08 Illusion

by Frank Peretti

  After 32, then 35.76 were no bigger deal.

  Now. Could she control all these blocks and be distraught? She kept driving the blocks and driving the blocks as she let one more thought come in, that of dangling at the end of a cable 150 feet off the ground. That didn’t make her distraught, just nervous. She thought of Dane, the aspens, the white fence, the big ranch house on the hill …

  Oh, brother. She could sense her Deltas and Bakers and Candlestick Makers falling off.

  Yep. Parmenter was frowning as he watched his monitor and listened to his headset.

  “No, no,” said Moss, “she’s holding steady on the accumulated mass, but her corridor isn’t moving. She still has a discrete timeline.”

  “Should I say anything?” Parmenter asked.

  “You could try saying ‘Boo.’”

  She tried remembering Clarence and Lemuel, how conniving they were, how much it hurt to be zapped with a taser and jabbed with a needle. That got her dander up, but that was anger more than fear. She thought of escaping from them and running back to the ranch—the ranch? Where’d the ranch go? She’d lost it.

  “Umm …” Parmenter said. “Is there something I could do that would frighten you?”

  The blocks broke free and clunked to the ground. Mandy bent in frustration, hanging her head. She felt so tired.

  Parmenter got something from Moss through his headset. “Yes, right, I’m getting the same thing here.”

  Moss scanned his monitors once again, a curious smile on his face. “Well, she is getting there, she’s a little closer each time.”

  Parmenter came back, “But how long can we keep this up? The others are …” He lowered his voice, apparently to keep Mandy from hearing. “You know the situation there. We can’t keep DuFresne and his bunch on hold forever, and we certainly can’t keep a lid on what we’re attempting. Sooner or later it’s going to come to light and we’ll miss our chance entirely.”

  Moss nodded, smiling more broadly. “I know. I think you’re right.” He looked over his shoulder.

  Immediately behind him, face lit by the monitors, was Dr. Martin DuFresne. He was hearing every word over a speaker and nodding in amused agreement with Parmenter’s appraisal. Next to DuFresne was the man they all referred to as Carlson. The project team knew little or nothing about him except that he was the one who brought large sums of cash in a briefcase on a regular basis and acted as if he and the people he represented owned the whole project, which, for all practical purposes, they did.

  Moss continued, “But I think she has enough on her mind right now. She has a premiere tomorrow. You can’t expect her to handle all this tonight.”

  Parmenter nodded to Moss, who couldn’t see him, then addressed Mandy. “You’ve done very well, just moving along step by step. Don’t be discouraged. We’ll get there.”

  “We’d better,” she said as she peeled off the sensors.

  Dane sat alone in Preston’s dining room going over his checklist one last time, page … after page … after page. Every item was already verified and checked off twice by himself, Preston, and Emile, but if he wanted to sleep at all tonight, he would have to go over it one more time just in case that one little thing that slipped everyone’s mind would come to his. By God’s grace, if it was there he’d think of it before he fell asleep.

  The doorbell rang. At nearly eleven P.M., that did not feel right. Preston was on the road somewhere between LA and Vegas, and of course he wouldn’t ring the doorbell. Dane wondered if Preston kept any firearms in the house, but it was a little late to be thinking about that, and maybe a little paranoid.

  He went to the door and looked through the peephole.

  Well … !

  He had to crack the door open and put his finger to his lips—Parmenter said the house might be bugged—but after that, he flung the door open and gave Arnie Harrington a hug.

  * * *

  It was Parmenter’s turn to sleep overnight at the lab; he’d worked and bargained and made offers to make it happen that way, and Moss seemed only too happy to sleep in his own bed that night.

  Well and good. Parmenter had things to do he didn’t want anybody to see, such as weighing himself on a medical scale he’d borrowed from upstairs, then combing carefully through his office for his notes, files, and hard drives, all the essential secrets of the Machine’s development and how it worked. He put them all in a box, then weighed himself holding the box.

