Realizing that William's own disappearance meant that one could instantly "think" oneself from one place to the other, Linda squeezed her eyes shut and thought about home. She thought of Cole and the last time they'd made love. She thought of Grace playing in the garden and Emily reading and Iain practicing his drums. She thought of Mary and Keeley and Stan and Sten. She thought of warm baths and hot tea and Dennis's cold, wet nose. She tried to "push" herself from where she was to where she wanted to be. But when she opened her eyes, there was Mars, still looming, dominating both overhead and underfoot, depending on how she oriented her perspective in the free-fall of space. The Fisherman's container was real, and she was trapped inside of it.
"Follow me," he'd said. The arrogant bastard. How the hell did she do that? I'll tell you inside. Inside what? Inside Phobos? Inside a moon? He'd told her she could pass through solid matter. Jesus! She'd even passed her hand right through her own body! But inside a moon? What could there possibly be to see inside of a rock? And how would she ever find him, if that was where he'd gone?
Find him. That was the key. She had to key in on him. On his body. His face. His being. His vibration, even. It didn't matter where he'd gone. If she just followed him, she'd end up where he was. Linda took a relaxing breath, closed her eyes, and imagined the Fisherman in her mind's eye. His face, with its fierce eyes and gentle smile. His feathery white hair. His proper British accent. His stupid Hawaiian shirt. But he was more than these outward features, wasn't he? He was a real human being, arrogant and self-assured, and yet vulnerable, clearly wanting Linda's understanding and acceptance. Even, he'd said, her love. He claimed he wasn't human, and yet Linda sensed something in him that could feel for others. He had a plan to murder a large portion of the human population, if what he'd said was to be believed. Perhaps what he really wanted was for Linda to talk him out of it.
Linda sighed, though she understood that her sighing involved neither lungs nor throat nor moving air. This was all too much. She was exhausted and angry and aching for her family. And now she had to play hide-and-seek with a man whose motives she could barely comprehend. It was the anger that burned red-hot at the surface of her being. Linda went with it. Closing her eyes once more, concentrating on this little old man who was pissing her off, Linda willed herself to him.
And there he was.
She stood on what appeared to be a ledge, a balcony carved into a vast stone wall. Before her was a cavernous rectangular room, large enough to easily fit an aircraft carrier. All six sides had been roughly cut from solid rock. And on the ledge with her, standing with his hands resting atop the half-wall that served as the balcony's railing, standing with his back to her, was the Fisherman.
"I was certain that you'd find me," he said, his voice as calm and still as a prayer.
"Where are we?" Linda could think of nothing else to say.
William turned. "Inside Phobos," he said with a wink. "In what might have served as a grand hall or conclave. For those who built this." He motioned toward the vast room with a sideways tilt of his head.
"Built this?" asked Linda.
The Fisherman nodded eagerly. "Phobos is an ancient spacecraft, Madam. Battered and dead, to be sure, but unmistakably crafted by intelligence."
Linda could only shake her head. There were too many questions to choose from.
"There are many such ruined craft to be found in our solar system. Phobos and Deimos are the only ones to be found stranded in orbit around a planet." He took a step away from the railing, toward the President.
Linda frowned. "Deimos is a spacecraft, too?" she asked.
"Most certainly," said the Fisherman, "though we've not yet succeeded in exploring it. We can tell that there are artificially hollowed out areas in Deimos, but we can find no way to enter, on the physical plane or otherwise. It is blocked to us."
"But..." Linda stopped and exhaled wearily. Her anger had evaporated as soon as she'd appeared here. She missed it. She wanted to be angry. She wanted that power. But she could not maintain her anger in the face of such mystery. "Ancient, you said?"
"It would seem," said William. "The remnants of a cosmic war from the solar-system's deep past. The Gods’ War, we call it, though we understand only fragments of what happened."
