"What worries me is the fact that I don't even have a distant relative who remotely resembles a computer simulation."
"It wouldn't work," Pilgrim says, suddenly serious.
"Uh, what wouldn't work?"
"The espionage scenario I just outlined. Lazarus People don't care about spying, and they won't lend their efforts to anything that might harm another human being. They can't be manipulated, and they'll just jerk around anyone who tries. Unfortunately, people would try. This place would become an obsession to any 'outsider' who even suspected its existence."
"Yes," Veil replies simply, remembering the network of caves.
"Great harm would be caused. Any information having to do with near-death studies would be classified. Hospital records would be searched, Lazarus People rounded up. Idiots."
"Jonathan," Veil says evenly, "I've got a flash for you. I'm not convinced this is happening."
Pilgrim frowns. "What are you talking about? You're experiencing it. That's why I waited for you to come to me."
"I don't know what I'm experiencing. A rush of endo-morphins from my brain as I approach death, yes; that accounts for the ecstasy we feel, and that all Lazarus People report. As for the rest, it could all be a hallucination. I expected, I wanted, to meet with you, and so my dying brain may be indulging itself in a little wish fulfillment. You could very well be a hallucination, and I may be talking—thinking— to myself. There's only one way to prove that this is really happening."
Pilgrim turns his back to Veil, and when he speaks, his tone is almost petulant. "You're too heavy, Veil. You and I share what may be the greatest discovery about humankind in the history of humankind, and all you can do is talk like a goddam lawyer. Or a detective. I don't care if you are a detective; it's unbecoming."
"I'm not a detective, Jonathan," Veil says with a sigh. "I'm a painter. You have no idea how tired I get of explaining that to people; it ranks right up there with trying to convince people that I'm not a CIA agent."
There is a long pause, then Pilgrim asks quietly, "How can I convince you that I exist, and that this is really happening?"
"Come back with me and we'll compare notes. We'll go into separate rooms and write down our detailed recollections of this conversation. You're a scientist, Jonathan; you know it's the only way."
Again there is a long pause, during which Veil waits patiently, staring at his friend's back.
"How's Sharon?" Pilgrim says at last.
"More than a little pissed at both of us."
"I can believe that." Suddenly Pilgrim turns back to Veil. He is grinning once again, but the expression seems forced. "Oh, I almost forgot. Don't you want to know who the fucker is who shot me?"
"I already know. Ibber."
Pilgrim raises his eyebrows slightly. "How do you know?"
"Process of elimination, to begin with, combined with accumulated circumstantial evidence and an important slip on Parker's part. The more I thought about it, the more it always came back to the fact that it was Ibber who did my initial background check. Now, a standard check by someone who was only an Institute investigator would have turned up nothing but the garbage that the Army and CIA had strewn about. Granted that a good investigator would have smelled the garbage—something Ibber dutifully reported to you because he couldn't discount the possibility that you could have baited a trap for him. But Ibber was much more than just an Institute investigator; he was KGB, and the KGB file on me certainly hadn't been tampered with at all. All the KGB saw in their file was Veil Kendry before the Fall. Whatever they'd heard about the breach between the CIA and me, they weren't willing to buy it. Red warning flags popped up all over the place."
"What about the similarity between your paintings and Perry Tompkins's?"
"Then you know Ibber was spying on the hospice, using Army personnel?"
"The thought occurred to me at about the time he was squeezing the trigger. I'm a bit slower than you are."
"I'm not sure Ibber or anyone else from the compound who was sneaking into the hospice ever saw Perry's paintings; if they did, they wouldn't know what to make of them. They may have checked out a few chalets, but I'm sure they were far more interested in Sharon's files and the computer data. Ibber probably figured that you'd grown suspicious, and I was being brought in, through contacts you might have with the CIA, to do some general housecleaning."
"Why didn't he have you killed in New York? Why wait until you got here?"
