The Fury and the Terror (4 page)

So what did Betts have against Geoff? He and Eden had progressed slowly, from the end of her sophomore year, to what might be a serious relationship, and Betts had received hints that Eden had had sex with Geoff on weekend camping trips the previous summer. So, okay. Must have been a positive experience, or she wouldn't still be seeing him. Eden would be twenty-two in August, old enough and, Betts felt, wise enough to weigh and resolve all of her moral choices. If she'd wanted guidance, she would have asked. Betts the mother was satisfied that Geoff was an appropriate first lover, possessing the sensitivity and loving concern to allow his and Eden's relationship to mature without stress into an affair.

And yet—

Betts the psychologist had reservations about Geoff McTyer, not the least of which was a certain vacancy in his life before Innisfall, and his resilience in deflecting reasonable questions about his family, with whom he apparently had no contact. He'd owned up to a comfortable childhood. Parochial schools in a Boston suburb had not left their mark on him in a religious sense; he was not a churchgoer. Mother passed on when he was twelve. He still carried her faded picture in his wallet—a woman with a lipless self-conscious smile from whom Geoff obviously had inherited his cheekbones—but he had no other family photos, as far as Eden knew. Father retired from a middle-management position with a Boston insurance group. Geoff had named as his father's employer two different firms on widely separated occasions, which Betts found curious. No relationship with his father, now living off his comfortable pension in a seaside village in Ireland—Geoff couldn't think of the name—or his older sister, who, he said, had married a couple of times, small businessmen, and was content to be a breeder. Geoff couldn't remember what her married name was now. He thought she was living in Woburn. Other relatives? Sure, here and there. Never kept up with any of them.

A chilly kind of indifference to his bloodlines, Betts thought, knowing it wasn't unusual. Family members who were all strangers to one another. Some of her patients suffered like the damned because of nonexistent family ties, the deep psychic chill of loveless people.
My mother didn't want to have me. My father never looked at me when he talked to me
. But Geoff, if there had been similar strain in his formative years, had had the toughness of spirit to survive, with wit and optimism. A steady sort, not inclined to be a cop all of his life—he had lately developed an interest, through his graduate studies, in teaching. Reliable, humorous, intelligent.

And yet, and yet—

Geoff was still in uniform; with a couple of hours to go on the twelve-to-eight shift he preferred working. Gave him the freedom of his days, he said, and he was still young enough to get by on a few hours' sleep. Three hours in the morning, a nap after dinner, often on the couch in the downstairs rec room of the Warings' fieldstone ranch house with his head in Eden's lap while she listened on headphones to the guitarists she loved and studied Michael Jordan's moves on videocassettes.

"I was just passing by and saw all the lights," Geoff said after the kiss from Betts. "Eden got the yips?"

"Maybe we both have. Anyway, Riley was up before either of us, and you know how that is, when his side of the bed's empty I can't sleep either. Want coffee? How about something to eat? Bacon-crumble waffles."

"Sure." Geoff made himself at home rummaging in the pantry, found a box of cereal. He stopped at the fridge on his way to the breakfast table in the center of the kitchen.

"Know what you get when you crash a helicopter with a flock of songbirds?" he asked Betts as he was taking out a carton of milk.

"Shredded tweet," Eden said, robbing him of the punch line as she bustled into the kitchen. Betts bellowed, spilling some batter down the front of the waffle iron. Eden made a face at Geoff. "That's fifth-grade humor."

"I always liked the fifth grade," Geoff said. "That's when I discovered girls. When did you discover boys?"

"I was wiping the sweat out of my eyes on the bench, looked up, and there you were, practicing your cross-over dribble. I thought, hey, this carbon-based life-form is different from me. It's wearing a jockstrap." Eden had put on her old high school jersey, number 12, with ratty overalls, and was barefoot. She kissed Geoff, recoiled slightly with a wrinkling of her nose. "Gahhh."

Betts turned to Geoff. "Notice I was too discreet to say anything?"

