The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (13 page)

Marc straightened, bracing himself with one hand on the booth bench. “No, thanks.” He put a horrible french fry into his mouth and chewed, looked away from the pair and at nothing.

“I don’t mean to disturb you,” Marc heard Ray say. “We’re…well, Mister Teslowski, I guess you could say the boy and I are fans. Wanted to say thanks.”

Marc put his focus back on them with a tinge of difficulty.

“Thanks?”

“Yes, sir.” Ray gestured at the empty bench across the table from Marc. “You mind?”

Marc squinted at them. “Whatever.”

Ray slid in, resting his cowboy hat on the booth next to him. Arby sat on the edge. Under the table, Marc shifted his legs to avoid those of his guests.

“Appreciate it,” Ray said. He looked at Arby. “Go fetch us some beers, kiddo.” He turned to Marc. “What’re you drinking? Miller?” Marc nodded, and Arby went for the bar.

Marc looked at the man across the booth. Ray Greene looked to be a little older than Marc, maybe in his early fifties. His face was deeply tanned and on its way to weathered. His swept-back hair was mostly pepper, headed for salt. He wore a red and black flannel shirt with a bolo tie with a turquoise and steel steer’s head at the collar.

“How’d you know I was here?”

Ray looked apologetic. “Local news mentioned what happened.”

Marc grimaced.

“Don’t misunderstand,” Ray said quickly. “We don’t care what the news says. I got a boy.” He looked over to where Arby was carefully counting money to pay for the three drinks and inclined his head tolerantly. “I know I’d do just about whatever needs doing to keep him safe. So we…I have a great respect for what you did today.”

Marc snorted. “Well, Ray, it didn’t do a hell of a lot, did it?”

Ray shrugged. “Got my attention. Probably some other folks’, too.”

Arby returned with the three steins of beer just barely held in his two hands. Ray took one and put it down in front of Marc. Arby set the other two down and slid back into the booth.

“Damn near spilled Mister Teslowski’s drink,” Ray said to his son. “That wouldn’t have done nobody any good, boy. We’d be done before we started, you might say. Have a care.”

“Yessir.” Arby kept his eyes low and deferential. Marc thought that said something about Ray’s skills as a father, something Marc approved of.

“Thanks,” he said to both of them. He lifted his stein.

“Hold on.” Ray held up his own glass. Arby did the same. Ray lifted his a little higher. “To…
Homo sapiens
. And brave deeds.” He nodded to Marc.

Sounded a little formal and weird, but, hell, Marc wasn’t paying for the drinks anymore and was all out of give-a-damn. He clinked his stein against the other two and drank.

Ray smacked his lips. “That’s been my go-to toast these days. It’s never been more appropriate than right here and now, though.”

Marc wasn’t an idiot. He knew this guy was flattering him. He’d seen a lot of this when the college recruiters courted him his senior year of high school. But after the day he’d had, he didn’t care what kind of bullshit the guy was shoveling. Right now, it smelled just fine.

So he played his part.

“I don’t know about brave deeds. I was just…fed up. You know?”

“You bet I do,” Ray said. “The way I see it: that’s how most things are. We get tired of it; everything else is all played out…what’s left? Sometimes…you just have to take it into your own hands.”

“That’s…yeah. That’s right.”

“I get it.” Ray sipped at his beer. He put a finger on the low stack of extra napkins next to Marc’s plate. “You mind?”

Marc dipped his head. Ray took a napkin and dabbed at his mouth.

“I get it,” he said again. “And here’s what else: it doesn’t even matter if you succeed.”

Marc remembered his humiliation at the hands of the Visitors Center guards. “I don’t know about that.”

Ray lowered his eyes, pursed his lips, and shook his head. “No, sir. It doesn’t matter. Because even in failure, we can inspire others to greatness. To…risk, even.”

Marc laughed. “What’re you, a preacher?”

Ray’s eyebrows arched. He smiled and looked at Arby, whose lips curled slightly. Ray looked back at Marc.

“Oh, hell… no,” he laughed, “no, I’m no preacher. I do a little writing, a little organizing. I help bring…I guess you could say I help bring like-minded folks together.”

“They pay you for that?” Marc smelled a pitch coming. What the hell. He didn’t have anything else going on. They could keep plying him with compliments and beer. He’d return the favor by humoring them until he closed the place down. Might as well.

