A clock on the desk ticked, and she watched as it counted up to noon. Sweat beaded down her cheeks.
There was a procession, when the time came, led by Witzgenstein. She passed by the window up the West Colonnade and did not look in to the Chief of Staff's office, but Lara felt her glowing presence and bottled lust even from where she sat. She was dressed in a snug navy power dress with bold white piping. Her golden hair had been worked up atop her head like a kind of halo. Just seeing her gave Lara shivers of anticipation.
Crow came then and led her out, like a father walking down the aisle with his daughter. The carpet was red in the Colonnade, then veiny cream marble in the Cross Hall, blue and gold up the stairs. Through the Blue Room and the open South Portico doors she caught a glimpse of the crowd gathered out on the path and the South Lawn, dressed in all their finery, with Drake's children to the fore.
Crow led her through the Yellow Oval Room on the first floor, where Witzgenstein's retinue were waiting. Frances gave Lara a sharp glare. Others just stared at her outlandish dress. The doors to the Truman Balcony were open and Witzgenstein was already out there, speaking to her people. Crow shuffled Lara into place beside a pillar, largely out of sight from the crowd below, then took up position beside her. She kept her eyes downcast, her legs close together, her hands crossed in front of her, clutching her speech.
Witzgenstein was speaking.
"… in this New World of ours, we must forge a common purpose, united in a greater sense of responsibility, both to ourselves, to each other, and to the Lord. No longer can we hew to the selfish days of the past, where our individual desires dictated the paths we as a community took. Now is the time for us to give our bodies and our minds over to Him, that He might better use them than we ever could. Only in that surrender can we find eternal truth."
Lara tuned out the dogma; the same bullshit Witzgenstein had been spewing for years, altered perhaps by her time at Drake's side. She snuck a glance out through the balcony, over the South Lawn. A small space had been cleared in front of the Truman Balcony; saplings rudely hacked back and low vegetation slashed, in which their hundred or so remaining people were gathered. Lara tried to pick out her children, but couldn't see them.
It was a sad affair, in that space fit for thousands, hemmed in by overgrowth. Still, flashbulbs popped as photographers commemorated the occasion for posterity. The day their new President took the Oath of Office, sworn into service for all.
Witzgenstein continued in, outlining a time of faith and security ahead, of unfettered growth. There were hints of Drake in her promises, and Lara glimpsed the beginnings of a eugenics program that would break existing couples apart, that would split the genders into separate roles, that would segregate the races as much as was feasible, and roll back social policies to the 19th Century.
She kept her head down like a slave. She waited until a silence fell, and Crow touched her arm gently. "It's time," he said.
He led her out. She kept her eyes down. Yesterday they'd seen her frantic, as if a woman possessed. She could use that now. The demon was gone, and this woman dressed in a poorly made curtain was what remained. She would be piteous, but virtuous; a whole new Lara purged of Amo.
On the balcony, slowly she lifted her head. There were some 'boo's and some gasps, but Witzgenstein beside her held out her arms and they quieted. Lara looked out over the people and saw faces she'd known for years, who she'd helped, who'd helped her build her coffee shop and cried as they ate her banana cake, now glaring glass-eyed up at her.
Of course they were angry. People always were when they were lied to. They'd been angry when it was Drake whipping them up, and now they were angry when it was Witzgenstein. The only thing that had changed was Lara.
She raised her arms slowly, spread wide as if she were ready to invoke the heavens. Witzgenstein's breath quickened as her arms lifted, revealing a slice of brown skin down her ribs, lifting her tightly bound breasts. Then she spoke.
First she annulled herself from Amo, as the speech dictated, speaking from memory. Next she annulled New LA, and took responsibility for her role in its fall. Finally she annulled her children, and signed them over to the people, and asked for forgiveness for leading them astray.
Silence met her, and she gazed out over these lost people, feeling Witzgenstein's bridle swollen over them all like a slow-moving current. It had the tinge of red on the line, and maybe it had been there all the time, she wondered. Stealing over the gentler minds. Perhaps Amo had been doing the same thing, without realizing it. Only the blast when she touched Drake on the stage had opened her eyes.
