Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2)

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Linda turned and watched her sleeping husband for a few moments. In a way, he was more a mystery now than any of these others. Not that she didn't trust him. She did. It was more that she wasn't sure who he was any longer. There had barely been time to talk, let alone synchronize their mental hard drives so that each knew, as fully as possible, what the other had been through in the past two weeks. Cole's "hops"? The light from his hands? An alien in disguise? Jesus! Linda didn't know what to do with any of that. All she knew was that she could no longer assume that she understood what he was up to. Somehow, here with her husband, her love, hand in hand, her gut failed her. She couldn't tell.

  The jet engines roared softly as the plane leapt across the North Atlantic. Soon she'd have to rouse Cole. Call them all together. Make some plans. Talk about the day to come. She needed to phone Stan and get an update about the Greensleeves cure. And the girls. And Iain. But not yet. Not yet. There was time still. And Linda was so very tired. And she wanted to hold Cole's hand a while longer. She wanted to feel him. She wanted to feel her love for him.

  Because she was not at all convinced that she would get to do that for much longer.

  17.12

  Jay Sinclair tucked his drunken wife into bed and turned out the light, leaving her to fill their tiny apartment with her loud, juicy snores. He grabbed his jacket and headed out the door to make his way to the hangar. This sector of the living quarters, reserved for members of the Directorate and their families, was quiet compared to the major corridors, yet there was still more activity than he'd expected, even in these wee hours of the morning. The last push was on. It was almost show time. There were so many last minute details to take care of. Which would make his little trip to Kiev seem all the more strange, should anyone notice.

  He entered the elevator and headed up to the hangar deck where his wok would be waiting for him. It was likely that nobody would say anything. He could hear the concern in the Flight Director's voice when he'd called to requisition his ride, but Sinclair was a junior member of the Directorate. He was a Sinclair. Nobody would question him, with the exception, perhaps, of his superiors. And Sinclair intended to be back long before any of them knew. He looked at his watch. It was almost four in the morning. His contact would be seven hours fresher than he. He'd have to get some caffeine.

  The fact that this contact had been able to get to him via the Ape was telling. That meant he had some significant level of insider status, and knew enough to discern that Jay Sinclair even existed, and had a missing daughter. If his story turned out to be true, if this person truly had a bead on Gabrielle, that would make him a valuable commodity. He or she would, no doubt, want something in return. Sinclair could easily guess what that might be.

  Ah well. Directorate members had as many comp tickets as they wished. If this person was young and smart and motivated, why not give him or her a berth? Sinclair could always use another aide. He stepped out of the elevator and took the short hallway to the left, turning right and pushing through the double doors to the hangar. Usually there were only a few woks to choose from, as most were in service. But so close to the Giant Leap, almost everybody was now in-house. He had a whole hangar full of woks from which to choose. Since he'd trained on a seventeen, he chose one of those.

  The tech checked his credentials - a formality of which Sinclair approved - and handed him a flight helmet. Sinclair stepped up to his seventeen, an old favorite he thought of as "Sadie," and put his hand on her side. Though the human-built woks weren't as alive and conscious as their alien exemplars, they had some truncated sentience. He could feel her muted response of recognition, and patted her in appreciation as her doorway melted open. Sinclair glanced back toward the flight office, then stepped up onto the stairway. He'd be at the diner in Kiev in a matter of minutes. He could already smell the coffee.

  17.13

  "Yes, Ma'am," said Stan into the phone. "Dr. Pintick arrived a few minutes ago and the hybrids - the Middle Children - are outfitting his lab. He should be up and running before dawn." Stan listened for a moment, then spoke again, his voice soft and low. "No word, Mrs. President," he said. "I'll speak with Alice when she returns from the nullspace. I know they're on it, but not much else. I'm sorry." He listened for a moment longer, then said good-bye and clicked off his phone. Stan sighed, leaning back in his office chair. He put his feet up on his old desk and closed his eyes to think.

