Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2)

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Once again, the need for information asserted itself. There would be no way out of this if she did not know what "this" was. "Are they...?" she asked. She couldn't even say it.

  "As of now they are fine," said the Fisherman. "Confused, to be sure, but essentially unharmed. The Families have made no move against them. There has been no need. As far as your people are concerned, you are being kept in a biocontainment facility situated near your old summer cottage on Squirrel Island. They're worried about your health. And they are angry at whomever it is they believe has locked you up. Your staff has been quite put out by the whole affair and has worked tirelessly to reestablish free and clear communication with you. The Families, of course, will prevent this."

  "But you said Emily-"

  "Has found them out, yes," finished the Fisherman. "Or at least she's on their trail, even if she has yet to comprehend the reality of the situation. I await her next move with unmitigated delight. She's an extraordinary child."

  "Will it do any good if I threaten to kill you if you so much as harm a single hair on the kids' heads?" asked Linda.

  The Fisherman chuckled warmly. "You forget that I'm the one who has rescued you, Madam President," he said.

  "Well, that's your story," said Linda. "I have no way to judge its truth."

  "In time..." said the Fisherman.

  Linda closed her eyes. The Martian daylight was strangely stressful to her eyes. The colors were all wrong. "So, if I've got this straight, the 'reality of the situation,' as you put it, is that I was kidnapped from my home and sedated by some hidden group whom you refer to as 'The Families.' At that point, they substituted a computer-generated version of me, in order to pretend that, while I am ill, I am still in charge. And once they had that up and running, they were going to kill me. But you came in and stole me away and brought me here to Mars to keep me safe." Linda's voice had grown cold and angry as she spoke. "Does that pretty much sum things up?"

  "Your brilliant précis fails to capture the full reality of your opponents, Madam President," said the Fisherman evenly, "but is otherwise correct in the essentials. Your abduction was the work of those who serve the dominant faction of The Families. You might take it as a sign of respect and admiration on the part of your adversaries, that they saw the need to contain you before they put their plans into motion. But there were many of us who were against the move. Hence my rebellious intervention. The Families have become quite divided these days, both in goals and in strategies."

  Linda opened her eyes. "So you're a member of these 'Families'?" she asked.

  "Born and raised, as you Americans like to say," answered the Fisherman.

  Linda paused for a moment. She wanted so badly to reach up and touch her own face, but could not. "So I'm not really sick?" she asked at last.

  "The ‘alien flu,’ as the press has been instructed to call it, is merely the ruse adopted to fend off any and all demands for a face-to-face meeting with you, Madam. Such a meeting would lie beyond their current abilities to simulate. Who, after all, can trump the priesthood of scientists and physicians purporting to care for you? And surely no one can argue with the need for complete containment of this most menacing unknown virus. Who would even want to risk exposing themselves to such a thing? By restricting access to your virtual counterpart to chats, emails, and the occasional phone call or videoconference, The Families exercise complete control over your continued presence in the affairs of state. You have not been abducted and murdered, Madam President. Not in the eyes of the world. Instead, you are being helped through a frightening and most unfortunate crisis. Cared for. Protected." The Fisherman stopped himself and went silent for a moment before continuing in a lighter voice. "In any event, no, you are quite well, Madam. Quite well indeed."

  Linda scoffed. "Except for the fact that I'm trapped in this lobster tank on the Martian surface and am unable to move. None of which makes any sense at all." Linda inhaled deeply and stared out across the plain. The day was fading. Already there were stars rising above the distant hill. "You couldn't have just hidden me away in a cheap motel?" she asked. "I mean, really? Mars? How did we get here? What's with this coffin? Why can't I move?" As she spoke, Linda's heart had begun to pound. She realized she was furious.

  The Fisherman's voice moved closer. She could almost feel his hot breath as he whispered into her ear. "Times are so urgent we have to ask our questions three at time, don't we?" he said, his tone low and full of power.

