Obie shook his head in wonder, his eyes soft and wide with a look that approached reverence. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“She?”
“Not just a sailor’s convention, in this case,” Obie said with a grin, stepping forward. “She’s definitely a she, though I’m not exactly sure what that means.” He looked at Linda. “This ship is alive, Mrs. President,” he said.
Something old and long lost stirred inside her and Linda stepped forward, reaching out and placing her unbroken hand on the wok’s side. She closed her eyes, then opened them and turned to Obie with a smile. “Jesus!” she said.
Obie reached out and touched the ship as well, then stepped back and laughed. “You two have met before,” he said.
Linda didn’t say a thing. It was too much. And the laughter hurt more than anything. Cole was dead. She did not want to laugh. She backed away until her shoulders touched the rough granite wall. Something inside her felt ready to snap. “I need her to get me out of here,” she said, her voice a ragged whisper.
“I think that’s why she’s here,” said Obie.
12.4
“You ever fly one of these?” asked Linda. They were lying side-by-side in the wok’s inner cabin, Obie on his stomach and Linda curled on her left side, guarding her broken hand. Obie was searching for something in the darkness. When the door melted shut Obie’s flashlight had gone dead and they’d been left in pitch black again. Linda was about ready to scream.
“Here it is,” said Obie.
“What?” Linda could hear something metallic scraping against the floor.
“Flight helmet,” said Obie. “I knew there’d be one somewhere.”
Linda listened as Obie pulled whatever he’d found over his head. “You don’t really have a clue what you’re doing, do you?” she said.
Obie’s voice was muffled. “Not really. But I’ve learned to trust my dreams.”
“Your dreams?”
Obie pulled at a strap of some sort. Linda could hear the unmistakable sound of Velcro strips being ripped open and adjusted. “It’s how I found you, Mrs. President. Why I’m here. I dreamt two weeks ago that you’d been imprisoned in the Ottawa Lodge, lost in the dark. There was this huge square drain in the floor, like a black hole, and you were being sucked into it and I stepped in to help. Then somehow you were in a wok, flying away. And there was a helmet like this, though you were wearing it.” He tapped the helmet in the blackness. “When the news of your … shall we say ‘abduction’ … hit the airwaves, I knew there had to be more to the story.”
“Jesus,” said Linda. “So they knew all along I would end up down here?”
“Don’t know, Mrs. President. When you start messing with timelines, all bets are off.”
Linda sighed. She could not wrap her mind around such things right now. “So then you came to find me?”
“Well, I didn’t do anything until that pay-phone rang as I was walking by. That was your friend, right? You were there?”
“You mean that phone call at Keeley’s? Yeah, Cole and I were right there.”
“Wish I’d known that. Could’ve saved us all a great deal of trouble.” Obie chuckled. “Maybe. Depends on how locked in the timelines are. It took me about ten minutes to realize that there might be more to it than a stray wrong number. I went back to that phone and ran a trackback. Got the ID and did a search at the library. Found your connection to Ms. Benedict and figured it out from there. I knew then that Rice had attempted to bring you in, and that something had gone wrong. When I called back, there was no answer. I guess you’d already made for the border at that point.”
Linda reached over and grasped his arm with her good hand. “Keeley’s husband was killed getting us across,” she said.
Obie sighed again. “Like I said, I wish I’d known.”
“Yeah, me too,” Linda said. She took a deep breath. “So what did you mean when you said Rice has been sidelined?”
Obie stopped and flashed his eyebrows with delight. “I arrived in Ottawa yesterday, but wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Figured Bob and Rice were keeping pretty close tabs on you. But I took a chance this morning and buzzed the astral for a quick peek. Found Bob in D.C. and Rice still in bed. I didn’t get too close, but it felt like he was sick. That was my cue to come get you.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Right down that pit Rice warned you about.”
“Down the drain?” asked Linda.
“Down the drain.”
The wok began to glow from the walls and ceiling, a faint blue-white light that cast Obie in silhouette. Linda breathed deeply, relieved just to have some illumination. Obie lay still for the longest time. Linda wondered if he’d fallen asleep. After a few minutes, she asked, “Obie?”
“Hang on,” he said. “Almost there.”
“Almost where?” asked Linda. They hadn’t even moved yet.
Obie reached around with his left hand, looking for something. “I wish I knew how to make this thing transparent,” he said.
In an instant the ship was as clear as glass. Linda covered her eyes with a gasp. They were underwater, rushing along what looked like a riverbed with full daylight overhead. After a moment the water disappeared. The wok was again opaque. They were back in the relative darkness of the blue-white light.
“Sorry,” said Obie. “Should’ve warned you.”
“Where are we?”
“The Lodge is right under Parliament Hill. Directly beneath the seat of government, as they like to say. The People love to do shit like that.” He reached down to scratch his side. “We’re currently making our way up the Ottawa River.”
“You can see where we’re going?” asked Linda.
“Yeah. That’s what the helmet’s for. Sorry there’s only one.”
“Why does it feel like we’re not moving?”
Obie turned in the dim light and saluted. “Alien technology, ma’am,” he said with a laugh. He turned back.
