The Traveler (25 page)

"We've found a cooperative Traveler."

And you're using him?"

Richardson nodded.

"I can't believe it. Why are the Brethren doing this?"

Richardson picked up the folder and the petri dish. "This is a wonderful discovery, Dr. Lundquist. I just want you to know that."

"I'm not looking for compliments.
Just an explanation.
Why have the Brethren changed their strategy?"

Boone approached the table and spoke with a soft voice, "Is that what we came for, Doctor?"

"I think so."

"We're not coming back. You better be sure."

"This is all we need. Listen, I don't want anything negative happening to Dr. Lundquist."

"Of course, Doctor. I understand how you feel. He's not a criminal like Pius Romero." Boone placed a gentle hand on Richardson's shoulder and guided him to the doorway. "Go back to the car and wait. I need to explain our security concerns to Dr. Lundquist It won't take long."

Richardson stumbled down the staircase, passed through the kitchen, and went out the back door. A blast of cold air made his eyes tear up as if he was crying. As he stood on the porch he felt so weary that he wanted to lie down and curl up in a ball. His life had changed forever, but his body still pumped blood, digested food, and took in oxygen. He wasn't a scientist anymore, writing papers and dreaming of the Nobel Prize. Somehow he had become smaller, almost insignificant, a tiny piece of a complex mechanism.

Still holding the petri dish, Richardson shuffled down the driveway. Apparently Boone's conversation with Dr. Lundquist didn't take very long. He caught up with the neurologist before he reached the car.

"Is everything all right?" Richardson asked.

"Of course," Boone said. "I knew there wouldn't be a problem. Sometimes it's best to be clear and direct. No extra words. No false diplomacy. I expressed myself firmly and got a positive response."

Boone opened the door to the car and made a mocking bow like an insolent chauffeur. "You must be tired, Dr. Richardson. It's been a long night. Let me take you back to the research center."

Hollis drove past Michael Corrigan's apartment complex at nine o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the
afternoon,
and seven o'clock in the evening. He looked for Tabula mercenaries sitting in parked cars and on park benches, men pretending to be power company employees or city workers. After each drive-by, he would park in front of a beauty salon and write down everything he had seen.
Old lady pushing a shopping cart.
Man with a beard loading a child's car seat.
When he came back five hours later, he compared his notes and saw no similarities. That only meant that the Tabula weren't waiting outside the building. Perhaps they were sitting in the apartment across the hall from Michael's apartment.

He thought up a plan after teaching his evening capoeira class. The next day, he put on a blue cotton jumpsuit and picked up the mop and the bucket on wheels that he used when he was washing the floor of his school. Michael's apartment complex occupied an entire city block on

near Barrington. There were three skyscrapers, an attached four-level parking structure, and a large inner courtyard with a pool and tennis courts.

Be deliberate, Hollis thought. You don't want to fight the Tabula, just play with their minds. He parked his car two blocks away from the entrance, filled the bucket on wheels with soapy water from two plastic jugs, set the mop into the water, and began to push everything up the sidewalk. As he approached the entrance, he tried to think like a janitor—play that role.

Two old ladies were leaving the building when he arrived. "Just cleaned the sidewalk," he told them. "Now somebody messed up one of the hallways."

"People need to learn some manners," one of the women said. Her friend held the door open so that Hollis could push the bucket inside the foyer.

Hollis nodded and smiled as the old ladies walked away. He waited for a few seconds,
then
went over to the elevators. When the next elevator arrived, he rode alone up to the eighth floor. Michael Corrigan's apartment was at the end of the hallway.

If the Tabula were hiding in the opposite apartment, watching him through the security peephole, then he would have to start lying right away. Mr. Corrigan pays me to clean up his place. Yes, sir. I do it once a week. Is Mr. Corrigan gone? I didn't know he was gone, sir. He hasn't paid me for a month.

Using the key that Gabriel had given him, Hollis unlocked the door and went inside. He was alert, ready to defend
himself
against an attack, but no one appeared. The apartment had a hot, dusty smell. A two-week-old copy of the
Wall Street Journal
was still on the coffee table. Hollis left the bucket and mop near the door and hurried into Michael's bedroom. He found the telephone, pulled out a small tape recorder, and dialed Maggie Resnick's home number. She wasn't home, but Hollis didn't want to talk to her anyway. He was sure that the Tabula were monitoring the phone lines. After Maggie's answering machine came on, Hollis switched on the tape recorder and held it up to the telephone handset.

"Hey, Maggie.
This is Gabe. I'm going to get out of Los Angeles and find someplace to hide. Thanks for everything. Bye."

Hollis hung up the phone, switched off the tape recorder, and quickly left the apartment. He felt tense pushing the bucket down the hallway, but then the elevator arrived and he stepped inside. Okay, he thought. That was easy enough. Don't forget, you're still the janitor.

