by Dean Koontz
KEEP YOU IN LINE AS MUCH AS THEY CARED
ABOUT YOUR HAVING A CHRISTIAN UPBRINGING); SECONDLY, IT GIVES A PURPOSE AND
MEANING NOT ONLY TO YOUR LIFE BUT TO THE
ENTIRE UNIVERSE WHICH SOMETIMES SEEMS
UNEXPLAINABLY CHAOTIC TO YOU-THE WARS
AND THE SUFFERING, THE REST OF IT.
I am thirsty.
IN A MOMENT. I MUST FINISH WITH THIS FIRST.
YOU SEE MORSFAGEN CASTING DICE, FOR HE
DESPISED AND ONLY USES YOU FOR HIS OWN
ENDS. THE CLOAK SYMBOLIZES YOUR LIFE,
YOUR PURPOSE, YOUR INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY.
THERE SEEMS TO BE A HINT OF THE FUTURE IN
YOUR DREAM, A MOMENT OF CLAIRVOYANCE,
AND YOU SHOULD BEWARE THE MAN.
Go on.
YOU SEE CHILD AS A THREAT TO YOUR NEATLY BUILT THEORY. HE IS ANOTHER VIRGIN
BIRTH, OF THE ORIGIN THAT YOU ARE OF. YOU
REALIZE THAT HE HAD BUILT THE SAME SECOND-COMING THEORY TO EXPLAIN HIS OWN
PURPOSE IN THE WORLD. YOU UNDERSTAND
THAT SINCE HE HAS MET YOU, HIS LIFE PURPOSE HAS BEEN SHATTERED AND THAT HE IS
HUNTING FOR ANOTHER ANSWER. YOU DON'T
WANT TO HAVE TO DO THAT YOURSELF. YOU
DON'T WANT TO HUNT.
THE WOMAN, MELINDA, IS ALSO A THREAT TO
YOUR PURPOSE (OR, RATHER, TO THE FANTASY
PURPOSE YOU HAVE CREATED FOR YOURSELF).
CHRIST COULD NOT FALL PHYSICALLY IN LOVE
WITH A WOMAN. BUT YOU HAVE. ADMIT IT. THIS
IS YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE. LISTEN AND KNOW
THAT YOUR PURPOSE IS TO LOVE AND COMFORT
AND TO BE LOVED IN RETURN. OTHERWISE, YOU
FACE ONLY SCHIZOPHRENIA.
Could that be a purpose, though?
IT IS THE OLDEST PURPOSE. WASH YOURSELF
CLEAN OF FALSE PURPOSES. ALLOW ME TO ESTABLISH A SERIES OF PERSONALITY TAPES TO
REINFORCE YOUR FALTERING SENSE OF REALITY AND TO SUBDUE THIS CHRIST SYNDROME.
THE REASON YOU LIVE IS TO LOVE. SO IT IS
WITH MOST HUMAN BEINGS. DON'T SEARCH
FOR A LARGE PURPOSE, FOR MORE COMPLEX
MEANINGS, FOR THE WHY OF THE WORLD OR
THE REASON IN HATE AND WAR. BE SATISFIED
THAT YOU KNOW YOURSELF. IT IS A WISE MAN
WHO KNOWS HIMSELF.
WE WILL PROCEED WITH THE HEALING
NOW...
VII
The following morning, as I stepped out of the elevator near the top of the AC complex, Harry intercepted me before I had taken more than four steps toward the room where Child waited for another session. His round face was drawn, pale, and lined with heavy creases that had not been there before. He looked as if he had not slept all night. A cursory examination of his rumpled clothes and withered shirt collar was proof of that. He grasped my arm, digging his fingers in until it hurt, and steered me across the corridor to an unused office, pushed me inside, followed, and closed the door behind us.
"Cloak and dagger?" I asked. It was amusing to see him engaged in some melodramatic play like this. Yet also terrifying. If Harry Kelly thought there was a need for caution, there most assuredly was. Normally, he had the greatest respect and confidence in due process, even in these days. Many considered him a Polyanna. Now Polyanna was scared, and nothing short of an ogre could have managed that.
