"Ma'am?" said Agent Gilder a second time. She was worried about Mary standing so long in this heat, still sweltering even after the sun had set.
Mary pulled her gaze away from the sky. "Yes?"
"Are you okay, Ma'am?"
"I'm fine," said Mary.
"Are we going someplace I need to know about?" asked Gilder.
Mary shook her head. "We're just... going," she answered. She waved her hand around, to indicate the trees looming over them, and the open field at the end of the drive. "Following." She looked at Agent Gilder. "I'm trying to feel... something."
The agent relaxed her shoulders, resting her hand on the radio at her hip. "I've heard about you," she said. "You've got a knack for seeing things most people can't see." Gilder glanced over her shoulder to make sure they were alone, then returned to Mary. "I do too," she added. "A bit."
"Really?" said Mary, giving Gilder her full attention. She was always heartened to learn that Secret Service agents were real human beings. "What do you see?"
Agent Gilder shrugged. "Not much. Just … every now and then … little pointers. You know? Like... signs, maybe. Or arrows. Go this way. Drive in this lane. Take this hallway. That sort of thing. I found my little brother that way, when we were kids. He was hiding. From my dad."
Mary recoiled at that, knowing exactly what it meant to hide from one's father, feeling again her shame and guilt over having left her own little brother behind, and wondering again where he'd ended up. With all the resources of The People, and then the US government, she'd never been able to find him. Danny was probably dead. Mary had a bad track record when it came to protecting kids.
"Are you searching for the President's children?" asked the young agent. There was a touch of excitement in her eyes, evident even in the moonlight.
Mary nodded. "Of course." She started ambling down the driveway toward Parkwood Drive. The trees on either side fell away, opening up the sky. The overgrown athletic field on the other side of Capitol Street shimmered faintly in the Gridlight.
"Can I...?" said Agent Gilder, following.
Mary stopped and turned.
"Can I tell you what I sense?" asked the agent. "If I sense anything?"
"You must," said Mary.
Gilder studied the ground for a moment, then looked back up at Mary. "I never get to talk about this stuff. With the other agents. You know?" She shook her head in wonderment. "They just think it's stupid."
"Old habits die hard," said Mary. She started again down the drive. Agent Gilder followed, noting that Ms. Hayes seemed strong today, and was walking straight and tall. They turned onto Parkwood, keeping to the shoulder, which was easier to see. All they had to go on was Gridlight and moonlight. The streetlights of Augusta had long since gone dark.
Parkwood brought them almost immediately to Capitol Street. Mary stopped and peered in both directions. The road was empty and quiet, save for the two soldiers who sat in a Jeep in the middle of the intersection. Mary glanced at their fields but saw little of note, vague images of food and sex and wanting to be in bed, then guarded suspicion towards Mary and Agent Gilder, for showing up unexpected in the night.
Agent Gilder walked over and conferred quietly with the soldiers. One was shaking his head back and forth while the other muttered short, sharp phrases. Mary joined them, noting the lack of anxiety in her gut. Searching for the missing children had called her into her power in a way she'd thought was long lost.
"Is there a problem?" she asked.
The head-shaking soldier turned to her. "No, Ma'am," he said. "Not as long as your plan is to turn around and go back to your home. We've got this town locked down tight tonight."
Mary stepped closer. "You know who I am," she said. It was more a threat than a question.
"Sure do," said the muttering soldier. "But the President's children went missing today, as I'm sure you know." Mary noted the sarcasm in his voice, and wondered if the CO had already judged her as responsible. "The party or parties responsible may still be in the area. The Colonel has upped the threat level to orange. We're under curfew."
"Then I guess we're going to need an escort," said Mary evenly.
"Ma'am?" said the head-shaking soldier.
Mary nodded as though what she was saying were obvious. "Agent Gilder and I are doing a high-level psychic search for clues as to the children's whereabouts. Of course you want this to happen, and of course you should accompany us, for just the reasons you stated."
The two soldiers looked at each other, then back at Mary. "I don't think that's going to happen, Ma’am," said the muttering soldier.
"That's too bad," said Mary, her teeth glinting in the Gridlight. "Because your careers will suffer for it."
The head-shaking soldier motioned with a head tilt to his colleague and the two took a few steps away, to converse in low tones with faces close together. The muttering soldier glanced back at Mary repeatedly as the head-shaking soldier spoke. At last, they stopped muttering, turned, and stepped closer to Mary and Agent Gilder. "We're going to have to clear this higher up," said the muttering soldier.
Mary smiled sweetly. "I think that would be a good idea, soldier," she said, amiably. "And when you get Francis on the phone, do let me speak with him, will you please?"
The muttering soldier pulled out his phone.
5.4
"I'm glad to have you back online," said Vice President Singer. He sat in the cushioned office chair behind his expansive desk, his feet crossed and resting on the desk's edge. His hands were clasped behind his neck, cradling his large head with confidence and nonchalance. The room was so well air-conditioned that there wasn't so much as a spot of perspiration under his arms.
"I'm glad to be back online, Al," said Keeley. "It was a rotten time to get sick." Singer's head, reflected in the night-darkened window behind him, looked to her as though it was surrounded by a halo. Keeley wondered if it was something like this that Mary saw when she spoke of people's "fields."
