by Greg Bear
Friction of life.
He might never sleep again.
He was back in the Porsche when he heard a Trans chime. He pulled out the unit Helen had given him, but it was quiet. He looked around, peered into the backseat, trying to locate the sound.
It was coming from the front.
Peter popped the hood and got out of the car. Nestled in the front storage well, below the gas tank, three Trans units gleamed gold, black, and white under a wedge of streetlight glare. Peter could not imagine how the units had gotten into his trunk. He had not put them there. Senses tuned by shock, he found the chiming unit. He opened it but did not say his name.
Heard a sharp intake of breathmasculine breathon the other end.
Peter, is that you? Whos there?
It was Hank.
This is Peter, he said with frightened formality.
Thank Christ. What time is it? Shit, I don't care, I'm sorry. I'm still in Prague. Everybody else is locked in their rooms or gone. The hotel staff ran out last night.
Peters mind buzzed. Someone had come to his house and moved the Trans units into the Porsche. But when? And why? It's after midnight. What time is it there, Hank?
It's morning. Late, I guess. I wish I was alone, Peter. She's still here. She's been here all night. She's making me sick. You won't believe this.
Try me, Peter said.
Theyve ruined the shoot. They're everywhere. The whole crew is hiding or trying to get out of Prague. Jack Bishop hung himself yesterday, right outside the hotel, from a lamppost. He just climbed up with a rope and dropped. I saw what was after him, Peter. Like a long cloud of soot. He had these shadows clinging to his back and his head like leeches.
This isnt my Trans, Peter said, still trying to think things through. How did you get my number?
Jesus, Peter, we traded all the numbers. I just kept dialing until you answered.
Whats your visitor doing? Peter asked.
She's standing by the door and she won't move. She looks so old. I mean, she might have been young once, but now she's just frayed, like an old sock, and . . . Christ, the room is full of shadows, the corners, the ceiling, the closet.
Is she a ghost, Hank?
Prague, city of ghosts. Possibly the worst place on the planet to have a Trans.
Fuck, yeah, she's a ghost! Havent you been listening? Oh, shit, now theres another one. His voice, already high, rose a notch in pitch. God, God, Godthis one is worse. I can't even see a face, just wrinkles
Listen to me, Hank. Shut the Trans and smash it. Break it all to hell. Then go out a window or push through . . . to the door, whatever it takes. Just get out of there.
Are you joking? Go through them?
Just do it, Peter said. Get on the next airplane. Go to Africa or someplace far away. I have to go now.
Peter, for the love of God
No more debating, no more arguments. He shut the Trans. His hand tingled and he shook it out, dropping the unit to the curb. It bounced.
Sleep no more.
Years ago, when he had taken a vacation with Helen and the girls, he had left a key to the Glendale house with Joseph and Michelle. He had never retrieved it.
One more reason to go out to Salammbo.
He removed the units from the Porsche and dropped them into the street. Something dark had stained the bottom of the trunk. Again, his hand tingled and this time the sensation was painful. He added Helens Trans, and, one by one, stomped them beneath his feet. It took some effort. Peter danced on them, grunting and flinging out his arms. As the cases finally cracked, like the tough shells of big insects, a pale blue fluid seeped into the gutter.
His hand still tingled.
People leaving the Dennys stared at him in pity.
* * *
PETER STOPPED AT an old pay phone near an Asian grocery, one of the last pay phones in Los Angelesthey were being dismantled everywhere. Everyone was going wireless.
He dropped a small stack of quarters into the slot and dialed Weinsteins alternate office number at San Andreas, ten digits, a backup landline phone. It was late, everyone might have gone home, but he did not care. He had to try.
Weinstein was not the one to answer.
This is wrong phone. Who in hell is calling? It was Arpad Kreisler. He sounded upset, angry, and exhausted.
Mr. Kreisler, it's Peter Russell. I need to ask something.
It is late. I do not care about marketing now. You ask Weinstein, but he is not here.
