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

by Michael Stiles

  “This could be the end of his career,” Jonathan said. “I was relying on Mr. Bush to get me the access I need to keep searching for our enemy. But now… I think he’s ready to give up on politics altogether.”

  Ed knew it was unseemly to think of himself in a situation like this, but he couldn’t help it. “Where does that leave me? I can’t stay where I am for very long.”

  Mason held up a hand to stop him. “Remember, no one is supposed know where you are. Don’t say anything that might reveal it.”

  “I wasn’t about to.”

  “The question is,” Mason said, already on to the next thought, “where do we go from here? Mr. Bush was made for government service. Oh, he could always go back to his oil company, and I’m sure they’d love to have him. But that’s not his destiny. An oil company can’t do a thing to help us with our Urizen problem.”

  There had been no training for Ed that day; Mason had ended their meeting early. By the following week, he had regained his usual high spirits and said nothing more of George Bush’s political misfortune.

  “You usually have to be physically close to a person to control his body,” Mason had explained during another lesson in January. “As you were close to Kajdas when you broke him. It’s hard to do from far away unless you know the person very well.”

  “Nathaniel was far away when he took control of the Guru,” said Ed.

  “He had already burrowed deeply into the Guru’s mind, and into yours as well. Nathaniel tunneled into each of your brains by following myelinated neural connections.”

  “Myelinated?” Ed had taken a neurochemistry class once, several years before, but that term wasn’t familiar.

  “Ah.” Mason adopted his lecturing tone. “Myelin is a substance in the brain that improves connections. You’re familiar with dendrites and axons?” Ed nodded. “Impulses in the brain are simply electric shocks that propagate from neuron to neuron. Axons send the signals and dendrites receive them. That process tends to be inefficient because there is signal leakage and the transmission is slow. But as your brain develops, myelin sheaths form around the axons, increasing the speed of transmission. This creates a set of pathways that a skilled person can follow, if you know how to find it. Nathaniel seems to have an instinctive ability to locate these pathways. Once inside the Guru’s mind, or yours, it wasn’t hard for him to take control. He did all of that by identifying one thing, an idea or symbol, that triggered your strongest emotions. Once he found that, he used it to drill more and more deeply into your subconscious mind.”

  Ed felt his skin grow suddenly cold all over. “The gnome.”

  Mason nodded. “Which itself was a symbol of your deceased wife. Nathaniel seized upon that symbol and used its power to creep into every dark crevice in your subconscious.”

  Ed didn’t like discussing Eleanor with anyone. He had tried to leave her behind when he’d been with Sarah, but since Sarah had left he found himself thinking more of his marriage and the horror that had ended it.

  “I want you to learn to do the same thing,” Mason said quietly.

  Ed shook his head stubbornly. “I’ve already told you how I feel about that.”

  Jonathan’s bald spot was shining in the glow of the purple sky. “You’ve become very good at navigating the mind-space. But that’s only useful for manipulating static memories. You want to find your Oriental friend, right?”

  “Of course I do,” Ed said with some hesitation.

  “Digging through thousands of his memories won’t help you unless you happen to be very lucky. You have to move up and out of his memory center and into his conscious mind where you can converse with him. Do you have any idea what sort of symbol might have meaning to him?”

  “No,” said Ed.

  “Then you need to talk to his family and―”

  “No. I mean, I’m not going to. I don’t want to do what Nathanial did to me.”

  Mason sighed with exasperation. “Your boundaries are ridiculous, Ed. Don’t you understand what’s at stake?”

  Ed did understand, and he still refused. When he thought of the way Nathaniel had gotten inside his thoughts, the filthy feeling of having someone poking around in his head, he could not bring himself to consider doing it to someone else. So, for months afterward, he painstakingly explored the forests of Danny’s mind to find any clues to where he might be now. Mason thought this was dangerously foolish, and never hesitated to say so. Fortunately, Ed had once been married and was therefore experienced at standing firm in the face of incessant criticism.

