by John Dalmas
"Vic," Tory said, "I think that's a little steep for Martti." That did come through, and I was aware of her eyes on me. "Martti," she told me, "get up and walk around the room. Look at things. Touch them." I did, and felt better right away. Then we all refilled our coffee cups and I got a couple more chocolate-chip cookies, and they asked Tuuli about what it was like growing up in Lapland.
After a little, I brought the conversation back to Ray Christman, more or less. "So all this information and theory you developed—what good does it do? If Christman got it wrong and you're not doing anything with it yourself?"
"It doesn't have to do good. The bottom line is, we had fun doing it, Tory and the boys and me. Especially me. And Ray had fun with it in his own way. Beyond that, he gave half a million people enough of it that it's making a useful difference in their lives and their environments. And it's percolating into the overall body of the New Age movement, with all its interests and information, its mythologies and misinformation from a lot of different directions.
"Folks need a new paradigm, you see. One they can relate life to. Even before Arne Haugen introduced his geogravitic power converter, things were changing so fast in people's lives that a lot of them were having trouble coping. Then along came the GPC, and the incomplete theory that Haugen based it on, and all of a sudden, science had the breakthrough it needed to start simplifying a lot of things, and integrating them into new and more powerful conceptual models. And engineers had a whole new information set to play with. Play and build with. And boy have they ever!"
He paused to dunk and eat another cookie. I matched him; I'd forgotten all about calories.
"So things got to changing faster than ever," he went on, "and people are having more and more trouble with the changes. They feel like the world's getting away from them."
I nodded. "That's why the government passes laws to slow things down, some things."
I thought of the agricultural preservation acts that restrict the use of food factories in the United States and a lot of other countries. The geogravitic power converter changed agriculture as drastically as it did transportation. Desalinized seawater was nearly as cheap as river water now, and pumping it long distances over mountains is economical too. Though to call the machinery "pumps" is stretching the term; they just create localized energy fields where uphill is downhill. And there was storm control that grew out of the same theories, and the advances in molecular engineering. Along with genetic engineering, they'd changed farming so drastically my dad wouldn't have recognized it, and he'd been dead less than twenty years.
But it was still farming. People still lived on the land and worked the soil, even if a lot of it was under clear-tents that covered acres of ground. The unrestricted development of food factories would wipe out most of it, something a whole lot of people weren't ready to face yet.
That's the kind of thing I meant when I mentioned government restrictions.
"Right," Vic said, "the government does hold back some changes. But even so, they're coming faster than ever, and a whole lot of people feel anxious. Some get to be activists for some cause, trying to increase their control of things. Some take drugs, trying to relieve their anxieties. Others look for deeper meaning in consciousness clubs, dream networks, or just life itself. Or join churches or cults. A religious cult, if it's not a con, is just a church outside of what folks are used to."
He stopped to eat another cookie, chewing and sipping thoughtfully. "More of them might join cults, except they've learned not to trust 'em. So there's getting to be a lot of New Age eclectics, borrowing from this belief and that philosophy and these other sets of practices—puttin' them together in a system that makes sense to them. People leave groups like Leif's and Ray's, and take with them what they learned there, and gradually it spreads.
"Leif borrowed a lot from psychiatry and psychology—culled it, tested it, and unified it. And added his own ideas. Some of them, especially dealing with application, have worked their way into psychology and psychiatry in a sort of reverse flow. You can find quite a few psychiatrists now, and clinical psychologists, who'll treat you with what amounts to Noetics One, which are the levels that bite best. Especially when they're not loaded up with Leif Haller's cosmology and megalomania. Even his cosmology can be beneficial; it can break older false realities, and give you food for thought."
I interrupted. "You're talking about Noeties. What about Gnostic procedures?"
"They've barely begun to influence psychology and psychiatry. They're less familiar seeming."
