by Sarah Dreher
The light went out completely.
Stoner sat back on her heels, one hand still holding the bandage against Gwen’s shoulder. Her knee hurt like crazy, sharply. She wanted to scream.
“Do you think anyone would hear us if we screamed?” she asked.
“I doubt it,” said Marylou. “I certainly tried.”
A twinge of guilt cut through her pain and panic. Marylou had been through a terrible ordeal, and in all the confusion no one had even asked how she was. “Are you all right, Marylou?”
“Fine. It wasn’t the worst experience of my life, not compared to some blind dates I’ve been on. Of course, this one couldn’t really be gotten out of with a phone call and a taxi, could it? How did you know where to find me?”
“You know that voice, right before we got here? The one yelling about Yankees?”
“Yes, I think she was here,” said Marylou. “A mere wisp of a thing. I suspect she saved my life.”
“She’s a spirit. Disembodied.”
“I thought as much,” Marylou said. “Not that I necessarily believe in such things, but whether I believe in them or not, I am grateful.”
Stoner felt someone touch her arm.
“Dear,” Aunt Hermione said, “we really must do something about Gwen. I’m getting a very strong feeling she’s… well, separating.”
“Separating?”
“Her soul from her body.”
Stoner could feel it, too. The energy in the room diminishing, as if being drawn out by a magnet. Flowing, dispersing…
“Don’t you leave me,” she shouted. She grabbed Gwen’s face in her hands. “Do you hear me, Gwen? Don’t leave me! ”
She was still going.
“This isn’t how it was supposed to be, Gwen. Damn it, you can’t leave me. You promised, Gwen. Remember? We’re going to go through lots of stuff and get old together and sit on the porch and rock and reminisce and argue about irrelevant details...” She could feel the tears streaking down her face. She let them fall. “Come on, Gwen. Please don’t leave me. Please.”
Aunt Hermione reached a hand across her shoulder and waved something in her face. “Try this, Stoner. It’ll probably be more effective than guilt.”
She took the small packet containing the cloth capsule. Ammonia. Good. Tearing open the packet, she crushed the capsule and waved it under Gwen’s nose.
“Breathe,” she muttered. “Damn you, breathe.”
Gwen took a shallow breath, then another. She jerked backward as the fumes stung her nasal passages.
“Okay,” Stoner said. “Now stay with me.”
And do what? she wondered. Nobody was coming to rescue them. Either Tunes and the man Marylou called David had escaped, or they were keeping mum. They probably had already hired a slick lawyer, who was advising them not to admit to anything, not to mention this tunnel until the trial. After all, the four of them were witnesses.
But what about George and Stape? They knew what was happening. They knew about the tunnel. Had David and Tunes caught them, too? Or were they crawling around in the dark, looking for the trap door?
Nobody was going to get here on time.
Gwen whispered something. She leaned closer.
“I’m sorry, Stoner.”
“No, Gwen. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“I messed up.”
Stoner gripped her hand. “This isn’t over yet. We’ll get you out of here.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Trust me.” Sure, trust me. Look how wonderfully effective I’ve been so far. “Gwen?”
There was no answer. Stoner lowered her head close to Gwen’s. She was still alive, but she’d slipped into unconsciousness again.
It wasn’t going to work. There was no one coming. And even if the rest of them were rescued, it would be too late for Gwen.
She tried to imagine life without her. She couldn’t. From the moment they’d met—before that, even, from the moment she’d seen that blurred, poorly constructed Instamatic picture of her, looking awkward and completely lovely—she’d known she had to have this woman in her life, one way or another. They could be lovers, or friends, anything. Anything so this funny, gentle woman with the fawn-colored hair and deep brown eyes that drew you in, this woman with the laugh like velvet and a touch that was both strong and soft—anything to have her there. Life couldn’t be the same without her. Never the same again.
Gwen was dying, and there was nothing she could do to help.
“Aunt Hermione,” she said in a choked voice. “She’s going.”
