They sat there for a while, watching the gray clouds roll in. The breeze was picking up a bit.
“Will you teach them to do what you did to Kajdas?” said Jonathan. “How to… defend themselves?” Ed had told Mason all about Kajdas and the gnome. It had been the first time he’d told all of it to anyone. Everything he could remember, anyway.
“Back when I was learning from the Guru, he had some rules for his people. No taking control of others. No paralyzing or killing with the mind.”
“Those restrictions seem reasonable,” said Mason. “Then again, you saw fit to break the rules when your life was at stake.”
“I never trusted the Guru,” said Ed. “I didn’t like the way he treated Sarah. But his rules were good ones. I don’t want to teach anybody how to hurt people.”
“You’ll be asking these people, these kids, to risk their lives by following you. Don’t you owe it to them to show them every trick we’ve got?”
Ed had already thought about this, and the answer hadn’t been an easy one. “I owe it to them to lead them on a good path.”
Mason clearly wasn’t satisfied. “Urizen won’t fight fair. Why should you?”
“How is Witherspoon?” said Ed, mainly to change the subject.
Jonathan picked up a stone and turned it around in his hand to examine it. “He’ll live. He seems to be in good spirits. But Nathaniel did some damage to his mind. He won’t ever be quite the same again.”
“What about the memory we were trying to find?”
Mason tossed the rock away and shook his head sadly. “Novus? Nathaniel cleared away every memory relating to it. I did find one tree that had been knocked over. There was still an image locked inside it—the image of a building in the woods. But the image was faint, almost gone.” He chewed his lip in frustration. “I don’t think we’ll get what we need from Witherspoon.”
“We’ll have to find it some other way, then,” said Ed. “At least he’ll be left alone now.”
“We hope.”
Ed didn’t like the uncertainty in Mason’s voice. He decided to try a different subject. “Nathaniel wanted me to know that he has Arthur, and that Arthur’s still alive. Why do you think he hasn’t killed him?”
“Part of it might be a desire for payback,” Jonathan said. “Complete domination over his old teacher. But there’s a bigger reason to keep him alive.” He took on a lecturing tone, like a professor. “The spirit of Orc is bound to Arthur. There are lesser demons in this world that can move from host to host, like you see in the Bible. Urizen and Orc are not like those. When Orc wormed his way into Arthur’s soul, probably when Arthur was very young, he merged very tightly with Arthur’s own personality. He became Arthur, and Arthur became Orc. They aren’t really two separate things anymore. Have you wondered why the demon doesn’t just leave Arthur’s body, now that he’s being held prisoner?”
The question had crossed Ed’s mind. “He can’t escape.”
“Killing Arthur would sever that connection, allowing the demon to go free and find a new host. It would be weakened and lost for a while—years, maybe decades. But only Arthur’s death can set it free. The same is true of Urizen’s connection to Elmer Nosgrove. Killing the man is the only way to remove the demon. On the other hand, if you keep the body alive, the demon is stuck. With the demon inside, Arthur’s body is very nearly immortal. He can live for years, maybe centuries, without the necessities that normal humans need to survive. If I were Nathaniel, I would consider keeping Arthur alive and hiding him in a safe place. Somewhere he would stay for a long time, until Nathaniel can cleanse the world of all the people who might serve as another host.”
“Put him on ice,” Ed mused.
“Figuratively, yes. But this doesn’t achieve our goal, which is to break the Cycle for good. You have to defeat the demons to accomplish that—utterly destroy them. But the next obvious question is: if you kill the host, how do you prevent the demon from finding another? If we’re going to break the Cycle, we have to come up with an answer to that.”
Ed had seen first-hand what could happen when a spirit was permitted to fly free of its body. “Nathaniel found a new body to live in almost as soon as I killed his old one.”
“Nathaniel is human,” said Mason. “He’s learned some tricks from the old ones. He was able to take over a new body much more quickly than Orc or Urizen could have. But he isn’t immortal like they are. I’m sure he can be killed, truly killed, if we’re clever.”