"Right." Singer unclasped his hands long enough to paw at a tickle in his ear. "The ship of state continues to sail, no matter the waves that smash into its prow, knocking some of us to our knees." He smiled like a salesman, obviously pleased with his metaphor. "There is more to do now than ever before."
"Of course," said Keeley, working to keep her eyes from rolling. Try as she had, she'd never grown to like Albert Singer, and had never fully understood why Linda had kept him on when so much of her government had been shaken apart. Singer was an old-school political man, not particularly bright, and he'd never seemed to fully grasp the true implications of either the acknowledged presence of alien beings in the affairs of humanity or the unstoppable unraveling of the human-built economic and industrial machine, and the environmental nightmare that that machine had caused.
But there was more. Truth be told, even though no direct connection had ever been established between Singer and The People, or between Singer and whatever hidden layers existed behind The People, Keeley just couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been one of them. It came down to a matter of trust. Keeley did not trust her Vice President.
And yet Linda seemed to. So Keeley followed her President's lead, and accepted him, even when he all-too-easily fell into the role of acting-President in Linda's absence. Keeley would have preferred a great deal more diffidence on Singer's part than he'd displayed since Linda was quarantined. There was too much relish in the man's eyes, and Keeley did not mean chopped pickles.
"So how are you holding up?" asked Keeley. "Having to fill in for the President at the times when she can't freely communicate with us?" Keeley felt it her duty to remind Singer of the temporary and supportive nature of his current role. Linda Travis, though ill and confined, was still their President, still in charge, and still able to fulfill her duties.
Singer waved off the question with an expression of humility, dropping his feet to the floor to appear as dignified as his response. "It's my honor to be of service," he said. "But I must sa
y, this is a difficult job, one that I'm glad not to have on a full-time basis. I'm fortunate to be serving with Linda Travis. Anyone else would have plunged us straight into war right after the Crash."
Keeley raised an eyebrow. "You don't call our current actions in Congo, Turkmenistan, and the East China Sea 'wars'?" she asked.
Singer leaned forward, placing his hands calmly on his desk. "Mere policing actions," he said. "We're there by invitation only." His eyes tightened. "I'm talking about the big one," he said.
"Of course."
Singer inhaled deeply and relaxed back into his chair. "It could have gotten way messier than it has, you know," he said. "Linda refused to escalate the situation. And she insisted that we focus simply on taking care of ourselves while we let other countries take care of themselves.” He offered an open hand, as though acknowledging that Keeley already knew all of this. “It broke up a global political game that was otherwise destined to end badly.”
Keeley nodded her reluctant agreement. “She gave up trying to control the whole world-”
“-and that gave other nations the freedom to do the same,” finished Singer. “Though there were those who took a while to get it. The Chinese, in particular, had to thrash about for a while, as you know better than anybody. But now, they, too, seem to have turned their focus inward.” The Vice President picked up a pencil from his desktop and started tapping the eraser on the wooden surface.
“So you don’t agree with those in the party who blame Linda for America’s reduced role in world affairs?” asked Keeley.
Singer scrunched his nose in disgust. “What I think, Keeley, is that under Linda's leadership, America finally became a world leader in something worth leading in: restraint, common sense, commitment to a healthy planet. The fact that she's now suffering from a possibly fatal disease could change the global political situation in horrible ways. I don't think many understand that."
Keeley pushed back in her chair. This didn't sound like Albert Singer at all. Perhaps she had misjudged him. "I think you're right, Al," she said at last. "I'm glad to hear that you understand."
Singer sighed wistfully and smiled. "I've learned a great deal in the last three years," he said.
Keeley returned his expression. "I guess we all have," she said softly. She glanced at her watch, then regarded the Vice President. He seemed more peaceful than he used to. Maybe what felt like ambition to Keeley was simply that he'd grown more comfortable with himself, and knew that the nation needed him to look like he was in control of the situation. She was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "So, time to crank it down for the day? I'm exhausted."
The Vice President sat straight in his chair and pulled closer to his desk, shaking his head. "I've got a call with Perkins in Brazil in ten minutes," he said, checking the clock on the wall. He reached for his glasses, examined the lenses for dirt, then put them on. "The Crash may have reduced State Dinners, meetings, fundraisers, and photo-ops to almost nil, but the work continues on phones and computers." He nodded toward Keeley. "You?"
Keeley rose from her chair and smoothed her blouse. "I'm gonna try Stan again," she said. "He hasn't been answering his phone. Then I'm gonna get some updates on the search for the kids. And after that I'm going to watch Linda's speech."
Singer's face softened. "Ah, the kids," he said, his face grave. "You must be as worried as I am."
Keeley raised her shoulders in helplessness. "I love the little monsters," she said, hoping a bit of levity would distract her from the fear and anger inside of her.
Singer pulled his phone from his desk drawer. "Don't work too late," he said. "Okay? You've been sick."
"I promise," said Keeley, smiling weakly. She turned to head back to her own office.