Just as Witzgenstein was about to speak, Lara turned bodily to face her and resumed speaking in a loud, clear voice, adding the words she'd written the night before.
"I beg most of all, that My President find it within her heart to forgive me. My trespasses are countless, and I do not deserve her generosity. But I beg it. I ask for the good, Christian forgiveness I never showed to her."
At that, she knelt. A slight gasp came from the crowd. Kneeling hadn't been in the speech, and she felt Crow at her side stiffen, ready at any moment to step in and haul her away. She tilted her head forward, and parted her hair with her hands, revealing her forehead.
"Anoint me with your touch. I beg it. Please, my President. Release me from this burning shame, as Judas was released by his Lord and Master. Show mercy in my hour of need."
Long seconds passed, in silence. She kept her eyes down on the floor, as beads of sweat trickled down the nape of her neck. The rough curtain material scratched at her underarms. She waited, barely daring to breathe, until finally Witzgenstein moved. Two steps, and her hands came down, framing Lara's face. She bent over slowly, bringing her face down to place a forgiving kiss on Lara's forehead.
At the last moment Lara lifted her face, catching the kiss full on her lips. Witzgenstein's eyes widened, but the moment lingered. Lara felt the lust pouring off her. A second gasp rose from the audience.
Then Lara pulled away, first to break the contact, tilting her head back down to the floor, totally penitent, abject, leaving Witzgenstein reeling above her.
Long seconds passed before their new President acted. She gave a dazzling smile. She strode to the edge of the balcony, and held out her hands.
"You see our mercy?" she called to them. Now they cheered. This, after all, was a show of her strength. A show of their strength, of such utter vanquishment of their foes that they could afford such unconditional forgiveness. They cheered and cheered.
But Lara knew it was something else, as the heat of Witzgenstein's touch lingered on her lips. On the line she felt that Witzgenstein knew it too. A kiss was a keyhole, through which secrets could pour.
More slaps might follow tonight. But after the slaps, more kisses.
HUNT
10. CAIRN
The chaotic assault on the line lessens as I circle the upper gantry, focusing on the metal lockbox in the center of the white 'f' in its blue square. This is real, and it anchors me in a past and a future, pushing back the madness.
Their signal still causes me pain, still threatens to flood me under the tide, but perhaps I'm getting used to it. I thumb the trickling wound on my thigh and the pain sharpens my focus. I glance into their eyes as I go around, acclimatizing, wordlessly asking them who is master here, who slave. I've killed a leper and survived. I've killed thousands of grays and dozens of demons, but I'm still here, still doing this shit, so what have I got to fear?
They sway after me like seaweed. They tilt from side to side of their hall like water in a bowl, like the ocean as the moon pulls it with the power of its gravity.
So I'm the moon. I own it.
Red demons stamp over the box, unseeing. Black and white ones spark and jump around it. Blue ones and yellow ones roll by, all these guardians of the cairn. But they can't stop me.
It's a small box. It doesn't belong here, just like the f doesn't, just like I don't. But we're all here, aren't we?<
br />
I circle, letting my thoughts drift on the chaotic line. I watch them as they follow me. They don't fight each other. As I move around the walkway, one hand trailing on the railing, one touching the frozen glass, I try to imagine what happened here, and what's happening now.
Out in the world the ocean and the demons always fought. Out in the world they're all dead or comatose now, flattened by whatever blast happened with Drake, but here they're not fighting.
It's obvious what I have to do. I need to open that lockbox.
I watch the interweaving flow of their bodies like I'm scoping the pattern of traffic in a game of Frogger. There has to be a route down and through. I pick out multiple paths. Here, here, then here.
I rub my head where it aches. I shot myself again, like I'm going back in time. History repeats itself, they say, first as tragedy then as farce. So this is my farce. I touch the scar where I blew my brains out in New York, and wonder what is left now of the man I once was.
