by Tom Deitz
But Aikin saw no golden glimmer. Then again, he didn’t have Second Sight. Dave did. His eyes burned when they were near an activated Track. They burned in the presence of the substance of Faerie or the powers thereof. Magic came to Dave unasked. Was it, therefore, too much to expect that someone who wanted magic as desperately as he did be granted this one small boon?
…closer, and he almost touched it, then relented. Suppose the same thing happened to him as had happened to Dave and his brother? Suppose the Track held him bound, unable to escape?
Stupid, Daniels, he argued back. No way folks don’t walk over this all the time.
And with that, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath—and laid his hand upon the Track.
Did a spark jump between his fingers and the earth as he closed those last few millimeters? Maybe. Probably it was a prickling of pine straw. And was the earth warmer there? Possibly again. But the sun also lay in long beams across the fallen leaves, so they could’ve been heated longer. And had the wind picked up, bringing the scent of strange flowers? Again, that was possible. But the wind had been gusting all day, and his hands were sticky with the sap of a dozen plants he’d collected in passing, some of them quite fragrant.
No, he just couldn’t tell. Not this way. Reluctantly, he rose.
One final test remained, however, which he both longed for and dreaded. Steeling himself, he took a deep breath and stepped full upon the Track.
Nothing.
Merely the warmth of the sun on his shoulders. Another breath, and he took a pace.
Again, nothing.
Another of each, and still no response.
Finally he took fifteen strides one way, then fifteen back the other. Nothing changed. No energy awoke beneath his feet, though they were bare, the better to feel such things. And no visions came to him; no gold glittered on the needles. Nothing altered at all.
But this had to be the place. Had to be.
Sparing one final glare for the blasted oak, he stepped off the Track. A briar snared his leg in passing, leaving straight red scratches across his calf. “Fuck you,” he snapped. “I can’t do shit on that Track beside you, but you can have a friggin’ field day with me!”
The briars did not respond. Aikin retrieved his pack, found a place in surveying distance of both Track and oak, reactivated Tori, chose a book from his stash, and commenced to read.
It was not botany that occupied him, or Wildlife Management or Orienteering. Rather, it was every single book he had found in the library when he’d claimed a terminal and called up Ley Lines and Straight Tracks in the subject data base—all three of ’em. He’d chased ’em down anyway, and raided their bibliographies, and from them gleaned a couple more. And then by browsing the stacks to either side of that assembly, he’d finally accumulated a pile. The View Over Atlantis was one; The Old Straight Track—a new, annotated, edition—another. Probably he should have checked the periodical indices as well, and the folklore journals. And he would—tomorrow. But even the arcanely compromised could stare at CRTs only so long when there were actual pages to be read. It was, therefore, with a keen sense of anticipation that Aikin opened The Old Straight Track.
Most of an hour later, he closed it again. There was interesting stuff in there, no doubt; mostly about how a man named Watkins had noticed how sacred sites in England tended to line up with distinctive natural features and locales significant to prehistoric Britain. From them (so the annotations read) later, less pragmatic folk had hypothesized a system of lines carrying the “earth power” (whatever that was). But he found no mention of Faerie whatever, and no suggestion how this supposed earth power might be accessed.
The View Over Atlantis was no help either. From some promising references to the lines being used to direct magic, it lapsed into a discussion of how the Chinese geomancers had used the concepts of yin and yang represented in those same earth forces to reorder the landscape of their entire country—which was still cool, sort of. But then it had latched onto the mystic symbology of the proportions of the Great Pyramid—and that had quickly gone to mind-fuck bullshit. Aikin was not fond of math that did not pertain to the roll of percentile dice. That the Great Pyramid was in the geographic center of the world’s land masses, and its height a certain percent of the distance to the sun and another to the diameter of the earth was interesting, if suspect, trivia. But mostly it smacked of people with too little to do.
