Of course Michael knew that the Virtual Skies pyramid was not really empty. Michael knew all about pyramids, how potentates had used them for thousands of years to project their influence. Michael had even witnessed San Francisco’s other “empty” pyramid being constructed back in the ’60s. They had put that one up to stop the cracks that were starting to form in society back then, and it had worked. After the Transamerica Pyramid went up, everyone fell back in line. And that was nothing compared to the new one.
There was something special about this Virtual Skies pyramid, how it linked to the emanation of other towers in other cities, slowly blanketing the earth. Michael had been keeping watch from his post between newspaper stands since the day the new tower opened, studying the technology it employed to access people’s minds and entangle them in its web of digital distractions. Most disturbing of all to Michael was that there was something about the quality of this tower’s vibrations that he recognized. His suspicions were verified the day he caught a glimpse of the Tower’s high priest slipping into the garage in his black limousine.
It had happened late one night when another homeless man, new to the block, had set down cardboard in front of the Tower’s garage entrance. When the limo pulled up, its driver jumped out to shoo him off. That was when Michael saw the rear window lower and a face appear—first yelling at the driver and then looking in Michael’s direction. For a split second, their eyes met, but it was enough. It was him. The same man who 30 years before had destroyed Michael’s life—had betrayed him along with the rest of their group, stolen their work, and then set in motion the terrible accident that left Michael in a wheelchair for life, his brain all twisted and tangled, his wings forever broken.
The man didn’t seem to recognize Michael before the window slid up, and the limo eased away. But Michael knew without a doubt. Hidden beneath the seat cushion of his wheelchair, he kept a large manila envelope with a few important things inside, including an old photograph. It was Michael’s only evidence of past events that he could now barely remember. Everything else had been destroyed in the psychedelic blur that was the aftermath of the ’60s. But this photograph was proof that what he was able to see looking up at the Tower tonight was not just his imagination.
Michael reached down and slipped the photograph out of the envelope. As painful as it was to look at, he needed to see it from time to time. In the light of the Tower, he used a finger to scan the rows of faces, friends—all lost. At the center of the group was a tall black man with an Afro as proud as his smile. It was hard for Michael to look at who he had once been, so he quickly moved on. Trembling now, his finger drifted up toward the back of the group, where he found the man’s face. Younger but definitely the same face he had seen in the limousine.
Before the accident, when Michael had his wings and could fly between worlds as freely as most men walk the streets, he had known the potential of a thunder-perfect mind. But tonight all Michael knew was how tired he felt. Just as the doctors had warned him, his seizures had been getting worse. The bright explosions in his temples had gone from occasional firecrackers to full-on Fourth of July extravaganzas. There were medications that could help, and hospitals willing to treat him, but meds blunted what was left of Michael’s ability to see, to really see, and now he couldn’t afford to look away. Right now his job was to keep watch on the Tower.
CHAPTER 21
MAN IN THE WOODS
Beatrice and Adam sailed north for about three hours until they reached an area of California called the Lost Coast. If someone wanted to get lost, this was definitely the place to do it. Due to the steepness of the coastal mountains, no state highways or even county roads had ever made it into this stretch of the state. The only means of access was either a network of logging roads that had fallen into disuse when the old-growth redwoods became protected by environmental regulations, or by boat.
The inlet where the pier was supposed to be located was not visible from the open water, and as they sailed closer to land, Beatrice had to motor the boat through a series of dangerous rocks and small islands. Finally the entrance to the cove revealed itself—a narrow break between high cliff walls rimmed with twisted cypress trees hanging on for dear life. As they approached, Adam saw that the inlet widened, and the cliff walls sloped back and down to the far side, where a small riverbed emerged from the forest. Next to the river, an old, wooden pier extended out into the bay. Beatrice explained that this place had once been used by a lumber company to gather and ship their dressed trees.
