by Mary Eicher
“The Constitution does not give you the right to burn buildings, murder people, or commit fraud and racketeering.” The chairwoman stared at the man she considered despicable. “The Constitution protects those whom you seek to harm.”
Members of the special committee had been handpicked by Chairman Stone. Each had a friend or family member who had heard the Harbinger and subsequently died. Each bore a deep dislike for the hypocrite before them. They were well prepared with details of his nefarious past and alleged criminal activities. They were of a single purpose—to bring the man down.
Uberdorf sat through nearly three hours of insults and accusations before rising, looking like a broken man, and walking out. They knew all of it. They were going to destroy his life and lock him away. As he left the chamber, he spied two figures who watched him with satisfaction on their faces. Uberdorf knew them well: the archbishop of Los Angeles and the televangelist Uberdorf had sought to murder. They’d been invited to the private hanging. He stripped off his monk’s robe and made a beeline for the exit where he lit a cigarette and made a phone call.
Now the mask of propriety had been removed, Uberdorf had nothing left to lose. He told Jerry to call the section leaders together immediately. “Instead of being servants of the stupid Harbinger, we are going to become harbingers ourselves.”
He descended the steps of the capital building at a jog and signaled his chauffeur. A familiar blonde woman stood at the top of the stairs, hands folded at her waist and a triumphant smile on her face. “Smile while you can, bitch,” he muttered, vowing to himself that before anything more could happen to him, he would make sure the bitch was dead.
*
Governor Hemsley had a hit list of his own. It was a list of actions he needed to take to help his state recover from the damage the Harbinger phenomenon had caused. Death had become big business for lawyers and con men. It had been a disaster for the world’s major religions, and it had brought the economy to its knees. Perhaps worst of all, the Harbinger had allowed government to perpetrate crimes against the population.
Fear had been the only winner. And Hemsley knew he couldn’t combat it on his own. He was betting that a conference of experts would find the antidote needed. Scheduled for the second week in December, the conference would bring together legal, religious, and health authorities to draft the strategy he needed.
He paged through the conference folder his staff had prepared with bios and photos of each participant. He had selected the best people he could find albeit limited to California. It would be politically problematic to go beyond the borders of his state and step on the toes of the recently reelected president. The two men were already at odds over a number of matters. The Harbinger had started in California, and that was where it would be resolved.
His staff had advised against making a big deal of the conference with the media. Hemsley had gone back and forth on the issue, deciding in the end to keep it as low key as possible just in case things went south. Sacramento had put out a press release announcing the conference dates but leaving the objective ambiguous. Predictably the media found little interest in a forthcoming meeting of stodgy scientists.
Hemsley turned a page in the folder and saw an exceptionally beautiful woman smiling at him. “Well, hello, Miss Andronikos!” he said, reading the name below the photo. “You will certainly put the lie to any idea my conference is going to be boring.”
*
Angie was delighted to see her grandmother waiting for her at the door. She ran to her, all trace of a limp gone. Lucy and Artemis told Claire all about their visit with frequent additional remarks from Angie. Lucy’s mother loved the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and the whale figurine, but most of all she was happy to have them home.
“Seems you were gone for months so much has changed,” she told them. “The president and our governor are in a verbal fist fight.”
Lucy shrugged. “We’ve kind of been avoiding the news. Hawaii seems to have ignored what’s going on.”
“Well, God bless them for that. It’s not possible to ignore things here.” Claire tossed a dishtowel over her shoulder and wiped her hands on her apron. Lucy and Artemis glanced at each other.
“That explains the real reason for Hemsley’s phone call,” Lucy said. “He needs help.”
Artemis gave Claire a quick explanation of the call she’d received.
