Psychlone (23 page)

“May I?” Miss Unamuno asked.

“Ho ho!” Burnford grimaced. “Playing with a mind-reader. By all means.” He made a move. “Checkmate."

Prohaska turned in his seat as Jacobs sat behind him. “You're an author, aren't you?"

Jacobs nodded. “And you're a reporter."

“I'd like to have an interview with you when this is over. An exclusive."

Jacobs shrugged. “Put your name in with my appointments secretaries,” he said. “Either General Machen or Colonel Silvera."

The black man's name was Voltaire Simons. As he fixed lunch for Tim, he told the boy to call him Volt. “Other fellow, his name is Jack Davies. We'll be with you and Mr. Thesiger for a few more days."

Tim sat at the kitchen table and drank from his glass of milk. “I was going to Lorobu,” he said.

“There ain't nothing for you there, son,” Simons said. “Just a bunch of Army people and scientists. Most of them'll be pulling out soon."

Davies entered through the swinging door, holding a half-eaten sandwich in one hand. “Thesiger wants us to call Machen and get us a flight to Haverstock in two days."

“Will do,” Simons said. “Tim, I hope you like corned-beef hash, ‘cause we have a mess of it."

“I'll take a dollop,” Davies said, sitting at the table.

“What about Thesiger?"

“He isn't eating much now. Says he works better on a fast. You like him, Tim?"

“He's okay,” Tim said.

“Sure.” Davies gave Simons a wink.

In the afternoon, Tim watched television with Simons and played Monopoly with Davies. He took a bath and ate dinner. Simons wrote in a small black book and Davies made numerous phone calls in another room.

“Who lives here?” Tim asked as he helped Simons with the dinner dishes.

“Nobody but us,” Simons said. “Rented the place special."

“You trying to keep me away from people?"

“No—” Simons began, his tone betraying him.

“If you are, that's good,” Tim went on. “I got to stay away from people until I'm grown up."

“Yeah,” Simons said softly. “I know how that is. We're all here together, son. We ain't afraid of you, you shouldn't be afraid of us."

“I'm not afraid,” Tim said. “Mr. Thesiger knows what's happening, I think."

Thesiger came out of his room in the back of the house at seven. He stood beside Tim's old overstuffed chair and smiled at the TV game show. “Gentlemen, do you mind if Timothy and I get back to work?"

“Not at all, sir,” Davies said. “If you need anything, let us know."

“Ready, Timothy?"

Tim nodded.

“Then get your coat and come out in the backyard with me. There's a lot to do tonight. We're leaving here tomorrow, right, gentlemen?"

“Sure are,” Simons said.

Tim slipped into his jacket and walked through the kitchen to the service porch. He zipped himself up, stuck his hands into the pockets—it was a new, bright blue, down-filled coat—and opened the back door.

Thesiger was standing in the middle of the small lawn. The fish pool and tool shed were clear in the moonlight. “Have the voices been bothering you?” Thesiger asked, motioning for Tim to stand beside him.

“No, sir,” Tim said.

“No headaches, anything like that?"

“Nothing."

“Good. Do you understand what was happening to you?"

“I think so. Everybody who died was trying to get me to come with them. I didn't want to go, so they made me want to hurt people."

“Why would they want to do that?"

“Whatever killed them was real mean."

“I see. Have you ever heard voices before, when you were younger, or seen anything unusual?"

“No. I had nightmares—still do, sometimes, but not like you mean. Not like I think you mean."

“You understand my meaning very clearly, Timothy. Would you like to see something marvelous tonight? Not see, exactly, but feel?"

Tim hesitated. “What kind of thing?"

“Nothing that will hurt. We're going to duck our heads into the water—below the water—and feel what lies far beneath. Not the fish pond, but all around us."

Tim dug his hands deeper into his pockets. “Why?” he asked.

Thesiger put both his thin, gnarled hands on Tim's shoulders and squatted down in front of him. The old man's eyes were as bright as a child's, without the bleariness or veining Tim had once seen in his grandfather's. “Because you're important to us now. We need you strong and capable. Grown up, even. To be sure you understand, I'm going to show you things related to what you've experienced. You're a lucky young man, actually. Very few people can be shown these things any more. They keep their feet on the ground so firmly they don't even know how to die. But you're young and flexible."