Geoff said, "Two A.M. I pull ovah this guy with Nevada plates. He's all ovah the road, but not speedin', thanks be to God. So he blows a two point seven on the Breathalyzer, right? I mean really lit. There's an empty fifth of Johnnie Red. Another one-half empty on the seat of his Caddy. Claimin' he drives bettah when his hands are steady. Hell of it is, his hands are steady. Stomach's a different story. Chucks it all in my direction. I'm quick but not that quick. Needed a complete change. No time to wash the stink out of my hair."

"Cool, I gotta see that. Bring the tape. It's probably funnier than our New Year's party. Did I ever mention you talk real fast?"

"When you get in a critical mood, means you're unhappy with yourself."

"Try a baby wipe," Eden suggested. "Some of Dad's cologne wouldn't hurt."

"Good idea. You nervous?"

Eden held out her right hand, palm down.

"No, it's an earthquake.
Of course I'm
—"

"Just look at the front of the rim. Block out the crowd."

"Yeah, thanks, Coach."

Geoff left the kitchen to use Eden's bathroom. Eden's cell phone rang. She dug it out of a bib pocket of the overalls and spent the next several minutes raptly in conversation with her best friend, Megan Pardo, in spite of scowls from Betts.

"When she's on the phone Eden measures time in dog years," Betts complained to Geoff when he returned to the kitchen. His hair was re-combed and glistening. Geoff smiled as if he'd never heard her say it before and passed his plate for waffles.

"Stop me if it's none of my business, but how old was Eden when you and Riley—"

"Just four months."

Betts looked a little strange about his bringing up the adoption at this time. Geoff smiled and said after a forkful of waffle, "Eden and I talk about it. Who her parents might have been. With her coloring and imagination, we're pretty sure one of them was an Irish poet."

"She does have an imagination," Betts said with a shrug.

"But that's not all there is to it. Imagination, I'm sayin'."

Betts looked at him through the smoke of her first cigarette of the day, mindful of the booted cop look, the trim uniform, the blunt butt of his Glock semi-auto holstered high on his belt. And was silent.

Geoff said, still smiling, casual, "We've talked about that, too. Second sight, isn't that what it's called?"

Betts drew into herself ever so slightly, but didn't have to reply: the police dispatcher was on the radio that Geoff wore on his left shoulder. He was back in service with another hour and a half to go on his shift.

"Eighteen-wheeler jackknifed at the Buck Lake exit," Geoff explained. Eden looked around, then met him at the door for a quick kiss on his way out. "See you at the stadium," he said. "Front of the rim, Eden."

Eden stayed on the phone for another ten minutes, laughing now, at ease with herself, her pre-graduation jitters toned down considerably, perhaps forgotten.

Outside the fog along the creek behind their property had taken on a glow from the sun. Betts glanced at the digital clock on the wall oven as she sat down to her own breakfast. She thought about the dreambook, and wondered how soon she could get her hands on it without appearing overly anxious to see what Eden had written this morning. It was now twenty-five past six, Pacific daylight time. She turned on the kitchen TV to distract herself, surfed to the Weather Channel. The forecast for northern California was breezy with lots of sun, low seventies by noon. Looked like a perfect day for an outdoor ceremony.

EASTBOUND/TRANSPAC 1850 • MAY 28

T
he TRANSPAC DC-10 that was leased to the Multiphasic Operations and Research Group—better known, to those who had to know or wished they didn't know about its existence, as MORG—took off from Hickam AFB at 0310 hours Honolulu time.

