The Edge of Ruin

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “Have a blessed day,” she chirped.

  I got into the hall, leaned against the wall, and realized we were surrounded.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  From the bitter cold of a Washington, D.C., January to the sultry heat of an Australian January, and Pamela hadn’t packed a thing appropriate for a southern hemisphere summer. On her way to the Air Raid City Lodge, the taxi passed a mall in downtown Darwin, and she had the driver stop. She ran into a department store and bought jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals. “I’ll wear them,” she told the salesgirl, and had them put her wool slacks, cashmere sweater, and pumps into the bag.

  During the seemingly endless flight, she’d spent time on what passed for research in the modern age—she’d Googled Darwin, Australia, and read all the tourist information sites. They had all agreed that Darwin had the youngest population of any city in Australia. Her brief foray into the mall had provided anecdotal proof of that—it was filled with lots and lots of young people.

  Of course, most malls were filled with young people. The sway of the taxi was like the rocking of a hammock. Or maybe we have a visceral memory of floating in the womb, or being rocked in a cradle. She realized she was maundering in her own head, and she gave herself a physical shake. Once in the lobby of the lodge she called up to Dr. Tanaka’s room.

  “Hello?” It was a surprisingly young voice, and he sounded hesitant and suspicious.

  “Hi, this is Pamela Oort, Lumina sent me. Are you ready to go?”

  “Oh, shit, yeah.” And the connection was broken even as she was opening her mouth to tell the scientist what she looked like.

  She took up a position where she could watch for a Japanese American entering the lobby. The room was buzzing with activity—people booking tours, and a party of young Germans, all wearing backpacks, checking in at the front desk.

  Moments later an incredibly tall, incredibly thin Asian man dressed in jeans, a white tee, and tennis shoes hurried into the lobby. Pamela stood up, but he looked right past her. Instead he zeroed in on an older, heavyset woman. He said something, and she shook her head. Frowning, he moved on to the next closest woman. For some kind of physics genius he seemed pretty damn clueless, Pamela thought. After the fourth such encounter Pamela took pity on the other guests and walked up to him.

  “Dr. Tanaka?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Pamela Oort.”

  “Oh, okay. Huh, I didn’t think you’d look like … well, like you do.”

  “And just how do I look?” The moment the unwary words emerged Pamela wished she hadn’t uttered them.

  “Kind of pretty.” She drew herself up and gave him the patented Oort disdainful glare right down the nose. He seemed unfazed and in fact continued to dig deeper. “You don’t expect that from a corporate drone.”

  “Are you trying to be rude?”

  “Oh.” His mouth worked as if he were chewing on something. “So, that came across as rude rather than as a compliment?”

  Pamela looked him directly in the eye, but he wasn’t being sarcastic. It still didn’t incline her to be charitable. “Well, duh,” she said and was pleased when he blushed. “Do you have anything in your room?” He shook his head. “Do we owe anything on the room?” He again shook his head. “So, we’re ready then.” Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. Tanaka took two long strides like a wading stork and fell into step with her.

  “Actually, I’d like to get something to eat before we leave. I was using the computer in the business center and I kind of forgot to eat.”

  The reminder set her stomach to growling. There was a small galley on the Gulfstream, but the choices were limited to cold cuts and bread for sandwiches. A hot meal and a martini sounded lovely.

  As they walked toward the door he added, “Actually I used up a lot of the money you sent me buying computer time.” He glowered at the front desk and added, “It’s just bullshit. It’s so cheap, but these hotels just stick it to you.”

  “Your work must have been very important,” Pamela said.

  “Oh, shit, this wasn’t work. I can’t do my work without an accelerator. No, my raid group was entering a dungeon, and it took a lot longer than I thought it would.” This time she didn’t have to explain her expression to him. He looked momentarily guilty, then sulky, and finally devastated. “I just wanted to feel like things were normal again,” he said in a tone barely above a whisper.

  Pamela laid a hand briefly on his upper arm. “I know. I understand.”

