The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2)

by Michael Stiles

  Mallick, satisfied that his papers would not be ruined, sat back down and frowned at his pipe, which had gone out.

  “Ah,” said Kissinger. “The Monkeys. Please sit; you’re making me nervous.” Danny complied, feeling a little foolish. “They are my helpers,” the Doctor continued. “Monkeys are clever animals, aren’t they? To the Hindus, the monkey Hanuman is swift and intelligent, a disciple of the god Rama and a destroyer of demons. My Monkeys are destroyers of demons, too. But first we must find the demon. That’s where I come in. I have been hunting the dark man for years, and I am getting close. Washington is a small place, smaller than you think. There are only so many people of influence there, and they turn up again and again. And yet, there is someone unknown who is influencing the President on foreign affairs. Someone who has his ear and is guiding his decisions. That person convinced the President that COSVN should be controlled rather than destroyed. That same person is now pushing Cambodia toward civil war. He is also maneuvering China toward a military confrontation with Taiwan. The whole world is about to unravel, unless I can find this person and stop him.” He stopped long enough to pour himself a little more tea.

  Mallick had reloaded his pipe and was attempting to light it, but he was having difficulty getting the match to light. “Politicians,” he grumbled. “Can’t be trusted.”

  “That is a broad brush,” Kissinger replied. “Mr. Chan, Washington is a small place, as I said, and most of the people there are correspondingly small. If I may be blunt, there are only two people in our government with any real power. I am one. The other is President Nixon. Everyone else is aligned with one of us. Everyone must pick a side. Two great coalitions, and the one that comes out ahead will drive America toward either greatness or destruction. There is no middle ground. Mr. Nixon governs out of a desire to glorify himself. I am motivated by something higher than that. You’re making a face.”

  Danny didn’t realize that he had been making a face. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “No. Say what you’re thinking.”

  He took a moment to choose his words carefully. “In the place where I grew up, there were two bosses. I met both of them, and they both sounded like you. Each of them said the other one was the bad guy, but they were both just a couple of criminals. They killed people and stole things.”

  “I am no killer.”

  “But the decisions you make, there are real people who pay the price for them. I’ve lost friends in this war. I almost died myself once or twice.”

  “War is an abomination,” Kissinger said softly. “A war like this one, where our hopes lie with a weak ally, can’t be won without a great deal of bloodshed. If it can be won at all. I am sorry you’ve lost friends. If I had my way, we would be fighting this war in a smarter way. We would already have won.” He put down his cup of tea and folded his hands once more.

  “Better get to it,” Mallick said. “It’s getting late.”

  “So it is.” Kissinger covered his mouth as he yawned deeply. “The time change is difficult. Mr. Chan, you have put us in a predicament. You have seen the old COSVN. So you know a secret that must not be allowed to spread.”

  Danny had an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I won’t tell.”

  “And yet you know very well that there are ways to find things out even if no one talks about it. At the same time, you have demonstrated some useful skills during your time in the wild.” He leaned in closer, until Danny could smell the tea on his breath. “President Nixon has hired his own ‘private eye’ in the White House. That’s his term for it. A former police officer who is not on the government payroll, but is paid from the President’s campaign funds. He watches, takes notes, determines who is a friend and who is not. I need someone to do the same for me.”

  Danny swallowed. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  Mallick laughed out loud. Kissinger merely smiled in a patient, grandfatherly way. “Of course not! That’s why I’ve asked Vince Milligrew to do it.”

  “Oh.” Danny felt his face turning red.

  “But he will need help. I would rather make use of your talents than have you killed.”

  Danny, halfway through swallowing some tea, choked and began to cough. Kissinger laughed in his deep baritone voice.

  “Only joking, of course. Are you all right? Only joking. Although there were some here who thought you should be quietly dealt with, for fear that you would reveal our secrets. Eh?” He looked at Mallick, who shifted uncomfortably in his folding chair. “So,” Kissinger continued. “You will go back to the United States. I will put you in touch with someone who can help you with your memory loss. In return, your job will be to watch and listen. I want you to find out all you can about the dark man and report it to Milligrew. Can I trust you to do this?”

