The Fury and the Terror (12 page)

"Who was the father, then?" he asked, impatient with her.

"I can't be sure. I believe it was either Peter Sandza or his son."

"
Robin Sandza?
"

"She must have told you about him."

"Gilly approached the matter, over a period of many months. The telling was difficult, her memories fragmented. This is all I know. Gillian believed that she and Robin Sandza were, her description, 'psychic twins.' Born at the same moment, to different mothers, during a solar eclipse, while other potent conjunctions of the planets were at their most effective. That eclipse may have been the catalyst for Gillian's ... for the 'gift' both children shared. They were to have been fraternal as well as psychic twins, she said, but the scheme went awry. The other baby you carried, Gillian's identical twin, strangled on his umbilical in the womb while Gillian was being born."

"The ethereal entity that became Robin Sandza had to find a different mother, and quickly; someone already far along in labor. Robin's mother was quite beautiful. She died young, of complications from an infected tooth. Peter Sandza was a covert MORG agent. He had to leave the raising of his son to his sister Fay, who was living a life of religious drudgery with an impotent fanatic. I learned much of this long after the events that took place at Psi Faculty."

"And there's some evidence that Gillian had sex with Robin's father?"

"Only supposition. Gillian wasn't able to tell me anything."

"Could she have recalled, under hypnosis?"

"I wasn't willing to put her through that. Why should I have? She'd had the baby, which she was in no condition to care for. At the time it seemed that she might never ... get her mind back. I already knew most of what had taken place. Peter Sandza and Gillian were on the run. He was desperate to find his son. Before they reached Psi Faculty they put up at an inn in Mount Carmel, Connecticut, then at a ski lodge called Shadowdown, which was not far from the Psi Faculty campus in the Adirondacks. I'm certain that they spent at least two nights together, sharing a room. In both places where they stayed, Sandza registered Gillian as his daughter. Of course he wasn't going to let Gillian out of his sight; she was the key to his recovering Robin.

"By then Gilly, in a variation of the captor/hostage syndrome, may have been emotionally dependent on him. They'd dosed her heavily with hypnotics and psycho-suppressive drugs at Paragon Institute. Virtually canceled her identity. That was my fault, for leaving her there. But I did so because I was terrified of my own daughter, unsure of my sanity. I had bled like a slaughtered pig. I needed to be sedated. Dr. Irving Roth and his associate from Paragon, a young Chinese woman, came to our house in Sutton Mews. They'd been highly recommended to my husband. I learned from Dr. Roth that Gillian had the power to make me, to make almost anyone, bleed, when she was in a psychometric trance. Roth put our dilemma in terms Avery and I could understand. He said, 'Are you familiar with the short story about the man who traveled in time and changed the fate of the world by accidentally stepping on a butterfly? When the man returned to his own time he found that because he'd been careless in a prehistoric epoch, the world was now a grotesque, savagely distorted place with nothing beautiful in it anymore.

"'Gillian,' Roth said, 'as she flashes back and forth in time according to her clairvoyant visions, is like the man who crushed the butterfly. Her very thoughts can significantly affect reality as we know it.'"

"We've come a long way since then, in our understanding and uses of the paranormal."

"Uses and misuses. The world has become the savagely distorted place Roth predicted, although none of it was Gilly's fault."

"She wanted to do good. To be of help, when the others sought her out. I didn't like it. MORG was still there. The opposition was too powerful. I was afraid something would happen to her. It happened."

He felt savage pain, deep in the unprotected heart. "Tell me about Peter Sandza."

"MORG also had his son. The other half of the twinship. They had convinced Robin that his father was dead, that he was virtually an orphan. The better to bond with him, gain control. They did their best to eliminate Sandza. But he was as ruthless as the men MORG sent after him. A trained assassin, with the cunning of a hunted man. I visited both of the rooms in which they slept together. I have no psychic ability, but—I could imagine it happening, deep into the night. His own need. Gillian's beauty, her youth and vulnerability. Gillian was barely fifteen. I forgive him for that. I truly hope . . . it
was
Peter Sandza, because the alternative . . . too dreadful. I've never wanted to think about Robin coming to her. So corrupted. Driven insane by the collective efforts of the researchers at Psi Faculty to enhance his already-considerable paranormal talents."

"But Gillian told me that she and Robin never met. They were only in touch through psychomorphic channels."

"They knew each other
intimately
."

"How?"

"When Gillian came home from the hospital, after she'd had her first clairvoyant experience and fainted on the ice rink in Central Park, she was changed. A different child altogether. Sullen, evasive, brooding. She locked herself in her room for hours at a time, practicing her flute. Then she would listen to rock music, so loud I thought it would bring the roof down. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I made Avery pick the lock on her door. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the drapes were drawn. Quite dark in the room. Gillian lay across her bed, partly covered by a sheet. She was naked. She didn't appear to be breathing. I panicked, thinking she had died. Avery wouldn't let me touch her. My husband was a respected anthropologist. He told me she wasn't dead. Neither was she
there
, and he warned me not to disturb her body. He said that she was in a state of ... tonic immobility. A deep trance. The loud music was one aspect of the ritual that allowed her astral body to travel. Avery had a great deal else to say, about the metapsychical systems of tribes he had studied on three continents. About material bodies and astral bodies. He mentioned a word, the first time I had heard it.
Doppelganger
."

"Her mirror image. But only a double, unless she chose to give it a life of its own. Gillian told me it could be done merely by bestowing an alternate name on the dpg. She also said that it was a dangerous practice."