Several local fishing boats were anchored in the natural harbor. Dwarfing them all was the boat docked alongside the pier, a rugged, 100-foot-long expedition vessel built to face off against icebergs and sea monsters. Adam saw men hauling supplies up a gangplank onto the broad deck.
Once Paradiso 9 had been tied up, Adam waited as Beatrice made her way over to the massive ship. He could see her talking to several members of the crew. A few minutes later, she came back on board.
“He’s still up at his house. It’s not far. Give me a couple of minutes. I need to grab a few things, check in with Anush, and then we can drive up.”
“Anush?”
“The cat.”
“Oh, right. Is it okay to leave her here?”
“She never leaves the boat. Why don’t you go down to the parking lot and get the Jeep he leaves down here. It should have a card in the window that says Camp Nineteen.”
Beatrice went below deck as Adam headed off to look for the car. It was already getting dark, but he found the Camp 19 card in the window of a vehicle that had the unmistakable shape of a Jeep, although it was so caked with dried mud that it may very well have been a giant turnip. Ten minutes later he and Beatrice were bouncing up a winding, rutted dirt track as the vehicle’s headlights carved a narrow tunnel of light through the dark canopy of redwoods. With each turn the track grew rougher.
“What’s Camp Nineteen?”
“The lumber companies left a lot of abandoned structures up in the hills, old camps that people later converted into homes or whatever. After my parents split, my father wanted to stay off the grid, so he ended up here. His version of Walden Pond, I suppose, but without the publicity.”
“Who else lives up here besides your dad?”
“Mostly folks who knew my dad and wanted to stay involved with his work, or who discovered him through—oh, watch out right here.”
Adam slowed as they approached a large mound of rock taking up the entire right side of the road.
“Go slowly, and if you stay left and keep one tire on the side of the rock, you’ll have just enough room to squeeze by,” Beatrice said.
Adam did as she instructed, and as the vehicle tilted, Beatrice fell into Adam, laughing. At the top of the next ridge, they came to a wooden gate encrusted with the same sepia-brown dirt that covered the Jeep and everything close to the road. Beatrice jumped out, and Adam watched in the headlights as she pushed open the old gate. Before returning to the car, she bent down and picked something growing on the roadside. Back in the passenger’s seat, she placed it under Adam’s nose. Horsemint.
After a couple of hundred yards, the silhouette of a large cabin came into view. Light from inside leaked out through shaded windows onto the lush surrounding greenery. Several old pickup trucks were parked out front, one of which was full of bulging cardboard boxes. Beatrice led Adam toward the front porch via a footpath that was lined on either side with a collection of rusty metal objects—gears, saw blades, engine parts, and other odd lumber camp relics. The front door led straight into a large, open living space that, despite everything being packed in boxes, felt warm and inviting. There was a pleasant musky odor, a mix of wood fires, oil lamps, wet wool, and another scent—powerfully familiar to Adam but too elusive to name. Beatrice was now leading him down a dark hallway, toward the glow of a back room, and as he stepped in, Adam was immediately awestruck by what he saw.
The room, almost as big as the one they had just passed thro
ugh, was filled floor to ceiling with books. Packed bookshelves against all four walls. Desks, tables, and chairs covered with books. Moving boxes crammed with books, surrounded by towering stacks of books, teetering precariously high. Tucked away here and there Adam saw other objects—a lamp, a reading chair, a side table with a collection of bird feathers in a large Mason jar, an old Chinese diagram of the human body, and prints and paintings of various sacred places from around the world. It reminded Adam of his own cluttered cubicle back at Virtual Skies—only this was the supersize version. And just as in his old work space, Adam sensed a hidden order to this labyrinth that only its creator could navigate.
“Glad to see I’m not the only one holding things up,” Beatrice said to the room, which so far had shown no signs of life.
“They’re telling me I can’t take any more books,” came a gravelly voice with a hint of childish concern. A moment later Adam noticed a large head poke out from behind a distant literary mountain range. The man was in his late 70s, with deep-set eyes completely shadowed in the dim light, and white hair sticking up all over the place as if he had just woken from a nap.