  Despite their disagreement on that point, Mason was still a patient teacher. He had arrived punctually for every one of their weekly lessons and had taught Ed many things that the Guru either hadn’t known or hadn’t had time to get to. His knowledge, most of which he’d learned from his old mentor, Shiloh Jones, was extensive.

  “I once met a boy who came to see Shiloh,” Jonathan had told him at the end of one of their meetings in the early part of March, when the harsh winter weather was just starting to soften. “His mother brought him. She was worried about some problems the boy had been having at school. He was small and had some mental difficulties. He was bullied, sometimes to the point of being severely beaten. Have you ever been beaten up?”

  Ed thought of an alley, and two bald-headed men cutting him with a knife. He nodded.

  “This boy was beaten up every day at school for years. He drew inside himself, refused to talk to anyone but his mother. At night she could hear him crying in his bed. The mother let him stay home from school, but a police officer came to their house and made him go. Said they’d take the boy away if she didn’t send him to school. So back he went, and it only got worse. Until one day, when four big kids surrounded him in back of the school. A teacher heard the commotion and looked outside just in time to see those four big kids fall down on the ground, all at the same time. She went out and found them all dead. The principal was called, then the police, and the boy was kicked out of school. All of this was avoidable if they’d just kept those other boys under control.”

  “Dead?” Ed was a few steps behind in his comprehension of the story. “All four of them?”

  Mason shrugged and raised his eyebrows in a way that said too bad, but they had it coming. “The coroner found their craniums full of blood. Severe hemorrhaging, all of them at the same time. They suspected the boy had done something, but who could say for sure?”

  “What did he do to them?” Ed wondered how much Mason knew of Sarah and her ability. This sounded similar.

  “Shiloh had to study the boy for months to figure it out. It became his pet project. The kid had the same innate ability as we do, but he had no control. Under pressure, his mind created something like a shockwave. Recall that brain waves are just transmitted electricity. The rules that apply to a radio transmission also apply to the electrochemical transmissions that occur inside your head. In this case, the boy created a very strong, disruptive signal that destroyed their circuits. They melted down. Instant death.”

  Instant death is gonna get you, Ed thought, invoking a John Lennon song he’d heard not long ago. A question came into his mind that had been in his thoughts for a long time, and this gave him an opportunity to ask it. “What about the kid’s own brain? Didn’t this shockwave hurt him?”

  Jonathan stood up to stretch his legs, and Ed stood with him. “It didn’t seem to,” Mason said.

  “That’s good.”

  “At first.”

  Ed’s relief turned to alarm. “What do you mean?”

  “Most of the wave’s energy was directed out, not in. Using his ability caused the boy considerable pain, but it didn’t seem to do any permanent harm. Then there was a change in him. One day he was quite chipper, and the next day he went into a rage and never came back from it. Became quite violent and tried to kill Shiloh.”

  “Tried to kill him?”

  “It was like he was possessed, and I don’t use that term casually as others do. You cou
ld see in his eyes that the boy wasn’t at home anymore. He became a wild animal. Shiloh thought he must have messed up something in his head when he was zapping people. He had a certain number of zaps in him, and then his brain blew a fuse.”

  “So what happened to him? Did he turn out all right?”

  Mason shook his head sadly and said no more about it.

  Now it was nearly summer, and Ed was growing restless. Urizen was still out there, building up his power, and Ed was hiding away to keep himself safe. It wasn’t right, especially with Danny out there risking his life on a mission Ed had given him. And now that Urizen had found where he was staying, it would do no good to hide any longer.

  Ed was looking down into one of the holes when he felt a sudden jolt of alarm. He spun around and stepped away from the edge of the pit, instinctively preparing to leap out of the forest and back into his body. A man stood perhaps twenty feet away, looking directly at him. “For the love of… Jonathan! Don’t sneak up on me!”

  Jonathan gasped and then looked sheepish. “Ed, is that you? I’m terribly sorry.” He put a hand over his heart and paused to catch his breath. “You frightened me. I couldn’t see your face and thought you might be him.”

