Chapter Forty-Three
After paying for my last lame lunch at the Sidewalk Fish Brains Café—the family at the next table may have had something to do with it—I mope my way back toward Lillian’s apartment and my two packed suitcases. And whatever listening devices or bags of marijuana those two hoodlums may have planted there last night. I’ve lacked the curiosity to check.
The family at the next table, if you must know, included a baby attired in the usual split pants you see in this country. I was just delving into my stir-fry when number-one son needed to number-one, as it were. Alertly, his father lifted him and held him out at arm’s length while he irrigated the sidewalk between their table and mine.
My shoes have since dried completely. Thanks for asking.
Entering the school gate, I pass through the temperature scanner, malfunctioning as usual. Today it’s flashing random numbers as two guards scratch their heads. There’s nothing left to do at the apartment. Just lock the door behind me. I was supposed to be out three hours ago, but Lil’s flight doesn’t arrive till five. All that remains is to wrestle my two bags down the stairs and grab a taxi to a cheap hotel. Tomorrow morning, I find an ATM to clean out my checking account—Miriam wired me airfare this morning if she’s as good as her word—and book an evening flight to Memphis.
Memphis. Can’t even imagine the place.
“Oh, Ju-wen, it’s you!”
“And it’s you, Marilyn.”
At her elbow is a man wearing a nervous smile and a pumpkin-orange necktie.
“Ju-wen, this is my friend, Mr. Li.”
He laughs shyly as we shake hands.
“I tell Mr. Li,” says Marilyn, “that you are very famous writer.”
“And you, my dear, are a very famous liar.” Edging away, I say, “Wonderful to see you both.”
“Ju-wen, please, how is your mother?”
“Better,” I say, still edging.
“Oh, is so good.”
“Isn’t it though?”
Turning, I hurry into the shade of the dormitory building. So, Mr. Li, is it? Nice taste in ties. Actually I owe Marilyn one, if not three. She turned out to be quite a decent sport about the whole seafood dinner thing. When I returned her phone the following day, she was kind enough to interrupt my apology with, “Is okay, is not enough,” then closed her apartment door.
Nicely put when you think about it.
As I approach the too-antiseptic American Teacher’s Apartment, fumbling in my pockets for the key, what do I hear but the ringing of the phone? Who could be calling now, I think irritably, going through all my pockets twice. Finally I discover the key in my hand. That’s embarrassing. As the phone continues to ring, I force the lock two turns in the wrong direction and have to make three turns back the other way. Finally the door opens. Bursting into the apartment, I grab the phone and say, “Hao?”
Rhymes with ciao.
“Sit down,” says Tree.
“What?”
“It’s Lillian. They have her. The Chinese have Lillian.”
The voicemail is eighteen seconds long:
“Tree, are you there? Please pick up. I’m at the airport in Beijing. They’ve quarantined my flight. I’m not joking. A passenger must be running a fever. I’m trying to find somebody to explain—excuse me, I’m talking to my—no, you may not have my phone. Tree, listen. Do something. They’re taking my phone, which they have no right—hey, you may not take my goddamn—”
I set Tree’s cell phone on the white tablecloth between us. I’ve listened to the message four times. It isn’t getting any better.
“What do you think?” asks Tree.
As I ponder my reply, a waitress brings two cellophane cups of jasmine tea and Kenny J’s saxophone describes the thought process of a sheet of Sta-Fluff Fabric Softener with Stati-Gard. I’m not sure what to say to Tree. She has already made calls to the American Consulate and the supervisor of the teaching program and Lil’s headmaster. I already know those three calls will result in exactly nothing. The SARS machine is a runaway train. No one can stop it, not even the Chinese. Both Tree and I tried calling Lil’s cell phone. Subscriber not available.
“I don’t know,” I say at last, running my hands through my hair. “Maybe a passenger really is running a fever. That would be bad enough. That concentration camp outside Beijing worries the crap out of me. Ten thousand people jammed together in close quarters, stress levels off the charts. You wouldn’t need more than one or two actual cases…”
My voice trails off.