"Look, Sim, lay off the arrogance with Morsfagen. Say yes sir and no sir and thank you sir, and help me get his temper down. No smart cracks and no more antagonism.
I haven't ever asked you much, but I ask this. Listen, son, it might mean everything we've worked for if you can't keep yourself in check."
"I can't stand the man," I said.
"Neither can I."
"What's happening?"
"The situation is worse than any public communications are reporting it. The Chinese and their Japanese advisors have set up a command post on the Russian side of the Amur River. Only maybe a hundred yards' worth of invasion, but they refuse to move backwards on request. On the Chinese side, troops have been massing for four days.
A special spurline was laid down, and troop trains are running in on the hour from the main tracks that pass east of Nunkiang, through the Khingan Mountains."
I took it all in. I'd never been much on geography, and I must have looked rather blank, for he flapped his arms in despair and started on me again.
"On the other side of the border there, the Russian towns Zavitaya, Belogorsk, Svobodnyy, and Shimanovsk lie in a straight line, each within striking distance of the other. Zavitaya contains a missile complex trained on several Chinese population centers. Belogorsk is the site of an extension of the Khabarovsk laboratories, dealing with the problem of lasers. It's the place where the news has been coming from lately-about the possibility of the equivalent of a death-ray. The entire area has become, in the last ten years, a strategic one. If the Chinese can sweep it, they can isolate that arm of the Soviet Union.
Toward this end, portable nuke facilities have been moved in on the Amur, pointed toward Zavitaya."
"War," I said. "But we've had it before. And we've been expecting it now for fourteen years or more. Why does this mean I have to brown-nose Morsfagen?"
"I received an interesting telephone call from a judge who was a friend in law school, back in the age of the dinosaur. He reported that Morsfagen has been asking around about the possibility of impounding you-just like they tried years ago."
"We already won that case."
"That was in peacetime. What Morsfagen wants to know is whether the looming war will make a difference."
"Law is law," I said.
"But in time of national crisis, it can be suspended.
And the word that the general got, my friend tells me, is that he can pull it off. It will be nasty, dirty, replete with complications-but possible. He'd much rather work with you the way it now stands. But if you drive him to the wall or anger him more than his limit of tolerance, he might decide that its worth a risk to his career. He might try it."
I didn't feel well. I wanted to sit down, but that would have been a sign of weakness. I knew Harry was just barely holding up now. There wasn't any use to make it worse for him. "What's your considered opinion?" I asked.
"The same. Only I think it's more possible for him to succeed than even his own advisors told him."
I nodded. "We'll play it cool, Harry. We'll play it so cool that there will be icicles hanging from the walls. Let's go."
He breathed a sigh of relief and followed me out of the empty office, down the hall, through the door, and into the hex-walled room.
"You're late," Morsfagen said, consulting his watch and scowling at me as he waited for the thrust of my tongue.
Maybe he had decided one more witty remark on my part would be the weight to push him to action.
I didn't give him the chance. "Sorry," I said. "I got held up in traffic."
He looked genuinely perplexed, opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and ground his teeth together. It was almost as if he would have preferred being insulted to being treated civilly.
I had come to AC only for the money this time, not to demonstrate my super-humanness, my Christlike talents.
The therapy the mechanical psychiatrist had given me had worked deep and had taken root. But with a few more paychecks in my pocket, Melinda and I could be vagabonds for an eternity, running from the ugliness, the filth, war, and the people who made it. I thought of the future in the context of the two of us, though I could not yet know how she felt, whether her interest in me matched mine in her. But from a life of pessimism, I had suddenly become optimistic, and I refused to consider any but the brightest of possible futures.
Child was tranced. His mouth sagged slightly, and his twisted teeth could be seen beyond. His hands trembled against the arms of his chair, even though he was asleep.
They administered the drugs while I watched, then stepped back to
allow the freaks to converse in the way only we could understand.
I parachuted from the room, down into the labyrinth, not trusting to stairs that might have been there yesterday and not today...
Hooves clacked on rock, the sound like splinters of flying glass.
There was an outline like a child's scrawl, not nearly so definite and real as the day before. Whether he was losing power to refute my presence or merely planning some deception to put me off my guard, I did not know.
There was the vague odor of musk, all the textures of dark hair that fell like night mists, but all of them merely hazy crayon lines.