Tuuli broke in then, and what she said startled hell out of me. Shook me! "I want to— I want to realize my potential as a psychic," she said. "I know there's more. I can feel it. Will you be my guru? You or Tory?"
She hadn't asked me about it or even warned me. As if she was independent, unmarried. Vic wasn't grinning now. "We're not in the guru business, Tuuli," he answered softly. "If we were, we'd sure like to have you, but we're not. Tell you what though. Before you folks head back to L.A., we've got something to give you. Each of you."
He turned his attention back to me then, and after a few thoughtful seconds picked up more or less where he'd left off. "The big breakthrough in philosophy won't come from people like Tory and me. Not directly. It'll come from the scientific establishment."
I stared at him.
"Physics and math. It started long before Arne Haugen, but he shifted it up a few gears. And it's changing a lot more than the way we travel, and power our factories, and raise our crops. Physics has been turned on its head, and it's growing a new cosmology. Now we've got theoretical constructs like the omega matrix and the Meissner-Ikeda Lattice. Interest in hypernumbers theory is getting to be respectable; it's spread beyond the Institute. And Ali Hasad's Limited Theory of Generated Reality is gaining supporters in mainstream physics. In a decade or so there'll be a new model of reality to orient on, compelling enough and simple enough that it'll change how people look at things. And sooner or later it'll give rise to a psychology that'll compare to present-day psychology the way chemistry does to alchemy."
He stopped then and picked up his last cookie.
I knew this wasn't just a pause. He'd finished. I ate my last cookie too, and finished my coffee. As far as I could see, I was done there.
13
MERLIN THE MAGICIAN
Before I could say anything about going home though, Tory invited us to stay for supper, and she seemed to mean it. Vic said they were having friends down from "up on the Rim"—that's the Mogollon Rim, the rim of the Coconino Plateau—who looked forward to meeting us. It would have been rude to insist on leaving sooner, and besides, I could see that Tuuli wanted to stay. Really wanted to.
Then Vic asked if I'd care to take a hike around, and that seemed like a good way to use some of the time.
"You want to come?" I asked Tuuli.
Tory spoke before Tuuli could. "I'd planned to show her some things around here."
So Vic and I went alone, hiking a path that slanted up the canyon side to the top, stopping to rest when we needed to. A couple of times we passed what seemed to be pieces of airplane, and when we got to the top, sure as hell, there was a whole damned propellor stuck upright in the ground. When I asked about it, he said the plane had belonged to "the Four," and had blown up. I got a strange chill when he said it, and didn't ask for an explanation.
We sort of moseyed along up there in late-afternoon sunshine and a mild breeze. The temperature must have been about 75 degrees. We talked about everyday kinds of things. He asked about my family, and I got carried away. Told him about my dad having been Ojibwa County Sheriff for twenty-five years, and a deputy for ten years before that. That he'd married my mother when he was sixty-one, and they'd had Elvi and me. I also told him a couple of stories I'd heard of things dad had done as sheriff. I was still a preschooler when he'd retired.
Dad was a pretty remarkable man, born on a homestead in a Finlander colony in Upper Michigan, and went to work in the l
ogging woods when he was fourteen, instead of going to high school. I didn't mention how he died though, how they both died. I'd learned years before that I couldn't trust myself not to break down. The last person I'd told was Tuuli, and I didn't tell her everything. My sister Elvi and my half brother Sulo did it for me.
Vic was from Texas; he could even talk Tex Mex. His dad had been an oil field worker, a roustabout, and Vic had too, after high school. Till he had enough money to start college, where he got his bachelor's in chemistry. He'd started on his master's in biochem, but washed out by getting a C in physical chemistry. He'd switched to science education then, to finish his degree, but taught only briefly before getting a job with Viggers.
