Deep Fire Rising

by Du Brul, Jack

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “You two sound a lot alike.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “He’s my best friend. It’s good.”

  “Now that’s someone I’d like to hear about. Philip Mercer’s best friend. Tell me about this Harry White.”

  After that, things went better. With Harry as a subject, Mercer didn’t even have to try to get Tisa laughing. When they left the restaurant two hours later neither was surprised at how natural it felt to hold hands as they strolled. Mercer had removed his shoulder holster in the men’s room and tucked the gun into the back of his slacks so he could drape his blazer over Tisa’s shoulders.

  There was no need for any artless wile on Mercer’s part or false coquettishness from Tisa. Both knew where the evening was headed as they walked and talked, and yet that certainty made neither impatient. Everything unfolded at such a natural pace that when they finally arrived back at Mercer’s hotel they simply continued down the stairs to his room without pause.

  There wasn’t one moment of awkwardness. They felt only the joy of discovery as their lips met for the first time and as clothes began to pile on the floor. Together on the soft bed, their acts became more intimate until Mercer found himself doing things he hadn’t done since his days of college experimentation. But this wasn’t about pushing boundaries, it was about Tisa giving more and more of herself and he being willing to receive. There wasn’t any fear of going too far, for when he looked in her eyes he saw he’d just scratched the surface.

  They did not separate, but clung tightly to each other as they both drifted toward sleep. It was only as the last spark of consciousness faded that Mercer recognized the words Tisa had panted as she reached her climax. He could have sworn she’d been repeating, “I love you. I love you.”

  SANTORINI, GREECE

  In the moments between sleep and consciousness, in the blending of the dream world and the real, there was a moment of clarity where Mercer often found inspiration. He was not yet aware of his surroundings—that was a minute away—but his mind felt unimpeded and open to new ideas. Without realizing why, he played back his conversation with Tisa about chi forces and locus points. Then that scene became over-dubbed with his own words to Ira Lasko a scant twenty-four hours earlier. They were talking about global warming and Mercer told his boss that the planet had rhythms and cycles we had yet to detect.

  It seemed that he and Tisa had been discussing the same concepts, only she had a name for it. He’d dismissed her philosophy as Eastern legends and New Age bunk, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was the very same thing he believed, that we know more about outer space than our own planet and momentous discoveries await us if only we took the time to look.

  And then the thoughts diverged once again, leaving him with two separate ideas that couldn’t be reconciled. That was his last thought before coming fully awake.

  The light pouring into the room was pearly and wan. With the room’s door open, the air tasted fresh with the scent of the sea. As his eyes adjusted he saw Tisa on the balcony. Because the deck was screened on three sides and open only to the ancient volcanic caldera, she stood completely nude as she made the slow, balanced moves of the Tai Chi ritual, her supple body twisting in lissome poses. As he watched, his mind flashed back to their exploits during the night. He felt a familiar stirring.

  Tisa’s moves became more complex, and intense. Soon she deviated from Tai Chi to commence her morning contortion exercises. She’d taken the quilt from the bed so she could practice more freely. As she moved, Mercer became entranced. She exercised without guile, but he found the poses increasingly erotic. At one point only the crown of her head and the tips of her toes remained on the ground as she formed a backward arch. Her skin was stretched across her torso and her breasts rode high and proud. He could not hold back a moan.

  Tisa flipped around as agile as a cat, peering over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide and mischievous. “I was wondering when you’d notice me out here.” She swung up to her feet and sauntered to the bed. She dropped next to him and her hand disappeared under the covers. “So it is true. Men do have a thing for limber women.”

  “Limber, hell. Some of what you were doing would shame Gumby.”

  She bent and kissed him deeply, her lips soft against his. Mercer reached for her and dragged her into the bed. Her body had cooled from her exercises but quickly warmed against his and soon became almost hot to the touch.

  It was another hour before they got out of bed. Tisa left Mercer in the shower so she could go to her own hotel and gather her things. They would meet at ten for brunch. When she returned, Mercer lounged on the terrace, a Bloody Mary at hand to ease the lingering effects of too much ouzo. She’d left her luggage with the concierge and carried only a beach bag.

  She took a proprietary sip of Mercer’s drink. “Fur of the cat?”

  He smiled. “Hair of the dog.”

  “Ah, that’s right. English is an easy language to speak but has too many idioms.”

  “What is your native language? If you don’t mind my asking, what is your ethnic background?”

  “I grew up speaking Vietnamese at home. My father was half Vietnamese and half French. My mother was from Paris. In the village where I was born, the native language was a blend of Tibetan and Chinese.”

  “You were born in China?”

  “At Rinpoche-La,” she answered as if he should have known. “How do you think I know so much about Zhu and the archive and the oracle? I was raised to be a watcher until my mother fled the village with my half brother and me. I returned when I was eighteen.”

  “Why?”

  Tisa paused. “You must understand the size of the Order. Literally millions of people support us in one form or another. We control yoga studies, temples, and special schools. We also run organic farms on four continents. Go into any specialty food store in the United States and I can show you dozens of products that are produced by Order-owned companies. Most people who work for us have no idea. A yoga instructor in Miami pays a franchise fee to a company in California, who then pays a fee to another corporation in a country with loose banking laws. Eventually the money ends up in our coffers and no one knows we even exist.”

