Bleak History

CHAPTER TWELVE




That same night. Upstate New York. Special Facility 23.

“It's almost a sad thing, really,” General Forsythe was saying, as he and Gulcher walked ahead of the six black berets, the armed guards escorting them into the big, square, concrete courtyard. Their footsteps echoed in the hard-edged, empty space. He didn't immediately explain what was “sad, really.”

It was a warm summer evening, gnats and mosquitoes buzzing in the open air above their heads, but there was something chilly about this half acre of courtyard. The high, floodlit concrete walls seemed to suck up the warmth. The glare from the blue-white lights blotted out the stars. The night sky was like a black ceiling.

The courtyard was part of a sprawling, gray, obscurely institutional facility that, to Gulcher, had a “black budget” feel to it. Black budget, because driving up here he'd seen no signs, nothing but a number, and a gate, and razor-wire fence. And armed guards. “Sad how the yubes need human beings to do their work in this plane of being,” Forsythe continued. He sounded to Gulcher like he was acting all the time. Reading lines from a script. “But they can't do that much without people, not in this world. Because this is the world principally designed for embodied humans. Sad they're stuck with human beings to work with.”

“Is that right?” Gulcher never wasted any time thinking about what was sad, and what wasn't. What was boring, what was frustrating—those were his concerns. He had been both bored and frustrated since surrendering to Forsythe. They'd gone to a federal prison overnight, with the whisperer refusing to respond to him the whole time and Gulcher thinking he was in for hard federal time—but this afternoon he'd been escorted in chains to a military-green bus, most of its windows tinted too dark to see through, with these same unspeaking armed guards, and bused fifty miles north to meet Forsythe here. Just him and the silent marine driver and the six guards on that bus.

Gulcher was having a hard time feeling relieved not to be in prison. He understood prison. But this—it was too much like the stories you heard about extraordinary rendition, or people taken to secret CIA prisons.

Now they stopped in the center of the courtyard, and Gulcher glanced around, thought the courtyard looked disturbingly like some place they stood people against a wall to shoot them.

They sure hadn't hesitated about shooting Jock. Bang, down he went. Going to miss that noisy son of a bitch.

My turn now? Were they going to shoot him here? Enough guys with guns were standing right behind him. He tried to ask the whisperer about it—and got a reply, finally, but nothing helpful. “Hold on, just wait, Greatness is here and Greatness is on its way” was all it would say. “Ya see,” Forsythe went on, “your average yube has to work through humans, most o' the time.”

Something about General Forsythe was bothering Gulcher, something that came out of the mysterious place the whisperer came out of. But Gulcher couldn't put his finger on it. And what was this talk of...

“Yubes? What's a yube?” Gulcher asked. “That like a noob?”

“No, no. Sorry about the jargon—slang really. Messin' with the acronym. U-B-Es— Unconventionally Bodied Entities.”

“Oh, okay. Spirits. Elementals. Subtle bodies and stuff. Sure. I read about it in one of Aleister Crowley's books, first stretch I did in state.”

“Did you read about it in Crowley! Well, I'll be damned. We had Crowley's spirit in a session with Soon Mei, there.” Forsythe nodded toward a nervous, little Asian woman, missing some of her hair, being escorted into the courtyard through a metal door opposite. Her escorts were two guards, a short, heavyset white guard and a tall black one, both with the same corps patches, the same black berets, same nonexpressions. “But Crowley just wanted to whine about things. Didn't care for his situation, inside some big, hungry critter in what they call the Wilderness. Some call it hell, I guess. Old Crowley! He was no use at all. Soon Mei there, though, she's useful. One of the only real mediums we can find. And that peanut-headed fella there, Krasnoff—coming behind her—he's useful as all hell. He's got second sight he can share with you like you were in a movie theater.” Forsythe said theater like thee-ate-er. “It's somethin' to see. And here's our adorable little Billy Blunt.”

