The Traveler fr-1

by John Twelve Hawks

  * * *

  BOONE ESCORTED RICHARDSON back to the SUV. He received two more phone calls, said “yes” to each person, then switched off the cell.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Richardson.

  “Next stop is the Chan Chan Room.”

  Limousines and black town cars were double parked outside the club entrance on Fifty-third Street. Held behind a velvet rope, a crowd of people waited for the bouncers to search them with hand-held metal detectors. The women standing in line wore short dresses or flimsy skirts with slits up the side.

  Boone drove past the crowd, then stopped beside a sedan parked halfway down the block. Two men got out of the car and walked up to Boone’s side window. One of the men was a short African American wearing an expensive suede car coat. His partner was white and as big as a football lineman. He wore an army surplus jacket and looked like he wanted to pick up a few pedestrians and throw them down on the street.

  The black man grinned. “Hey, Boone. It’s been a while.” He nodded at Dr. Richardson. “Who’s your new friend?”

  “Dr. Richardson, this is Detective Mitchell and his partner, Detective Krause.”

  “We got your message, drove here, and talked to the club bouncers.” Krause had a deep, growly voice. “They say this Romero guy came in an hour ago.”

  “You two go around to the fire door,” Mitchell said. “We’ll bring him out.”

  Boone rolled up the window and drove down the street. He parked two blocks away from the club, then reached under the front seat and found a black leather glove. “You come with me, Doctor. Mr. Romero might have some information.”

  Richardson followed Boone to an alleyway at the rear exit of the Chan Chan Room. A rhythmic, thumping music pushed through the steel fire door. A few minutes later the door popped open and Detective Krause threw a skinny Puerto Rican man onto the asphalt. Still looking cheerful, Detective Mitchell strolled over to the man and kicked him in the stomach.

  “Gentlemen, we’d like you to meet Pius Romero. He was sitting in the VIP room drinking something fruity with a little umbrella. Now that’s not fair, is it? Krause and I are dedicated public servants and we never get invited to the VIP room.”

  Pius Romero lay on the asphalt, gasping for breath. Boone pulled on the black leather glove. He gazed at Romero as if the young man was an empty cardboard box. “Listen carefully, Pius. We’re not here to arrest you, but I want some information. If you lie about anything, my friends will track you down and give you a great deal of pain. Do you understand that? Show me that you understand.”

  Pius sat up and touched his scraped elbow. “I ain’t doing nothing wrong.”

  “Who supplies your 3B3?”

  The name of the drug made the young man sit up a little straighter.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You sold it to several people. Who sold it to you?”

  Pius scrambled to his feet and tried to run away, but Boone caught him. He threw the drug dealer against the wall and began slapping him with his right hand. The leather glove made a smacking sound every time it hit Romero’s face. Blood trickled out of his nose and mouth.

  Dr. Richardson knew this violence was real-very real-but he didn’t feel attached to what was happening. It was like he was one step back from what was going on, watching a movie on a television screen. As the beating continued, he glanced at the two detectives. Mitchell was smiling while Krause nodded like a basketball fan who had just seen a perfect three-point shot.

  Boone’s voice was calm and reasonable. “I’ve broken your nose, Pius. Now I’m going to strike upward and crush the nasal turbinate bones beneath your eyes. These bones will never heal successfully. Not like a leg or arm. You’re going to feel pain for the rest of your life.”

  Pius Romero raised his hands like a child. “What do you want?” He whimpered. “Names? I’ll give you names. I’ll give you everything…”

  ***

  AROUND TWO O’CLOCK in the morning, they found the address near JFK airport in Jamaica, Queens. The man who manufactured 3B3 lived in a white clapboard house with aluminum lawn chairs chained to his porch. It was a quiet, working-class neighborhood, the kind of place where people swept their sidewalks and placed concrete statues of the Virgin Mary on their tiny front lawns. Boone parked his SUV and told Dr. Richardson to get out. They walked over to the detectives sitting in their car.

