08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  Well, Clarence could drop the pod now.

  The other guy—Lemuel. Dane only saw a peripheral corner of him when a lightning bolt hit him in the back of the neck. The next thing he knew, he was on the asphalt beside the crane. He couldn’t move, but he could look up.

  An angel was flying by, suspended under a cloud of doves.

  Maybe I’m dead, he thought. Maybe I’m in heaven.

  Emile was just about to order the drop …

  Mr. Stone had his orders. He lunged for the button.

  The pod dropped, the open petal doors causing it to invert like a shuttlecock on the way down. Only half the audience saw it fall, but all heard the explosion when it hit and saw the fireball. Wow!

  Emile went back to watching Mandy and her doves make a climbing turn, circling around to make one more pass by the bleachers and over the crowd.

  In the background of Mandy’s mind it was her fortieth birthday. She opened Dane’s gift to her: the most beautiful diamond wedding ring she ever saw. Dane said, “It’s about time you had a really nice one.” That was 1991.

  In 1992 she was in his arms, weeping at the news he’d brought: her father, Arthur, had passed away suddenly, a failed aortic valve.

  The rest of her mind was on her doves—Easy now, right turn, that’s it, stay together, let’s give ’em a show—and where in God’s universe she was going to find and join up with the Machine. That timeline, that certain fold in space, was like an elusive word on the tip of her tongue, something she knew she knew but couldn’t remember. What happened that day? She was afraid, she was drugged, she ended up in Dane’s pasture, then his living room … how? What did I do?

  In 1995 her periods became sporadic, her life became pointless, applause irritated her, and Dane couldn’t do anything right—and right now she was having a hot flash.

  Moss and DuFresne had a debacle in front of them and deadly power in high places pressing in from behind.

  “As I was trying to tell you,” said Moss, “if we kill her short of the retrace we’d have to rework the numbers manually. It would take years.”

  DuFresne shot back, “But if she finds the Machine’s timeline with that much mass …”

  Silence.

  An idea. Moss ventured, “Can we, can we cripple her? Wound her so she can’t think clearly, so she can’t do … whatever it is she does?”

  DuFresne barked into his headset. “Stone! Mortimer!”

  Stone and Mortimer had just slinked away from the crane and into the crowd when they heard the order. They looked skyward, reached inside their jackets.

  chapter

  * * *

  52

  Local time: 14:18:47.

  Mandy and her doves were half a lap around, slowly climbing. Far below to her right were the parking lot and bleachers filled with ant-size people; to her left, beyond the flat roofs of a retail center, was the vacant lot. She’d visited that site and knew how to find it, but it sure looked small from here, and a long way to go.

  She could feel the years passing. Her hair was shorter now, in the style she settled on somewhere in her late forties. Her costume was feeling tight.

  Stone and Mortimer left their guns concealed. Not here, around all these people. They’d have to follow her, look for a chance.

  Dane watched her circle back around, the doves blending into one huge wing, making a beautiful fly-by for all the folks with all their cameras. Now it made sense, and didn’t bother him, why nobody noticed him lying there on the pavement shorted out like one big funny bone.

  “Dane! You okay?”

  It was Andy and Big Max. Of course, they could never stay hidden behind the stage, not with Mandy giving the world a show it would never forget. They grabbed him and yanked him to his feet without looking at him, and he didn’t look at them either. As the sight and the incredible sound passed directly overhead they let go of him and he almost collapsed but grabbed on. “Did you see those two guys?”

  “What two guys?” Andy still wasn’t looking anywhere but up.

  Dane held on to Andy, waiting for his legs to remember they were there. He swept the area.

  Oh, brother. There they were, running after Mandy as she turned south.

  He tried to run after them—his legs didn’t know how to do that. He returned to the pavement, hobbled back to his feet—his feet had to be down there somewhere—limped after Clarence and Lemuel as they cleared the parking lot and dashed into the street, stopping and slowing traffic, weaving through.

