Fury and the Power

by Farris, John

  Eden felt darkened, exhausted. She took a few minutes to regain her composure, staring sightlessly out the window next to her chair as the Gulfstream jet rose through streamers of cloud to the assigned flight level for the Cheyenne to San Francisco flight.

  "I do need your help," Eden said finally.

  "Ask."

  Eden described the dreams and visions she'd been having, of a tiger with the head of a hyena, and the bloody paw prints on the sacred staircase in Rome.

  "It couldn't be one of us," Chauncey said.

  "My friend Bertie Nkambe, the Kenyan girl you were talking about—"

  "Oh, yeah," Chauncey said, with a wry scrunch of her mouth, "the shooter. She plugged me twice when I was in an alter shape, trying to keep them from toting you away. Sorry to interrupt; what about Bertie?"

  "She's Gifted, particularly at Peeping and brain-locking. Bertie thinks I may subconsciously be creating this thing. Slowly bringing it to life. But that's horrible. Obscene. I know I can't be doing it. I mean, why would I want to?—What are you smiling about?"

  "This conversation. What do other girls our age dish about? Hair, clothes, what we saw on TV last night. And guys sex sex guys."

  Eden smiled too, painfully. "I love your boots."

  "Aren't they awesome? Thirty-seven bucks at this little trading post near the Navaho rez in New Mexico. I like the way you cut your hair. Are you bleaching those streaks in?"

  "No, it's just the African sun. Want another brew?"

  "Frankly, I wouldn't mind getting blitzed. It's been a tough tour."

  "I wouldn't mind, either. But I have business to attend to tomorrow morning, and something about—this gentleman I'm supposed to meet doesn't seem right to me. That's another story, Chauncey."

  "Getting back to the were-tiger—I don't believe you're just freaking out. Other than the Fallen of Moby Bay—and we're the good guys—no one else on earth has the power and the ability to shape-shift. Except for Mordaunt."

  "Deus inversus. But who is he, and where is he?"

  "Dunno. In human form he can be anyone he wants to be. He's been on earth for, oh, a couple of hundred thousand years."

  "Where did he come from?"

  "Where all the Bad Souls are, except those who have slipped through the Barrier with Mordaunt's help. Malterra. Terra inversus. The Dark Earth, what the occultists call the Invisible Planet orbiting between Earth and Mars. It isn't invisible, actually; just one level removed from our vibrational pattern. If you want to get technical, I could—"

  "What I want is another beer," Eden said with a smile that came more easily this time. "Was that your stomach I heard? How does a cheeseburger and fries sound?"

  They were thirty minutes from SFO when they finished eating.

  "The killing of the evangelist and the guru in India sounds like something Mordaunt would be up to" Chauncey said as she wiped a smear of mustard from beside her mouth. "A warm-up for his assault on the Pope. How many Catholics are there, about nine hundred million? And the truly devout believe he is literally God on earth. Mordaunt could be rigging a spiritual crisis for a lot of believers. We'll be seeing God Is Dead on the cover of every supermarket tabloid. It'll be prime-time network hysteria. As only the media knows how to feed hysteria. Evil Wins. Tough luck, mankind."

  "That's not very hopeful. You're immortal, so why do you care?"

  "Hey, I go through my life-death-rebirth cycles like the rest of you. For all practical purposes, I'm one hundred percent humanoid flesh and blood, so don't blow me off like that."

  "Yeah, okay. My bad."

  "We have to coexist with all of you, so of course we prefer peace and prosperity to Sturm und Drang." Chauncey took a few moments to think something over. "If the Pope is about to get the same treatment Mordaunt handed out to Pledger Lee Skeldon, and obviously you're meant to do something about preventing it—otherwise what's the point of your dreams?—aren't you traveling in the wrong direction?"

  "Tom and Bertie ought to be on their way to Rome by now. You don't just barge in on His Holiness with dire news about a psychic's premonition. Diplomacy is required. My grandmother is our ambassador to the U.N. I suppose she knows all of the formal dance steps. This is the reason why I'm going to San Francisco."