  “You want help?” Mitchell asked.

  “Stay here. Dr. Richardson and I are going to go inside. If there’s trouble, I’ll call you on my cell phone.”

  The sense of detachment that had protected Richardson when Boone was beating Pius Romero had disappeared during the ride out to Queens. The neurologist felt tired and scared. He wanted to run away from the three men, but he knew that would be useless. Shivering from the cold, he followed Boone across the street. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  Boone stood on the sidewalk and gazed up at a light coming from a third-floor window. “I don’t know. First I have to assess the problem.”

  “I hate violence, Mr. Boone.”

  “So do I.”

  “You almost killed that young man.”

  “I didn’t even come close.” Puffs of white breath came out of Boone’s mouth as he talked. “You need to study history, Doctor. All great changes are based on pain and destruction.”

  The two men walked down the driveway to the back door of the house. Boone stood on the porch and touched the door frame with the tips of his fingers. All of a sudden, he took one step back and kicked just above the knob. There was a cracking sound and the door flew open. Richardson followed him inside.

  The house was very warm and smelled harsh and foul, like someone had spilled a bottle of ammonia. The two men passed through the dark kitchen, and Richardson accidentally stepped on a water dish. Creatures were moving around the kitchen and on the counters. Boone flicked on the switch for the overhead light.

  “Cats,” Boone said, almost spitting out the word. “I hate cats. You can’t teach them anything.”

  There were four cats in the kitchen and two more in the hallway. They moved quietly on soft paws as the inner layer of their eyes reflected the dim light and turned gold and pink and dark green. Their tails curved up like little question marks while their whiskers tasted the air.

  “There’s a light upstairs,” Boone said. “Let’s see who’s home.” Single file, they climbed up the wooden stairs to the third floor. Boone opened a door and they entered an attic that had been turned into a laboratory. There were tables and chemical glassware. A spectrograph. Microscopes and a Bunsen burner.

  An old man sat in a wicker chair with a white Persian cat on his lap. He was clean-shaven and neatly dressed, and wore bifocal eyeglasses tilted downward on the end of his nose. He didn’t seem surprised by the intrusion.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.” The man spoke very precisely, enunciating each syllable. “I knew that you’d show up here eventually. In fact, I predicted it. Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.”

  Boone watched the old man as if he were about to run away. “I’m Nathan Boone. What’s your name?”

  “Lundquist. Dr. Jonathan Lundquist. If you’re the police, you can leave right now. I haven’t done anything illegal. There’s no law against 3B3 because the government doesn’t know that it exists.”

  A tortoiseshell cat tried to rub against Boone’s leg, but he kicked it away. “We’re not policemen.”

  Dr. Lundquist looked surprised. “Then you must be-yes, of course-you work for the Brethren.”

  Boone looked like he was going to slip on his black leather glove and break the old man’s nose. Richardson shook his head slightly. No need for that. He walked over to the old man and sat down on a folding chair. “I’m Dr. Phillip Richardson, a research neurologist with Yale University.”

  Lundquist looked pleased to be meeting another scientist. “And now you’re working for the Ever
green Foundation.”

  “Yes. On a special project.”

  “Many years ago, I applied for a grant from the foundation, but they didn’t even answer my letter. That was before I learned about the Travelers from renegade Web sites on the Internet.” Lundquist laughed softly. “I thought it was best if I worked on my own. No forms to fill out. No one looking over my shoulder.”

  “Were you trying to duplicate the Traveler’s experience?”

  “It’s much more than that, Doctor. I was trying to answer some fundamental questions.” Lundquist stopped stroking the Persian cat and it jumped off his lap. “A few years ago I was at Princeton, teaching organic chemistry…” He glanced at Richardson. “I had a respectable career, but nothing flashy. I was always interested in the big picture. Not just chemistry but other areas of science. So one afternoon I went to a graduate seminar in the physics department about something called brane theory.