  Linda froze. Those were Obie's words. Words from their long discussion in the trailer a whole lifetime ago. And the fact that the Fisherman knew those words disturbed her deeply.

  2.5

  "So you're telling me it's contained," said Colonel McAfee, pressing.

  Paul DuPont pushed himself back from the table, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "We don't get guarantees, Colonel," he said. "Not in this game. This is new territory we're exploring."

  McAfee took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I got it. Nobody’s ever done this before. What I want is your assessment. Your opinion," he said the word with obvious distaste. He put his glasses back on and peered peevishly at his Chief Tech. "Gimme you best guess, here, cowboy. Is this thing handled or isn't it?"

  "I think it is, yes," said DuPont, nodding. "I drove her last chat myself. With her husband, just before he went to bed. When he asked about the mole, I grabbed the wheel from the AI and took over. Told him how Linda's skin is all blotchy from the virus, but that her old mole is still right where it has always been. Told him how bad she thought she looked when she watched herself on the video later, how poorly the camera captured the reality of her actual condition. It was a wonder Cole could tell it was her at all, she said, what with her skin changing and getting worse every day. He'll be so afraid now he won't be thinking clearly. And without him on board, his kids will just give it up."

  McAfee leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. He pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his teeth. "But there are no guarantees," he said. He raised an eyebrow. "You said so yourself."

  The Chief Tech shook his head. "No, Colonel. As I said..."

  McAfee waved him off. "So tell me about the mole," he said.

  DuPont opened a folder on his desktop and clicked on a file. "It was done on purpose," he said. The document he needed opened on the screen.

  "What?" said the Colonel in disbelief.

  DuPont nodded his confident assurance that he knew what he was talking about. "Yep. One of the skin guys in Facial Modeling..." he checked the screen, "... a guy named Evans. Young kid. Fresh out of college. He..." DuPont stopped to consult the document again.

  "You're not gonna make me torture you for the story here, are you?" said the Colonel. He leaned back in his chair and cradled his head in his intertwined fingers.

  DuPont put on a blank face and waited for the Colonel to settle into his chair. "Evans says he was told to move the mole. About two weeks ago, after final faces had all been signed off on. Said Stu Tollerman himself called him on the phone and ordered the change. Something about needing a quick way to ID the VLT in media coverage. To tell the Virtual from the Real."

  "And Tollerman?"

  "Denies it completely."

  "Of course he does." McAfee sighed deeply and pulled out the toothpick. "And this Evans kid didn't realize how absurd that request was?"

  DuPont smiled slightly, hoping he could generate a bit of empathy for the guilty party. This kid didn't need to be scapegoated for this. "He's young, Colonel," he said. "Got the job because of his famous uncle."

  "Sid Evans? Air Force?"

  DuPont nodded.

  "Jesus," muttered McAfee. He poked at his teeth, digging between a couple of molars. He stared at the ceiling.

  "So do we move it back?" asked the Chief Tech at last.

  McAfee glanced at DuPont, his head slightly cocked in disbelief. "The mole? Hell no, cowboy. You leave that mole where it is, add the original
back in, and then start blotching her up a bit more. Let's just stick with the plan, but do it correctly. You savvy? Use the rash to cover any facial distortions we might miss. And make sure the video quality is degraded the next few times we see her. Blame it on sunspots or something."

  DuPont closed the document on his desktop but said nothing.

  "Does the kid understand the gravity of what happened?"

  "He does now, Colonel." DuPont kept his face neutral as he regarded his boss. The last thing he wanted was for the blame to blowback on his crew when the kid was just following orders.

  "He needs to be transferred," said McAfee. He tossed his wet toothpick onto the DuPont's desk and stood.

  The Chief Tech opened his mouth to protest, then bit off his words. He swiped the screen and brought back the primary control interface. "Colonel?" he said.

  "I'm listening," said McAfee as he walked toward the door.

  "One more thing."

  The Colonel stopped and turned. "Spit it out, kid," he said. "I'm way overdue for some shuteye."