  Eden opened her first edition of Isak Dinesen's great memoir of farm life in Kenya eighty years ago and took out the convoluted E-mail from Betts. She gave it to Chauncey to read, explaining who Betts Waring was, and how much she'd always meant to Eden.

  "What does this mean; she's dying of an inoperable brain tumor?" Chauncey said after struggling with the syntax and odd wordings for a couple of minutes.

  "It is true, as she said that she had at least one minor stroke, a few years ago. I was there."

  "You've circled a few words."

  "Betts smokes a lot. Merits, never Pall Malls. And she's never drunk hard liquor. She wouldn't have had a rum and Coke in that airport lounge."

  "But if her mental processes are messed up by whatever it is they diagnosed at Stanford Med—"

  "According to Danny Cheng, she was never there."

  "She could have gone to another hospital in the Bay Area."

  "I know. Confusion. Mr. Cheng is looking into that."

  Chauncey studied the last page of the E-mail. "So she's staying with an old boyfriend somewhere close to San Francisco. Where did Betts go to college?"

  "Where didn't she go? Oregon State, Berkeley, USF, UCLA, are the ones I remember. She has advanced degrees from two of those schools."

  "She could have met Edmund Ruddy at any of them. I suppose he'll straighten that out for you when you meet him. He's going to pick you up at the airport?"

  "I didn't go for that. I changed our meeting place to Ghirardelli Square tomorrow morning."

  "Which will give Danny Cheng time to check him out? Who is Cheng, a skip-tracer?"

  "A lot more sophisticated than that."

  "Do you have a reason to be suspicious of Ruddy?"

  "Huh-uh. It's just that Betts never said anything about him."

  "Probably wouldn't have, if she was happily married." Chauncey finished with a questioning look.

  "Yeah. They were happy."

  "So there's really no reason not to believe Betts is in a bad way."

  "No," Eden said, blinking, sniffing a couple of times.

  "Are you meeting this guy alone?"

  "Yes. I guess so."

  "I could go with you."

  "Would you?"

  "Some things you don't want to face alone."

  "Really appreciate that. Megan would've offered to go, but she has this job and she can't get away. We'll be spending the night with Megan. My best friend. She's house-sitting for her aunt and uncle in North Beach while they do the round-the-world cruise thing."

  "Great. I've been working on some tunes, if you want to hear them. Do you play an instrument?"

  "Don't play, can't sing. I spent all of my formative years working on my jump shot and trying to figure out who I was. Not that I've made a lot of progress there."

  "I had a thought. Maybe I shouldn't bring it up, probably has nothing to do with this situation." She handed the E-mail back to Eden.

  "Go ahead."

  "It's a good bet Mordaunt knows all about you. And he would see you as an adversary. Do you know for sure this E-mail is really from your mom?"

  "Yes. There's a code word. She used it a couple of times. Weenie."

  "I wasn't trying to scare you. About Mordaunt, I mean."

  "If you don't scare me, nobody else ever will."

  Chauncey grinned. "Just be aware that he's around, that's all."

  "Uh-huh. Could be I've got better moves than a two-hundred-thousand-year-old man."

  Eden hesitated, shook her head in a perplexed way.

  "Or woman," she said.

  Chapter 17

  COLDSTREAM BRIDGE, CALIFORNIA

  OCTOBER 15

  7:35 P.M. PDT

  The Assassin had spent most of the
day in his garage dressing room preparing for his new impersonation. He had filched the identity of Edmund Ruddy, whom Betts had reluctantly come up with when he requested the name of a boyfriend from her college days.

  "Why does it have to be someone I actually knew?" she had asked as the Assassin paged through the details of Ruddy's life, gathered from dozens of sources available to anyone handy with a computer.

  "Because I'm assuming our Eden is nobody's fool. And she has powerful protectors. They will want to be certain there was, and still is, an Edmund C.—for Coombs—Ruddy."

  "Ed was arrested for soliciting sexual favors from an undercover policewoman? In Minneapolis?"

  "Eight years ago."

  "How do you come up with—my God, a nude photo?"

  "Except for the bandanna. He did, after all, grow up in the freedom-loving, tie-dyed decade of Aquarius. Like yourself. Shall we amuse ourselves for a little while researching Betts Waring?"