"I'm not sure. He may have been afraid that I was closely guarded, or he may simply have considered the Institute a safer, more controlled situation. Also, he may have wanted to size me up in person, see how I reacted to him."
"Have you told anyone else?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Ibber will kill anyone who looks at him the wrong way. I have to handle him myself."
"Well, you're pretty damn vulnerable right now. You're taking one hell of a big chance, my friend."
"I'm counting on Ibber thinking that I'm still holed up somewhere over in the Army compound."
"What did Parker have to do with it?"
"He said that he wasn't going to let you in. Well, Ibber also had access to the compound—so why not mention Ibber?"
"Ah, yes. I told you Parker was a fuck-up."
"If I'm right, Ibber is a bit more than a KGB agent who managed to penetrate your Institute. I think he's a KGB agent who managed to become a high-ranking Army officer in charge of that entire military installation in the valley. I was certain Parker was reporting to someone, and that someone was faking phone calls and feeding phony information to Parker just to make sure Parker would end up letting me die. It had to be Ibber, which means that the U.S. Army has a very fat KGB mole sitting on its collective face."
"Do tell," Pilgrim says in a somewhat cryptic tone.
"Then again, there's more than one spook running around over there. Someone arranged to spring me—who, and why, I don't know."
"Do tell."
"I must say that you don't sound too surprised."
"Don't I?" Jonathan says with a smile. "Go ahead; I want to hear what else you've been up to."
Veil studies Pilgrim for a few moments, but Pilgrim merely stares back, the same enigmatic smile on his face. Finally Veil shrugs, continues. "After I'd roamed around over there for a while, I realized that the safest and fastest way out of the compound would still be through a gate that Parker opened for me. I was hoping that turning myself in after having escaped might finally get the man's attention. But by then Ibber had already shot Parker."
"Parker's dead?"
"Yes."
"Parker was a fool," Pilgrim says softly, "but I'm sorry to hear that he's a dead fool."
"It meant that Ibber was in a panic, and for good reason. It had to have taken years for the Russians to maneuver Ibber into a position where he was both a DIA operative and your chief researcher."
"Well, the Army will have to take primary responsibility for Ibber; they had him first. He was strongly recommended to me by some friends in the military. Now I realize that my friends were probably being pushed by the DIA, because the DIA wanted to have their own man in here. Who turns out to be a KGB agent. That's a big ho-ho-ho on them, isn't it?"
"My concern is making sure that Ibber doesn't get the last laugh, Jonathan."
"Actually, I've been more than a little suspicious of Henry for some time. When that Mamba tried to kill you the morning after you'd arrived here, I decided it was past time to do some serious checking into Henry's background; not easy, since I didn't want to tip off the military that I was suspicious, and then have them tip off Henry."
Veil nods. "With Parker dead, I figured that Ibber would come after you—and maybe Sharon—next. If I was caught and killed inside the compound, there was still a chance he could cover his tracks."
"Where's Ibber now?"
"I don't know. Either on his way to Moscow, if he thinks he's totally blown, or looking for me. I'm sorry I cou
ldn't get back sooner; I'd have saved you some pain."
"Do I look like I'm in pain?"
"No. As a matter of fact, neither of us has probably ever felt better. I understand things a bit better after coming here the hard way. It's no wonder Lazarus People no longer fear death."
"Death is love."
"I understand, Jonathan."
"Yeah. Anyway, I'm glad Madison got off his ass and told his man to spring you from that cage."
Veil feels a sudden stiffening of his spine, as if a wire running through him has been tugged. "How did you know about the cage? And where did you get that name?"
"From you," Pilgrim says easily.
"No. I never mentioned the cage, and I never mentioned anyone named Madison."
"Orville Madison," Pilgrim announces with a certain smugness. "Once your controller, and now a big—and very hidden—man in the CIA's nasties department, third in the chain of command behind the Director of Operations. You can bet your ass that I started some tongues to wagging when I called Langley's listed number, asked for Madison by name, and outlined his connection to you."