Billy Blunt, the only one with his hands cuffed, looked to Gulcher like a middle-school kid. A sour-faced, plump little kid of maybe thirteen, with a bowl haircut, gray sweatpants, flip-flops, and a too-small T-shirt emblazoned with BRAINSUCKER in Gothic letters. Brainsucker was a video game, Gulcher remembered, he'd seen an ad for it on TV.

The kid glared at Gulcher and mimed snapping with his teeth, as if he'd like to take a bite out of Gulcher's face. Then he winked and stuck out his tongue.

“Billy there, we've had him almost two years now, bought him from his parents out in Arkansas. They were glad to be shed of him, I can tell you. They tried behavioral therapy, everything, to no avail. Billy liked to set small animals on fire with kerosene, watch 'em run smokin' around the neighborhood. Got the family into some lawsuits. He can do something like you do—he can take control of people, sometimes. Not quite the same way. They tend to die, soon after. Something about blood clots in their brain. He doesn't control spirits to do the possessin'—he kinda steps out of his body and does the possessin' himself. Killed two of our guards. We're hoping he'll be useful... eventually.”

Right behind Billy was a man who made Gulcher think of one of those old game-show hosts from the 1960s you saw late at night on the Game Channel. He wore funny little glasses and had a contemptuous little smile on his face like he thought everybody else was an idiot. Clearly he was staff around here. He was pushing something that looked like a portable heater, or maybe an air purifier, on a dolly. A long, orange extension cord trailed from the thrumming device, back through the door, and a tiny green light was glowing on it. The dolly, with a waist-high steel handle, made regular squeaking sounds with its wheels, the squeaks reverberating like dolphin noises in the courtyard spaces.

“And that's Dr. Helman with the suppressor. He keeps that little machine pretty close to Billy. The boy might be our most dangerous resident.”

“I think that's unlikely, don't you?” said someone, behind them. A soft, teasing voice that  sounded like it was coming through clenched teeth.

Gulcher turned around, thinking one of the guards had spoken out of turn.

But it was somebody new. He was a lean, medium-size young man, with shoulder-length sandy hair, bright blue eyes—and a funny mouth. Kind of a squiggle, that mouth. Like it was struggling to keep its shape. He wore army-style cammies, boots, a khaki shirt, a short military jacket—same jacket the men with black berets had, but without any insignia except that same patch, on the left shoulder, that showed the knight shielding the world. The guy tilted his head a little bit forward, just a little, but you felt like he was going to butt you with it.

“So who the f*ck are youT Gulcher didn't like people sneaking up on him.

“Aren't you the rude one,” the stranger said, with that squiggly smile, lazily scratching his head— and not sounding offended. “My name's Sean, is all you have to know.” He didn't open his mouth much when he spoke. Almost kept his lips shut. “You'd be our new protege—Mr. Troy Gulcher.”

“I'm nobody's protege,” Gulcher said.

“He means you're our new student, really,” Forsythe said.

“You don't have to say what I mean,” Sean said, in the same soft voice. He smiled at Forsythe, then turned to look at Dr. Helman. His look became sleepy, as if he were about to nod off, as he gazed at Helman.

The doctor seemed to trip, would have fallen except he had a grip on the dolly handle. Helman shot a glare at Sean, as he got his feet under him again. Sean chuckled.

Gulcher watched him—and Sean, aware of the scrutiny, gave his twisty little grin and started to stroll around Gulcher, circling him just out of reach. Walking all the way around so that Gulcher had to turn around to keep an eye on him.

Forsythe looked at Sean with hooded eyes and spoke with an edge in his voice that Gulcher hadn't heard before. “Sean—we need to keep ourselves contained, and directed. We do not wish to waste energy. This man is valuable to me. To all of us.” Forsythe had sounded friendlier when he'd warned that the sharpshooters might take Gulcher out.

There was that feeling, again, Gulcher got, looking at Forsythe. Like someone was hiding behind Forsythe, peeking over his shoulder; like something on the Nature Channel—the way a wolf would peer over the stump of a tree. Only there was nothing you could see. Not quite.

“Sure, he's valuable,” Sean said, still circling, still looking Gulcher over. “He's another valuable machine, like the rest of us.” Said with a hoarse whimsicality through clenched teeth.