“There have been a ton of executive orders in the last week. I’m not sure we have any freedoms left. The detention camps are up and running in all the western states. Everyone has to have a will on file with the new Department of Human Affairs, or as the protestors call it, the Department of Harbinger Atrocities. Banks can wait seventy-two hours before honoring a withdrawal. And most businesses have gone completely online or just plain closed shop. Everyone is afraid.” Claire took a seat on the sofa, looking as if the weight of the oppression was too much to bear. “I haven’t gone out much, but there’s an unnatural quiet everywhere. People are so afraid of getting infected by the Harbinger they are refusing to live their lives. It’s just ridiculous.”
“What did you mean about the governor and the president?” Lucy asked.
“Oh, yes. Governor Hemsley refused to abide by most of the executive orders.” She took another chocolate and popped it in her mouth. “I expect the army to come marching into California any day now.”
Artemis smiled. “The president can’t use the military on citizens.”
“He can’t do half of what he’s doing. But he’s doing it.” Claire stood up and saw Angie come dancing into the room. “There’s my little munchkin.”
“Why don’t you take her to the park, Mom? She’s been locked up traveling all day.”
Her mother’s face contorted in horror. “You can’t be serious, Lucy. The only people who go out these days are either going to work or have some emergency that makes them. The parks are empty. It’s not safe out there. The streets pretty much belong to the criminals.”
Lucy turned to Artemis who had remained silent. “Do you think the world can change that much?”
Artemis indicated with a small smile that she did. She had a strange look in her eyes as if her mind was somewhere else. Angie brought her back to the present, holding out her arms, indicating she wanted to be picked up. Then she put her chin on Artemis’s shoulder and whispered in her ear. “My angel says you shouldn’t worry. We understand.”
Artemis gave her a peck on the cheek. “Tell your angel thank you. Now let’s go unpack and call Wolf to tell him we made it home safely.”
*
“There she is.” Jake leaned against the door jamb of his office and announced Lucy’s arrival for her first day back in the office in nearly two months. Her fellow workers stood and clapped, and she blushed at the attention as she greeted them. There was a stack of mail waiting for her and a hand-lettered sign the others had hung on the partition.
Jake brought her a cup of coffee and complimented her tan. “You didn’t get that in Rome,” he observed.
“The only thing one gets in Rome is pinched.”
He laughed. “It’s good to have you back. How’s Angie doing?”
“Good. She’s good.” Lucy thanked him for the coffee.
He asked her if she wanted to cover the governor’s upcoming conference or the Uberdorf story. The latter was looking to become a full-blown scandal with Assemblywoman Stone after the televangelist’s tail. Scuttlebutt was that Uberdorf had even tried to have her killed but failed. Both stories would require Lucy to travel to Sacramento and she was definitely against leaving her daughter home. She told him the conference might be the best fit. It was the work of only three or four days, and Artemis was involved, so Lucy might have an inside angle.
“Artemis?” he asked. “You know Artemis Andronikos?”
“So do you, sort of. She’s the woman I interviewed at the beginning of this whole Harbinger matter.” Jake still looked clueless. “You saw her. She came in to see me once.”
&n
bsp; His eyes widened in understanding. “You mean that gorgeous gal with the long black hair and legs that go on forever? I thought you said her name was Terry.”
“Temmie. That’s short for Artemis.”
He straightened his tie and waggled an eyebrow. “You, ah, couldn’t get me an introduction to her, could you?”
Lucy laughed. “She’s not your type.”
“Oh, yes she is,” he insisted. “Are you kidding? She’s every man’s type.”
Lucy gave him a peculiar smile. “She’s already taken.”
He sighed. “Figures. But I’d still…”
“You’re a married man, Jake.”
He started walking back to his office. “No one is that married.”
Lucy dug into the stack of mail and pieced together an outline of her next article. The governor’s conference was only a few days away. She could set the stage for the readers. She could promote their local attendee. She paused and reconsidered. Artemis would definitely not like that idea. Maybe if she found a way to talk her into it. She shook her head and wondered how anyone could talk Artemis into anything. She decided to split the difference. She would write the article and not tell Artemis.