“How did you see when you were younger?"

“Remember the story about my grandmother? I knew I had the gift from that time on. So I travelled around the world, listening to people tell stories and camping in the countrysides, just listening. Feeling. I saw many of the things they talked about, and saw them clearer than most others had before me. My strength grew. And so must yours, but we don't have much time. I will give you advanced training now, because I believe you can stand it. You've already stood up to considerably more than most could."

Tim looked up. The sky was bright with stars and a close, observant moon. “Okay,” he said. “If it will make me grown up."

“In a way, it will.” Thesiger lay on the grass and stared up at the sky. “Lie on your back, feet pointing away from me, with your head against mine.” Tim did as he was told and Thesiger adjusted himself until their scalps touched. “Good."

“Now, do you see the stars, Timothy?"

“Yes, sir."

“Between them and us, around them and us, there is a vast ocean which we seldom see. It isn't really our business to see it. Our business is to live in this world as well as we can, and to keep our kind alive. But some of us, now and then, have a glimpse of the ocean. We've interpreted it many ways. Some have been driven mad, others have become saints, others have lived their lives normally. But apparently something very bad has happened and this balance has been upset. Now we must look into the ocean, for there are sharks waiting. What kind of sharks, we don't know. The sharks got your town, Timothy. But sharks are very rare in this ocean. Look, feel. Listen."

“I don't see anything,” Tim said, scrunching up his eyes. “Just stars and stuff."

“Listen."

After a few minutes, Tim's body began to tingle. The old man was very strong. Tim felt his eyes were sinking far back into his head. It didn't hurt, but it was peculiar. When he shut his eyelids, the illusion was complete and he swam in warm, empty darkness. Thesiger's voice was clear and distant. “Some of the ocean's inhabitants are huge. Feel them? They move between the stars, between and through us and our world, like leviathans—great whales, broad and slow, paying no more attention to us than we do to molecules of air. Feel."

A shudder passed through the boy. His eyes were locked and would not move. He was no longer seeing with them. His arms and legs were numb, yet he was moving. And from the darkness came a deep, shuddering mind-sound.

“There's one,” Thesiger said without words.

“I feel it,” Tim replied in kind.

The mind-sound passed back and forth across great distances, echoing yet not echoing, rising in pitch and falling, yet not. “It's singing,” Tim said.

“Breathing,” Thesiger corrected. “With every breath it swells past suns, and with every exhale it vanishes into a pinpoint. But it lives across a wider range than we do, so at no moment is it ever smaller in our universe than it is now. Or larger."

Tim didn't understand, but he didn't need to. The leviathan, whatever it was, had no care for them, no care for the world. It existed and travelled. Then it was gone and the ocean was empty again.

“The giants are very common,” Thesiger said. “They aren't powerful, however. Smaller forms have a greater ability to influence our world. Listen for them—they chatter like birds."

Yet the chatter was a symphony compared to human speech.

“Are they God?” Tim asked.

“No more and no less than we are."

“I seem to know them."

“They play with our dreams sometimes like dolphins play with turtles. You know them, they know you."

“Are they angels?"

“Close, but no. The beings important to you and me are inaccessible without much deeper ability, or training. These things are harmless, trifling. Now listen again."

The next things Tim saw were shadows, small and shapeless. Tim could feel one realizing it was being observed. It suggested horse and Tim saw a long, dark horse swim through their sea.

“Occasionally, these creatures attach to a world and live there. It seems to be a stage in their lives. Once in a great while, something will go wrong—though I'm not sure that's the right phrase—and they will stay. The longer they stay, the more power they gain. Humans have seen them, used them, and been used by them."

“Ghosts and demons,” Tim said.

“In a way."

“Can I see people who have died?"

“Not in this sea, Timothy. When we die, we go very much farther away. Sometimes it takes ages to get there, but time has little meaning. People must make their decisions, prepare themselves. Dying is very important, much too important to be left to amateurs."