  As they stepped into the tropical heat and Pamela waved for a taxi, she reflected on how terrifying that statement actually was—that an online computer game felt more normal than the world they presently inhabited.

  * * *

  They found a restaurant right on the beach. Pamela watched the waves rush forward and then retreat with a hiss and a chuckle, like mischievous children begging the grown-ups to chase them. Running in pursuit of the white foam were tiny, long-legged birds pecking at the wet sand.

  Pamela leaned back in the fan-backed wicker chair and took another sip of her green appletini. Her lobster thermidor had been wonderful and very rich. Eddie Tanaka was still masticating his way through a giant plate of fried seafood and french fries. He had downed five refills of Coke thus far. She could only conclude that he burned off the calories with the caffeine high. She had finished first because Eddie had been punctuating bites with tales of his escape from Indonesia.

  “I was really careful not to speak English. I mean, I’d watched them burn down the American and the British embassies, and I speak some Japanese so I could fake people out, but man, it was scary. I got down to the docks and managed to get on this old freighter. I got lucky—one of Talafani’s crew had landed in jail, and he didn’t want to brave the city when things were going nuts. I was there. I’m tall, and I didn’t seem nuts.” He stuffed a breaded jumbo shrimp into his mouth, and Pamela watched his throat work as he swallowed the massive bite. A Coke chaser and he was back talking.

  “You know how people are always talking about the romance of working a tramp steamer, exotic ports of call, sloe-eyed women in the exotic ports—well, it’s a crock. They ought to ban kids reading Hemingway. Anyway, Captain Talafani worked us like slaves, and I was awful seasick, but he expected me to keep working anyway.” The outrage rang in his voice. “I’m never eating curry again. We had a lot of curry, and it just turns your vomit yellow and it’s like eating it again only worse.

  “Even though this was a really big ship …” He spread his arms out like a fisherman displaying a prize catch. “There were only fourteen of us on board—automation’s really changed things—and none of them would talk to me.” He considered and then added, “They didn’t talk to each other either, but I didn’t totally get how much they were channeling Greta Garbo until one guy punched me in the stomach. That made me sick all over again, and I was blowing chunks—”

  Pamela interrupted a new rendition of exactly what he’d eaten and how it looked when it came back up. “The police said you came ashore in a lifeboat. Why did you leave the ship?”

  “’Cause Talafani was steaming right back to Libya, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be in another Islamic country after what had happened.” For an instant his gaze seemed lost, and distant, and frightened. He quickly ate an oyster.

  “I really sucked up to the captain. He liked this gross, really sweet tea with condensed milk in it, and I kept bringing it up to the bridge for him. I finally got a look at the charts, and realized this chunk of coral represented the Sylph. That was the ship’s name. Anyway, I saw we were close to Australia, so I stole food out of the galley, filled some empty bourbon bottles with water, and hid them in the lifeboat. I waited for the first moonless night, and then lowered the lifeboat, and dove into the water after it. I had to swim like hell to catch up with it. It got caught in the ship’s wake.”

  “You dove off the side of a commercial freighter?”

  Eddie shrugged. “I grew up i
n San Diego, practically in the water. And I was a competitive diver in high school and college. It was no worse than a platform dive.” He mopped up more ketchup with several french fries and gobbled them down. A few more massive bites and the last of the breaded fish was also gone. He drained his glass, burped, and sighed.

  “All set?” Pamela asked.

  He nodded. “You’re taking me back to California, right?”

  “Actually no, my brother needs to talk to you first.”

  “He can come to California.” He sounded pugnacious, and Pamela decided it wasn’t the right moment to argue with him. Then he added in a little boy’s voice, “I want to go home, and see my parents.”

  For the first time she realized how terribly young he was, and she saw the fear that he’d been holding at bay.

  * * *

  The visit to Britches, Washington’s premier old-line men’s clothier, had been necessitated because Grenier could barely zip his slacks closed over his burgeoning paunch. As he had told Richard, he needed a new wardrobe before he was arrested for indecent exposure. The young man had taken a look at the pale skin and graying chest hair revealed by the gaping buttons and quickly agreed.