“You can take a few of your books, Dad. You just can’t take them all,” said Beatrice.
“These are just a few of my books,” he replied with a wry smile.
Beatrice’s father made his way toward them through the obstacle course of books and boxes. He wore a plain, beige Windbreaker that reminded Adam of the one Dustin Hoffman wore in the movie Rain Man. His slow movements gave an initial impression of infirmity, and for a moment, Adam wondered if they might need to dive into the book maze and help him out. But as Beatrice’s father drew closer, Adam saw that he was more than capable of managing on his own. He had a pleasant scholarly face with weathered lines to match the volumes around him. And he emanated a sort of clumsy yet good-natured serenity, Adam thought, like an adorable grandfather on some TV sitcom.
Except for his eyes.
With enough light now to pull them from their hollows, his eyes were revealed as large, black opals, coiled and intense, like a panther lying in wait. Adam immediately sensed that he had seen these eyes before.
“Hey, pumpkin,” Beatrice’s father said as he embraced her. “Nice of you to finally show up.” The family connection between Beatrice and her father was more than clear, yet they acted more like old comrades than father and daughter. As they separated from their hug, Beatrice’s father turned to look at Adam. “And this must be the troublemaker you told me about. The grandson of the remarkable Anne Beers, isn’t that right?” His dark eyes lit up with astonishing warmth.
“Yes, that’s right. Adam. Adam Sheppard.”
Adam was still trying to piece together where he had seen this man’s face before. The pictures on Beatrice’s boat, he thought. The old guy in the photos. But it feels like I must have seen him before that. As a kid maybe?
“Ah, yes,” said Beatrice’s father, examining Adam’s face. “I see it now. You were quite the force of nature. You probably don’t remember me, though. You were just a boy, and I looked rather different back then.”
“Sorry, but I don’t remember much from those days.”
“Quite an extraordinary thing, the two of you running into each other again.” Beatrice’s father glanced at his daughter then looked back to Adam. “And it sounds as if you and I have already reconnected too, at least in a way.”
Adam looked to Beatrice for help, but all he got back was her enigmatic smile.
“She tells me that you’ve happened on a copy of a particular book I wrote?”
“Book?” Then it hit him. “Wait—you’re—”
At once, and from two completely different quadrants of Adam’s brain, came the answer to the identity of these fathomless eyes now looking at him. This was the man he had seen as a child down in the hippie grove, the man with thick, red hair and a bushy beard, typing endlessly on his typewriter—click, click, clack, click, click, ziipppp. The man to whom Adam could put any question, knowing it would be treated seriously. The man who had warned him about evils he would one day face out in the world, things like “domestication,” and “the system.” These were the eyes of the outlawed professor squatting in the woods below his grandmother’s house, the man who had told Adam that he was writing a book that one day might help him—“a book just for you.” Adam also recognized these same eyes as belonging to the man whose black-and-white photo he taped into the back of an obscure book he’d bought from a homeless man in San Francisco. They were the eyes of the “crackpot genius” who had written Navigations of the Hidden Domain, the disgraced professor who had slipped off into the ocean of obscurity.
“Would you please stop unpacking everything—”
“Your friend might want some coffee. You want me to be rude to a houseguest? Don’t have many of those out here.”
“Don’t use Adam as an excuse just because you want a cup of coffee.”
Still in a mild state of shock, Adam sat at the kitchen counter, watching Beatrice and her father, Virgil Coates, bickering like an old married couple.
“You like kimchi, Adam?” Coates held up a rather disgusting-looking Mason jar he had pulled from somewhere or other.
“Dad, stop it!”
Just then a man came through the front door. “Got the truck filled up, so I’ll take a load down now. You still want to ride down to the dock with me?” he asked Beatrice.
