“Westlake,” he whispered, “assemble a team. No Manna users.” If he sent a team including Users, Varden would know they were coming before they got anywhere near. “How long?”
Westlake didn’t respond immediately. He was doing some quick mental calculations. He’d need a team of eight and they’d be coming from various parts of the country.
“Fifteen to twenty hours,” he said, allowing a couple of hours for unforeseen delays.
“Do it,” whispered Mason. “And go via Ford’s place. You’re going to need to look like someone else.” Despite his distrust of Ford, the man’s ability to alter his own, or another’s, appearance was unparalleled.
“Who do I need to look like?” said Westlake.
“Sebastian Varden,” said Mason. There was a long pause at the other end of the line. Westlake clearly remembered cutting off Seb Varden’s head and watching it, and his body, being burned down to a blackened skeleton. But no one questioned Mason, not even a special-forces trained multiple murderer like Westlake.
“Yes, sir. And our final destination?”
“Mexico City.”
Chapter 18
Las Vegas
The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon. In Walt’s yard, the buzz and dart of hummingbirds and the scuttle of lizards were the only sounds. Walt sat in a garden chair watching the shadows lengthen and the last of the light slide away. He hadn’t had a drink all day. He checked his pockets one last time. Passport—not in his own name, naturally—his wallet, and a small key. No phone—it was on the desk in his office. He stripped all his credit cards out of the wallet and tossed them into the trash, leaving $3,000 cash which he rolled up and put in his pants pocket.
Walt looked back at the house. Gaudy, opulent, over-the-top, its design based on the Taj Mahal, for thirty years it had stood as a beacon of bad taste in a neighborhood famous for it. He admitted he felt a sentimental attachment to the hideous piece of architecture. Leaving it was one of the sacrifices he was going to have to make. The car, much of his money, and the few friends he’d made in Las Vegas—none close—were others. He felt few regrets about any of them. The true sacrifice was yet to happen, and it was a sacrifice he would have to keep making if he was ever to be truly free of Mason.
Standing slowly and taking a few deep breaths, Walt began to still his mental processes and bring an intense focus to bear on the earth a few feet in front of him. Over eighty years of practicing with Manna along with his own innate ability had made his talent formidable.
The obscure but powerful use of Manna he was using had been first demonstrated to Walt by Sid Bernbaum, his mentor. Sid had taken him out to a junkyard one night and told him the Jewish legend of the Golem. According to the ancient stories, the golem was a creature made of clay and given ‘animus’, or spirit, by the will and prayers of a rabbi versed in the mystic arts hidden in the Torah. Walt had watched Sid concentrate, hold out a hand. A creature had formed itself from the dirt. A clumsy, misshapen being, its passing acquaintance with the human form only emphasizing its monstrousness. It had lived for a few minutes, then collapsed back into the dirt which had given it shape. Walt had practiced night after night for months until he began to match, then supersede, the realism and longevity of Sid’s golems. “The accepted word these days is ‘homunculi’,” said Sid, “but they will always be golems to me.”
Now, over seven decades later, Walt’s homunculi were so advanced they could last for many hours and obey simple instructions. He’d even had one open the door to a pizza delivery guy once, but the resulting scream confirmed Walt’s theory that a homunculus could never look truly human.
His mind emptied of every thought other than the image of what he wanted to create, Walt held out his hand and watched the earth begin to spiral upward like a miniature cyclone. As it grew, a core formed. There was no need for a skeletal structure. The entire creation was made in two stages. The first was workmanlike, rough, merely throwing matter together to produce the right dimensions with which to work. The second stage was more like sculpture, taking the rough figure and carving out fine details, adding color, expression and because it needed to mimic humanity, a capacity for movement as if it possessed the skeleton and musculature of its artist.
The whole process took just under eight minutes, more than double the time Walt normally spent on a homunculus. He was sweating slightly as he looked at the figure before him. The creature’s skin was ashen gray, its eyes dark shadows. He’d added clothes to it, but had only used shades of blue and gray. The cameras in the house were black and white, so there was no need to waste energy trying to reproduce the ivory of Walt’s shirt or the burgundy of his Italian loafers.