Linda stepped forward, placed a tentative hand on the stone railing, and peered over the edge. She appeared to be a hundred feet or so from the stone floor. On the distant wall opposite her was another balcony. In the center of all four walls, at both floor and ceiling levels, were what appeared to be enormous stone doors. It was lit as if by daylight, but she could see no source for the illumination. She turned to face the Fisherman. "So why is this an appropriate place?" she asked.
"Madam?" said William, cocking his head.
"Back outside," explained Linda. "You said that it was appropriate that we begin our conversation here."
"Ah," said William. "Right." He stroked his neat beard. "Back on Earth, at this very moment, your virtual twin is poised to address a global summit of so-called world leaders."
"I'm not following," said Linda. She motioned toward the vast, open space behind her with a wave of her arm. "What does that have to do with this?
The Fisherman looked Linda in the eye. "You stand on a balcony that oversees the grand meeting hall of a long-deceased intelligent species. What better place from which to deliver your State of the Union address?" He grinned broadly, as though he'd been waiting to deliver that line.
"My what?" asked Linda, taken off guard.
"Your assessment, if you will," said the Fisherman.
"My assessment of what, William?"
William raised an eyebrow. "Of your administration, Madam President. And of the collective human situation back on planet Earth."
"But... surely you know more than I."
The Fisherman shook his head firmly. "I don't know what you know that you know, Madam."
Linda had to run that through her mind a couple of times before she grasped his meaning. "What is it you think I know?" she asked.
William smiled gently. "You failed to save the world, Madam President. I want for you to tell me why."
4.14
"I've been thinking," said Carl.
Ted looked up from his tiles and smirked. "That would explain the sound of grinding gears," he said. He returned his attention to the game. It was his turn again.
"No, really," said Carl.
Ted sighed, sat back in his chair, and rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. "You're not gonna let me get out of saying 'what?' are you?"
"Maybe we haven't always been here," said Carl. "I mean... do you think about that? That maybe we were someplace else once? Before now?"
Ted shook his head from side to side. "I'm not sure I follow you," he said at last.
Carl shrugged, a grand gesture of both uncertainty and exasperation. "I don't know," he said, his voice almost plaintive. "But... I mean. There has to be, right? Somewhere else? Notice the words we've played. Fork. Basement. Keys." Carl pointed at each word on the board as he went along. "I mean... we play these words and we both just know what they mean and agree that they're words, but there is no fork here. No basement. No keys." He pointed at Ted. "So if you and I know these words, and if we know that they describe real things, then we must have come from some other time or place where such things exist."
Ted closed his eyes to think. "So..." he said, his eyes still closed, "we haven't always been here." He opened his eyes to look at Carl. "So what?"
"So we may not be stuck here!" said Carl, as if it were obvious.
Ted got up and checked the door again. "Still locked," he said.
"Yes!" said Carl, rising to join him. He shook the handle and pulled on the door. There was enough wiggle room in both that they made sounds as he jerked on them. "But maybe it won't always be so." He folded his arms in front of his chest. The expression on his face was that of someone who had just won.
Ted rolled his eyes and returned to his
chair. He bent forward to stare at his tiles, hoping to put an end to Carl's crazy ranting. Perhaps if he just quickly played a word and made it Carl's turn, Carl would forget about this nonsense.
But Ted could find no word. At least, nothing good enough to score him the points he wanted.
Carl sat heavily in the chair opposite him. "Maybe there's something we have to do," he said softly.
Ted turned his letters face down on the table. "To do what?"
"To get out of here."
Ted stared. "So you want to get out of here?" he asked.
Carl scoffed. "Don't you?"
Ted surveyed the room. "It's not so bad," he said. He returned his attention to the game, righting his rack and shuffling the order of his tiles as the put them back in place. Accepting that he didn’t have what he needed to get a high score, he drew three of his tiles and put them on the board, playing off the word that Carl had just played. "Spud," he said, "another word for potato."
Carl glanced at the word, then at his own tiles, and immediately drew three of them. "Rice," he said as he played his turn. He looked at Ted. Both of them smiled.