“Where are we headed?”
“I asked the ship to take us someplace safe.”
“You can just talk to the ship?”
Obie shrugged. “Think of the ship as concentrated consciousness,” he said.
Linda didn’t know what that meant. She started to ask another question but Obie cut her off.
“We’re here.” He pulled off the helmet.
“Where’s here?” asked Linda.
“Looks like a golf course.”
12.5
“I should have thought to bring pain meds,” said Obie, gesturing toward Linda’s broken hand. “We don’t have time right now for real healing.”
Linda looked down. She’d been carrying her right hand against her chest, cradling it against the fabric of her jumpsuit, protecting it with her left hand when she could. The fingers were swollen and red and would not move. She could imagine Rice, kneeling over her unconscious body, breaking her fingers one by one, maybe with a hammer, maybe with his bare hands. What she could not imagine was the inner experience of someone who could do such a thing. That sort of emotional detachment was beyond her. It was evil. And it was very, very dangerous. She thought of Cole falling to the floor, then looked over at his brother. She waved her broken hand in the air between them. “I have way worse pain than this, Obie,” she said.
Obie exhaled heavily. “Yeah. So let’s talk about that, okay?”
Linda looked away. The wok had set down in a small pond at the golf course’s edge. Transparent now, it looked to Linda as though they were lying side-by-side in a soap bubble, surrounded by mud and lost golf balls and the remains of last summer’s water lilies. She looked back at Obie. “Okay,” she said.
Obie nodded. “It may be true that Cole is dead,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I’m sure that’s what Rice intended.”
Linda closed her eyes.
“But he’s also capable of making mistakes, Mrs. President. Shooting Cole proves that. I mean, if what he wants is to contr
ol you, then killing my brother was a stupid, impulsive move on his part. Cole would’ve been of much more use to him alive. So Rice can fuck up. But another mistake he might be making is to assume Cole dead, just because he killed him. I don’t intend to make the same mistake.”
Linda reached out and took Obie’s hand. “I don’t understand, Obie. I saw him die.”
“I’m sure you did,” answered Obie, gently. “But when you start hanging out with the Strangers,” he pointed toward the sky, “the word ‘death’ kinda loses its meaning.”
Linda opened an eye. “What are you saying, Obie?”
“I’m saying, Mrs. President, that from what I can see, the Strangers have gone to way too much trouble to bring you two together to just let Cole go now.”
Linda raised her head. “What?”
“I’m saying that I think we need to go find my brother.”
Linda’s breath caught, her brow furrowed. “I don’t—” Linda raised herself to her elbow. “Do you know where to find him?”
Obie nodded. “I have a pretty good idea.”
“Then we need to go get him.”
“It’ll mean going back into danger,” he cautioned.
“I don’t care.”
“I should just go myself.”
“The fuck you will, Obie. Take me there. Now.”
Obie lowered his head. “It may not be easy. To see him,” he said.
“Take me there, Obie. Please. We have to get him. We can’t let Rice have him.” Linda held Obie’s gaze with fierce, raw eyes.
Obie reached out and pulled on the flight helmet.
12.6
The afternoon sun was waning. The shadows reached out to Linda like cold, spindly fingers as she followed Obie across the roof. Her bare feet stuck slightly to the black, tarry surface as she walked. The wok had landed on a squat, flat-roofed building, part of a complex of such buildings that lay just to the north of downtown Ottawa. Obie had told her not to worry, that they wouldn’t be seen. The ship knew what “she” was doing even if he didn’t. They made their way to an entranceway and Obie pulled on the gunmetal door. It opened without a hitch.
Obie stopped and turned. “You have to remember: ultimately, nothing you see here is real. And at the same time, of course, it’s all very real indeed.”
“And you don’t have time to explain that to me right now, do you?”
Obie grinned. “You got it, Mrs. President.”
“Where are we?”
Obie shrugged. “As far as the locals are concerned, it’s a hospital, a brand new facility specializing in the care and treatment of children with cancer. All of which is a cover for the Show.”
“The show?”
Obie raised a finger. “Like I said, nothing you see here is real.” He patted the gun at his hip, turned and walked through the entranceway. Linda followed, closing the door behind her. Together they headed down the stairway.
The fifth floor was as empty as the sixth had been: long, well-lit hallways lined with locked doors, the halls bending back on themselves to form rectangles. The elevators seemed to function properly but Obie insisted on the freedom of stairwells, even if they were harder on Linda’s ankle. He started down the next flight. Linda stopped to rest. “Wait,” she said.
Obie halted and turned. “Sorry. You okay?”
“I just need a minute.”
Obie walked back up to her side. “I think Rice’s biggest mistake is that things have changed and he hasn’t caught up yet.”
Linda frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Well, the Strangers – the Life, as he calls them – have departed. And without them, the Plan begins to fall apart. Without the aliens, it’s a whole new ballgame.”
Linda nodded. “Rice said something about that,” she said. She gestured behind her with a vague wave of her wrecked hand. “Back there. Underground. He didn’t seem to know where they’ve gone. Or why they’ve left those dormant ones behind.”