MORG had been the creation of a man named Childermass, who, like all great demagogues, had a long memory and a lot of patience. He excelled in deceit, intimidation, and persuasion, both silken and bloodcurdling. Childermass liked to say the weakness of a democracy was that it empowered too many fools. The gods (he also would say, quoting Ovid and by implication placing himself within that pantheon) have their own rules. During the Cold War frenzies of the middle decades of the century he used all he knew about the empowered fools and their complex political machineries to maneuver what had been a small entity of the Department of Defense, located in a suite of offices down a humble corridor in a dingy building, into a massive presence in the global business of espionage. Childermass had drowned in his own blood in a bathtub at the age of sixty-two, assassinated (though that was never revealed) by a remarkable adolescent closer to the gods than he could have hoped to be. Gillian Bellaver had imagined, in her fury and heartbreak, that the destruction of Childermass would mean the end of MORG. But bad institutions are like breeder reactors for Childermass's kind. MORG proved to be a self-perpetuating institution that continued to expand and thrive on blackmail, conspiracy, and various kinds of outrage within a developing fascist nation that once had consisted of thirteen proudly independent states.

The DC-10 flying from the mid-Pacific to southern Montana on the mainland had been expensively refitted for the benefit of one passenger: Kelane Cheng. She had half the plane to herself, in what amounted to an intensive care unit with a team of six doctors and specialty nurses in charge. Finding her still alert, they had added to her medication soon after she was brought aboard. IVs of Brevia, an anesthetic, and succinylcholine to further relax her. She was, according to her activity readout, in a twilight state, although her eyes, mere slits, never closed completely. Portia Darkfeather had been assured that there was no way the Avatar could become a problem.

Darkfeather ate scrambled eggs and Pop Tarts for breakfast, followed by strong coffee. Then she took a needed nap, reviewing in her only dream the back of Frank Romanzo's head flying apart. Her response was to take Zephyr's throat in her hands until Zephyr was on her knees, her face white and puffy like a huge blister with a tiny red blood spot of mouth, eyes like those of undersea life fragile as apparitions....

She woke up with dawn light in her eyes, feeling like hammered shit, and went to the bathroom. Then to Kelane Cheng's quarters in the aft section of the huge plane.

Low lights, the occasional pulse of vital signs monitors. Cheng was restrained on the white hospital bed, as if there could be a possibility of a physical struggle. White patches on her forehead and body, wires, nasal cannula, drip lines. Cheng's heart was beating very slowly. Darkfeather, while not an adept, could lower her own rate to six beats a minute. The Avatar could get by on eight beats an hour.

Darkfeather sat beside Cheng. Her presence provoked no movement or sign of recognition.

"Kelane?"

Cheng answered after a time lag, as if Darkfeather's voice were circling the moon to get to her.

Yes? Darkfeather couldn't be sure she had actually spoken, but the response was clear in her mind.

"I want to apologize for—you know. She shouldn't have done that. Shot Romanzo. There was no call. I don't know what gets into Ro—into Zephyr, sometimes."

Cheng's lips moved, but again Darkfeather had the sensation of mind-to-mind communication.

What is your name?

"Portia Darkfeather."

How did you find us? Were we betrayed?

"By someone in your group?" What the hell, Darkfeather thought, let's find out what a good little audile she is.
No. Listen, we've got some pretty fair people ourselves. You've heard of Psi Faculty? What we call a proprietary in our—

No time lag in comprehension now, which concerned Darkfeather.

I know all about them.

Darkfeather spoke aloud, easing the strain on herself. Thought communication was hard work. "Affiliated with major universities. Nobel Prize winners on staff. Enough funding makes any area of academic inquiry respectable. When the Cold War ended, we also picked up some of the Russians who were cutting edge in psi research."

Do they realize who—and what—they are actually working for?

"Why make us out to be the bad guys, Key? The rest of the fucking world hates the good old U.S., no need to wonder why. Maybe it's our come-to-Jesus statesmanship. There's always been and always will be another war. We're simply defending our country with the best means at our disposal." She added, sub-vocally,
Like the Avatar
.

There was a slight change of weather in the twilight pall of Cheng's face.
Why do you treat me like this? I am American born. I went to Harvard. My stepfather owns a Buick dealership in Paso Robles.

"United Way. Rotarian. Registered Dem. Put on some weight since I saw him last. But I like a man with girth."