The Birth of a new moon

by Laurie R. King

  "Not unless I have to."

  "I don't think so. Anyway, we just found out about it on Monday and had the autopsy report faxed over and translated. They're treating it as a mugging—he was a mass of bruises, found dumped by the roadside."

  Ana heard the emphasis on "they". "You don't agree that he was mugged."

  "All the boy's bruises had diffuse edges—no sharp-edged marks such as you'd expect to find after someone was struck with, say, a bat or a board or kicked by a shoe. Most of the bruises were along the sides and back of his upper torso and head, with a concentration on his shoulders. He may have been naked when the injuries occurred, because there were no marks on the skin from fabric or seams or buttons. His legs were not bruised other than his hips and knees, but his feet were badly damaged—he had three broken bones in his left foot. No defense marks on his arms, but all the fingernails on both hands were broken and bloody. Actual cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage caused by the blows to the head."

  Ana did not hear the final sentence. The image of those destroyed fingernails, the clear picture she had of the Japanese boy clawing at something, kicking and throwing himself violently and repeatedly at some smooth, hard surface, rose up inside her and blotted all else out. All the blood in her body seemed to turn around and flow backward. She felt like vomiting, her head buzzed as if she were about to faint, and she stood up and stumbled rapidly away, unseeing, just to be moving.

  She felt Glen's hand on her back, felt his solid presence by her side, and wanted either to turn to his arms for comfort or beat at him for putting her there. He was saying something in a low, urgent voice and she was looking through the window at the hills beyond the cross, and she shuddered.

  "God. I've got to get out of here, Glen. I need air."

  It was better outside, seated on a bench overlooking the world, with the clear desert breeze sweeping away the nausea and light-headedness and with Glen and Rayne standing between her and the curious tourists. Glen saw her begin to shiver and he took off his heavy jacket and wrapped it around her.

  "I saw a death like that once," he said quietly. "A kidnap victim closed into a shipping crate. Differences, of course. What did Change lock that boy into?"

  "I don't—He's—Oh Christ." Ana sat perfectly still for a long moment with her eyes clamped shut, and then sat up straight, took a deep, steadying breath, and, addressing herself to the red rock cliffs, summoned the analytical words of Anne Waverly.

  "As I told you, the doctrine of Change is based on alchemical beliefs concerning transmutation of substances into higher forms. Whether or not Change as a whole believes in the actual production of gold is still open to question. But in its metaphysical form—the transformation of human beings—it permeates the Change creed.

  "The alchemist believes that a person can transform base matter using heat and pressure, as a means of speeding up the normal processes of nature. The matter being worked on is closed inside…" And gulped and started again. "Inside a hermetically sealed vessel. An alembic. It is heated on a furnace and, if the alchemist does it right, it passes through a defined series of stages to become gold or alternatively a tincture or "philosopher's stone" which, added to a substance such as mercury or lead, changes it into gold.

  "This paradigm of heat-generating transformation is used by Change to effect the transformation of the human spirit as well. Their mantras—meditational chants—often concern the benefits of heat and pressure. Psychological pressures are positively welcomed, on individuals and on the community as a whole. Members are taught to welcome intrusive outsiders, hard physical labor, unpleasant tasks. When I was hurt at the museum the other day, it was a direct result of Steven's instructions that two antagonistic boys be forced to spend the entire day in close proximity. When one of the boys, Jason Delgado, snapped and struck out—the other boy was insulting his sister. Dulcie. When Jason—" Ana stopped, her jaws clenched. In a minute she continued. "When Jason lost control, Steven took him away for two days."

  "That was when you came to town with Dulcie. What do you mean, 'took him away'?"

  "I mean that early on the morning following the museum trip, Jason was removed from the room he shares with Dulcie. The men who led him off are two of Steven's closest associates. And Dulcie was told that Jason was 'helping Steven with his work'."

  "But he's back now? Unharmed?"