  "Not the kind of laughs I'm in the mood for right now."

  "The vast majority of people have no conception of how often, usually on a daily basis, their lives are being vacuumed for dirt by one electronic search engine or another."

  "Including your life?"

  "I am the sum of many lives, all stolen for a specific occasion. There is no cyberspace trail that does not quickly fetch up against a stone wall. Not even a government's supercomputers can hack the core of my existence."

  The Assassin had taken an hour to study all available photos of Edmund Ruddy, including the one that should have been deleted from police files once charges against Ruddy for solicitation were dropped. And finally concluded: "I suppose he must do."

  He had left a dinner menu for Betts to prepare, and he liked his meals served punctually; in this case, seven-thirty. He was five minutes late for dinner. Betts didn't care for cold or warmed-over food either. Because he had been sequestered for nearly eight hours with his latest creation, she decided a discreet knock on the plywood door of his dressing room was in order, although he had severely warned her not to disturb him.

  Maybe, Betts thought as she edged around the big Winnebago he had stolen late last night and which took up most of the space in the small garage, he'd had a heart attack, and she'd find him stone-dead inside the dressing room, his head on his makeup table. Maybe God was thinking about her after all.

  But when she knocked, he answered her.

  "What is it, Betts?"

  "Dinner's ready."

  "So soon? Oh, it is getting late. I'm at the finishing-touches stage, but I suppose I could use a break. Come in, why don't you? See what you think of my work."

  Betts pulled open the door, bottom edge scraping on the concrete floor. Bright bulbs surrounding the triptych of narrow mirrors on his makeup table assaulted her eyes.

  Then it was Betts who had the heart attack as she witnessed the image of his artistry repeated in the three mirrors.

  "Oh, no! My God, you wouldn't! You can't! No, no, no—!"

  The Assassin turned awkwardly; he wore a back brace during the hours he put in creating a new face. All of the gray-haired simulacrums stared in astonishment as Bells staggered back two steps and collided with the front of the Winnebago, hands clasped tight to her breast.

  "Betts. What's wrong? I've worked so hard. It was pure inspiration. Don't you like us?"

  Betts barely heard him. She was on her way to the floor, eyes rolled up in her head.

  By the time he got to her she was turning blue. She had swallowed her tongue.

  Chapter 18

  ROME

  OCTOBER 16

  0020 HOURS ZULU

  Frank Tubner was having a dream about God. He lay on his back in the king-size bed in the suite that he and Pinky occupied in the Hassler while they waited for word from the Vatican that their audience with His Holiness John the Twenty-fourth was a go. He was breathing sibilantly and there was a contented smile on his face.

  In his dream he and God were at the Oakmoor Lanes, where Frank had bowled regularly until he was thirty-five or so, when tendonitis in his elbow forced him to give up the game. Some of his old teammates also were there at Oakmoor: Jesse and Cal and Owen. He could tell by their covetous glances that they knew he was bowling with God, but they were shy about coming over. No need to introduce themselves to God, of course.

  So Frank was well on his way to a crackerjack 220 game, not a single twinge from his formerly bad elbow. Relishing his camaraderie with the Almighty, although they hadn't spoken to each other. God occasionally hooked His ball just to keep things interesting. Needless to say, He could roll a perfect game anytime he wanted.

  Frank had worked up a sweat. He wondered if after their game he should invite God to have a cold one with him. Maybe get the answers to some questions that had nagged him from childhood. Like what happened to all the methane gas on the Ark when there was only one small window for ventilation? Frank's father had been a dairy farmer near Mendocino, and Frank had grown up mucking out cow barns. He knew that the eight people aboard the Ark with thousands of different species of fauna would have had to shovel shit practically nonstop for the duration of the Flood, or wade around in it up to their necks. But ask a question like that in school, all you got was a ruler across the knuckles from one of the nuns.

  In Frank's dream God was about five-ten, gray hair clipped short, muscular, a little saggy around the middle but with a definite aura about him. You just knew He was God, that's all. He had a way of looking at you.