  The world was facing a deadly pandemic, the bad guys were getting away, and Linda's greatest concern was with the whereabouts of her lost son. That was exactly how it should be. And that's why Stan had to take the lead on these other matters. That was his job, was it not? He was the Secretary of Homeland Security. These were strange and stressful times. Death stalked the land. Evil had gained the upper hand. The homeland was not secure. Stan would not just sit on his hands and watch all of their work fall down around his ears. Not while he still had breath in him. That's not who he was.

  Stan had been surprised to find how well the engines of government had chugged along without them for the past few days. Even with Linda at the Squirrel and he and Cole gone to find her, things had kept running on their own steam. That made sense, really. Though the President was in Augusta, the government really wasn't. The Congress, the Supremes, the Joint Chiefs, most of the Exec, Intelligence, they were spread out across the country, or concentrated in other cities, where Linda had sent them after the destruction of D.C. three years previous. Most of the business of government was transacted now via email, chat, phone, Skype, and video conferencing. And until Alpha hit, most in the government assumed that their President, though ill, was still in charge and running things from the infectious disease containment facility on Squirrel Island, with assistance from her VP, Albert Singer, still in Augusta. Things were running smoothly enough, it had seemed, that she could even attend and participate in the global environmental summit, all thanks to those who had abducted her and replaced her with a virtual doppelgänger.

  It was not until earlier today, when the President was reported missing and presumed dead, that things had begun to fall apart. Albert Singer, it turned out, had mysteriously vanished in the night. He was already gone before they'd boarded The Pokey Joker for her final voyage. His office, his home, his car, he'd left it all behind. He'd even left his laptop on his desk, open to a half-written email. It was as if he'd been beamed up by the aliens.

  Perhaps he had. Stan had always assumed that Singer had close ties to members of the secret cabal. It made sense that some members of the cabal were still deeply embedded in the real world, and Albert's loyal deference had always felt a bit off to Stan. Bank's former ties were out in the open, and the man had worked hard to earn their trust and make amends. The General's involvement was also out in the open, and he'd never seemed to care whether they trusted him or not, so Stan just trusted that the General would one day betray them, and he had. But Singer had never been outed as a collaborator. He just felt like one.

  In any event, Singer was gone. The order of succession had been sorted out. The Speaker was now presiding from his office in Kenosha. All was well with the world. The military maintained its watch. The wars banged along. The oil wells pumped what was left. The food trucks showed up at the shelters. They would do their best. And their worst. As they always had.

  This intense heat, more fierce than ever in the wake of the hurricane, would no doubt spark a few riots in the coming days. There would be brown-outs and black-outs all over the electrical grid. Water would grow ever more precious as the droughts continued. Speaker Simpson would be under more pressure than he'd imagined was possible. And the real President would do what she did in Ukraine.

  Stan couldn't decide what he thought about that: Linda Travis's insistence that she and her husband travel without protection, and with a group of relative strangers, to Chernobyl to confront this mysterious Fisherman. It didn't make much sense to him. There were too many more pressing needs, in Stan's opinion. Where Linda Travis needed to be was
right here in Augusta, doing her job. So the bad guys would get away. Let 'em go. This Fisherman and his cronies. The General. Albert Singer. The whole lot of them. Let 'em go and good riddance. There would be no stopping them anyways. Hadn't she already learned that? And maybe when they left they'd take their damned alien buddies along with them, and good riddance to that lot as well.

  There was stuff to do here. Linda Travis was not here to do it. But Stan Walsh was. And he was going to do it.

  17.14

  There were actually two Alices that had come to see them in the nullspace. The first was their friend, the strange, lost little hybrid girl who'd stayed with Cole and Linda and the kids for a few months after the wild events of three years previous; the smart, wise, inquisitive, yet odd little being who had won their hearts with her funny questions, her direct manner, and her awkward but sincere attempts to learn from them about the human side of her lineage. That Alice had disappeared one day out of the blue, leaving behind a short, vague note. She had reappeared three years later, seeming to have aged twelve years or more. She was a young woman now, not tall for a human but thin and well muscled, like a dancer. Her long, black hair fell straight on either side of her beautiful face, almost hiding the outer edges of her huge, almond-shaped black eyes. Her look was elfish, animal, hyper-aware, and yet there was still something girlish about the way she would cock her head, or move across the room, or slump onto the sofa next to the girls.