Ed looked up at the stars through a gap in the clouds, wondering if one of them might belong to Eleanor. Her light would have gone out when she died, but sometimes he thought that a new one lit up for every one that went out. “When my wife died, I made a promise that I’d kill the man who took her away. I’ll find a way to keep that promise, sooner or later.”
“I’ll help you keep it, if I can., Oh, I almost forgot to tell you: a young Oriental man came here looking for you recently.”
“Danny!” Ed grabbed Mason’s arm in his excitement. “You saw him? Is he all right?”
“We didn’t talk much. I made him leave, out of fear for his safety. Have you still been meeting here with your group of friends?”
The wind was definitely picking up. “Now and then,” Ed replied.
Mason grimaced and shook his head. “The last time we spoke in person, I told you to avoid contact with anyone Urizen might want to use against you. Did you not understand what I said?”
“I understood you,” Ed said. “But―”
“I can’t help you if you won’t listen to me.” If Ed hadn’t known better, he would have thought Jonathan’s feelings were hurt.
“Sorry,” Ed mumbled.
“No more meetings. Now that Urizen has found you, anyone who visits your mind is in danger. And any one of them could be infected by Urizen’s influence.”
“I trust them. We’ve been through a lot together.”
“You care about them.”
Ed nodded.
“Especially the girl. Sarah.”
“Especially her.”
Mason put a hand on Ed’s shoulder. “Think about what you just told me. You care deeply for these people. It would wound you if anything happened to them. What exactly do they bring to this fight that makes them so indispensable? Do they have special skills?”
Ed shrugged. “Not really.”
“Then my advice is to leave them out of it. You have several new recruits who are already in tune with your mind. They can be helpful if they’re properly trained. And if something happens to one of your Eddites, well, it might be easier to lose a soldier than a friend.”
“It’s not as easy as you make it sound. The more I get to know them, the more I’ll care what happens to them.”
“Then let me help train them. You can keep a safe distance. If it makes you feel better.”
The clouds had thickened noticeably in the last few minutes. Ed watched as more of the stars were blocked from his view. “I do need your help,” he said after a moment. “But I want you to follow the Guru’s rules.”
Jonathan patted his arm. “You’re a good man, Ed. Too good for your own good, if you catch my drift. But I’ll follow the rules.” He sat gazing into the distance, until Ed realized he was looking at the two dark holes in the ground. They were just visible near the bottom of the valley that stretched out from the base of the hill on which they were sitting.
“We need to do something about those,” Jonathan said.
“Where do they go?” Ed asked.
Mason drew a long, slow breath. “The subconscious mind has many levels. This one, where we see a forest, is most comparable to the world we experience in our daily lives. Well-ordered, with rules that are easily understood. Down below there are more levels, areas of your mind where there are no rules. If you were to go down there, you would find your hidden desires and fears. Strong emotions blow through the subconscious mind like storms. You might come out again, or you might not. The things that hide
in those dark places could tear you apart or take you captive, hold you there forever so your physical body has no soul left to operate it.”
“A part of me feels… drawn to it. Like I want to jump in and see what’s down there.”
“Maybe you can do that someday. But not yet, all right? You’re not ready.” Mason frowned. “More importantly, those holes are a vulnerability. They are a window into the inner workings of your brain. If Urizen were to find them, he could do a lot of damage. I wish you hadn’t made them.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Ed mumbled.
Mason raised one eyebrow. “Be more careful next time. Once opened, I don’t know if it’s possible to close them up again. All we can do is guard them.” He nodded, as though he’d just come to a decision. “That’ll be our first lesson for your Eddites, then. I’ll have them keep watch over the holes and send me a warning at the first sign of danger. We’ll have them watched around the clock.”
Ed didn’t like the sound of that. “You want them in my head all the time?”
“Only when I can’t be here. It’s for your own good. Now, don’t make that face. You’re the one who created these holes to begin with. Now you’ve got to live with the consequences.”
Ed sighed heavily.