  Mandy’s brain was like a city coming out of a blackout; lights were coming on everywhere. She knew so many friends, recalled so many shows …

  Below her, two doves flew down toward the rooftops, then four more … five more. How did she lose them?

  Mind on the doves! Stay with them!

  Reach for the Machine. Feel that day. Run for the ranch.

  She passed over the street, over the retail center even as she saw herself on Robin Hill Road in the shadow of the aspens, looking up that long driveway toward that beautiful house, building the rehearsal stage, unpacking the crates of illusions in the barn …

  I helped pack those crates!

  But the Machine! That timeline was ungraspable, like a rainbow backing away.

  She was gasping for breath and so were the doves.

  What did I do that day? If I could only remember.

  One thing she did remember: the Horizons Hotel. It was her and Dane’s last gig before …

  They were going to drive to Idaho.

  Moss leaned toward the monitor. “Oh, don’t tell me. Are we getting lucky?”

  DuFresne and the others could see the same thing: fewer bars indicating deflection of time and space, a shrinking number of timelines.

  “She’s losing it,” Moss reported. “More retrace, less deflection, less influence on the Machine.”

  “How long does she have?” DuFresne asked.

  “Not very.”

  Dane was getting his legs back as he stepped off the sidewalk and into the traffic, got one car to stop, then another—the bumper tapped him off balance; he put his hand on the hood to recover. A Corvette almost ran him over, but the guy behind the Corvette stopped and waved him through. He made it to the other side, looked up just in time to see Mandy’s flying carpet disappear over a women’s clothing store. The two guys had just dashed around a corner—a distant corner. He ran again, pushing against his age, like running uphill. He might never catch them, but he would try. If he caught up they might kill him, but at least he’d be keeping them busy.

  He rounded the corner. There they were, still running, looking for a chance.

  The rubble-strewn lot looked much bigger because she was nearly over the top of it, but also because the birds were tiring, starting to sink. Five or six more peeled off the rigging and flew toward the ground, obviously exhausted and just wanting to set down somewhere. She’d lost them, couldn’t find them, couldn’t call them back. Was this going to mess up the weight thing?

  Take hold, girl! Finish the show, find your way back.

  She steered her remaining doves onward, toward the empty lot. Some of them were getting confused, just following their buddies. The ground was coming up.

  She remembered.

  The dove anklet. She wore it the morning of their trip because it had come to symbolize new beginnings, God’s hand in their lives.

  That morning, Dane was still finishing his coffee and toast as they walked to the car.

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  He tossed her the keys to the BMW.

  Local time: 14:23:19.

  What Dane wouldn’t give for some oxygen! He couldn’t draw enough breath, couldn’t get his legs to hurry anymore. He made it to the sidewalk across from the vacant lot. Clarence and Lemuel had already made it to the other side and were positioning themselves amid the rubble, looking for a chance.

  She was sinking toward the bricks, brown dirt, crumbled foundations. The Machine … still so far away. Th
e memory of that frightening, dopey, wonderful day seemed far away too, as good as lost.

  Oh, sweet love, I wanted so much to see Idaho again, to start the new season of our lives. I couldn’t wait.

  She remembered driving the BMW, seeing Las Vegas for the last time—and then …

  A disturbance, a ripple in space, made her look down. Two men were running amid the rubble, looking up at her.

  Faces she would never forget.

  The Machine hummed so loudly it turned Moss’s and DuFresne’s heads. The whole room resonated, quivered with the tone. The monitor went crazy with colors, waves, graphs. The deflection figures shot to a new high.

  Dane got across the street just as the dark guy, Lemuel, reached for his gun. Dane hollered—gasped, mostly—“Stop! Don’t you … do that!”

  Clarence rolled his eyes, plainly fed up as he positioned himself to block anything Dane might try.

  Oh, great.

  Lemuel had his gun in hand and was aiming.

  Dane kept running. What else could he do?

  She saw Lemuel aim at her, then a puff of smoke. A dove fell through the rigging and spiraled behind her. She felt it struggle, die, and slip from her hold.

