by John Farris
Rona asked Courtney, who had opted for a starry-eyed routine and a naive personality, a lot of questions. Courtney seemed happy to play to Rona while she conducted her recon of household security. The First Lady had okay'd a complex of perimeter alarms well beyond the house, but the system depended heavily on infrared cameras. Motion detectors had been tried, but in a wildlife area filled with elk, mule deer, brown and black bears, badgers, and the occasional cougar, all of them nocturnal prowlers, such alarms were useless. Inside the house Rona liked her privacy. The Secret Service had limited their security efforts to cameras and motion de tectors that covered areas of access on the first floor, six in all. The motion detectors were never turned on until everyone had retired for the night, which often was the hour before dawn. While in residence at Big Country the President and First Lady were supposed to wear tracking devices, but Nick Grella had said they almost never remembered them.
Courtney spoke under her breath as they walked together. A camera full on her face could not have seen her lips move. The hearing aid Buck had substituted for the one he usually wore could pick up a whisper through a cement wall.
"POTUS is down for the night."
"Then it's a miss."
"No, I can bat from the other side of the plate."
"Come again?"
"FLOTUS is hot for me."
"Noticed that."
"She'll invite us to spend the night. Wilding is half-bombed already. You fake it. Pass out early. Then it's me and FLOTUS, and she'll be ready to boogie. When we're alone it's all my play."
"Can't ask you to—"
"Like I said. I'm a switch-hitter."
"Oh."
Outside the baronial dining room, with its twenty-five-foot vaulted ceiling and rustic chimney stack, the temperature had fallen into the low fifties. A fire of seasoned hickory blazed on the hearth. The solar-gain windows framed a panorama of mountain peaks. The moon was golden in a misty nimbus. A meteor flickered in the far, far dark.
They were halfway through a meal of poached trout, elk steak, and wild rice when Clint Harvester appeared, wearing only his pj's. The top half was mostly unbuttoned. He had put on sneakers, on the wrong feet, and the laces were untied. A MORG security man with a harried expression came up behind Clint as he hesitated in the doorway fifty feet from where Rona was sitting, her back to him.
Victor Wilding noticed Clint first and nudged Rona. The others looked up as she turned, a glass of cabernet sauvignon halfway to her lips.
Buck Hannafin saw her hand tremble. He seized the moment and stood, pushing his chair back from the table, and before anyone else could move or speak he strode across the floor with a glad smile, his hand out.
"Mr. President! Wonderful to see you again. Rona said you were a little under the weather tonight."
Rona recovered her wits, put down the wineglass and said, "Buck, don't."
Buck ignored her. When Clint failed to respond, only stood there with a slight swaying of his body and a mildly puzzled expression, Buck seized his right hand and pumped it enthusiastically, looking intently into Clint Harvester's eyes.
The MORG guy behind the President said, "Mrs. Harvester, I'm sorry, but he heard voices—"
"Should be asleep by now," Rona finished, biting her underlip in exasperation. She smiled at Courtney, excused herself, and went swiftly to her husband's side.
Buck was saying, "Don't you know me, Mr. President? It's Buck Hannafin."
Clint's eyes were moving, but not as if he were trying to track something inside the room. He appeared to be deeply engrossed, like a very young child sitting on the ground, counting marbles as he put them into a sack. He made a windy sound.
"Hafffn."
Rona linked arms with her husband as if giving him desperately needed support, and faced Buck with a set defiant face and a half smile that dared him to take a fatal step.
"He doesn't know you, Buck. Why not let it go at that for now? We were having such a good time."
Buck's eyes turned flinty but he smiled, more for Clint than Rona as he reluctantly let go of Clint's hand. He glanced over his shoulder. Victor Wilding was pouring himself another glass of wine, his third or fourth since they'd all sat down to dinner. He was content to let Rona handle the situation. There was a warning in Courtney's eyes.
"Why'd you put on a show, Buck?" Rona asked. "No point in confirming what I'm sure you already knew. Being Buck Hannafin."
