Oh, God, if only it doesn’t get worse. Don’t let me die a creeping death, he prayed.
Gillian came out of the bathroom, lay down on the bed again.
Peter, standing by the windows with his left hand in his right, looked at her in awe. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might be affected, waking or sleeping, by the immense power that had killed the woman in the hospital. He had no idea of how it worked or why it worked, why some were immune and others susceptible. He wondered if Gillian knew.
“You slept with me,” she said.
“Not in the Biblical sense.”
“I should have told you—there’s something—well, I think you already know how weird I am. But it’s worse than that. Do you know what a poltergeist is?”
“German word meaning ‘noisy spirit.’ It involves psychokinesis—furniture moving, objects flying around, pictures falling off walls without a hand touching them. I read somewhere that this sort of psychokinetic activity depends on energies generated by the repressed angers or sexual frustration of certain adolescents. There usually seems to be a child around when there’s a poltergeist.”
Gillian turned on her side and looked at him.
“I can read people, you know? Like a clairvoyant.” Peter nodded. “I don’t remember much of what they told me at Paragon Institute. They had me on junk to keep me from thinking too much, and—remembering.” Her voice quavered. “I was somebody else there, the mousiest little—”
“Gillian, honey.”
Her teeth were clenched, but she wouldn’t cry.
“I’m sorry. What I’m trying to tell you—when I’m into clairvoyance, having visions, I become some sort of awful generator. Like a poltergeist, but I don’t smash dishes, I bleed people out. Kill them. I killed my b-best friend.”
“But you’re not to blame.”
“How can you say that?”
“You’re no more guilty than if you’d carried a rare virus around for years, then inadvertently handed it off to a few people who are particularly susceptible.”
“For a virus there are antiviruses. The only cure for me is—” Gillian didn’t finish the thought, but her meaning was clear. Peter came to keep her company on the bed.
“Did you hurt your hand?” she asked.
Peter hadn’t been aware that he was massaging the unresponsive fingers.
“It’s a little sore; nothing to worry about. Gillian, while we were next to each other, asleep or half asleep, did you read me in some way?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Not much to tell. I just had an impression of someone … who you’re very close to.”
“Do you mean Hester?”
“No; it was a man. You’d do anything for him—I think you must love him, more than anyone you’ve ever loved. Even more than Robin. You cried when you had to tell him all about your father. It hurt so bad, talking about those things in your life you’ve tried to forget.”
Peter stared at the windows. The dark diamonds in the curtains were becoming visible as the sky lightened.
“What does he look like?” Peter said, his voice strained.
“He’s small. Old. Not much hair. Just a very ordinary looking person. But he wears reflecting sunglasses; you can’t see his eyes.”
“I’ve had very few friends in my life, Gillian. I don’t know the man you described. You must have dreamed it.”
“Dreams and visions are different,” she said. “He’s real. What happened to your father?”
“I don’t know,” Peter said remotely. Then, “Yes. I do. It was his heart. I was only about ten. Fathers die. And are buried. And you try not to think very much about them after that.”
Peter got up and walked the floor.
“Robin thinks I’m dead. They’ve convinced him of that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have cooperated with them. It’ll be a hell of a shock when he—well, that’s just one more problem. Getting to Robin: that’s all I’m concerned with now. I have to find Robin. Find Robin. Find Robin.”
He pounded a wall with his right fist, hard enough to rouse everyone in the inn. Gillian sat up on the bed.
“Peter!”
He turned slowly, fist poised.
“What’s the matter?”
“You. You’re scaring me.”
Peter sat at the foot of the bed. He made no comment about his wall-banging, but he opened and closed his right hand several times, his head bent in concentration.
“I know very little about the human brain. But I think there may be a way of helping you, Gillian.”
She shook her head. “I’m harmless when I’m doped. Or, I suppose they could do an operation; plant electrodes in my brain and just—turn me off forever. But I refuse to end up like that. I would rather be dead.”
“What affects you might be described as a rare form of epilepsy—”
“Oh, God,” she said listlessly.
“But there’s nothing to be afraid of. Many epileptics are learning, through biofeedback training, to cut off potential seizures by regulating their own brain waves. You may be able to fully control your clairvoyance, and the side effects, the storm of magnetic energy that does the damage.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“A handful of people have extraordinary bodies, which they train to perform feats which are literally beyond duplication. Houdini, the escape artist—or those marathon runners who like to go up and down mountains all day. Not too many years ago I was a member of an elite Navy assault team. I trained myself to swim, twelve, fourteen hours a day. I thought that was pretty good, but there was a little guy in my outfit who could outswim me, and do a thousand sit-ups afterward.”
“What does all that prove?” Gillian said.
“You’re bright and intelligent, not a freak or an idiot-savant, capable of only a single, bizarre mental feat. You and Robin absolutely prove what we’ve always known, that the mind of man is capable of anything. Mentally, you’ve split the atom. All you can think of now is the holocaust, the potential tragedy. But your power is basically more useful than the power of the atom, once you’ve made the effort and acquired the necessary controls. Maybe no one can help you, Gillian. You may have to do it all by yourself. But I think you’re tough enough to give it a hell of a try. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t waste my time on you.”