  "He was returned during the day while Dulcie and I were here. I've barely seen him since then, but he looked…" How far could she expect Glen to understand? "Jason looked changed. Exhausted. Depleted. Fulfilled. I'd say he had some fairly profound experience.

  "Glen, you remember those drawings that Gillian sent me? There was one of a child's nightmare, a man trapped—" She paused to swallow. "A man in what I took to be a giant pear, or a raindrop with two monsters outside. Glen, I think Change uses an alembic big enough for a man as part of their process of transformation. Steven called it 'the power nexus of our Change'. I think they shut people in there, an alchemical version of a sensory deprivation tank, as a means of applying pressure. I think the child's drawing is a textbook illustration of the hallucinations a person experiences under enforced, long-term sensory deprivation. Probably not the child's own experience, since the drawing was of a man with a beard, but possibly that of a father or friend who talked about it in the child's hearing, and frightened him. I think… I believe that Steven shut Jason into the alembic that's in the basement under the meditation hall, and I think there's a good possibility that the Japanese boy died in one just like it."

  "Hell. Have you seen this thing?"

  "Last night."

  "Where did you say it was?"

  "In a locked room underneath the meditation hall. You enter it by a door off the highest meditation platform."

  "Damn it, Anne, what were you doing there?"

  "I wanted to see if Steven had some kind of alchemical laboratory in the basement. That's what I found, a complete alchemical workshop out of the Middle Ages. Plus a box of paraffin wax. There's also a computer in there with a modem, in case any of your pet hackers want to play with it."

  "You didn't open it up?"

  "I didn't touch it."

  "No sign of anything else in that lab?"

  "No dismembered clocks or clippings of wire, no nice, labeled bins of Semtex, or even fuel oil and ammonium nitrate. Those two harmless ingredients when combined had proved spectacularly deadly. No heaps of pretty little balloons or scatterings of mysterious white powder, no distinctive smells other than sulphur, and the lab equipment I saw couldn't possibly have been used to process any drug I know. Sorry—no bombs or drugs that I could see."

  Glen stood up and looked out over the rocky valley for a minute, thinking. Four days ago Ana had struck him as being far more healthy-looking than he had expected to find her, and he had been unable to get that unnatural cheerfulness out of his mind. It had not been like her, and this sudden venture into derring-do was not like her either. Besides which, the vulnerability and emotional involvement sounded more like Anne than Ana; it was all very worrying.

  "I don't like the sound of any of this, Anne," he said abruptly. "I'm pulling you out,"

  "My name is Ana, and it's gone too far for that, Glen," she said flatly. "The only way you can keep me from going back to Change is if you get out your handcuffs," She looked at him, and Rayne was amazed to see on her boss's face a thing that on anyone else's she would have called a blush. She dismissed the unlikely thought immediately.

  Ana turned back to the landscape while Glen thought about this unexpected shift in authority. When he spoke again, it was in a voice gone dead with the realities of his profession. "Did you see any evidence that the boy Jason was locked into the thing against his will?"

  "No,"

  "Would he or anyone you can think of be willing to testify?"

  "No," said Ana. "No," God, she felt like moaning aloud at the thought of that beautiful, strong boy stuffed into a dark, smooth space with the door shut behind him,
and here was Glen thinking about warrants and rules of evidence. She dropped her face into her hands and scrubbed at her skin, which felt thick and insensate. "Jesus, you're a cold son of a bitch. No, there's no justification for a raid. You could argue that Jason is too young legally to have given his permission, but I'm sure you'd find he would refuse to testify. Nothing's changed, except a boy in Japan is dead. I'll go back to watching and listening, and if I need anything, I'll develop problems with the tooth and make another appointment with the dentist," She felt so tired, and old, and sick. "Go away, Glen. Christ, go away before I throw up on your foot,"

  She tugged his coat away from her and held it out without raising her head. It was taken from her, and a hand rested briefly on her shoulder—Glen's hand or Rayne's, she could not tell—and then she was alone at the side of this sharp-edged concrete-and-glass building set down among the round red hills of Sedona. She leaned up against the side of the building, and in the darkness behind her eyelids she saw the dining hall mural, which held it all: The progress from the prime matter of the desert on the left to fully actualized human on the right, and in the middle, looking like an elongated version of a Native American bread oven, the power nexus, the instrument of the proclaimed transformation, an alembic. What she had taken for a symbolic journey was physical and literal, an actual vessel in which sensitive human beings were subjected to the pressure of their own undiluted minds.