Ray laughed again. “Well. Sometimes. I have a little put away.” His face leveled out. “My wife passed a couple of years ago, so there’s the insurance.”

“Sorry.”

“Obliged,” Ray said. “Anyway, I don’t do it for the money. Some things are more important.”

Marc tipped a mouthful of beer down his throat. “Gotta have money to do the important stuff, though, right?” He thought of the lawyers and all the money he’d wasted on important things.

Ray grinned. “Sometimes it’s enough to surround yourself with the right people. Hell, sometimes that’s better than a boatload of money.”

Marc waited.

Ray’s grin widened a little in acknowledgment. “Yeah, okay. You’re waiting for the pitch. You’re not an idiot.”

“You’re buying, Ray, so I can be polite.”

Ray laughed and slapped the edge of the table. “So I am. So I am. And I appreciate it.” He leaned forward a little. “Look, Marc—you all right with my calling you Marc?”

Marc sat back and waved his hand at the drinks Ray had bought. “Sure.”

Ray laughed again. “Right. Look, Marc, I wish I’d known you were coming to Missoula. I have resources. We could have helped you some.”

This wasn’t what he’d expected. “How?”

“Well, for one thing, had I known, you never would have paid for no rental car. You sure as hell wouldn’t be staying in no hotel. I wouldn’t have it.”

Marc shrugged. “How would that have made anything turn out different today?”

“It’s all about appearances, Marc. All about it. That’s the thing. I told you—and I mean it—that we respect what you tried to do today. But, I’ve got to be honest with you, there’s no way it would have turned out any different so long as it’s just you headed up there and just, well, just telling those Sovereigns you want in.” He smiled sympathetically. “One doesn’t just walk into the Donner Institute.”

Marc figured he better drink up. This was getting old.

“You think you coulda got me in?”

Ray shrugged. “I think we could have worked up a little attention beforehand. Talked to KPAX and KGVO ahead of time—we have some sympathetic folks over there—so if there was going to be any news coverage, we could have a little influence in that regard. You follow?”

Marc shook his head. “You want me to hire you as a…what, a publicist or something?”

Ray laughed again. Even Arby chuckled, looking at the table.

“Oh, hell, Marc. That’s not it. I’m telling you: we want to help you.”

“Sorry, Ray,” Marc didn’t feel at all sorry. “I’ve had a lot of people say they wanna help. Usually ends up with a hand on my wallet.”

“I told you. I don’t need any money.” Ray seemed a little frustrated. That was fine with Marc. “Look. I’ve got ‘pert near seventy acres. A nice house. A little business—but here’s the thing, Marc: it’s not just a business. It’s a mission. And it’s your mission, too.”

“All I give a shit about is getting my kid back where he belongs.”

“Sure. Sure. But I know it doesn’t stop there for you. I know it. This whole thing—doesn’t it offend you?”

“What whole thing?”

“The Sovereigns, Marc.” Ray sighed. “The damn Sovereigns. What else?”

“Fuck ‘em.”

Ray shook his head slowly. “It’s not as simple as that, though, is it? They’ve set themselves up just a few miles from my land in their…compound.” He sneered. “Do you know their Institute, that it’s on the site of the old Garnet Ghost Town? Damn, I used to go there all the time as a kid, thinking about how things used to be, all the miners and saloons and gunfighters and whatnot.

“Now…now it’s ground zero for those…I don’t know what they are.”

Arby spoke up. “Ain’t nobody does.”

Ray nudged his son’s shoulder. “Nobody does. Damn right. And yet.”

“What?” Marc said.

“Hell. A year ago, where were they? Before Donner? Where’d they all come from?”

Marc thought about it. “Don’t they say they were always around? That the government knew…?”

“Who says that? The Sovereigns?” Ray snorted. “I’m not prepared to take them at their word, are you?”

Marc shook his head.

“No one knows who they are, what they are, for the love of Pete…or where they came from. And here we are as a country, in bed with them.”

“All right, fine.” Marc said. “It’s shitty. Sure.”

“And they’ve set up their base of operations in my back yard, which, if you’ll give pardon, pisses me off, Marc.”

“Sure.”

“And,” Ray said. “They’ve got your son.”

“Yes they do.”

Ray nodded slowly. “You’re someone I’ve wanted to meet for some time, Marc. I was thinking of writing you, but I figured, hell, this guy probably gets bombarded by all kinds of crap. He won’t pay any attention to me or mine.”

