08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  Something was rubbing, tickling her ears and neck. She thought her angel costume had popped out at her shoulders. She checked with her fingers …

  Her hair was long and straight, hanging into the narrowing cavity below her. The realization stunned her, tightened her insides: the fairgrounds, under the tree, that’s where!

  Dane ran around the edge of the crowd, looking for any change, any indication. He got on the radio. “Preston, anything?”

  Preston, his men, and their birds were becoming nuisances but that was all. “I’ve got nothing! No control whatsoever.”

  I’ve gone back, Mandy realized. I’m starting over. I’m going to die in here.

  The pod was so tight she couldn’t spread her arms from her body, could not bend her knees enough to kick. A scream only bounced back in her face, as trapped in here as she was.

  “Look at that,” said Moss, indicating a monitor. “She’s stuck. No activity.”

  “Like an interdimensional flatline,” DuFresne mused. “Dead to time and space.” He looked over his shoulder. “Finally.” The Watchers were pleased.

  “Oh, Dane,” she cried out loud, “I’m so sorry. It could have worked, it should have worked …”

  Dane.

  He was still in her mind like a permanent resident, a dear, clear thought when no other thought would come. Let him be your starting point, she told herself. Tell me again, Dane. Tell me how we met, the name of the dove … Snickers, that was it. He flew down and landed on my finger …

  She gasped, the sound bouncing from the confining walls.

  She could see Snickers landing on her finger, fluttering as he got a grip, folding his wings, looking at her as the crowd laughed. She could see the crowd, the stage, the poultry pavilion behind the stage, the trees, the fairgrounds.

  She remembered!

  She let the memory—yes, the memory!—play in her mind: Angie and Joanie giggling, Marvellini—he had black hair parted in the middle, an oversize handlebar mustache, a baggy tux with tails—playing it for laughs: “Snickers! He’s quite the ladies’ man, you know!”

  And then a young man stood before her, his face the most pleasant thing in the world to look at, his eyes laughing and kind. He didn’t try to recover Snickers from her hand, he just said, “Hi. What’s your name?”

  And she looked into those eyes and told him, “Mandy.”

  She could feel the grip of Snickers’s hot little feet on her finger, the nap of his feathers …

  Bonkers. Somewhere far outside herself, she could feel his feet—and by his reaction she knew he could feel her touch. Maybelle? Yes! Maybelle was there, too, listening. Lily popped into her awareness—she could see the little dove looking right at her.

  DuFresne noticed one small, jittery bar appearing on a graph. “What’s that?”

  Carson popped into her consciousness, as if he didn’t want to be left out. She stroked their necks, loved them up. She was with them.

  Up in the parking garage, the four doves could not sit still. They chirped, fluttered, bobbed, and bowed in their cages until their handlers turned them loose. They flew over the audience and straight for the pod, circled it as if looking for something, then alighted on the top of the crane boom like little watchmen.

  Now she found others …

  “Preston!” said a crewman.

  A dove was flying back. Two others, perched on a building ledge, alerted, fidgeted, then took to the air, returning. Four from a streetlight followed, heading for the trucks.

  Were they just flying on an impulse, or … ?

  Preston and his men held the net ready.

  More bars appeared on the graph.

  “Wait, wait, what’s happening?” DuFresne wanted to know.

  Moss tapped frantically at the keyboard. “She’s creating timelines.”

  “What!?”

  “Hang on, I’ll cancel them.”

  “She’s supposed to be retraced!”

  “She hasn’t completed the retrace. She can still influence the Machine.”

  “Well, fix it!”

  Moss tapped at the keys. A line dropped off the graph.

  She lost two doves. Oh, no, you don’t! You come back here. She found them again, with ten others.

  She remembered Marvellini asking, “Young lady, how would you like a job?”

  Forty others.

  She could still hear the young man say, “Oh, by the way, my name’s Dane.”

  And now she could see herself on the back of each dove, envision her arms about its neck. What a ride!

