“You aren’t a coward,” Dee said.
Alvaro grunted.
“Time is all that matters now,” Dee said. “Olivia, give us a chance to make you understand. You’ve inherited a great power. If you don’t use it to fix what you broke, the Society will take it away from you. And taking it away means you die.”
“Her life doesn’t matter,” Alvaro said. “It’s the world.”
These people are crazy. “I have to tell Brian I’m all right. That’s not negotiable. After that, you can try to convince me of . . . whatever it is you’re talking about.”
“That’s fair,” Dee said. “Alvaro, that’s fair?”
He watched the road.
* * *
The first chance she got, as soon as they were in a populated area, Olivia planned to run like hell.
The rain stopped. An hour later, the lights of a town appeared on the horizon. Olivia opened her hand. The phone had bars. It was almost 2 A.M. Her thumb hovered over the touch screen. 911? Alvaro was watching the road, but Dee had her eye on her. Olivia tapped redial and Brian’s number connected. He picked up before the second ring.
“Hello?” He sounded wide awake.
“Bri, it’s me.”
“Liv.”
“I’m all right. Now listen—”
Alvaro tore the phone out of her hand and turned it off. Olivia grabbed for it. Alvaro elbowed her away. The truck swerved, juddered on the shoulder, swerved back onto the road.
“Goddamn it,” Olivia said.
“You told him you were all right. That’s what you wanted.” Alvaro stuffed the phone in his pants pocket.
“Fuck you.”
“This won’t work,” Alvaro said. “If she can’t control her temper, how will she control the halo?”
“She can do it.” Dee sounded certain.
Alvaro glanced over. “How bad is the leg?”
“Hurts like hell.”
To Olivia’s disappointment, they bypassed the town and continued into the wooded countryside. Alvaro guided them to Frank R. Gooding State Park. The headlights slipped over a sign prohibiting camping, hunting, and open fires. Nothing about kidnapping. The park closed at 9 P.M. A chain blocked the road. Alvaro turned off the engine but left the lights on. He got out, taking the keys, and retrieved bolt cutters from the back of the truck. He hunched over, bore down on the long handles of the cutters, severing the chain. Olivia, staring at his back, reached for the door handle.
“Don’t,” Dee said, grabbing Olivia’s arm. “Whatever you think, we’re not insane. This is about the future. Everyone’s future. Hear us out.”
Olivia pried Dee’s fingers off her arm, but the opportunity was gone. Alvaro returned to the truck, slammed the door, started the engine, and drove into the park.
Twelve
On the park road, the pickup wound between thick stands of pine. After ten minutes, Alvaro stopped and killed the engine. Olivia stared into the dark under the trees. This time she would get away. But before she could make a move, Alvaro reached under the seat and came up fast with something in his hand—more flex cuffs. Olivia yanked on the door handle, but Alvaro caught her left arm and zipped one side of the cuffs tight around her wrist. Dee slipped her right hand through the other loop.
“You assholes,” Olivia said. “This is how I’m supposed to start trusting you?”
Alvaro got out of the truck, leaned back in. “You would run away as soon as I wasn’t here to stop you. Am I wrong?”
“You have to give us a chance,” Dee said. “I know this is scary.”
Olivia looked into her eyes. “Tell me one thing. If you don’t convince me about this power, whatever it is, are you going to let me go?”
Dee dropped her gaze.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Once you understand, you won’t want to run away.”
Alvaro lifted something out of the back of the truck, a large bundle. He hoisted it onto his shoulder and carried it into the woods. About twenty minutes later, he came back and opened the passenger door. “Ready.”
They entered the woods, Alvaro supporting Dee, who had to hop on one foot. They came to a broad clearing drenched in moonlight. The blue nylon shell of a tent stood glowing from within. Beyond the clearing, a river made burbling sounds.
“Great,” Olivia said. “Are we going to make s’mores?”