Sean ended his circling by standing beside Forsythe, looking toward Billy Blunt. “We're like those cell phone towers that pick up signals and send them on. That's all we are.”

“The hell you say,” Gulcher snorted.

“Funny you should use that expression,” Sean said lightly.

“In certain respects, Sean is right, with his phone-tower analogy,” Forsythe said, watching as soldiers set up folding chairs for the three freakish “containees.”

Gulcher had heard the word containees in an earlier conversation with Forsythe. And he didn't like the sound of it.

He didn't want to be contained.

He watched as Dr. Helman moved the suppressor completely out of range of the three containees —and well away from Gulcher. He noticed the guards bringing their guns to bear on the containees when the suppressor was out of range.

“They going to use those guns?” Gulcher asked.

“Not unless they have to,” Sean said, his voice barely audible. He reached up and caught a moth in his fingers and slowly crushed it.

“Talented containees,” Forsythe went on, “are instruments for other beings to act through—and I suppose you can say it's kinda like being a useful machine. But of course that's what you call your oversimplification.”

“I could do this, Forsythe,” Sean said. “We don't need him. This Gulcher thing.” Gulcher ground his teeth. This Gulcher thing?

“If you could have done it, Sean,” Forsythe said vaguely, “you would have. You have...other specialties. And sure as the devil it's a process of specialization. We need Mr. Gulcher here for this.” “Could end up a mess,” Sean muttered. “But come to think of it, that might be entertaining.”

Forsythe shrugged and called, “Are we ready, Dr. Helman?”  “We are!”

“Then, Mr. Gulcher—come over here with me, please.” Forsythe led the way to a seven-pointed star, about four feet across, painted in black on the concrete floor. “If you would stand on the mark there...thank you. I believe you require no special focusing devices.... So if you will simply stand here and”—he lowered his voice, speaking in a tone only Gulcher could hear—”reach out to the Great Power you call the whisperer.”

“It hasn't been answering me much lately. Just once and that was...almost no answer.”

“I believe, for this experiment,” Forsythe said confidently, “you will get an answer.”

Again Gulcher had that sense of something peering at him from behind Forsythe. Or maybe from inside him. He was beginning to suspect what that might mean.

Gulcher had been briefed, barely, on what he was to do. Now he stood on the appointed spot and looked at the three containees sitting in folding metal chairs with their backs to him. The spotty-headed Asian woman on the left was fidgeting, the Krasnoff guy in the middle was slumped like he was in despair, the fat kid sitting on the right, no longer in handcuffs, was picking his nose with an air of boredom. They sat about forty feet from Gulcher, facing the concrete wall. The soldiers and Dr. Helman had gathered behind Forsythe. Gulcher was supposed to apply the whisperer to these three losers in the chairs, and do it in a specific way.

It occurred to Gulcher that if he contacted the whisperer, maybe he could get it to obey his wishes again and send influences into Forsythe and the guards and that Sean a*shole—Gulcher really didn't like that f*cker—and get them to take each other out, like at the prison, then he could get out of this place, be on his own again.

“And if you are considering any digression from our agreed-on course of action here, Mr. Gulcher,” Forsythe said suddenly, giving him that hooded-eyed look he'd given Sean, “why, it won't work, and we'll be forced to punish you as we punish all problem containees.”

The general had shown an ability to look into his mind, Gulcher remembered. Seemed like the old prick was doing it again.

Okay, Gulcher thought, there's guns all around me, and the whisperer isn't doing what I want it  to all the time. But it seems to need me to talk to it here. Maybe I can play along, do something useful for these spooks and get some kind of good deal for myself in return.

“That'd be fine and dandy, Mr. Gulcher,” General Forsythe said, in a more courtly tone, stepping back out of the way.

Gulcher didn't like people getting into his head that way. But he suppressed imagining what he'd like to do about it. And he went to work.

He looked at the back of Krasnoff's head. He focused, calling out, inside, to the whisperer, using the names he'd been given. Wondering for the first time why there was more than one name. Focus, focus! The ethereal steam formed; the man-faced serpents wriggled through it. He stretched out his astral hands and the transparent serpents followed...

