Trinity's Child (45 page)

The awesomeness of the dawn's first light stunned Harpoon. He paused briefly, taking in the breathtaking if unnatural beauty of the panoramic scene through the now unscreened cockpit windows. Venus winked at him mockingly, the morning star hovering at eye level low over the horizon's haze. The sun peeped over the earth's curvature somewhere to the right, out of sight but casting endless tongues of fire-opal reds through strata of clouds both normal and not. He felt ever so fleetingly that man had improved on God, and then he knew that he had not. He slipped forward past the busy cockpit crew and toward the left-hand seat. The pilot turned, a black patch strapped diagonally across one eye, and smiled comfortably at him. “'Morning, admiral,” he said. “You really should wear a patch, even in the daylight.”

“I'm sorry, major,” Harpoon said.

The pilot's single eye looked at him strangely, then darted over the admiral's shoulder. “What the hell?”

Harpoon began to lunge. He felt a strong hand clasp one of his biceps from behind. He felt the Uzi barrel jam painfully into his midvertebrae. The remote thought that eluded him in the presidential cabin broke decisively through the old barriers. He prayed with quick fervor: Please, God, let him pull the trigger and bring this plane down, too. He felt the Uzi withdraw, the grip tighten on his bicep, damp and jellylike flesh press in where the gun had been. He heard the pilot scream. “For God's sake, no!” A glint of turquoise flashed in the periphery of his vision. A belt tightened around his neck. Gray metal whipped at the side of his head. He heard himself gurgle and groan. He saw one last spectacular flash of color—the rockets' red glare of a nation he had guarded, the sun's bright spasms of a strange new day—and then Harpoon neither saw nor heard nor felt anything.

The probing irritated Sedgwick greatly this time, for his dreams had become blissful voyages deeper and deeper into a more serene world. He lashed out without looking up and felt a swift, hurtful kick in the ribs. “Doan do that,” a surly voice, upper-Fourteenth Street tough, growled at him. He rolled painfully onto his side in the thin mantle of snow and saw the cherub image retreating again. He also saw, through eyes still half-tracking on his dreams, three larger images looming around him. The light was much brighter now, although it hung in the dull burnt-orange color of smoke. In the background a soft, soulful wind whisked eerily through the canyon.

A different voice spoke. It was deep but rich, mellifluous and feminine. “My son says you has the President down in the hollow.” The voice was time-worn and suspicious. Once again, Sedgwick forced his eyes to focus. Gradually the outline of an immense woman took form. Beside her stood two muscular and sullen teenage boys, perhaps sixteen and eighteen years old. “The Man,” the younger said, his words skittering toward a high, hostile laugh. “Who else you got down there, mofu?” he gibed. “The First Muthah?” The teenager cackled and started to kick Sedgwick again. The older youth grabbed his brother and the woman spoke again in a quiet but confident matronly command. “Zachary, you keep your filthy street mouth shut. You very close to your Lord this mornin'.” The boy pulled back. The woman looked down at Sedgwick with large and unsmiling brown eyes.

Sedgwick reached toward her gratefully. “God bless you for coming, ma'am,” he said feebly.

“Lord's not blessin' us for much of anything today, young man,” the woman said with a weariness that had begun long before this day. “Now, what kind of foolery you been tellin' my son?”

Sedgwick drew a deep racking breath and began to explain a story so strange his words sounded unbelievable to himself. But the woman listened quietly and patiently, as if she had seen too much to discard anything. She watched him without expression as he concluded the story of a President lost and injured for many hours, Sedgwick not being certain of the time any longer. He pointed shakily through the light haze. A few hundred feet away, wrapped in splintered trees, the forward section of the Sikorsky helicopter lay mangled at the lip of the gully. The skin of
Nighthawk One
was broken jaggedly, creating a jigsaw puzzle of the words “
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
.
” The woman gazed only briefly at the wreckage. Then she firmly directed the two older boys, who seemed far more intent on salvaging the helicopter, down into the ravine.

Sedgwick sagged back in relief, slipping toward his dreams again. He shook himself, drawing deep on his will, and forced himself to remain alert. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Ya'all didn't get far, young man,” the woman replied. “Fell down in Rocky Gorge.”