You might be able to answer my questions, Peter said. I think something is going wrong with Trans. With your network. I don't know how to begin explaining . . . Ive thought I was crazy
Yes, yes, you are seeing things. So? What can I do for you?
It's not just me.
Of course not. I try to tell them three days ago, Trans network is going bad. Weinstein orders me to shut up, and when I do not, he orders guards to kick me out of San Andreas. I am partner! He cannot do that. He says he will call Homeland Security about my green card.
But you're there now . . . Peter said.
Guards at gate quit, Kreisler said. Gate is open. I am looking for Weinstein. Place is a mess. Then, in a lower tone of voice, almost reverential, Kreisler asked, What do you see, Mr. Russell?
Ghosts, Peter said. And I'm not alone. I thought I was, but I'm not.
Of course not, Kreisler said.
Everyone who has a Trans is seeing things.
That is not good, Kreisler said, almost a whisper.
You told us Trans would change space, Peter said. Something about permittivity, sparking information. I remember that much. Can it go back? Can we shut everything off and make it return to the way it was?
Weinstein, he will not let us shut down network. There is so much money involved now. Even so, I try, but I cannot get to the center, the transponder. It is very bad in there.
I need to know. If I destroy my units, if you turn it off, will it go back to the way it was?
Kreisler did not answer for a moment. I have been thinking. I do not know shit. Stuffs of old memory and personality, irregularly coded information, we did not understand about it's persistence, even in wildest theory. Embedded in space like carvings, graffiti. But when life is over, it must decayso the math sayslike burning unread books in a library and scattering ashes. I think Trans interferes. Normal decay is blocked. Old library doesnt burn, ashes don't get scattered. And old memories seem to attract bad things.
Edward Schelling said something like that, Peter said.
I do not know him, Kreisler said. Is he physicist?
No. A very old, wise man.
Kreislers voice became simple and determined. I will find Weinstein. You should see what is going on here . . . indescribable, really.
Did you have any clue that Trans could go wrong, that this was possible? Peter asked.
No, I swear. I am not believer. I am inventor and scientist. Ghosts are figments of long nights and too much work. You know, all that bullshit. Not even on my horizon, what is happening here.
Ive smashed all the Trans units I have, Peter said. I don't know if thats enough. What will happen if the network doesnt shut down?
You tell me, Kreisler said. You are imaginative writer. What is the worst? Maybe it is permanent, we must live like thisand die like thisforever. But I do my best, that I also swear. Perhaps, Mr. Artist, Mr. Writer fellow, you can come here and help. He laughed, bitter, wrung out, and hung up.
Kreislers words stung. Peter was not a coward, but he had to think things through. There had to be the right place to begin. He walked across the wet asphalt to the car in the market parking lot and sat for a few minutes. The lights inside the grocery dimmed. A curtain was pulled on the door. The red neon sign on the facade blinked out, but the tubes continued to sputter, flashes of faded brilliance following the cursive circuit of the letters.
Peter watched, hypnotized.
Then he turned the key.
First things first.
&nb
sp; Family.
CHAPTER 39
PETER ROLLED DOWN his window and tapped in the number code on the pad outside the big wrought-iron gate. The gate opened with a complaining whine and bounced at the end of it's run. He drove forward, stopped, and watched the gate swing shut behind him.
Under spotty, cloud-dappled moonlight, the road through Salammbo stretched in a long V toward El Cid, the long black hedge, and to the left, Flaubert House. He could not see Jesus Wept from this vantage. He looked at his watch. One-thirty in the morning. Sleep no more.
The Porsche seemed incredibly loud on the long stretch of dark road. A warm breeze sighed across the grounds. Only one window in Flaubert House was illuminated; the porch and veranda lights were off. Moon shadows crossed the long stretch of lawn. Peter followed their blurred outlines with a curious sense of disbelief; how could he be sure they were clouds? Perhaps something equally vast was swimming above him, waiting for an opening, a vulnerability . . .