  "I'm sure you'd have thought of this on your own, Colonel," said DuPont, sure of no such thing, "but, well, somebody told Evans to do this. So don't we now have to deal with the possibility that we have a real mole somewhere in the operation?"

  Colonel McAfee glowered at his Chief Technician with tight, squinted eyes. "I'll speak with Tollerman," he said at last. He turned, opened the door, and left.

  DuPont stared after the man who believed he was the boss, wondering how such a dullard had been put in charge of such critical projects. He hoped that the good Colonel would be left behind for the Second Wave.

  2.6

  Grace was fairly sure that she was not sleepwalking. Iain had done that a few times and he never remembered a bit of it. But Grace felt fully awake and aware. She was just not in control of her body. But that wasn't really true. She could reach up to scratch her nose if she wanted to, and she did. If she wanted, she could turn around and go back to bed. She just didn't want to. She wanted to go to Emily's room. She wanted to do that more than anything.

  Her door closed with a soft click and she hurried down the carpeted hallway, careful not to make a sound. She didn't want to make a sound any more than she wanted to turn around and go back to bed. She wanted to be really, really quiet.

  She came to Emily's door, opened it, and slid inside. Emily's heavy breathing rose above the silence of the night like soft ocean waves. Grace used the sound to navigate through the dark room to the side of Emily's bed. She reached out and flicked on the bedside lamp, then placed a hand on Emily's face. "Em!" she whispered. Emily stirred. "Emily!" whispered Grace again.

  Emily opened her eyes with a start. "What?" she said, so loud that Grace put a finger to her lips to shush her. Emily brought the heels of her hands up to rub her eyes, then spoke again in a hushed tone. "What?"

  "Alice is back," said Grace.

  Emily pushed herself up onto one elbow and looked around the room. "Where?" she said.

  Grace pointed at her head. "In my dreams," she replied.

  Emily frowned. "Gracie," she said, her voice tinged with frustration. "Alice is -"

  "Alice spoke to me in my dream," said Grace. "We have to get Iain."

  Emily shook her head in confusion. "Why?" she said.

  Grace switched off the bedside lamp and headed back toward the door. She opened it, then turned back, silhouetted against the dim hallway lighting. "Because I know what we have to do," she said, her voice just loud enough to carry to her sister. Grace closed the door and headed to Iain's room.

  She really, really wanted to go speak with her brother now.

  2.7

  Stan Walsh muttered a curse, threw off his covers, and swung his long, skinny legs over the edge of his bed. Grabbing his clothes from the floor, he made his way carefully across the darkened room, steadying himself against the dizziness of exhaustion with a hand on the wall. He found the knob and slipped quietly out of the room, hoping for a moment that the sound of the fan would cover the click of the latch before remembering that he no longer had to worry about waking his poor Loretta, gone almost two years now. Stan sighed and headed down the hallway. He needed coffee from his private stash. He needed time to think.

  The first inklings of dawn peered through the front door of his modest house like curious children, throwing enough light on the steps for Stan to make his way down to the first floor. He glanced through the window at his front yard, gray and dry, and the Kennebec River beyond, noting the fading Gridlight and the regular military patrols. All seemed in order: a warm, quiet spring morning in downtown Augusta, Maine. Scratching at his large, red nose, he stepped into the kitchen to put the kettle on, then continued on to his home office. He sat at his desk and closed his eyes.

  The jet that had buzzed them last night was personal, and Stan knew it. A warning. A threat. From those who now controlled Linda Travis. Stan had pressed them again on the President, demanding free access, demanding an explanation, demanding... something. But he had been shut down completely, treated like a child who asked too many questions. As if the Secretary of Homeland Security had no right to answers and information. As if he could do his job without free and direct access to his boss. As if he could not be trusted. When "national security" is the excuse used to keep even DHS out of the loop, you know things are out of whack.