  Not quite.

  He threw in a paperweight and two manuals.

  Too much.

  He took out the paperweight.

  Okay. Within limits.

  Just after midnight, two semitrucks exited the Las Vegas Freeway and turned up a street one block from the Orpheus. They belched, rumbled, and hissed onto the rubble-strewn vacant lot and parked side by side. Preston Gabriel and two of his crew hopped down from the cab of the first one; three more of his crew climbed down from the cab of the other. They would sleep in the trucks that night, but first they had a lot of prep to do.

  Dane took Arnie for a walk through the neighborhood and told him enough to keep him awake worrying. The rest, he supposed, would have to wait until a day long after tomorrow when the story would have an ending. With Arnie tucked in on the living room couch, Dane turned in, easing into the big four-poster in Preston’s guest bedroom. He set the alarm for six in the morning, clicked off the lamp …

  And lay sleepless for a little while, dwelling on an image that hovered in his mind—a snapshot that still existed in an album back in Idaho: Mandy, not in a glimmering gown on a big stage, exulting in the thrill and applause of her audience, but in pants and a top she made herself on a portable sewing machine they took everywhere with them on the road, standing at an outdoor picnic grill in a public park, cooking up their dinner. They had no roof over their heads other than a travel trailer, no future beyond a month or two of low-paying festivals, county fairs, or Grange hall gigs, and yet there she was, flipping burgers and boiling green beans, her heart chained to his for the distance. That was forty years ago.

  Only the Lord God could have brought him such a woman. He never could have found her himself, never could have known hers would be the kind of love that would last so long and still be so tenacious despite a gulf of age and memory. She was a kid who didn’t even know who he was, but still she came looking.

  He hadn’t thought of it in these terms until now, but maybe this was why he always opened doors for her, let her take his arm when they walked, stood when she entered the room. Loving her had always been easy, but somewhere along the way he just knew he had to honor her.

  Mandy was numb with exhaustion, one blink away from sleep, but at long last she was alone and it was quiet, and after tomorrow nothing would matter the way it did now. She knelt by her bed.

  “Dear Lord, I gave you my life a long time ago and I meant it, so whatever it is, or was—only you know—it’s yours. Near as I’m allowed to know, most of it’s already happened and it’s like I missed it, so I hope you don’t mind my praying backward—I figured I could since time is all messed up anyway—but I hope I lived my life well and you’re pleased, and … whatever my life was—and you know and I don’t, so I’m just saying this, just asking—if it’s okay with you, could it really be true? Could I please have lived my life with Dane? Could I please have been his wife? That’s the only way I can imagine it, and that’s what Dane and everybody tells me, so I hope that’s your way of seeing it, too. I hope we had a great life together.

  “But even if I was never in love with him, and even if we were never together, thank you for letting me meet him and love him for just a little while, as weird as it was. I pray you’ll always take care of him and reward him for being the wonderful man he is. He treated me really well. Just wanted to say so.

  “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She climbed into bed and turned off the light.

  chapter

  * * *

  49

  At 5:00 A.
M., March 25, Parmenter was at the command console of the Machine, running simulations of what might be to come and checking the readings that resulted. He could tell Mandy was still asleep. The monitors were void of activity and, apart from maintaining Mandy’s secondary timeline, the Machine was at rest, allowing him a limited but sufficient access to its functions. This would be his only opportunity.

  At 5:20, having double-checked his times, readings, and figures, he weighed himself, holding the box containing his notes, printouts, and hard drives. He’d lost one pound during the night, probably due to dehydration and elimination.

  At 5:50 he accessed the Machine. The processing time was snail-paced but he got the input prompt he wanted and entered 14:24:09, two-twenty-four and nine seconds in the afternoon, today.

  He added a book to the box and weighed himself and the box again. Within limits.

  At 5:54, based on a conversation with Dane regarding when Dane planned to get up that morning, he entered some presets to initiate a function at precisely 6:00 A.M.