Finally converging on Orrin Krasnoff; making him sit up straight and cry out. “These containees are difficult for us to control. “ Forsythe had told him, on the way to the courtyard. “Often they'll do just the opposite of what we want—especially the youngster. Control is what you do, with your...special interface. So what we're gonna do, here, Mr. Gulcher, we're gonna use you as a channel for forces that will control these problem containees. You, my friend, are uniquely suited to be of use. There is something Krasnoff does not want to look at. You will control him, make him look into the darkness between the worlds.”

Gulcher felt abstract, now, like he wasn't even here. He felt like he was watching from a million miles away, though he saw it all crystal clear up close.

All the while, the energy of psychic invasion built up around him—until, suddenly, it found an outlet through Krasnoff.

Who screamed—and the scream cut off abruptly, stopped by the projection from Krasnoff's open mouth and eyes, the three beams converging on the wall next to the metal door: a circular, swirling image, edged with multicolored sparkles, a projected vision of a place where shapes constructed and deconstructed constantly; where buildings grew out of buildings, like growths of crystal in fast action, clusters of asteroidal shapes that weren't made of stone at all—you could tell, some way, that it was  the stuff thoughts were made of—and boiling out of holes in these constructs were nasty shapes chasing others: some, the pursuers, were decidedly demonic, though in some way humanoid; the pursued were vaguely human, but also buglike.

“One perspective on the Wilderness,” Sean muttered dismissively, behind. The general hushed him.

Krasnoff writhed, as if trying to escape this vision; as if by projecting it, he was within it.

Then the metal door opened. Three women came through into the courtyard—were pushed through from outside the door, really—wearing identical prison-style, institutional-blue shifts, identically bobbed hair, and blue canvas slippers. The door closed after them with a muted clang. The women huddled together and looked around in confusion.

One of the women was blond, with high cheekbones and small eyes. Russian-looking, to Gulcher, or Ukrainian. The other two, much smaller, looked like they might be from Thailand or Laos, one of those places. They all looked scared but also dulled, and resigned. Like they'd been through a lot before they got here. Gulcher knew the type. They were probably sold women, who'd belonged to brothels. What the Internet news called sex slaves. Eastern Europe and Asia had a great many of them. Probably these spooks had bought some for this experiment.

Gulcher didn't really care. He'd learned not to, a long time ago.

“It's your turn, Billy,” Forsythe said.

The Blunt kid was writhing in his seat—then he jumped up and pointed a finger at the blond Eastern European woman...and his face went blank. And the blond woman went rigid in response, her back arching, then she sank to her knees beside one of the other women, who shrieked and drew back —but the blond had the shorter of the Asian women by the knees, was gripping her hard, was biting into the woman's 7egjust below the hip.

The girl screamed and pounded on the blonde's head but couldn't get her loose. Blood ran down the Asian woman's quivering leg. The third woman tried to back away, but a guard stepped in and shoved her back in place.

Billy Blunt's jaws made biting, chewing motions. The bitten woman squealed and struggled to  escape.

“No, Billy,” Forsythe said mildly. “That's not what you were told to do. Now, Gulcher...control him. Control Billy, in turn.”

Gulcher whispered to the whisperer and gestured, and the steamshapes swirled over Billy...and entered him. Let her go.

The blond woman Billy was controlling jerked back from the Asian woman, her mouth rimmed in blood. She turned to glare at Forsythe.

The bitten woman struck the other woman resoundingly on the back of the head, knocking her down. The blonde lay stunned—and the wounded woman staggered back, hunched down, clutching her injured leg, murmuring in her own language, rocking back and forth.

The other Asian woman turned and ran—and stopped, suddenly, standing a step away from the swirling image on the wall, caught up, gazing at it, fascinated, gawping...then she gasped and her back arched and something ectoplasmic slipped out of the top of her head...and the ghostly shape went into the image of the Wilderness projected on the wall, as a solid person would step out of the open door of an airplane to fall through the sky. She was staring at the vision of the Wilderness—and she was in the image too: her soul, floating along, tumbling, clawing at nothingness. Even as her body stood there shaking with rigidity, ogling at the image of her own soul drifting away.