Dee pushed through the flap first, pulling Olivia after her. Alvaro ducked in behind them. The tent was big enough to sleep four. An electric lantern hung from the apex of the flexible rods supporting the shell. Alvaro bumped it with his head, and the tent filled with swooping shadows. Dee lay back, groaning from the pain in her leg, and Olivia sat down beside her. Clean wound or not, Olivia knew the woman should be in a hospital, not a tent. Sweat beaded Dee’s round face.
Alvaro sat cross-legged in front of them and looked at Olivia. “You have a scar on the back of your neck.”
“What?”
“You know what I’m talking about, but you don’t know what made the scar.”
“Some bug.” She reached back and touched the ridge of scar tissue.
“You saw this ‘bug’?”
“Yeah.”
“So you know it wasn’t an insect.”
Olivia started to reply but stopped. In her mind’s eye the thing squirmed out of Jacob’s hair, its metallic-looking carapace shiny with blood. At first she had identified it as a beetle or some other insect. Later, she told herself it might have been a micro-drone similar to the flies she and other journalists sometimes deployed to capture video. But she had known it was neither of those things. Eventually other stuff crowded it out of her thoughts, mostly Brian and his impossible resurrection.
“You’re saying, what, that it was man-made?”
“It’s a link between the Shepherd’s brain and a machine that can manipulate probability streams, change the course of reality from the point of change onward,” Alvaro said. “We call them crisis points—crossroads events where the highest probability outcome threatens humanity. It used to be the threat of a cumulative effect, but since the mid-twentieth century, crisis points have become dangerously amplified. That was a crisis point under the madrassa in Aleppo, a single end point along the timeline that could threaten the odds of survival for the human race.”
Olivia closed her eyes. She was in the hands of absolute lunatics. “Come on. Where would a thing like that even come from? Who could build it?”
Alvaro leaned in. “Do you remember when Andrew asked you to recite the Parable of Two Cities?”
“Something about a guy going for a walk. What does—”
Alvaro interrupted, reciting from memory: “A man left his home in the shining city and followed a crooked road. Along his journey he encountered many perils and obstructions, and many times lost his way. When he came to the final bend he found himself in a rude and primitive place. It was the same city from which he set out.” Alvaro ran his hands through his hair. “Everyone in the Society knows the Parable of Two Cities. Our children are expected to memorize it.”
Olivia stared at him. “That’s great. It’s more of a riddle, though, don’t you think?”
Alvaro returned her stare. Did the man ever blink? “The parable is translated from the original Aramaic. It’s part of the Society’s ritual heritage. It comes down from the beginning, hundreds of years ago. But it’s the truth behind the parable that matters. The probability machine was created by a future civilization. It’s the mission of the Society to choose alternate probability outcomes at crisis points so the future that created it can exist.”
Olivia nodded slowly, as if she were humoring a child. “Right . . .”
“The road symbolizes time,” Alvaro said, plowing on doggedly, like a crackpot conspiracy theorist. No, that wasn’t it. Alvaro didn’t entirely believe what he was saying, or he was leaving something out, something he knew but couldn’t say, and it was making him grouchy. “The perils and obstructions along the r
oad are crisis points,” he went on. “The primitive city and the shining city are the same, one in the future and one in the past. We know the shining city—the future—exists, because we have the probability machine. Otherwise, how could it be here? So we have to use the machine. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s deterministic, an unbroken loop. Now you’re the Shepherd and you have to continue the mission. There isn’t any other choice.”
Olivia said, “Wait. The traveler is a time traveler?”
Alvaro pulled back. “You don’t believe me, of course.”
“Ah—”
“You have two diverging memories,” Alvaro said. “In one, a dead man lies on a table. In the other, the man is alive. What’s your explanation?”
Exasperated, Olivia said, “I don’t need to have an explanation of my own to know yours is horseshit.”
“Jacob used the probability machine to choose a path forward from the crisis point—the only path forward that preserved the future. The choice cost him his life. He knew it would, but he chose it anyway. And you reversed his sacrifice.”
