20
HARRY TOOK LESLIE home, to the house on Bolingbrook Road and, by the light of the street lamp, in Julie’s bedroom, undressed her. One by one, he dropped her clothes in the middle of the carpet. When he’d finished, she turned slightly, on some whim, perhaps, or from reserve, and her navel and the single nipple that had been visible passed into shadow. But her eyes stayed with him, and her hair was a pale radiance in the light that came through the curtains. “You’re lovely,” he said.
She opened her arms to him, and he felt the soft press of her small breasts through his shirt. Her lips were wet and warm, and he tangled one hand in her hair. They rocked gently, while the box elders rubbed the side of the house and Harry’s manual alarm clock ticked loudly on the bureau. The flesh at the nape of her neck, just below the hairline, was firm and almost muscular.
He lifted her; she burrowed into him, and he could feel her heartbeat. On the queen-size bed, she fumbled with his shirt, laughed when one button stuck, and jerked it loose. “I’ll fix it for you,” she whispered, sliding the garment down off his shoulders. She flipped it casually into the dark and pressed one palm against his belly, just down inside his belt buckle.
Harry bent over her, fitted his mouth to hers, and, in good time, took her.
They talked, and slept, and made love, and talked again.
They talked about themselves mostly, and how they enjoyed each other. And they talked about the Altheans, from whom they expected to learn nothing more. “I wonder why,” she said, while they lay lazily entangled with each other, “they never told us about their past. There was no history that I could find. And no psychology, by the way. In fact, nothing of the social sciences. It’s over now, and the illusion of the lone alien in the tower is stronger than ever. I really don’t understand it.”
“What will we be like in a million years?” asked Harry. And, without waiting for an answer, he went on: “There’s a priest in Pete’s order who plays bridge like nothing I’ve ever seen. You get the feeling when you play with him that the cards are all face up on the table. I mean he did things that were just not possible unless he could see all the hands. And I wonder whether, in some sense, he could?”
“I don’t know,” said Leslie. She traced the line of his shoulder with a fingertip. “What has he to do with the Altheans?”
“If telepathy can happen, or whatever it is that Rene Sunderland seems to be able to do, what’s the end product after, say, a million years of evolution?”
She closed her eyes and lay back. Her head sank into the pillow. “If ESP is possible, and if we developed it, I would think that in time we’d lose our individual identities.”
“And our languages! What use would a race of telepaths have for language?” They looked at each other; both had the same thought: We could have done better.
“It fits,” she said. “For that kind of community, I suspect history, at least as we use the term, would cease to exist. There’d be no more politics, probably no conflict, at least among members of the species. And I have another thought for you: in a community being, there’d be no real death. The individual cells, units, members would die, but not the central intelligence.”
“In fact,” said Harry, “it might be that only the bodies would die; once you’ve become part of the central mind, you may have achieved a kind of immortality.”
She stirred against him, and Harry stroked her cheek lightly and her hair. For the time, the Altheans fled into the night. But later, half waking and half asleep, he thought of them again. Or he may have dreamed of them. When the telephone rang, just before dawn, he woke knowing why the Altheans had sent their signal. And he was both sad and frightened.
He lay unmoving, his legs entwined with Leslie’s, listening to the insistent jangle, recalling that this was how it had begun on the night Charlie Hoffer had called to tell him that Beta Altheis was doing something strange. But then it had been a different woman and a different fear. Oddly, in a way he could not understand, this was more personal.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Leslie asked, her voice startling in the dark.
He picked it up. “Hello?”
“Harry!” It was Wheeler. “I just got a call from one of our priests over at Saint Luke’s. They brought Ed in tonight. He had a heart attack!”
Harry sat bolt upright. “My God,” he said. “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know yet. He’s still alive. I’m going over; I’ll call you when I find out.”
“What’s wrong?” whispered Leslie.
Harry covered the phone. “Ed had a heart attack tonight. He’s at Saint Luke’s.”
Wheeler’s voice had taken on a harsh timbre. “Harry, Gambini probably knows the Hercules Text has been lost. Some of Maloney’s men brought him in.”
“How could that have happened?” asked Harry. Leslie was out of bed now, getting into her clothes.
“I think they were a little smarter at NSA than we expected and checked the discs right away. It’s the only thing I can figure. They must have assumed Gambini had a hand in scrambling the Text, so they went after him right away.”
And we did it, thought Harry. “Thanks for letting me know, Pete,” he said.
“What’s the rest of it?” asked Leslie as she slid her watch over her wrist and picked up a shoe.
“The Text is gone,” said Harry. “Scrambled. Both sets.”
She stopped to stare at him. “Both sets?” Her voice trembled.
He nodded. “It must have happened somewhere between Goddard and Fort Meade.”
“Oh, Harry,” she said, “those damn fools.” She threw the shoe at the floor. “Are they sure? How in hell could they lose both sets?”
“I don’t know.”
“I assume Hurley will conduct an investigation.”
“I’m sure he will,” said Harry.
“Damn,” she said. She stood frozen in the cold gray light. “I’m going over to see how Ed’s doing. Want to come?”