While we walked, a Dodge Skytote came in from the northeast; its driver saw us and put down on the ridge. It had Diacono's Spirit Lodge painted on the side, in script resembling the Devanagari of India. A big, powerfully built guy got out, and a woman as good looking as it's possible to be at sixty. With them was what I took for a Hindu, small, hardly bigger than Tuuli, looking totally incongruous in Levi's, a chamois shirt, and a very large hat. I stood back and watched while all three of them, laughing, hugged and kissed Vic as if he were a favorite uncle they hadn't seen for years. My family had had a lot of affection among themselves, but its men didn't kiss each other, or their wives in front of anyone. I'd always felt uncomfortable, seeing men kiss each other, but for these people it seemed natural.
When the hugs had been distributed, Vic turned to me. "Frank, Mikki, Bhiksu, I'd like you to meet Martti Seppanen, the visitor I told you about from L.A. Martti, this is Frank Diacono, and this pretty lady is his wife Mikki." He chuckled. "And this rawhide buckaroo is Bhiksu. Frank and Mikki and I are old friends from way back; Frank helped me debug the surprise generator, and Mikki saved his life on the lake ice. He'd been shot, and like to have froze unless he bled to death first. Bhiksu's an old friend too, who came to Arizona three years ago. Bhiksu's all the name he uses. I think he's on the run from somewhere."
Something about Vic's monolog had made my head spin, but pressing the flesh cleared it. Frank Diacono's grip was as strong as mine, and his strength seemed to flow through it into me.
"Glad to know you, Frank," I said. "And Mikki. And Bhiksu." It seemed to me I knew Diacono's face, and his wiry hair, half gray now. Knew it from when he was younger and I was a kid. The name rang a bell, too. It would come to me.
Then we all got in the Skytote and floated down to the house. As soon as I got out, I could hear two women laughing in the kitchen, and for a minute thought someone else had arrived while we were gone. It turned out to be just Tory and Tuuli; I'd never heard Tuuli laugh like that before, or look so beautiful.
Supper was a ranch-style meal: steak, chili, and coffee, plus a salad with boiled eggs and home-sliced cheese on top of lettuce and slices of cucumber and tomato. There wasn't any dessert, but when we went to the living room afterward, there was a tray of brownies, and two battery-powered thermal coffee pitchers to supplement the pot.
I really can't tell you what was talked about. I started feeling groggy early on, a grogginess I decided later was protection against mental or psychic overload. Tuuli, though, was taking it all in. I have a sort of vision of her there, laughing and lovely, her tan cheeks with a pink underglow. Before I conked out entirely, I was in a sort of weird falling-asleep state, with Bhiksu seeming to float in the air, glowing a violet blue. That was the last I remember until I woke up in darkness, having to use the hyysikää, the bathroom. It was half past one, and the house was quiet. The only light came from the bathroom door, standing slightly ajar down the hall. When I was done and came back out, there was Vic, sitting in the wicker rocker, almost invisible in the dimness. I wondered if he'd been there all along.
He stood up, and without saying anything, beckoned. I didn't know what else to do, so I followed him down the hall to a corner room. He opened the heavy wooden door and closed it behind us.
It was an ordinary, if undersized, bedroom with no bed, only two kneeling chairs, well upholstered. He gestured at one, and I knelt-sat down on it. He sat down facing me about six feet away, and spoke. "Remember I said we had something to give you?"
"Yeah."
"Tory gave Tuuli hers while you and I were up the hill."
I nodded. Something had happened, that I knew.
"I thought I'd better give you yours tonight, so you could sleep on it."
I had no idea what he was talking about, but for whatever reason, it was okay with me.
"I want you to just sit there and look at me, while I look at you."
We did, and I felt tension gradually developing. Then something began pulling inside of me, twisting, and suddenly I felt as if the whole world was dying. I could feel my face screwing up, and then the tears started. I was a grown man crying, crying right in front of someone, another man, and I couldn't stop, didn't want to stop. I keened and swayed and sobbed, and then a stranger thing happened. Much stranger. I seemed to be outside myself, in a back corner of the room, up by the ceiling. I watched myself cry, and as I watched, felt a strange warm affectionate feeling, tinged with amusement. And at the same time still felt the grief and the bitter bitter loss. It was as if I was two people, one watching the other.