Walt had the creature walk up and down the yard a couple of times. He certainly walked like Walt and even aped some of his mannerisms—the way he pinched the bridge of his nose when tired, or stretched his upper back muscles by holding his arms behind him, hands clasped together. The creature couldn’t speak. No need—there were no microphones in the house to pick up sound.
There was only one final gift to give, but Walt hesitated. What he was about to do, no one ever did. It would leave him exposed in ways he hadn’t experienced since he was a boy. But if he didn’t go ahead, Mason would inexorably track him down and kill him. Slowly.
Walt closed his eyes and offered up a silent prayer to the god he’d stopped believing in ninety years previously. Then he walked up to the homunculus and took both of its coarse, lumpen hands in his. He closed his eyes, opened up the channel through which Manna had flowed in his body almost all of his life. He let all the Manna he possessed course through him, leaving through his fingertips, filling his creation with enough to keep it going—he hoped—for twenty-four hours or more. Long enough for him to get away. Long enough for him to be on a plane to somewhere quiet. Somewhere simple. Somewhere Mason would never care quite enough to go looking for him. Somewhere it wouldn’t matter that he had just got rid of every last vestige of Manna in his entire body. Somewhere he could avoid the temptation of looking for more.
Walt would have to learn to exist like a normal mortal again. He could no longer slow the aging process. If he wanted something from someone, he couldn’t just get it. He’d have to ask. And if someone wanted to kill him badly enough, he’d almost certainly have to die, since all of his defenses had gone. Although over a hundred years old, he had a body a fifty-year-old would be happy with. Barring accident or violent murder, he might live for another fifty years. If he walked away from trouble. The problem was, he was about to do the opposite.
Walt nodded at the homunculus. It nodded back and stepped back into the house, sliding the door shut behind him. Walt watched it fix itself a large bourbon, grab a cold beer and head toward the office. It hesitated as it reached the door, looked out toward where Walt was standing in the dark, flicked off the light switch and was gone.
Walt climbed the fence at the back of the yard, cut through a neighbor’s garden and strolled up to the guard house at the perimeter of the gated community.
“Hey, Pete,” he said as the overweight security guard looked up from the ball game to register his approach. “I need a taxi to the airport. Phone’s dead. Can you call one for me?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Ford.” As the man dialed, Walt peeled two hundreds off the roll in his pocket. Pete’s eyes widened when he saw them. Walt leaned close enough to get a nose-full of acrid aftershave; the kind often used to mask worse odors beneath. He only flinched a little.
“I’m still at home, safely tucked up in bed,” he said. “You haven’t seen me since I drove in this evening. Ok?”
Pete eyed the hundreds greedily, then tucked them in his breast pocket, smiling.
“Sure thing, Mr. Ford. No problem. No problem at all.”
McCarran airport was busy, and Walt knew a man his age, wearing a suit and traveling alone would be unlikely to be remembered. He bought a one-way flight to London Heathrow, from where he could transfer to almost anywhere.
He had used his key to open a luggage locker rented weeks ago. The carry-on bag he now wheeled behind him contained old books, mostly maps and atlases, tying in with his passport which announced him as Professor Patrick Henson, an academic specializing in mediaeval cartography. Nestled between the pages of the most fragile-looking volumes were bearer bonds amounting to a little over two million dollars.
As the fasten seatbelt light went off and the charming stewardess brought him a bone-dry Jerez sherry, he felt a little of the pressure lift, but not much. He believed he was out of Mason’s reach for now. Maybe forever. But he had no Manna. And if he wanted to stay hidden, he could never Use again. He was normal. A nobody. And he’d decided he had to contact Meera. Had to warn her that Mason hadn’t given up. That he was coming for her. And if Seb Varden really had died that day at the building site, or if he wasn’t there to save her when Mason came looking, her life would become a living hell.
