Tintagel (27 page)

"A woman," Christy added.

That's right. I never thought about it until now, but it just seem too coincidental for Matkin and Eventide to die in the same way, especially given their real-world associations."

Charlie said, "But they didn't die in the same way. At least, not according to your reports."

Yes, they did, because the same individual was present."

"A dreamling?"

"That's enough to go on." He looked up at Charlie. "Did you ever see any of her movies?"

"Whose movies?"

"Ellie Estevan's."

Once, some time ago. Years ago, in fact."

"Do you remember her eyes? What they looked like? Or better yet, remember Shaughnessy's party?"

Charlie looked at him curiously. Lanier turned back to the waiting console. He punched in a code for open access to insurance records. Insurance records and credit files would still be open to all of the proper sources. Since Lanier had the facilities for such data retrieval—being a Stalker—he had the proper codes.

He punched a cross-reference to Ellie Estevan.

"There." He pointed as the lines began drawing themselves out across the screen.

"Ellie Estevan," Katie read for them, her hand on the back of Lanier's chair. "Married to Michael Estevan." The screen read off the dates of the marriage and then the date of the divorce a year later.

"No." Lanier lifted a finger to the screen. "This is what I'm after."

Katie Babcock read, "Ellie Estevan, born Elizabeth Jinn, New York City." The date of birth was three years after Lanier's own birth date.

"I don't understand," Katie began. "What's important about that?"

Lanier said, "Well, she may have been born in New York, but look where her father was born."

The cross-reference to Elizabeth Jinn Estevan's father read, "Durango, Colorado."

Lanier took a deep breath.

"When Ellie was first reported vanished back during the summer, I read her portfolio, saw where she was born and thought nothing about it. But it's not Ellie who's important, it's her parents."

"Oh, Fran," Christy suddenly said. "She's a Stalker."

Everything came back to him. The girl leaving Perry Eventide wounded beside the drained creek in the disintegrating cylindrical world. The girl fleeing the farmhouse on the prairie that the orange spacecraft consumed. He should have known. But there was no way that he could have.

Lanier was silent.
Those eyes
. Burton Shaughnessy even noticed the similarity. He felt so commonly stupid not to have guessed.

"Yes," he whispered. "Her parents lived in the area and would've been naturally exposed to the same chemical. The cases got fewer and fewer as the years went by, but," he nodded his head, his heart racing, "yes, she was a Stalker."

He clenched his fists, staring at the words on the mute console.

"I still don't understand," Katie told him.

Lanier turned from the console and walked through the hallway, into the living room, nearly in a daze.

He spoke. "Randell owns White Condor Studios, if not outright, then indirectly. He nevertheless runs it through his influence. Randell also has enemies, both political and financial. It seems so simple now."

Charlie sadly added everything together. "Randell," he began, "through the Leander Interphase, built Ellie Estevan's career, made her into an international star, far beyond anything she could've amounted to on her own."

"He
owned
her," Lanier said not looking at them.

Charlie went on. "Even though she would've had an independent contract, such was his influence that she couldn't refuse. She could get more money and better parts through White Condor and the Interphase."

Then Katie said, "And he had her escort his enemies…"

"And stalked them when they went under since she was immune," Lanier concluded.

There's the balance
, he realized.
For every good force, there is an opposite and equal badforce
. In this world and all of the others, Fudd-Smith's Law was hard at work.

"So she had to do it," he told them. "It wasn't her nature, but she had to do it. Her career was too far along. And that's what killed her."

What?" Katie was confused.

"Just before you went under, Ellie Estevan herself vanished. I went in after her, and she died. I failed to rescue her."

"That voice you said …" Christy began.

"Randell," Lanier affirmed. "Or merely her own conscience acting. Her own guilty conscience."

Lanier dropped heavily onto the couch. He shut his eyes, hoping that the world itself would vanish, go away and leave him alone.

Just then, one of the Shawnee walked out into the living room from where Lanier had left them sleeping. He was rubbing the small needle wounds in his neck and on his chest.