  “That’s where the money for the tower came from?”

  “Partially. Any group that lasts for as long as we have is usually wealthy beyond measure. If someone invests a dollar when they’re a child, it’s worth thousands when they retire, right? Now expand that scenario to span generations.”

  “We’re talking millions.”

  “Billions, actually.”

  “You returned to be part of all that?” Mercer prompted after Tisa lapsed into silence.

  “I returned because I was stupid and spiteful. I was never really happy in Paris. Rinpoche-La was a village of a thousand people and I was the daughter of an important man. In Paris I was another half-breed left over from France’s colonial past. I was isolated and lonely. There were a few people in the city who knew my identity. They were some high-ranking members of the Order. Because of my father they treated me as an object of veneration, not a person.

  “Naturally, like any headstrong teenager I blamed my mother for all misery. When I was old enough, I sent word to my father that I wanted to join him. He arranged everything.”

  “That must have been painful for your mother.”

  “Doubly. My half brother had already returned to Rinpoche-La a couple of years earlier. She died a short time later in a train accident never knowing how sorry I was.” Behind her glasses Tisa’s eyes were wet. “I think we should talk about something happier than my childhood.”

  “From the sound of it that should be easy. How about the violence in the Middle East? Or maybe world famine?”

  She understood Mercer’s sense of humor. A smile touched her trembling lips. “What about the AIDS crisis? Much happier.”

  “I do have one more question for you,” Mercer said seriously. “When we met
, you told me how you knew about me and the work I’ve done.”

  “Yes,” she answered cautiously.

  “Why? I mean why me in particular? There are hundreds of prospecting geologists.”

  Tisa paused. “When I rejoined my father at Rinpoche-La, my first job for the Order was to collect information about large-scale mining operations. It was part of our efforts to determine how much human development was affecting the earth’s chi. Over the course of a few years I saw your name come up again and again. I was a bit intrigued about how you were at the epicenter of so much work. While I’ve followed the careers of many mining engineers, I think I paid special attention to yours. More than anyone else I came across I saw you balance humanity’s need for raw materials with a sense of environmental awareness.”

  “There are a few dozen conservation groups who’d disagree with you,” demurred Mercer.

  She made a face. “Most of whom are so misguided they don’t think we even need raw materials. Like I said there’s a balance and I believe that on this issue your views parallel mine. I know you’ve refused jobs that others greedily took because you felt the damage far outweighed the benefit.”

  “Or maybe they weren’t offering enough money,” Mercer countered, just to hear her reaction.

  “You’re being disingenuous.”

  He grinned. “Okay, you found my dirty little secret. I’m not a corporate money grubber after all.”

  Tisa’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “I wouldn’t go that far. How about a money grubber with a heart?”

  The rest of the day passed in a sweet blur of meandering strolls and aimless conversations. They blocked out everything but themselves and the perfection of the island. For Mercer only one thing marred the day. It seemed that ten times an hour Tisa would ask him the time. She did not wear the watch he’d given her, which he didn’t mind, but her obsession with time was something he couldn’t understand.

  They were sitting on a quiet beach on the eastern coast of Santorini when she asked yet again and he told her it was quarter of five. She bit her lip, her gaze fixed on the horizon. Mercer knew that their idyllic escape was at an end.

  “We have to go,” she said sadly. “It’s almost time for you to see your proof.” She placed her hands on each side of Mercer’s face. “I want you to know that today was the most enjoyable I’ve had in a long time. I can forget so much when I’m with you.”

  “Tell me what’s so horrible that you have to forget, Tisa.”

  She released him and got to her feet, brushing sand from her backside. “You’ll know in a little while.”

  They found a taxi in the village of Monolithos and negotiated a fare back to Fira to pick up their luggage and take them to the city’s main dock south of town. The road hugged the cliff and descended to sea level in a dizzying string of switchbacks. The narrow tract was clogged with trucks climbing up from the dock. The vehicles were laden with produce and supplies that kept the island habitable. Teens on rented motorcycles darted between the trucks and tore up the road, their whining exhaust echoing off the mountains. The driver cursed one particular biker who came around a blind curve in his lane as he overtook a lumbering ten-wheeled truck. The silver bike juked back into his own lane with inches to spare.

  Tisa turned to Mercer. “I read that at the height of the tourist season there’s a motorcycle accident every day on Santorini and a death at least once a week.”

  “To a kid only old people are mortal.”

  They rounded another curve and could see the open dock far below. Beyond ranks of shipping containers a ferry even larger and older than the one that had brought Mercer here disgorged a stream of cars and trucks while an equally long line of vehicles waited their turn to board. The double-ended ferry had the battered appearance of a veteran New York taxicab. Her paintwork had been faded by years in the fierce sun and she had fared poorly in her fight against the tough Aegean storms. Her lines were boxy and blunt and her flanks were deeply scarred by careless captains who used her bulk in port to push aside other craft.

