The two of them were as close to him as anyone had ever been. His cook and his housekeeper knew there was something odd and secretive about him, but as befitted loyal and well-paid servants, they kept their noses out of his business. It was only Trish and Don he trusted with the secret of who and what he was. Well, not entirely what he was. He had admitted to Trish that he had been a monster in his past, but even she had no idea to what dark depths he’d taken his power. And even though both of them shared his excitement at potentially finding another of his kind—if indeed he was a kind of anything—they could not possibly fathom the depth of his need to no longer go through a potentially endless future alone.
As Jason sat letting his heart grow heavy with such thoughts, Don suddenly winced and said, “Oh crap, that’s not good.”
“What?” asked Trish.
“Uh … yuck.” Don groaned as he appeared to be battling between reading further and squirming away from the text.
“What?” Trish repeated.
Don looked at Jason apologetically. “Don’t get mad at me, but I think we need to re-evaluate the wisdom of setting whatever’s down there free.”
“I believe you mean ‘whomever’,” Jason said in a dark tone.
“Just tell us what you found already, sheesh,” Trish complained.
“Two years ago, Dr. Steele sent out an urgent memo out that anyone working on her ‘special project’ was now under severe food restrictions while at work, which pretty much come down to not eating anything that can last in the stomach for any time as a viable seed or plant material. I can’t find any other internal notes or memos about it, but it does coincide with the reported disappearance of one of the lab assistants, Yuko Hansuke.
“The local paper says her roommate reported her missing when she didn’t come home, and Dr. Steele told police Hansuke was feeling ill and left early, which her passcard record confirmed. An article two days later says her car was found just off of I-90 near North Bend, and then a couple of months later her decomposed body was found downstream in the Snoqualmie River.”
“So, what, you think Dr. Steele killed her?” Trish asked.
“No, he thinks Gaia did,” Jason said.
“What? Why? How?” Trish asked, but even as she spoke the words it was clear by her horrified expression that she’d gleaned the answer.
Don explained, “If Gaia can make anything grow, then it’s reasonable to assume she can do so even if the source material is currently inside—”
“Oh my god, don’t say it! I just lost my appetite for a week!”
Don nodded. “Maybe Steele dumped the body to avoid questions that would expose her ugly little secret project. Gaia might have a level of power that we’d never considered before.”
“You have absolutely no evidence that she even knew she was hurting someone,” Jason said defensively. “You know very well I can sense familiar people far away, even behind walls, and unfamiliar but emotionally charged people at a distance. Maybe she can sense plants the same way, which is why they’ve got her so far down in the first place, and if someone came down the elevator having just eaten—”
“Please,” Trish said.
Jason paused and then rephrased his argument. “If someone brought vegetation down the elevator, it could be that Gaia sensed it, locked on to it, and started trying to use it to get herself out of there. That’s a perfectly rational reaction to captivity. If someone had me locked up you’d better believe I’d grab at any chance for escape despite how I feel about killing.”
“The thing is, Jason,” Trish said carefully, “you feel that way because you made a decision not to be a solider anymore. We don’t know anything about Gaia, really, including how she feels about killing us mortal types.”
“She killed some people in India,” Don reminded him.
“No,” Jason retorted but then admitted, “not intentionally, not like a murderer. She defended herself and others. Let’s clarify that right now, shall we?”
He rose, hurried down the little stairs into the ballroom and then up the matching ones opposite, and whisked past the pool table and through the arch into the gallery. He grabbed a key from on top of a cabinet, unlocked the glass door, and withdrew a battered old journal from a stack of books.
He strode back through the rooms until he found Don and Trish tentatively entering the ballroom from the parlour. He waved the book at them and said, “Shall I read from my ‘father’s’ journal then?” He roughly flipped through the pages until he reached one dated March 17, 1923, and then read aloud:
I have finally found the boy Tushar, who of course is a boy no longer, but a man now with children of his own. He is no doubt the same lad cited in Prasad’s account of the events near Cawnpore in 1903, for I can see the resemblance clearly from the photo despite the weathering of age upon his face.
I had feared in approaching him that he would not wish to speak of it, for it had been a bloody event and no doubt entirely traumatizing to behold, especially in light of the reaction of the British forces who had dispersed the populations of both villages involved.
On the contrary, however, to my relief Tushar was all too happy to tell the tale to any goras who actually believed him.
He recounts that Annapurna came to his village in late summer of 1902 to the delight of all, for they had heard tell of her miracles in other villages before theirs. Though their harvest looked to be weak—albeit not so poor as it had been in the famine previous—Annapurna only needed to stand among the crops and raise her hands. Tushar wept as he recounted how the leaves strengthened and turned a deep, rich green, how the vegetables became so plump that all mouths watered at the very sight, and how the air filled with the scent of a feast to come.