“This ain't right,” Forsythe muttered. “Gulcher—take control of the woman sitting in the chair there, Soon Mei. Bring that woman's soul back. Control!”

Gulcher was having trouble maintaining control over Billy and Krasnoff. But he sent a whispering spirit toward Soon Mei. Felt resistance. Felt it thrust at her...then...her back went rigid.

And there was an explosion of ghosts.

The apparitions erupted from the swirling circle on the wall, drawn to the patchy-headed little medium sitting in the chair, Soon Mei. Figures of wailing translucent gel were whirling around her— dozens of them becoming scores more, becoming hundreds, lost spirits compacted into a swirling, living vortex; terrified faces, translucent and tormented, all around Soon Mei—who jumped up, screaming, tearing at her hair, running toward the guards, babbling...

And one of them, prompted by a gesture from Forsythe, knocked Soon Mei down with a gun butt. She fell onto her side, weeping. The ghosts circled in the air over her, a living ectoplasmic vortex, howling.

Krasnoff was standing, shaking, eyes screwed shut, slapping at his own face.

But the Eastern European woman was up then, blood on her mouth like sick lipstick, crouching, turning toward them, her eyes savage, her blond hair wild—Gulcher's control of Billy, who controlled the woman, incomplete. Gulcher struggled to hold her back.

The armed guards tensed. But Forsythe gestured at them to hold off and shouted, “Gulcher—let them all go, release them!” Gulcher was glad to obey. He was way out of his depth.

As Gulcher released Krasnoff, the image on the wall shrank away, as if swirling down a drain... and sucking the eruption of ghosts with it. They were drawn into the drain of the wall and were gone as the image became a pinpoint...and vanished.

Krasnoff collapsed, wriggling on the concrete floor. The Asian woman who'd lost her soul in the image crumpled onto the ground. Lay sprawled on her back, staring.

Dead.

Billy, freed from Gulcher's uneven control, started toward Forsythe and Gulcher, raising his hand, the woman with the blood on her mouth stumbling ahead of him, near the sprawled form of Soon Mei.

Billy was sending the blonde to attack them, Gulcher realized. “Doctor!” Forsythe said sharply. “The boy—the suppressor!”

Helman rushed the dolly with the machine on it between Gulcher and Billy Blunt, and the boy seemed to shiver and shrug...and turned away, giving up, when the machine got close.

The blonde sank to her knees, her eyes going blank. She hugged herself, muttering in some foreign language, near Soon Mei. Who lay there chattering in her own dialect. The surviving woman from Southeast Asia came to sit next to them—some impulse of moral support—weeping and babbling. Three women crying out in three separate languages, voices overlapped and tangled.

The fourth woman, the dead one, just stared emptily at the blackened sky.

Billy sighed loudly and simply sat down on the ground, talking to himself. “This totally like f*ckin' sucks, man. I wanta be back in my cell. I got a hella headache, dude.”

Gulcher closed his eyes. He felt sick himself. Like someone had injected sludge into his veins. Like he was tainted.

“Well,” said Sean, behind him, “there you have it, General. Like I predicted. A goddamned fiasco.”

“Not at all,” said the general. “I'll admit it was a mite messy—as you predicted. Pressure on Soon Mei created some kind of backlash, opening a doorway we never intended to open. I did not anticipate losing that subject's soul. Billy proved to be more resistant than we supposed. But the principle was proven. We had control—and then we lost it. But we made progress. We just need to refine our approach. There were a few damned good moments there, when the one who came through Gulcher controlled Krasnoff—and to some extent, Billy and Soon Mei. The image of the Wilderness showed us the possibility. The mass visitation. We could use that, on purpose, if we wanted to. Send a mass

visitation against those who get in our way, and then the Great Wrath will be...” Forsythe let the sentence trail off, unfinished.

