"Ah," said the Fisherman at last, struggling for a response. "I see." He cleared his throat. "My apologies. I see your point." The Fisherman turned to stare down at the Herschel Colony once again. Then, his back to Linda, he spoke again. "Excuse me," he said. The Fisherman vanished and was gone.
So was the Herschel Colony. Linda was no longer hanging in deep space over Saturn's moon. She was standing in a rectangular room seemingly cut out of the bedrock. It was unfurnished, save for a series of metal boxes or cubicles that lined one wall. Linda's heart began to pound. She whirled around, scanning the space. She knew those cubicles. There had been one just like it in the cell in which Agent Rice had confined her, in the alien Lodge under Ottawa. It had held a dormant Gray. One of the Life.
Linda put a hand to her hammering heart and inhaled deeply. She did not know where she was, but she could feel the oppressive weight of this room, the solid, smoothly cut rock on all sides, the mass of stone overhead.
Once again, she'd been imprisoned underground.
8.5
The situation was getting weird and The Families were expecting Aidan McAfee to take care of it. That, at least, was the message delivered earlier in the evening by that slimy mouth-breather, Albert Singer. McAfee closed his paperback and pushed back his covers, exposing naked skin to the wet, warm night air. He exhaled sharply through his nose, a soft, scoffing surge of exhausted incredulity and bemused exasperation.
Apparently the Augusta folks were having a wee bit of a problem keeping track of people. First, the President's kids disappear. Then the First Hubby goes AWOL, with Secretary Stan at his side, no less. Good ol’ Keeley gets herself a raging case of the alien flu, taking her out of the game, and reportedly to Squirrel Island, though if she was on the island then nobody had told him. And then Mary vanishes. McAfee had heard of rats fleeing a sinking ship, but this was too much.
But was it really a problem, let alone his problem? The Colonel was not convinced. The lost kids were a bit of a scare, sure. He understood that. But the authorities were now in possession of the bodies, were they not? Cole Thomas and Stan Walsh were both tagged, so they were easy enough to track. Granted, it was a bit disconcerting to learn how easily they’d slipped through the Cordon, but Stan was the Secretary for Homeland Security, for Chrissake. If anybody could get through, he could. And while Mary had removed her own alien implants years ago - a ballsy act for which her old pal Colonel Phelps had awarded her bonus points in the you-go-girl category - surely, given her position in the U.S. government, she carried iDents in her bloodstream? So what was the problem? Enquiring Colonels wanted to know.
The problem, it seemed, was not so much that they’d gone missing, but where they had gone missing to. Stan and Cole were now right across the water, no doubt intending to storm the castle gates in an attempt to rescue their damsel in distress. Though the kids’ bodies were accounted for, their consciousnesses were off traveling. And if the note they’d left could be believed, they were on their merry little astral way to Squirrel Island with the help of the Life themselves! And Mary wasn’t showing up on anybody’s scans, military or Family. For all McAfee knew, Mary was headed this way as well, in some misguided, superheroine mission to get to the bottom of this flu thing, save her lover, find the kids she lost, and free her President.
If she was, that would mean that the President's entire inner circle, or most of it, was converging on his doorstep. Cole. Cole's kids. Mary. Stan Walsh. Maybe even Keeley. Gettin' all up in his shit, as the youngsters might say. Crowding his space and causing problems. All of which meant that Stephen King would have to wait a bit, while McAfee dealt.
The Colonel sighed. Okay. He could deal. That's why he made the big bucks, right? McAfee put the paperback on his nightstand and rolled onto his side, accidentally kicking his cat in the head. Or maybe not accidentally. Nicky slinked onto the floor and walked out of the room.
Ah well. At least Linda Travis was still tightly wrapped. And Squirrel Island was now a heavily fortified position. So what was there to worry about, really? They had standard high-security military fencing in place, plus eControl fields, plus a Level 3 Toroidal Shield Wall. They had more itchy-fingered soldiers with weapons at the ready than anybody in their right minds should be shaking a stick at. And they even had, if what Technician DuPont said was true, defensive fields in the next two levels up. A Mirror Pool, maybe. Or a Murk. That was a shit-load of defensive force for guarding one middle-aged woman's drugged, naked body. Nobody was getting in, and the PILF wasn't getting out. McAfee was sure of that. He'd gone down to check on her before climbing into bed. He'd stared at her for a really long time.