“A probability machine,” Olivia said tonelessly.
“Yes.”
“Those people back at the ranch, they wanted to cut this link thing out of me and put it back in Jacob?”
“It doesn’t work like that. Cutting the link out would damage it and kill the Shepherd. That used to just be part of the traditional lore, too. But in modern times we’ve used magnetic resonance to image Jacob’s brain, so we know for a fact that the link is too intricately woven into the brain. It only migrates when the Shepherd dies. The next Shepherd in line is supposed to be present at the time of death. There’s a ceremony. But I wasn’t there when Jacob died. You were, and the link migrated to you. No one thought that was possible—for it to migrate to someone like you.”
“What he means is ‘for it to migrate to a woman.’ It’s always a man.” Dee propped herself on her elbow. “That’s why, according to Andrew and his followers, you can’t be legitimate.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Alvaro said. “Andrew wanted my cousin Emilio to be the next in line.” Olivia thought, Not brothers; cousins. “There are all kinds of reasons why that’s a bad idea.” Alvaro sighed heavily. “After what happened at the ranch tonight, we know Andrew’s faction always planned for it to be Emilio, even though Jacob had rightfully chosen me. And, yes, some members of the Society believe the order of transference can only be male.”
“They all believe it.” Dee sounded pissed off. Or maybe the gunshot wound made her cranky, which would be understandable.
“Not everyone,” Alvaro said.
Dee reached toward him and they touched fingertips. “I’m sorry. Obviously I didn’t mean you.”
They had their own vocabulary of touch. Olivia thought of Brian and felt her impatience and anger rise. “Isn’t your Society kind of low rent, considering how much power this probability machine would give you? I mean, no offense, but that pickup we’re rattling around in is a piece of junk.”
For the first time, Alvaro smiled. “Hey, I love my truck.”
Dee ignored him. “There’s a big argument in the Society over how much to use the machine. Most think it should be kept as true to the original intent as possible.”
“Strict crisis-point management,” Alvaro said. “Whenever we’ve strayed from that path, it hasn’t gone well. Andrew and his group want to stray. That’s why it’s important you keep the link.”
Olivia sighed. “Okay, so . . . exactly what is it you want me to do? I mean right now.”
Alvaro turned to Dee. She nodded, and Alvaro said: “I want to instruct you in how to use the link. I know you don’t believe the things I’ve told you. And there’s a lot more I haven’t told you. For hundreds of years the Shepherds have guarded the future by choosing probability streams that steer the human race around crisis points. We’re now living in the catastrophe Jacob tried to prevent. It’s happening out in the world. I know that’s a lot to take in. Don’t worry about it right now. The first step is to make you believe.”
“I have to tell you,” Olivia said, “that’s a big first step.”
Alvaro pulled a nylon rucksack over and unzipped it. He reached in and withdrew a clear baggie of what looked like tea leaves. “I want you to chew these.”
“What are they?”
“Jai ba leaves, indigenous to Thailand. They produce a mild opioid effect that interacts well with the link. It’s to reduce your natural resistance.”
“I don’t think so.”
“The effects are like smoking a joint.”
“No drugs. Besides, you said I already linked with this machine, and I wasn’t drugged then.”
“I talked about that with Jacob. We think the circumstances had something to do with it. You had been in a firefight. Your friend had just died and you were alone in the dark. Your body was probably flooded with adrenaline, and your amygdala would have produced a large amount of glutamate. In other words, your brain chemistry was already altered even without the jai ba leaves. But unlike the jai ba effect, you would have been in an agitated state and liable to make reckless changes in the probability stream without knowing you were doing it.”
Jesus Christ. Welcome to Crazy Town, Olivia thought.
Dee sat up. “Olivia, the sooner you do this, the sooner you get to see your friend again.”
“It’s the only way,” Alvaro said.
Olivia raised her left arm, the one flex-cuffed to Dee. Dee’s arm came up with hers. “Take these off and I’ll try it.”
“No.”