On my third revolution beneath the Arctic sky, I decide.
First, I'll explore. There may not be a chance later.
I climb down the elevator shaft to the lowest floor, where I find a cavernous expanse of dead tech in a great, dark underhall. A jungle of scattered office equipment rests silently beneath a dangling canopy of thick cables. I roam alone in the darkness, cutting through the black with the scalpel of my flashlight, remembering days in the Yangtze darkness back in Iowa, back when this new path began and I made my first cairn for others to follow.
I float on the understanding that this is a cairn, that there's a message for me here like supply dumps left by early Polar explorers like Shackleton and Amundsen, each cairn driving them another toehold further into the unknown.
I boot computers but there's no power. I push thick cables aside and weave a path, flashing my light on scattered papers, studying some, discarding others. I see graphs of brainwaves and pages of data points, memos sent between departments whose names make no sense, lists of men's names with photos and strings of data.
Gradually I put together some idea of what this place was for; some kind of experimental psychology research. They had one hundred young men in the arena up above, monitored by brain wave scanners. I compare their photos to the monsters, but fail to see the resemblance. Still, they were living people once, before the world changed.
Computer towers bulge like square mushrooms in the darkness, but there's no way to access their secrets. Maybe it would mean nothing to me. I stroke surfaces and dust ruffles in little heaps. I feel like the first sailor to step aboard the ghost ship Marie Celeste, all her crew gone, to find warm meals half-eaten on the tables.
Except I'm not the first. That 'f' was not there before this happened. It was left here for me.
I start compiling a list from the papers, scratching out my notes in the darkness. I find the name 'Joran Helkegarde' in a printed email next to the designation of 'Director'. I find reference to a Piers Sandbrooke, Oversight, and Garibaldi Sovoy, Deputy Director, and many more. It seems there were more stations in this 'Multicameral Array', twelve in total, and that makes me laugh.
Twelve bunkers. Twelve Arrays. Just what in the hell were these people doing?
The latest date I can find reference to, in printed mails or crossed off on desk calendars, is the very day I entered my coma. When I first make that connection it floors me. I stand there for minutes, working the calculations in my head, checking if it's true; but it's just a date, there's no real calculations to do. Perhaps this is the place my condition began, when the fuse was set on everything that was to follow. Or maybe it was just another casualty from another shared cause.
Still, it gives a certain perspective.
I emerge from the under-jungle after hours, with my head throbbing from the pressure on the line. I find a different elevator bank and climb up, into a part of the building with bedrooms and bunkrooms, offices, a canteen, a gym, a comms room. At the northernmost point of the structure I find the office of Joran Helkegarde, Director, overlooking stretching tundra and ice through large windows.
Joran Helkegarde.
I hunt his office for clues, but there's not much here; no degree certificates on the walls, no pictures of wife and kids on his desk, just a few sketches, one of a global map with twelve Array locations roughly marked with stars: all in northern latitudes, mostly in Russia, a few in Canada.
It's sad, perhaps. Helkegarde's work was his life, and he didn't have anything else, at least nothing he wanted to remind himself of.
I sit at his desk and go through his desk drawers, but there's nothing I haven't seen already. The bottom drawer is locked, so I force it with a screwdriver from my pack, and find inside more sketches and plans that I can't really understand. Talk of the hydrogen line, frequency bars, future expansions.
Perhaps Anna or Lucas would understand them. I fold them into my bag, not really thinking about the reason why. Maybe they'll be useful in the future.
I turn in the chair and look out of the window, trying to get into the mindset of this long-ago, lonely scientist. Several of his memos talked about the mind of God. In a restroom I found graffiti carved into a toilet door, reading-
Michelangelo's dead, and so is God.
I can appreciate the reference. I can imagine what they were doing here; hunting for the hydrogen line before anyone knew it was real, using an array of receptive minds. They reached into the unknown with their bare hands, like fishing in a dark pool, but what they caught was darker than anything they'd expected. It sucked them in and swallowed them whole, along with the rest of us.