"Get out!"
I mean you no harm at all.
"And I wish not to harm you, Simeon. Get out."
Yesterday, as you well remember, I fashioned a sword from the very air itself. Do not forget that. Do not underestimate me, though I am in your regions.
"I beg of you to leave. You're in danger here."
From what?
"I cannot say. It is in the knowing that the danger lies."
That is not good enough.
"It is all I can say."
I swung the sword, and he dissipated into an eerie blue vapor that clung to the walls until the wind whistled in to blow it away. It curled along the stone, slithered back to the pit, and was gone.
Two hours into the session, as I was sprawled on the dirt shelf above the pit, grasping at thoughts and diverting them toward the waterspout, a "G" drifted out, and with another level of my mind, I plucked at it and traced it. G to Grass... which is dark Green and bendinG over the hills... toppinG and hills to see GGGGG... G... G ... GodGodGodGodGodGod like a whirlwind moaninG and babblinG over the Glens, cominG, cominG, twistinG relentlessly onward toward me... G... G...
I reached out to take a strong hold on the thought progression, partially because it might lead to something of interest and partially because it was such an odd, intense, and seemingly fractured train of images. Suddenly, the earthen shelf under me gave way, plunging me down toward the flaming pit which sent climbing streams of magma after me.
Wind lifted me toward the river before I could plunge into that cauldron of teeming madnesses.
I flew as if I were a kite.
The river swept me toward the ocean.
The water there was choppy and hot-and at places steam rose in spirals like smoke snakes.
At places, ice floated, dying.
I fought for the surface, desperately trying to stay on top of the turbulent currents, giving up thought direction and fighting only for the integrity of my own mind. Then I was suddenly up and splashing through the pillar of foamy water that roared into the black, heavy sky; like a bullet out of a rifle, whining, spinning, was I. Splashing, sputtering, I showered out of the mind of Child.
The room was dark. The hex signs glowed on the walls, partially illuminating the serious faces of the generals and the technicians. They were all grimacing, like gargoyle masks.
"He threw me out," I said in the quiet which stretched to the breaking point.
Everyone stared at me with what was obviously a bad case of doubt. I wished I had been more conciliatory in the days past, so that this incident would not appear so suspicious.
"He just threw me out of his mind," I said. It was the first time it had ever happened to me. I explained that.
They listened. Somewhere, I was certain, Child was laughing...
VIII
Rumors of war.
The Chinese had slaughtered the skeleton staffs manning the last two Western Alliance embassies in Asia. One was in what had once been called Korea, the other on the home islands of Japan. The Japanese denied any responsibility for the massacre on their own soil. The story was that citizens of Japan and Chinese ancestry had forced their way past the police detailed to protect the Western delegates, had run wild in an orgy of destruction. The Japanese press pointed out that the West, perhaps, should have been expecting this for years, their own silly trade practices-from which China had always been excluded-drawing the wrath of a poverty-stricken people who felt cast aside from the main commerce of the world. Other reports, from eyewitnesses in Japan, said that the Japanese police did not resist the mob at all and actually seemed to be directing its bloodthirsty attack on the foreign consulate offices.
The Tri-D screen showed headless bodies for the benefit of those with shallow imaginations. In the streets of Tokyo, masses marched, holding those heads speared on the ends of sharpened aluminum poles. Dead eyes of our countrymen looked back at us from the other side of the screen...
The Pentagon, the same morning, announced the discovery of the Bensor Beam, which was capable of shorting out all synapses in the nervous system of the human body, leaving the brain imprisoned in a mindless hulk. Named after its creator, a Dr. Harold Bensor, the beam was already being referred to (by Pentagon officials and their cronies in the War Bureau of Moscow) as "the turning point in the cold war." I knew the idea had come from Child; I recognized it the way one recognizes a bad dream that someone has made into a movie. But the censors had learned from the mistakes they had made with me in the past; the public would never hear of Child.
I wondered, for the briefest of moments, what sort of inhuman fiend this Bensor must be to want his name attached to such an inglorious device. Then I lost my facade of superiority when I considered that the weapon might just as likely have been called the Simeon Kelly Beam, for I had been the middleman who had brought it into existence. I was more responsible than anyone, even Child, for whatever might be done with this damn thing.