  “Physicists have a serious problem these days. The concepts that explain the universe, such as Einstein’s theory of general relativity, aren’t compatible with the subatomic world of quantum mechanics. Some physicists have gotten around this contradiction with string theory, the idea that everything is composed of tiny subatomic objects that are vibrating in multidimensional space. The math makes sense, but the strings are so small that you can’t prove much experimentally.

  “Brane theory goes large and tries to give a cosmological explanation. ‘Brane’ is short for ‘membrane.’ The theorists believe that our perceivable universe is confined to a sort of membrane of space and time. The usual analogy is that our galaxy is like pond scum-a thin layer of existence floating on a much larger bulk of something. All matter, including our own bodies, is trapped in our brane, but gravity can leak off into the bulk or subtly influence our own physical phenomenon. Other branes, other dimensions, other realms-use any word you wish-can be very near to us, but we would be totally unaware of them. That’s because neither light nor sound nor radioactivity can break free of its own particular dimension.”

  A black cat approached Lundquist and he scratched behind the animal’s ears. “That’s the theory at least, in a very simplified form. And I had the theory in my mind when I went to hear a lecture in New York given by a monk from Tibet. I’m sitting there, listening to him talk about the six different realms of Buddhist cosmology, and I realize that he’s describing the branes-the different dimensions and the barriers that separate them. But there’s one crucial difference: my associates at Princeton can’t conceive of going to these different places. For a Traveler, it’s quite possible. The body can’t do it, but the Light within us can.”

  Lundquist leaned back in his chair and smiled at his guests. “This connection between spirituality and physics made me view science in a new way. Right now we’re smashing atoms and ripping apart chromosomes. We’re going to the bottom of the ocean and looking up into space. But we’re not really investigating the region within our skull except in the most superficial way. People are using MRI machines and CAT scans to view the brain, but it’s all very small and physiological. No one seems to realize how immense consciousness really is. It ties us to the rest of the universe.”

  Richardson glanced around the room and saw a tabby cat sitting on a leather folder crammed with sheets of stained paper. Trying not to alarm Lundquist, he stood up and took a few steps toward the table. “So you started your experiment?”

  “Yes. First, at Princeton. Then I retired and moved here to save money. Remember, I’m a chemist, not a physicist. So I decided to search for a substance that would break our Light free of our body.”

  “And you came up with a formula…”

  “It’s not a cake recipe.” Lundquist sounded annoyed. “3B3 is a living thing. A new strain of bacterium. When you swallow the liquid solution, it’s absorbed into your nervous system.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “I’ve taken it dozens of times. And I can still remember to take out my garbage cans on Thursday and pay my electric bill.”

  The tabby cat purred and walked over to Richardson when he reached the table. “And 3B3 allows you to see different realms?”

  “No. It’s a failure. You can swallow all you want, but it won’t turn you into a Traveler. The journey is very short, a brief contact instead of a real landing. You stay long enough to get one or two images, then you have to leave.”

  Richardson opened the folder and glanced at the stained graphs and scribbled notes. “What if we took your bacterium and gave it to someone?”

  “Be my guest. Some of it is in the petri dish right in front of you. But you’d be wasting your time. As I told you, it doesn’t work. That’s why I started giving it away to this young man named Pius Romero who used to shovel the snow off my driveway. I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with my own consciousness. Perhaps other people could take 3B3 and cross over to another place. But it wasn’t me. Whenever Pius comes back for more, I insist that he give me a full report. People have visions of another world, but they can’t remain.”

  Richardson picked up the petri dish on the table. A blue-green bacterium was growing in a graceful curve on the agar solution. “This is it?”

  “Yes. The failure. Go back to the Brethren and tell them to check into a monastery. Pray. Meditate. Study the Bible, the Koran, or the Kabbalah. There’s no quick way to escape our shabby little world.”

  “But what if a Traveler took 3B3?” Richardson asked. “It would start him on the journey, then he could finish on his own.”