He startled everyone. Everyone but Lanier. The Indian leaned in the doorway, livid in the red warpaint on his torso.

"Ow," he said expressively, blinking and staggering.

Behind him, the other Shawnee, quite passive now, appeared. Katie stepped back, hiding behind Charlie. The nightmare world was still too close for her.

Christy walked over to the first Shawnee. "Here," she said comfortingly. "Let me help you."

"Thanks," the Indian said politely.

The other Shawnee shook his head as if trying to dislodge the quagmire that the drug induced.

"Please sit down," Christy offered the two men.

The first Indian was a tall, very thin man, and very tanned, though it was hard to tell through the makeup and paint. The other was not nearly so tall, and he wore less paint. Their narrow manes of hair made them look very frightening to everyone in the room.

Christy poured coffee and indicated the tray of sandwiches.

"Oh, Christ," the first one said, digging in. "Thanks, thanks …"

Lanier, as if in a trance, leaned over, looking quizzically at each of them, thinking.

The second Indian asked, "Where are we?"

"Near Missoula, Montana," Lanier informed him. "I'm Francis Lanier, a Stalker. These are my friends," and he indicated Christy, who stood before them, and Charlie, who stood off to one side. "And this," Lanier indicated Katie Babcock, "is the President of the United States, whom I'm sure you recognize." There was a touch of irony in his voice. But the men missed it.

They stopped wolfing down the sandwiches, somewhat shocked by Lanier's assertion. But beneath the grime and smoke stains, they could see that Francis Lanier was right. This was, indeed, Ms. Katie Babcock.

They seemed to recollect immediately where they had just come from.

"Were you in the tower?" the second Shawnee asked. He wore a jaunty blue feather hanging from his right ear.

"Yes, I was," she told them. "You were trying to kill me."

They seemed confused. They looked at each other.

"It's …it's so strange," the first man started. "It was like a dream. We were just fighting. We had to …" He looked at his companion. Only their Mohawk haircuts made him look like Indians. Their mannerisms spoke otherwise.

"I didn't even know you," the second Indian said to the first. "I thought I was the only one there."

"There are three more asleep in the other room, in case you didn't see them," Lanier informed the two men.

"What are your names?" Christy asked.

"I'm Tom Dunlap," the first Indian said, now no longer an Indian. "Montana did you say? I'm from Cincinnati."

The other looked at them almost as if they were all crazy. "I'm Wallace Frazier. Jesus Christ, is this for real? I'm supposed to be in Houston." And they could now discern a slight east Texas drawl.

Like the millions of voices Lanier frequently heard chattering between the planes of existence, a million thoughts raced through his mind.
Ellie Estevan. Albertson Randell. The Leander Interphase
.

Then he thought of the astronomer who refused to return to the world he came from.
You're right, doctor
, he suddenly realized.
So right
…

"What
is
all of this?" Wallace Frazier, the man from Houston, asked.

"This," Lanier said to them, "is one of the best things that could have ever happened to us."

Chapter Fourteen

Fanfare for the Common Man

Aaron Copland

In Los Angeles, most of the San Fernando Valley was in flames.

Salvos from the tightly organized urban guerrillas went off sporadically as National Guard troops flew over in helicopters trying to cordon off the pockets of civil unrest. When they weren't doing that, they were either dropping in food and supplies to the millions of trapped citizens or trying to effect an evacuation toward the Mojave Desert. The fire and smoke and smog filled the valley with a fetid bubble of amber light.

No law was in existence, even martial law. The state government in Sacramento was helpless in maintaining any kind of order. When the Mexican nationals flooded in to help Draco scour out the barrios of enraged chicanos, there was nothing that the Governor could do to stop them. Phone lines were cut. Those that remained were effectively scrambled. Radio was the only reliable form of communication left. And with the government in Washington in its own state of confusion, the local citizens wondered whom they were fighting for, or against. No one had any idea when the fighting would stop, for it seemed to be going on continuously, with no end near.