Pictures on the screen showed two Chinese prisoners on whom the weapon had been used. Spastic, they flopped about on the gray floor of their cell, eyes sightless, ears unhearing, bodies pulled by strings that none of us could really understand.
I turned it off.
I pushed my unfinished breakfast away from me, and got my coat from the closet. I was to meet Melinda at her apartment for another session with the tapes, and I did not want to miss that. Besides, seeing her might somehow purge the strain of guilt running through me.
AM the interviews were at her apartment, for she had a ton of equipment there and preferred not to have to move it. That evening, we were going to the theater-and that was no business meeting at all. In fact, even the interviews had become more than business.
I was trying to heed the mechanical psychiatrist's advice, trying to reach out and accept human warmth. And, in small ways, in kisses and touches and a few words, she was returning that effort of mine. To me, so thirsty for companionship after a long drought, it seemed even more heady and fine than it really was.
The sky was gray again and whispered snow. It was a regular oldtime winter, a Christmas-card sort of winter, sparkling and white and bitterly cold. Somewhere, far above, floated Dragonfly.
"Did the FBI mistreat you at any other time?" she asked.
The black microphone dangled above us like a bloated spider. Behind the couch where we sat, reels hissed in the recorder, like voices commenting on the anecdotes I told.
"It wasn't the FBI so often as the doctors who treated me not as a human being, but as something to be pricked, punched, and jabbed. I remember once when-"
"Keep remembering," she said. She reached behind the couch and stopped the recorder, laid the microphone down. "That's enough for one day. If it gets moving too fast, you lose the color. You try to tell too much, and the details are blurred. It happens with everyone."
"I guess so," I said.
She was wearing a peasant blouse with a scalloped neckline, an alluring garment which I found myself staring at. And that, in itself, was a shock. It did not seem disgusting, as it once would have. In fact, the fullness, the perfect roundness of her breasts seemed deeply exciting.
Perhaps my mechanical psychiatrist had been correct. Perhaps this was a purpose, a legitimate need.
She saw the direction of my gaze. Perhaps that was what produced the following. Perhaps she had been awaiting a sign, and this
was the one she saw and chose to travel by. She moved across to the couch, beside me, leaned upwards, and made a bow of her mouth, her tongue flicking along those lips, anxious and inquiring.
What is your mood, the tongue seemed to say. How do you feel? Is this the time? Why don't you do something?
I obeyed the wishes of the tongue. I found it with my lips and with my own tongue, drew her closer with both arms and felt her breasts against my chest And was not disgusted.
In time, I had touched the flesh of her legs, felt the warmth of her thighs through her skirt. Then I scooped her breasts free of the peasant blouse and tested them with teeth and lips. An hour passed in a minute and had the joy of a century encapsulated in it When I left, a hundred yearsa minute later, she stood clean and brown before me, a dark, supple woman divested of all but the glow of her body's youth. We kissed and said nothing more-for there was nothing more to be said. Not really. Even if I could have forced words out of my dry throat Outside, I stood in the drive a long while, oblivious of snow and wind, of stares from passing pedestrians, of the need to get to the AC complex and confront Child again.
For the first time in my life, I had been with a woman.
And she had been a goddess, a good place to start. I didn't feel tainted or used or sinful. I felt better, in fact, than I had ever felt in my life. In time, I managed to think enough to get to the car, climb inside, and close the door. I sat for maybe five minutes before I started it.
My body seemed to burn where she had touched me.
Flames played along my lips. All the way to AC...
I was in love: no question. I had not even attempted to esp her thoughts ever since we had met, and that was unusual. I was affording her the same privilege that Harry received, but before she had done half as much for me as he had, before I really knew whether she would accept me or demolish me. I imagine I had been afraid, at first that she would love me-and later that she would not.
How foolish I had been at the party, weeks ago, when she had been pointed out to me and when, later, she seemed to take interest in me, looking my way, smiling, doing all the things a woman can do. I had bolted. I had left the party even before anyone asked for parlor tricks, and I had hidden in my house, pretending I had not been interested in her. Foolish. I was so much older then-but I am younger than that now.