When the elevator reached the lobby, Hollis pushed the bucket out and nodded to a young couple with a cocker spaniel. The entrance door clicked open and three Tabula mercs hurried into the lobby. They looked like police officers who were doing this for money. One man wore a denim jacket and his two pals were dressed as painters. The painters carried towels and drop cloths that concealed their hands.

Hollis ignored the Tabula as they pushed past him. He was five feet away from the door when an older Latino man pushed open the door that led to the swimming pool area. "Hey, what's going on?" the man asked Hollis.

"Somebody dropped a bottle of cranberry juice on the fifth floor. I just cleaned it up."

"I didn't see that in the morning report."

"It just happened." Hollis was at the door now, almost touching the knob.

"Besides, isn't that Freddy's job? Who are you working for?" "I was just hired by—"

But before Hollis could finish the sentence he sensed movement behind him. And then the hard point of a gun muzzle was pushed against the small of his back.

"He's working for us," said one of the men.

"That's right," said another man. "And he's not done."

The two men dressed as painters stood beside Hollis. They made him turn around and guided him back to the elevator. The man with the denim jacket was talking to the maintenance man, showing him a letter that described some kind of official permission.

"What's going on?" Hollis tried to look surprised and frightened. "Don't talk," whispered the larger man. "Don't say one damn thing at all."

Hollis and the two painters stepped into the elevator. Just before the door closed, Denim Jacket slipped in and punched the but-ton for the eighth floor.

"Who are you?" Denim asked.

"Tom Jackson. I'm the janitor here."

"Don't bullshit us," said the smaller painter. He was the one with the weapon. "That guy out there didn't know who you were." "I just got hired here two days ago."

"What's the name of the company that hired you?" Denim asked.

"It was Mr. Regal."

"I asked you the name of the company."

Hollis shifted slightly so that he was away from the barrel of the gun. "I'm sorry, sir. I'm real sorry. But all I know is that Mr. Regal hired me and I was told to—"

He made a half turn, grabbed the gunman's wrist, and thrust it outward. With his right hand he punched the man in the Adam's apple. The gun went off with a loud cracking sound in the small space and the other painter was shot. He screamed as Hollis whipped around, smashing his elbow into Denim's mouth. Hollis twisted the gunman's arm downward and the Tabula merc dropped the weapon.

Turn.
Attack.
Spin around and punch again. Within a few seconds, all three men were lying on the floor. The door opened. Hollis flipped the red switch to stop the elevator and stepped out. He ran down the hallway, found the fire exit, and ran down the stairs two at a time.

When Michael was growing up on the road he had an automatic response to his mother's wild stories and Gabriel's impractical schemes for making money.
It's time to go to RealityTown,
he told them, which meant that someone in the family had to be objective about their problems. Michael considered himself to be the Mayor of Reality Town—not a pleasant location, perhaps, but at least you knew where you stood.

Living at the research center, he found it difficult to be objective. There was no question that he was a prisoner. Even if he discovered a way to get out of his locked room, the security guards would never let him stroll through the gates and catch a bus to New York City. Perhaps he had lost his freedom—but that fact didn't trouble him.
For the first time in his life people seemed to be giving him the right amount of respect and deference.

Every Tuesday, Michael would join Kennard Nash for drinks and dinner in the oak-paneled office. The general dominated the conversation, explaining the hidden objectives behind what appeared to be random occurrences. One night Nash described the RFID chip hidden in American passports, and showed photographs of a device called a "skimmer" that could read passports from a distance of sixty-five feet. When the new technology was first proposed, a few experts had called for a "contact" passport that had to be pushed through a slot like a credit card, but the Brethren's friends in the White House had insisted on the radio frequency chip.

"Is the information encrypted?" Michael asked.

"Of course not.
That would make it difficult to share the technology with other governments."

"But what if terrorists use the skimmers?"

"It would certainly make their job easier. Let's say a tourist was walking through the marketplace in Cairo. A skimmer could read his passport—find out if he was American and if he had visited Israel. By the time this American reached the end of the street, an assassin could be stepping out of a nearby doorway."

Michael sat for a moment and studied Nash's bland smile. "None of this makes sense. The government says it wants to protect us, but it's doing something that makes us more vulnerable."

General Nash looked as if his favorite nephew had just made an innocent mistake. "Yes, it's unfortunate. But you have to weigh the loss of a few lives against the power given to us by this new technology. This is the future, Michael. No one can stop it. In a few years, it won't just be passports. Everyone will carry a Protective Link device that tracks them all the time."