“Or?” asks Tree. “What else could be happening up there?”
“How should I know? Are you still trying her phone?”
Tree leans forward. “Yes, every fifteen minutes. And I do not wish to be misdirected. What are you thinking, Julian?”
I take a deep breath and let it out. “It’s just the climate up there, okay? The rules don’t apply anymore. Assuming there were rules to begin with. Now? Since 9/11? Since SARS? Governments do any fucking thing they want.”
“And?” demands Tree.
“And they may have locked down that flight to get Lillian.”
Tree looks confused. “You think they would quarantine a whole flight to—to do what? What would they want with our Lillian?”
“It’s complicated.”
“You mean all that cloak and dagger stuff?” asks Tree.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Tree shoos away a fly. “No, that’s crazy.”
“Absolutely,” I reply. “But that doesn’t make it not true. We have to consider the possibility. That’s all I’m saying.”
I take a moment to stir my jasmine tea. “I had a beer one night with a Beijing reporter,” I say at last. “High profile guy. Part of his job is covering the big government hospital. Somewhere around beer number whatever, he told me about seeing body bags dragged out of back doors and thrown into trucks. No records, no reports, no names, no nothing. Just bodies loaded into trucks.”
Tree strains to understand. “You’re saying those people died from SARS?”
I shake my head. “This was before SARS. You’re missing my point. I’m telling you something about the people we’re dealing with. Now with the whole SARS thing, they’ve got all the cover they need to do anything they want.. Even to Americans because…”
“Because… ?” says Tree.
“Because they’re burning the evidence. The gloves are coming off, Tree. I think we may have really gotten ourselves caught up in something this time.”
Tree’s eyes are locked onto mine. “We didn’t get caught up in anything, Jules. We were airdropped here. We came here with a purpose and—”
“Don’t go grandiose on me, Tree,” I growl. “Not now. Not fucking now.”
Tree startles. “Grandiose? Did you just accuse me of grandiose? Who do you think you are talking to? What do you think might happen if I take off my gloves?”
I glance nervously at the woman across the table. I once saw Tree Carter wade into a Memphis street-corner disagreement between an intoxicated pimp and a young employee of his distantly related to Tree. He only slapped her once. That’s all the time he had. A moment later he’d been launched from his spot on the sidewalk to a brick wall across the street.
Across the street.
“Let’s not go there,” I tell Tree as soothingly as possible.
“And who do you think I’m talking to?” she demands, fiery-eyed. “You have no idea of the power you hold in your hands, Julian Mancer. Well, the time is fast approaching when you will either discover that power, or we will all perish, do you hear me?”
“Uh, can we just focus on Lil?”
“The battle is joined,” says Tree, her eyes still blazing.
“Okay. The battle is joined. Now how do we get Lil out of that place?”
“We go there,” says Tree, pushing her teacup away.
I push mine away, too. “Fine. Agreed. Sounds like a plan. But, oh, wait. We haven’t decided w
hat to do after we go there. Any ideas on that?”
A thin smile appears on Tree’s lips. “I am speaking to Tlecort.”
I cry out in anguish, doubling over so uncontrollably that my nose hits the tabletop. A moment later, my chair is clattering across the floor and I lie wheezing partly under the table.
Two waitresses come running.
Glaring at Tree’s knees, I say, “What did you just do to me?”
I allow the two waitresses to right my chair and put me back into it. “Maotai,” I gasp and they scamper away.
Rubbing my sore right shoulder, I demand, “What did you just do to me?”
Tree, still smiling thinly, doesn’t reply.
“Never mind,” I say. “I’m going to pretend it didn’t happen.”
A moment passes.
“That’s not going to work,” I decide. “What did you just do to me?”
“What did I inscribe on your cast?” she asks.
