A Fold in the Tent of the Sky

by Michael Hale

  He’d found the old Nazi’s file folder and the document they were looking for with no effort at all. It had taken him less than a minute, but he’d dithered around for a bit making it look to Jane and her linebacker assistant, Blenheim, as if he were having a bit of trouble. Checking out the rest of the deposit boxes in the room: stashes of jewelry, bearer bonds, one box stuffed with thousand-dollar bills. The other half; how they lived. Switzerland. The Alps: the world’s mattress. Stuff it under here; we won’t tell a soul.

  Gold. Lots of gold jewelry. That was one of the things that impressed him about St. Martin too—how much gold there was around. Duty-free, supposedly. St. Martin being a free port since the days of the privateers. Gold doubloons; pieces of eight. Casino chips.

  If he was going to go freelance, moonlight, so to speak (this is what he’d decided; he couldn’t see himself working for these people the rest of his life, playing psychic messenger boy; in the back of his mind too, was the notion that one day he might figure a way to put them out of business—corner the market, maybe—play “Biggest-Fish-in-the-Pond” like Bill Gates), one way of avoiding suspicion would be to focus on lost wealth, rather than lost information. For information you needed a buyer, and what the information was worth to someone had to be negotiated, which added an extra complication he had no time for. He wanted to go after something with a fixed exchange rate. Something like what he’d seen in the basement of that Swiss bank.

  He was sitting at a table outside a café looking out over the harbor—the marina full of boats worth more per square foot than Fifth Avenue real estate—sipping an overpriced rum punch, watching the Citroëns and BMWs circle the square stalking parking spaces.

  Watching, through his mirrored Paul Marco glasses, all the glorious women, multihued, sleek as Thoroughbreds. Beautiful women hanging off these fat old guys wearing Sansabelt polyester slacks. Really together-looking women, women in their thirties, forties maybe—on top of things. Savvy. Which after Betty was becoming a real turn-on to Simon. Jane had given him a look this morning coming out of her office—something she did with her eyes you could bet the farm on, if you let yourself. He’d even put up with all the voices—the noise in her complicated head. The next time she made the mistake of touching him, he would dig a little deeper—find something he could use to make her take more notice of him.

  Lotteries, horse races—you had to be there physically to collect the winnings, even to buy the ticket. Having to deal with expiry dates and the consequences of changing the destiny of the ex-winner—all in all, a risky business. Ask Ron Koch. Going back and coercing a J. P. Morgan or a Henry Ford into writing you into their will—or making you the beneficiary of an insurance policy—neither scenario was hassle-free. Or he could figure out a way to get back to 1950, say, and stay corporeal long enough to buy IBM stock or General Electric dirt cheap. But it would involve a lot of legwork and paperwork—a pain in the ass, really; and none of it very interesting.

  And apart from the life line interference problem (if he had been born rich he wouldn’t have to be here would he? Making sure he was born rich), there were all kinds of complications, legal and otherwise, that could mess it up. Paradoxes, ironies—the dragon eating its own tail. All that stuff.

  Buried treasure was the answer. Gold. (The little kid in him was jumping up and down at the thought of it.) Treasure trove; he’d done his homework, looked into the legalities of it. “Finders keepers” seemed to be what it all boiled down to: if you find anything keep your mouth shut, and if it’s on private property, make sure you don’t get caught.

  He had checked out sunken treasure first; tons of it out there supposedly—over two thousand ships full of ripped-off Inca gold from Peru, gems from Colombia, all lost at sea between fifteen something and eighteen hundred alone. Only a handful of these Spanish wrecks had ever been found. Twenty of them going down off the Florida Keys. But that involved diving for the stuff. Or paying someone to go after it.

  He would stick to buried treasure, like that hoard of Roman coins, silverware, and jewelry a British farmer had dug up in his field a couple of years ago. And Simon didn’t really have to go looking for it, it was all judiciously documented—newspaper accounts, books, TV shows. He would just have to go back in time, witness the discovery, then screw with the original finders’ heads maybe, and make sure they never got it out of the ground. (Sounded like he would need a Calliope Ph.D.) Make sure it would all be there for Simon Hayward when he got around to going after it—the old-fashioned way, with a real shovel.