Sedgwick looked befuddled.

“The reservoir. The President fell down in the reservoir. Lucky it's winter. Ya'all mighta drowned.” Sedgwick still looked befuddled. “Doan know your way around much, do you? Skaggsville's over the gorge. Ednor's a mite closer. Brown's Corner, too.” Sedgwick shook his head despairingly. He had never heard of any of these places. “Lordy me, young man, you really doan know your way around. We's kind o' out in the toolies here. But Baltimore's just over yonder. Washington's only a frog-hop away, maybe a dozen miles.” She wagged her head sadly. “Not that ya's goin' there.”

Sedgwick struggled, fighting the mind fog for some rough fix on where they were. “Fort Meade,” he said suddenly, remembering that the Army post, headquarters of the National Security Agency, was somewhere near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

“Yessir, yessir, Fort Meade's over the gorge too.” The woman wagged her head again. “Was. They had a ba-a-ad Fourth of July, young man.”

“Ma'am,” Sedgwick began to plead, “the President must get to a military base, with radios and a hospital. I can't exaggerate how important it is.”

The huge black woman looked down at Sedgwick and smiled for the first time. “Doan imagine you can exaggerate anything today, mister. Jus' can't see how we's goin' to do it. Doan look like you're gonna walk far.” She paused. “A world full of trouble out there, too,” she added with great melancholy.

Sedgwick slumped back to the ground, the memory of the wailing and the shooting and the godawful race across the White House lawn filling his mind. “Riots,” he said dully.

“O-h-h-h, no, no,” the woman's mournful voice continued. “Time for that's gone. Can't you hear it, young man?”

Sedgwick listened. He heard only the soulful wind, ebbing in a low haunt as it passed through the naked stands of trees, then flowing in a distant shriek as it rushed down the gorge. It was a horrible wind, and his flesh crawled as the woman's silence let its sound immerse him. He stared at her in confusion.

“People,” she said in a hush. “That's the sound of people, young man.”

Sedgwick felt very nauseated.

“Oh, they did their riotin', the big, fancy cars racin' at us one way from Baltimore, the other way from Washington, crashin' inta people, crashin' inta houses, crashin' inta each other till there was no room t' crash no more. Then they was shootin' and when they got tired o' shootin' they jus' started walkin'. Walkin' and moanin', moanin' and walkin'.” She looked at him curiously. “Your man start it?”

Sedgwick buried his head in the ground. “No, ma'am,” he whispered.

“Don't make no never-mind. Comin' anyway. Preacher tol' us. Teevee tol' us. Plain sense tol' us.”

Sedgwick heard thrashing behind him and saw the cherub boy dart away. Then he watched the two muscular teenagers approaching through the woods, carrying a limp form. Sedgwick's heart sank. The President, still wrapped in the blankets like a mummy, looked quite dead. The teenagers placed him carefully on the ground and the woman hovered over him. “So that's the Man,” she said solemnly. “Doan look so mean now. Doan look so good, either, do he?” She poked at the quiet form. “Alive. Always knew he was a tough cuss.” She beckoned to her sons. “You boys gonna carry these men over to the hospital at Olney.”

Sedgwick's mind fuzzed on him again. “Olney?” he muttered.

“Hospital there. Leastways, there was yesterday. It's four, five miles. Best we can do.”

Sedgwick reached up toward her, grasping at a worn woolen coat. “
FEMA
,” he said desperately. In his muddle, he couldn't think of anything else to say. “Out past Muncaster Road.” He pulled hard at her coat. “
FEMA
,” he repeated weakly. “Please understand.”

She took his hand and released it from her coat. “I's not stupid, young man,” she reproached him. “I teach m' boys. I read the papers. You talkin' 'bout civil defense.” She stopped, the disdain spreading across her face. “They's been real helpful folk. Yessir, real helpful.” Sedgwick began to whimper in pain. “Calm down, young man. Everybody in these parts knows the place. Out past the feed store. The Man ever wakes up, you tell him he can't keep a place secret if n they's always poppin' radio aerials up 'n down out of cee-ment holes.”