  Grenier had really stressed the outing because there were things he needed to report, and he didn’t want that gray presence of the judge interfering with Richard’s natural cunning. Aside from the ever-present guards they were alone, which suited Grenier just fine. He hated the judge’s constant hovering over Richard. It had stopped seeming protective, and had started to feel more like a doctor making sure a mental patient didn’t do something dangerous or foolish. Grenier had only been with Lumina for six days, but he couldn’t find the young man who had defied him, challenged him, and played him for a fool. Instead Richard had retreated to hesitant childhood.

  While these thoughts ran through his head, Grenier was issuing orders to a young salesman. “I want a gray suit with a small pinstripe of lavender. I want a blue suit with a pinstripe of yellow and brown. And I want the buttonholes enlarged. I have to work one-handed. Also a selection of slacks and shirts, and a black sports coat. Go.” He waved the young man away. “Oh, and shoes, wing tips in black and brown, size ten—”

  “And who’s going to tie them?” Richard asked. He had his back to Grenier and was sifting through a stack of cashmere sweaters displayed on a polished cherrywood table.

  Grenier flushed and couldn’t control the glance down at his stump. The rush of fury, regret, and grief left him breathless. He regained control and said smoothly, “An excellent point. Loafers, then, and let’s try a C width.” He joined Richard and said in an undertone, “Even my feet are getting fat. I didn’t know that could happen.”

  “You could try eating less.”

  “Leave me a few of my pleasures. You’ve taken so much from me.” Their gazes locked, and Richard looked away out the front window. Grenier watched Richard stiffen. “What?”

  Richard indicated a car driving slowly past with a jerk of his chin. It was a BMW convertible. The driver’s long black hair floated around her, and though her eyes and much of her face were hidden behind large dark glasses and a muffler, it was clear she was gazing at the store.

  “My, my,” Grenier said.

  The car passed the store and suddenly accelerated away.

  “So, you said your barhopping had yielded results?” Richard asked.

  “You’re not going to deal with that?” Grenier asked and pointed at the rapidly dwindling car.

  “What would you suggest? Run down the street with the sword drawn? Shoot her in the head? And she’s careful never to give me a chance to get close to her.”

  “So this isn’t the first time you’ve seen her.” Richard shook his head. “Why haven’t you mentioned it?”

  “Because everyone would start clucking.”

  Grenier chuckled. “Good point.” He hurried into speech after seeing Richard’s impatience. “Ah yes, what I’ve learned. The Cardinal of Washington, D.C., has sent for a team of experts from the Vatican. No details on what kind of experts, but I think it can only mean one thing. They’re going to try an exorcism.”

  Richard gave a short bark of laughter. “Whoa, wow, I bet the Old Ones are scared now.”

  “I think the Old Ones will let it … work,” and Grenier bracketed the words with quote marks in the air with his one hand. “Miracles will occur, stigmata will bleed, the Madonna will cry, maybe even the face of Jesus will appear in some interesting foodstuff. The Catholic faithful will be ecstatic. But in the evangelical churches the preachers will be thundering from their pulpits that this is the Antichrist, and that the Catholics, by worshiping a false god, are preventing the real Jesus from returning.”

  “Oh, the Catholics hate the Protestants and the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Hindus hate the Moslems and everybody hates the Jews.” Richard softly sang the old Tom Lehrer song.

  “Exactly. Also, word about the sword is leaking out. People are talking, at least in the bureaucracy. If we verify its existence I think you’ll have takers just like you did with those FBI agents.”

  “Career bureaucrats may not set policy, but they actually run the government,” Richard mused. “We need a mechanism for meeting with them. I can’t just go walking in and out of agencies whacking people with a sword.”

  “If Aldo succeeds and you manage to see the President, he may mandate it,” Grenier said.