  No! Every muscle tensed, her hands trembled. Her eyes darted everywhere, but of course she was wide open with nothing she could do, no place she could hide.

  The doves shuddered, out of sync.

  Don’t lose the doves! She reached, held, tried to keep the fear at bay. God, help me!

  She remembered.

  The gravel against her face as they held her down. The stab of the needle. The tire iron in her hand.

  Animal terror.

  Moss’s hands were poised above the keyboard, but everything was happening so fast. “Convergence,” he said.

  “What?” DuFresne asked.

  Was the guy deaf? “Convergence! Her timeline, the Machine’s timeline!”

  “Stone! Mortimer! Shoot her!”

  Dane had to get to Lemuel before he could line up another shot.

  Clarence held his hand up. “Now, take it easy, old man! There’s nothing you can do.”

  Well, nothing that would actually work. Head down, Dane charged into Clarence, who easily sidestepped and threw him aside.

  Dane! Dane was down there! She saw him go tumbling and another puff of smoke from Lemuel’s gun. She was with the dove, guiding it, when the bullet took off its wing, she felt its agony, and lost hold. It fell past her in death, spinning toward the ground.

  Dane got up again, went for Lemuel, trying to stop him, trying to save her …

  The white paddock fence became so vivid she could touch it. In clear, crystalizing memory she half climbed, half leaped over it. The pasture grass whipped against her legs as she ran for the ranch house, for home, for him, reaching, reaching …

  Lemuel caved in Dane’s guts with his elbow and Dane fell backward, losing awareness, his vision darkening.

  Moss was pounding keys, trying to cancel the timeline and normalize deflection. The Machine pushed back, canceling his commands, directing energy toward the timeline, increasing deflection.

  He was arm-wrestling with the girl!

  Clarence was cocky enough to turn his back. Dane landed a kick that bent Clarence’s knee and made him buckle, if just for an instant. In that instant he went for Lemuel again.

  Lemuel pointed the gun at him.

  In mind, spirit, memory, Mandy was running forever and ever … longing, reaching, looking up through drug-darkening eyes at a man and a woman in the window of that beautiful house … together … where she wanted to be … where she belonged …

  As she fell into the grass …

  As she fell toward the broken bricks and concrete …

  She reached so hard a shudder went through the birds …

  Through Dane.

  Through the Machine.

  And Dane was somewhere else. No Lemuel, no vacant lot, no noise, no pain … no body? He rode on waves of colors, fell into shadowy crevasses, passed through brightness, darkness, sounds from his memory he heard all at once, far away. He was floating, suspended … in between… .

  A warning flashed on the monitor, catching Moss’s eye. Mandy’s collective mass now exceeded that of the Machine by 185 pounds.

  “Yes!” Moss exclaimed, getting everyone’s attention. He answered the question in their eyes. “She’s yanked Collins into her collective mass, trying to save him. She’s ruined the gravitational equivalency!”

  “Meaning?” DuFresne demanded.

  “Meaning no timeline trade today, folks! She’s just killed herself and her husband.” Moss leaned back, relieved. “Too bad Parmenter didn’t see that one coming—”

  But then, at that instant, the Machine’s clock indicated 14:24:09, and Moss and everyone else saw the adjustment the Machine made—by prior programming.

  Jerome Parmenter was no longer lying on the bed in the next room. With a flash he appeared in the Machine, sitting on the bench holding a box, and he was looking out through the glass with a strange, gotcha kind of smile.

  The monitor proclaimed it: gravitational equivalence had been restored. The masses were balanced.

  Lemuel spun, looked, pointed the gun in all directions as if he still had an enemy, but he didn’t. He looked up. Engulfed in an eerie, tea-stained atmosphere, Mandy and her doves hovered, wavering as if seen through heat waves, their sound slowed and muffled, the motion of the wings hardly discernible.

  The Machine, with Parmenter inside, was distorting like rubber, bending, twisting, warping. The deep HUMMMM was shaking the floor.