  Still, now she finally knew the shape of this community, the essence of belief that lay at its core. Knowing, she could watch over the two children; at least she could do that.

  Ana opened her eyes, got to her feet, and trudged down the hill toward Rocinante.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Request for Child Emergency Assessment, signed May 14, 199-

  It was difficult to return to Change. It was difficult that night, when she dozed off over the wheel and nearly overturned into a stand of cow-tongue cactus, but it was worse the next morning, when she had to force herself to walk to the dining hall, to eat breakfast, and to speak in her normal manner to Suellen and Dominique across the table from her. To her relief, Steven did not happen to cross her path, because she was not certain that she could conceal the violent agitation of her feelings about him that had been set off by the death in Yokohama—or by the image of Steven in meditation while below him Jason sweated and confronted his inner demons in the prison of the dark alembic.

  Was it child abuse? Yes—but. But there was no sign of physical injury on the boy. And manipulation of belief is monstrously hard to prove compared with overt aggression or abuse. And even fourteen-year-olds have freedom of religion in this country. And despite any apprehension he might have felt when the two men came for him, Jason came out of the experience a willing participant.

  Yes, but. Even at the moment when the truth of the alembic's purpose first struck her, she had known that a prosecution based on that alone would be futile and short-lived. Certainly if she informed the local Child Protective Services of what was happening with one of their charges, it would set Change on its ear, and might even lead to the end of the fostering program, but was the responsibility for that a price she wanted to pay? She loathed the idea of doing nothing, but she knew without question that if she were to stay on with this investigation, she had to accept that Steven had the right, not to lock Jason into the alembic, but to ask Jason to submit to it.

  Still, she needed a day, or perhaps a bit more, to assume this attitude. She could sense Anne Waverly stirring in the back of her mind, wanting to step in, sweep aside Ana Wakefield's natural diffidence, and set things right. That would be disastrous, and she remained grateful as the day wore on and she did not meet Steven. She didn't even want to see Jason or Dulcie until her fury had a chance to subside.

  Steven believed, she told herself time and again; therein lay the difference. She reminded herself of that until she nearly believed it, and thought that she might look at Steven again with equanimity.

  She got through her teaching day, distracted but functioning, but as soon as school was out she fled for the solitude of the desert. This time she took a bottle of water and a wide-brimmed hat, and she sat among the rocks, listening to the wind blow.

  Late in the afternoon, another human being entered the landscape in the form of a desert rat whom Ana had seen two or three times before, once close enough to exchange a brief greeting. He was a prospector of some sort, she supposed, since he carried with him a small rock pick and a canvas sack. Perhaps he was gathering arrowheads or small petroglyphs to sell to tourists and collectors. He looked, however, like any of the other desert creatures she had seen—dull, dusty, leathery, and intent on his own business—and seeing him working his way along the hillside a mile off was like watching any other wild creature going about its business, unaware of being observed.

  It was restful, leaning up against some rocks in the shade of an ironwood tree and following the man's mysterious progress, his bendings and straightenings and the occasional long period when he stood, bent over something he had found, before either placing it in his sack or tossing it over his shoulder.

  She could feel the tension ease from her body, the clamor in her head go quiet. She may even have slept briefly, or retreated into that inner place where there is no time, because she came out of her reverie to realize that the shadows across the dry wash were immensely long and the prospector was no longer there.

  She stretched luxuriously and took a long drink of warm water, and then tentatively, as if touching a finger to a wound, she brought Steven to mind.