  Dane’s radio crackled. Preston’s voice. “Dane, we might have something.”

  The monitor in the lab was coming alive with bars on the graph, interdimensional intensity waves, deflection vectors.

  “What is going on?” DuFresne demanded, and now the Watchers were stepping up for a closer look.

  “I’m canceling, I’m canceling!” Moss countered.

  DuFresne watched the monitors. It didn’t look like it.

  She’d found it. The feel, the intuition, was different, like driving on the wrong side of the road or writing with the wrong hand, but she’d found it. Some of her reaches were dropping out for no reason, but she just had to feel around to find them again, along with a couple hundred others.

  Yes! She could remember when Dane told her, “Hey, Mandy, guess what: Marvellini’s calling it quits. He’s offering us the business if we want it.”

  DuFresne was losing his cool. “I thought you were canceling!”

  Moss was losing his as well. “She keeps resetting!”

  “Dane,” Preston radioed, “it’s working! She has them!”

  The doves were returning in droves, bursting from the trailers, lining up in wing-to-wing formations, one formation behind the other, formation on formation, descending toward the net like waves breaking.

  Hundreds of horizons reeled, rocked, and raced before the eyes of Mandy’s mind as each bird climbed, banked, dropped, lined up wing-to-wing with forty-four others, and descended behind other lines of doves toward the trucks, the four men, the net. She placed herself on the back of each bird to guide, prod, love it along, feeling the wind streaming over each dove’s head, the violent beating of the wings, the muscles driving like pistons. Okay, drop down, level out, you see that cord running across the net? Grab on, grab on… . That’s it! Now climb, baby, and pull! PULL!

  Preston and his men had planned for this, envisioned it, hoped for it beyond all reason, but absolutely nothing came close to standing there and seeing it. Line upon line, wave upon wave, the birds took hold of each horizontal course of webbing and pulled it skyward, lifting the next course for the next line of birds who came in as one, grabbed hold, and lifted. With each additional line of birds lifting, the net rose faster, opening up more courses for more lines of doves to grab, until lines were coming in by the fives, tens, twenties, grabbing their courses and pulling, pulling toward the sky. The last hundred courses reeled off in a blur.

  It was the most amazing thing these men had ever seen.

  A gasp moved like a wave over the audience, from the folks in the bleachers and then the folks on the ground as heads turned toward the south. What was this, a cloud, a huge white banner? What could it be? Surely it wasn’t what it looked like: a glimmering, sparkling, living magic carpet … made of … were those birds?

  People in the bleachers rose to their feet as the usual ooohhhs and aahhhhs ebbed to a stupefied silence and the silence broke into a cacophony of cries, questions, exclamations. This couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.

  They’d never seen anything like it.

  Neither had Dane. He wanted to drop to his knees in awe and gratitude, but … not yet, and not where he’d be seen. He headed for the crane, the main point of vulnerability.

  Moss fell back from the keyboard, overwhelmed by the numbers and the blinding speed with which every setting, every indication, every prediction was changing.

  “Seamus!” DuFresne shouted into h
is headset. “What’s going on?”

  Seamus stammered trying to answer, his video camera sweeping, blurring, searching.

  The announcers on the television were going berserk. The cameras zoomed in on a huge white banner flying toward the Orpheus. “What is that?” they shouted. “No, I don’t believe it! I have never, ever seen anything like this!”

  Seamus got his camera pointed and zoomed, but the shot was too shaky.

  The television cameras zoomed in closer, stabilized.

  DuFresne was on his feet, nose inches from the television screen. “Are those … are those doves?”

  Moss couldn’t think of which key to press. He could only read the monitors. “Exactly four thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four—on that many timelines.”

  She remembered!

  The wedding cake was half gone by the time they left the reception … their travel trailer was a Terry and had a propane furnace … they kept the original Bonkers, Lily, Maybelle, and Carson on the windowsill next to the dinette … she cooked dinner on a barbecue stand in Brentwood Park in Minot, North Dakota, because they couldn’t afford restaurants … they hauled and stored all their gear in the vanishing trunk Dane built.