  Nearly all of the thirty-six lanes at Oakmoor were filled. An infinity of graceful gliding bowlers like mirror images in shadowless brilliance, that sharp echoing thunder of tumbled pins. The more Frank sweated, the more he thirsted. He retrieved his solid gold ball for the last frame and was embarrassed to discover that there were no holes for his fingers and thumb. Oh-oh. Under the suddenly disapproving gaze of the Big Guy he perspired as if rooted beneath a cloudburst, cradling the heavy gold ball against his midsection, trying to hide it. His friends had vanished. So had the Oakmoor Lanes. The bowling emporium had become a steep ancient street in the Quirinal, at the end of which lay the magnificent Trevi Fountain. Now it was late beneath a cat's-eye moon, and no one was about. Except for Frank's wife Pinky.

  She had shed her clothes and was astride the husky shoulders of Triton, calling to him. When he didn't respond Pinky stuck out her tongue, licking the moonlit air, the droplet moisture around the pagan sea-god and his winged horses, a come-on that gave Frank an immediate erection, which he hoped God wouldn't see beneath the gold bowling ball. His trophy of a lifetime. Not counting Pinky.

  The ball had become slippery. He lost his grip and it rumbled away down the street, pursued by a snarling pack of wild black dogs. Frank experienced the sort of gloom that can come over a man who finds himself inexplicably in a strange place among strangers, bereft of his God, devoid of Grace.

  He awakened with a hand on his hard penis. The other side of the king-size bed was rumpled but empty. The door to the sitting room was nearly closed; a vertical slash of lamplight glowed in the darkened bedroom. Frank sat up, straightened his twisted pajama top over his convex belly, glanced at the digital clock on an antique commode—it was past two in the morning—and went silently to the sitting-room door. He hesitated there, didn't open it. Instead he looked through the half-inch space at his wife, who was seated in profile to him twenty feet away.

  Pinky had ordered room service again. She was eating voraciously. It was what she ate and how she handled her late-night snack that disturbed him so.

  On the plate she was hunched over was a large serving of ground beefsteak tartare. And Pinky was eating with her fingers, shoving the raw meat into her mouth as fast as she could gobble and swallow. There was blood on her fingers and blood on her chin; because steak tartare was served raw but not bloody Frank reckoned she must have bit her lip or tongue. A strand of blood mixed with saliva hung almost to the free-swinging crucifix on the chain around her neck, which she took off only t
o bathe. Twice while he watched in amazement and—yes——disgust, she lifted her head to gulp air. Then she bent to the task of cleaning her plate, a fierce gleam in her eyes.

  The Tubners had been married twenty-four years. In all the time Frank had known Pinky she hadn't been much of a meat-eater. Preferred seafood. A broiled lamb chop on occasion, if they were dining out. But steak tartare? Never. And of all places to suddenly develop an appetite for it. Three nights in a row.

  Pinky had almost finished. She picked up noisettes left on the plate, then licked her fingers. He heard a low groan, or growl, of pleasure. Then she turned her head quickly, as if she had detected him spying on her from behind the door. But she couldn't make him out in the dark of the bedroom, Frank was sure of that. Anyway, her eyes were unfocused, drowsy, now that her hunger was satisfied.

  Frank retreated to the bed and pulled up the covers. A little later Pinky came quietly into the room and entered the bath. Frank heard her pissing, then the handles squeaking as she turned on the bidet and "watered her flower." As she liked to say.

  Twenty years since their second and last child had been born. But Pinky was only forty-seven, not yet menopausal. It was possible that she was pregnant, and just hadn't wanted to say anything yet. Still getting used to the idea herself.

  Yes, pregnancy could account for Pinky's otherwise unexplainable craving, her lack of caution in spite of recent outbreaks of mad cow disease on the Continent.

  Frank breathed easier, although the idea of raising another child at their age wasn't entirely welcome. They already were grandparents. Frank recalled dietary mismatches she'd blithely concocted during her first two pregnancies. Peanut butter with sweet potatoes. Ketchup on her pancakes—dear Lord, it gave him heartburn to think about it.

  Pinky got into bed like a little mouse so as not to disturb him. When he felt her cold but clean hand momentarily on the back of his neck, he was all nerve ends, flinching beneath the covers.

  "Oh, I just wanted to touch you. I'm sorry. Good night, Fuzzinuts."