Gulcher just closed his eyes and wished he could smell something besides blood and fear.

Where the hell have I gotten myself to?




***




RIGHT ABOUT THAT TIME. Generals Swanson and Erlich. In that same Pentagon office, staring into the same computer surveillance window. But they were looking through another set of cameras, a new vantage on the Containment Authority: the courtyard of Facility 23.

General Erlich toyed with a cup of coffee, untasted and gone cold. “Can we be sure Forsythe doesn't know we're monitoring him like this?”

“I don't think he'd have said some of the things he did, if he knew,” General Swanson pointed out, unwrapping a piece of chewing gum. Hard to find Juicy Fruit anymore. Had to order it online. He folded the stick into his mouth, chewed meditatively a moment. “That thing about those who get in their way. Who'd that be? Us maybe? The senators that are down on this project? Foreign enemies? Who? Forsythe knows we're trying to talk the president into closing this thing down.”

Erlich frowned. “Does he? Who's told him?”

“He just always seems to know what we talk about with the commander in chief.”

Erlich put the coffee cup down on the desk. “I need to see that footage over again. Not sure what I saw. I don't think the cameras picked up everything. Looked like something coming out of the wall. Looks like they've got experimental subjects we never approved. Looks like one of those subjects died. Definitely got a woman going insane, chewing on someone's leg. And that fella Gulcher. You know what he's done? And he's working for us?”

“You know what they'll say about that,” Swanson said. “Might be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.'“

“Is he? I'm not sure Forsythe's our son of a bitch. So maybe Gulcher isn't ours either.” “You weren't bothered by that remark, about those who get in his way?” “Could be talking about the Iranians, for all I know,” Erlich said, shrugging. “What if he meant us?”

“You and me?” Erlich took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Even if he didn't...this thing sure looks like it's spinning out of control. Let's look at it again, slow, see what we can see.”




***




ABOUT HALF AN HOUR later, in Manhattan. The same night.

Bleak and Loraine were standing outside an ordinary apartment building in uptown Manhattan, under a softly buzzing streetlight. The apartment building was relatively modern; yellowish plaster, impregnated with little stones, covered the facade. Only one streetlight on the block worked. Maintenance had been shifted to privatization, in most of America, so some neighborhoods kept their streetlights and fire hydrants up, and some wouldn't pay the company fees.

Bleak stood there, waiting, watching the sky. Wondering again if he was doing the right thing, bringing Loraine here.

Doing the right thing? Hell, this could be insanely—catastrophically—wrong. The meeting had been Shoella's idea in the first place. With the coming of the detector and that close call on the Jersey dock, Shoella and Oliver had gone to Scribbler, who channeled the words the recruiter should be recruited—and he made it clear the “scribble” meant Agent Sarikosca. Loraine.

It was Bleak's idea to bring Loraine to Scribbler. But Bleak was having second thoughts. This  woman was an agent of CCA. And the CCA preyed on ShadowComm. And there were ShadowComms in this building....

Shoella had surprised Bleak by agreeing Loraine should come. “Why we got to be afraid of them all the time?” Shoella had said. “If we had someone we could trust—someone who saw we could work on the outside, maybe even help them, on some things, if they trust us to be free while we did it, we could stop hiding. “

It was a compromise. Some in ShadowComm could choose to keep their freedom—in exchange for doing some work, at times, for the government...i/Shoella and Bleak could make some kind of diplomatic connection with the government.

If Scribbler's scribbles approved it, on his meeting with her—that'd go a long way to convincing the other ShadowComms. But it would require trusting CCA.

And then there was the other reason Bleak had gone to Loraine—to find out about Sean. If some prototypical form of CCA had abducted his brother, how could he do business with them? For the greater good? But maybe it was the only way to really find Sean.

“We waiting here much longer?” Loraine asked, as an ambulance went warbling by on Second Avenue, headed uptown.

“We're waiting for someone. We can't go inside till she gets here—or I get some other signal to go in. Or to get the hell out of here.”