The one thing that nagged at him was the possibility that the Life were involved. Back down in the muck and mire, ye damnable bugs? The kids' note spoke of Alice and a wok. They knew now that the kids had lied, as they obviously hadn't been taken away in a wok at all, bodily at least. Still, the mention of Alice bothered him. If Alice was back on the scene, then very likely the great Spud himself was lurking not far behind. McAfee understood that The Families, or at least the Directorate, considered Spud an inconsequential player at this point, seeing as how he had betrayed the Plan and all, and given his long absence from human affairs. McAfee was not so sure. Those were miniature woks at the intersection points of the Grid. Millions of them. The Life hadn't really gone away, so much as just taken a step back. Like you do before you hit somebody. And he suspected that Spud had other irons in the fire here, beyond The Families and their precious little Plan.
McAfee winced. It was dangerous, to think that way. No telling what the new generation of nanoplants could pick up. And he was certain to be on The Family's watch-list. The Colonel took a calming breath and coaxed a smiled. It was the worry, that's all. They'd expect worry. It was his job to worry. Keeping the POTUS on ice was a career-maker. He knew it and they knew it and he knew they knew it and they knew he knew they knew it. And he was up for the job. He really was. He could handle whatever came his way. Happily and efficiently. All in the service of The Families and their Plan. All with the hope that, when the time comes, he would be chosen.
McAfee pulled the top sheet back up to his neck, not so much for warmth but for a sense of protection. He felt so exposed, here inside so many layers of defense. There were eyes everywhere, it seemed. And some of those eyes were large and black and slanted. Spud had pulled the rug out from under them before. Not only had he withdrawn the assistance of his people, he'd put another obstacle in their way. Who knew what else he had up his sleeve? And who knew, really, whether it was possible to stop the little bastard, if he decided to stir up more shit?
McAfee didn't. And the thought of that kept him from sleep. So he rose, pulled on his robe, and stepped out onto the back deck. The night was clear and pocked with bright stars, and the Gridlight cast a bluish glow on the surface of the bay. Most of the island's defenses were invisible to his eye, but he knew they were there, extending above and beyond the tall steel fence, and reaching far past the range of the arsenal of weapons he could see glinting in the Gridlight. From his post on the shoreline, one of the soldiers looked up and spotted the Colonel watching from the cottage deck.
The soldier saluted.
McAfee returned the salute.
Nicky, the Colonel's cat, stole silently onto the deck and slipped over the edge, disappearing into the shadows and the trees.
8.6
It surprised Mary, lying alone in her bed, how easily the protocols came back to her. The strict procedures, ingrained into her during her training, were still right there when she needed them, a full operator's manual she could open with her mind's eye. Even so, the process was difficult. Excessive emotionality had always been a source of distraction for those attempting to step away from the body and travel up to another level. Emotions, in fact, were a large part of what the Protocols were designed to counter. But Mary was all emotion these days, with her feelings always at the surface. And after her experience at the hospital, she fe
lt like a wreck. Setting aside her feelings felt impossible.
But necessity and urgency helped Mary to focus. They'd stolen away her Keeley, and would not explain why. Just as they had taken the President away from her. And the kids had gone off on their own. Mary could not afford to be stopped by her feelings. Not now. The people she loved needed her. So she slowed down her pounding heart. She stopped her frantic thoughts. She breathed. She cleared. She chanted. She breathed some more. And she went through the steps she'd gone through so many times before, though it had been years now. Years. But even then, even after repeated attempts, Mary failed to step away from her body. She squeezed her fists, digging her nails into her palms. There was too much at stake for her to fail.