The wire pulls even tighter. "Jonathan, how?"
"Still think this is an hallucination, my friend?"
"How?"
"You sent out a cry for help, and I heard you . . . probably something to do with this place and our affinity for each other, although I haven't given it a great deal of thought. Yesterday, the thing you wanted more than anything in the world—except for a drink of water—was for Parker to call Orville Madison and have Madison verify that you couldn't be a KGB agent. Parker wouldn't listen; I did."
"My God," Veil whispers as the wire suddenly goes slack.
Pilgrim chuckles. "A new wrinkle, huh? It seems that in certain situations, with certain people, you don't have to come to the conference room to use the telephone. I'll tell you that it impressed the shit out of me. Incidentally, I also picked up the name, Lester Bean, but I sensed that Madison was more important. He was CIA, and he was the man I went after."
"Did you actually talk to Madison?"
"After a time, yes. He didn't have much choice. When they tried to put me off, I told them I was going to tell all sorts of old but juicy Veil Kendry stories to The New York Times. Madison came on the line."
"What'd he say?"
"Not a whole hell of a lot. Mostly, he just listened. I described the situation here, and shared my suspicions about Henry. I told him the Army had you, you were close to dying, and you needed help. After I finished, he said he'd take care of it. He warned me never to mention the call or the conversation, and never to call him again for any reason. Then he hung up."
Veil pauses, thinking. "The telepathy works even away from here," he says at last.
"Yes and no. After all, what we're sharing is one hell of a lot more than telepathy—whatever that means. The message from you was a good deal less. It was like a distress call that only I could hear, something which made me consciously uneasy but which I couldn't grasp consciously. Just as one has to view your paintings out of the corner of the eye, I picked up on what you needed out of the corner of my mind—when I was momentarily distracted by something else. Also, as I mentioned, the fact that you and I have a very special affinity probably had something to do with it. Identical twins often sense what happens to each other; you and I are twins in a different way. For want of a better expression, I'd describe us as astral twins."
"Still, it means that Lazarus People may have very special potential that nobody, except you and I, is even aware of."
"Lazarus People, and weirdballs like you and Perry Tompkins—yes. But clues, like the fact that Lazarus People tend to recognize each other without a word being spoken, have always been there. What's new is what's happening between you and me right now, this incredible oneness. We're not only proving that this state of consciousness exists, but that it can be maintained for periods of time far beyond the brief flash that Lazarus People have with the near-death experience. We're also showing that the state can be entered into, and controlled, by scientific means. I'd always suspected it, and I knew it when I saw the paintings you and Perry were independently producing. You were the key, Veil, the one person I needed to prove it."
"We haven't proved anything, Jonathan. This could still be my hallucination."
"Your escape from that cage wasn't an illusion; neither is this."
"I could be making up both ends of this conversation."
"Do you really believe that?"
"No," Veil says after a pause. "I do believe this is happening. But we still haven't made it back."
"I told you it would be a piece of cake. How much time did you tell Sharon to give you before she pulls you back?"
"Fifteen minutes, but I find I have no way of relating the quaint notion of fifteen minutes to what's going on here."
"I know what you mean; we're thinking to each other, and thought is one hell of a lot faster than talk."
"How much does Sharon know?"
"Before you accepted my invitation to come to the Institute, there wasn't much to know that she wasn't an expert on. After all, near-death studies is her field. I'd been here only once before, at the time I crashed in my plane. You came here all the time, in dreams, and Perry . . . well, the images began to come to Perry when he started dying. I've shared a few of my general speculations with Sharon, but that's all. She's always believed that the sighting of the Lazarus Gate is attributable to trauma and brain chemistry run amok in some people. She's certainly interested in the aftereffects of the near-death experience in Lazarus People, but she believes it's strictly a psychological phenomenon. Of course, she's standing over us right now, worried as hell, but she's convinced that we're stone-unconscious."