Trouble was, those two books had been the most promising. The others were long shots at best. He scanned the topmost: John Gregory’s Giants in the Earth. But it was so dull it set him first to yawning, then to nodding off. And then (as a growling stomach informed him, before the beeping of his watch did the same), it was time to go questing for dinner.
Reluctantly, he gathered up his books, notebooks, and the plastic bags of hastily labeled flora. It had grown cool with the approach of evening, and he put on his shirt before shouldering the pack. Shoes too: scruffy sneakers. Finally, he ejected Tori and chose another tape. Enya’s “Exile” promptly melted into the woods, soft and plaintive. Aikin smiled at the music—he loved that song. A pause to slip on the headphones, and he started back to his cabin.
He did not hear the rustle of unseen leaves behind him, or the patter of oddly laid feet.
Interlude III: When Duty Whispers Low
(Athens, Georgia—Tuesday, October 27—afternoon)
David glanced one last time at the sheaf of faxes he’d picked up at Bel-Jean Copy Center moments before—the ones he’d received from Uncle Dale—and punched the number for long-distance information into the phone in the Anthro department lounge. This late, the place was empty. Fortunately.
“What city, please?” a far-too-perky voice queried promptly.
“Clayton, Georgia.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’d like a number for John Devlin. Could be unlisted, I guess,” he added, inanely.
A staticky pause ensued, followed, electronically, by the number. David took a deep breath and punched it in, along with his PIN, wondering, as it began to ring, if this was too long a shot, if this was even the same guy who’d been David-the-Elder’s friend in the weeks before his death, and was he going to sound like an utter dweeb when—if—anyone answered.
Someone did. Male. Youngish. Voice soft but clear; Southern accent edged with mountain twang. “’Lo?”
“Uh, hello,” David began, shifting his weight and fidgeting with a copy of Charles Hudson’s The Southeastern Indians someone had left unattended. “Uh…could I speak to John Devlin, please?”
“You got ’im.” The voice was neutral. Polite but a tad impatient, as though the guy got lots of calls from strangers.
“Uh, well…you don’t know me, but my name’s David Sullivan. I’m sorry to bother you, but—”
“Oh shit, you’re him!”
“What?” David blurted out before he could stop. “I mean—”
“I knew your uncle,” Devlin replied. “You sound just like him.”
“I…do?”
“Sorry,” Devlin went on, with a chuckle. “You kinda caught me off guard. Your voice. Your name—same as his, and all.”
“So you’re the right John Devlin? The one my uncle talked about in his letters?”
“If he talked about any John Devlin, it was me.”
David swallowed, trying to determine how to proceed now that the ice was broken. Devlin spared him the trouble. “You know, I was just thinkin’ ’bout ol’ Dave the other day,” he confided. “I was workin’ on one of my poems and had to check the dates on some stuff, and found a card your uncle—hard to think of him that way, ’cause he talked about you like you were his son or brother—sent me right before…what happened, and that made me realize that we were comin’ up on the anniversary.”
“It was last Saturday.”
“Bummed you, didn’t it? Sure as hell bummed me!”
David relaxed. This wasn’t going so bad. Not bad at all, actually. “How’d you know him?
You weren’t in his unit—”
“Didn’t have that pleasure,” Devlin sighed. “I was out by then, snoopin’ ’round lookin’ for…answers, I guess you could call ’em. Happened into a bookstore one day, and saw this American guy with white-blond hair—the kind you’d notice, ’specially over there—prowlin’ through the philosophy section. Something about the way he wore his body said ‘Ranger’—which is what I was. Had on an Enotah County ’Possums sweatshirt, which told me he was from my neck of the woods. So him bein’ a Ranger, a mountain boy, and probably literate, I figured I oughta speak. I did. We hit it off—and spent most of his free time for the next few weeks prowlin’ around archaeological sites—bookstores—a bar or three. He told me a lot about you.”
David had almost forgotten this was a two-way conversation, so caught up had he become. “Yeah, well, we were pretty close.”
“Sounds like.”