“Just a minute, dear,” her aunt replied. “I’m talking to someone.”
“I need you, Aunt...”
“Quiet,” Marylou said. “She’s getting an idea.”
There was a silence. Stoner couldn’t think of anything to say. It was over.
“I see,” she heard Aunt Hermione say. “Well, it’s worth a try.”
Her aunt crawled forward, crushing the remains of an ammonia capsule under her hand and sending up a weak wave of fumes that momentarily overwhelmed the smell of blood.
“I have a suggestion,” Aunt Hermione said. “If we can get to Callie’s side, it might keep Gwen alive until help arrives. Kind of a state of suspended animation, such as Eastern Mystics use.”
“I don’t know…”
“Of course you don’t. Nobody knows anything, really. But we can try.”
Yeah, they could try. Right now she’d try anything. She’d settle for conjuring up the Virgin Mary and begging her to ask her Beloved Son to take care of it. She’d go to church for the rest of her life. Hell, she’d even make a pact with the devil if she had to. It was crazy, but it was something.
“What do we have to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“That’s right,” her aunt said. “And that’s going to be extremely hard for you. We have to do absolutely nothing.”
“We’re doing nothing now.”
“We’re doing a great deal now. We’re talking, and thinking, and intending. We’re holding the cells of our bodies together. Our internal organs are functioning at break-neck speed. We have to let go of all that and… well, drift. Cast ourselves on the Cosmos.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Stoner said. She wondered if Gwen was still breathing, or if...
“Because you’re thinking. If this is going to work, you must absolutely stop thinking. Imagine you’re...well, letting yourself drop off to sleep.”
“Maybe if we all had a bit of wine,” Marylou suggested.
“No wine. Too unpredictable. We could end up anywhere.”
“I get it!” Marylou said. “It’s like Star Trek. We’re going into the transporter.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Hermione, “that’s a good analogy. Why don’t you go first?”
“Okey-doke. See you on the other side.”
Marylou grew silent. It was quiet in the room. Very quiet. It seemed to turn a shade cooler.
“She’s over,” said Aunt Hermione. “Now you, Stoner.”
She tried to imagine a blank mind and couldn’t.
“Stoner,” her aunt said. “Look over my way.”
She turned in the direction of her aunt’s voice.
Aunt Hermione slapped her hard across the face.
Startled, she went blank.
She came to lying on her back, on the ground. The earth was rich and crumbly beneath her. The air was sweet with the odor of orange blossoms. Warm sunlight poured down, caressing her skin.
Stoner opened her eyes. Aunt Hermione was kneeling above her.
“I’m terribly sorry I had to do that,” the older woman said. “But it was the only way to stop you thinking. An old Zen trick.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” She sat up. Her face didn’t hurt. Her knee didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt.
They were in the middle of an orange grove. Straight lines of trees extended in every direction. Perfect trees with deep green leaves and brig
ht fruit and soft white blossoms.
“Where are we?”
“I’m not certain,” Aunt Hermione said. “Wherever Callie wanted us to be, I suspect.”
“Gwen?”
“Right here,” said a velvet voice behind her.
She whirled around. Gwen was sitting on a patch of grass, her back against an orange tree, arms around her knees.
“I have never,” Gwen said with a laugh, “experienced a ride like that.” She looked down at herself. Her dress was spotless. “Looks as if they did the laundry on the way.”
“There isn’t any ‘They’,” Aunt Hermione explained. “I suspect you’re dressed as you last perceived yourself.”
“Well, I wish I’d perceived myself in a more everyday way,” Gwen said. “I feel like a down right fool in Edith Kesselbaum’s clothes.”
Stoner reached for her. “You’re okay? You’re really okay?”
“I seem to be,” Gwen said, taking her hand.
She was going to be all right. Stoner felt her heart grow huge. Gwen was all right. At least until they went back. Maybe, when they went back, Gwen would have...