"I think it's likely that Robin Sandza's doppelganger, named or unnamed, visited Gilly, at that time when she was just home from the hospital and inexperienced, unguarded. Too trusting. He, or it, visited and may have seduced my daughter. Once I learned that she was pregnant, I consulted psychics. Having become a believer. They all agreed that there is sexual intercourse in the Astral, but they disagreed that conception can occur. Could a doppelganger father a human child? No answers."

"But they are, supposedly, exact replicas of their homebodies. Who does this girl named Eden look like?"

"She favors Gillian, thank God."

"Gillian had powers beyond our comprehension. If Robin Sandza was Eden's father, what must she be like? She could be—what? A savior—"

"Other psychics call the rare ones 'Avatars.'"

"Infinite in faculty. In apprehension how like a god."

Sherard paused, silenced by implications. Katharine made of his stillness an opportunity, moving from her seat to sit on the floor by him. Fluid in movement in spite of her years. The disciplines of yoga and the StairMaster, tennis on weekends. She put a forearm across his knees, her head resting on her arm, pose of subjugation. Contrived, of course, but not unpleasant. Her artifice a corollary of privilege.

"And you gave the child up for adoption."

"I had to. I chose her adoptive parents very carefully, culling the candidates from nearly every state, Canada, Europe. They had to have the education, experience, and emotional security to deal with a prodigy. Since Eden went to live in California as an infant I haven't seen her, except in photographs. I wanted her to have every opportunity to lead a comfortable, conventional life in a Cheez Whiz kind of town. She's very intelligent, of course. Quite the athlete. So am I. It became obvious, early on, that Eden inherited Gillian's ability to travel in the astral. Her dreams, she was told, were actually journeys out of the body. According to her adoptive mother, who is a clinical psychologist, Eden's visits to the astral have been under the supervision of a third, surrogate mother, whom Eden named the Good Lady."

"Why do you think she's in danger now?"

"Unfortunately she 'came out' in front of several thousand people at her college graduation exercise two hours ago. It was, still is, on all the national news channels. Eden was about to deliver her valedictory address. Suddenly she warned everyone to leave the stadium where they were assembled. She told them a plane was about to crash there."

Sherard vaguely remembered seeing something about this on a television in the British Airways lounge. Right now he longed for another scotch. The limousine might have had a bar tucked away in some ingeniously discreet compartment, but a drink hadn't been offered and he wouldn't ask.

"Saved nearly everyone with her timely warning. So Eden 'saw' it happening before it happened?"

"Of course."

He touched the back of Katharine's lax small hand, tracing a vein there. Her skin was still remarkably supple, unblemished.

"Where is she now?"

"No idea. For many reasons I can't, don't wish to directly contact her adoptive parents."

"MORG again?" Sherard asked.

"You know what they are. How bitterly I've fought them. They watch me constantly. Victor Wilding still must believe that because of Gillian, I have connections to the psychic underground."

"Do you?"

Her eyes moved away from his.

"I'm not watched anymore," Sherard said. "They never took me very seriously. I was Gillian's white-hunter husband, found a cushy thing for himself with the profession dying out, the hunting bans and tribal wars. Otherwise I should have died on the sidewalk beside Gilly."

"How do you know you're not watched?"

"Bush sense."

"You're probably wrong."

"It's my legs that are damaged, not my instincts."

"Regardless, please do this my way."

"What is it you want, Katharine?"

"Find Eden. Bring her home to me. I'm so very anxious to get to know Eden, after all these years."

"Find her?"

"Betts and Riley Waring have long known what to do for Eden in the event MORG learned about her." There was a gleam of hazard in Katharine's eyes as she looked at Sherard. "In spite of all the precautions Avery and I took, I'm sure Victor Wilding has long held suspicions that there was a child. Through yoga I've always been able to block the MMF." Katharine used the short reference for what was known to the activists in the psychic underground as
MORG Mind-Fuckers
. "Gillian must have taught you similar techniques."

Sherard nodded. "She described it as 'not leaving footprints in the air.'"

"You were on your way to London? Good. Get on that plane, then get off. I'll make those arrangements. United is holding space on the six o'clock to San Francisco under your old alias."

"G. W. Hunter?" He and Gillian had usually traveled under assumed names, because of her activities, and because she was a member of one of the richest families on earth.

"I assumed your British passport in that name is still valid. And you have it with you."

"Yes, but—"

"Good. No footprints in the air. I'll contact you tomorrow at the Blackwelder office in San Francisco. Ten sharp. By then I'll have heard from Betts Waring."

"It's the Blackwelder organization you ought to be using, not me. Vaughn Blackwelder has been devoted to you for years. Don't understand why you haven't married him."

"Hairpieces. He has a dressing room with a dozen hairpieces sitting on white foam heads. It does something to the soul. I can't have Vaughn and his group handle this matter. It
must
be you."

"Why?"

"Eden knows she's adopted. She was never told who her mother was. You were Gillian's husband for twelve years. Everything that Eden will want to know about Gilly you can tell her. Eden is subject to seizures, a consequence of her phenomenal abilities. My principal concern is not to frighten her. And you do have a way with women, Tom."

"Thank you."

"No, that was from the heart. You truly like us. Most straight men your age are sexual provocateurs. Those who aren't outright creeps. You're what your contours say you are. Stalwart. I love that word. A hunter, a provider, a companion. You're wounded now. Doesn't matter. There's still a sense of completeness about you. No trivialities. Staunch. Another good word from the chivalric days of manhood. But you have no bent for obsessive, despairing relationships and quaint romantic afflictions. Always up front with your loyalties. A woman's man. We all want to be that woman."

"God Almighty."

"Don't you see? Eden will trust you. She'll come with you. No questions."

"You're asking too much. I don't think I can do this."

"But you will. Won't you? And now you know why. You'll do it for Gillian."