He wasn’t surprised to see Gillian crying, but the change in her was remarkable; her head was up, face coming clear as a cameo as she turned it toward the dawn windows. She was, just then, as beautiful as ever he’d wished her to be. He watched her come of age and held his breath, afraid that any move on his part, the faintest gesture, might annul the new growth.
“It’s just—too much to hope for; I don’t dare believe it.”
Peter pressed his advantage. “I only said there was a chance, Gillian. But I think it’s a damned good chance, for you and for Robin.”
“Robin, yes: oh he needs help! And soon, before he—”
“If you believe that, then try to communicate with him. It’s vital.” Gillian sat back and dried up; her eyes were alert.
“I’ll try,” she said. “You mean now?”
“No. Let’s move in closer. We’ve got some hard traveling to do.”
Peter rose and took Gillian by the hand, helping her off the bed. For a long moment she leaned gratefully against him. Then she tensed, but tried to be casual as she stepped away. Now her death-bringing fear was instinctive, but at least she had an alternative to hopelessness. Peter smiled thinly. The middle finger of his left hand, which he tried not to let her see, was numb to the first joint. And the dead fingers had begun to curl toward the palm. The small cerebral-vascular accident she had precipitated in his brain was still in progress. He could be detached about his accident, fatalistic. But he worried that the time left would not be enough time.
“I guess you’d like to have a toothbrush,” Peter said.
“And a hairbrush. And—these jeans are so raunchy
. And if I had about nine thousand pancakes and plates and plates of sausage I could eat every bite!”
“Amen. We ought to be able to find a place over on Route Seven that’s serving early breakfast. I’ll provide you with a wardrobe when we get to Poughkeepsie.”
“Poughkeepsie?” Gillian said, with a humorous perplexed tilt of her head.
The travel agent Peter found near the Vassar College campus was every bit as helpful as Peter hoped she’d be.
“It’s the height of the season, and accommodations are very scarce in the Lake Celeste area. How about Vermont? No, forget I said that. Vermont is worse.”
“I thought the snowstorm might keep people away from Lake Celeste.”
“That’ll be over by tomorrow morning; forecast is clear and sunny for the weekend. Let me think. You want to be near Lake Celeste. That limits us to Shadowdown, Great Spirit Mountain or Purviance. Two rooms—impossible. How old’s your daughter?”
“Fourteen.”
“Would she be embarrassed, sharing with her old man?”
“It’s the skiing that counts.”
The agent reached for her telephone. “The manager of Shadowdown is a very dear friend, but I’m going to try this once too often.” She consulted a rolodex, dialed long distance, whistled through her teeth, studied Peter.
You are a lot of trouble, you know that?” She beamed at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you into Shadowdown. I know how it is. I’m raising two kids alone. You make promises, you break promises. Comes a time when you just can’t let them down. Right now skiing with her dad is the most important thing in your daughter’s life. You gotta be a hero to your kids once in a while.”
After making a couple of purchases, Peter met Gillian in front of the Vassar College library. She looked pleased with herself.
“They had the maps. I xeroxed two copies.”
It was a bright cloudless day. The snow was melting, and water ran in freshets in the street. Peter took Gillian’s arm as they strolled together.
He wore a tweed jacket over a wool turtleneck sweater, and when the sun was shining directly on him he felt a little too warm. He kept his left hand in the jacket pocket. Gillian carried her parka. Her cheeks were reddening in the crisp air. She looked like any other pretty student to him; prettier than most. They were just part of the crowd on campus, and no one paid much attention to them.
Peter said, “We’re booked into a resort called Shadowdown. It’s seventeen miles and on the other side of a mountain from Woodlawn College. Our train leaves at one-forty. On Fridays the railroad puts on extra sections for ski buffs. There’s always a big local contingent bound for the Adirondacks, including a lot of unattached college kids.”
“Will MORG be looking for us up there, Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Are we going to disguise ourselves?”
“We’ll take on the coloration of the group. It’s much more effective than you might think.”
“Something’s been nagging me. If they expect you—us—to come, why wouldn’t they take Robin somewhere else? Wouldn’t that make sense?”
“Moving an individual under guard greatly increases the risk factor. I don’t think they’re all that worried. If anything, Childermass may be overconfident. There’s a ski shop a few blocks from here. Do you feel up to walking?”
“I feel fine,” Gillian replied.
At the edge of the campus in the shade of a wall she hung back for a moment, bothered, frankly wistful. So close to the reality and routine of classes, friends, weekend dates, she felt just a step out of her proper life. But what a step, Peter thought, and probably the same thought occurred to Gillian: she turned quickly, and walked on, the hard sun flash through trees taming her blindly, melting down her eyes.
“Friends of mine,” she said, “were going off one deep end after another. Sex, breakdowns. Pressure got to them. I was sorry. But I felt kind of above it all, you know? Insulated. I knew who I was. I knew what I was all about.”
“Are you feeling sorry for yourself now?” Peter asked unkindly.
