the lobby as soon as possible,” Silvera said. The soldier saluted and left. Silvera looked up at them. “Could you have predicted this?” he asked.

“If I had known where the people on that list lived, yes,” Miss Unamuno said. “The third name—where did he live?"

“He was a Colonel,” Jacobs said.

“I know,” Silvera said. He picked up a piece of paper. “He lived in Waukegan ... no, he was born in Dayton, Ohio. His wife lived in Waukegan until she died in 1956."

“They all died in World War Two, didn't they?” Miss Unamuno asked.

The Colonel nodded.

“They were all prisoners of war, weren't they?” Trumbauer asked. He looked at Jacobs. “I was trying to put it all together. They died all at once. My guide protected me, but some of it came through and I've been sorting it ever since."

“Do you know where they died?” Silvera asked.

“Is Mr. Trumbauer cleared to work with all of us?” Jacobs asked.

“We don't bargain—but—” He raised one hand to fend off Jacobs’ birthing protest. “I don't think we'll have to worry about Mr. Trumbauer. I'll give him my personal support and that should be enough—unless and until I'm replaced, which could be any time now. Do you know where they died?"

“In a prison,” Miss Unamuno said, closing her eyes. “Flowers bloomed on the walls of a compound, bloomed and burned."

Silvera shook his head. “Please be patient with me. We think you're right—but we don't want to give out information that may prejudice your ... uh ... sensitivity."

“What information?” Jacobs prodded. “Janet, do you know what happened to those men?"

She shook her head. “I don't think they know what happened to themselves, not really."

“Why are they still here?” Trumbauer asked quietly. He had slumped in his chair and looked older, more frail. He refused to meet Jacobs’ direct gaze.

“What do you mean?” the colonel asked.

“If they're dead, they should have passed on,” Jacobs explained. “But I think we're all avoiding the major question. These little things are just the prelude to a real biggie—why in hell are they killing people?"

Silvera reached into a desk drawer and brought out a thick folder. “This is our dossier on the men whose names you've brought to us. We can tell you, without any worry of prejudice—since it's all a fait accompli, and Miss Unamuno seems to be guessing anyway—that Lieutenant William Skorvin lived in Lorobu—"

“You've mentioned that,” Jacobs said.

“And,” Silvera continued, pointing to the paper, “Haverstock, Illinois, just outside of Chicago—Corporal S.K. Percher lived there.” He held the paper out to Trumbauer, who took it reluctantly.

Jacobs looked over Trumbauer's arm. “Sixteen hundred people dead and wounded,” he read. “But not the whole town. Why not all of Haverstock?"