  Because her forward loading ramp gaped open, she reminded Mercer of a bloated fish trapped on a beach and gasping for air.

  “Looks like they’re running late,” he said.

  “What time is it?”

  “What does it matter? It’ll take a half hour to load all those cars.”

  “Please.”

  “It’s six fifteen.”

  Tisa ticked off on her fingers as she made a mental calculation. She let out a relieved breath. “We’ll be okay as long as we’re not too late shoving off.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Proof, dear doctor. Your proof.”

  Tisa had to pay the cabbie because last night Mercer had given the hundred dollars’ worth of drachmas to the couple that ran the restaurant as appreciation for the sumptuous meal.

  “So where are we going?” he asked as they joined the line of people at the amidships passenger ramp loading.

  “I think the ferry’s next port of call is Crete, but I’m not sure.”

  The vague answer made little sense to Mercer. “You don’t know where this proof of yours is?”

  “Oh, it’s right here on Santorini, but the best way to see it is from a distance.”

  On board, Mercer and Tisa stashed their meager luggage in one of the coin-operated storage bins outside a shabby middeck cafeteria. Tisa kept a single bag and Mercer asked to stash his pistol in it so he didn’t have to wear his sports coat. The day had been a hot one and inside the ship the press of humanity already made sweat ooze from his pores.

  Tisa bought several bottled waters in the cafeteria and said enigmatically, “We might need them later.”

  They climbed to the top deck and found a space at the ship’s rail shaded by one of the smoke-darkened funnels. Twenty minutes later the ferry’s horn gave a great mournful blast as the vehicle door was secured and lines cast off. She eased from her slip with ponderous dignity, and as soon as she felt waves broadside she started to roll like an overweight woman on uneven pavement. Just a few dozen yards from the black cliffs that reflected the last of the day’s heat like mirrors, the air was much cooler, freshened by the trade winds blowing past the island.

  Tisa set her bag at her feet and rummaged through it until she found what she wanted. She handed the bundle to Mercer. It was a book wrapped in stiff waterproofed canvas. The volume was leather bound and ancient; the binding crackled as he opened it.

  “You are the first person outside the Order to ever see one of our chronicles.” She gazed at the book with reverence.

  “What is this?” Mercer scanned a brittle parchment page but couldn’t read the words, or even recognize the language.

  “For almost two hundred years the monks and villagers from Rinpoche-La and later others who became part of us have left the mountain redoubt in order to verify the predictions made about the earth’s chi forces. Each person carried a journal like this to write observations about the event.”

  The words “event” and “predictions” sent a chill down Mercer’s spine as he finally understood what Tisa had been saying all along. “You’re talking about earthquakes?”

  “Yes,” she said somberly, “and volcanic eruptions too.”

  “No one can predict earthquakes.” Mercer shook his head. “It’s impossible.”

  “Which is why I didn’t tell you the truth that night in Las Vegas. You would have thought me more insane than I probably seemed. Admit it. Had I said we could predict earthquakes you never would have agreed to meet me. I had to get you here so I could show you proof.”

  “This book isn’t proof, Tisa.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Quarter of seven.” And then he got it, what Tisa meant by proof. He felt breathless. “My God, we’re here to watch an earthquake.”

  “According to the original journal entry it should have hit the island two days ago at noon. I said last night that ever since the Tunguska blast the oracle�
�s predictions have been off. The new calculations say it should hit in about twenty minutes.” She took the book back from him and opened to one of the latter pages. She handed it back. Mercer couldn’t read the faded script so he concentrated on the numbers written along the side of the page. One he saw was the date two days past and others he recognized as longitude and latitude coordinates. Tisa then gave him a modern tourist map. Santorini was circled and he saw that the coordinates matched exactly.

  “When was this written?” Mercer whispered, still unable to fully grasp the implications.

  “In 1850,” she answered. “This particular chronicle is of seismic activity around the Mediterranean. There are others for the other parts of the planet. If you’d like I can show you where it mentions the Izmit, Turkey, quake that hit in 1999 and killed so many, or the cycles of Mount Etna’s eruptions.”

  “You knew about these events before they happened?”

  She nodded. “The journals are kept by a council of archivists and were only given to watchers a short time before an eruption or earthquake, just long enough for them to get there so they could report their findings. Over the past twenty years, as the media has become globalized and the Internet has grown, the council has stopped sending watchers because news reaches Rinpoche-La on its own.

  “We do have groups around the world, members who don’t know the full scope of our prognostication. They provide details if we need them to help us correct the time differences that cropped up in the prophecy since 1908.”

  “Jesus, Tisa, if an earthquake is about to strike the island we have to warn people, we can’t let them die.”

  Mercer launched himself from the railing. Tisa had to race to grab his arm before he descended down to the lower deck to find someone to take him to the captain. “Relax. The oracle says the quake is a small one. I would never put you in danger.”

  “How small?” he asked dubiously.

  “Just enough to rattle some windows and panic a few cats.” She smiled.

  “But the others, like the one that struck Turkey? Why didn’t you send out a warning? My God, you could have saved thousands of lives.”