  “Where in the world have you been? I thought Urizen must have gotten you.”

  Mason smiled. “No, not yet. But he did have something to do with my absence. I’ve been in Washington, working my contacts in the White House.”

  “Have you found him?”

  “Getting closer.”

  Ed’s temper swelled up for a moment, until he fought it down. He’d been on a short fuse lately, and being startled did not help his state of mind. “You said it shouldn’t take you long to find him. That was months ago, and I’m still here. Still waiting.”

  Jonathan’s fortunes had begun to rise again along with his benefactor’s, when George Bush had been appointed to the post of Ambassador to the United Nations, keeping much of his staff intact. Mason had tried to hide his excitement at that development, but Ed had learned to read the man’s subtle signs of emotion. Yet even after that turn of events, the hunt for Urizen had not been fruitful.

  “Ed, I’m doing what I can. It’s not easy.”

  “Then let me help. I can’t stay where I am any longer.”

  “We can’t afford to put you in danger,” Jonathan said, a bit defensively. “Until we know who Urizen is, I can’t let you anywhere near where I believe he’s hiding. He’s extremely clever.”

  “We’re clever too, aren’t we? Anyway, it’s too late to hide. He’s found me.”

  Mason’s eyes opened very slightly wider than usual. “He found you?”

  “He was outside the house.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “No. But I could feel him out there. And I could smell him, like something burning. Baxter chased him away, but he knows where I am.”

  “Ah.” Jonathan stroked his beard, deep in thought. “That complicates things, doesn’t it?”

  “Just a bit.” Ed rolled his eyes.

  “Don’t be rude. Did he try to harm you?”

  “No. He was just standing outside. Watching.”

  Mason frowned, looking deeply troubled. “You felt his presence?”

  Ed nodded.

  “Hmm.” Jonathan considered this a bit longer, then came to some sort of decision. “We will have to find someplace else for you to go.”

  “I’m tired of hiding. Why not set a trap for him? If he comes back for me, we can be ready.”

  “No!” Jonathan shook his head vigorously. “Facing him directly will do no good at all. We would never beat him. No, we have to get to him indirectly. He’s built up a base of power, and the only way to hurt him is to take that away.”

  “Then let me help you look for him. Take me to Washington with you.”

  “Too risky. That’s Nosgrove’s back yard.”

  “Then at least tell me what you’ve found so far. Maybe you’ve missed something.”

  Mason seemed irritated by that comment, but he soon got over it. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been hesitant to tell you all of what I’ve found, because I don’t know what to make of it myself.”

  “We’re on the same side. I need you to tell me everything.”

  Jonathan nodded slowly. “That is true. Let me explain the situation to you, and we’ll come up with a plan together. Is that fair?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “I’ve been traveling overseas with Ambassador Bush on official business. He brings me along wherever he goes. Like an old suitcase—I’m mainly there to carry his things. We’ve been in Asia the last few weeks, which is why I haven’t come to see you. With the difference in time zones, I was always working at our designated time.”

  They walked together over the hill, stopping near the big tree.

  “I’ve met a number of interesting people,” Mason continued. “Like Yahya Khan, the president of Pakistan. There’s an intriguing fellow. Ambassador Bush has been meeting with him quite often, behind closed doors. Khan has been busy crushing a rebellion. He calls it restoring order, but it just amounts to simple rebellion-crushing—slaughtering the resistance until they stop resisting.”

  “He sounds like a swell guy,” said Ed. “Why are we talking to him at all?”

  Mason narrowed his eyes and arched his eyebrows conspiratorially. “All roads lead to Henry Kissinger. The National Security Advisor has been in talks with Khan as part of a strategy to make contact with a certain large nation in the Far East. Pakistan is going to help Dr. Kissinger get a meeting with that country’s leader in order to forge a new relationship.”

  Ed, who had received quite decent marks in geography as a boy, had no trouble guessing which country Mason was talking about. “What does Nixon want with China?”

