Demons

by John Shirley

  A sob escaped him. When the driver looked at him in the rearview mirror, Stephen tried to turn it into a cough.

  He noticed a rack of miniature bottles and glasses, under the window that separated him from the chauffeur. “Little bit of a croup. You think it’s okay if I have a drink from this bar here? I mean it’s sort of early, but it eases this, uh, cough.”

  “It’s there for your convenience, sir.”

  Stephen opened a miniature whiskey, then another and made himself a double in a small brandy glass. He drank half of it down quickly, grateful for the familiarity, the mundanity of it soothing. Some of the lingering ghostliness retreated.

  He began to think about the prospect of getting another job. He could find something. A lot of people had died nine years ago. There weren’t really enough qualified people around. Most likely it would be much more entrance-level than what he’d had at West Wind. Or maybe he could pull a little investment money together, get back into online trading. Most of the lines were back up.

  Dickinham had stared at him and said only, “Uh-huh,” when he’d caught Stephen heading out, carrying his grip, and Stephen had told him he was quitting.

  Psychonomics? Had the process really projected him out of his body? It had been some kind of hypnotic experience, he told himself. A vision in a trance. A training tool of some kind, enhanced by his own morbid imagination.

  Or it had been real. After all, the experiences he’d had as a boy now seemed to have been real.

  But it didn’t matter. Either way, he wasn’t going back there.

  They drove onto the freeway, but they were scarcely a mile toward the city before the limo took an exit onto a side street he didn’t know. “Shortcut to another freeway?” Stephen asked.

  The driver shook his head. “No, the hospital is right here. It’s the new one by the airport.”

  “The hospital?”

  They pulled into a parking lot and drove to the emergency room doors of a very modern hospital, a big building with sweeping curves of tinted glass, balconies tufted here and there with deck gardens. The breaking sunlight purpled on its rain-wet surfaces, reminding Stephen of the wings of a fly.

  Winderson was there, standing under the Emergency sign, wearing an unbuttoned trench coat. Behind Winderson stood a big black man with wavy, greased-back black hair, sunglasses, and a black suit and tie. He wore a headset, and his hands were folded in front of him. A bodyguard, Stephen thought. Tongan, maybe.

  But maybe not a bodyguard—maybe it was just a guy hanging out here, and Winderson wasn’t really here, not physically. Maybe this was a hologram.

  Then the CEO opened the door of the limo himself and bent down to speak softly to Stephen, who hurriedly put the whiskey glass away.

  “She’s up on the sixth floor, Stephen. It’s faster to go in this way. They know me by now.”

  “Who’s up on the sixth floor?”

  “Jonquil! She was admitted just a day ago. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  Ashgabat

  The sergeant had taken thirty-five minutes. They waited with Ira in a sweat-reeking little holding room near the doors to the outer world, and Melissa wanted to scream from tension, sure that at any minute those who had incarcerated Ira would notice he was gone. She prayed they, too, were at their meal.

  Araha had induced a kind of quiet in Ira somehow. Ira had slipped into semiconsciousness and now lay rocking slightly from side to side on the stretcher, lips moving soundlessly.

  Then a uniformed guard with a pocked face and a slack mouth gestured to them from the doorway. They followed him to the checkpoint booth.

  There were two sentries at the booth beside the exit doorsof the state security building. They only glanced at Melissa inher veil and the head-to-toe garb of a devout Muslim woman; but they stared at Ira, then for long, muttering moments at Nyerza—there weren’t many blacks in Turkmenistan state security and even fewer so tall they had to stoop to pass through the doorway.

  Melissa and the others had agreed on a story ahead of time, and Melissa knew what Araha was telling the sentries, with much ironic gesticulation: that Nyerza was a security consultant from Nigeria, where this American on the stretcher had worked with the environmental terrorists. They’d had a Turkmen soldier helping carry the stretcher but the fool had disappeared, was loafing somewhere, so this dignitary volunteered to carry one end. Can you imagine? There will be a report on the slacker—one Amu.

