"So we should make a decision that will forever change the course of human history in exchange for your assistance?" asked Linda with a frown.
Alice nodded slightly. "That course is set to change in any event, is it not?"
Linda sat back and sighed. Stan scowled. Sten and Eddie watched with great attention but kept their silence. Gabrielle leaned forward in her chair and cleared her throat. "Will the human race come to regret it, should the President agree to your proposal, Alice?" she asked. Everything inside of her told her that this being would not, could not, lie to her, any more than Zacharael could.
Alice turned her attention to Gabrielle, who sat petting the cat, which had again settled onto her lap. "You are like Emily," she said. A faint smile flashed across her face. "And you are seeking a place as well. Perhaps we shall be friends." Alice regarded the others in the room: Sten. Eddie. Stan. Linda. Then she returned her translucent gaze to Gabrielle. "I give you my word," she said, "and the word of us all, the Middle Children: you shall remain ever glad of our presence." She turned to look Linda in the eye. "If the time ever comes that you regret your decision, you need but say so and we will leave."
16.10
Doobie, Marionette, Sten, and Eddie, with an equal number of hybrid soldiers, departed soon thereafter for Boothbay Harbor in a single, enormous wok. Their plan was to find and evacuate as many people as they could, including Andrew and Macy, Annabelle, and any other Church members they encountered. They had no idea about Ken and Celia, whether she was still alive, and what they should do if she was. A hybrid doctor had told them that they had not yet determined the transmission vector for the Greensleeves virus, but that preliminary studies indicated that direct, human-to-human transmission could not account for the rapidity of its dispersal. Something else must be going on, but they did not know what that was. The rescuers were less than reassured by that news, and decided that they'd leave those decisions to Ken and Annabelle.
Eddie was excited by the prospect of seeing the storm up close. He'd left a backup video camera stowed in the back seat of the old Mercedes parked at the Thieving Seagull. If it was still there, he and Sten could shoot some footage and do a report from inside the storm. They wouldn't have the uplink gear they'd need. That had all gone down with The Pokey Joker. But just getting the film in the can would feel like a victory. And who knows? Perhaps they could uplink it when they got back to Augusta.
The thing was, Sten was not sure what he could, or should, say, were he to file a report. The situation was far too chaotic, and things were moving much too quickly, for him to wrap his head around, and he had no idea which information he could share. The hybrids? The woks? The rescue of the President and the truth of what had happened there? The amazing powers Cole had shown? The loss of their son? He would have to hear from Linda and Cole and Stan and the others before he made mention of any of this. There were dark forces at work in the world. How to counter them was a decision way above his pay grade. The more he thought about it, Sten was glad they had no uplink gear, so he would not be tempted to file a story. The first order of business was rescue. Everything else would have to wait.
The hybrid soldiers took them first to Ken's house in Southport, where Stan and Cole had shared that wonderful meal with the Church less than two days before. The woks settled smoothly to the ground and the soldiers took a moment to monitor the outside conditions. One of them turned to his human passengers and shook his head. "Sustained winds of 166 miles per hour," he said, shaking his head. "Gusting to 195. We cannot go outside." He turned and mumbled something to the wok. The walls of the ship turned instantly clear.
Sten, Eddie, Doobie, and Marionette gasped, to see the devastation this storm had already wrought.
16.11
There was one last fire to put out before she could rest. Linda kissed Cole and the girls on their foreheads and left the room, promising to be right back. She walked down the hall and around the corner to the nurses' station for directions to the infectious disease unit, then made her way up to Keeley's third-floor room. She stopped at the nurses' station outside the isolation ward and waited for the nurse to finish a phone call. In a moment the tall, red-haired young man looked up at her and smiled. "You are here to see Ms. Keeley," he said.