He blocked that line of thought. El Cid was bad enough, glowering over the sparkling oleander leaves with an expression of haughty alarm, horses left hoof poised high over the roadway.
* * *
HE PARKED THE car at the far end of the circular brick drive and switched off the motor. The grounds were exceptionally quiet. He opened the door and put out one leg, then stopped to listen some more, like a cat deciding whether or not to go through an open door. His senses might or might not be tuned to an extraordinary degree; how could you know for sure until you heard something? But the only sound he heard was the scuff of his shoe on brickthat, and a distant whisper of leaves.
The moon hid. Parts of the estate were still illuminated, trees and hills, but where he sat in the car, he could see almost nothing.
He slid out and shut the door as quietly as possible.
The veranda lights came on. They were connected to motion and sound sensors. Broad ovals of brightness played over the limestone and bricks. Joseph and Michelle sometimes hired a security force to patrol the grounds at night, but Peter saw no signs of them. Joseph disliked having too much, and too obvious, security. I get claustrophobic. I don't like to have cops and walls shoved in my face, he had once told Peter.
Peter walked quickly across the bricks to the steps of Flaubert House. He bounded up the steps into the brighter light and entered a keypad code next to the intercom speaker, buzzing directly into Josephs bedroom. Waited five minutes. No answer.
Peter pulled his key ring out of his pocket and fumbled to untangle it from a thread. Holding one hand against the heavy oak door, he slipped the thick brass key into the appropriate lockthere were three, all electronically coded. The locks did not move.
Drawing back, Peter looked behind him with a quick jerk. Nobody on the lawn, the circular drive, the road to the main gate. He wondered if it would be best to just get back in his car and try again tomorrow. Michelle might have shut down everything, set the entry codes and key codes to reject, and locked the house up tight. But if that were the case, how could he have gotten through the main gate?
Joseph. What if his problem past had come back? What if something had happened to Michelle, or to both of them?
Experimentally, just testing, Peter raised his hand and pressed the door again, harder. The door opened. He stepped back, his neck shrinking into his shoulders, waiting for a blast of alarms. None sounded. The house security was turned off.
The door swung back toward him with a groan, leaving just a crack. He pushed it again. Hello, it's Peter! he shouted into the entryway and the hall beyond. Hey, the alarms off!
He waited a few seconds, then called out, Joseph, Michelle, it's Peter. If I come in, don't shoot me, okay? Joseph owned guns; Michelle no doubt had access to them. The house had already been entered. Perhaps the guns had already been used. What would he find if he went inside?
Now he regretted destroying his Trans units and leaving his cell phone behind. Crazy thinking, hauntings, madness. Puts you in a bind when real emergencies come along. Phones in the house required personal four-number codes to dial out. There were panic buttons, of course, but neither Joseph nor Michelle had told him where they were.
Joseph, it's Peter!
The entry beyond was a wall of black. As Peters eyes adjusted, he saw a small red diode glowing like a rats eye straight aheadpossibly the alarm panel under the stairs. He tried to remember the layout, all the panels and security boxes, and could not; that had never concerned him. As a cat burglaror a spyhe was a total failure.
He stepped into the entry and did not bother to close the door behind him. Someone come down here and help me out. Or I'lljust turn around and leave, all right?
He felt like a fool. What could only be worse than babbling such crap would be to babble such crap to the corpses of his friends as they lay sprawled in the shadows, their heads blown off or bashed in. He could not leave without trying to find out what had happened. Then, wiser or not, he could locate a panic button and bring in the police, because this was way beyond starting to look bad. It was bad.
The glowing red rats eye went dark. Peter stopped moving. His breath caught. He found it easy to convince himself he was not alone in the house. Something had passed in front of the diode.
Almost immediately a memory map flashed into his mind and he saw the location of the switches in the entryway, on the right-hand wall, just before one turned to enter a small study. Peter moved right and felt along the wall. His fingers made small brushing sounds against the paint and then bumped into the wainscoting, bruising a knuckle. A short table blocked his way. He stopped and felt around, knocking a vase. The vase spun and wobbled and something brushed his armflowers. A fumbling grab stopped the vase from falling, but the flowers and water spilled onto the floor.