“Look,” Olivia said, “you want me to trust you. Okay. Show me I can, by demonstrating you trust me. I don’t like being restrained against my will. Do you?”
“Alvaro,” Dee said, “go ahead. She won’t run.”
Alvaro opened the bag and picked out a few of the green-brown leaves. “First chew these, but don’t swallow. They’ll make you sick if you do.”
Olivia held her hand out. She sniffed the leaves. Dry and brittle, they smelled faintly of licorice. She pushed them into her mouth and started grinding them between her molars. They didn’t taste like licorice; they tasted bitter and dusty. Still grinding, Olivia held up her cuffed hand again. Alvaro produced a key that looked more like a fish hook and used it to press the release tab. He unzipped the cuffs, freeing Olivia’s wrist. She rubbed it, calculating her chances of getting out of the tent without Alvaro stopping her.
The chances were zero.
“Let yourself become aware of the link,” Alvaro said.
“How do I do that?”
“By not trying.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“It’s like not being able to see something because you’re trying too hard.”
“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be seeing.” The dusty taste of the leaves made her a little nauseated.
“That’s enough.” Alvaro held his hand under her chin. “Spit them out.”
She spat the pieces of leaf into his palm. Some bits stuck to her tongue, and she scraped them off with her fingernail.
“It’s like a ring of light,” Alvaro said. “We call it the halo.”
“You’ve seen it? I thought only somebody with the bug could see it.”
“I’ve seen the actual halo, the probability machine itself. Not inside my head, the way a Shepherd sees it.”
Olivia was barely listening. She turned her head toward the tent fly. But the jai ba effect had already taken hold. Just turning her head had produced a trembling effect, as if her eyes were thimble cups overfilled with tears. Alvaro placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down on her back.
“Let the halo come up. It’s there. The world is a vast chessboard. If you wanted, you could make a move. But for now you are simply looking at the board.”
She wished he would shut up. Mild opioid, my ass. At this point, she doubted she could even find the tent fly, let alone crawl through it and run away. No
wonder he was willing to uncuff her.
The electric lantern hung suspended above her like a mechanical moon, and then it was a moon, or a luminous door that opened wider and wider, expanding, not into a chessboard but a bright halo that, somehow, was inside and outside her head at the same time.
The halo encompassed the world.
Billions of lives swarmed within the light. She felt immense power . . . and didn’t want it. Her body writhed as she attempted to retreat from the halo. She felt the stones and roots beneath the tent dig into her back, but it was almost as if it were somebody else’s back; she was more in the halo than in the tent.
“What’s wrong with her?” Dee said.
“She sees,” Alvaro said.
Woozy and frightened, Olivia turned on her side and drew her legs up sharply, her knees encountering something that yelped in pain.
Dee.
“Ride it out,” Alvaro said. Who was he talking to? Olivia peered through her watery, thimble-cup eyes. Dee sat up, rocking and clutching at her wounded leg. Olivia, empathizing, remembered all the other wounded: in Syria, in Iraq, in the killing fields of Kenya, all the wounded of the world, all the victims of the Disaster. Brian’s warm blood bubbling between her fingers . . .
But Brian had recovered, Brian was alive. Instead, she focused on Dee, isolated her in the halo, just this one person, not the world’s billions, not the overwhelming crush. If she could heal just this one wound . . .
A chain of events unfolded before her.
Men pour out of the barn at Sanctuary and run shouting across the muddy sod. Dee swings toward the passenger door of Alvaro’s truck. One of the running men points a gun, a big revolver. He pulls the trigger. Muzzle flash. A bullet rips through Dee’s leg.
No.
Olivia looked deeper.
Now the same man is dressing alone in one of the ranch’s wood-paneled bedrooms. The gun lay in a box on a neatly folded pile of undershirts in an open dresser drawer.
As he reached for the gun, Olivia tried to make him leave it, but she couldn’t. No part of his decision presented a chess piece she could move.
The Chaos Function Page 10