Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) (7 page)

Light.  From somewhere down the hall.  He lifted his head to see.  The glow came from the linen closet.  Blue-white radiance was streaming out along the edges of the closed door.

Moving carefully so as not to awaken his wife, Mr. Veilleur slipped out of bed and padded down the hall.  His joints creaked in protest at the change in position.  Old injuries, old wounds, reminders of each hung on, sounding little echoes from the past.  He knew he was developing arthritis.  No surprise there.  His body looked sixty years old and had decided to begin acting accordingly. 

He hesitated a moment with his hand on the knob of the closet door, then yanked it open.  The very air within seemed to glow; it flowed and swirled and eddied, like burning liquid.  But cold.  He felt a chill as it splashed over him.

The source – what was causing this?  The light seemed most intense in the rear corner of the bottom shelf, under the blankets.  He reached down and pulled them away.

Mr. Veilleur bit back a cry of pain and threw an arm across his eyes as the naked brilliance lanced into his brain.

Then the glow began to fade.

When his eyes could see again, when he dared to look again, he found the source of the glow.  Tucked back among the towels and sheets and blankets was what appeared to be a huge iron cross.  He smiled.  She'd saved it.  After all these years, she still hung on to it. 

The cross still pulsed with a cold blue radiance as he lifted it.  He gripped the lower section of the upright with two hands and hefted it with an easy familiarity.  Not a cross – a sword hilt.  Once it had been gold and silver.  After serving its purpose, it had changed.  Now it was iron. 
Glowing
iron.

Why?  What did this mean?

Suddenly the glow faded away, leaving him staring at the dull gray surface of the metal.  And then the metal itself began to change.  He felt its surface grow coarse, saw tiny cracks appear, and then it began to crumble.  Within seconds it was reduced to a coarse powder that sifted and ran through his fingers like grains of sand.

Something has happened.  Something has gone wrong!  But what?

Slightly unnerved, Mr. Veilleur stood empty handed in the dark and realized how quiet the world had become.  All except for the sound of a jet passing high overhead.

2

Roderick Hanley twisted in his seat as he tried to stretch his cramped muscles and aching back.  It had been a long flight from
L.A., and even the extra width in first class cramped his big frame.

"We'll be landing shortly, Dr. Hanley," the stewardess said, leaning close to him.  "Can I get you anything before we close the bar?"

Hanley winked at her.  "You could, but it's not stocked in the bar."

Her laugh seemed genuine.  "Seriously, though…"

"How about another gimlet?"

"Let's see."  She touched a fingertip to her chin.  "'Four
- to-one vodka-to-lime with a dash of Cointreau,' right?"

"Perfect."

She touched his shoulder.  "Be right back."

Pushing seventy and I can still charm them.

He smoothed back his silvery hair and squared his shoulders inside the custom made British tweed shooting jacket.  He often wondered if it was the aura of money he exuded or the burly, weathered good looks that belied his years.  He was proud of both, never underestimating the power of the former and long since giving up any false modesty about the latter.

Being a Nobel Prize winner had never hurt either.

He accepted the drink from her and took a healthy gulp, hoping the ethanol would calm his jangled nerves.  The flight had seemed interminable.  But at last they were approaching Idlewilde.  No, it was called Kennedy Airport now, wasn't it.  He hadn't been able to get used to the name change.  But no matter what the place was called, they'd be safely down on terra firma shortly.

And not a moment too soon. 

Commercial flights were a pain.  Like being trapped at a cocktail party in you own house.  If you didn't like the company you couldn't just up and leave.  He much preferred the comfort and convenience of his private Learjet where he could call all the shots.  But yesterday morning he’d learned that the plane would be grounded for three days, possibly five, waiting for a part.  Another five days in California among those Los Angeleans who were all starting to look like hippies or Hindus or both was more than he could tolerate.  So he’d bitten the bullet and bought a ticket on this Boeing behemoth.

For once – just this once – he and Ed were traveling together.

He glanced at his traveling companion, dozing peacefully beside him.  Edward Derr, M.D., two years younger but looking older, was used to this sort of travel.  Hanley nudged him once, then again.  Derr's eyes fluttered open.

"Wh
-what's wrong?" he said, straightening up in his seat.

"Landing soon.  Want something before we touch down?"

Derr rubbed a hand over his craggy face.  "No."  He closed his eyes again.  "Just wake me when it's over."

"How the hell can you sleep in these seats?"

"Practice."

Thirty years of regular attendance together at biological and genetic research conferences all over the world, and never once had they traveled on the same plane.  Until today.

It would not do to have the pair of them die together.

Certain records and journals in the
Monroe house were not yet ready for the light of day.  He couldn't imagine any time in the near future when the world would be ready for them.  Sometimes he wondered why he didn't simply burn them and have done with the whole affair.  Sentimental reasons, he guessed.  Or ego.  Or both.  Whatever the reason, he couldn't seem to bring himself to part with them.

A shame, really.  He and Derr had made biological history and they couldn't tell anybody.  That had been part of the pact they’d made that day in the first week of 1942.  That and the promise that when one of them died, the other would immediately destroy the sensitive records.

After a more than a quarter century of living with that pact, he should have been accustomed to it.  But no.  He’d been in a state of constant anxiety since takeoff.  But at last, the trip was over.  All they had to do was land.  They'd made it.

Suddenly came a violent jolt, a scream of agonized metal, and the 707 tilted to a crazy angle.  Someone behind them in the tourist section screamed something about a wing tearing off, and then the plane plummeted, spinning wildly.