The sidewalks were nearly deserted, though lights burned in the buildings, and hip-hop played from an open window across the street. Bleak watched a bent, white-haired, old woman laboriously pulling a bag of groceries in a small metal cart. Another ten steps and she turned toward a limestone-fronted tenement, maneuvered the cart clankingly down the stone stairs to a basement apartment, descending out of sight.

Loraine looked at the sky. “We shouldn't be out here too long. I don't think we're being surveilled at this point, after changing trains three times, but...”

“We won't have to wait long now.”

A blue-and-white NYPD patrol car cruised by. Bleak wanted to turn away, hide his face, in case CCA had pulled strings to get an APB out on him. But instead he looked down the street, as if  impatient for someone to meet him. Which he didn't have to fake.

The cops looked them over and moved on.

“What worries me,” Bleak said in a low voice, when the cops turned the corner, “is that maybe the cops have Lucille Rhione. Maybe she accused me of being a murderer. Maybe there's an APB out on me—CCA might do it that way. Easiest way to pull me in. Then they get me from the cops.”

Loraine shook her head emphatically. “No—we don't want the police bringing you in unless it's way, way necessary. It was a big hassle, with Gulcher, squaring it with all the interested parties. A lot of lies had to be told about where he was going to be—” She broke off, seeming to think she was saying too much; an expression of irritated self-reproach on her face. “Anyway—if the police try to take you, you might be forced to use your gifts. And who knows what might come out in the media. We don't want the general public knowing about that. You could get yourself shot too. You're too valuable to risk to the police.”

“If that's true, it's one less thing to worry about. That leaves four hundred other things.” Bleak licked his dry lips. It was a warm night. After the fight with Gandalf, the conference with Shoella, then getting Agent Sarikosca here on all those trains, Bleak was hot, tired, and he badly wanted a glass of beer. Maybe a pitcher of beer. The shooting had left him with a clutching feeling; a feeling that was still there. He wasn't much moved by death, especially not the death of a speed dealer. But shooting someone in the head brought back that morning in Afghanistan. Isaac dying, Bleak running to find the mortar, killing another militant because there was no one else to kill...then killing the militant's son. Shooting a teenage boy in the head. Yeah, the kid was shooting at him at the time. But the kid was crying with grief as he fired at Bleak. Yelling the Afghan word for “father.”

Bleak felt nothing that day. But later...the feelings came.

Somehow it was all one thing. Isaac getting killed was of a piece with shooting that kid. As if it were all one shooting.

It didn't help much to know there was life after death. Not when he also knew that people were  trying to live out their lives for a reason. The spirit of the young militant he'd shot was probably still wandering in that village. Maybe he should have tried to talk to him, after. But that wouldn't work. Then there was the sheer violence of the thing—right through the head...and the blood...the smell of blood and shattered brains...

Think about something else.

Loraine Sarikosca. Maybe she was an enemy, maybe not. But he liked looking at her; he liked wondering about her. And he felt something extraordinary when they were together. A desire to trust her that he felt to the core of his being. As if he'd known her all his life, and beyond this life. “Okay with you if I call you Loraine?” he asked impulsively. “Calling you Agent Sarikosca...” He shook his head. “It's not discreet and...the agent part gives me the willies.”

“Call me Loraine if you want.” She glanced at him and looked quickly away. “If you don't mind that I continue to call you Bleak.”

Bleak wondered why that was important to her. But all he said was “I was looking at some of your books, before I sprang my visit on you.”

“And my records. You're out there poking through my things—”

“Hey—you're detecting me, I'm detecting you. You've got Jane Austen, Fielding. Dickens. O'Brian and Cornwell. I've read those. And the nonfiction. The Occult by Colin Wilson. Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe. Some Richard Smoley, some Alice Bailey, Jay Kinney—some Leloup. You're pretty well read in the occult.”

She looked down the street. “I had a fascination with the supernatural. When it seemed so far away. So unreachable. Now I feel like...”

“Wish it was still...Hidden?”

“Sometimes. I'm still not used to seeing it right there in front of me.” She looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “I wouldn't think you'd bother with books on the occult, Bleak. Being up to your neck in it.”