He looked at Rona, his shoulders falling slightly. "I thought he might have made some progress. I thought maybe seeing an old—seeing a friendly face—"
She shook her head. "I'm going to take Clint upstairs now. Finish your dinner. I can't promise when your next meal might be."
A cell phone began to ring.
Courtney burst into sobs. "Is the President sick? What's going on? I don't understand!"
Buck looked quickly at her, realizing she was about to make an impromptu move. He wished he knew what was on her mind.
Victor Wilding picked up the cell phone next to his plate with a grimace of annoyance, flipped it open.
In desperation Buck put a hand on Rona's arm as she was turning her husband around in the doorway.
"Let me speak to him again, Rona! Let me try, I think Clint recognized me.
"Don't ever touch me, Buck!" Rona snarled, and jerked her head toward Clint's MORG nanny. "What are you standing there for? Get this old bastard out of my face!"
Courtney wailed hysterically, holding a napkin to her mouth, slumping out of her chair as if she didn't have a bone in her body. Buck knew she was going for the flint knife in her boot. It was blowing up, here, now, right in their faces. He tugged at Rona's arm again. The MORG agent, mindful that he was dealing with a United States Senator, tried to separate Buck and Rona.
Victor Wilding rose from his seat, cell phone to his ear.
"What? WHAT?!"
His face went slack. Nothing but the whites of his eyes showed, as if he had taken a knockout punch and was on his way to the canvas.
Clint Harvester, in obviously good physical shape, wrestled free of Rona and, for the first time, looked directly into Buck's eyes.
"Help me," he said.
Joy welled up in Buck's heart. He let go of Rona and backed away. He was looking at Rona, and she was staring past him at Victor Wilding. Clint's left arm jerked up. It seemed to Buck to be an involuntary movement. His elbow hit Rona in the face, breaking her nose. She staggered back a couple of steps and sat down hard.
They all heard an anguished moan that rose in pitch to a scream, but it didn't come from Rona.
Victor Wilding had dropped the cell phone and was clutching at his throat in a paroxysm of solitary violence. He fell over a serving cart and rolled in scattered food and chafing dishes on the floor, making terrible scalded animal noises. Courtney Shyla was crouched on the same side of the table with the flint knife held low in fighting attitude, but she was distracted, as they all were, by the sight of Wilding writhing in mortal agony. Especially Rona, in shock herself, what remained of her nose pushed gruesomely to one side, almost lying on her right cheek, blood flowing.
She said in a choked voice, "Gahh—wha's wrong ... Victor?"
Three other MORG agents and half the household staff came on a dead run. Courtney saw guns in too many hands and slipped the knife back into her boot. She was the closest to Wilding and the first one to get to him.
"Bring me morphine!" she yelled, in order to be heard over Wilding's shrieks. "Then get medevac here fast! This man's burning up!"
The numbers flashing on Victor Wilding's digital watch read 9:26.
CHAPTER 31
PLENTY COUPS, MONTANA • JUNE 7 • 8:44-9:24 P.M. MDT
Eden Waring's doppelganger had nearly given up finding Robin Sandza when she saw Dr. Marcus Woolwine coming her way in one of the many look-alike corridors of MORG's underground facility.
It gave her some hope that he might be on his way to look in on Robin before calling it a night. She followed h
im.
Card key unlocked a private elevator. Snug in there, but she hugged a back corner of the elevator during the slow ride down. Woolwine, with the dpg slipping out behind him, entered what looked like a maximum-security unit of a communicable disease control laboratory. Air-lock doors with a "clean" room in between. Woolwine was sanitized, gowned, gloved, and masked by a technician. The procedure seemed to bore him. He had little to say to anyone working there.
The dpg, stifling an urge to yawn, drifted to a window with a full view of what had been Robin Sandza's world for the past several years.
Nothing very homey about the room in which he lay, not in a bed but on a cushion of air, no part of his body actually touching anything. Warm air, she hoped, because his pathetically pale, thin body was nude. What hair he had left on his scarred head was white as moondust. There was a respirator mask on his face. He was attached by wires and drip lines to several monitoring machines and life-support systems. Because he was fed like a hydroponic tomato he needed a catheter, but his bowels were perennially empty.