“Uh, like I said, I’m sorry to bug you…but I’ve been thinkin’ about him a lot lately, with the anniversary, and all. And I got to wonderin’ about…exactly how he died. I’ve seen the report, and all. But—I mean, I know you weren’t there. But I don’t know any of his friends from the unit. And I thought you might’ve heard something…”
“Hmmmm,” Devlin grunted, sounding serious and a touch uncomfortable. “Can’t help much, that’s for sure. I heard about it from a street kid we knew, when he didn’t show up for lunch one day. Dave had given him a baseball cap, I think. I got there just as they were—there’s no good way to say it—pickin’ up the pieces, but they wouldn’t let me help. I tried to find out what I could, but they were real tight-ass about it.”
“But it was a hand grenade?”
“Yep.”
“One of ours?”
A pause. “Yep.”
An echoing pause. “This is gonna sound funny, but please don’t laugh ’cause it’s really serious stuff to me. But…was there anything, you know, weird about it? Or do you have any idea who did it; if there was anything strange about him?”
“You really are a lot like him,” Devlin mused. “But weird? I don’t know. They let out that it was one of them with a stolen weapon; but from what I caught in a bar where a bunch of his buds were hangin’ out—they didn’t know me, see, and were drunk as skunks—they figured it was one of their guys that thought that ol’ Dave was just too perfect.”
“But nothing really strange?”
Devlin hesitated. David could hear his breath hiss. “Like what?”
“Like…angels,” David asked carefully. “I know that sounds crazy, but—”
“God!” Devlin broke in. “There was something about angels, as a matter of fact. Really weird, too, now I think of it. See, these guys were talkin’ ’bout that guy they thought might’ve done it, and said that he’d really flipped out since then—blew his brains out later, as a matter of fact, which I guess is why there wasn’t more of an inquiry. But before all that, he’d apparently been braggin’ that—and I quote—‘Ol’ Sullivan may think he’s God Almighty, but I’m the one that’s fuckin’ an angel.’ End of quote.”
“Well,” David gulped, “that answers that, I guess.”
“What?”
“About the angel. I was wonderin’ if she was…real.”
“Was she?” Devlin sounded remarkably nonchalant—as though it was perfectly normal to discuss esoterica with strangers.
“I dunno,” David hedged. “But I think I just found out who she was. What she was, rather.”
Another long pause from Devlin. “Well, David-the-Younger, I suspect most folks would ask what you meant by that, but knowin’ who you’re kin to, I’m probably smart not to. I’ve seen some things myself, and ole Dave told me he’d seen some more, and you sound like me when I’m tryin’ not to talk about…certain subjects.”
David chuckled grimly. “Yeah, well, I don’t think it’d be cool to say more—’least not on the phone. And I guess I’d better let you go. I got class in a couple minutes.”
“And I’ve got a book to write. But if I can help, let me know. And if I think of anything, I’ll let you know. You got a number?”
David told him.
“Okay, then,” Devlin said, “you take care of yourself…and remember that your uncle was a good man. But you sound like a pretty good guy yourself, like you’ve got a lot of his…magic. And I mean that word, precisely.”
“…Thanks.” David choked. “And thanks for talkin’.”
“Carry on.”
David hung up the phone.
And breathed a long, ragged sigh. He now had independent corroboration for his dream. For somehow he knew without a doubt that no way on earth was John Devlin a liar.
Chapter VI: Trick or Treat?
(Jackson County, Georgia—Wednesday, October 28—afternoon)
“Yeah, but are they always true?” David asked pointedly. He folded his arms, flopped against the doorjamb of his and Alec’s study, and tried very hard not to glare.
“Far as I know,” Alec muttered, not looking up from his desk, where as best David could tell, he was watching a Mandelbrot screen saver smooth out fractal curves of black and orange—appropriate, given it was nearly Halloween. Stupid, too, in view of the number of papers piling up in Alec’s classes. He appeared to be severely preoccupied—but not with Geology 101, computer science, or art appreciation. Or with discussing the antics of a certain ulunsuti he’d refused to show pouch or pot of for the last four days.
