But perhaps that’s what Annabelle had been pointing to. He was supposed to stop his greatest love from destroying the human race. That's what she'd told him. Cole's teeth ground together as he stared out over the water. What a head-trip to put on him. What a curse, and damn her for speaking it. Already he could feel the words eating away at his soul.
The morning sun was rising behind Squirrel Island, sparkling on the waves, making it difficult for Cole to see. He imagined Linda in her room in the facility they’d built for her. What are you up to out there, sweetheart? Who has you captive, and what are they telling you? Annabelle's warning about her destroying the human race was absurd. Linda had done nothing but work for the human race. There wasn't any part of her that could cause such great destruction. Nothing.
A knock sounded on his bedroom door and Cole stepped back into his room, sliding the deck door closed before answering. "Yes?" he called out.
"It's Ken," came the reply. "Are you awake?"
"I am," said Cole, walking over to open the door.
Ken smiled. "Morning, Stranger," he said. "We've got a crew ready to roll and people setting up at Pig Cove. We can head out as soon as you're ready. Breakfast?"
Cole nodded. The mission terrified him. Breakfast would be good.
9.7
The underground facility in which William had left Linda had turned out to be fairly close to the "lobster tank" that held her body. Linda gazed out over the Martian plain William called "Rumi's Field." She could see the container gleaming in the distance. But she had no need to examine it again. She'd already done that. And the Fisherman was gone now. She wanted to use this time to explore on her own.
But, Jesus, how far could she go? She looked up to the sky, half expecting to find William hovering directly overhead. You tie me down with gravity? And then leave me alone in an underground prison? Really? Her fists clenched and relaxed and clenched again. She felt chained to the ground. There'd be no flying. No blinking. No zipping about the galaxy. It'd take her hours, or days, just to reach the nearest mountain.
She peered again at her naked body, tiny and vulnerable in the vast expanse. The whole set up was so surreal she could hardly believe it. It occurred to her that perhaps belief was the problem. Maybe she wasn't stuck. Maybe what held her fast was the heaviness of belief. The easiest way to control her - and William was certainly trying to do that - would be with words. All he had to do was just tell her something and darned if she didn't accept it. And if she was convinced that something wasn't possible, then she wouldn't even think to test it, would she?
The truth was that she didn't really know what the rules were now. How could she, when William kept changing them? She had assumed, down in that underground corridor, that because she felt bound by gravity, because she did not sink through the floor, because she could feel the cold hard stone underfoot, that she would have to turn the ship's wheel to open that door. But she'd been able to pass right through it like it was nothing.
So what else could she do?
William had told her that she was confined to Mars. And her previous attempt to escape back home had seemed to confirm that: she'd been stopped by an invisible barrier. But that was then. The Fisherman was obviously trying to teach her something with his series of examples and object lessons. And he was no doubt testing her. He needed her to act in the world in a way he could not. He wanted her to oversee the depopulation of the planet. So he was trying to forge her into the instrument of his will. Make her strong and smart and resolute. Or something.
Linda scanned the sky. Maybe she had more power here than she'd been led to believe. She imagined herself leaping upward from the Martian surface, reaching the barrier, and bursting through it. She imagined the barrier breaking apart like shards of glass. And she saw herself journey instantly back to her home. Linda glanced one last time at the lobster tank, noting how her body and her spirit were in similar situations. A tiny smile crept onto her face. Nothing here is by accident, is it William? You've got it all planned out. This moment is a test, and you're waiting to see how I do.
With love and longing swelling in her heart, Linda put all of her focus and attention on Cole's vibratory pattern. In an instant, she was at his side, back on Earth. If there'd been a barrier, she'd passed right through it. If it had been a test, she had passed it.
9.8
Mary screwed the top back onto the peanut butter jar and placed it in its spot in the cupboard, label facing outward. Then she pulled it back down and loosened the lid just a bit before replacing it. Danny would be up soon, and he'd want something to eat, and he wouldn't be able to open the jar if she screwed it down tight like Daddy demanded. She'd be back home long before the old man returned. She could retighten the lid then.
