“You mean my car that is still parked in Portland?” she responded. “There’s an abandoned police car a few blocks down the road, if you want to take that.”
“Sheesh, and my car is still in Portland too. What are we going to do?”
Diana walked up to the door and leaned on the frame, drying her hands with a towel. “Detective Bohannon said he would drive your car down here and take the patrol car back up to Portland this afternoon. Don’t you remember giving him the keys last night?”
“No, I don’t remember that at all.”
“You were a little out of it when you got home. Anyway he should be here in an hour or so. Then you will be mobile again.”
CHAPTER 40
Mara made a point of keeping the brim of her ratty Mariners ball cap pulled down over her eyes as she made her way through the halls of the hospital. When Bohannon stopped by to drop off her car, he said that, earlier in the day, Channel 12 had been showing a close-up freeze-frame of Mara’s face from the dragon-fight video, but that the picture was not as identifiable as they had feared. The blurred features might remind someone of Mara, but it could also be one of thousands of other people as well. If, by chance, someone identified her, she could credibly deny it. The detective said he thought it was a fluke that the little girl at the hospital saw her and the news report at the same moment, and then connected the two. Mara was, after all, wearing the same clothes in the hospital as the girl on TV, and they did look alike.
She walked past the nurse’s station without stopping and headed directly to Room 217, Ping’s room. No one questioned her, so she leaned into the heavy wood door and pushed slowly, not wanting to make a noise that might wake him. That wasn’t a problem, as she saw when she stepped inside.
“Hello, Mara,” Ping said, smiling and sitting up in bed. He pointed a remote at a television screen mounted on the opposite wall. It went blank. “Come in, come in.” He seemed quite perky.
Mara walked to the side of his bed. “You look great. You’ve got color in your face, and you don’t even look tired.”
He pointed to the chair on the other side of the bed. “I understand that I have Detective Bohannon to thank for that. Sam called a few minutes ago and filled in a few blank spots for me.”
She walked around the end of the bed. “Yes, Bo is a little freaked-out about the healing stuff. I think he’s afraid he’s going to have to hit the road and start doing three shows a night or something.” Mara dropped her book bag on the floor next to the chair and sat down. “How much did Sam tell you? Do you remember any of it?”
“He said the dragon stalked your mother across town and that you had to intervene to help her and to stop me, or it, from attacking a helicopter. I think I remember most of it, but it was more like watching a movie through a tunnel. More like being an observer than a participant. It didn’t feel like I was doing these things. I was watching them from outside my own body. The dragon had complete control, and I just had the vaguest sense of its presence.”
“Vaguest sense of its presence? What’s that mean?” she asked.
“Normally, on the few occasions when the dragon has awakened, I could hear its thoughts, anticipate how it might act or respond to a given situation. Last night I think it figured out a way to distance itself from me or somehow isolate me.”
“What’s it up to right now?”
“It’s asleep, completely unconscious. I think last night’s episode traumatized it severely.”
“How so?”
“Stripping a dragon of its wings is as severe as you can get, short of killing it,” Ping said.
Mara’s face reddened and reached up to grab his hand. “I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just stand by and let him kill those people in the helicopter.”
Ping smiled and patted her hand. “That was not an admonishment, far from it. It was the perfect tactical move, given the situation. You couldn’t have played it better if you had planned it out.”
“That wasn’t playing, Ping.”
“Just a turn of phrase. I know more than anyone that last night wasn’t a game.” He held up his arms and smiled at them. “Hard to believe they were gone, and the detective restored them.”
Mara looked exasperated.
Ping put them down and looked at her. “What’s the matter?”
“You seem to be taking this whole thing in stride. You almost died. I almost killed you.”
“I am not trying to diminish the seriousness of what happened last night. I am just taking a moment to appreciate how incredibly well it worked out, all things considered.”
“I’m relieved you are okay, but you understand that nothing has been resolved, that the dragon is still a threat to us and to the whole damn city? You get that, don’t you?” Her face reddened, and her eyes welled up.
Ping held out his arms to her. She stood and leaned down to him. “I’m so sorry to put you through all this,” he said. He held her for a moment and then pulled back to look into her eyes. “You have got to stop carrying the world on your shoulders. I had my arms erased, fell from the sky, and almost bled to death, and you look to be in worse shape.”
She laughed and wiped her eyes as she took her seat.
“I know we have to do something about the situation. The dragon has to be dealt with. But I’m not convinced that it has to be dealt with immediately,” he said, then added, “That’s me talking, not the dragon making excuses.”
“How can you say that, when that crazy flying lizard is hunting my mother and terrorizing the city?”
“I’m not so sure it is hunting your mother, at least not exclusively, and certainly not with the intent to harm her. While it seems to be able to block its thoughts from me, I still can feel its emotions, like the trauma it felt last night.”
“You mentioned before that it felt threatened—its radar was going off.”
“Correct, and that makes me wonder why that would motivate it to attack your mother. After all, your mother’s counterpart was its mistress in the other realm. I picked up on other feelings last night, intense feelings that were somewhat incomprehensible to me.”