Sedgwick faded then, somewhere in the realm between consciousness and unconsciousness. He seemed asleep, but his dream-visions were far less blissful. The soulful winds turned woeful and he saw shadows of people walking, empty-faced and hunched, down country roads strewn with smashed cars and rubble. The wailing followed him through suburban yards deep in shattered glass and decapitated azaleas. It trailed him across farmers' fields where cow eyes watched him dolefully, accusingly, from the tangled debris of crumpled barns. Then his visions went totally black.

The flight south was a dreadful drone. The B-52 cruised economically but uneventfully at just over forty thousand feet in a slightly southwesterly drift edging them slowly west of the 150th meridian. Kazaklis had cut off all radios except the intercom, and it was rarely used. For the most part, except for the engine noise, the plane had become deathly silent, its occupants keeping their thoughts to themselves. The make-work chores were unnecessary and undone. It was a bus ride.

Kazaklis and Moreau had had no further discussions about a final destination, but they both knew they were not going to her fantasy island. They were moving west of Tahiti, and while they could cut back later, it was not the place for them. Gauguin's velvet had turned to acrylic long ago. If civilization were busily killing itself off, as they assumed it was, they had no desire to land among overweight, hysterical tourists whose last dream had been to bring home a silicone-covered conch shell. Nor did Kazaklis want to land among provincial French gendarmes casting about for the guilty ones in the destruction of the far-off republic which, even to French provincials, was the world. He had no wish to spend whatever time he had left in a stinking tropical bastille.

Kazaklis had few illusions. In the vast expanse of the Pacific their options were mostly paradises lost or paradises never there—bleak little atolls on which a living might be scrounged while they waited for God knew what. Radiation, solar or man-made. A half-crazed exodus of survivors from a totally wrecked world. Naval patrols from a half-wrecked and angry world. Nothingness. . . .

If they had options. The Air Force had not been considerate enough to provide accurate charts for the turncoat run. They had no navigators. They were heading into a blue desert as intimidating and untracked as the Sahara. In the tedium of the flight south, the pilot's mind wandered into a thousand thoughts. But one occurred—a faint memory of a history lesson about Magellan sailing ten thousand miles through the atolls and islands of the mid-Pacific without spotting a rock until he stumbled onto Guam far on the other side.

Kazaklis glanced over his shoulder into the murk behind him. Halupalai had not moved in hours, his back stooped as if he had aged a year for every hour since they left Fairchild. The gunner had not fled into the destructive schizophrenia that had consumed Tyler. Nor did he seem lost in the utterly morose and suicidal inwardness that had killed Radnor. He had stopped the guilt-ridden babbling. He answered questions rationally and sensibly. But the answers returned without life. Kazaklis worried about him. The pilot turned back toward the flight panel and looked at his watch. It read 1555 Zulu—more than three hours since they had passed over Kodiak and less than an hour to the rendezvous with Halupalai's islands. Moreau's pensive voice interrupted the pilot's thoughts.

“Sunrise,” she said.

The single wistful word did not connect and he turned slowly toward her. Moreau stared straight into the flash curtains, still drawn against the night, still drawn against the chance of a blinding explosion.

“It's almost time for sunrise.” Her voice filled with quiet awe, as if she had made a remarkable discovery. Her hand reached childlike toward the curtain and tugged at a dirty corner. Through the peephole, stars still twinkled enticingly at them. But the stars no longer shone out of inky blackness. Their background carpet had turned to a deep, regal purple. Local time in their ocean wilderness was about six
A.M
. In a few minutes the sun would pop suddenly out of the subtropical sea. Moreau slowly let the curtain return to its place and sat back in her seat.

The two of them were silent for several moments, entranced by the same thought. Destiny had granted them a night flight—a 10
p.m
. departure from Spokane, a journey through the winter Arctic darkness over a slowly spinning earth that turned man's clocks toward an identical 10
p.m
. appointment at a faroff city. There, they were to ignite a man-made sun they would not see and make a final nocturnal run toward oblivion long before their own life-star rose again. They had changed that destiny, if only in the most fleeting way. They sat in respectful silence now, uncertain how to accept the simple blessing of a sunrise. Kazaklis spoke first.