“Not now,” said Harry, struggling with his conscience and with prudence. “Leslie,” he said hesitantly.
She was at the window, looking down into the street. “Yes?”
“I have a copy.”
She turned slowly, not sure what he meant. “Of what?”
“The Text.”
Leslie didn’t come away from the window, but he could see the energy flow back into her frame. “How could that be?” she asked suspiciously.
“Long story,” he said, wondering what tale he could concoct. “I’ll explain later.”
“Where is it?”
“In the trunk of my car.”
“In the trunk of your car? Harry, what kind of place is that to hide anything?”
“I was going to do better tonight, but you kind of got in the way.”
“Well, you’d better get to it, because someone’s sitting out there in a van.”
Harry saw no one. A gray van, stenciled “Jiffy Delivery Service,” was parked halfway down the street. But the driver’s compartment was empty. “They’re in back,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I saw the flare of a match.”
Harry tried to think. Could they know? Could they possibly know? Pete’s phone call: they might have tapped the lines. What had Wheeler said exactly? Harry had been careful, because Leslie was in the room, but had Pete said anything that might have given them away? “You go see how Ed’s doing. I’ll hide the discs.”
“Where?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he lied. Her eyes pierced him for that, and he wondered whether, in that moment, he’d lost her. “Wait until I’m gone,” he said. “Then call a cab.”
Harry went down into the attached garage and opened the trunk of his Chrysler to assure himself that the Text was still there. He had placed the discs in individual plastic sleeves and packed the sleeves in a lunch cooler. He took time now to seal the cooler with masking tape. Satisfied, he added a spade and a crowbar, closed the lid, and w
ent back into the house to see if anything had changed out front.
The van was still there, but he could see no other cars. While he watched, Hal Esterhazy emerged from his house across the street, walked to the end of his driveway, and picked up his Post. Leslie was behind Harry when he turned around. “You pulled a switch on them, didn’t you, Harry?”
“Yes,” he said.
“My God, they’ll put you away for the rest of your life if they catch you. Harry, how could you do that?” But she did not look entirely displeased. They went into the garage, she embraced him again in an impulsive act that somehow contained within it all the passion of the night. Then Harry keyed the garage door opener, started the car, and backed quickly out, leaving Leslie behind.
The van did not move.
Harry drove somewhat more quickly than usual along Bolingbrook Road and turned north on the pike. It was still early morning, and traffic was light.
He wandered through the Maryland landscape, seeking out narrow country roads. A gray sky began to build and, when he stopped at a gas station outside Glenview to call in sick, rain was falling. It slanted into the trees and the tomato fields and turned the clay driveway of the gas station outside the phone booth into a quagmire. He dialed Rosenbloom’s office.
“He’s not in yet, Mr. Carmichael,” said the Director’s secretary.
Harry never took his eyes from the road up which he’d come. Engulfed now in swirling rain, it was satisfactorily empty. “Tell him I’m having problems with allergies,” he said. “I’ll be in tomorrow.” The truth was that this was the time of year when his allergies were usually at their worst. And he felt fine!
Maybe it was the rainstorm.
He hurried through the downpour to his car and bounced back out onto the two-lane road.
He was no longer sure where he was. The road was long and straight, running alongside railroad tracks. There was no traffic to speak of. Now and then he passed a pickup, and once a long black Continental closed in behind him. But he slowed, and it pulled out and roared by, sluicing water across his windshield.
He wondered about the van. Maloney’s men—or the FBI, for all he knew—could not be aware of his part in the incident, because they’d gone directly to Gambini to ask questions. Depending on the circumstances, Gambini’s coronary might have looked like the result of a guilty conscience. In no case, however, could they know precisely what had happened. Ed was probably in no position to tell them anything. As long as he and Wheeler kept their heads, they were in no danger. Eventually, with luck, NSA would come to accept the notion that a freak accident of some sort had occurred. Were they now checking the route between Goddard and Fort Meade, seeking an explanation? And watching the principal suspects for some indication of guilt? Like jumping into a car and driving all over the Maryland countryside? Well, there was no help for it. He had to get the discs to a safe place.
Anyway, he thought, Leslie was probably wrong about the van.
The rain stopped and started again. Harry filled his tank at a two-pump Amoco with a cafe attached. He got a Post out of the machine, went inside, sat down at the counter, and ordered coffee and doughnuts. The headline did nothing for his state of mind:
SOVIETS RECALL AMBASSADOR
Kremlin Rejects Demand for Feldmann Restitution
Through a streaked, dingy window, Harry watched the afternoon darken. Distant thunder rumbled. The rain quickened: it drummed ominously on the roof and ran down the cracked panes. The highway withdrew into the cloudburst, and even the gas pumps grew indistinct. Harry’s sense of security increased accordingly.
He finished his snack, waited a few minutes for the storm to lessen, gave up, and made a mad dash for the car. As he was pulling out of the station, a gray Chevrolet stopped beside the pumps. There were two men in it, and Harry had a bad feeling about them. One got out and (he thought) took great pains not to look at the departing Chrysler.