"Looks like we've got a food theme going here, Carl," said Ted. He put down three more letters to spell the word "wok."
"Looks like," agreed Carl.
Chapter Five
5.1
Another powerful wave crashes over my head and sluices down my throat, choking me with salty, metallic brine. I kick and flail to keep my head above water as all around me, huge, dark bodies twist and lung and thrash. Dolphins are dying by the dozens and the water is red with their blood. The air is filled with screams. One of the screams is my own.
A boat appears to my left and I turn to face it. Along the edge stand grim men with long, bladed poles, tight mouths, and death in their Oriental eyes. The men plunge the blades into passing dolphins, slicing away their flesh and cutting away their lives. Others lean over the gunwale with large hooks and pull the dying creatures onto the deck to finish them off. A dolphin, a slab of flesh like a huge salmon steak peeling back from its side, leaps into the air right before me. I can see the panic in its eyes. Or is that rage? The dolphin lands in the boat, knocking a man over the edge and into the sea on the boat's opposite side before coming to rest on the deck. One man crushes the dolphin’s skull with an iron bar while the others help their friend back aboard. Another wave slaps me in the face and I struggle, again, to keep my head above water.
Zacharael stands on the deck as solid and unmoving as a mast as the boat tosses in the choppy bay. The Oriental men seem not to notice him. The tall, thin, red-haired man's gaunt face is covered with tears and his mouth is round with horror and helplessness. He reaches out as if to stop one of the fishermen from plunging his blade back into the water. The fisherman goes about his work, unmoved by Zacharael's ghostly touch. Zacharael steps to the gunwale, looks me directly in the eye, then raises his arms out beside him and gazes prayerfully at the sky.
In a moment, we are once again in the depths of space. The thrashing cries of dolphins have been replaced by the silence of hard vacuum. I note the huge icy rock rolling underfoot, but my attention is demanded by Zacharael. He stares at me with eyes that burn with grief and rage. One of his eyelids ticks up and down, up and down, a barely perceptible twitch, like a prison door struggling to remain closed as the inmates inside pound on it with their fists. The tears on his face glisten like ice, as if the cold of space has frozen them.
Zacharael jerks his head to the right, looking away as though I disgust him. He waves his hand dismissively and again, in an instant, we are transported. We float in the air over a high, frozen plain that ends in a cliff jutting out over the sea. A small cluster of houses straddles the cliff's edge. The plain is flat and treeless, crusted with snow and ice. Carved into the ice is another huge symbol, that same circle bisected by an inverted L.
"What are you going to do about all of this?" asks Zacharael. I open my mouth to respond. I am not sure what he is talking about. But before I can answer, he has morphed again into a shiny black sphere. As it hovers in the sky before me, the whole world seemingly spinning about us, I fall backwards, tumbling head over heels onto the sofa.
Finishing, Gabrielle placed her notebook and pen on the floor, rose from her couch, and dragged her exhausted body across her darkened room to her bed, not even stopping to take off her clothes. Walking in her sleep, it did not occur to her how unfair was Zacharael's question.
5.2
Linda stepped to the podium that the Fisherman had materialized before her, Presidential Seal, microphone, and all. She turned back and wrinkled her brow. "No teleprompter," she said, her humorous tone conveying both anger and fear.
"All they want is you, Madam President," said the Fisherman. He pointed out toward the vast, cavernous hall before them. Linda turned and gasped. There, hovering just below the balcony in the weightlessness of Phobos' orbit, standing and waiting with faces lifted and eyes expectant, was a crowd that stretched from side to side and all the way to the back.