  This Alice had stood stiff and still and allowed first Grace, then Emily, then Mary, to hug her in turn, and had even reached up to put her hand on their backs as they did so. She greeted them by name, expressed her gladness to see them again, asked how they were, and listened intently as Mary and the girls told some more of their story. The girls were keen to understand how it was that Alice was now so much older than they, and nodded as if they knew just what she meant when Alice explained that she'd "skipped between a number of world-lines in the time since last we saw each other."

  The other Alice felt very different: imperious, businesslike, stern, even burdened. It was as if her thoughts did not fit into the human world, as if it was all she could do to make words come out of her mouth that the humans would understand. Her air was that of one who'd been away in battle, who had seen things neither Mary nor the girls could begin to comprehend, who had learned the hard truths of loss and leadership and had come back to aid her people - the Middle Children - in another sort of war, this one a war for place and belonging. This Alice had much larger things on her mind than the humble swapping of greetings and stories. Though she may have been fighting for such things as peace and security, home and belonging, rest and comfort and glad gatherings, it felt as though she herself could only hover on the edges of such things, the seasoned warrior uncomfortable with the peace between battles.

  This Alice gave a short, clear account of the Middle Children's search efforts regarding Iain. She told them what she'd confirmed about Murks from the packet she'd received from the Cogency, how they were, indeed, a plant-like lifeform that existed simultaneously in three different layers of reality, how they'd been discovered, researched, and eventually weaponized, and how the chances of finding someone who had fallen into the Murk's central flames were almost nil. There were some in the Cogency who believed that consciousness itself was not destroyed in a Murk, and that it was simply thrown into another time. For this reason, a panel of six Middle Children had set up a sweep through jumptime, in an attempt to find some sign of Iain along that axis. A full sweep would take days to months, depending on how tightly they tuned their nets. Even with the tightest weave possible, there would be no guarantees.

  When she was finished, Alice rose from the sofa and started toward the door, as though she meant to leave without so much as saying goodbye.

  "Alice?" said Grace, her eyes still wet with tears from the news of her brother.

  Alice stopped as if Grace's question had been a knife thrown into her back. Slowly she turned to face them. Her face was dark.

  "Are you leaving?" asked Grace. She stood and took a few steps toward the young hybrid woman.

  Alice nodded but said nothing.

  Emily rose and followed her little sister. The two girls stepped closer to Alice. "What happened?" asked Emily.

  Alice cocked her head. "I do not understand what you mean," she said.

  Emily gestured toward the hybrid girl, whose stance was tight and wired, ready to run or fight, whose arms looked poised for battle, whose face was dark and angry. "What made you so... I don't know... cold?" said Emily.

  Alice jerked back as though slapped. She raised a single eyebrow and scowled, first at Emily, then at Grace. "I... cannot..." she finally said, glancing from one to the other

  Mary joined them, standing off to the side between the girls and Alice. "What can't you do?" she asked Alice, her voice soft and loving.

  Alice glanced at Mary, then back at the girls. She shook her head from side to side and wrinkled her tiny nose. She exhaled heavily. She looked back at Mary. "This is my burden," she said.

  Mary reached out and touched Alice's arm. "Friends share their burdens," she said, offering a gentle smile.

  Alice flinched but did not step away from Mary's touch. She looked to Grace again. Then Emily. "My mother," she said at last. She looked at Grace. "I could not find her either." Without another word, Alice turned and walked into the docking chamber and was gone.