Linda nodded and the red-haired man stood and gestured for her to follow him through a set of double doors. Down the hall on the right the man stopped and waited outside room eleven. In a moment the door slid open. For just a second, the air in the doorway was filled with sparkling energy, but it quickly dissipated. Inside was an old woman, who bowed slightly to Linda and then stepped to the side. Linda saw an anteroom of some sort, with a wall of glass on the far side. The curtains were drawn, but she assumed that beyond them she'd find Keeley. The set-up was similar to the viewing room connected to the underground laboratory in which she'd found her naked body on Squirrel Island. She stepped in and the door behind her slid closed.
"We can only allow you this far, Mrs. Linda," the old woman said, echoing Alice's name for her, and adding to Linda's sense that these hybrids were all connected mind-to-mind. The nurse unfolded a metal chair that had been leaning against the wall and placed it before her. Linda smiled and said thank you and sat down, grateful for the attention, and the rest. Linda shook her head at the irony, that the whole world thought it was she who was sick, and contained in a room such as this.
The nurse pulled the curtain open. There was Keeley in her bed, sick with this alien flu, just as Cole had said. On the edge of the bed sat someone in full protective gear. "Ms. Mary was insistent that we allow her in," said the nurse. "We agreed to her demand."
Linda watched as Mary, her back to the viewing room, sat facing Keeley, head bowed as if in prayer. She watched for a few minutes, then cleared her throat and started to ask the old nurse if she could talk to them. Mary raised a hand in the air like a stop sign and Linda fell silent, motioning to the nurse to never mind for now. She watched a bit longer as Mary slowly allowed her arm to return to its resting place. Mary sat for a while longer, breathing slowly, head bowed, then roused herself. She inhaled deeply, lifted her head, leaned forward as if saying goodbye, then turned and stood to walk over to the glass. She smiled at Linda through her visor.
"I am glad you are home, Mrs. President," said Mary. Her voice came through a tiny speaker in an intercom box on the sidewall. "We haven't had a chance to catch up."
"Seems I have you to thank for my rescue, Mary," said Linda. She leaned forward and spoke into the intercom the nurse pointed out to her.
Mary winked. "Seems like there were others involved too," she said, pointing toward the sky.
Linda sighed and shook her head, as if she couldn't even think about that right now. She gestured toward Keeley with a wave of her hand`. "How's our girl?"
Mary glanced at Keeley, then back to Linda. "She's treading water, Mrs. President. And she's very tired. But I sense that her sleep is peaceful and full of joy."
"I thought this disease was really fast," said Linda. "When it... you know."
"The Middle Children were able to slow it down," said Mary. "Something to do with the nullspace field they installed around the room. You may have seen the glimmer when you entered. And Keeley had only a little of the virus in her system."
"Do you know what...?"
"I have been communing with Greensleeves, Linda," said Mary. "I see it now. I will tell the doctors what I know when I leave here."
Linda glanced back to make sure the nurse was out of earshot. The old woman had retreated to the far side of the anteroom and stood quietly near the door, her eyes closed. Linda leaned close to the intercom and spoke in a low voice. "I may have something, Mary. Some knowledge. About how to cure it."
Mary raised an eyebrow. Linda’s field was tight with secrets and shame. "I would like very much to know about that, Mrs. President," she said.
Behind them, Keeley inhaled sharply and moaned. Her lips trembled and moved, as if she was trying to speak. Mary tur
ned and walked back to her partner's side. Keeley inhaled again, then managed a few words, her voice a mere whisper. "My love," she said. "Alas."
16.12
Ness awakened in her bed. A storm outside shook her windows. "Now how the hell did I end up here?" she muttered. It was well into the day, judging from the light. She never slept in this long. She should be in the kitchen. Ness rubbed at her eyes. She remembered being at the hospital with the kids. She vaguely remembered building some sort of structure, something that would protect them. She remembered dancing, though why she'd been dancing she couldn't say. She remembered going to sleep. And she remembered a dream of Alice, or at least she thought it was Alice. But already the dream was evaporating from her mind. Ness exhaled heavily. How did she go to sleep in the hospital and end up back in bed? And fully dressed? She must be getting old. They were gonna be wiping the drool from her face before she knew it.