  It was starting to rain again. Heavy drops hit the roof, making quite a loud noise inside the little hut. “I’ll do it,” Danny said. He would agree to just about anything to get out of this place.

  20

  Eddites

  Mr. Fu had only just gone to bed when the phone rang. He’d been staying late at the university most nights, forcing himself to stay awake out of a firm determination not to fail. He was not a fast thinker, but he was a thorough thinker, and he was able to do quite well on his biology exams as long as he took the time to learn the material. He was rarely home before midnight, and on this night, as he usually did, he had gone straight to bed.

  The phone call had caught him by surprise. Ed mentioned a plan. They had talked about several plans in recent weeks, and Fu had a hard time remembering which one they had finally settled upon. By the time they finished their brief conversation, though, Fu was more fully awake and knew what to do.

  His first step was to go upstairs to wake Alice and Ching. Ching was not supposed to be sleeping there. Alice thought their mother didn’t know. That was silly. Mrs. Chan knew everything that happened in her house. It was pointless to hide things from her. Fu waited patiently in the upstairs hall while they got dressed. He did not wake Mrs. Chan. She had been extremely upset lately and needed her rest.

  His next step was to make a call to an old friend named Baxter Chen. Baxter had moved up into Fu’s old position as Mr. Wang’s chief bodyguard, and they had remained on good terms.

  “Hummm,” answered a sleepy voice.

  “Ngo yu nei bong ngo,” Fu said. I need your help. He explained as briefly as he could.

  “Roger Wilcox,” Baxter replied in English. He was immensely proud of his mastery of American idioms. Baxter hung up the phone immediately.

  Mr. Wang had shown Fu great kindness when Fu had left his employment for the old gangster. Wang was a distasteful man, and the Chans had good reason to dislike him. But Fu had always had a soft spot for the old rascal, and Wang had always treated him well. Wang’s rival, Li—he had been the truly nasty one.

  Fu was still not entirely clear on what had prompted Mr. Wang to take such good care of the Chans. The FBI agent, Driscoll, had been involved somehow; that was all he knew. The old man had met with Mrs. Chan personally, bringing with him three suitcases full of money carried by three big men—almost as big as Fu himself. He had asked Fu to watch over Mrs. Chan, with a weekly stipend to be paid out of the suitcases. Mrs. Chan had sworn and spat at Wang before accepting his gesture and using it to buy this enormous house with high ceilings. Wang had taken it all in good humor. He knew what the woman had gone through, and Fu thought the old man felt ashamed of the whole unpleasant ordeal.

  As the night was getting on toward morning, Fu saw a crowd of people coming down the street. They were hippies, wearing baggy old clothes and looking like they hadn’t washed in years. Fu, who treasured cleanliness, watched them with wonder and distaste. Crowds of hippies were not something one normally saw out here in the suburbs. They stopped in the middle of the street. Fu had left the outside light on, and he could see that they were carrying a limp body with them. He knew that limp body.

  They carried Ed
inside and dumped him on the sofa. Alice hurried over to check on him. “We don’t know what’s wrong with him,” said the young man who seemed to be in charge. “He’s been in and out.”

  Mrs. Chan had heard the bustle and was standing at the bottom of the stairway, watching with an unreadable expression. She had never quite taken to Ed, and recent events had hardened her even more. She looked tired and disheveled.

  “You should go back to sleep,” Fu whispered to her in Chinese.

  “Why is he here?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “I don’t want him here. Hasn’t he hurt us enough?”

  An Army man had arrived at their door a few days before. Alice had burst into tears as soon as she saw him getting out of his car. Mrs. Chan had stood stoically as Fu let him in. The soldier had spoken to Alice and Fu, saying the words that they had feared he would say: Danny had been reported missing in action. The uncertainty of that bothered Fu greatly. Danny might be a prisoner, or he might be dead, or any of a multitude of terrible possibilities. When Alice had translated for her mother, the poor woman had taken the news without any outward reaction at all. She just turned and calmly walked slowly to her room. Alice tried to follow, but Mrs. Chan wouldn’t let her come in.