  The sentries chuckled—they all knew at least one Amu. Their sergeant took a second look at the papers.

  We have a chance, Melissa thought. The papers of transferral were, after all, legitimate, having been obtained by Araha’s contact in the government—legitimate, except that the name of the authorizing officer was fabricated. And it wasn’t uncommon to transfer prisoners to a mental hospital, for holding until they were needed again.

  Melissa’s heart thudded and the fear was magnified when she found herself wondering if she were committing a sin against humanity—risking herself, members of the Conscious Circle, who were all too rare and all too important—just to rescue her husband. It was selfish. And if they were caught, Marcus would be left alone with strangers in this foreign land.

  But then, Marcus was not Marcus. She forced that thought down, because with everything else, it was just too much to bear.

  When would they be done looking at the papers?

  Then the sergeant shrugged and said something in his own language. He pressed a button. The door buzzed, declaring itself momentarily unlocked. Nyerza pushed through, trying not to hurry, he and Araha toting the stretcher.

  Their contacts—two tall, turbaned men in long coats—were waiting with the truck outside, Marcus with them. They were Turkic Sufi dervishes who sometimes worked with Araha. Brave men but both had been unwilling to enter the building, so Nyerza had been forced to be a stretcher bearer.

  Marcus looked up at Melissa as she got into the back of the truck. Before the Fallen Shrine, he would have rushed to her arms, seeing his mother back, safe from danger. But now he only smiled encouragingly.

  Their contacts gave them truck keys and good wishes, and hurried off down a side street.

  It was only a short drive to the Iranian border, but here they stopped. There were four guards at the checkpoint in a glass-walled booth by the gate across the highway, playing a game with odd-looking dice. Two of them grumpily got up from their game and made Melissa, Nyerza, and Araha get out of the truck and stand in the chill drizzle as they peered in the back at Marcus and Ira, who mumbled in his delirium. Once again most of the guards stared at Nyerza; but a fat lieutenant in a turban and uniform, tugging at his pointed beard, gave his attention mostly to Melissa. His eyes were so small in the heavy folds of his face she could barely see them.

  “You look back boldly,” he said in English. She dropped her eyes, and he snorted. “She is American or British,” he said flatly to Araha. “You will all be arrested, if you please.”

  “How could it ‘please’ us?” Araha asked mildly. “I have something around my neck to show you. Perhaps it will change your point of view . . . perhaps it will touch your heart.” He said something else in Turkic.

  Melissa despaired. She knew that around his neck, on a thong, he wore a silver nine-pointed geometrical symbol with a cross superimposed over it and on either side of the cross the crescent moon and star of Islam. Just an esoteric medallion, representing his syncretistic sect. Did he really think this man would respond? Or did Araha suppose this man was a dervish, a member of his order?

  Not this man, she thought. He emanated lust and greed and self-satisfaction.

  Araha drew out the medallion and a leather bag, also on the thong. He opened the bag and produced a roll of bills. She saw one of the colorful new American twenty-dollar bills—red, white, and blue with a green border.

  Araha whispered something in what sounded like Turkish; perhaps, How much do you want?

  The man snorted, and laughed, and said something that mu
st’ve meant, All of it, of course!

  Araha looked convincingly exasperated, made a few noises of protest, and nodded in reluctant agreement. As if suddenly realizing this stranger with the drooping white mustaches was an old friend, the fat lieutenant moved to embrace Araha. When he got close, he took the money with a practiced swipe of his hand, like a raccoon fishing. His girth hid the exchange from the other guards. The money vanished into his uniform. The lieutenant gestured to a corporal, who threw a switch, causing the gate to creak open.

  Almost high with relief, Melissa climbed into the back of the truck to sit with Ira and Marcus. They trundled through the gate, and into Iran.

  Later, when they had arrived at the little airstrip where the plane was waiting, Melissa asked Araha how much money he’d surrendered—hoping she could reimburse him somehow.