Then Mary remembered that she had another path she could take. She rose from her bed, headed downstairs, made her way through the kitchen, and walked out into Ness's garden behind the Presidential Home. She looked up to the night sky and asked for help. From whom she was not certain. Not at first. God? Jesus? Allah? Satan? She didn't see the Universe in those terms. The ancestors? The spirits? The many beings she'd encountered in her years as a traveler? None of these. Or all of them. She asked for help from all of the above. And then, finally, she asked for help from Spud. So many long hours they'd spent together down in the Rock. Communing mind to mind. Teaching. Learning. Sharing. There must be something still between them. Some bond she could call on. Some help he could give. Mary asked.
Whether it was Spud that helped her just then Mary would never know. She saw a flash of bright white light through a crack in the garage door and went over to investigate. She opened the smaller side door and stepped through. Inside, pulsing dimly in the dark, two-stall garage, hovering in the space where a car used to sit, was a small wok, perhaps seven feet across. There was an opening in the side.
Mary recalled the last time she'd stood this close to an alien craft, and those harried moments down in the Rock with Linda and Cole and Alice. And with Agent Rice. She'd been helping carry Bob's unconscious body into a wok before the facility imploded. So that her colleague might be saved. But in that last moment, Rice had lashed out with a blow to Mary's nose that had put her in intensive care, near death and in need of multiple surgeries. That blow had damaged her brain and altered some fundamental qualities of her being. She had never fully healed.
Mary glanced around the garage. There was no Agent Rice here now, as far as she could see. She could sense no danger. No evil. No risk. And she could feel the essential goodness of the wok itself, though she could read no field, no thoughts, no intentions.
Mary stepped forward and put a hand on the wok’s sleek surface and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving. Then she climbed through the open doorway and lay on her back on the wok’s soft deck as the opening melted shut behind her. She waited there in the blackness and breathed deeply. She felt around the confines of the interior, but found no operator's helmet. That did not matter. Mary hated flying these things, and she did not intend to go that way in any event. Flying was not what this wok was for, and both of them, Mary and the wok, knew it. This wok was for hiding. For protection. For alignment. To provide her a safe space from which she could travel. This wok was the help she'd prayed for.
Mary followed the protocols once again. Still they did not work. She wiggled around, cleared her mind, and then reached toward the wok's ceiling to stretch her shoulders. She gasped. There in the darkness was a tiny, clawed, leathery hand reaching back down toward her. The hand grabbed hers and jerked her upwards. She was away.
Had Mary been standing in the garage at that point, she'd have seen the wok sink through the floor, as though the concrete were quicksand or mud. In a moment the wok was gone, taking Mary's body with it.
But Mary was not standing in the garage. Mary was in the next level up from the physical realm, hovering in the sky that was not really a sky.
8.7
Mihos had taught the kids how to tune their awareness to what he called the mock physical. "It'll look like home-sweet-home to your monkey eyes, but otherwise we're still a level up," he had said. "That'll make it easier for you." It had. They flew now through the skies over Maine; three kids, one old dog, and one condescending cat huddled together on a Pac Man rug. The rural countryside beneath them glowed with purple Gridlight. The Kennebec River glinted and sparkled as it led them South to the sea.
"So," said the cat as they flew, "what brings you kids here, anyways?" He sat at the rug's leading edge and scanned the landscape ahead of them. "I mean... you're kids, you know? What's with the whole rescue-the-stepmother-from-the-Forces-of-Evil thing? Don't you have a Dad to do that kind of stuff? Or the cops? And if you needed to get to Squirrel Island, why didn't you all just pile into the family Buick and drive down to visit her?"
"Emily noticed the mole," said Iain.
"And Alice spoke to me in a dream," added Grace.
"And then the hand pulled us up through the MRI machine," explained Emily.
Mihos turned to face the three, his eyes rolling upward in a look of bemused incredulity. "I seem to have missed a few episodes," he said dryly. "Care to give me the two-minute synopsis?"
The kids told Mihos the rest of their story.
"So you think the President Monkey you saw on TV wasn't really the President Monkey?" asked the cat when they were finished.
Emily stared at Mihos. "Something is wrong," she said evenly. "We don't know what."