  Many quiet days had passed. Mrs. Chan had come out of her room eventually, and even ate a little at mealtime. She still kissed Danny’s picture goodnight as she had done every evening since he’d left. Fu knew that she was thinking all the time about Ed Terwilliger, and the fact that he was the one who had sent Danny across the ocean to be lost forever.

  And now Terwilliger was unconscious on her sofa. Fu didn’t blame Ed for what had happened. Ed had dreams that couldn’t be ignored. Alice was trying hard not to blame him. But Mrs. Chan would never forgive Terwilliger for taking her boy away.

  She watched silently as Alice covered Ed with a blanket. Fu stood by her, saying nothing. There was nothing he could say. After a while Mrs. Chan went back upstairs.

  The hippies turned out to be nice kids, although they all smelled truly awful. There were five of them. Fu would need to get them to clean up and wash their clothes as soon as possible. He and Ching got them settled and managed to quiet them down, which was no small accomplishment. Fu wondered if there was any way to keep them off of the furniture, but they naturally seemed to gravitate toward the cleanest, whitest upholstered chairs they could find. He would just have to clean up later. Fu sighed and went to the kitchen to get them some cups of water.

  “—but they weren’t real firemen,” one of them was saying when Fu returned.

  “That’s nonsense,” said Ching. “Why would somebody go around impersonating a fireman?”

  “Because,” said the one called Ricky, “they were the ones who set up the bomb. They work for Urizen.”

  “We don’t know that,” one of the girls said. “I think they were just firemen.”

  Alice was pulling one of Ed’s eyelids open to inspect his eyeball. “You said they got there almost as soon as the bomb went off,” she said. “Sounds fishy to me.”

  Fu held up a big hand. “Hold on, people. What’s all this about bombs?” The hippies all started explaining at once, overwhelming him with a multitude of conflicting explanations. Alice shushed them impatiently and then told him the story, as she understood it, in Chinese so no one would try to correct her.

  “And they wandered around the neighborhood until they found our street,” Alice finished.

  “Did anyone follow them here?” Fu asked, still speaking in Chinese.

  “They don’t think so. But they would have been easy to follow. Can you smell?” She waved a hand in front of her nose. The buxom girl, Penny, saw the gesture and made an indignant sound.

  Fu nodded. “We have to expect someone to come looking for them. Baxter should be here soon.”

  Alice grimaced. She didn’t like Baxter, or any of Wang’s men. It had taken her a while to get used to being around Mr. Fu; she would not be pleased to have Baxter in the house. Fu hadn’t yet mentioned that Baxter would be bringing a few friends with him.

  “I’ll find them a place to sleep,” said Fu.

  Alice’s eyes went wide. “They can’t stay here! Mom will never let them!” The hippies couldn’t understand what she was saying, but they understood the way she kept looking at them.

  Fu shrugged. “They’re with Ed. We can’t just throw them out.”

  “Of course we can.”

  Ching had been listening quietly to them, waiting to see who would win their argument before offering his own opinion. Now he spoke up. “Alice, he’s right. Look at how pathetic they are.”

  Penny looked like she was near tears. “You’re going to let us stay here, aren’t you?” One big teardrop leaked from her right eye and rolled down her face.

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said to Fu, switching to English. “But you can explain to my mother why they’re all staying in her house.”

  “They can stay in the basement,” said Ching.

  Fu shook his big head vigorously. “Not the basement. Baxter and Wang’s other men will be staying down there.”

  Alice’s eyes went wide. “Other men?”

  Ching put his arm around her and began steering her toward the stairs. “Fu can handle things,” he told her. “These kids can camp out here in the living room. Let’s just get some sleep and figure it out in the morning.”

  “Wait,” said Norris. “What about Ed? He needs help.” Several of the others nodded in agreement. “What do we do if he dies?”