Tim laughed and the laughter poured into his body. He seemed to be hollow, filled with a tide of humor. This was what it felt like to be grownup. If it was, he had never known anybody truly grownup. The sensation passed and he missed it terribly.

“Now, Icarus, listen to your guide carefully. We are going to fly much higher than we should, but only for a while, a very short while."

“I thought we were in a sea."

“And so we are, a sea of flying. Ready? Cling tight.” It was neither soaring nor sinking, but a dizzy expansion which Tim wasn't sure he enjoyed. “Open your eyes."

He opened.

“Close your eyes."

He closed.

And they were in the backyard again, lying head to head.

Tim wasn't sure what he had seen. A hundred billion earthworms crawling through a city made of flowers and wire and glass? Except they weren't earthworms, and there were no flowers, no wire, no glass. Or had it been a convention of holy men, their spirits like doves, walking through a maze of gardens and parks, singing, each song emerging like a golden cord from their mouths, and the cord forming a tapestry too bright to look at? He couldn't capture it, or remember it.

“What was that?"

“Don't ask,” Thesiger said. “And don't try to remember. Just keep the feeling. Was it a happy feeling?"

“Yes,” Tim said, feeling his chest fill. “Oh, yes."

“Good. That is our strength. Tomorrow we'll carry that strength into battle. Are you ready?"

Tim nodded, and their scalps rubbed together.

The van driver started the engine. Flakes of snow were drifting across the closed highway in the pale-blue twilight. Fowler finished a game of chess against Burnford by conceding. Burnford packed away the pieces as the bus lurched onto the road through the valley. “Should have brought a magnetized set,” he said, folding the board and sticking it into his valise.

Fowler looked at his watch. It was five-fifteen. Trucks big and small were following them. His stomach was upset. Williams offered him a thermos cup full of milk and he took it, sipping it slowly.

Burnford handed him a sketchpad filled with mathematical equations and a crude diagram spotted with Greek letters. “This is what it looks like, I think,” he said. Fowler traced his finger along the diagram.

“Like a mushroom,” he said.

“Sort of. The stem is its power link with the earth. Last night we were able to distinguish this rough shape, and a distribution of charged air masses. It can't cross the running water because that would interfere with its power supply.” He grinned. “Actually, I don't have any idea what I'm talking about. How it converts energy, how it maintains a four-dimensional space surface, and what the hell it really is—none of us know. But we learned one thing. Microwaves bug the hell out of it. If it's sluggish tonight, we'll get it going with a few pulses. Or we'll lob another cross into the area."

“Has anyone brought out the priest?” Prohaska asked.

“Not a chance,” Williams said. “Nobody's going to interfere until we've studied the situation thoroughly."

“They're scared shitless,” Burnford confided.

“And if the streams freeze?” Fowler asked.

“The first truck to go in today has a portable water heater. We'll tap into the water table to keep a flow.” Williams put aside his much-handled newspaper and sat up in the seat.

Opposite the gravel road to the cabin, a meadow had been cleared and levelled. A bulldozer sat vacant in one corner of the lot. The van parked near the middle and the other trucks maneuvered around it. A staff car was the last to arrive. Silvera and Machen stepped out, escorted by soldiers armed with submachine guns. Fowler smiled and shook his head. “Are they expecting commando raids?"

“Even Chinese ghosts hate crosses,” Jacobs said. He had been quiet throughout the trip, sitting in the front seat next to the driver. “Any explanation for that, Mr. Burnford?"

“None,” Burnford said.

“Humans attach great significance to symbols,” Trumbauer said. “They allow us to concentrate and gather our forces. I imagine if something hates us, it hates everything beneficial to us."

“You mean, the priest might have gotten out of there alive if he hadn't carried a crucifix?” Williams asked.

“By itself, the symbol is nothing,” Miss Unamuno said. “One must have faith."

“You think a good exorcist could clear the whole area?” Williams pursued, a small grin curling the edges of his lips.

“No,” Jacobs said. “This is an elemental, not a fallen angel or a dead soul."

“Pray tell, do you believe in all those things?” Williams asked.

“That's enough,” Fowler said sharply. He could feel the debate starting again—materialists against spiritualists—and he didn't want to hear it.