But when she went inside after Marcus Woolwine she saw the other Robin Sandza, the athletic, vital boy of twenty years ago, leaning against one blank wall of his cavernlike sterile crypt.
Robin was bored too. But glad that she had come back. He grinned and walked over to her.
Took you long enough, he chided.
Just all day. Sorry, I couldn't bring flowers.
Your eye is turning in. Gillian's eye used to do that, when she was tired. Has she ever come to visit you?
No. But we'll see each other again. Once this is over with.
The dpg glanced at Marcus Woolwine, who was studying a printout from one of the machines.
Do you have any idea how to do this? Should I just pull some plugs after he leaves?
Wouldn't work. They have backup life-support systems. And backup for the backup. You'll have to go into the brain again. The hindbrain, did I show it to you before?
I remember. Where all life begins in the womb.
And ends. Go in there, shut off the power. It'll just take a few seconds.
Eden's doppelganger looked at Woolwine again. He had a peculiar smile, as if he were savoring a joke. It had to be a coincidence, but he was looking right at her. Then he turned to the viewing window and signaled someone.
Oh-oh. Robin said, and suddenly he wasn't by her side anymore.
The recessed ceiling lights went out. For a few seconds it was nearly dark. But the power hadn't failed. She could still see the luminous, nocturnal blink and scrawl on the screens of Robin's monitors, hear the rhythmic whoosh of his respirator.
Then light returned, a stealthy alarming ultraviolet glow that took her breath away.
Black light.
The dpg felt energy draining from her body. Her lungs seized up. Her knees were as weak as if she had spent the last couple of hours climbing steps in a dream-tower. She saw her hands. They trembled.
If she saw them, Marcus Woolwine could see as well. All of her. Helpless. Panicked.
He was smiling again.
"As I suspected all along: when the lab couldn't find the blood sample we took from you. The vial was empty. Your blood seemed to have vanished overnight. Also I noticed at table that you favored your right, not your left hand. I knew from studying videotapes of Eden Waring that she was left-handed. So the new Avatar fooled us, sent her doppelganger in her stead. To what purpose? Just what mischief are you up to?"
"Can't . . . breathe. Turn off . . . that light."
"And have you disappear again? I won't take the chance. Now that I know who—what you are, I want to study you. Very closely. Black light is not fatal to doppelgangers. Nothing short of the death of your homebody can end your own existence. Ultraviolet or infrared only makes you very, very weak. Causes some discomfort as well, no doubt."
The doppelganger was on her hands and knees. "Yes . . . it hurts me. Please turn it off!"
"If you're cooperative I will let you dress yourself and then, once you've been suitably shackled, you may leave. With me. But what brought you back to Robin? Nothing but the truth, now."
"Robin . . . wants to . . . die."
"Out of the question. It has been my responsibility to keep him alive, and I never fail. We won't expose you to Robin Sandza again. Victor will simply have to accept that it is too much of a risk. Take a last look at Robin if it pleases you, Eden. Oh, my mistake. You have no name. No existence except at the discretion of your homebody. You are cunningly made, but of no consequence. A soulless facade, a fake, a nonbeing."
"I have ... a name. And I will ... be someone . . . that you could never . . . deal with!"
She heard Robin's voice.
We can end this now.
How? I can't move. I'm stuck to the damn floor.
I'll help you.
The doppelganger raised her head. It felt as if there were a yoke of iron on her neck. She looked at the still body of Robin Sandza, suspended in a puppet's snarl of wires and drip lines, a violet glow around his body. Where his head and face should be she saw a different aura, light as distant as that from a nebula in space. But the light exploded into the sterile room with the speed of thought.
One of the ultraviolet spots overhead shattered smokily. Woolwine looked up, then stared accusingly at the dpg.
"What are you up to? Do you need a pacifier?"
Two more lights broke, showering his bald head with hot fragments. Woolwine threw up his arms to protect himself and scowled.