  Mason smiled. “Good question. Notoriety, perhaps. To be known as the president who broke down the barriers and brought us to a new era of cooperation the Chinese. More likely, he wants to use an alliance with China as leverage against the Soviets. It’s not what Nixon wants that I care about. It’s what Urizen wants.”

  “You think this is all part of his plan?”

  “It all fits. Kissinger reaches out to both the USSR and China at a moment when those nations are at odds with each other. We straddle the fence in our relations with each. But then we ally with Pakistan in their war in Bangladesh, indicating that we favor Pakistan’s ally, China, over India and their new sponsor, which happens to be Russia. This will make Leonid Brezhnev nervous, won’t it? And a nervous Russian always reacts the same way when threatened: he prepares for war. That’s what Urizen is after: war. War makes the rich richer, and it brings more power to the powerful. Especially Urizen himself.”

  “Do you think Kissinger is really Urizen?”

  “I haven’t ruled it out,” Jonathan said. “Between trips overseas, I’ve been spending time with Mr. Bush in Washington. He visits Kissinger on occasion and brings me along to meetings at the White House. In the process, I’ve been able to get a good look at Henry Kissinger. I don’t know whether he’s the man we’re looking for. But he certainly does reek of Urizen’s influence.”

  Mason looked up at the big tree. He never went close to it; Jonathan said each person’s big tree was a sacred thing, a private place that no other person should ever violate.

  “All of Nixon’s men show the influence of Urizen,” he said after a long silence. “Everywhere the demon goes, he spreads his essence like a disease. People who spend a lot of time near him start to take on some of his characteristics. They begin to act and think like him. I’m convinced that he’s disguised himself as one of Nixon’s trusted men. The signs of his presence are everywhere.”

  “If his presence is so obvious,” Ed said, “why can’t you figure out who he is?”

  Jonathan’s expression turned sour. “He hides. Urizen is very good at hiding. Orc has always displayed himself proudly, daring his enemy to come after him. He loves being famous. But U
rizen stays in the shadows and makes his plans in secret. He doesn’t care for fame. The only way to tell he’s there is from the smell.”

  Ed looked at Jonathan quizzically.

  “There is a very distinctive smell anywhere he’s been, like something is burning. And sometimes you can see traces of the demon’s essence around people he’s touched, like black smoke. That was what I saw around everyone in the White House—almost every single person working in that place. Those closest to the President were the worst, and Nixon himself was surrounded by a very thick cloud. I could hardly breathe whenever Nixon was in the room. Kissinger, too, and Spiro Agnew and all the rest. Those with the smoke are all suspicious of each other. They scheme and plot and make alliances, then they betray their alliances and make new ones. All the while I was there I could see Urizen at work, using his corrupted people to put his own plans into motion—in the Soviet Union, in China, Indochina, Cuba. He’s setting up proxy wars, revolutions, and puppet dictatorships in dozens of countries around the world. The President’s men are his pawns. You know I always try to stay upbeat, Ed, but the situation is very bad.”

  “Would I be able to see this… smoke the way you can?”

  Mason’s frown deepened. “You said you were able to sense Nosgrove when he came to find you. You seem to be sensitive to it. But―”

  “Can you get me in there? I want to look around.”

  “See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you. Everyone who spends time with Nixon’s men is infected eventually. It would be the same for you.”

  “You’ve been there,” Ed said. “I don’t see any smoke around you.”

  “I limit my exposure.”

  “Then I won’t spend a lot of time there. Just long enough to see what I can see.”

  Jonathan ran his hand over his balding head and sighed. The idea clearly wasn’t sitting well with him. “I knew you’d say that. It’s just so risky.” He sounded like an accountant contemplating a vexing tax return.

  But Ed was not about to be dissuaded. “Doing nothing is pretty risky too, don’t you think? Besides, how many people do you know who can see this smoke? You need help, and there aren’t many people who can help you.”