  Knowing where the stuff was buried wasn’t enough; he would have to muck with the past in some way, interfere with it. Go beyond a remote walkabout and try for what good old Eli called a “corporeal manifestation.” To protect himself he would have to narrow his search down to treasure discoveries before 1970—the year he came into the world—or rather, the year his father came into his mother.

  Another way to do it would be to use his remote viewing skills and just do some searching in the present. But he needed a specific target—that’s one thing he’d learned already at Calliope High. Unless he had a specific location to aim for, he was lost. X and Y coordinates: longitude and latitude. Crosshairs.

  Where to start was another big question. He could get hold of one of Gordon’s dowsing rods, maybe; get him to show him how to use it with a map. That could narrow things down pretty quickly, but it sounded like a lot of dreary work to Simon. He wanted to get his hands dirty, so to speak. As soon as possible. But first he needed to do a little experimentation, see if he could actually go back in time like Ron did and change things. Play it safe, though; fine-tune something not connected with his own life line—but it would have to be something interesting, something relatively high-profile.

  Look but don’t touch. Screw that; he wanted to see if it really worked: “corporeal manifestation in the past.”

  He took the narrow road out of the square up past a small Italian-looking church to the hill and the ruins of the old fort that overlooked the bay. He felt the dampening effect of the rum punch on his balance and the hot afternoon sun on the back of his neck. He was breathing hard when he got to the top, thinking maybe he should do more than the few sit-ups and push-ups in the morning—maybe a few sets of tennis with Jane.

  Simon looked out over the bay and the thatch of masts in the marina, at the huge boats anchored offshore and the sails near the horizon shaped like all the best parts of all the most beautiful women he had ever seen, or imagined; then across to the china-white cliff-hanging palaces of the officially wealthy. He saw no reason in the world why he couldn’t be padding barefoot through one of those in no time at all.

  It was in the cards; he could feel it. And for a second he believed he could jump from the craggy parapet (with its petrified cannon and tourist lectern spelling out a chronological itinerary of official bloodshed) and dive right up into the sky, float up to one of those houses and make himself right at home. Right now, in the flesh—he deserved it.

  He pressed his medal into his sternum as if he were hitting the enter key on a computer; setting the software in motion. Sanctifying his vision.

  21

  That Maurice Chevalier song where he’s digging up all these fond memories and the woman beside him in the carriage keeps contradicting him . . .

  There was something odd about the place all of a sudden, and Peter put it down to the shifting dynamics of the group itself—Ron Koch disappearing like that wasn’t enough to explain it. The mood of the place was different, less informal; people seemed to be preoccupied with their posted schedules, their homework: the large powder-blue envelopes that came with every assignment now—background information, precautions, coordinates, landmarks, fail-safe procedures.

  He had a track record of three successful missions since Ron’s disappearance: a mountain climber lost in the Andes; another plane crash (this session had been much less distressing); a mafia hit man who had turned State’s evidence and promptly disappeared—and he wa
s proud of that but the fun was leaking out of it for Peter: the sense of discovery. All the cases he was assigned to suited his particular talent, of course—he needed a psychometric link to get where he wanted to go: something connected to the target—so most of the time he was like a bloodhound on the trail of disaster and chaos. Not much fun at all.

  None of his remote viewing targets were as risky as the situation Koch had put himself in, but there was a new caveat in big bold letters across the top of the first page of every assignment now, something that had been in the handout Jane had prepared for them but not really emphasized in any follow-up meetings. It concerned the family tree, how a family tree grows larger as you go back in time just the way it does as you go forward—like a tree root: two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents—like that. Never mind all the siblings and such connected to each branch. You could see how tricky it would be if you happened to bump into your grandmother’s second cousin twice removed, say. How the ripple effect could potentially shut down your own life line. He had Jane explain it to him: her honey-and-yogurt voice filling him in on how the dangers associated with interfering with your own life line increase the further back in time you aim for—“Just stay clear of the old Heisenberg problem—the observer altering what’s being observed—and you won’t have any trouble whatsoever.”