They fell to their knees in praise, but the great Annapurna would not accept it. As she walked from the field her eyes were sad and she could not be consoled, though she most graciously accepted a meal and lodging at the home of one of the elders. She went from field to field about the town in the next weeks, bringing everything to the same degree of perfection and asking nothing beyond basic shelter in return. She declined all requests to celebrate her magnificence but told them she was greatly fatigued and wished for a quiet place to spend the winter months. She pledged in return to ensure their spring planting would be strong and viable, so the villagers of course granted her request and gave her use of a small hut of her own.
She blessed them through the winter with local foods grown entirely out of season, and the villagers in turn brought her meat and cheese, but otherwise she kept to herself and did not long entertain any visitor.
But before the next planting, men came from another village; they too had heard that an incarnation of the goddess Annapurna was about and had come to beg her to visit their village, which, like all others, had lost many to the great famine and was only beginning to recover. They pleaded that the British were not helping as much as promised and that their need for her was dire. They offered her splendid items of gold and even a necklace with an enormous ruby, but she spurned them and said she would come only after she’d fulfilled her promise to Tushar’s people.
The men became angry and brandished guns and knives. Tushar said Annapurna was not moved by their threats, though the women ran away with their children. Tushar’s mother tried but failed to drag him away as she fled with his younger siblings.
The men of the village brought forth their own weapons, and despite Annapurna’s demand that they all cease, a fight broke out and shots were fired.
Tushar was enraptured as he recounted how the goddess knelt upon the ground, her fists upon it as if she were clenching a rug, and beneath each fighting man there grew a tangle of grasses and vines, encircling their feet and legs, up the length of their bodies and knocking the weapons from their hands.
But one man held fast to his gun and shot Annapurna. She fell, and a heavy silence came upon the land as she bled into it.
They all gasped when she rose from the pool, tore her bloody
dress away from her waist, and looked upon her wound, which closed before the eyes of all. The men wept, for they knew they had done a great evil. She caught the bullet in her hand as divine magic forced it out of her pure form, and she cast it to the ground, saying, “I came to help, to sustain life in the names of those whom I have loved and lost, but I see now that here too there lies only greed and hate and pain upon pain.”
She waved her hand, and the vines that bound them wilted away. The men fell to the ground, except one who ran to one of the dead and screamed, “My brother! My brother is dead! A curse be upon you all!” Then he picked up his brother’s gun and aimed it at another man, but before he could shoot, with a flick of her arm Annapurna brought forth a tree from the ground that pierced his chest, killing him.
Two others cried that she was not Annapurna but a demon stealing the form of the great goddess, and they ran at her. Again she moved, and again life sprang from the ground to entangle them, but this time it went about their throats and strangled them dead where they stood.
All the men fled, but Tushar stayed hidden behind crates. He watched Annapurna go amongst the bodies and regard them all without affection as she waved her hands, making all that she’d grown wither and crumble to dust. But then she sat amongst them and wept until villagers returned with British soldiers from the nearby camp en route to Sikkim.
Tushar said his heart broke when he heard Annapurna lie to the British, saying she was a Christian missionary from Canada, that her name was Anne Parnah but that the villagers had concocted a tale of her as the pagan goddess Annapurna, and that they foolishly believed their unexpectedly good harvest was due to her. The goras believed her, of course, and gladly took her away as they set about relocating the villagers to prevent further skirmishes.
Jason snapped the journal shut. “Do you see? She was trying to do good. There’s no reason to believe she’d harm anyone unnecessarily. Even I still believe in the right to kill if necessary for self-defence or the defence of another. If they’ve got her locked up, I’m going to set her free, with or without your help or blessing.”
“Jason,” Trish said gently, “of course we’ll help. We just need to be careful and sensible. I know that’s a bit weird coming from me, but that’s how important this is.”
“I understand that.”
“I think we should break for dinner,” Don suggested. “With what appetite we have left, anyway. Then we can figure out what to do later.”
“At the very least, I want to go down there and see what’s going on for myself,” Jason said. “She can’t hurt me in any permanent way.” He turned to take the journal back to the cabinet and left them standing there.
After he gently closed and relocked the glass door, he turned to the enormous portrait hanging on the wall to his right. He sighed and closed his eyes, knowing if he looked too long it would draw him in as it always did, and someone would have to come fetch him for dinner. He didn’t want to deal with that, so he forced himself to leave.
* * *
Late that night, after an exhaustive session of reading, hacking, and discussion, Trish said, “Okay, I think we’ve got a plan, then.”
“A risky plan,” Don muttered.
“That’s why you get to stay with the first van,” Trish retorted.
“I still think it’s too dangerous for you to go in there.”
“Oh god, not again.” Trish groaned.
Jason raised his hands and firmly declared, “We’ve been through that. I’m not thrilled either, but she made her point about me needing her in there, and I’ll keep her safe. With Dr. Steele away on conference this week, we need to move now.”
Trish said, “So let’s summarize what we need to do over the next couple of days. Jason, you’re going to have Judy book a hotel suite and a rental van in Seattle, and then I’ll book the second van with one of our generalized corporate cards. Don, you’re going to file the flight plan with the FAA so we have our fake-Seattle-meeting alibi all wrapped up with a pretty bow.”