  At 5:55 he went up the steps to the glass enclosure and, for the first time since Mandy’s reversion, opened the door. The stench of the bloodied sheet brought back the gruesome memory of September 17, but Parmenter’s disgust was mixed with a scientist’s regret. To put forward a theory, these molecules staining the sheet—skin cells, fluids, blood—did not revert with Mandy because they no longer composed something living in the present and possibly because they were not part of the arrangement of molecules that composed the living Mandy in 1970. Under any other circumstances he would have devoted himself to testing the theory and confronting the plethora of riddles and questions that remained, but that was only the scientist side of him. The human side, prevailing, could only do the right thing.

  He stepped inside the enclosure, closing the door behind him, then sat on the bench holding his box of knowledge and secrets. He waited.

  At 6:00 A.M., Dane’s alarm jolted him. He reached over and shut it off, then sagged back upon the pillow, waking up to the burden of this day and the visceral wrenching that left him only during his few precious hours of sleep.

  Oh, Lord, is this day really happening? It’s the stuff of bad dreams, not real life. If I don’t get out of bed, maybe I’ll wake up for real in a little while.

  Such words, such thoughts. This day had to happen, as unavoidable as life always was. He flopped over on his back and stared at the real ceiling fan above him, still there just like everything else. He got up and got started.

  At 06:00:00, March 25, the Machine awakened, the enclosure glowed an eerie blue, the interdimensional core beneath the bench hummed with energy. Parmenter sat still, letting the program run, recording his mass, his exact location, and exactly when in the course of time this event occurred. After five seconds, the program completed, the Machine went dark, and Parmenter found himself in a strange, nontypical state of mind: he’d just done the last thing he could have done.

  By 7:30 A.M., Andy’s stage crew was onsite, giving the bleachers a final cleanup and dressing up the stage, placing a few more artificial plants, trees, and stones to suggest a medieval, fairy-tale forest and replacing the burned trees around the volcano with fresh ones.

  The sound man was running the sound effects and music cues, making sure they all lined up with the script, which they did. The ground-shaking rumble of a volcano, the explosive thud of a pod landing in the volcano’s crater, the whoooosh! of a hang glider circling to earth, all playing against a thrilling musical sound track, were great people attractors. Curious tourists and passersby paused at the ribbon barriers around the parking lot to see what was going on, and from there could read the splashy signage telling them there would be a spectacle on this very spot at two that afternoon.

  On the roof of the Orpheus, the three-man hang glider crew gave Mandy’s glider one more preflight while monitoring the wind sock on the roof and the wind sock on the ground. So far so good, but even mild breezes boiled and swirled around and between the high structures on the Strip, and if the winds got too intense, Mandy would have to fall back on her rappelling routine.

  One block away, Preston and his crew unfolded a sixty-foot platform that spanned the top of one truck and trailer, and on top of this they carefully laid out a foot-thick, sixty-foot-long cluster of fine fibers bound with Velcro loops. They had a wind sock as well, installed on the other truck’s radio antenna. Right now it barely stirred, but that could change as the day warmed up.

  By 8:00 A.M. Dane had made the rounds checking on everything and now stood with Emile on the stage, “preflighting” the pod prior to hoisting it aloft and second-guessing his own design. I could have … maybe I should have … this is a little awkward, I could have put it over here …

  But the design, as it was, was sound and the escape hatch was functional. Given that, the greatest danger today, if any, would be human error.

  Which put it all on Mandy, and if there’d been an easier way he would have taken it.

  At 9:00, Mandy arrived with Seamus, and while Seamus oversaw everything and took videos, she squeezed into the pod for one last go-through with Dane and Emile.

  While she squirmed inside the pod, testing the petal doors, shedding the shackles and cuffs and tripping the escape hatch, she remained detached and clinical, never suggesting through tone or action that there were any galactic-size issues overshadowing this whole day, never showing that there had ever been or would ever be a love between herself and Dane, the clearest and farthest opposite of the truth. Dane followed the same script, to the point that she hungered for assurance, for one moment when they could say something … anything.