Mihos nodded. "You think maybe they cloned her?" he asked. "Or maybe that was a robot you saw. Evil Robot Stepmom, perhaps. Or maybe she's turned to the Dark Side and she had her mole moved as a sign of her new devotion to the Emperor?"
"Is everything a joke to you?" asked Iain, angry.
Mihos glanced at the boy, then looked away. "I just..." he said. He sighed, then looked at Iain again. "Sorry. You're right. You're stepmom's missing. And she's sick. Of course you're worried about her. And you want to help."
“And even those Great Ones you talk about seem to be on our side,” said Iain, chin out and brow furrowed.
Mihos flinched but did not respond, then turned and scanned the horizon toward which they were headed. "We're catching a bit of luck," he called back to the kids. "I figured we'd have encountered the Murk by now, but I don't see a sign of him."
"Do you think he's gone away?" asked Grace, glad for the change of subject.
Mihos turned and smiled at the girl. "Wouldn't that be nice?" he said, turning forward again. Grace could not tell whether he was being sarcastic or genuine.
"Well do you?" said Iain, his voice rising.
The cat's tail began to flick up and down, but he did not turn around. "No," said Mihos at last. "I don't know. Maybe." His tail settled back down onto the rug. He turned and looked at Iain. "I'd like to think we're catching a break here. But my fear is that he's just pulled back to consolidate his defenses." Mihos turned back to scan the sky. "In which case... when we finally do meet him, he may be tougher to fool." The cat’s voice was soft and sad.
Emily cleared her throat. "Does it make sense, Mihos," she asked, "to just fly right to him like this?" She gestured in the direction they were heading. "I mean. Can we sneak-"
"I'm sorry, Emily," said Mihos, raising a paw. "But again... no. The Murk isn't watching out for us. He doesn't have eyes. He's not even really a 'he' at all. Sneaking up on him would be like sneaking up on a trip wire. He only notices us when we break through his outer membrane. Until then, just like a trip wire, we could stand right next to him and he wouldn't react to us."
"But once inside?" asked Emily.
"He'll react. And he'll probably know immediately that it's you again, and he may be rather annoyed at having to deal with you guys a second time. I have no idea whether he's been programmed as a simple general defensive shield, or whether he's been informed you are coming. Did you tell anybody in the physical that you were headed this way?"
The kids glanced back and forth at each other. "We did leave a note," said Grace at last.
Mihos snorted and shook his head, but did not look back. "Good thinking," he muttered.
Emily nodded toward the sky ahead of him. "So will we be able to see the Murk before we get to him?" she asked. "Last time we-" Emily stopped talking.
All around them was blackness. There was nothing else.
8.8
They'd sung Wayfaring Stranger more than once, undoubtedly for his benefit, though Cole did not really understand how the lyrics applied to him. Didn't matter. The mandolin player, a young woman named Marionette who had an eye-patch and a scar that ran from her forehead and across her nose to her cheek, played such sweet, soulful, soaring solo lines that Cole felt transported back to simpler times. The band - a mandolin, two guitars, a stand-up bass, an old man on harmonica and a very young boy on a kid's drum kit - played a wide variety of songs, from traditional string-band pieces to rock songs so classic that Cole had tears in his eyes. He thought about joining in. They tried to coax him, even. But all Cole knew by heart were the songs from Ziggy Stardust, and he was pretty sure that if he tried to sing one of them he'd start sobbing.
So Cole watched and clapped and kept his tears mostly to himself. There was more food. More fortifier. And at one point Marionette put down her mandolin, grabbed Cole by the hand, and pulled him up to join in the dancing. Stunned and honored and moved and embarrassed, Cole let go of his inhibitions and allowed his body to take over. It'd been years since he'd danced. Not since before Ruth had died. But it felt great, and soon Cole didn't give a damn what he looked like. After a while he noticed that Stan was up dancing as well and he laughed and laughed, to see them both cutting loose. This was not at all what they'd expected to find when they snuck through the Cordon and into the post-collapse world.
Then the music stopped and Annabelle stood up. The room fell quiet and she spoke.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 27