“You know any time they weren’t?” David persisted.
Silence. The screen enlarged a random rectangle, the contents of which it commenced to refine. One hall and two rooms away, a dirty dish shifted with a delicate “clink.” The stereo was off, for a change.
More silence. Then, almost a growl: “My word not good enough?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Alec whipped around abruptly, face nigh as dark as his Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, eyes wild as his spiky hair. “You know fucking well!”
“I know that when you use the ‘F’ word you’re pissed. I’d like to know why, seein’ how you’re the one who wouldn’t answer!”
“If you’re so fucking smart,” Alec hissed, “I wouldn’t have to fucking remind you every fucking day that I hate talking about fucking magic, which is what the fucking rock is—and does. More to the fucking point, I hate thinking about how it works. I hate the fact that it can’t decide if it’s critter, stone, or veggie. And right now I’m still hating the fact that I let you and Aik talk me into using the fucking thing!”
David slammed his fist against the wall. The front door rattled. “Well I hate the fact that Uki told you to study it, and you’re not doin’ shit about it!”
“It scares me!”
“You’re supposed to be scared of the unknown,” David snorted. “You gonna be a scientist, you gotta regard stuff like this as a puzzle—a source of inspiration.”
“Yeah, well, the rock’s a little too puzzling.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t be if you’d even try to figure out how it works!” David shot back. “Like what its range is, or how much blood it takes for what reaction—stuff like that. Or,” he added for effect, “how accurate its visions are.”
Alec dived into the ensuing pause. “You’ve used it as much as I have, Mr. Anthropologist! Nothing’s stopping you from studying it to your heart’s content. I’ve already told you it works best when you just worry at it—but apparently that’s not good enough. And it’d help if you’d talk about what it showed you—but of course that’d require you to actually be here.”
“I’m here now!”
“’Cause Liz ran you off.”
“I didn’t see her all weekend!”
“I don’t think seeing her’s what you missed.”
David gaped incredulously. “Good God, McLean, I thought we worked that out years ago! I love Liz—but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you!”
“Just not enough to actually live with me,” Alec snif
fed. “I’m just supposed to baby-sit your stuff while you’re out working your willie—”
“Jealous!”
“Damned right! I mean shit, man, do you have any idea what it’s like to be buddies with somebody for practically your whole life, and share…everything with ’em, and then have ’em slam the door in your face and stick matches to the bruises!”
A deep breath. For calm. For friendship. Barely. “There’re other women, Alec. The only one makin’ you celibate’s you!”
“And my goddamn fucking memory! You think I could be happy with a mortal woman when the first woman I ever made it with was from Faerie?”
“Won’t know till you try, will you?”
Silence.
“Ten thousand single girls seven miles down the road, kid; and you’re hung better’n I am.”
Alec took a deep breath. “So what did you dream? I mean, just in case you actually feel like telling me.”
“Some stuff about David-the-Elder. The day he died, and stuff.”
“Not good enough.”
David stomped a venturesome roach with a bare foot.
“You said, ‘And stuff,’ David,” Alec sighed. “I know you won’t flat out lie to me—but that doesn’t mean you’re telling all the truth. I think that little ‘and stuff’ hides a shitload of something that’s made you a ring-tailed bitch the last few days. I think that’s why you’ve been sleeping over at Liz’s: ’cause she won’t bug you about this. You give me grief about being celibate, and not facing stuff that’s making me unhappy, and all—and you’re doing the same thing! You’re as afraid to face…something as I am. I bet you’re afraid to stay over here ’cause you’re scared you’ll talk in your sleep, or I’ll invoke the Vow, or you’ll…just break down.”
Tears stung David’s eyes. He blinked them away without embarrassment. Alec’s eyes were also gleaming. But at least that bond still existed. At least they were still—mostly—honest about emotions. It was one of the things that made their friendship special. “Got my number, don’t you?” David managed at last.