  “But you’re talking about a full-blown manifestation. Isn’t that hard to do? I mean Ron Koch was a fluke, right?”

  Back in his apartment Peter took out the information sheet and had a good look at it again, using a pencil to highlight the stuff about family trees. He was earning his keep now for sure—new stuff to commit to memory every day. He was used to that—actors were good with memory work; forgetting a line landed you in an embarrassing situation: a stumble through a scene, a reprimand from the director, say—but never death.

  He wondered whether all this talk about corporeal manifestation—how dangerous it was—was like handing out condoms to high school kids and then telling them not to have sex.

  Anita took him aside one day and asked him outright what he actually remembered about Ron Koch. He told her as best he could, piecing together their first meeting that day he showed up in the lounge; the few times he’d spoken to him after that; their night out with the boys to the casino—and the last time, a chance meeting on the way to his apartment. She interrupted him: “I was there too, remember? You met us coming down the steps of my building? You said something about the wind or the heat or something like that, in a funny English accent.”

  Peter had to admit the details were a little fuzzy but he conceded enough to ease her mind. It was as if he did remember and he didn’t; not one or the other, but both. Two versions of the event: one with Ron and one without. It was an odd sensation, as if the first version were a sort of theatrical presentation of the second—with one extra character. Maybe that was it; his old life as an actor had something to do with it. Back when he did rep theater he could memorize a whole script in a couple of days.

  They sat down at a table in the shade as far away from the others as they could get. Larry was sitting with his pant legs rolled up, dangling his feet in the shallow end of the pool; Blenheim was in his tennis whites today, chatting and testing his backhand on the smoke from Larry’s cigarette.

  “It figures you remember so much more about him than anyone else—I mean, you need a P-link like me, right? It’s a tactile thing.” Anita was nodding. “From what you’ve told me you two were pretty close—and that’s the impression I get from the bits and pieces I remember.”

  “It’s all fading,” Anita said after the waiter had brought them their drinks.

  “What do you mean, ‘fading’?”

  “The image of him, what we—our relationship. Everything, it’s just fading, his face, everything. Like I’m having some kind of Alzheimer’s attack!”

  “You could be just blocking it—you know, to protect yourself—”

  “But there’s other stuff filling the hole; that’s what’s even more crazy, things that I couldn’t have experienced—an afternoon with Jane in Marigot, a special day it turns out, a day off for some reason; at the same time I have this memory of me and Ron going to the beach—all day on a weekday. I remember because we went over to Mullet Bay and there were hardly any people there at all.” She stopped to light a cigarette, shaking it out of the pack so forcefully that it bounced off the table. “I’ve never even been to Marigot—at least not as far as I can remember. It’s like these new memories are superimposing themselves on top of the old ones.”

  “Have you spoken to Jane? Does she remember it? The day in Marigot?”

  “No, I haven’t. I’m afraid to. She already thinks I’m crazy.”

  “No, she doesn’t. We backed you up, remember. Gordon, Larry—Pam wasn’t here till near the end, so she doesn’t count really—”

  “Larry’s changed his mind already.” The look on Peter’s face made her go on. “Yeah. He says he never met Ron. He thought he knew him but now he says he’s not so sure; now all he remembers is the rest of us talking about him.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Will you talk to Jane for me? Today?” Peter could see something in her face, or maybe it was the tactile link doing it—she had reached over to touch his arm—a desperation coupled with something else: distrust. With a garnish of panic.

  “I’ll make sure she tapes it this time.”

  “I feel like one of those mental patients you hear about who’ve been brain damaged, lost their long-term memory. Spend all their time reading the same fucking copy of Reader’s Digest over and over again.”