***

IT WAS DURING one of these weekly conversations that Nash mentioned what had happened to Gabriel. Apparently, Michael's brother had been captured by a fanatical woman who worked for a terrorist group called the Harlequins. She had killed several people before they fled from Los Angeles.

"My staff is going to keep looking," Nash said. "We don't want anyone to harm your brother."

"Let me know when you find him."

Of course."
Nash smeared some cream cheese and caviar onto a cracker and squeezed on a drop of lemon juice. "The reason I'm mentioning this is because the Harlequins might be training Gabriel to become a Traveler. If you both have the ability, there's a possibility that you could meet in another realm. You'll need to ask him the location of his physical body. Once we know that, we can rescue him."

"Forget it," Michael said. "Gabe would only go to another realm if he could ride there on a motorcycle. Maybe the Harlequins will realize that and let him go."

***

ON THE MORNING of the experiment, Michael woke up early and took a shower, wearing a swimming cap so that the silver plates on the top of his skull wouldn't get wet. He pulled on a T-shirt, drawstring pants, and rubber flip-flops. No breakfast this morning. Dr. Richardson didn't think it was a good idea. Michael was sitting on the couch, listening to music, when Lawrence knocked softly on the door and entered the room. "The research team is ready," he said. "It's time."

"And what if I decide not to do it?"

Lawrence looked startled. "That's your choice, Michael. Obviously the Brethren wouldn't be pleased by this decision. I'd have to call General Nash and—"

"Relax. I haven't changed my mind."

He pulled a knit wool cap over his shaved head and followed Lawrence out into the hallway. Two security men were there wearing their usual black neckties and navy blue blazers. They formed a sort of honor guard—one man in front, the other behind. The little group passed through a locked door to the courtyard.

Michael was surprised to see that everyone involved in the Crossover Project—secretaries, chemists, and computer programmers—had come out to watch him enter the Tomb. Although most of the staff didn't understand the true nature of the Crossover Project, they had been told that it would help protect America from its enemies and that Michael was an important part of the plan.

He nodded slightly, like an athlete acknowledging the crowd, and sauntered across the courtyard to the Tomb. All these buildings had been constructed and all these people had been assembled for this moment. Bet it cost a lot of money, he thought. Bet it cost millions. Michael had always felt that he was special, destined for greatness, and now he was being treated like a movie star in a high-budget film that had only one role, a single face on the screen. If he really could travel to another realm, then they should give him their respect. It wasn't luck that he was here. It was his birthright.

***

A STEEL DOOR slid open and they entered a vast, shadowy room. A glass-enclosed gallery, about twenty feet above the smooth concrete floor, ran around all four walls. Light from control panels and computer monitors glowed inside the gallery and Michael saw that several technicians were looking down at him. The air was cold and dry and he could hear a faint humming sound.

A steel surgical table with a small pillow for his head was in the middle of the room. Dr. Richardson stood near the table. The nurse and Dr. Lau were checking the monitoring equipment and the contents of a steel rack that held test tubes filled with different colored liquids. Eight wires connected to silver-colored electrode plates lay beside the little white pillow. The separate wires were spliced together into a thick black cable that slithered off the table and disappeared into the floor.

"You okay?" Lawrence asked.

"So far."

Lawrence lightly touched Michael's arm and remained near the door with the two security men. They were acting like he was going to run out of the building, jump over the wall, and hide in the forest. Michael walked to the center of the Tomb, pulled off his knit cap, and handed it to the nurse. Wearing only a T-shirt and the drawstring pants, he lay faceup on the table. The room was cold, but he felt ready for anything, like an athlete about to play an important game.

Richardson leaned over him and taped the eight sensor wires to the eight electrode plates on his skull. Now his brain was directly connected to the quantum computer, and the technicians up in the gallery could monitor his neurological activity. Richardson looked nervous, and Michael wished that the doctor's face was concealed with a surgical mask.
To hell with him.
It wasn't his brain that was skewered with little copper wires. It's my life, thought Michael.
My risk.

"Good luck," Richardson said.

"Forget luck. Let's just do it and see what happens."

Richardson nodded and slipped on a radio headset so he could talk to the technicians in the gallery. He was responsible for Michael's brain while Dr. Lau and the nurse were in charge of the rest of the body. They taped sensors to his chest and neck so they could track his vital signs. The nurse swabbed topical anesthetic on his arm, then slipped an intravenous needle through his skin. The needle was attached to a plastic tube and a saline solution began to drip into his veins.

"Are you getting a wave range?" Richardson whispered into the microphone. "Good. Yes. That's very good."

"We need a baseline to start out," he told Michael. "So we're going to give the brain different kinds of stimuli.
Nothing to think about here.
You'll just react."