“What kind of feelings?”
“Jealousy. Fear and jealousy.”
“Fear of whom? Jealous of whom? My mother?”
“I don’t know, but the emotions were unmistakable.”
“Strange,” she said, almost under her breath. She picked at a cuticle, tried to make sense of what Ping said and couldn’t. After a moment she looked up at Ping and said, “That doesn’t answer the question of why not deal with the dragon immediately.”
“Two reasons. One, your future self has advised you to ignore the dragon’s folly, and I think, unless we have evidence that would contradict that advice, it might be wise to follow it. And two, if we wanted to do something about the dragon at this point, what would it be? You haven’t recovered the Chronicle of Creation, have you?”
“No. I’ve sort of been tied up for the last day or so.”
“Not ignoring the dragon’s folly.”
“Ping, I’m not going to sit by and watch a monster eat my mother, just because some book with my handwriting in it tells me to. If that really is me in the future sending out all these stupid haikus, you would think I would know that.”
“Okay, let’s ignore the book, and do something immediately. What do you suggest we do about the dragon?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t you say that the Chronicle is really just a talisman and that it doesn’t really have any power? That its power comes from me?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Then shouldn’t I be able to send the dragon back to its realm?”
“Yes, if you have the requisite knowledge, awareness and belief to do it. You’re talking about pulling the consciousness of a dragon from this body and sending it across eons to another realm without the help of a talisman. Do you think you are ready to do that?”
Mara looked down, deflated. “No.”<
br />
“Then you might want to reconsider the advice you’ve been getting from the Chronicle of Continuity.”
She looked back up again. “Well, Bo and I have checked out a couple passengers. The book said to seek out passengers, so we’ve done some of that.”
“Did you get anything revealing from them?”
“There’s man who’s hibernating under a pile of laundry and a woman who’s disappeared into thin air in the middle of a locked greenhouse.”
“Did she come in contact with her own DNA somehow and get blown back to her own realm?”
“No, I think something else is going on. Cam was telling me about this opening that appeared in the middle of the—”
Ping held up a hand. “I’m sorry. Cam? Is that a person, a passenger from the flight?”
“Oh, wow, yeah. He’s a robot—well, a synthetic person, I think is what he likes to be called.” Mara looked up, as if making a mental note. “I’ve got to get out of here soon enough to take his head over to the hospital and reattach it to his body.”
“You’ve got a robot’s head from another realm?”
“Yeah, it’s a long story. Yesterday was just absolutely nuts, wasn’t it?”
“You’ve lost me,” Ping said, shaking his head.
“Cameron Lee comes from a realm where everybody has transferred themselves into synthetic bodies. He was damaged pretty badly in an accident, and the hospital didn’t know what to do with a robot, so they called the cops. Bohannon asked me to go with him, and, long story short, I got Cam’s head working, but I didn’t have time to reattach it to his body, because your alter ego was dive-bombing the Ross Island Bridge. I brought his head with me, because it could track Mom’s phone’s GPS signal.”
“Yesterday was quite a day.”
“Anyway, what precipitated Cam’s accident in the first place was this black hole that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a blue bubble, and he heard a deep voice telling him it was time to come home.”
“A blue bubble like—”
Mara nodded. “Like the Chronicle of Creation when it’s activated. That’s what I thought.”
“You think it might be Abby?”
“The Aphotis. Cam’s description of the voice sounds like Juaquin Prado’s.”
“If the entity that took Abby is using the Chronicle to do something to passengers that have crossed over, that could have significant consequences on a mind-boggling scale. The implications of her being able to move around from realm to realm at will are potentially horrendous. The destruction she could wreak could reach across existence itself.”
“But why just the passengers?”
“Was Cam assaulted in anyway? Was there an attempt to abduct him?”
Mara shook her head. “Not physically. But he did describe beginning to dissolve into that fluorescent mist—similar to what happened when I sent Mr. Sandoval back to his realm. That’s when Cam panicked, and the accident occurred.”
“Find the trail of mist,” Ping said. “That’s the third line in the haiku, correct?”
“Yes, but what does that mean? There was no trail. He escaped.”
“But you said there have been other disappearances. Maybe the third line is simply a hint to indicate the course you should take, while investigating these occurrences.”
“Maybe,” Mara said. She leaned over the arm of her chair and retrieved the book bag from the floor. After unzipping it, she removed the small leather-bound book. “There are a couple new haikus that have shown up since the last time you saw this.”
Ping reached for the book, but Mara held it away from him. “Are you sure you are up to this? I mean you are in the hospital recovering from some serious injuries.”
He waved a hand in the air, dismissing the concern. “Like I said before, you look more tired than I do. Perhaps you should get the detective to give you a treatment.”
“I don’t need healing, thank you. And, if I did, I suspect you could do it yourself, since it is likely that Bo passed on the ability to you, just like Denton Proctor gave it to Bo.”
Ping up held his hands and studied them. “That had not occurred to me. I’ll have to give it a try sometime.”