But if they didn’t go back, if for some reason they couldn’t go back, she’d happily stay here forever, if it would keep Gwen alive. Wherever Here was.
And where was Marylou?
She turned to Callie Rose, and saw her for the first time.
She was about sixteen. Painfully thin, with stringy long dark hair. Her dress was a faded calico, the kind of clothes she’d seen pictures of in magazines. Made by hand, from old feed bags. Stoner guessed she was from a poor family, in the Depression.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m pleased to meet you at last. My name’s Stoner McTavish.” She offered her hand.
The woman took it tentatively. Her fingernails were torn and bitten. “Pleased ta’ meet you. Are you going to get me out of here?”
“Either that or you’ll have plenty of company. Have you seen Marylou?”
“That other Yankee?” Callie Rose asked. “That loud one? She went off eating.” She turned to Aunt Hermione. “You said you’d get me out.”
“And we will, Callie, as soon as we figure out how.”
Stoner stared at her aunt. “Aunt Hermione…”
“Now, Stoner,” the older woman said, “I’m sure it’s just a technicality. I haven’t actually done an exorcism before...” She turned to Callie Rose apologetically. “Sorry, dear, I know it’s an ugly word. Would you prefer I use something less emotionally tainted? ‘Removal,’ perhaps?”
“I don’t give a dern,” Callie Rose said sullenly. “Long as you do it.”
Aunt Hermione patted her hand. “Thank you, Callie. Now, I haven’t actually done a removal or whatever, but I have assisted at a few, and I think I can remember most of the details. Quite simple, really. It’s the intention that counts.”
The air suddenly turned cooler. A breeze came up. In the distance they could hear a rumbling sound, like boxcars rolling slowly along a track.
Stoner shivered. “I know it’s irrelevant, but I really wish I knew where we were. I thought we’d just kind of hover around inside the tunnel or something. Outside, at the very least. I feel like a character in The Wizard of Oz.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Aunt Hermione said. “I know you hated that movie. Callie, have you any idea where we are?”
The young woman shook her head. “I was just all of a sudden here. I don’t understand this place at all, and I don’t like it. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Which is nothing, Stoner thought, compared to the impact you had on me. “Wherever we are,” she said, “I think we’d better get back to the tunnel before they find our—uh—bodies. They might haul us away and we’d never reconnect.”
“I agree,” Aunt Hermione said. She reached up and plucked an orange and stripped away the skin. She popped a juicy section into her mouth. “One thing is certain. Wherever we are is real. There’s nothing imaginary about the taste of this.”
Stoner tried one. The flavor was spectacular. Tart and sweet and sharp. She thought she could almost touch it.
A dark cloud crept over the edge of the trees, wiping out the blue sky like a painter covering blue with black.
We’d better find Marylou and get to shelter.
A loud, rasping warning alarm split the air. They must be warning the pickers.
“Marylou!” Stoner called.
“Over here.” Marylou broke through the trees, scarf waving. She had taken off her hat along the way. Her face was flushed from running. “We have to get out of here,” she panted. “Something really bad is headed our way.”
“Oh, Marylou,” Stoner said indulgently. “It’s only a storm. We probably won’t even get wet, since we’re not really in body.”
“Not the storm, idiot.” Marylou looked back across the rows. Her pants legs flapped like flags in the gusting wind. “This is a...a...” Her words caught in her throat as the tip of the flying saucer rose above the trees and tilted downward, heading directly for them.
CHAPTER 12
“Hit the dirt,” Marylou shouted, and made a dive for the base of the nearest tree.
Fascinated, Stoner stood in the cleared center of the row of trees and watched the object approach. It was a large white vehicle, straddling five rows of trees. Long arms protruded from its sides. It was spotlessly clean and new looking, and somehow very familiar.
“You idiots!” Marylou shrieked. “It’s gathering samples. Do you want to end up in a Martian laboratory?”
“I don’t think we’re in any danger,” Stoner said. She looked back to where Marylou, Aunt Hermione, and Callie Rose huddled together under the tree.