“… Desperate,” Gillian said, just getting it out.
“That’s okay,” he said, taking her arm again with his workable hand. “That we can use.”
In the ski shop Peter spent nearly seven hundred and fifty dollars to outfit them. He bought, in addition to equipment and clothing for the slopes and for apres-ski, a dark two-piece snowmobile outfit, a helmet and appropriate boots. They left the store loaded down with gear, wearing Scandinavian sweaters and ski pants. Gillian had pinned up her hair, which she wore under a knit cap. She was also wearing pink-tinted glasses with heavy French frames. Peter doubted that her own mother would have recognized her from more than six feet away.
“Snowmobiles are usually banned from ski areas,” Gillian said on the street.
“Shadowdown ought to have quite a few of them for staff use. I’ll find what I need.”
“Is that how you intend to get to Robin? By snowmobile? Even the new ones make a lot of noise—around seventy-three decibels.”
“Under the right snow and wind conditions the sound won’t carry fifty feet.”
“But you’re taking a terrible chance going out in a blizzard—”
“Gillian, it’s the only chance. If things are lousy for me, then they’ll be lousy for MORG. Now let’s cool the questions. What you don’t know can’t hurt either of us.”
They stopped at a luggage shop and purchased a big shoulder tote for Gillian. Back in the car Peter unwrapped the cassette tape recorder he’d picked up earlier. He put in a blank tape and talked for fifteen minutes about himself, about Robin, about MORG.
Then Gillian took her turn. She spoke haltingly to her parents, broke down, recovered and told them exactly where she could be found.
“But what good is this going to do?” she said, while Peter sealed the cassette in a double thickness of manila envelopes.
“Your family—I mean all of the Bellavers—has tremendous power, Gillian. They have access to all the power there is in Washington. But even with MORG in a predicament they’ll have to move quickly along the lines I suggested, in order to protect us.”
“Couldn’t we just call them and tell—”
“MORG will have a tap on their line. But they won’t intercept the mail.”
Gillian addressed the envelope to her parents and marked it for special delivery while Peter asked a cop for directions to the Poughkeepsie post office.
When he was back in the car she said, “Why will MORG be in a predicament?”
“There’s no clear line of succession; Childermass has always been afraid to put too much power in the hands of his subordinates. Cut off the head and MORG’s enemies will devour the body. Then the skeleton should crumble slowly away on the banks of the Potomac.”
“That’s what you’re going to do? Kill Childermass?”
“Yes, if it’s the last thing I ever do,” Peter said.
Gillian blinked several times. She put her head back against the seat, face turned to him. She looked depressed. Peter didn’t question her mood. Neither of them spoke for quite a while.
They arrived at the Conrail terminal across the river from Poughkeepsie fifteen minutes before train time.
Everything that wasn’t essential, including the clothes Gillian had been wearing, was left in the rented wagon. Even so Peter found himself burdened.
“Is your hand worse?” Gillian asked. “You haven’t been using it.”
“About the same.”
“I can carry both pairs of skis,” she said, and proved it, balancing them on one shoulder. They joined a crowd of about one hundred weekenders on the station platform. It was a young crowd, but there were several family groups; Peter saw three men about his age with half-grown children.
He had explained to Gillian that it would be a good idea if they didn’t spend much time together until they were safely in their room at Shadowdown. He anticipated a MORG watch on all the resorts, but with upw
ards of four thousand skiers arriving in the area for the weekend, it was unlikely MORG could pick Peter or Gillian out of the crowd.
Gillian left him with the skis and strolled along the platform. By the time the train was there she had a boy at her heels, whom she introduced as Cary. Cary was on the chubby side but looked like a lot of fun. Peter smiled benevolently.
Thirty-seven minutes later, as the train pulled into Hudson, New York, Gillian said in his ear, “Dad, this is Francis.”
Peter looked up. Francis was tall and wore glasses and braces. He had hair like a caveman. Peter shook his hand and spoke privately to Gillian.
“What happened to Cary?”
“Oh, he’s with us. He’s—” She waved a hand airily toward the coach behind them. “Do you think I should try for three?” she said, flushed with accomplishment.
“Gail, honey, aren’t you overdoing the protective coloration?”
“This is fun. I never picked up boys before.”
Peter’s protection was a man named Galleher. He had three boys with him who were ten, eleven and twelve years old. They were going to Shadowdown. Galleher was an insurance man. Peter lamented the fact that he’d never owned enough life insurance. Peter and Galleher became fast friends at that instant. Peter won his sons over by letting the two oldest beat him at chess. By four thirty-nine, when the train stopped at Fort Edward to let off most of the skiers, Peter, Galleher and the boys were inseparable.
The resorts had sent yellow school buses, leased for the weekend, to pick up their guests for the forty-minute trip into the mountains. Peter got aboard one of the two buses going to Shadowdown, Gillian on the other with Cary and Francis.
At Fort Edward snow was already falling, but lightly: far to the west the setting sun was red and smoky like a fire in a tunnel. By the time they reached Shadowdown it was dark and ten degrees colder; the snow had quickened to a lash.
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