I can't muster much anger at Mr. Helkegarde for that. If anything it makes me sad. Scientists making mistakes is a sad story, but it's not why I'm here. It's not why there's a lockbox marked out in the arena. That is something just for me, and I wonder, was Helkegarde responsible for that too?
His office is depressing, so I leave. I go in and out of other rooms, not expecting anything anymore, more out of a strange sense of duty than anything. Some have a view, some don't. Parts of it remind me of footage of Bordeaux, sent back by Anna; the same era, the same tech, the same footlockers, bunk beds, sheets and pillows.
I find my way to the lighthouse tower.
There's a separate elevator shaft from the lobby which leads to a viewing slot halfway up the tower, where I stand and look out at the brittle, icy world through the warping blue ice. Beyond that there's a ladder, and I take it. Two more floors up, I stand before a large light bulb set behind a large Fresnel lens. It captures the light and focuses it out to the south, a clear beacon for anyone who hadn't already picked up the chaos on the line.
It's hot and bright. There's a line of bulbs on a kind of mechanized train feeding into it. Six on the far side look to be burnt out, the filaments broken, with three yet to go. I touch them. The mechanism hums with a silent power. Perhaps this could have been here for thirteen years, functioning all that time, given a steady power source or some minimal maintenance. Perhaps it served a purpose even back when hundreds of people worked here, taking walks out in the snow and storms.
A lighthouse to guide them back. Perhaps. Who cares?
I smash the bulb, not for any real reason other than a momentary whim, and pale blue Arctic light rushes in to replace the white. Seconds after that the train hums into life and the next bulb along lights up, sliding into position before the lens like I've ordered a Coke from an automatic vending machine.
"You think so?" I ask it, and smash that bulb too. It's strange to find such life out here. But I'm never coming back, and neither is anyone else.
The next two bulbs scroll into position, like lining up the T-ball, and I knock them both out of the park. Only then does the mechanism go silent. The light is forever gone, and I take a deep breath. It's a sad achievement.
I exit, and from my sled outside I gather the necessary supplies. I can always scavenge more. I carry them with me to the second floor walkway above the arena, and set them d
own in a neat line, in the places where I'll need them. A lot of this is supposition. Perhaps it's for pizzazz. Maybe I'm just a completionist. Every bunker so far, I've wrecked. Why not add another?
I pick my line of approach, woven in between the demons with their long reach. I have no idea what the others are capable of. It's all a risk.
It feels familiar, pouring thick gasoline down onto their bodies, across the grooved squares below, etching out the walls of a maze. I've done this before. Left, right, straight ahead. I may make it. I feel like Mario lining up his jumps. I gear up with all my Siberian clothes, doused and heavy with water.
Before I drop a lit match, I summon the black eye. It comes fairly easily, growing out of me like a rose bud, well rooted now. I firm it up around me like a shield, then move to the far side so the ocean tilts toward me, and drop the match.
My maze lines below whuff to flame. Many of the Ocean are caught in the inferno. The gray ones stagger after me still, like they did thirteen years ago, as I circle back around. The lepers also catch fire, and the yellow ones melt faster, but the others seem unaffected.
I watch them burn, and it's odd how it doesn't touch me. I wonder how much time I have, with this fuse set. The leper I killed in Istanbul blew hard, and I don't think I can take more than one of them popping in a row. I need to move fast.
I climb over the railing, encumbered by the weight of my dripping wet clothes. The heat is already oppressive. I lower myself down the rope ladder I tied to the railing, then drop into the middle of my maze of flames. Walls of fire rise either side of me, bringing pain, dizziness and a slick of sweat. This isn't a good idea.
Snapping, barking sounds come from within the flames, and through the orange licks I pick out demons lashing to the extent of their leashes, straining toward me. Not all at once, fellas, I think. I catch glimpses of the Ocean tumbling over, walking sticks of fire that leave fragments of their burning bodies behind. I push out the shielding black eye a few feet further, and run forward at a soggy wobble.
The Lies (Zombie Ocean Book 8) Page 12