  The young salesman returned. “Sir,” he said diffidently to Grenier, “I have a selection of clothing for you to try.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be right there,” Grenier said. He waved the man away. “There’s one more thing we need to consider—media.” Grenier watched as Richard’s nostrils narrowed with disdain. He threw back his head and laughed. “God, you old blue-blood families and your elitist attitudes. It’s the twenty-first century, baby,” and he reached out and patted Richard on the cheek. He was surprised when Richard didn’t jerk away as he had every other time Grenier tried for physical contact.

  Richard sighed. “I know you’re right. You’ve got the experience. Are you willing to take it on?”

  Grenier struggled to hide his surprise. “You’re actually going to give me some responsibility?”

  “Yes.”

  “Power?”

  “Limited.”

  “Okay. Money is no object, so let’s have some very slick and very scary commercials made, and air them nationally. Interviews, articles, blogs, Web sites, podcasts, chat rooms …”

  Richard’s phone rang. “Oort.”

  Grenier watched as all the color drained from the young man’s face, and his eyes seemed suddenly dark and sunken. Richard hung up the phone and looked up at Grenier.

  “Aldo’s been killed.”

  * * *

  The vibration from the engines seemed to have permanently embedded itself in her bones. Pamela sighed and leaned her head against the plane’s window. At least the seats in the company jet were wide and very comfortable. They even went flat so you could sleep. But that constant thrum! She shook her head and picked back up the Bose headphones. They helped with the engine noise and the Eddie noise. The young scientist snored like a log stripper.

  There had been a bit of a kerfuffle when they stopped to refuel at an airfield in eastern California. Eddie had tried to get off, saying he needed to stretch his legs, but Pamela had caught the furtive look toward the small building and the cars in the parking lot, and said no. It hadn’t escalated because Pamela had the very good idea to have Jerry stand in the door of the plane and openly wear his pistol. Apparently Tanaka’s high IQ allowed him to add two and two.

  Pamela looked out the window again. They were flying over the great flat empty of the Midwest. Much of it was snow covered, and Pamela wondered what the people in those small towns and farms thought, or even knew, about what was happening. It was a part of the country that grew wheat, made cheese, and sent kids into the army and Republicans to Congress.

  Eddie awoke with a snort an
d a mumble. He gave her a bleary-eyed look across the aisle. “Hungry. Gonna make a sandwich. Want one?”

  She shook her head, and turned back on the music she’d been listening to, and watched the clouds they were now flying over. Occasionally wisps of cloud swirled up, smokelike, to caress the wings of the plane.

  Eddie returned from the galley with a true Dagwood sandwich, piled high with turkey, pastrami, and liverwurst. He settled back into his seat; his jaw seemed to crack in half as he took a bite. He glanced out the window, let out a whimper, and lettuce and lunch meat rained into his lap.

  Pamela unsnapped her seat belt and rushed over to him. “What? Are you all right?”

  He pointed wordlessly. His hand was shaking. Pamela looked out the window at another plane that was rising through the clouds like a breaching silver whale.

  There were winged creatures beneath the wings and belly of the plane. Holding it up. Slowly one of the massive heads turned and looked at them.

  Pamela jerked down the shade over the window, as if that could somehow protect them. Then a sudden banking of the Gulfstream sent her falling against Eddie. He caught her, and she didn’t try to pull free. Instead she wrapped her arms around him, too, taking comfort in his human touch.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “Would the two of you care to explain why I had to arrange the murder of a United States senator?” Madoc said as he continued in rapt contemplation of the delicate Japanese painting of cranes in a snowy landscape.

  They were in the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution. Despite Madoc’s mild, almost plaintive tone, Rhiana took a step back and to the side so she was standing partly behind Jack. Neither of them dared to answer.

  “I thought you were getting the sword and neutralizing the paladin. Not letting the paladin nearly reach the President. So, when do we get the sword?” Madoc asked.

  “Why does it matter so much?” Jack asked. “You’ve told us the sword alone can’t close a gate. So what if Oort gets to the President, or the Joint Chiefs, or the Chamber of Commerce for that matter. They throw more troopies at you, you kill them or make them nuts, and hey, it’s all-you-can-eat night.”