"I'm not so sure," Veil says thoughtfully. "Seeing the Lazarus Gate pattern on the monitor next to your bed may have made a believer out of her." He pauses, laughs. "Also, you've got the silliest grin on your face I've ever seen."
Pilgrim grunts. "Do I? Well, you'll have some stories to tell Dr. Solow, won't you?"
"Ibber suspected big things, obviously," Veil says seriously.
"Oh, yes. I'm sure that the hospice and what Sharon was doing in near-death studies has been uppermost in Ibber's mind from the very first day he reported for work, and his bosses must have hit the ceiling when I wouldn't grant him access to the hospice. His job had no connection with what Sharon was doing, so he couldn't argue the matter. But he had to have been pissed. Monitoring near-death studies would have been his number-one priority."
"Why so?"
"Both the Russians and Americans have always been officially interested in parapsychology, which is a category near-death studies fits into. Our Navy at one time funded a study to see if it was possible to communicate telepathically with submarine crews. But the Americans have always been unenthusiastic dabblers compared with the Russians. The
American government has never shown the slightest interest in Sharon's work."
Once again Veil thinks of the marked caves in the mountain and the hundreds of man-hours, undoubtedly expended on Ibber's orders, it must have taken to find the route to the hospice. "The Russians are certainly interested."
"Sure they are."
"The Russians must have a near-death studies program of their own."
"If they do, they've kept it a secret. But they certainly have thousands of individuals who've had a near-death experience, and the changes that take place in what we call Lazarus People wouldn't have gone unnoticed. It's impossible to say what they make of it, or what they've done about it."
"Maybe they've already sent somebody through the Lazarus Gate—or two people at once, like us."
"I doubt it. We've interviewed Lazarus People from all over the world, and I'm the only person I know of who's actually gone through the gate, seen what's here, and then come back. Then there's you, with your dream-paintings. The Russians don't have you. Indeed, you may be absolutely unique—and you proved to be the necessary catalyst.
You have to know— or strongly suspect—that something is there before you search for it, especially if the search carries a strong risk of death. I doubt that the Russians would have risked killing people just because some individuals reported seeing a portal of light and felt terrific about it."
"But the Russians must be interested in more than the changes; they do suspect there's something here."
"Obviously. Otherwise, Ibber would have been as disinterested as Parker. They want to know what the military or population-control applications may be. They're fools."
"Why fools, Jonathan? My guess is that this experience transcends time and distance; if someone else from anywhere in the world were to be sent through the Lazarus Gate at this moment, we'd have company. And communication here transcends language. We're communicating with pure thought, which we happen to hear as music. It seems to me that the espionage capabilities look pretty damn good."
Pilgrim laughs and shakes his head. "You still talk like a detective, and you still don't get it."
"Get what?"
"You're not a Lazarus Person, Veil, so you don't feel precisely what Lazarus People feel, and you don't know what they know. Still, I don't think that anyone has ever been able to control or manipulate you. Well, Lazarus People can't be manipulated, because this experience brands a message very deep into the heart and soul. The message is that we—all of humankind—are one, literally. Birth and death are parentheses around lives that should be as happy, full of meaningful challenge, and as free from pain as possible. That's all. Everything else is an illusion."
"War isn't an illusion, Jonathan. Neither are bullets, bombs, torture, and a few thousand other things I could mention, including bad guys like Henry Ibber."
"Those things aren't illusions, but the assumptions that lead to their creation and use are. You don't shoot off your foot because it's infected, and you don't shoot off your neighbor's foot because your foot is infected. A Lazarus Person—any Lazarus Person, of whatever race or nationality—understands that his neighbor's foot is his foot, and he won't cooperate in any activity that is hostile to other human beings. You don't accept that, do you?"
"I accept what you tell me about Lazarus People, because you should know," Veil replies evenly. "I don't agree with your thinking."
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