He kept his speed down, trying to look casual, and watched through his rearview mirror until he couldn’t see the gas station anymore. Once out of sight, he pushed the pedal down as far as he dared. He held the wheel tightly now. The drenched landscape rolled past, and his tires plowed through the water. At the first intersection, he turned left and then, a few miles down the road, right again. Still the highway stretched empty behind him.
More than once, he wondered whether the most prudent course might not be simply to lose the discs, weight them, perhaps, and lob them into one of the muddy streams wandering across the landscape, and be done with them.
He turned southeast, toward the Chesapeake.
The rain slackened finally. And the farms became a less prominent feature, replaced by villas and expansive brick ranches and small towns with clock towers and McDonald’s and main street shopping districts. In Norton, he went left at a minor intersection, swung into a theater parking lot, and waited to see if anyone was behind him. In Eddington, he left the car on a side street, rented a Dodge, and transferred to its trunk the cooler full of discs, the spade, and the crowbar.
Near Carrie’s Point, he thought he saw the gray Chevrolet from the gas station again. But it was turning away from him, into a bank drive-in, so he couldn’t be sure. He kept going. At Newmarket, he connected with Route 2 and followed it south, through tumbled rocks and rolling hills.
The Norbertine priory couldn’t be seen from the highway under the best of conditions. In the fog and rain, even the top of the ridge was invisible.
Harry made his left turn, passed the old stone house, and started up the hill. In late spring and summer, the vegetation tended to close over the winding road, creating a tunnel effect. Large flat-bladed fronds sucked at the car, and water continued to pour through the branches. The rock wall and the gates were overgrown with hedge and shrub, almost invisible to a motorist entering the Norbertine grounds. The trees opened up, but it didn’t matter much: fog lay heavy on the grass, and the big manor houses were insubstantial shadows.
He looped carefully past them toward the west. The elms that screened the lodge huddled against the blast of the storm. Harry eased past the building about twenty yards and turned off onto the grass. It was as far as he could go: the road ended, and beyond this point the ground dipped sharply.
He got the spade and crowbar out of the trunk, leaving the discs until he was ready for them, and stumbled and slid downhill through the rain. He entered the forest, following a footpath that went in the right general direction, and kept walking until he found the pump house. Inside, everything was as it had been when he and Julie were here. The spade he’d seen before was still on its nail, but he’d prudently brought his own. Even the burlap pile that he’d laid over the half-built wooden floor on that memorable night was undisturbed. The place was dry, and the earth beneath the boards showed no sign of the deluge that had been falling all morning.
He selected a likely place, in a corner away from the door and away from the single window. He pried up some of the floorboards, using care not to damage them and, shivering in his damp clothes, began to dig.
The storm subsided somewhat, but a brisk wind rose off the Chesapeake. It hammered against the dilapidated building and it scattered the fog so that the manor houses suddenly appeared sharp and clear through the trees.
Eventually, Harry reasoned, when it was over and forgotten, he’d come back here and retrieve the Text. By then, he’d know how to store it permanently, put it away somewhere until the world had changed sufficiently to use the Hercules data safely. Or, perhaps, until a group had sprung up that could be trusted with the power in the discs. Harry had considered the possibility of founding such an organization himself, handing down perhaps from generation to generation the secrets from the stars. Sort of like the Rosicrucians, he thought with a grim smile. The Carmichael Society.
He kept digging.
And he realized that he still wasn’t sneezing.
Despite the long ride through farm country, he felt no allergic reactions. Now that he thought of it
, he’d had no problems the day before either. In any other year, this kind of experience would have put him in bed for a week. Well, by God, maybe things were going to turn around for him at last.
He was about two feet down by then and so preoccupied that he failed to hear the approach of a car. He looked up when the engine died, but he hadn’t really heard it, at least not consciously, so he just shrugged and kept on with his work.
The only sounds were the crunch of the spade, and his breathing, and the storm.
He didn’t allow himself a break; he wasn’t going to feel safe until the discs were in the ground, the boards were back in place, and he was on the road home. But his shoulders and back were beginning to ache, and he was contemplating taking a few minutes off—he was almost deep enough now, and he would have liked to finish it and get out of there—when he heard a hinge creak.
The pump house door swung open, and Harry looked into the bored eyes of the two men he’d seen in the Chevrolet.
They were quiet, efficient men, clean-shaven, in hunters’ clothes. The taller of the two might have been a lawyer: he was long and lean, with unkempt sandy hair and an easy smile. His companion, who was older, stepped forward and asked casually whether his name was Carmichael.
Harry measured his chances against them. But a lifetime of respect for law officers rendered him indecisive. “Yes,” he said. “What do you want?”
The man who’d spoken produced an ID. “FBI,” he said. “Read him his rights, Al.”
“What the hell’s going on?” demanded Harry in as indignant a tone as he could muster.
“We want to ask you some questions.” He read Harry the Miranda warning off a plastic card. “Do you understand your rights?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Harry.
“Okay. Mr. Carmichael, what were you going to put in the hole?”
The van remained.
The Hercules Text Page 33