“And don’t tell anyone where you are in the physical world. Not anyone; not even me. I’ll keep working with Driscoll to try to find out what we can about Nosgrove. In the meantime, I want you to stay where you are and wait patiently. Will you do that?”
“I hate waiting,” Ed replied.
“Good. I’ll contact you when I know more.” He patted Ed on the shoulder again before fading away.
Ed sat for a while and looked at the sky. Although the clouds made it hard to see, somewhere up there was a star that belonged to Eleanor—wherever she was now—and one for Sarah. That gave him a little bit of hope.
* * *
In a stylish townhouse in Georgetown, Elmer Nosgrove sat in his study sipping a glass of wine. He had reached an obstacle in his plans, and he needed to take time to think things through properly.
As far as the world was concerned, Elmer Nosgrove was of no importance whatsoever. He had been a bureaucrat at the FBI, retired without fanfare, and was never heard from again. He had made sure that no one would remember what he looked like. Very few people knew anything about the many schemes Nosgrove had overseen during his years at the Bureau. Most of those who had known were dead.
Candlestick, Daisy, Summit. The first had been a terrible failure, due to Kajdas’ bungling. The Summit project had been set back in Toronto, but Nosgrove had put other men in charge, and those other men had done well. Three of the first four on Nosgrove’s list had been eliminated. Hendrix, the guitarist who had been idolized by so many young people, had been killed by poison and arranged so it appeared he had choked on his own vomit. Barely two weeks later, the singer Janis Joplin had been given heroin that was far purer than what she’d expected. The same had happened to the singer Blind Owl Wilson from a band called Canned Heat, whose horrible, high-pitched voice had made Nosgrove twitch. None of these deaths had been deemed suspicious by the investigators. All three had died at the age of 27—three raised to the power of three. Nosgrove had always loved the number three.
And then there was Daisy. The success of the Daisy operation had surpassed even Nosgrove’s expectations. With Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy both out of the way, and a malleable Nixon in the White House, Nosgrove had been able to position his own men in all the places where they were needed. It was time for the next phase to begin.
He had already put his Nosgrove persona to rest, as he had once retired another identity named Thornwood. A different name, from a different time. Retirement did not mean any rest for Elmer himself—far from it. He had other names, other masks he could wear to suit his needs. But even when he assumed a new identity, he would still think of himself as Nosgrove. He liked the name.
Elmer swirled the wine in his glass. The bottle had cost six thousand dollars. And, to tell the truth, it tasted like six-thousand-dollar wine.
It had been pure chance that had brought Terwilliger into the picture, when Kajdas had fouled up the Candlestick operation and caused the man’s wife to be killed. The discovery of Terwilliger had been a new development, a surprise. Nosgrove had lived a hundred different lives in the bodies of a hundred different men, and each time he had battled Orc. Sometimes Elmer won, and sometimes Orc won, but the endless game was always just between the two of them. Now Terwilliger had appeared, and Terwilliger was something new. For the first time in Elmer’s long existence, there was another threat at least as dangerous to him as Orc was. More dangerous, in fact, because Orc might win one iteration of the Cycle, but Terwilliger had the power to end it forever.
That stinking prophet, Blake, had written about a man who could break the Cycle. Palamabron, Blake had named him, one of the sons of Los. Blake had imagined himself to be Palamabron incarnate, the hero of his own pantheon—but that had proven false when Blake had died of liver disease, penniless and pathetic. Elmer had met William Blake once, and was not impressed. The poet had allowed his twin obsessions, mythology and the Bible, to cloud his thinking.
Now, after all this time, Blake’s writings had come true. Palamabron was walking the earth. Terwilliger had a second sight, an ability to see the future. And he could visit the worlds of memories. Few could do that anymore. There was no doubt in Nosgrove’s mind that Terwilliger was a bigger danger than Orc had ever been.