The thought of his own death was no more than a fleeting presence.  The knowledge that there would be no one left to destroy the records crowded out everything else.

"The boy!" he cried, clutching Derr's arm.  "They'll find out about the boy!  He'll find out about
himself!
"

And then the plane came apart around him.

For the rest…
Reborn

March 1968

Dat-Tay-Vao

The mysterious Dat-Tay-Vao was not always free to wander the globe as it does, hopping from person to person.  Millennia ago it was trapped in an object, but was freed and has been following its own agenda ever since.  But it knows it will eventually have to surrender its freedom in the final battle… and that the final battlefield will be America. 

I'd originally intended to use a much shorter version of "Dat-tay-vao" as either a flashback or a prologue in
The Touch
, but no matter how I tried to work it in, it simply wouldn't fit.  Used early on, it gave away too much of the mystery of what would be happening to Alan Bulmer in the body of the novel; inserted later, it seemed redundant.  So I scrapped it.  

After the novel was finished I returned to it and fleshed it out to make it a stand-alone story – a prequel to
The Touch
.  It appeared in the March 1987 issue of
Amazing Stories
.  The story takes place exactly nineteen years before its publication… right about the time of
Reborn
.  The events in
Reborn
trigger the
Dat-tay-vao
's migration to the US where it plays an important part in the Secret History, as you will see in
Nightworld
. 

Here’s how it starts…

1

Patsy cupped his hands gently over his belly to keep his intestines where they belonged. Weak, wet, and helpless, he lay on his back in the alley and looked up at the stars in the crystal sky, unable to move, afraid to call out. The one time he’d yelled loud enough to be heard all the way to the street, loops of bowel had squirmed against his hands, feeling like a pile of Mom’s slippery-slick homemade sausage all gray from boiling and coated with her tomato sauce. Visions of his insides surging from the slit in his abdomen like spring snakes from a novelty can of nuts had kept him from yelling again.

No one had come.

He knew he was dying. Good as dead, in fact. He could feel the blood oozing out of the vertical gash in his belly, seeping around his fingers and trailing down his forearms to the ground. Wet from neck to knees. Probably lying in a pool of blood… his very own homemade marinara sauce.

Help was maybe fifty feet away and he couldn’t call for it. Even if he could stand the sight of his guts jumping out of him, he no longer had the strength to yell. Yet help was out there… the nightsounds of Quang Ngai streetlife… so near…

Nothing ever goes right for me. Nothing. Ever.

It had been such a sweet deal. Six keys of Cambodian brown. He could’ve got that home to Flatbush no sweat and then he’d have been set up real good. Uncle Tony would’ve known what to do with the stuff and Patsy would’ve been made. And he’d never be called Fatman again. Only the grunts over here called him Fatman. He’d be Pasquale to the old boys, and Pat to the younger guys.

And Uncle Tony would’ve called him Kid, like he always did.

Yeah. Would have. If Uncle Tony could see him now, he’d call him Shit-for-Brains. He could hear him now:

Six keys for ten G’s? Whatsamatta witchoo? Din’t I always tell you if it seems too good to be true, it usually is? Ay! Gabidose! Din’t you smell no rat?

Nope. No rat smell. Because I didn’t want to smell a rat. Too eager for the deal. Too anxious for the quick score. Too damn stupid as usual to see how that sleazeball Hung was playing me like a hooked fish.

No Cambodian brown.

No deal.

Just a long, sharp K-bar.

The stars above went fuzzy and swam around, then came into focus again.

The pain had been awful at first, but that was gone now. Except for the cold, it was almost like getting smashed and crashed on scotch and grass and just drifting off. Almost pleasant. Except for the cold. And the fear.

Footsteps…coming from the left. He managed to turn his head a few degrees. A lone figure approached, silhouetted against the light from the street. A slow, unsteady, almost staggering walk. Whoever it was didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Hung? Come to finish him off?

But no. This guy was too skinny to be Hung.

The figure came up and squatted flatfooted on his haunches next to Patsy. In the dim glow of starlight and streetlight he saw a wrinkled face and a silvery goatee. The gook babbled something in Vietnamese.

God, it was Ho Chi Minh himself come to rob him.

Too late. The money’s gone. All gone.

No. Wasn’t Ho. Couldn’t be. Just an old papa-san in the usual black pajamas. They all looked the same, especially the old ones. The only thing different about this one was the big scar across his right eye. Looked as if the lids had been fused closed over the socket.

The old man reached down to where Patsy guarded his intestines and pushed his hands away. Patsy tried to scream in protest but heard only a sigh, tried to put his hands back up on his belly but they’d weakened to limp rubber and wouldn’t move.

The old man smiled as he singsonged in gooktalk and pressed his hands against the open wound in Patsy’s belly. Patsy screamed then, a hoarse, breathy sound torn from him by the searing pain that shot in all directions from where the old gook’s hands lay. The stars really swam around this time, fading as they moved, but they didn’t go out.

By the time his vision cleared, the old gook was up and turned around and weaving back toward the street. The pain, too, was sidling away.

Patsy tried again to lift his hands up to his belly, and this time they moved. They seemed stronger. He wiggled his fingers through the wetness of his blood, feeling for the edges of the wound, afraid of finding loops of bowel waiting for him.

He missed the slit on the first pass. And missed it on the second. How could that happen? It had been at least a foot long and had gaped open a good three or four inches, right there to the left of his belly button. He tried again, carefully this time…