  She still felt empty, but at some point in the last hours the feeling had changed slightly, turning from confusion and turmoil into a cool, focused determination, from bleakness to calm. The death of the Japanese boy might even have been an accident, she finally admitted, and his being dumped on the road the result of panic. Stupid, but human.

  The desert had done its work. She would now be able to look Steven in the eye without flinching.

  There was a new man at dinner.

  In itself this was not unusual, but this was no visiting newcomer. On the contrary, he ate surrounded by a knot of high-ranking initiates, who hung on his words and gave all the signs of knowing him well. Ana had little doubt that the man wore a silver necklace beneath his shirt, if not a gold one.

  "Who is that man?" she asked Dov over the warming tray of baked potatoes.

  "That's Marc Bennett. He used to lived here for a little while, taught science until Dennis came and then he went back to England. He's a close friend of Jonas—Jonas Seraph, the founder of the English community. Sort of his right-hand man. An important man in Change, anyway."

  "You'll be glad to have him back, then."

  "Oh, Marc's not staying. It's just a short visit."

  Ana moved to a nearby table and watched Dov return to the group around the newcomer. A short visit might mean recreation or family matters, or peripheral to some kind of business trip. It could also be the work of a courier.

  Steven did not lead the meditation that night, which had happened only twice since Ana had been there. Instead, Thomas Mallory took the central position, stumbling and stuttering his way with even more awkwardness than he normally displayed in public speaking. Marc Bennett was seated at the highest level of the row of meditation platforms across the hall from Steven, who sat unmoving the entire time. The whole Change community left the meditation hall unsettled.

  She spotted Steven the next morning, too, still looking distracted, even troubled. He was walking with his hands locked behind his back and his head bent. Mallory was following him at a distance, also looking upset. As she watched, a third figure appeared: Jason on his morning run. Steven's head came up and he thrust out a hand to beckon Jason over to him. They exchanged a few words, Steven clapped Jason on the shoulders, Jason resumed his run, and when Steven turned to watch him go, Ana's silent presence must have caught the corner of his eye. He swivelled to face her across half a mile of scrub and rock and stood in
tent for what seemed a very long time. Then he half raised his left hand in a gesture of greeting, or benediction, and continued his walk. She ignored Mallory's glare and set off in a different direction.

  A high initiate, a close friend of one of the original four Change founders, arrives from England; Steven is troubled. Had Glen's phone taps been discovered, or even suspected? Or had Steven just then learned about the Japanese boy's death from this old Change member, sent to bring him news too sensitive to be overheard?

  It fit all the circumstances, and Ana knew that she would have to get word to Glen of the possibility. The knowledge, even a strong suspicion, of official scrutiny would have powerful repercussions in the community; it was exactly the sort of paranoia trigger she dreaded. She reminded herself, too, that the general anxiety did not necessarily mean they feared her in particular, that she must take care not to be a victim of her own paranoia. That time in Utah she had given herself away, but those circumstances did not apply here. Change had a long way to go before its instability escalated into violence. This community was not about to turn on her.

  She did not sleep well, but over breakfast she discovered that no one looked particularly rested, that all the adult faces revealed a heaviness and degree of preoccupation that she had not witnessed there before. Talking to the other members and listening carefully, though, she did not think they knew of a specific problem, simply that Steven, their center, was out of sorts, and therefore Change as a whole was unbalanced.

  Rumors began to circulate. Steven was leaving Arizona. Steven was not leaving, he was ill; no, he had simply received bad news from his family. Steven and Marc Bennett had had a raging argument; Marc had slammed out furiously to return to England; Marc had not slammed out, he was scheduled to go back anyway.

  Ana had the fact of the argument between the two men confirmed by Dominique, who overheard the raised voices if not the words, but she could find no truth in any of the other rumors except that Marc Bennett had left. The whole Change compound began to feel as if somewhere on the horizon a storm was stirring, making the inhabitants feel prickly and on edge.