“Will do,” Don said. “And I’ll schedule it as another test of the plane to add extra veracity, since we haven’t flown three people that far since the last solar cell upgrade.”
“It’ll be safe, though, right?” Jason asked.
“Oh definitely. I wasn’t even going to officially test it after such a small upgrade,” Don said. “It’s just an excuse.”
Jason rubbed his eyes. “Do we have an excuse for why we’d rent a gas van instead of the usual electric limo service?”
Trish thought for a moment and then muttered, “Fuck. Judy’ll notice. And she’ll notice if you book it yourself too. Damn it, I’ll book the hotel and van and tell her I’m using my credit card perk points if she asks why. Then if anyone notices I booked a gas van, I’ll say it was part of the perk package, or something. We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.
“Anyway, I’m going to find that blonde wig I wore at Halloween a few years ago, plus dig out some various-sized clothes so if anyone is down there we can get them into something inconspicuous when we leave. Don, you’re going to get us two lab coats that don’t have any of our labs’ names on them, one that’s too big for me and one too short for Jason, so it makes us harder to accurately describe should anyone notice us.”
“I’ve got that in my notes. Don’t worry.”
“And lucky thing you’re in need of a haircut anyway, Jason, so arrange to get it cut as soon as we’re back. Remember not to shave tomorrow morning or the day after so you’ll have major bush-beard going.”
“I know,” Jason replied. “Maybe I should work from home once I’m really fuzzy so nobody notices at the office. Nobody will care the first day, but after that someone’s bound to comment.”
“Yeah, go in tomorrow but not the next day,” Trish agreed. “In fact, when I do my preliminary set-up of how I’m going to fuck up their security cameras, I should do that from here too, just in case.”
“It could appear suspicious if we all stay home a lot, so Don should still go in.”
“I will,” Don replied. “I’ve been putting other things off, so I’ll be conspicuously around.”
“Okay,” said Trish. “Jason, promise me you’ll stick to the plan to drain and drop her if we get her out and she goes crazy.”
“I said I would.”
“But I know you’re not happy about it.”
“I’m never happy about using my ability to knock out anyone, but I recognize the utility and importance of that aspect. Bear in mind that we don’t know if I can affect her at all.”
“They got her down there somehow,” Don said, “so presumably she can at least be temporarily made unconscious with enough damage, same as you.”
“I will do what needs to be done,” Jason declared, crossing his arms in such a way as to not have to see his hands.
“I guess that’s that, then,” Trish said. She looked at the clock. “Holy crap, it’s after midnight. Bedtime, especially for you old men.”
Jason nodded. “I’ll see you two in the morning,” he said before heading back to the gallery.
Once there, he gazed at the portrait again. It depicted a somewhat Rubenesque woman in Victorian dress, a pleasant smile upon her face as if someone beloved had recently made her laugh. Despite the smile, however, her green eyes bore a certain sadness that had captivated Jason ever since he’d acquired the work. He hadn’t seen her eyes closely enough in real life to discern their colour and had often wondered how much was artistic interpretation versus reality.
After all, his own old portrait across the room was hardly a photographic representation. It matched well enough that, if he stood beside it, an impartial observer might glean a familial resemblance between the two tall, brown-haired, hazel-eyed, strong-jawed, muscular men. However, the late-seventeenth-century styling had rendered his eyes and expression in a flattened way that Trish said didn’t do justice to how handsome he truly was, when she was in a conciliatory mood.
“I’m sorry f
or being a bit of a bitch earlier,” Trish said as she came into the gallery behind him, clearly in such a mood at the moment.
“Hmm? Were you?”
“You know, deflating the two of you when you were so excited.”
“Oh, that. No, you were raising entirely pertinent questions. I rely on you for that. No apology necessary.”
“You okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He turned to look at her and saw she was unconvinced. “I am, really. This is a good thing.”
“I know what this means to you. I know what she means to you.”
Jason nodded.
Trish patted his arm. “I’ll leave you to your brooding, then.”
“I’m not brooding.” She gave him an incredulous look, so he admitted, “Not as much as usual. There’s hope now, and I’m clinging to that.”
Trish walked out, and Jason sat on the small couch to stare at the portrait for a long time before finally heading to bed himself.
Chapter 2
WHEN TRISH ARRIVED in the dining room the next morning, she found Don eating in front of his computer. “Where’s Jason?” she asked.
Without taking his eyes off his reading, he replied, “Gone to the office already. He was on his way out the door when I came down.”
“How did he seem?”
“Don’t know. I didn’t give him a psych eval.”
Trish sighed as she served herself from the heated platters. “I meant was he all cranky and slow or—”
“No, no, he was zipping around the place.”
“Smiling or scowling?” Trish turned to see Don holding a fork in the air, dripping egg yolk in front of his open mouth. “What? What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.
“Huh? Nothing! Craig over at Truitt Filter just sent me an email that he’s got great new results on lowering the flow resistance on the—”
Sorrows of Adoration Page 55