5.5
Ness was working late in the kitchen, readying things for the next day's meals. There was nothing unusual about this at all. Ness slept very little, and spent most of her time here, cooking, cleaning, reading, thinking. This was her spot. Her nest. Her cave. This is where she felt the safest, surrounded by her pots and pans, by her stove and her cutting counter, by her walk-in refrigerator, by the sharp knives that sat in their block. It was cold stainless steel, most of it. Commercial grade, roomy, outfitted for cooking for the type of events and gatherings one might expect to see in the Presidential Home. But even surrounded by so much cold steel, by so many hard corners, by so many sharp edges, Ness felt safe. She did not know why, really. She just knew how she felt.
For now, there were old potatoes to peel, with rotten spots to cut out and save for the chickens, one of which would soon be coming full circle to the same enormous soup pot to which the potatoes were headed. Ness remembered with a smile that old song from "The Lion King," and started humming it in soft tones. The only words she could remember were the chorus, but she sang them every time the tune came around. The circle of life indeed.
Then Ness remembered the last time she'd heard that song. She'd been lying next to Grace in her bed, watching on the small television and DVD player the child had in her room, with Emily and Iain sitting in chairs next to them. It had been a year ago, maybe. Just after the draconian gas and oil restrictions had gone into effect, in order to divert those precious fuels to agricultural and military needs. Just after that long winter of old people freezing in their homes and store shelves emptying and that horrible anti-gay murder spree in Connecticut and that food riot in Pittsburgh. Just after Linda opened up the first of the huge FEMA camps that previous administrations had built, and turned them into shelters and sanctuaries for those most in need. Food had gotten scarce there in the Presidential Home for a time. She and the kids had taken to watching movies most nights. They'd needed the comfort.
Ness tossed a handful of peelings into the bucket and pulled a half dozen more potatoes from the bag she'd brought up from the root cellar that those nice soldiers had dug for her the previous summer. She still felt guilty about losing the kids at the hospital. Didn't matter what Mary said. It was how she'd been brought up. She should have known better than to let those three out of her sight. These were crazy times. And the world had become wilder and weirder than even Ness had imagined it could these past years, what with Linda outing the presence of alien beings and all. "Never let your guard down, Goody," Ness's father had told her more than once. "You never know where the next punch is coming from." Ness sighed as she picked up the peeler. At least... she thought it had been her father. You never know.
Strangely, Ness wasn’t really worried about the kids. She figured she probably ought to be, but, honestly, she wasn't. Oh, she knew they were out in the big, scary world now, those three precious little souls. She knew there were strange beings, and that not all of them were nice. And she knew that those kids, seeing as how they were the President's, would make wonderful bargaining chips for somebody, should they end up in the wrong hands. But the fact that they were with Alice trumped all of that, in Ness's mind. She'd never met Alice, of course, though she'd seen many snapshots of the little hybrid, taken on their phones in the time before she left. She'd heard plenty of stories. But it was something else, really. Something beyond the pictures and stories and her mind's ability to figure things out. She knew in her gut that Alice was good. And that was all that mattered. If Alice was one of these Gray aliens, or half-a-Gray, anyways, she had all sorts of powers and connections. The kids would be fine. All she and Mary and Cole and Keeley had to do was wait. They'd see.
Ness tried, as she often did when she was alone at night, to think back to her past, to those long years of her life before she'd shown up, like a stray, starving puppy, on Linda Travis's doorstep the very day that the President had moved to Maine. Before the President, seeing her talking to the soldiers at the cordon gate, chose to speak with her. Before Linda took that skinny old woman into her life and put her right at the heart of things, cooking the food that sustained them all - she and her husband and her kids and many of her staff. As always, Ness failed to remember much.
&n
bsp; She'd been a housewife. She could remember that. She remembered cooking and cleaning. She vaguely remembered a baby named Roberta, but wasn’t sure that it was hers. She'd lived out west somewhere. Tacoma, maybe. She remembered a tall, snow-capped mountain in the distance. She remembered she was near the ocean. She'd been married to a man named Dave, though gods-above she could not bring his face to mind. Nor did she have any idea what he'd done for a living, or how their relationship had been. She remembered she'd had a cat, a small Tabby named Bert with a little divot in his ear, who would sit purring in her lap and let her pet him. She suspected that Dave had died. That was about all. The images were dull and scattered, faded photos from magazines, chopped up like confetti and thrown into the wind. Try as she might, she could not dig up anything else.
The funny thing was, Ness didn't much care. Somehow, she'd managed to leave that all behind. Somehow, she'd made her way across the country right as it was all falling apart. She remembered walking along the Interstate and seeing the exit to Augusta. She remembered walking up the exit ramp, toward the soldiers watching warily from behind the cordon fence. She remembered she walked with her hands held high, as if at gunpoint. She remembered smiling brightly and asking for help. And she remembered how hope rose in her heart when a huge, black Humvee rumbled up the exit behind her and stopped at the gate. It was there, sitting in the back seat, that Ness first spied her new boss. Ness turned and bowed Namaste. Linda Travis, over the objections of the soldiers in the front seat, rolled down her window. Linda's face softened in that moment. A sad smile of camaraderie graced the President’s weary face.
Ness's life changed.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 15