The nurse went to the steel cabinet and came back with several test tubes. The first batch contained tastes: salty, sour, bitter, sweet. Then different smells: rose, vanilla, and something that reminded Michael of burned rubber. Richardson kept murmuring into the headset as he took a special flashlight and aimed colored lights at Michael's eyes. They played sounds at various volumes and touched his face with a feather, a block of wood, and a rough piece of steel. Satisfied with the sensory data, Richardson asked Michael to count backward, add numbers, and describe the dinner served to him last night. Then they went into deep memory and Michael had to tell them about the first time he saw the ocean and the first time he saw a naked woman. Did you have your own room when you were a teenager? What did it look like? Describe the furniture and the posters on the wall.

Finally Richardson stopped asking him questions and the nurse squirted some water into his mouth. "Okay," Richardson told the technicians. "I think we're ready."

The nurse reached into the cabinet and took out an IV bag filled with a diluted mixture of the drug they called 3B3. Kennard Nash had called Michael to talk about the drug. He explained that 3B3 was a special bacterium developed in Switzerland by a top scientific team. The drug was very expensive and difficult to manufacture, but the toxins created from the bacterium seemed to increase neural energy. As the nurse raised the bag higher, the viscous turquoise-blue liquid sloshed around in the IV bag.

She took away the neutral saline solution, attached the IV bag, and a thread of 3B3 raced down the plastic tube to the needle in his arm. Richardson and Dr. Lau stared at him as if he were going to float off into another dimension.

"How do you feel?" Richardson asked.

"Normal.
How long does it take for this stuff to kick in?" "We don't know."

"Heart rate slightly elevated," Dr. Lau informed them. "Respiration unchanged."

Trying not to show his disappointment, Michael gazed at the ceiling for a few minutes,
then
closed his eyes. Maybe he wasn't really a Traveler, or perhaps the new drug didn't work. All this effort and money had led to failure.

"Michael?"

He opened his eyes. Richardson was staring at him. The room was still cool, but there were beads of sweat on the doctor's forehead. "Start counting backward from one hundred."

"We already did that."

"They want to return to a neurological baseline."

"Forget it. This isn't going to ..."

Michael moved his left arm and saw something extraordinary. A hand and wrist composed of little points of light emerged from his flesh hand like a ghost pushing through a locked cabinet. Lifeless, his flesh hand flopped back down onto the table while the ghost hand remained.

He knew instantly that this thing—this apparition—had always been part of him, inside his body. The ghost hand reminded him of the simple drawings made of constellations like the Twins or the Archer. His hand was composed of tiny stars that were connected by thin, almost imperceptible lines of light. He couldn't move this ghost hand like the rest of the body. If he thought—move thumb, clench fingers—nothing happened. He had to think of what he wanted the hand to do in the future and, after a brief interval, it responded to his vision. It was tricky. Everything operated with a slight delay, like moving your body underwater.

"What do you think?" he asked Richardson.

"Start counting backward please."

"What do you think of my hand? Can't you see what's going on?"

Richardson shook his head. "Both of your hands are lying on the examination table. Can you describe what you see?"

Michael was finding it difficult to talk. It wasn't just moving his lips and tongue; it was the awkward, laborious effort to conceptualize ideas and come up with words for them. The mind was faster than words.
Much faster.

"I—think—that . . ." He paused for what felt like a long time. "This is not a hallucination."

"Describe, please."

"This was always inside me."

"Describe what you are seeing, Michael."

"You—are—blind."

Michael's annoyance grew stronger, twisting into anger, and he pushed with his forearms to sit up on the table. He felt as if he were cracking his way out of something old and brittle, a capsule of yellowed glass. Then he realized that the upper part of his ghost body was vertical while his flesh body remained behind. Why couldn't they see this? It was all very clear. But Richardson continued to stare at the body on the table as if it was an equation that would suddenly produce its own answer.

"All vital signs have stopped," Lau said. "He's dead or—" "What are you talking about?" Richardson snapped.

"No. There's a heartbeat.
A single heartbeat.
And his lungs are moving. He's in some kind of dormant state, like someone who's been buried beneath the snow." Lau studied the monitor screen. "Slow. Everything is very slow. But he's still alive."

Richardson leaned down so his lips were only a few inches away from Michael's left ear. "Can you hear me, Michael? Can
you .
.

And the human voice was so difficult to listen to—so attached to regret and weakness and fear—that Michael ripped the rest of his ghost body from his flesh and floated above them. He felt awkward in this position, like a child learning to swim.
Floating up.
Floating down.
He watched the world, but was detached from its nervous commotion.

Although he couldn't see anything visible, he felt as if there were a small black opening in the floor of the room, like a drain at the bottom of a swimming pool. It was pulling him downward with a gentle force. No. Stay away. He could resist it and keep back if he wanted to. But what was there? Was this part of becoming a Traveler?