The security guard at White Condor Studios didn't care one way or another. Hyped up on Baktropol-9, he listened to the pirate radio station play its subversive music. It was classical music, but he didn't mind. It sounded rather pleasant, in fact.
Copland
…

Wearing his oxygen-assisted filter-mask, the security guard slowly paced the cement steps of the processing plant that still, in all the civil disorder, functioned. It ran twenty-four hours of the day, every day of the year.

He looked up. It was common to see the crimson running lights of the attack helicopters of the Army National Guard flash overhead, moving off behind the hills into the valley below, ferrying the reinforcements and equipment. All citizens were off the streets by sundown, and the choppers made him think back to the African War: gunfire in the streets, mortar explosions blossoming suddenly in the avenues, rockets launched by renegade urban freedom fighters. Chaos was everywhere.

Here, though, he knew he was safe. The plant was remote, innocuous, and impenetrable. Who would want to lay siege to a fortresslike brick and stone building? He thought that being a cop was much better than being on active duty in the Guard, particularly because of the fracas below in the hills.

It was almost like watching a war movie. The tiny radio and wafer playback dangled by its black cord from a hook inside the glass booth by the door. Listening to the music, he watched his city burn. It was either under attack by its own citizens or being besieged by an overly equipped and poorly organized National Guard.
The bombs bursting. The rockets' red glare
…

He shuddered, relieved knowing that in his own neighborhood life was still somewhat tranquil. And tomorrow was his day off. He made a mental note to catch Senator Randell's emergency State of the Nation speech tomorrow morning. There had been rumors circulating of some severe changes in Washington. There were rumors of a new President; rumors that Katie Babcock was missing, or assassinated, or that she had resigned. There was talk of suicide in high places. No one knew for certain, but everything was to be answered tomorrow by senator Albertson Randen in a press conference that was to be broadcast worldwide.

He knew that something was up. But he didn't know what. No one did.

Lost in his thoughts, the lone security guard stood in a cone of diffused light before the only entrance to the film processing plant. He was thinking of the trucks that would be coming later that night for the latest prints of the movies, and he didn't notice the shadowed form of a man approach him from the side of the building. He hadn't seen anyone in hours, and his attention had lapsed as the night wore on.

The guard stepped out along the large cement steps to stretch himself just in time to see a fire engine scream down the street, waving its spectacular red and yellow lights in every direction.

The tall, shadowy form came up behind the guard just as the fire trucks passed by.

"One move, clown, and you're dead," the shadow said firmly through the filter of his filter-mask.

The guard jerked around to see a man—face concealed by a wide-brimmed slouch hat and filter-mask—who wore a long black coat that dropped all the way to his ankles. He held a vicious-looking machine pistol in his gloved hand.

"Just stay where you are," Lanier told the guard.

Lanier stepped quickly to the light, then tugged the security guard over to the glass booth, out of the reach of the light. Lanier yanked out the man's automatic and thrust him against the wall. He snapped down the radio from its perch and crushed it under his boot heel.

"What the hell is this?" The guard didn't know at first whether to giggle or to start shaking with terror. This man, he felt, whoever he was, wasn't one of those damn chicanos.
Some stupid punk, probably
.

The guard stared at him through the lenses of his filter-mask.

Lanier touched his right ear with a finger and a thumb. He spoke. "I got him. Come on down."

"What's going on? Who are you? You'll never …"

The guard felt foolish asking him questions. He was the one who should be providing the answers, with his gun. But the intruder had removed that possibility. A
robbery
? The guard knew that robberies were common in the film industry, particularly for its industrial secrets. That's why the security was so tight.
But
, he thought,
he'll never get through the front door
.…

Lanier was strangely easy with the guard.

"Just stay out of sight," he told the man, "and no one will hurt you." Lanier was smiling mischievously behind the mouthpiece of his filter-mask. His goggled eyes made him resemble a creature out of Hell itself. The guard began quaking.