  And she really was Mandy Collins, riding a zillion doves and marveling at the view below each bird’s pounding wings. In countless minds, through countless eyes flying free, she could see the pod dangling just below the boom of the crane.

  Inside the pod, her body was racing through different hairstyles and lengths; her fingernails were growing out, jerking short again, growing out, jerking back. She may have had a few colds in the last second or two.

  Okay, guys, steer for the pod … this way, this way …

  Only a few seconds and they would be overflying the stage.

  The TV announcers were on their feet.

  “Like a flying carpet—literally!” cried Kirschner.

  “At least a hundred feet long, sixty, eighty feet wide, made up entirely of white doves!” Rhodes shouted, his voice high-pitched, his mike distorting.

  At the hospital, Arnie had to move up close to see around the people crowding the television.

  “An unbelievable precedent in the world of entertainment!” cried the announcer. “Impossible to believe, but there it is, folks, and we guarantee, what you are seeing, we are seeing.”

  People around the lobby—patients, nurses, doctors, administrative staff—were running over to see, scrambling to find another television, spreading the word: “You’ve got to see this!” They were stunned, totally engaged, astounded.

  And Arnie had to laugh. “Dane, you old trickster!”

  Back in the vacant lot, Preston and his men had folded up the platform, the wrapping, the Velcro strips, and loaded them into a trailer. Now, with stacks rapping and diesel smoke belching, the two semis drove out of the vacant lot while they had the chance.

  “Cancel those timelines!” DuFresne roared. “Get rid of those birds!”

  “There isn’t time!” Moss shouted back. “It takes at least one second to cancel each timeline, that’s—she’s way ahead of us!” Then, in all his number crunching, he discovered something that hit him like a blow to the stomach. “Oh, no …”

  “What? What now?”

  “Four thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four doves … the girl, the costume, that, that rigging, whatever it is … no wonder!”

  All eyes went to the video screens now filled with synchronized doves connected by a nearly invisible grid with something—ribbons? flags?—trailing on thin threads beneath it.

  DuFresne didn’t take his eyes away as he prodded, “What?”

  Moss pounded the console. “She has gravitational equivalence with the Machine. Equal mass, one thousand, six hundred and thirty-two pounds!”

  DuFresne needed no further explanation. “Stone! Mortimer! Drop the pod!”

  Moss objected, “No! Not before the retrace is complete!”

  “Drop it now!”

  Mr. Stone, out of his fireman’s uniform and back in his basic black, was at the controls of the crane. Mr. Mortimer, also back in style, was just behind the crane, pouring out the remainder of the crane operator’s “medicated” coffee and making sure the man’s “fainting spell” would look convincing. Stone had been waiting for the hourglass onstage to run out before triggering the release, the point being to make the show appear to go as planned even while the girl’s retraced body incinerated in the volcano. The cloud layer of birds doing a fly-by under the crane’s boom forewarned him there could be a change in plan. He replied, “Roger that,” and reached for the red button.

  Another hand yanked his back! Now somebody—oh, no, not the old magician!—dropped on top of him.

  Not that Dane had any choice but to throw himself into it, but he did have some advantages. He outweighed Stone and, as luck had it, was the guy on top. The crane cab was a tight place with little room for wrestling or hauling back for a punch, and all Dane really had to do was keep Clarence or whatever his name was crunched into that chair and away from the controls. Sure, it was going to hurt—Clarence nailed him in the side of the head, knocking off his headset—well, that hurt more than he expected.

  Mandy, trapped in the pod and flying outside with the doves, could see the stage and the flaming volcano passing a hundred feet below. Some of the doves were spooking at the heat and flames—she couldn’t blame them, it was more than enough to spook her—but they followed their buddies and kept flying straight and level, fifty feet beneath the pod and a hundred over the heads of the crowd.