It went on like that for several minutes—long enough that my shirtfront was wet with tears. Then it eased, and I realized I felt—clean. Drained but totally clean.
"Well," Vic said quietly, "shall we call that a done?"
I nodded. It felt done to me.
"Then how about we have a bite to eat?"
I followed him to the kitchen and sat watching him fry bacon and eggs at two in the morning, the bacon in an electric skillet, the eggs on an electric grill. The sound of sizzling was an aesthetic masterpiece. Frying bacon had never smelled so good, and things had never looked so sharp and clear before. I couldn't remember feeling so relaxed. While the eggs and bacon fried, toast popped from the toaster, four slices, and I helped butter them. Then Vic poured a tall glass of milk. Neither of us said anything till the bacon was crisp, perfectly crisp. Then he sat me down and put the whole batch in front of me, enough to feed a family.
"That's yours," he said. "I'll make some more for me."
Salivating like a rabid wolf, I started eating. It was marvelous. I scarcely thought, just savored the food, and the smell and sound of more bacon frying. Vic settled for two eggs, with bacon and toast in proportion. When we'd finished, we put jackets on and walked outside to look at the desert sky awhile. Living in L.A., I'd forgotten how many stars there are to see. Linnunrata, the Milky Way, was a broad white swath across the sky, and mentally I reached, glorying in it, high as a bird.
Back inside I lay down on the couch again, not to waken Tuuli. Vic went on to bed. I wondered if I'd go to sleep, and in a minute or two was drifting off, remembering Tuuli's laughter when I'd come back from the hill. Then I slept and dreamed, though I don't remember what.
I awoke to a kiss. Tuuli was kneeling beside me, and sunlight was glowing through the windows.
14
PIE ARE SQUARE
We flew out of Wickenberg at noon for L.A. It was another beautiful April day. I didn't feel as strangely marvelous, or as marvelously strange, as I had in the kitchen with Vic, and maybe I never will again. But I felt more relaxed than I was used to—than I had since I was sixteen. Since before dad and mom were killed, and I shot and stomped their murderer.
I can talk about it now. I still feel—not grief, but the memory of grief, a shadow of it. And the rage is gone, the rage and shame I worked to hide for so long, suppressed for so long.
On the flight home, Tuuli and I talked more than usual to each other, and without the sharp edges that sometimes were there—that often were there beneath the surface. Also, I came away with Frank Diacono's business card:
Frank Diacono
(602) 555-3443
Diacono's Spirit Lodge
Long Valley Route
Box 146
Pine, Arizona 85544
And an invitation: "If you ever need a place to get away to, give us a call. We can pick you up at Flagstaff or Phoenix."
* * *
The next day I caught up on office work, especially reading. Joe subscribes to a clipping service that faxes us clipsheets on crime and criminals in California, Nevada, and Arizona, covering both English and Spanish-language newspapers. And I turned in my expense account for the weekend—airfare, not including Tuuli's, my mileage driving to Hollywood-Burbank, and airport parking.
I also worked out at Gold's. I didn't buy Tory's comment that her brownies and chocolate-chip cookies were nonfattening. Although I hadn't gained any weight over the weekend, which didn't hurt my feelings.
Most of the next two days I spent contacting my informants and learning nothing. Just after I got back to the office on Wednesday, Tuuli called. The WorldWide Films Theatre was showing a Finnish film about the Lapps, and she wanted us to go that night. I told her sure. After that I dictated an interim report on the case, for Joe's editing and initials. He'd send clean copy to Butzburger, recommending the investigation continue. It was too soon to give up. Butzburger, of course, might feel differently, and it was his money. Also he might not like what I'd learned about the source of Christman's ideas.
The report didn't take long. Then I left early, to get home before the rush hour traffic.