  “He’s not dying,” Penny insisted, sounding as though she was repeating something she’d said many times already.

  “He might be dying,” said Norris. “If he dies, what happens to us?”

  “Why don’t you ask Ed?” said Fu.

  They all turned and gaped at Ed, who was sitting up and blinking in bewilderment. The hippies crowded around him, asking a thousand questions, until Ricky got them to back off a bit. “Blake needs to breathe,” Ricky told them. Fu wondered which one was Blake.

  “I’m okay,” said Ed. “Urizen was trying to get into my mind.”

  The kids all gasped in unison. “Is he still… in there?” asked Ricky. Norris was watching Ed warily. Fu didn’t like Norris very much.

  “Not anymore,” said Ed. “I had help. A friend. He’s standing guard right now so nobody can get into my mind.” He put a hand to his head and paused, considering something. When he next spoke, it seemed to be with some reluctance. “I need to ask all of you for a favor.”

  Immediately the people responded with enthusiastic exclamations of their willingness to do anything for him. Alice rolled her eyes at Ching, who tried to hide his smile.

  “I want to teach you some things that might save your life,” Ed continued. Fu smiled at their reaction. They were all smiles now, as the tension of the night began to bleed away. Four of them listened as Ed spoke, but Ricky came over to speak with Alice and Ching, who were standing together at the opposite end of the room. Mr. Fu edged closer to listen.

  “I’m sorry to put you out by coming here,” he said, and he really did seem to be sorry. “It’s just that Blake’s apartment got blown to bits, and then Blake passed out, and we were worried about him. He told me the address. I’m glad we were able to find you.”

  “Me too,” said Alice, but her tone said that she wasn’t fully glad, just a little glad. Fu could tell she was trying to figure out what to tell her mother when the poor woman awoke to find that the new arrivals were settling in for an indefinite stay. He had figured out by this time that Blake was the name they were calling Ed, although he didn’t know why.

  “Anyway,” Ricky said, faltering, “I wanted to say thanks. On behalf of…” He waved his hand toward the others, unsure of how to finish.

  Alice sighed. “You’re welcome. But I’m warning you: any bad behavior and you’re all out on the street. And we don’t have much food in the house, so I suggest you get somebody to go buy some gr
oceries tomorrow.” Fu knew there was plenty of food in the refrigerator; he had gone shopping earlier that same day. But Alice was setting ground rules, making it clear that she was not going to let these people take advantage, so Fu kept silent.

  There was a soft knock at the front door. Fu was on his way over to answer it when the door opened and Baxter Chen and three other men came right in.

  “You should lock the door, Fu,” said Baxter. “Wang says hi.”

  “Tell him I appreciate his help,” Fu replied.

  “I will tell him that. He will expect you to show your appreciation sometime in the future. An eye for a tooth.” A favor given would require a favor in return; that was Wang’s way. Fu nodded in understanding. Baxter sent his three companions back outside to keep watch. Fu saw that each man carried a handgun in a shoulder holster under his jacket. Whoever had attacked Ed might be following him even now, but anyone who tried to harm him here would be in for a surprise. Wang’s men were cruel and deadly. Fu hoped they wouldn’t be needed long.

  * * *

  “Eddites!” Mason chuckled. “Did you give them that name?”

  Ed blushed. “No. They came up with that on their own.”

  “Are you their leader, or their mascot?”

  They sat together on a rocky outcropping that overlooked a field of blue-green grass. There was no wind, but the blades of grass moved slightly as though being blown by soft breezes. The purple sky was mostly obscured by a growing mass of dark clouds.

  Ed scratched his chin. He had finally shaved off his beard in the physical world, and that change was reflected here as well. “They expect me to lead them,” he said, “but I don’t know what to do with them.”

  Mason nodded. “We’re going to need all the help we can get. Things are about to turn ugly. Those clouds…” He looked up at the sky and shook his head. “Urizen knows who you are now. He is probing your mind, testing you to see how vulnerable you are. When he decides to attack with his full strength, we’ll need all of your Eddites to fight him.”