Ness sat up and pushed her legs over the edge of the bed. The storm rumbled outside. She got to her feet, walked across her room, and opened the door out into the hallway. "Hello?" she called out. There was no one around. Closing her door quietly behind her, she headed down the corridor, looking for somebody who could tell her what the heck was going on.
16.13
It was only then that they could let it fully sink in. All of their losses. All of their trauma. All their wild stories. The fear. The anger. The deep grief. The intense stress. The need for action. With these forces and many others swirling about and within them, they retreated once again to the hospital room, in which the kids' bodies had been taken and tended and so carefully guarded.
They let the hospital staff, those strange hybrid creatures, form a wall of protection around them. The family gathered together on the little loveseat along the back wall, scrunched together for mutual support and connection. Cole sat on one end and Linda on the other, with the girls between them, and they joined together with hands and arms and legs, with heads all touching, with shared breath and silence and warmth.
Linda's face retained its gray cast, and her skin was still cool to the touch, even in their mutual warmth. It was only when he noticed this that Cole fully realized that Linda had actually been dead. Death clung to her still like a bad scent, and he understood how much of a struggle it must have been for her to keep going for as long as she had.
Then Cole remembered who he was, and he closed his eyes. Slowly, carefully, he drew out his light, letting it flicker to life like tiny bonfires in his hands. He adjusted the color to a warm golden hue and watched in his mind as it grew larger and stronger. He sent it upward like a fountain, then bent it back and around, the light now covering the four of them like a huge umbrella. He drew it downward, through the walls, through the loveseat, through the floor, wherever it needed to go, until it enclosed them on all sides, a sphere of golden light, warm and wonderful. He set it to pulsing, a soft heartbeat of living light, then drew in a column of light from above and brought it down to Linda's head, letting it seep into her cold, gray body, letting it fill her, warm her, soothe her, heal her. He drew the light all through her body and set it softly pulsing, then formed similar columns for Emily and Grace. And finally one for himself.
He let the golden light fill them all, pulsing like breath and blood and life. He drew it through them, let it return to the sphere, and then cycled it around to fill them all again. He listened as Grace's sniffles subsided, as Linda's breathing eased. He felt Emily's tension soften. He felt his own fears slip away. He did not open his eyes. He could see his light in his mind, and knew it was there, and had no doubt that an onlooker would see it as well. It was real. It was his. It was him. And he could use it for healing and love and connection as easily as he had used it for protection and containment and defense on Squirrel Island. Cole formed one last intention and a tendril of light reached out from the sphere to Iain, as he lay in his bed. The light formed a second sphere around their lost boy, separate yet connected to his family.
After a time they slept. The light enfolded them in their slumber. The hybrids stood guard in the hallways and rooms all around them as they went about their duties. They could feel Cole's light emanating outward from their room, and nodded their appreciation. One of them actually grinned.
16.14
Ken and Celia's house was gone, a flattened pile of sticks and bricks. The trees around it were gone. The Thieving Seagull was gone. The marina was gone. The house at Pig Cove was gone. The piers and buildings at Cape Harbor were gone. Everywhere they went they found flattened buildings and twisted trees and overturned vehicles and flooded roads. Viewing it from inside a huge, invisible wok that didn't so much as shudder in the wind, the landscape felt more like a movie than a real place, as if they were all seated in one of those IMAX theaters. It was horrifying, what they saw. Amazing. Almost impossible to believe. And the devastation was so complete and so thorough that it felt like intention to them. Like hatred. Like contempt. Like disgust. Somebody somewhere had clearly wanted to wipe the Boothbay Harbor region completely off the face of the Earth. They had nearly succeeded.