It didn't matter. It never did. Her father would find his reasons, no matter what she did. Mary grabbed some coins from the sock she used as a hiding place and stuffed them into her pocket. Enough to buy a Coke, at least. And D'Neal would give her one of those egg sandwich things. He always did when she promised to meet him after he got off work. That would be nice. The peanut butter never lasted very long.
Her chores were already done, so she'd have lots of time for D'Neal. She was glad of that. The pieces all seemed to fit together, just like she'd planned. She had one day a week that didn't feel just totally batshit crazy. She wanted to enjoy it.
Mary checked her watch, grabbed her tattered sci-fi paperback, and headed out the door, down the dingy hallway, through the sparsely furnished living room, and out the front door. To sunshine. To sanity. To freedom. She felt bad, leaving Danny alone. But he had his cartoons and his comic books and his Matchbox cars. Their father was off on his weekly. Danny would be okay. Maybe D'Neal would give her two of those sandwiches. She could bring one back for her brother. He'd like that.
Mary glanced back at their tiny shitbox house, sitting on a street packed full of shitbox houses. Ticky tacky, like the song said. But hers was different. In her house there lived a madman.
The morning was cool and still, but already she could feel the warmth of the day rising in the air. Danny would have to wait. Her father would have to wait. This was Saturday: Mary's self-proclaimed "day off." She was going to make the best of it.
Mary hurried along the sidewalk, heading into town.
9.9
Linda stared at her husband and shook her head. What was Cole doing, standing on the shore, looking out over the water? And who were all of those people beside him? With her body still on the surface of Mars, Linda felt the frustration of the ghost: able to move about in the physical realm and see what was going on, and yet utterly unable to have an effect there, or to make herself heard.
Cole was extremely worried about the kids. She could feel the emotions emanating from him like heat from a wood stove. So Linda attempted to blink again, this time focusing on Grace's pattern, with whom she felt the strongest connection. But she could not find Grace anywhere. Neither could she find Emily or Iain. In a panic to learn what was going on, Linda tried to focus on Mary's pattern, then Keeley’s, only to fail each time. Finally she keyed in on Ness and, finding her old friend, jumped instantly to Augusta. She was horrified by what she found: Ness, sitting and watching over the bodies of the children, bodies which were still healthy and alive, but bodies from which their essential selves were gone missing! What the hell was going on?
She blinked back to Cole. His attention was out on the water, so Linda followed his gaze. He was staring at Squirrel Island. Of course. As far as he knew, that was where she was being held, sick with the alien flu. He must be trying to get to her. She blinked again, focusing on her felt memory of her old getaway. In an instant, she was standing on her cottage's front porch.
Linda hadn't been here since she and Cole and the kids had spent a single night, not long after moving to Maine. One visit was all she’d been able to spare from the pressing demands of her job, and, sadly, she'd been glad of it. The cottage was where her old friend, Fred, had been br
utally murdered by Agent Rice. The place had felt haunted. She hadn't wanted to come back.
Linda glanced back toward the mainland, noting the tall military fencing at her property line. She turned to face her front door. There would be answers inside. She stepped through the door and walked from room to room, inspecting each in turn, searching for clues. Apart from some uniforms and personal articles in the upstairs bedroom, three bottles of liquor in the fridge, and a filthy cat bowl by the sliding glass door - not to mention the fact that her dining room had been turned into an office, with a soldier there now, typing happily away - her cabin looked much as it had the last time she'd visited.
She shook her head. This was not what she'd expected. Then she remembered the hidden elite's propensity for burying their secrets underground. She looked down at the floor. That's where her answers would be: beneath the cabin.