  Dr. Lundquist leaned forward and Richardson thought that the old man might jump out of the chair. “That’s an interesting idea,” he said. “But aren’t all the Travelers dead? The Brethren have spent a great deal of money slaughtering them. But who knows? Maybe you can find one hiding out in Madagascar or Kathmandu.”

  “We’ve found a cooperative Traveler.”

  “And you’re using him?”

  Richardson nodded.

  “I can’t believe it. Why are the Brethren doing this?”

  Richardson picked up the folder and the petri dish. “This is a wonderful discovery, Dr. Lundquist. I just want you to know that.”

  “I’m not looking for compliments. Just an explanation. Why have the Brethren changed their strategy?”

  Boone approached the table and spoke with a soft voice, “Is that what we came for, Doctor?”

  “I think so.”

  “We’re not coming back. You better be sure.”

  “This is all we need. Listen, I don’t want anything negative happening to Dr. Lundquist.”

  “Of course, Doctor. I understand how you feel. He’s not a criminal like Pius Romero.” Boone placed a gentle hand on Richardson’s shoulder and guided him to the doorway. “Go back to the car and wait. I need to explain our security concerns to Dr. Lundquist. It won’t take long.”

  Richardson stumbled down the staircase, passed through the kitchen, and went out the back door. A blast of cold air made his eyes tear up as if he was crying. As he stood on the porch he felt so weary that he wanted to lie down and curl up in a ball. His life had changed forever, but his body still pumped blood, digested food, and took in oxygen. He wasn’t a scientist anymore, writing papers and dreaming of the Nobel Prize. Somehow he had become smaller, almost insignificant, a tiny piece of a complex mechanism.

  Still holding the petri dish, Richardson shuffled down the driveway. Apparently Boone’s conversation with Dr. Lundquist didn’t take very long. He caught up with the neurologist before he reached the car.

  “Is everything all right?” Richardson asked.

  “Of course,” Boone said. “I knew there wouldn’t be a problem. Sometimes it’s best to be clear and direct. No extra words. No false diplomacy. I expressed myself firmly and got a positive response.”

  Boone opened the door to the car and made a mocking bow like an insolent chauffeur. “You must be tired, Dr. Richardson. It’s been a long night. Let me take you back to the research ce
nter.”

  36

  Hollis drove past Michael Corrigan’s apartment complex at nine o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the afternoon, and seven o’clock in the evening. He looked for Tabula mercenaries sitting in parked cars and on park benches, men pretending to be power company employees or city workers. After each drive-by, he would park in front of a beauty salon and write down everything he had seen. Old lady pushing a shopping cart. Man with a beard loading a child’s car seat. When he came back five hours later, he compared his notes and saw no similarities. That only meant that the Tabula weren’t waiting outside the building. Perhaps they were sitting in the apartment across the hall from Michael’s apartment.

  He thought up a plan after teaching his evening capoeira class. The next day, he put on a blue cotton jumpsuit and picked up the mop and the bucket on wheels that he used when he was washing the floor of his school. Michael’s apartment complex occupied an entire city block on Wilshire Boulevard near Barrington. There were three skyscrapers, an attached four-level parking structure, and a large inner courtyard with a pool and tennis courts.

  Be deliberate, Hollis thought. You don’t want to fight the Tabula, just play with their minds. He parked his car two blocks away from the entrance, filled the bucket on wheels with soapy water from two plastic jugs, set the mop into the water, and began to push everything up the sidewalk. As he approached the entrance, he tried to think like a janitor-play that role.

  Two old ladies were leaving the building when he arrived. “Just cleaned the sidewalk,” he told them. “Now somebody messed up one of the hallways.”

  “People need to learn some manners,” one of the women said. Her friend held the door open so that Hollis could push the bucket inside the foyer.

  Hollis nodded and smiled as the old ladies walked away. He waited for a few seconds, then went over to the elevators. When the next elevator arrived, he rode alone up to the eighth floor. Michael Corrigan’s apartment was at the end of the hallway.