Brian came over and told her he was going to work on the Uberdorf angle. Lucy shared the encounter Artemis had had with the reverend and about the car that had been spotted observing her own house. He asked her to keep him informed if anything else happened. They chatted a while about the role Uberdorf played in generating fear and misunderstanding about the Harbinger. Lucy was surprised to learn everyone in the office, including Jake, now considered the Harbinger to be real. She was looked upon as some sort of hero for having been the first to report on it. Lucy wanted to share the information from the health authorities but bit her tongue.
Through the day she came to realize that the staff had not merely accepted the existence of the Harbinger but had fully accepted the cultural change it had brought about. They didn’t rail against the loss of freedoms or the suppression of information. Their hostility, such as it was, seemed directed at the failure of science to provide an explanation. No one could explain what was happening, but the resignation to it was real. Lucy packed up her notes and headed out for the day. The silence that had descended on the community at the beginning seemed to her to have taken root in people’s minds. They didn’t want to think about what they didn’t understand.
She pulled out of the parking lot and saw men putting up a new billboard down the street. The new image was a brown capital letter H with a halo at the top. Beneath the H were the words “The Harbinger is God.”
*
What does “we understand” mean? Artemis asked herself again. Those were Angie’s exact words. She steered the motorcycle along Interstate 74 heading north from San Jacinto for no reason save that there was little traffic at this time of night. The conference was nearly upon her, and she wanted to get her head right. Riding always helped to clear her mind.
The hills rolled past her; sometimes far to the side and sometimes approaching the edge of the winding road like cliffs. The air was chilly, but the only wind came from the force of the bike plunging forward. She considered heading west along Interstate 10 to see if she could locate Uberdorf’s new headquarters but realized she was more interested in thinking than spying and turned toward home. She felt ready to try to put the bits and pieces together.
She parked the motorcycle in the garage and unlocked the entry door. Once she had set aside her helmet and shed her leathers, she turned the shower to hot. She washed away the dust from the ride and then let the water carry away the last vestiges of the doubt and melancholy from the past months. She wanted to be an empty vessel receptive to whatever answers would come. Having donned jeans and a T-shirt, she pinned her damp hair back and went in search of answers.
Artemis browsed the books among Cab’s collection. He’d kept several favorites from their childhood. Her hand ran along the books and stopped at The Secret of NIMH. As children, she and Cab had loved the story with its intelligent, mutated rats. She could see Strang as the wise and kindly Nicodemus and Lucy as Mrs. Brisby, struggling to save her children. But the analogy ended there. Artemis did not possess a magic amulet.
Angie’s words came once again to mind. “We understand.” Browsing through the tattered little book, she reviewed the story. It was about how a sudden mutation enabled the rats to save their children.
“It’s about the children,” she said aloud. “Angie was talking about the children. The children understand the Harbinger.”
By 1:00 a.m. Artemis gave up the journey through Cab’s literary memory lane and went to bed, trusting her dreams to be a superior source of understanding. The dreams had been especially vivid of late, beckoning her to the past. Each dream bequeathed her with a more confident sense of self. It was as if memories were emerging from deep within her, reminding her of what she had always been.
She awakened hours later to the sound of footsteps on the patio. She saw movement and slipped from the bed to the floor just as the doorknob to her patio door jiggled. She rolled to the side and crouched beside the door, quietly disarming the alarm as she waited for the intruder to appear.
A sharp rap broke a glass pane in the door just above the lock and pieces of glass tinkled to the floor. A gloved hand reached through the broken panel and turned the knob. The door opened hesitantly, and she watched a small human figure step cautiously into the room.
Artemis grabbed the intruder by the wrist, bent it back, and forced the person facedown on the bed. The intruder gave out a high-pitched yell of pain. Artemis yanked the ski mask off and was momentarily stunned at the dark, curly hair that flowed out.
“Don’t hurt me!” the woman on the bed begged.
Artemis released her grip on the woman’s wrist. “Get up.”