“Don’t be obscure. You just called me some kind of name—don’t say it again—”
“And what happened?” says Tree.
“You saw what happened.”
“What happened inside you, Julian? Where did you go?”
One of the waitresses reappears with a small glass of maotai. One whiff, and I recoil.
“Never mind,” I say, shooing. “Go, go. Take this with you.”
Leaning on my elbows, I close my eyes and rub them with my knuckles.
“Where did you go?” Tree asks calmly.
Reluctantly I go back into a vision of one fleeting instant. And the searing pain that accompanied it.
“I was wearing a toga,” I reply blearily. “With epaulets.”
“Who were you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who were you?” repeats Tree.
I sag. “I think you may have just voiced my name—don’t say it again.”
“How did you feel?”
“Like maybe I’d just messed something up pretty bad.”
“Good,” says Tree.
I open my eyes. “Tree? What happened in Cetus?”
“Lots of things,” says Tree. “What’s important now is what’s happening on Earth. How are you feeling now?”
“Horrible. Tell me what happened in Cetus.”
Tree shrugs. “You were a warrior. You are a warrior. Not much has changed. Just the way you see yourself. Did something not turn out exactly right? We both know the answer to that. Ever since, you’ve been in a tailspin. And you have milked it for everything it’s worth.”
I give her a cool glance. I’m reconsidering the maotai.
“You begged for this chance,” continues Tree. “You like to play like you’re just tagging along—and I’m not just talking about China.”
“I’m quite sure I didn’t beg.”
Tree sits back in her chair and folds her arms over her chest. “You were a math warrior. Your weapons were formulas so powerful they shattered their own fields and distorted dimensional space. Your equations opened vortexes that sucked down whole armies. You could change the trajectory of missiles. You could make a whole fleet of warships disappear into loops of extracted time. Wars stopped happening because of your work, Julian. Peace came to the whole planet. After that, you devoted your energies to architecture. You used your genius to design structures made out of pure thought. Then you turned inward and began designing structures for internal exploration. Temples, Julian. You built the most incredible temples.” Tree’s eyes glisten. “I know. I came into my own power in one of those very temples. Lillian did, too. We both owe you.”
Tree refills both our cups from the teapot. “Well, there are always elements in the military that see all the wrong potentials of that kind of power. So they asked you to build a structure that would have been capable of generating too much power for anyone to control, and you knew that. And you built it anyway.”
I nod. That part, at least, sounds like me.
“You knew those people were going ahead with you or without you, and you didn’t trust them to do it right. You decided it was an idea whose time had come, and you were right. But it didn’t have to be built by you, baby. That part was your own choice, and it has cost you a lot.”
“I don’t think this has a happy ending,” I say.
“The truth is, you couldn’t resist it,” says Tree. “You were seduced by your own genius. The structure you came up with was even crazier than the original idea. It used the whole planet as an amplifier. Before anyone knew it was operational, you sent the construction crews home, and you activated it yourself.”
Tree gazes at me. “Nobody in his right mind would have dreamed of firing that thing up without some kind of controls.”
“I would’ve.”
“When we don’t have a clear and conscious purpose, Julian, what we are operating on is clear and unconscious purpose. That puts the shadow self in charge.”
“I blew up Cetus?” I ask.
“Look through a telescope. It’s still there. But you did give everyone a very interesting day. Earthquakes. Floods. Cities destroyed. Civilizations that are no more.”
“Oooh.”
“In the end,” says Tree, “your temple destroyed itself. And you with it. You’ve been running from yourself ever since. Running from your power. It scares you. A lot of time went by, and you heard about a mission. You heard about a very dangerous three-soul mission to Earth, and you saw a chance to redeem yourself.”
A little like Heracles, comes the thought. I quickly banish it.
“And yes, you did beg. You had to. Lillian and I wanted nothing to do with you. But we also knew what you’re capable of. And we did owe you.”