So Walter Ford, an old man in a middle-aged man’s body, a man who had once helped kidnap Meera and had helped Mason’s men kill the people who had sheltered her, was now going to try and find her and offer his help. Which, now that he had no power at all, was a pretty worthless offer. It was a crazy plan. But Walt knew he was going to see it through. Something had finally changed in him. As he looked out at the moonlight on the clouds above Nevada, he wondered if this was how it felt to have a conscience. If so, it felt like shit.
Chapter 19
Upstate New York
Thirty-four years previously
Boy knew Pop must be dead, of course. No one could survive that much damage. He’d lasted a few days, though. And after the screaming, after the threatening, the promising and the begging he’d suddenly gone quiet and not spoken one more word. He had just watched Boy silently. Boy didn’t care to look back. Their eyes had met a couple of times and Boy didn’t like what he’d seen there. Pain, fear, that was to be expected, but there was a gleam that looked a little bit too much like pride.
It had started with a headache again, but this time, it was different. He had been a passenger in his own body when he’d taken Pop to see the old mine. When he’d hit him with the rock. When he’d dragged him down into the tunnel. When he’d used a heavier rock to smash first one knee, then the other. The first knee, Pop had woken up fast, screamed then passed out. The second, he’d just lain there. It made an odd sound when that rock came down. It sounded like when Mom broke a handful of dry spaghetti before boiling it.
Boy had watched it all play out like a movie. As Pop had followed him up to the mine, Boy tried desperately to move his own limbs, run away. Nothing worked. The worst thing was, he knew who was in control now. He recognized him. It was his own fault. He had let it grow, given it its power. All these nights lying in bed, listening to Pop hit Mom, waiting for his turn for a beating, he had started to dream of hitting back, hurting Pop. Maybe even killing Pop. Mom had taught him right from wrong, sure enough, and even Huck Finn had a conscience, preventing him doing whatever he pleased with no regard for the consequences. Huck had never thought about killing anyone. But Boy had. And now that part of him was in charge and all he could do was watch. Watch and wait until he got control back.
Halfway home from the mine that first day, his body had stumbled, stopped and leaned against a tree, his head hanging, breathing fast. When he’d looked up, he was back in control. He’d sat down heavily on the forest floor, only just managing to lean to one side before throwing up. He’d sat there for two hours. Thought about calling 911. Maybe Pop could recover from what he’d just done to him. Then what? He’d report Boy—have him arrested? No. He’d kill him. Maybe torture him first. More likely, he’d take it out on Mom and make Boy watch.
Finally, he stood up, wiped dried vomit from the side of his mouth and went home. He said nothing to Mom. When Pop didn’t come home, even after the bars had closed, she just assumed he’d gone off again. It happened every few months. It was good and bad. It was good because Mom and Boy got to spend a few days and evenings together talking, reading—even laughing. It was bad because when Pop came home, he was worse than usual for a while. Last time he came back, he’d broken three of Boy’s fingers with a pair of pliers. One at a time, making Mom watch. Because “you two don’t look like you missed me any”. Mom had taped Boy’s fingers together with a popsicle stick. He’d told his teacher he’d been playing baseball and had messed up a catch. Mrs Breckland had looked at him questioningly that time—he had been limping the week before and she’d see him wincing when he moved around during class. She hadn’t asked him outright, though. Boy was more careful still after that. It wouldn’t be good if anyone ever found out. Not for Mom. Not for Boy. Not for Mrs. Breckland, maybe.
***
He was floating on his back. He could feel warm sunlight on his face. He had a straw in his mouth, sunglasses perched on his nose. His eyes were closed and he could hear the “beep beep beep” of a garbage truck reversing somewhere nearby. He was so relaxed, he didn’t want to open his eyes. He heard voices, but they seemed far away at first. Then they got closer and clearer. He recognized Mom’s voice. Her voice was small and shaky. The other voice was authoritative, calm. They were talking about him, about…
Boy bit down on the straw slowly. It moved slightly and he realized it went all the way down his throat. His instinct to gag kicked in and he fought it, keeping his breathing steady. He remembered the headache suddenly coming on in the classroom. The cop in the corridor had looked at him. Boy knew it was over. They must have found Pop.