The intruder turned on her back and sat up. She was crying and babbling, her words a jumbled mess impossible to understand.
Artemis grabbed the front of the woman’s jacket and made her take a breath.
“What did you think you were doing?” she hissed in the woman’s face.
The woman stared at her with saucer eyes. Artemis wore only a T-shirt and panties juxtaposed by a menacing snarl. Her darkened eyes studded with tiny bits of light.
“I was supposed to find something personal-like and steal it,” the intruder sputtered. Looking at the dark, luminous eyes, she had begun to shake.
“And I was supposed to just let you?”
“You weren’t supposed to be here. Jamil says you’re rarely here. You travel a lot, he said, or you spend time at your girlfriend’s or something.”
Artemis released her hold on the woman and began to laugh. It was hard to decide who was more moronic, the intruder or Uberdorf. She folded her arms across her breasts and stepped back.
“What’s your name?”
The woman hesitated. “Fee. It’s spelled F-I but it’s not pronounced like that. I like Fee, like I’m valuable or something.”
Artemis backed up to the open door and ventured a quick look into the yard.
“I don’t suppose Foe and Fum are out there?”
“Wha…?” Fee looked puzzled.
“I meant are you working alone?” Artemis loomed over the bed. “Why did Jamil send you instead of one of his burly Servants?”
Fee shifted nervously. “He said it would be better if I got effing caught. You like women or something like that. You might try something with me ’cuz you know, he said you’re into that kinky stuff and all. But you wouldn’t hurt me.”
She rubbed her wrist, pointing out that Uberdorf had been slightly wrong in his assertion. Artemis pulled Fee off the bed and dropped her in a wingback chair.
“You aren’t nearly kinky enough for me, sweetheart,” she growled.
Jamil Uberdorf was after something, and Artemis wanted to know what. Fee had no clue other than she was to grab a pair of panties or a bra or even a tic tac. Artemis assumed she meant knickknack a
nd let her ramble on. The son of a bitch has put a bounty on me, Artemis managed to piece together from Fee’s bizarre conversation.
“My friend Jose, who was my main affection before Jamil, wants the money he, meaning Jamil not Jose, promised. Anyway, Jose wanted an item from you, and Jamil told me about your big house.” Fee crossed her legs and made a humming sound and then continued. “I have a highly quality personal life myself.”
She gave Artemis a flirty smile, making Artemis’s stomach turn. Artemis took the woman by the hair and pushed her out the way she’d come in.
“Go on. Get out of here.”
Fee stumbled a few steps and then got her footing and dashed around the corner of the house. Artemis taped a sheet of plastic over the broken pane and rearmed the alarm. The best she could figure was that Jamil or one of his minions was into a new kind of game. She stripped the bedding down to the mattress and went into the guest room to catch a few more hours’ sleep.
Chapter Twenty
It had turned out that the capitol building was not a viable target. The huge neoclassic granite edifice in the center of a forty-acre park was well fortified and difficult, if not impossible, to assault. But right next door was a perfect location for what Uberdorf had in mind. The convention center was actually a complex of buildings and shops far more accessible and accommodating to his plans. The hard part was getting the governor to move the venue of his conference there for the final day.
Uberdorf moseyed along the sidewalks that encircled the state capitol buildings, trying to blend in with the other anonymous tourists out to see the extravaganza of holiday decorations. Christmas was in the air but unlike the tourists, the reverend was driven by bitterness instead of goodwill toward men. He seethed each time he thought of that bitch Stone and fantasized what he’d do if she happened to walk by.
He was not wearing his monk’s robe. He rarely did anymore other than when he was on the air. The baseball cap hid his tonsure and he wore a brown hunting vest over his red flannel shirt. An apropos addition, he thought, since he was in fact hunting. Uberdorf had the façade of a holiday tourist, but his focus was altogether different. He pulled the cap low on his forehead and continued his casual walkabout.