“Yeah, thanks. Be right out.” Beatrice grabbed her parka and went over to Adam. “I just need to help sort out a few things, but I’ll be back up here later on. Give the two of you a chance to talk.”
Adam nodded.
Beatrice gave him a quick kiss and then whispered, “Don’t mention the cigarettes. He thinks I quit.” Moments later Adam heard the truck outside rumble away, leaving him alone in the house with Virgil Coates.
Coates had unpacked two coffee mugs, a kettle, and an old French press, but was still rooting around for some coffee. Just beneath the rummaging sounds Coates was making, Adam noticed for the first time the thick silence that comes with being out in the woods. Hoping to fill it, Adam searched for something to say. He was still trying to accept the fact that he was in the same room with the man who had written Navigations of the Hidden Domain. I should say something about the book, Adam thought. I had so many questions reading it, all those times I was like, “If only I could talk to the man who wrote this . . .” Well, here’s your chance. Of course now Adam could not think of a single question.
“In a way,” Virgil Coates said, breaking the silence, “I wrote that book for you.” He filled the kettle with water and went over to the stove, struck a match, and lit the gas burner. “For people like you. I’m curious to know how you came across it.”
“I . . . um . . . I know this sounds strange, but I bought it from a homeless person.”
Coates smiled. “I’ve heard stranger.” He then seemed to consider Adam’s words more seriously. “Where did you meet him? This homeless person?”
“Just outside the building where I work. In San Francisco. He’s always at the same spot by these newspaper stands, with his blanket and books and incense. His name is Michael. He’s got pins all over his jacket. Butterflies.”
Coates said nothing at first but then gave a very slight nod. He turned to the French press and started scooping ground coffee into it. “Black okay? There’s no milk, and I can’t find the damn sugar anywhere.”
“Black is fine, thanks.”
Coates heaped a few extra scoops of coffee into the French press. For a moment it seemed as if the conversation might be over, but then Beatrice’s father said, “And this building, where you work, would it happen to be that new tower downtown?”
“The Virtual Skies Tower, yes.”
Again Coates nodded. “Rene Adiklein?”
“Yep, he’s my boss. Actually, more my boss’s boss.”
“I know Rene,” Coates said.
Adam was unsure he had heard him correctly. “Did you sa
y you know Rene Adiklein? As in personally?”
“It’s been a long while, but yes. And in the interest of full disclosure, I once tried to shoot the man.”
The water on the stove started to boil. Coates turned off the burner, took the kettle over to the French press, and began to slowly pour the hot water into it.
Adam was blinking rapidly like Dynamic Dave, trying to grasp what he had just heard. “Shoot?” he finally asked. “You mean, like, with a gun ‘shoot’?”
“Not a moment I’m terribly proud of. But those were very different times, and I was a different man back then.”
Adam tried to picture Coates holding a gun and pointing it at someone—not an easy image to construct. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you want to shoot Rene Adiklein?”
Coates was carefully stirring the water and grounds with a large, wooden spoon. “We were involved in some research together. I was at Berkeley, teaching philosophy and religious studies. A group of my students and I had become interested in certain ideas. Extremely old teachings, forgotten, you might say. Inner disciplines that we began to experiment with.” Coates placed the top onto the French press but waited to push down the plunger. “When Rene found out about us and got involved, he was already a big deal on campus—the social psychology hotshot from the Sorbonne. Very intelligent, obviously, and ambitious. He was able to help expand our work and bring in some much-needed funding.”
“So what happened?”
“We started to make some rather important discoveries about the unconscious mind. I felt we needed more time to investigate our findings so they could be used responsibly. Unfortunately Rene had a very different agenda.”
Coates turned back to the French press and checked the color of the coffee. Apparently it wasn’t ready yet.
“Is that why you tried to shoot him?”
Coates shrugged. “Like I said, not something I’m particularly proud of. But things happen for a reason. Sometimes things need to go down before they can come up.” Coates pushed down the plunger. He then poured a cup of the coffee for Adam and brought it over.
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