“You do that.”
He held out his hand and said, “Give me the book. Let’s see if we can figure out what it’s trying to tell us.”
Mara opened the book and handed it to him. Leaning back into his pillow, Ping read aloud: “Forget all the fears preventing you from learning. Exchange memories.” He pondered the passage for a moment, tapping his cheek with a finger and looking into the distance.
After several minutes Mara said, “Well? Does that mean anything to you?”
“No. It’s classic haiku construction. We have to assume this is future Mara talking to you. Clearly something you fear is preventing you from learning what you need to proceed toward whatever goal she has in mind. This ‘exchange memories’ is fascinating. I’m not sure what that means at all. What do you think it means? It is you, after all, who is writing these haikus.”
“Beats me. I can’t even imagine considering a haiku as a form of communication, much less one as nonsensical as this. But I have to admit the one on the next page does sound a little more like me.” She pointed to the edge of the page, and Ping flipped it.
He read aloud: “Quit being a twit.” Laughing and looking up, he said, “Yes, that does sound more like you, and you might want to take it to heart going forward.” He continued reading. “Prepare like a pastor with this realm’s Chronicle.” His eyes narrowed, as he considered the passage.
After a short moment of silence, Mara cut in and said, “You know, there is such a thing as thinking out loud. What are you thinking?”
“This realm’s Chronicle. I wonder to what that refers?”
“I assumed it was the Chronicle of Creation, the one that Abby took. I guess that’s what I think of when I think of the Chronicle.”
“I don’t know if that’s correct,” he said, pausing again. “This. Realm’s. Chronicle. I don’t think it can be the Chronicle of Creation.”
“Why not?”
“The Chronicle that Abby took did not come from this realm. Remember? It came into this realm with Sam’s Mara when they crossed over on Flight 559. It is not this realm’s Chronicle, is it? It must be referring to this book, which presumably came from this realm, albeit from the future. That might make sense with this prepare like a pastor reference. What does a pastor prepare? A sermon? What book does a pastor use to prepare a sermon? Scriptures, perhaps?”
“That doesn’t sound like me at all. That’s just too convoluted,” Mara said. “Stop being a twit, now that’s me, obvious, literal, but this exchanging memories and pastors preparing sermons, as Hannah would say, nuh-uh.”
Ping fanned through the back pages of the little book which remained blank and closed it with a soft thud. “It could simply be a matter of time before events fall into place, so that these things make sense.”
“Yes, but won’t that be too late?”
CHAPTER 41
Footsteps, shuffling and voices pierced Mara’s subconscious and pulled her awake from a deep sleep, as she lay on the couch in the living room. Opening her eyes, she found she could not focus on anything for a few moments, because her eyes didn’t seem to want to work, and it was pitch dark. Someone flipped on the lamp sitting on the end table next to where Mara’s head lay. The light blinded her.
“Hi, Mar-ree!” Hannah said, her cheeks rosy from the cool air outside.
Mara rubbed her eyes and sat up. The little leather-bound book from the future slid from her chest to her lap. “Hey, are you trying to blind me? I thought you guys were going to visit Ping at the hospital.”
Sam swept around the end of the couch and grabbed Hannah by the waist, lifting her into the air, pirouetting across the round throw rug and landing in the chair to the left of the fireplace. “Mom dropped me off at the hospital two hours ago. She and Hannah ran some errands, while I visited
with Ping. Where’s Cam?”
“Right here,” he said. His head leaned at a slight tilt next to a throw pillow in the matching chair on the opposite side of the fireplace.
Mara ran her fingers through her hair and shook her head in an effort to cast off the drowsiness. “I can’t believe I crashed like that, with you sitting there the whole time. Sorry.”
“I understand. You’re exhausted following all the excitement yesterday,” Cam said.
“Yes, but I need to get you put back together. It’s the least I can do, considering how much you helped us yesterday. You deserve more than being stuck sitting here watching me crash for a few hours,” she said.
Diana closed the front door and took off her coat. “Don’t you think you might be a little too tired to be driving around at night? Can’t you wait until tomorrow to work on Cam?” she asked.
“I think he’s waited long enough. Besides, I’m feeling pretty well rested after that little nap. I’ll be okay,” Mara said.
“I’d be more than willing to volunteer to wait, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea,” Cam said. “At some point, the current state of affairs with my systems will degrade, and I’m afraid that may already be happening.”
Mara stiffened. “Degrade how?”
“There’s an interplay that happens between the neural engrams stored in my head and the central core—the main computer, if you will—stored in my torso that sustains my personality or consciousness. The remote connection I’m using is not robust enough to support those processes over the long term. Eventually I will begin to have about as much personality as a toaster, if we don’t do anything.”
“I think you would be a great toaster,” Hannah said. “A talking toaster would be funny.”
Sam smiled. “Yes, it would, but I don’t think Cam wants to be a toaster, bean.”
“Okay, let me throw some soup and sandwiches together, and then you can go,” Diana said, walking from the room, not leaving time for debate.
Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) Page 21