At the splash, the red light winked into view, then smeared and dimmed as if a dark translucent veil was sliding between them. By now, Peter thought, his eyes should have adjusted. He edged around the table and found the light switch. His fingers pushed up all five of the switches on the plate, and for good measure, he twirled the round plastic knob of the rheostat.
With shocking slowness, the room filled with light. Light advanced in oily waves from fixtures in the ceiling and a crystal chandelier, down and across the entry and the stairway, sliding over each stair to the marble-tiled floor, which filled as if with brilliant milk.
The light streamed around a shape at the bottom of the stairs, outlining a shaded hesitation of empty airroughly the size of a hunched grizzly bear.
That, too, filled in and vanished.
Peter blinked to clear sweat from his eyes.
The whole process had taken a fraction of a secondbut still, he had seen it and knew that it was wrong, that something dangerous was nearby.
The red diode glowed steadily, part of an open security panel mounted in the wall to the right of the stairs. He closed and bolted the front door.
I am not crazy, and I am not psychic, Peter said, as if that might be some sort of shield against an incontrovertible fact. He was also most definitely not alone, but he could not see what was with him. Whatever, it was hugeat least as large as a bear, if size had any meaning. And like the loops of serpentine shadow in the hall of his Glendale home, it was watching him, waiting. Expecting.
Get out of here, shoo, he shouted. Then, as if shocked by a small charge of static electricity, his social sense returned. He was in the home of a friend and employer, yelling silly things and acting like a frightened child. With a supreme effort, Peter moved away from the wall.
His shoes scraped and tapped lightly on the tile but no echoes returned, and in Flaubert House that was odd. He had always heard echoes in the entrywayexcept on the rare occasions when Joseph and Michelle had thrown a party. The huge room seemed full, as if an invisible crowd filled the space around the stairs. He walked swiftly, restraining an urge to stretch out his hands and fend off bodies, people that he could not see. Yet he felt nothing.
He inspected the security panel. A but
ton turned on motion sensors that would activate the house lights wherever there was an intruder. Looking over his shoulder, he pushed it. Then, room by room, he searched the north and south wings, bright ceiling lights in the halls switching on and momentarily turning off again, triggered by his passage.
Ten minutes later, standing in the kitchen, he knew that the bottom floor was not occupiednot by Joseph or Michelle, at least, or any human intruder. Returning to the entryway, he passed the open elevator door and gave it a quick and unhappy glance. Joseph used the elevator to get to the second floor, but Peter never had, preferring the stairs. He did not like elevators to begin with, and this one was small, with just enough room for two. The elevator also had a basement stop, opening onto the tram tunnel between Flaubert House and Jesus Wept. Joseph had years ago promised to take Peter all the way down for a tour, but then had claimed the tunnel was blocked by stored junk and still stank of smoke.
Just another of Lordy Trentons excesses, another piece of unused history. Michelle had long ago covered the basement button with tape. It's like a catacomb down there, she had told Peter.
He climbed the stairs. Upon reaching the landing, he looked over his shoulder. Something was following him. He could feel it watching with curious, invisible eyes, a huge presence of no weight or mass.
His arm hair went stiff as a bristle brush.
Shoo, Peter said. You're my death. You'll grab me and shake me like a big channel catfish gulping a lump of carrion. You'll shake and chew and shake some more, until I'm nothing but an empty sack of skin.
His breath left him in a shuddering moan. Having a vivid imagination was sometimes a real bitch.
The presence had halted at the foot of the stairs. It waited, expectant and serene. It wanted something, that much he could sensebut if it wanted him, here he was, as alone and vulnerable as he would ever be, and nothing was happening.
By main force of will, Peter turned away and peered along the length of the upstairs hall. The first door on the right led to Michelles bedroom. He had long known that they slept in separate rooms. He had assumed it was the politeness of a younger wife for an old and ill husband.