Tree waves for the check. “That’s enough for now. Just know this, okay? You have worked very hard for this chance. Don’t waste it.”
I sigh. “Can we just keep it on the level of checking Lil out of the hospital?”
“Whatever you say,” replies Tree, squinting at the check. “Go home and get some sleep. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a day.”
My feeling is Tree’s feeling doesn’t even touch it.
We walk to the nearest bus stop, the night sky threatening rain. “You’re sure the travel agency opens at seven-thirty?” I say.
“Seven days a week,” replies Tree, searching her purse for change.
“We don’t book anything at the agency,” I remind her. “We just check flights and seats. We buy our tickets at the airport. Once we’re in Beijing—uh, actually we haven’t quite penciled that in, have we?”
Bus 207 squeals to a stop before us, and Tree squeezes my hand. “We’ll know what to do when we get there. Go on home and get some sleep.”
Tree on board, the doors close with a hydraulic sigh, and the bus hammers away into the night.
We’ll know what to do when we get there. I actually let her get away with saying that. Then again, I decide, hurrying toward the corner, why bother with elaborate plans that have absolutely no possibility of working? It seems to be open season on Mancers and quite possibly Carters. Even if Tree and I are lucky enough to make it all the way to Beijing, our chances of getting past Arrivals are maybe one in seventy-two.
Just behind me, a car squeals to a stop. “Mr. Mancer?” I hear.
Turning, I look into a familiar pair of pale blue eyes. In the back of a taxi is everyone’s hero, John the Fulbright Scholar.
“Get in,” he says. “I have information about your sister.”
John is as I remember him. Thick neck. Decisive chin. Not much of a sense of humor.
“The driver’s dropping us in Dongmen,” he tells me. “We’ll talk once we’re there.”
“What can you tell—”
“We’ll talk once we’re there,” he snaps.
It’s a long drive to Dongmen Shopping District. Too many questions I can’t ask. Too many answers he probably can’t supply. John, looking snappy in pleated Bermuda shorts and a golf shirt, doesn’t speak except to murmur a
few words of Italian into his phone. Finally the taxi dumps us at Dongmen’s busiest intersection in full Friday-night fury.
Guiding me into the sidewalk throng, John says, “Sorry to surprise you like this again.”
“What do you know about my sister?” I ask.
In reply, he herds me into a three-story rat-maze of tiny shops offering fashions and accessories. We twist our way along a narrow corridor onto an escalator, exiting onto a different street entirely.
After a block of brisk walking, John slows his pace and turns to me. “Mr. Mancer, your sister has been taken to a quarantine hospital outside Beijing, along with the other passengers of Flight 261. We know that she’s all right. Of course you’re worried, but our advice is to remain here in Shenzhen, where we can keep you—”
“Excuse me, John. Is it John?”
“John’s fine,” he says.
“John, how do we get Lillian out of that place?”
The decisive chin juts toward me. “Listen, I know you’re worried but—”
“I don’t want to hear worried,” I reply. “I want to hear how we get Lillian out of that place.”
“For now, we watch and wait. We’re monitoring the—”
“What do they want with her?” I ask.
John considers his answer for a long moment. “The Chinese are aware of your sister’s special abilities, but we have no reason to believe that she’s being interrogated. This may be an actual quarantine situation. Let’s turn here,” he says, checking over his shoulder and pulling me onto a side street.
“And you could be in China on a scholarship program,” I reply, “but I doubt it. If something weren’t going on, you wouldn’t be talking to me right now. So, what’s going on?”
“The reason I’m talking to you right now,” John says evenly, “is to keep you from doing anything stupid. Suppose they are questioning your sister? Why talk to one Mancer if you can have them both?”
“If the Chinese really wanted me,” I reply, “they’d have me already.”
John shakes his head. “You don’t know how closely we’re watching you. Want to know the truth, Mr. Mancer? We’ll all be very happy when you and your sister are back in Tennessee.”
The Year of the Hydra Page 42