Thus far, all of Elmer’s direct attempts on Terwilliger’s life had failed. Terwilliger had a prophet’s foresight, and would predict any move Elmer might make against him. Nosgrove had decided that direct confrontation would not succeed. And all the while he had to watch out for the one-eyed man, who had taken control of Witherspoon’s secret weapon and would be waiting for his chance to attack. There were threats in all directions. But Elmer Nosgrove had been threatened before, and he always managed to win in the end.
So he sat in his study, making plans and sipping his wine, until it was time to go to bed.
21
A Man in the Dark
April 1971
Ed stood in a forest of young trees, sparse enough that he could see a bit of the purple sky through the gaps among the leaves. The foliage was a beautiful shade of red-orange, as if this was an ordinary woodland in the fall, except there was no variety of color here. He had spent a great deal of time in this forest lately, peeking into Danny’s memories for some clue as to where he was now. People often placed new memories in clusters—subconsciously, of course—filling in one region before starting to plant new thickets somewhere else. This part of the woods was young, containing memories Danny had formed in the last year or so. There were many memories of Sarah, whom Danny had known as Lizzie. Sarah loved Liz Taylor movies, and Doris Day as well. Ed forced himself to watch the memories of her, even though it made his stomach hurt every time he saw her face.
The condition of the forest had convinced him that Danny was not dead. It was alive and vibrant. Ed had once visited the Guru’s mind as the man’s spirit was slipping away. That dying mind had become a desert after the trees all died, and the desert eventually dissolved into the emptiness of space. The mind-forest could not exist without a consciousness to give it life.
Danny was most definitely still alive. There were two questions, then. The first: Where was he? His memories would contain the answer, if only he could find the right ones. But Ed had learned from his experience with Charles Witherspoon that finding a specific memory was practically impossible. There were millions of individual memories in the mind, and it would take a lifetime to explore them all.
The second question was how the Army had lost him. The only way to answer that was to find him.
Six months had passed since Ed had gone into hiding. The winter had been snowy and seemingly never-ending, until March had brought a hint of warmth that restored a little of his faltering hope. Locke
d up inside the Chans’ house, he had begun to feel like a prisoner. The featureless view from his window, in the room he shared with Norris, had worn him down with its unceasing grayness. Now, finally, the weather had turned warm and his spirits were improving a bit.
Six months since Sarah had left. She had phoned to speak with Alice a few times, but she’d never asked to talk to Ed. He wondered what she was doing now, and whether she was still working for that man Lester Myles. He hoped not.
A sapling grew nearby, with no more than a half-dozen pointed leaves growing on it. Ed brushed his fingers across the edge of one red-orange leaf. The world around him disappeared, and suddenly he was seeing things that Danny had seen. He was standing in a jungle, surrounded by men. One of them said, “He’s looking at your monkey.”
Those words made Ed’s heart leap. He followed Danny’s gaze and saw that one of the men had a tattoo of a green monkey on his arm. Ed laughed out loud, then looked around at the men in embarrassment. They couldn’t hear him, of course, so he laughed again. “He found the monkey!” Ed said, delighted. For months he had become increasingly sure that he’d sent Danny on a pointless mission. Where would he find a green monkey in Vietnam? But he had found one. Then Ed saw that same tattoo on another of the men—and then another. As the memory faded, Ed wondered what the monkey tattoo represented. He would just have to ask Danny when he saw him.
A chill ran through his whole body at that moment. He tensed and looked around. Soon it came again: a sense that he was not alone. Crouching close to the ground, he looked into the purple sky and watched for movement. There was nothing there except the bright, colorful stars.
He rose up and floated just above the canopy to have a look around. Far off in the distance he could just make out a very tall, slender object that stood out among the natural features of the land. It might have been a skyscraper, if such a thing could exist here; it was too straight to be a tree. He had been surprised to see the object the first time he had come here, and had tried to go closer to it to see what it was. But it was always far away no matter how he tried to approach it, and he eventually gave up trying to get there. Today he barely noticed it as he floated above the trees, looking up for any sign that he was being followed, but he saw nothing unusual.
The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2) Page 30