But how to get there in her present state? However it was that William had "tuned" her astral body, it made her a strangely limited ghost back here on Earth. While she could pass through doors and walls, she seemed unable to simply drop through floors. She glanced at the typing soldier. There was definitely something going on here. There had to be a way to find out what. She passed the soldier like the ghost she was and stepped into the kitchen, then through to the hallway. There, around the corner and past the bath: a new entranceway that opened to the back yard. She followed the hallway and stepped outside.
Not far from the door was a new concrete staircase that took her down to a basement she'd never had. At the bottom was a metal door with a red stencil: a stylized Earth inside a red oval. She passed through the heavy steel door, walked down another set of steps, and took a short hallway that ended at a set of double doors.
Here. This was it. She stepped into a brightly lit hallway: concrete floors and white tile walls and ceilings. She started forward. The corridor turned and turned and turned again, wrapping around itself in a large rectangle, with gray metal doors on either side, most of them closed, and most of them leading to office spaces, some of which were occupied by soldiers of various rank. It was uncannily like the facility she and Obie had explored in Ottawa, where they'd found Cole's dead body in the wreckage of an airplane. Linda breathed deeply, marveling at the size of the place. They had to have built this since her last visit. Easy enough to keep the secret when she never asked to go there.
Linda found another stairway and descended another level. This one was divided into larger rooms filled with computer stations and cubicles. It must be early morning here, she thought. There were only a few people present, drinking coffee and peering blearily into their computer screens. Linda stood behind one of them and watched him work. On his screen was a close-up of her face. She looked haggard and sick, her skin blotched and stained with that red rash. The man was using his finger to add tiny purple spots just underneath her eyes.
She returned to the staircase and descended another story. This third level was dimly lit and seemed to be uninhabited. There were no doors on the outer walls of the rectangular corridor. And there were only two doors on the inner walls, one directly opposite the other. She passed through the first to find a medical laboratory, complete with a surgical suite. She passed through the second to find an empty room, the wall opposite the door made of glass. A viewing room. Beyond the glass, she saw her own body, lying naked and still on a pedestal.
Slowly, stunned with disbelief, Linda passed through the glass wall and approached her inert form. Save for the clear glass box, which was missing here, she was looking at an exact replica of the body she'd seen on the surface of Mars. She looked down at her sleeping face, healthy and unblemished. She had no idea how this could be. She reached out to touch her unconscious self. Her hand was trembling with rage. "You bastard!" she spat, as if William could hear her.
A voice behind her cleared its throat. "Perhaps," it said.
Linda whirled to find the Fisherman, standing in the corner. "Good morning, Madam," he said cheerily.
"You can see me?" said Linda, confused.
"Time you and I got back to work," he answered, ignoring her question.
In an instant, they were standing face to face in the desert Martian plain called Rumi's Field.
9.10
"You can talk?" cried Grace into the darkness. "Since when can you talk?"
"Dunno," said Dennis. "Never... tried. Before. Didn't think..."
Mihos closed his eyes, extinguishing the only light they had, drawing attention back to himself. "Yes," he said after a long pause. He opened his eyes again. "Talking dogs are always good for a laugh. No doubt your little pooch can ride a unicycle here as well. But we were talking about-"
"You said something about a door?" asked Iain, cutting Mihos off.
Mihos did not say anything.
"Door," agreed Dennis. "Here."
They waited in black silence for Dennis to continue, but that seemed to be all he had to say. "We don't know how to find you here," said Grace at last. "The only way we know directions at all is with Mihos's eyes. We can't-"
"Oh for crying out loud," said Mihos in a huff. The kids watched as Mihos seemed to move. It was impossible to tell if he actually did. After a moment the cat spoke again. "Okay, monkeys. I've got my paws on yer mutt. So where's this door, Scooby Doo?"
The three children waited. There was a muffled sound, then nothing, then Mihos again. "That's not a... Oh... wait. Got it." A small round hole appeared in the Murk, brightly lit from beyond, momentarily overloading their visual senses. The kids watched as Dennis nosed his way through, pushing up what looked like a plastic flap that covered the hole. Mihos followed him through, calling back to the kids over his shoulder as he did so. "Looks like Astro here found the way," he said. The kids followed them through the door.