  To those on the ground, 4,864 pairs of wings flying in tight formation put out a sound as awesome as the sight, a rushing clamor like a stadium-size crowd applauding in a heavy rainstorm. People’s mouths hung open, kids clung to their parents, cameras blinked, clicked, and flashed, and voices across the entire crowd clashed in a corporate, involuntary drone of wonder and astonishment.

  Atop the hotel, the hang glider crew had been waiting for Mandy to arrive and get harnessed up, but now they stood like ornamental statues on the edge of the hotel roof, the only ones granted a view of the birds from above.

  “Emile …” the leader radioed.

  “Uh, roger, stand by,” Emile came back. “We have traffic in the area.”

  Clarence kept swinging and Dane kept trying to grab his arms to keep him from swinging, which worked only half the time. He dug his knee into Clarence’s groin and got some mileage out of that, though it was purely accidental.

  Mandy grabbed two tabs, one on each shoulder of her leather costume, and yanked downward. In less than a second she went from medieval warrior princess to glimmering angel.

  Next—there was no way to think or plan it, she just had to bring all her minds and selves and doves together and agree on the timing, speed, and placement, that one precise point in time that was … now!

  She squeezed her eyes shut, plugged her ears, braced herself, hit a button with her toe …

  Everyone heard the noise, like a short string of firecrackers all popping at once. A puff of smoke and fire from the pod caught their eyes. The petal doors had blown open. They cheered, shrieked, as …

  Mandy dropped out of the pod into blinding sunlight, spreading her arms and legs like a sky diver as the rush of air unfurled streamers and a long train from her costume. The doves were like a cloud deck below her. They filled her vision and disoriented her a moment—she felt as if she were rushing backward and they were standing still. She was floating.

  The crowd saw an angel with a glimmering, silken comet’s tail free-falling.

  An apparatus like a trapeze trailed just behind and below the doves, suspended from the grid by wires so fine they had to be assumed more than seen, and slowed by flags of silk to keep it trailing, in the clear. Before anyone had time to complete the thought: Uh-uh, never, no way …

  As Dane took another blow to his body that sent his radio flying but managed to land a punch of his own, bloodying Clarence’s nose …

 
As the hourglass trickled down to its last grains of sand …

  As Moss and DuFresne were just realizing they’d missed their chance to cover up the retrace …

  Mandy brought one more object into her realm of control, that trapeze behind and below her. The birds kept moving, she kept dropping, it appeared she would fall right into the last several rows of birds …

  She stretched her arms out front. Feather-light, composite clamps—Dane’s brainchild, Emile’s craftsmanship—shot out of her sleeves like open claws.

  Her hair was curled now, fluttering above her head. She had this style when she and Dane did the Carson show in 1989—she was thirty-eight.

  The last row of doves slipped under her and she fell past, body flattening out, arms extended. She could see the maw of the volcano, larger now, a circle filled with flames. Heat struck her face.

  The trapeze rigging was racing past, the lines marked with fluorescent stripes for her reference, counting down, counting down, getting closer.

  She tucked her chin to see the trapeze. Here it came …

  Oh, Lord, if I’m to live …

  A microsecond early. She lowered her arms six inches—

  The trapeze slammed into the clamps, her hands fell free, she dropped below the trapeze, the trapeze yanked the harness lines out of the slots in her sleeves until they terminated at the torso harness sewn into her costume and went taut. The jerk was mushy but enough to pull her arms and legs down into a crawling position, enough to make the birds sink a little from the added weight, but the birds recovered, she straightened into a graceful flying pose, and …

  She was flying under their wings, trailing a long train and streamers of silk.

  A fluttering to her right caught her eye. She grinned. Bonkers and Lily, wings beating, were flying their own formation with her. She looked to her left. Carson and Maybelle.

  Well, where Momma Dove went, they went. That’s just the way they were.

  Dane didn’t see the ultimate payoff of his design, but he heard the roar of the crowd, and it was not the sound of horror at something gone tragically wrong; it was the frenzied, jumping-up-and-down jubilation at something that had gone incredibly right.