“Well, with any luck, what Rice doesn’t know will kill him. All I know is that I was expecting this place to be full of activity: labs and mad scientists and vats full of body parts and hybrid aliens on gurneys. Shit like that. But it’s not. It looks like they’ve closed up shop.”
“Will Cole be here then?” asked Linda. Hope clung like a small child to the edges of her words.
“I don’t know where else he could be,” shrugged Obie. “It’s standard practice to store bodies topside. I doubt Rice would just stash him in Legrand’s closet.”
Linda reached out and grabbed Obie’s arm. “Please, Obie. Please. This is hard. Please don’t talk about him that way.” She let go of his arm.
Obie nodded and sighed. “I’m sorry, Mrs. President,” he said. “I, uh, don’t even know Cole, you know?” He looked into Linda’s reddened eyes. “He’s not even real to me.”
“He’s very real to me,” answered Linda quietly. “I … I was falling in love with him.”
Obie smiled. “Well, Mrs. President, we’d better go find him then, hadn’t we?”
12.7
Obie pulled open the stairwell door to the third floor and stepped back. “Fuck me!” he said.
Linda pushed in beside him and looked around. “Jesus,” she said quietly.
The third floor had been completely gutted, from the looks of things. Instead of blank white walls and hallways of locked doors and overhead fluorescents, they saw a single huge room, murky and cavernous, the ceilings much taller than they had any right to be, lit only by distant windows and the remains of the day.
Obie knelt down to feel the floor. “It’s grass,” he said.
Linda walked into the darkness so that her eyes could adjust. It sure felt like grass to her bare feet. She looked out across the room. Something huge took up a good third of the space, blocking most of the windows on the opposite wall. The room filled suddenly with bright light and Linda spun to see Obie, his hand on a switch. She turned back. That huge thing was the burnt-out tail section of a jet airplane.
Obie came up beside the President and exhaled, a low, whistling sigh. “Here’s the Show,” he said, his voice filled with wonder.
Linda started forward, then stopped. She pointed toward the plane. “Are those…?”
Obie nodded. “Bodies. Yes.” He passed her on the right and walked toward the wreck.
There were flames still licking around the edges of the tail section, though there was no smoke in the air. The tail had split from the main cabin about thirteen rows from the back, a jagged maw of twisted metal and dangling cables and bent, burnt rows of seats. The ground around it, for this was soil and grass and weeds rather than hard, tile floor, was gouged and torn and littered with shoulder bags and coffee cups and shoes. And bodies. Obie counted thirty-nine, just on the ground. Who knew how many more they’d find inside the tail? Here were those body parts he’d anticipated. But they sure as hell weren’t in vats.
“How can this be here, Obie?” asked Linda, her face frozen and hard. She stood beside him where he’d stopped at the closest corpse. “What the hell is this?”
Obie shrugged. “Some of the Strangers find it most effective to communicate with us with these,” he gestured toward the wreck with a wave of his hand, “these theatrics. These object lessons.” He turned to face her. “I’ve found that the best thing to do in cases like this is to breathe deeply, go very slowly, notice everything, and suspend any attempts to figure it all out until later.” He turned back to the wreck. “Let’s see what this is about.”
Obie started picking his way through the bodies and luggage. Linda followed, working with her breath as Obie had advised, trying to quiet her mind and slow her pounding heart. She moved with measured deliberation, so as not to step on a body part with her bare feet. She told herself that nothing was real, that it was all just a show, but that got more and more difficult to do. The decapitated body of a young boy assaulted her at every level. When she saw the head just beyond the body, how it had rolled to a stop ne
xt to an intact bottle of hand lotion standing as if on display, she almost screamed.
A burst of laughter from Obie distracted her. Linda looked up to find him holding out a pair of hiking boots. “Looks like they knew you’d need shoes,” he said. The boots were brand new, still tagged and laced together, and appeared to be about her size.
“I don’t think I can take this,” Linda said, her voice desperate.
Obie walked to her with the boots and led her away from the boy’s head. “Let me help you put these on,” he said, supporting her as she sat on the grass. He untied the boots from each other and pulled off the tags, jerking open the tongues so she could slip them on. He squatted before her, then guided each foot gently into a boot. He laced and tied them quickly and stood back up. “Better?” he asked.
Linda nodded.
“C’mon,” he said, helping the President to her feet. “You’re okay. Just take it in like you’re watching a play.” He led her to the plane.
A few steps along Obie bent to pick up a piece of paper. A ticket. He read it, then looked up toward the heavens and smiled. “Good one,” he said, as if he were Tevye speaking with God.
“What is it?” asked Linda.
Obie handed the ticket to Linda. “New Air 413,” he said. “This was Ruth’s flight.” Linda let the ticket fall to the ground and looked up at the plane with sad, wet eyes. Obie grabbed her good hand. “C’mon,” he said. He guided her around to the open end of the tail section.
Linda gasped. There was Cole, sprawled along the aisle between the twisted rows of seats. He was lying on his back, his legs away from them, his head hanging over the torn edge of the aisle floor like a rag doll. The height of the wreckage put his face on a level with hers.
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