In the light outside the Murk the five of them gathered, standing on the shoulder of a secondary road. Filling the sky on one side was the towering black wall, the Murk. On the other side, the Maine countryside stretched out for as far as they could see.
Mihos surveyed the scene, then shook his head and coughed. He turned to Dennis. "You found a doggy door that took us back outside?" he said. "What? You gotta pee?"
9.11
"It appears you are all doing a brilliant job here," said William cheerily as he stopped at the underground facility's security checkpoint. The sharp-eyed young lieutenant manning the station glanced up at his approach, then stood as the older man arrived to sign out on the clipboard. "I commend you all on your work," continued the Fisherman. "You seem to have the situation well under control."
"Thank you sir," said the lieutenant. "Shall I call Colonel McAfee?"
"Posh," said the Fisherman with a wave of the hand. "No need. I'm late and he has more important work, I presume. I'll just be off." William dotted the i's firmly and put down the pen, then pushed his way through the turnstile and scanner and headed toward the elevator. The lieutenant lifted an eyebrow as the older man passed but said nothing more.
A quick ride up one level brought William to the island's surface. He stepped out into the cottage's old garage, now serving as the facility's entrance lobby. He checked through another security station and hiked the short trail up to the landing pad, hidden away beyond the trees behind the cottage. The AB12's door slid open at his approach. The plankway descended. Not nearly as fluid and seamless as a Life-grown wok, to be sure, but it would do. Eventually their engineers would learn to think more gracefully inside the new paradigm.
William stepped onto the craft and slipped into the support field. The plankway and door retracted and the light gathered. In a moment, with only the slightest hum to give it away, the craft rose into the sky. Then it was gone.
9.12
Cole stood at the end of a long pier that stretched out over the rocks and mud. When Vince had told him that Ken Swathers had a place down near Pig Cove, Cole had envisioned a tiny cabin near the water. But this place was huge, well built, and richly furnished, just as Ken's other house in So
uthport had been. He'd assumed that Ken and his wife must be quite well-to-do, but that came from forgetting the sort of world he now lived in. "Not many people left out here, Stranger," said Ken with a smile when Cole commented on the place. "We kinda get our choice of places now. Not that we'd want to try to heat this monstrosity in the winter." It was obvious, when Ken explained it. Cole wondered if maybe he'd been a little too sheltered from the real world back inside the cordon. He felt like the Stranger indeed.
The morning sun warmed his face as he stared due East over the water. Squirrel Island was approximately half a mile away, backlit and shadowed. After taking office, and thinking that the Squirrel would serve as Linda's Presidential retreat, most of the south end of the island had been bought up by the government, with houses torn down and roads blocked off. The cottage itself was barely visible from where Cole stood, but Cole could make out that distinctive chimney topper he'd noted on his previous visit: it stood as tall and strong as a queen on a chess board. That's where Linda was.
Something rose from amongst the trees, extremely bright, a tiny sun. In a flash, it streaked away, leaving naught but a visual blur. Cole blinked his eyes to recalibrate his vision. Whatever it was, it was gone.
He shook his head and turned to make his way back up the catwalk and along the path through the woods. Stan and Ken and the others would be gathered at the house, waiting to take him down to Cape Harbor. The boat was ready. They even had a reporter from the Portland paper with them, another connection through their so-called "church." The plan was for Cole and a crew of six to loop around Squirrel Island as far to the east as they could, make their way to the north side, and then approach the island from the same direction as the old ferry. That would bring them to the island's north end and allow them to approach the cottage - and whatever military/medical establishment that now surrounded it - on foot, or in a vehicle, if they could find one. Cole was glad of the plan. Arriving on foot felt vastly preferable to arriving on their doorstep in a wobbly boat.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 30