  Moss leaped from the console. “Run! Get out! Get out!”

  Mr. Stone and Mr. Mortimer just stood there. They’d never seen anything like it.

  There was little about the collision Mandy could have remembered. She didn’t see the other car plowing through the intersection against the light. Her head hit the airbag before she had any awareness of an impact.

  But she did remember entering the intersection.

  The last thing the Machine’s monitor indicated was a unity of timelines.

  And then the room filled with flames, flashing and flying about the room like spirits, converging in spirals on the Machine, enveloping the platform, the bench, the glass, the cables—as Parmenter sat inside and watched.

  DuFresne made it out first. Moss and Carlson were blocked by the other men crowding the door. Carlson was in the doorway and Moss was only a few feet inside the room when the shock wave hit.

  In the hospital lobby, the floor heaved and then dropped under Arnie’s feet, depositing him across a couch and in the lap of a gentleman fortunate enough not to be standing. Everyone else ended up on the floor. The magazines hopped off the coffee table, the phones and monitors flew off the reception desk, plants fell over, pictures came off the walls, and people screamed, covering their heads, covering each other, crawling for cover. The place was in chaos.

  The television fell on its side but the picture still worked. Arnie stared at the screen, aghast. It was like seeing the space shuttle Challenger blow up all over again.

  * * *

  The crowds at the Orpheus were on their feet, their mood gone from awe and jubilation to wide-eyed, drop-jawed shock. First there was that wondrous sight, the magic flying carpet made entirely of white doves, and then … a flash, a fireball, and a sonic boom that shook the ground, rattled and echoed through the hotels, and hit the crowd hard enough to knock some of them over.

  Even if Mr. Stone and Mr. Mortimer survived the blast that flattened them into the ground, they did not rise to flee before a shower of flaming metal, shards of glass, blazing lumps of plastic, and smoldering circuitry came down on them like a shower of meteors, burning, melting, blackening the ground, and spewing smoke.

  Emile was spellbound, watching through binoculars. Like everything else this day, planning and expecting this were one thing; seeing it was far, far beyond that.

  As the last burning shred of metal
hit the ground, he got on his radio. “Dane? Dane, come in. Dane, do you read me?”

  Nothing.

  Dane awoke with a start, lying in bed in Preston’s home. Daylight streamed through the windows. What on earth?

  With horror and disbelief he saw the time: 2:25—in the afternoon! How could he have overslept that long? Why didn’t anyone call him? Where was everybody?

  And why was he lying in bed fully clothed, the keys to Preston’s car still in his pocket? He even had his shoes on.

  Whatever happened at the hospital—earthquake, gas explosion, terrorist attack—everyone agreed it happened under the building. The fire department was on its way. Four security personnel streamed down the NO ADMITTANCE stairways to a locked door, used clearance badges to get through, and stepped cautiously into the hallway.

  No smoke. No apparent damage.

  The big double doors appeared intact. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  “Okay,” said the chief of security, “heads up.” He went to the keypad.

  For the other three, this was scary but tantalizing. Even though they had access to every other part of the building, none of them had ever been allowed down here.

  The chief swiped his card through the slot, and the doors opened.

  They hit the floor, arms covering their faces, sure they were goners …

  … as hundreds of white doves exploded into the hallway, panicked and flapping, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, careening down the hallway.

  Dane sat on the steps that led from the house into the garage, the keys to Preston’s Lexus in his hand. He distinctly remembered parking the car in this garage the night before, but now it wasn’t there. Stolen? Arnie took it? Preston came and got it?

  Then … the next strange thing: he remembered getting up that morning, driving to the Orpheus, checking the pod, running through the routine with Mandy, deciding not to rehearse the hang glider.

  So how did he get here?

  Emile got a mike from the sound crew. “Thank you so much for being a part of our amazing show today with the one and only Mandy Whitacre! Please walk to the nearest exit and have a great day here in the Entertainment Capital of the World!”