Linda scanned the multitude. These were her people. Sprinkled amongst the nameless faces were many she knew, and some she loved: Cole and his kids, Mary and Keeley, Stan and Sten and Mike and Ness. There was Obie and Agent Rice, who'd disappeared together into the blackness of a rubix. There was Sina and Utterpok and Payok and Aamai, and countless other Inuit she'd never had time to know. There was Alice. There was Spud. There was the General. There was Pooch. There was her mother, missing and presumed dead, and Cole's first wife, Ruth, who'd died in a plane crash, and Linda’s long-dead husband, Earl, who'd died in his boat. There was Cole's father, Ben, who had passed from cancer just last year. There were senators and there were congresspeople. Supreme Court justices and CEOs. Bankers and brokers and lawyers and pundits and lobbyists and reporters. There were great numbers of “average Americans.” Linda knew it was all a mirage. A trick at the hands of the man who now held her captive. It didn't matter. Her heart was filled with warm love and sharp grief and bittersweet longing and stinging resentment. Pain raked her face with deep creases.
William stepped up beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Tell your people why you failed," he said gently.
"You're a cruel, cruel man!" spat Linda, whirling to face him.
The Fisherman nodded but did not defend himself. Linda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Tell them," said William again. "Tell the truth. Tell it all. Tell your people the state of their union, Madam President. They need to know."
Linda opened her eyes and turned to face the crowd. She pushed a strand of yellow-blonde hair from her forehead, opened her mouth to speak, then glanced back at the Fisherman. "I don't understand what this has to do... ” she protested.
The Fisherman raised his hand to stop her. "You will," he said.
Linda shook her head in frustration and turned back to the crowd. Inhaling deeply, she leaned forward to the microphone. "I failed," she said simply, then doubled over, sobbing. Those two words had untied the knots of shame and guilt and grief that had been holding her together for months. Years. Between the sobs came huge, gasping inhales, like a swimmer coming up for air after far too long underwater. She held to the podium, her hands clutching the corners, afraid she might otherwise fall or float away. Huge tears spattered the slanted lectern top and rolled to the edge, defying the lack of gravity. The crowd watched in attentive silence.
The Fisherman leaned forward to speak into her ear. "You failed," he repeated.
Linda glanced up at him through her tears. "I couldn't do it!" she hissed. "Nobody could do it. There was no winning." She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "We all failed."
"You couldn't do it," said William. "Nobody could have done it."
Linda shook her head. "No," she said.
"What didn't work?" asked the Fisherman.
The President bowed her head and closed her eyes. "Nothing worked," she said. "I tried. Jesus, I tried." She glanced back at the Fisherman with o
ne open eye. "It was all too much."
The Fisherman nodded warm understanding. "What was too much, Madam President?"
Linda wiped her nose on her sleeve, uncertain where to start. "I don't know," she said. "The climate? The population? The oil running low? I mean... Jesus, William, where do I start? There's just too much wrong with the world. Too many problems, too long ignored. Too much wrong with us. There was no way to fix it all."
"And that was your job. To fix it."
Linda exhaled heavily. "Nobody could fix it," she said.
"So you were set up, then?" asked the Fisherman. He cocked his head slightly to the side.
Anger flashed across Linda's face like afternoon thunderstorms. "Yeah," she said with a quick nod. "I was set up." She turned and looked back out over the crowd, finding there a sea of faces raptly attending her every word, hungry for answers. She turned back to the Fisherman. "But set up by whom?"
William nodded. "Indeed."
5.3
Mary, silent, her face slack in the moonlight, stared up at the sky.
"Ma'am?" said Agent Gilder. The short, dark-haired agent stepped hesitantly forward, her hand outstretched, in case Mary was feeling faint.
Mary noted her bodyguard’s presence but did not respond. There was too much in this moment. The agent would have to wait. Mary squinted her eyes slightly, then opened them fully again. Something was different but she didn't know what. The Grid was still there, shining brightly against the stars. The crescent moon slid slowly across the sky, its motion made more apparent by the Gridlines. The few clouds she could see were mere wisps. But there was something about the sky that caught her attention. There was an image in her mind, of Cole's three children peering down at her from above, like kids watching an ant on the sidewalk. She did not know what this meant.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 14