The most disturbing sight was Squirrel Island, which had been stripped bare. Houses, roads, buildings, trees and vegetation, the President's cottage, the military towers and fences, all of it must have been swept or pushed or carried into the sea. There was nothing left, save for odd bits of debris. An overturned Jeep here. A uniformed body there. A baby's high chair. A highball glass. A laptop computer. The only recognizable structure remaining was the paved landing pad from which they'd taken off some hours earlier. And where Linda's cabin had stood, the large metal bulkhead door that led to the underground facility. Otherwise it was rock and bare soil and little else.
They viewed it all from above, sometimes flying high for a longer view, other times dipping in for a close up. Marionette watched with a wide, staring eye. Doobie watched with tears streaming down his face. Sten and Eddie watched as news gatherers would watch, focused and intense in their observations. The hybrids watched without reaction, though one of them, an older woman, seemed attentive to the reactions of her human guests. Most of the tiny seaside resort town of Boothbay Harbor was gone, turned into a huge pile of building materials and gift items. Southport was flattened and flooded. They saw a few bodies, but far less than there would have been had much of the population not fled to the shelters a year earlier. They saw a couple of dogs hunkering down in a tipped dumpster. They saw no living human beings. If Annabelle and Ken and Celia and the others had still been here when the full force of the storm had hit, they were likely all dead.
The strangest was this: as they were flying slowly back up along Western Avenue from Southport to Boothbay Harbor, the storm stopped. It didn't die out slowly. It didn't push on up the coast. It didn't reverse its direction and head back out to sea. It stopped. It had been raging overhead, the rain had been falling by the bucketful, and then it stopped, as though some powerful wall of energy had blasted it out of the sky. The rain stopped abruptly, the wind fell to a slight breeze, and the clouds broke apart, fleeing in all directions as if from embarrassment. In five minutes, at the most, the hurricane was done.
Then the sun came back out.
16.15
Mihos was perplexed. And he was glad that there was no one else around, as the last thing a cat ever wants is for somebody to see him when he is perplexed. Nevertheless, that's how he felt. Perplexed. Confused. Befuddled. Bewildered. Cat's don't do bewildered, babycakes.
He had had no luck at all keying in on Iain's pattern. This had not surprised him. He knew that the Murk would block such things. So he made his way eastward, following close to the physical as they had before. There in the distance was the same black cloud they'd seen before. The Murk. But as he neared it, the Murk began to flicker and then, well... lean over. And then it just kind of rolled and tumbled away and was gone in a moment.
Mihos stopped to watch, then proceeded slowly, thinking perhaps that it was a trick, worried that the Murk would catch him u
nawares. But nothing happened. He continued his slow approach to that Squirrel Island place. There was no sign of the Murk anywhere. Tuning to the physical, the reason became clear: there was one whopper of a storm passing through here. The storm must have wiped out the weird plant that was the manifestation of the Murk in the physical bands.
He attempted again to find and key in on Iain's pattern. Still nothing. And then, as he'd hovered over Squirrel Island, the storm itself stopped, just as quickly as the Murk had disappeared. He'd never heard of such a thing. Not in the physical. Storms didn't just stop like that.
The thing was, now he had no idea how to proceed. Iain had been lost in the Murk. Now the Murk was gone. So where should Mihos start his search for the boy? What had happened to Iain when he fell into that vast cauldron of burning ember creatures? Had the Murk actually killed him, or eaten him? Was he totally gone for good? Or had he been taken to some whole other corner of reality, some other layer, some other realm? Was he still imprisoned in the Murk's deadly blackness? And what happened to Dennis? Mihos sighed. The trail had been wiped clean by a hurricane. He didn't know what to do. Iain could be anywhere. Or nowhere. Without the boy's pattern to sense, there would be no finding him.
16.16
Mary sat in a hard plastic chair in an empty examination room with three nurses and one doctor. The entire MaineCentral staff had been replaced by hybrids while she'd been away, so all four were members of what Mary had learned to call the Middle Children. All four were young and tall and beautiful, though one nurse, a dark-haired and swarthy man named Rogert, had an enormous forehead that gave him an exotic, and somewhat freakish, appearance.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 60