"Stop this, bitch!" He fumbled in a pocket of his long white coat for a hypodermic.
With the load on her body lessened, the doppelganger struggled to her feet, located the remaining sources of the black light, and popped those bulbs.
Woolwine dropped the vial from which he had withdrawn a powerful hypnotic and started toward the dpg. But without the glow of black light he couldn't find her.
"Seal the room!" he shouted to someone beyond the viewing glass. The dpg slapped Woolwine hard across the face, and he staggered back, glasses askew on his face, one shocked eye revealed.
The EKG machine that monitored Robin Sandza's heart rate began to beep in emergency cadence.
Woolwine recovered from the smack in the face and lunged forward with the needle held like a stubby rapier. Poised to jab flesh he couldn't see. Jab, jab—nothing there, or there, or behind him. The room was glowing now from Robin's funerary light. Woolwine raised his head sharply toward the cat's cradle containing Robin's slight body. He saw Robin float free of all restraints, rise toward the domed ceiling. His face was a luminous death mask. But Robin's eyes were open. They were free of pain, ecstatic.
"No! No! No!"
Eden's dpg gave the doctor a hard shove from his left side. Woolwine tripped himself up and sprawled, the hypodermic in his hand crumpling beneath him.
Robin?
I'm almost there. I could use a push too. But take it easy. You don't know your own strength. The shining blue cord—cut it for me, please.
Where are you going?
Can't make that out yet. Too far away. But I know it's where I want to go. I can feel gravity pulling me. Just cut the cord.
Done. Good-bye, Robin.
Marcus Woolwine was on his feet again, minus his mirror sunglasses. The doppelganger watched his eyes as he looked at the flat-line EKG. There was no supportive whoosh from the respirator. Saline solution and drops of chemical sustenance dripped uselessly from the ends of dangling IV lines. He saw Robin's body, white and weightless as an egret's feather, float higher, begin to glow translucently, dissipate atom by atom.
Good-bye—Guinevere. Good luck. Tell Eden I said . . . you deserve to be free. It's what we all deserve ... for being, and trying.
The door to Robin's former prison stood open, and medical technicians were milling about, gazing in wonder at the all-consuming but pacific drift of light that had replaced Robin's body. There was nothing visibly left of him except for a fine drift of sparky ash. Marcus Woolwin
e, in a grunting fit of rage, struck at everyone who stood helplessly near him. Bloody saliva flew from his mouth. He had bitten his tongue.
Eden Waring's doppelganger walked away. Nothing left for her to do there. She felt weightless herself. She took four or five climbing steps and found herself a welcome distance from the underground facility. On the surface, good Montana ground, on a rise a mile or so away from the fake brightly illuminated fort that marked the site of Plenty Coups. She sipped a rush of raw wind through clenched teeth, basked in starlight. There was a storm in heaven, off to the west, as beautiful and slashingly violent as a Van Gogh painting. A rumble like chariots across the sky, arriving with a pantheon of gods for a celestial inquiry. She felt that it had something to do with Robin, part of his redemption. Or was it about the condemnation of those who had used him, and his powers, so badly?
She waited for Eden to take notice of her, and bring her home.
CHAPTER 32
BIG COUNTRY RANCH • JUNE 7 • 9:54 P.M. MDT
The medevac helicopter from Bozeman had arrived just ahead of the storm that had banged its way down from the mountains and was traveling full-throttle across the Big Country range like an old-time Mallet, the behemoth of long-haul locomotives.
Two physicians and two paramedics were aboard the chopper. A paramedic tried to attend to Rona Harvester's devastated nose, but she kept throwing him off and crawling to where Victor Wilding lay on the floor. They'd had to restrain him to keep him quiet long enough to thump up a vein and insert an IV. He'd already had morphine from one of the RNs on duty at the ranch's small infirmary. His temperature was 106, pulse 180. His blood pressure was systolic 270, diastolic 150. The higher figure was a crisis number. Wilding was in imminent danger of blowing out every valve in his heart, a major blood vessel in his brain.