Marc smiled. “You were right.”

Ray raised his stein casually. “Thought so. So when I heard you were here…I had to meet you and introduce myself. Because I think we can help each other, Marc.”

Marc scowled, less irritated by Ray and Arby and more simply frustrated. “I don’t see how, Ray. Sorry.”

Ray looked at Marc. He studied his beer. He looked over at the old men at the bar.

“I know.” He looked back at Marc. “Look. Let me extend this to you. Call it a thank-you for being enough of a man to do what you did today, which, even though I get that you don’t see it like this right now, I take as no less than your taking a stand for normal human beings.”

He smiled a little. Marc thought maybe Ray had heard his own voice and thought it sounded a little ranty.

“Let us put you up tonight, out at the ranch. Sleep in a proper bed. We’ve got a couple of sweet little guest rooms, all homey, set up just like my wife left ‘em, only we’ve, you know, kept them clean and all.

“Have a proper breakfast with us. We can talk some more. I’ll show you around. And if you want, I’ll drive you back down to the airport myself, when the time comes.”

Marc looked at Ray’s open face.

“What the hell,” he said, finishing his beer. “Figure I can’t say no to the help.”

Ray beamed. “I consider it a privilege, Marc. A real treat.” He nudged Arby.

“Go settle up Mister Teslowski’s bill, kiddo.”

Automatically, Marc started to protest. Ray cut him off.

“I won’t hear it. From here on out, we’re taking care of you.”

Arby slid off the booth and ambled over to where the waitress hovered near the bar. Marc and Ray pulled themselves out and shook hands.

Byron Teslowski – Three

The first coherent thought in Byron’s head when he was jarred out of a very sound sleep by a grating, repetitive, achingly loud claxon was “fire drill.”

He pulled on his jeans and put on shoes, skipping socks to save time in case this was the real thing. How would his adaptive powers handle extreme heat or, worse, actual fire?

Blearily, he decided that was something he wasn’t going to suggest to Doc Mazmanian, at least not where Croy might hear. It was stressful enough learning how to be bulletproof.

He had been sleeping in a T-shirt. He threw his old varsity jacket over that. It was two-thirty in the morning; it would be cold outside.

Byron’s small apartment—as an individual, he was assigned a studio—was on the third floor. After checking the door with the palm of his hand and not feeling any heat, he opened it and went into the corridor. A few residents were doing the same.

Bethlehem Franklin, a nice older lady who could sometimes tell the future, smiled at him as he joined the queue down the stairs.

“Fire drill?”

She nodded. “Must be.”

He grinned at her. “Are you…sure?”

She tapped him on the arm with a small, veiny hand. “Be polite. I didn’t have one of my spells, so no, I’m not sure. But what are the odds?”

“Guess so.”

They descended to the ground floor and went out onto the commons. The grounds of the Institute looked strange at this late hour, like the world wasn’t accustomed to having so many people around at once.

Residents, most dressed in sleep clothes or haphazard combinations of jackets and sweatpants, milled in small groups and waited for word. It was just like high school, Byron thought, except that most of the people hanging out were adults and a few of them smoked cigarettes.

Byron tried to remember the last time he’d been in an actual fire drill. Probably 1984. He didn’t think Abbeque Valley High had done one after the Christmas break.

Standing a few feet away from an old lady who had seen the death of her daughter miles away and seconds before it happened, and a few more feet from a woman who could go unnoticed in a crowd unless she wanted you to notice her, and so many other Sovereigns and the regular humans who worked alongside them, Byron felt heavy. High school seemed like forever ago.

The loudspeakers set on poles around the Institute grounds crackled.

“Evening, everyone.” Byron couldn’t place the voice, especially through the crackle of the speaker. “Sorry for waking you, but safety first. Everything’s fine now. You can go back to your homes.”

Byron thought it was weird the Institute called their little apartments “homes.” He didn’t feel like he was home.

That didn’t mean he
wanted
to go home, though. He just didn’t know how long it would be before he stopped feeling like he was getting away with something.

He sighed. His breath flowed like white smoke.

The other weird thing: they didn’t call this a drill. Somewhere in the living center, something caught on fire.

“Huh,” he said to himself.

Ms. Franklin, who was walking back to the building, turned and looked at Byron over her shoulder. “You coming, kiddo?”