  Stan was a Navy man. Past sixty now, but his tall, barrel-chested body was still strong and in good shape. He believed in such things as honor, loyalty, duty, and service. He believed that good people could make a difference in the world. And he believed that he, his President, and her cabinet, were good people who had been trying to do just that. But it had been a losing game from the get-go. There was no "winning" when crops died and dollars disappeared and the gas dried up at the pump. No winning for a politician, anyways. Progressives had scoffed when Bush Senior had said that "the American way of life is not up for negotiation," but when the consequences of centuries and millennia of unsustainable living finally caught up with them, it turned out that, deep in their hearts, most of them had believed in that statement just as much as their President had. They needed somebody on whom they could pin the blame. Linda had been the most convenient target, especially since her great "revelation" on national television after the sinking of D.C. She and her "alien friends" and their inscrutable Grid. Signs and portents in the sky and all that rot, with Pastor Jeremiah Clinton in the front row, leading the shouting.

  Now Linda has thrown her hat into the ring again. And she'll probably win, he thought, if for no other reason than that the American people will want her to suffer the consequences of the mess they think she created. He scoffed. As if a few well-meaning human beings could control a climate spiraling out of control, or the amount of oil left in the ground, or an economy built on delusions. As if...

  But this flu she'd contracted, that was the game changer. And it had come from so far out of left field that Stan was still reeling. Linda could die from this virus, according to the medical reports. That was the long and short of it. And there were only a few people in the world who understood, as he did, that Linda was probably still the best real leader, and the best friend, that the nation could ever have. Stan shuddered at the prospect of her loss. He could not imagine someone else filling her shoes. Not now. Not when civilization itself was crumbling. America was one step away from barbarity, as far as Stan could see. One step away from every horrible dystopian future ever imagined in books and movies. One step away from utter madness. And the consensus was that this coming summer would see the first Arctic “blue ocean event” in human history. God save them all, should Linda Travis stumble and fall.

  The laptop on his desk pinged and Stan waved his hand to awaken the screen. There was an email from Keeley. Stan smirked. So she couldn't sleep either. Stan opened the mail to find five short words - "Just saw this on ACN" - and a link to a video. He clicked the link and watched.

  The report was short and relative
ly free of speculation. A new crop circle had appeared, in a field of wild grasses on a small and windswept island off the coast of New Zealand. What made it noteworthy was the fact that this was the first crop formation to be found anywhere on the globe since the Grid appeared. What made it stunning, to Stan, was that the formation was the same circle bisected by an inverted L that he'd first seen almost two and a half years ago, inscribed into the marble countertop of the President's post-revelation hideaway in Vermont. He did not know what this symbol meant. Neither did Linda or Cole, who had seen it before. Neither had any of the analysts or theorists who - in the years since she’d confronted the secret organization known as “The People” and their alien cover-up - had attempted to discern the reality behind their President's reported experiences. All he knew was that nobody understood, and Stan Walsh did not like things that could not be understood.

  Stan startled. The kettle was screaming. He rose to go make his coffee.

  2.8

  Nighttime on Mars was breathtaking. The stars hung like fireworks frozen in glass, their color and clarity like nothing Linda had ever seen, their brightness casting an eerie glow over the surrounding terrain. Directly overhead, an even brighter object moved steadily against the background stars. Probably one of Mars's moons. Domos? Phoebus? Something like that? She could not remember.

  Linda craned her neck to peer off to her left. Before leaving to "check in on things at home," the Fisherman had granted her the ability to move her head back and forth from right to left, increasing her “allowable range of motions," as he put it, "by one degree of freedom."

  For reasons she did not fully comprehend, granting her complete freedom to move her body would threaten the integrity of what the Fisherman called "the container." It was not glass at all, he'd said, but energy, and he was uncertain of its stability. And as it was all that kept her from the "nasty demise" that would most certainly claim her should she find herself suddenly unprotected on the Martian surface, he trusted she would understand the necessity for her confinement. Linda hoped that, one day, should he find himself unprotected in her presence back on Earth, he would understand the necessity of her throwing his ass in prison. She smiled at the thought of that.