  Maybe when it was over. For now, with the clock ticking, there was only the Grand Illusion—the timing, the devices, the costume change, the winds, getting it right.

  And, of course, there was Seamus.

  At 10:05, Seamus called Mandy, Dane, and Emile together and suggested they run one more test flight of the hang glider. Mandy was agreeable, but given that it was the surprise ending for the stunt and that people were beginning to linger around the perimeter of the parking lot, they decided to forgo it. Everything else was ready. The pod was safe and sound with the stage crew keeping an eye on it, ready to hoist into position at the top of the show.

  At 11:23, Parmenter and Loren Moss were seated at the command console, monitoring the readings as they had been doing for days on end, and of course, until the Grand Illusion actually took place, there wouldn’t be much to monitor. At the moment, Mandy’s readings were predictable: quivering, fluctuating, exerting small flashes and distortions on the space-time fabric as if she were troubled and nervous. Parmenter and Moss found it easy to stray to other topics of conversation. Two staff members, by now indifferent to this whole monotonous process, sat at the table eating some fresh doughnuts and talking about sports.

  At 12:00 noon, as the signs and the newspaper and television ads all promised, the ribbons around the parking lot came down and folks were allowed to drift in, find a spot in the bleachers, get comfortable, and wait. They arrived in small trickles at first, but there was no doubt the trickle would turn to a flood as two in the afternoon approached.

  Along with the people came the news trucks. Vahidi had seen to that. Mandy’s Grand Illusion would be broadcast live on two stations and on the evening news on all of them, which was the greatest free publicity the Orpheus Hotel could ask for, and all the more reason to give them a real show.

  At 12:30, Moss and Parmenter availed themselves of microwaved sandwiches from the kitchen and nibbled at them as they watched the monitors showing nothing interesting. One of the staff had brought in a television so they could watch the live broadcast, but right now the station was carrying a network show, six political pundits sitting around a table interrupting each other. When Parmenter turned down the sound, no one complained.

  “What are we expecting, anyway?” Moss finally asked.

  Parmenter had to think to come up with something. “I suppos
e we could be seeing the Machine approach its limits. From what I understand, this is going to be one heck of a stunt.”

  “Ohhh, that’s for sure.”

  Moss’s tone was a bit elevated when he said that. It made Parmenter wonder what he meant.

  Moss piped up, “Bigger than what we’re planning in the desert?”

  What? Parmenter put up a hand of caution. “Not here.”

  Moss looked at the two staff members finding something to do at another station. “They can’t hear us.”

  “We don’t discuss it here.”

  “Well … maybe in cloaked terms …”

  “Not in any terms!”

  “But it does look promising.”

  Parmenter answered, if only to end the topic, “Yes. I would say the theory’s working.”

  “But”—Moss looked all around the lab—“does it ever bother you? Do you ever consider the cost in terms of the progress we’ve made? We would lose all of this.”

  “We’ve already lost it. We can’t contain or control what this is, what it means, what it can do.”

  “What it can do. You can imagine how that looks through my eyes.”

  Parmenter nodded. “I realize—”

  “Do you? I’m dying, and this”—he looked around the room at the amazing Machine—“this could have saved me … and come on, being realistic, of course I have to wonder if there isn’t something we don’t know yet, some tiny, hidden secret yet to be discovered that could change the rules.”

  Well, Parmenter thought, it’s happened. “Loren, you do remember all the steps we went through where we talked just as you’re talking now, and how those steps brought us to this pitiful point. If we hadn’t stolen Mandy’s body and reverted it without anyone’s permission or knowledge; if we’d not tried a cover-up of Watergate proportions instead of admitting our error; if we hadn’t, from the start, chosen the Machine over every human life we entangled with it; if we hadn’t reached the point where we were actually plotting to retrace and kill an innocent young woman …”