  Peter couldn’t recall ever hearing Anita curse before. Either she was changing or she’d always talked like that and he was just remembering the wrong version of things. Déjà vu was never like this.

  22

  . . . leaving something witchy

  Simon had settled on a target for his little experiment. The Manson thing: the “Tate-LaBianca” thing. It had always bothered him that Charlie Manson had dragged the Beatles into it, co-opted them into the pantheon of his delusion. He had turned the White Album into his mantra, his national anthem—the soundtrack of his horror movie.

  His favorite Beatles album had always been a raped bride, in Simon’s mind. He wanted to do something to change all that, if he could—tweak history a little bit; fine-tune things. Turn that song, “Helter Skelter,” back into just another straight-ahead rock and roll joyride.

  He wondered what he should wear for the occasion, what was appropriate for this sort of thing. Dark clothes, sure, but what clothes?

  Nineteen sixty-nine. He remembered seeing the film Woodstock on the box, everyone looking like shit—a million street people wallowing in mud and garbage. A fashion sinkhole in his estimation, the sixties—the last part of it anyway. A fishing-through-the-dirty-laundry-basket-for-something-to-wear decade. The Beatles weren’t part of Woodstock so, as far as he was concerned, the music at Woodstock wasn’t any good either. As unkempt and as primitive as the audience. Except for Hendrix and his star-spangled wake-up call.

  To Simon the whole hippie phenomenon, the fashion aspect of it at least, had to do with TV. Kids playing Cowboys and Indians, imprinted by the programs they were weaned on—The Lone Ranger, Rin Tin Tin, Gunsmoke. Charlie Manson and the gang—the so called “Family”—hanging out at the Spahn Ranch, this mock-up of a frontier town main street, a backlot facade of a facade.

  He remembered the same thing happening to the people he grew up with in the eighties—turning themselves into schlocky Star Trek aliens with spiky green hair and Mylar jumpsuits. David Bowie and that band Devo looking like they were auditioning for Lost in Space.

  He liked the part of the sixties before the Flower Power Summer of Love shit happened. The Mod Era. Early sixties Carnaby Street fashions, tight Italian suits, boots with Cuban heels the Beatles and all the other English groups wore back then. Those Mary Quant minidresses with
patterned pantyhose—he especially liked that scene in the movie Blowup where the photographer’s wrestling with these two teenyboppers with long blond hair, playing at pulling off their clothes, tearing up this huge paper backdrop in the process—that part of the sixties. The chicks looking innocent, lollipop innocent. Virginal but desperate to lose it.

  He could try that later maybe—go back and check out swinging London in 1964, see if he could bump into that chick from The Avengers, Diana Rigg.

  He remembered seeing Valley of the Dolls for the first time when he was about twelve. Sharon Tate, gorgeous, blond; wearing Barbie doll clothes. Night after night he held on to an image of her walking into his bedroom, her hair falling on him as he pulled away the sheet; for a long time this was his favorite bedtime story.

  About a year later Simon decided to rent the video—he’d borrowed a friend’s VCR and he was going to make a copy for himself. The video-store clerk, a huge bearded guy with part of one ear missing—Simon couldn’t keep his eyes off it, the jagged edge like a torn piece of lettuce—started venting his opinion of the movie, as if his thumbs-up/thumbs-down was actually worth something to Simon. Telling him all about the shitty plot and how one of the chicks in it had been part of the “Manson thing”—Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, murdered with her unborn son still in her. Saying as Simon went out the door, “He never should have made that film, Rosemary’s Baby.”

  For a while after that whenever he tried something new in his diving, something scary his coach insisted he was ready for, he would see Sharon Tate’s face rushing toward him with the water. The knife sticking her—her and her unborn baby. Just as his own fingers broke the skin of the water. Meniscus, it was called. The surface tension. “Meniscus.” He said it sometimes just to hear the sound of it, walking along the street, repeating it in time to his steps: sharp edges flashing through his brain, infinitely sharp points puncturing.