“Excuse me,” said Marylou, “but I don’t think you are someone whose judgment I care to trust on the subject of danger.”
“Stoner’s right,” Gwen said. “There’s something about this thing. We’ve seen it before.”
Callie Rose was clinging to Aunt Hermione, her eyes round and dark as plums. “I hope it comes to you soon,” Aunt Hermione said. “This child is terrified.”
She thought as hard as she could. Something about the smell of the place, and approaching storm, the siren… She had it. “Horizons,” she said.
Gwen snapped her fingers in recognition. “Right. We’re inside the Horizons ride.”
“And that machine is one of the robotic pickers.”
“That,” said Marylou, “is disgusting. Robotic pickers. And just what does it robotically pick?”
“Oranges.”
Marylou looked down at the orange in her hand, shrieked, and tossed it away. The picker tilted to the side, sent down a mechanical arm, and plucked the orange from the ground.
“I think this one’s on clean-up patrol,” Gwen said. “I hope it doesn’t read us as litter.”
The robot seemed to study them for a minute, then began emitting a high-pitched “beep”, which set off ear-splitting alarms in every direction.
“Maybe not litter,” Stoner said. The robot continued to hover over them, as if guarding against their escape. “But it definitely reads us as intruders.”
“What do you suggest we do?” Gwen asked.
“Stay where we are. I think someone will come to see if there’s a short circuit in the exhibit.”
“Okay,” Gwen said. “But has anything strange occurred to you?”
“Like what?”
“For starters, if this is just a ride, how come the orange was real?”
“Uh...” Something told her she had a hunch about that, and she didn’t like it. She shrugged. “It’s Walt Disney World.”
“Very informative,” Marylou muttered.
The ground trembled a little—real ground, too, she noticed, and the orange trees were definitely real—as if someone were running toward them through the real-trees orchard. She looked around quickly. They’d better split up. If they were about to fall into hostile hands, they had to make sure one of them could get out and find help. And it
couldn’t be Gwen. If she went back into her body, she was dead within minutes.
“Marylou,” she said quickly, “get out of sight.”
“No way,” said Marylou. “I’m not being separated from this bunch again.”
“I’ll do it,” Aunt Hermione offered.
Good. Aunt Hermione could move between worlds pretty efficiently, if need be.
Stoner nodded.
Her aunt took Callie Rose by the hand and slipped away into the grove.
The running footsteps came closer.
A woman burst through the trees. She was in her late twenties, a brunette, and wore a bright yellow jump suit. She was carrying what looked like a compact walkie-talkie, but didn’t appear to be armed.
“Hi,” Stoner said cheerfully.
The woman looked them over. “Who in the world are you?” she asked. She didn’t seem hostile, just bewildered.
“My name’s Stoner McTavish. I’m a travel agent. From Boston. This is Marylou Kesselbaum. And Gwen Owens. We were visiting EPCOT and made a wrong turn somewhere...”
“Visiting what?”
“EPCOT Center. Walt Disney World.”
The woman shook her head. “I never heard of that.”
“Can you tell us where we are?” Gwen asked.
“Mesa Verde.” The woman held out her hand. “I’m Elaine, by the way.”
Gwen shook hands with her. “You work here, then?”
“I manage the orchards.”
“I like your harvester.”
Elaine grinned. “Thanks. I designed this one myself.” She reached up and patted its mechanical arm. The robot seemed to wriggle, like a pet dog.
“Did you say Mesa Verde?” Stoner asked. “Mesa Verde, Colorado?”
“Colorado?” The woman cocked her head to one side as if puzzled. “I haven’t heard that term in years. Not since History classes back in school.”
Uh-oh, Stoner thought. Here comes trouble. “Oh,” she said.
Elaine turned back to Gwen. “You have an accent,” she said.
“A little.”
“I never heard an accent before. I’ve read about them, but I always wondered what it would really sound like on a real person. The language discs always sound so… kind of put on, don’t you think?”