  17.15

  "I did my best," said Gabrielle to Linda. The six travelers were gathered together in a rough circle facing each other across the aisle. "Whether he can hear me I don't know. And whether he'll respond..." Gabrielle shrugged, flashing her eyebrows in a way strangely similar to the way William had done, as though it were a Family trait.

  Linda nodded. If she was right, this Zacharael character who'd been intruding into Gabrielle's life was the same tall, thin, red-haired man who'd shown up repeatedly in her own life, looking for all the world like Agent Rice and causing confusion at every turn. One of those Angels, or Elders, that Obie had spoken of, he seemed to delight in messing with people without really explaining himself. It was about time he did something useful for a change. And by useful, Linda meant helping to find her lost son.

  She reached out and squeezed Gabrielle's hand and smiled. The girl appeared exhausted and drained, not only from the crazy day they'd had, but from lack of sleep, and from the deep relaxing trance state she'd gone into in order to try to contact her alien teacher. Linda glanced at her watch. Still a couple more hours in the air. Time to end this meeting and send everybody off for a nap before they arrived.

  "So we won't know until we land whether this Mr. Bluebird has got things set up for us?" asked Annabelle. She studied Linda with a smiling mouth and irritated eyes, as if she could hardly believe their travel plans were not already rock solid, but didn't want to come right out and say so.

  Linda nodded, raising an eyebrow. "I believe you insisted on joining my expedition, Annabelle. Not the other way around," she said, not bothering to hide her frustration. Unlike Gabrielle, the old woman looked as fresh as a sunny morning. How she managed to get pulled from the wreckage of Hurricane Alpha and still feel this good less than twenty-four hours later Linda could not imagine. "You're welcome to drop out at any time, if my itinerary doesn't suit you."

  Annabelle glanced at Cole, who sat watching them straight-faced, then back to Linda. "I'm not complaining, Mrs. President," she said. "Just trying to get things straight."

  Linda sighed. "I think you're going to have to get used to being out of control if you're going to hang around with me, Annabelle," she said. Linda's voice was distant and wistful, as if she knew herself to be capable of wild and horrible acts.

  Annabelle raised her eyebrows at Marionette and Doobie, then leaned back in her chair, as if determined to "get used to it" right away. Linda looked around the circle. "Any other concerns?" she asked.

  "Do we need to worry about radiation?" asked Doobie, gesturing to Marion
ette as though he meant just the two of them.

  Cole shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "Not if Mr. Bluebird hooks us up with a licensed guide. They've been doing tours of Chernobyl for years now. Those folks know where to go. And where not to go."

  "So it's just... grab the plane to Kiev, take a taxi to Chernobyl, and then we stand there and wait?" asked Marionette. "That's the plan?"

  "They must have sensitive and redundant surface surveillance systems in place," said Linda. "Facial recognition software. IR. Motion sensing. The works. I've seen how they operate. And this is the most important place in their world right now, if the rumors Danny heard can be believed. We'll be seen. Gabrielle will be recognized. Somebody will come to meet us."

  "And then what?" asked Doobie.

  "Then we do whatever comes next," said Linda with a shrug.

  Nobody else said anything for a long while. "Let's see if we can get some sleep," said Cole at last. The weary travelers nodded, and settled into their seats.

  17.16

  Jay Sinclair sipped at his second cup, his back to the wall, his eyes watching the only door in the place. The Cafe So Good, right down the street from a Family-owned SafeHouse Hotel in downtown Kiev, was one of his favorite spots in the city. Simple. Warm. Dark. Coffee and pastries, soup and sandwiches. All of it served in large, hot portions by smiling people who appeared to be glad that he was there. He didn't care for very many places in the sleeping world, but he loved the So Good. He visited whenever he could.

  It was also open all day, every day, and it was always fairly busy. Sinclair could get that warm-body effect he so often craved. Whether it was his early training or a hard-wired monkey impulse, Sinclair preferred to have people around him. Unlike so many others, he was actually looking forward to the cramped quarters of the colony ships, and the close working conditions they'd encounter in the colonies themselves.