“I went through a period of trying to understand it better. Wondering what other people understood of it.”

“And those books—are they right?”

“Don't you know? You've got all those...pets of yours, at CCA.”

Her cheeks reddened. “They're not my...1 don't have that much interaction with them. Tell you the truth, I haven't been with CCA that long. I was...1 was with another agency before CCA. When I transferred, they put me to work right away. I'm getting kind of a crash course. I'm not exactly sure why they're putting me on...” She got that look of being annoyed with herself again. “So—are those books right about the supernatural or not?”

He waved vaguely at the buildings around them. “It's like this island—if you'd never been to Manhattan, and you've just arrived by sea, and went around the island in the sightseeing boat, would you know Manhattan from that? No. You'd have an impression of it, though, in some ways. You'd have a sense. But you'd figure a lot of things wrong too. Or—like that story of the blind men and the elephant. Each one of them gets it partly right.”

He saw she was trying to read the words printed on his T-shirt—he opened his unbuttoned white shirt so she could read it. “Are you in a motorcycle club?” she asked, perplexed by the T-shirt. “The... Black Rebel Motorcycle Club?”

“That's a band. I collect rock-band T-shirts. Mostly old bands. Most of them are stored at...” He broke off, not wanting to say Cronin's name. “A friend's house.”

She peered down the empty street. “You don't want to tell me who we're going to meet here?”

“Someone I trust who...has gifts. A certain woman. And someone we call Scribbler, who uses automatic writing, to get insights. Psychic insights. He doesn't always know what the 'scribbles' mean. It always turns out to be meaningful though. Sometimes it sees the future. Sometimes it sees things we can't see in the present. Let's leave it at that.”

She pushed at a flattened beer can with the toe of her shoe, her tone way too casual as she said, “On the subway you asked about someone at CCA. I didn't answer. There's probably not much I can tell you. But maybe you should ask me the question anyway.”

Bleak chuckled. “Sure, so you can learn something from the question. But I'll play. What do you know about Sean Bleak? I heard a story from one of your people—or he used to be one of your people’s—that Sean was...” He found it hard to actually get the words out. “That he was there. Alive. At one of your facilities, I guess. Being used for something.”

Loraine seemed relieved. “I can tell you that I've heard of someone named Sean there, who seems to be important to...to my superiors. But I've never met him. I'm supposed to meet him—it hasn't happened yet. I don't know his last name. I can only read the files they give me. Some files are 'need to know.'“ She frowned, as if she'd said too much again. Then seemed to shrug it away. “Sean Bleak? He's a relative?”

“If it's him...he was my brother. Fraternal twin. Or...he is my brother. I don't know which. I find it hard to believe he's...” Bleak shook his head. “Too long a story for right now.”

He heard a discordantly unfriendly squawk and looked up to see Yorena circling overhead. “Here comes one animal that doesn't like me. Only it's not exactly an animal, really. You see it up there? Probably means her mistress is about to arrive.”

A yellow cab turned onto the street. The cabbie, wearing a turban, pulled up nearby, next to a fire hydrant. Shoella paid him and got out, and as the cab drove away, she stood there, a long moment, scowlingly looking Loraine over. As if she wanted Loraine to know she didn't trust her.

Maybe that's good instincts, Bleak thought. Simple street smarts. Ishouldn't be this friendly with Agent Sarikosca either.

Yorena flapped down—making Loraine take a quick step backward in mild alarm—and settled on Shoella's right shoulder.

“I'm Loraine.” Smiling slightly at Shoella. “Loraine Sarikosca.”

Shoella didn't answer. Finally she said, turning to Bleak, “The bon Dieu knows if we do right. If she's coming, bring her upstairs, cher darlin'.”

She twitched the big, dark red bird off her shoulder, and the familiar leaped into the air, to flap raucously overhead. “Yorena, you wait on the roof, I call you soon. Scribbler, he don't want you in there.”

Shoella watched the bird fly off, then turned to look at Loraine. “But you—I suppose you got to come in.”










John Shirley's books