He opened his eyes a tiny bit, then shut them again. Not sunglasses—a piece of tape across the bridge of his nose, securing a tube which went up his right nostril. The sunlight was a powerful lamp. The sound of the garbage truck was the machine next to his bed. He ached all over, felt terrible. And he needed a drink.
He tried to say Mom’s name, but nothing happened. His lips wouldn’t shape the words. He tried to open his eyes again. Nothing. He’d lost control again.
“- Didn’t tell us anything, really. But the biopsies from last week, combined with the blood work are conclusive, I’m afraid.”
Boy tried to speak again, but again he failed. How long had he been unconscious if they were talking about last week? He’d read through enough medical journals to know what a biopsy was.
“When can I take him home? And please, please, take that thing off of his wrist.”
Mom’s voice was so tired. Boy’s arms moved. He tried to stop them. It didn’t work. When his left arm had moved a few inches, it stopped suddenly. He felt metal on his wrist. He was handcuffed to the bed.
“I’m sorry, that’s a police matter. Once I’ve passed on my conclusions, I’m sure they’ll release him. But you need to prepare yourself for a rapid decline in your son’s condition. The cancer is too far advanced for us to operate.”
“What do you mean?” said Mom. Her voice rose a little. She stopped herself and Boy sensed she was looking over at him. Her voice dropped to a whisper again. “That’s my son. I want to know exactly what’s wrong with him and what can be done about it. Don’t sugar-coat it, I need to know what’s happening. I’m not going to get hysterical, you needn’t worry about me making a scene. Just give me the facts.”
The doctor sighed. He wasn’t the first man to underestimate Mom. Because she was quiet, pale, a little jumpy, nervous in company, people often made poor assumptions about her intelligence. She rarely put them right, but this young-sounding doctor was quickly recalibrating his treatment of her. Wisely, he decided to dial back the patronization a whole bunch.
“It’s brain cancer. The tumor is so large that trying to remove it would kill him. It’s grown even since he was admitted. Nothing we can do can stop it now. His condition is terminal.”
If he expected an outburst of grief or anger, he was disappointed. Mom’s voice was level and quiet.
“Will he wake up?”
“It’s highly unlikely. Theoretically, it’s possible, but at this stage, his bo
dy is using all its resources to fight the tumor.”
“How long?”
Boy heard a scrape as the doctor pushed his chair back and stood up. There was a rustle as he consulted the charts at the end of the bed.
“Don’t prevaricate, just tell me.”
The doctor coughed. He probably hadn’t expected ‘prevaricate’ to feature in Mom’s vocabulary. Boy sensed some more hasty recalibration going on.
“A few days. Possibly a week.”
The silence lasted about a minute. The doctor cracked first.
“It’s probably not my place—wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but—,”
Another silence.
“Go on,” said Mom.
“Well, I - I’m beginning to specialize in brain surgery. I keep on top of all the latest research. The new computers at some of the bigger hospitals, they can show images of the brain in more detail. We are starting to understand which regions of the brain are used to control motor functions, which are associated with memory, which respond to optical or aural stimuli. Some of the work done has been tremendously exciting. In Austria, they’ve managed to—.”
He broke off again. “Sorry, I’m rambling,” he said. “It’s an exciting field.” He coughed again, nervously, remembering who he was talking to. “I stayed behind after a few of my shifts. Took a closer look at your son’s x-rays. The tumor is pushing at the medial prefrontal cortex and angular gyrus regions of his brain. No one can say with complete confidence what that means, but it’s likely that empathy, accountability and morality are being affected.”
The scraping sound. He’d sat down again.
“What I’m saying is, I don’t think he could be held responsible for his actions. If the tumor was effectively ‘turning’ off significant areas of his brain, we could no more blame him for his actions than we could blame a bear for killing a salmon. The tumor did it. Not your son.”
World Walker 2: The Unmaking Engine Page 13