  He laughed. “Not so much. Twenty on top, the rest all ones. He didn’t look closely. Most of my money is in my boot. I always keep dollars ready for this day.”

  South San Francisco

  The bodyguard, standing behind Stephen, breathed loudly through his mouth as if he suffered from asthma. The sound dominated the elevator as they rode up to Jonquil’s room. Winderson was scowling at the spotless floor of the elevator, his hands thrust into the pockets of his trench coat. “They call it cancer, a tumor. I call it an attack, myself. I mean—it’s cancer, but . . .”

  “An attack?” Stephen asked, overwhelmed, his voice hoarse. “You mean—like a relapse? She was sick before?”

  “Hm? No, she wasn’t. It was an attack like— I’ll explain later. Here’s the floor. I’m making arrangements to have a room set up for her at headquarters, like George’s private hospice, with her own doctors. But this was all very sudden, so for now . . .”

  Stephen followed Winderson down a hall. How many West Wind people were tucked away in secret little hospice rooms—and why?

  The room Jonquil was in, however, was the best in the hospital: large and sunny, gushing with get-well flowers and untouched baskets of fruit clasped by transparent Inimicalene. It was almost a suite, overlooking the freeway and San Francisco Bay beyond. There was an entertainment center near the foot of Jonquil’s hospital bed, the wide-screen TV turned on but muted, a sardonic daytime talk show host waving his arms wildly at an audience of clapping people with painted faces.

  The bodyguard waited at the door, watching the hall, as Stephen and Winderson approached Jonquil’s bed.

  She gazed out the window at an enormous cargo ship on the bay, the freighter’s decks stacked with interlocked metal bins, easing toward Oakland. “That ship,” she said, her voice weak, “it’s like a skyscraper lying on its side, floating along. . . . It’s so big. I never thought about how big those ships are before. It’s funny the things you notice when you . . . when you’re sick.” She pressed a button, raising the head of her bed so she was almost sitting up. She was wearing a satiny blue low-cut nightgown; her skin was very pale, the orbs of her cleavage like twin moons. Her blue eyes had lost some of their luster; there was a smudge around them; her lips showed the faintest blue tinge of cyanosis.

  She turned a stalwart smile to Stephen and her uncle. Her long hair, looking redder than usual in this light, was spread across the luxuriant silk pillow, as if arranged by a photographer.

  “Hi,” Stephen began, not sure quite what was expected of him. “You . . . well, I guess it’s stupid to say you look good, since of course you don’t feel good. This all happened so fast. Just a day or two ago . . . well, you seemed fine.”

  “She was,” Winderson said bitterly, slowly pacing the length of the room. “She was fine.” He took a few steps, picking up magazines from a coffee table at the sofa, putting them down, picking up a knickknack, not really looking at it as he spoke. “Our enemies have attacked her, you see. That’s the only way something so serious could happen so suddenly to someone in such good health.”

  “We don’t know that, Uncle Dale,” Jonquil said in a small voice. “The doctor said sometimes it happens this way.”

  So this is it, Stephen thought.

  This is why she was crying; this is why he hadn’t heard from her. She’d gone almost immediately into the hospital.

  “You keep saying ‘attacked,’ ” Stephen said. “You mean—like poisoned?”

  “In a way,” Winderson muttered. Then he looked at Stephen sharply. “Psychically poisoned. I think she was psychically attacked. You see, we’re not the only ones with psychonomics. There are others who use it—competitors. Evil, sick, unscrupulous people. Oh, you’re not in any danger. People like you, with natural abilities, you’re protected. It’s like you have a psychic immune system. But Jonquil here . . .” He shook his head.

  Stephen felt dizzy. This talk of being attacked, of enemies—it has to be bullshit. It sounds like bullshit.

  But what if it’s not. Then I might . . .

  In a way, Jonquil completed the thought. “If it’s true . . . what Uncle Dale says—” her eyes glimmering with unshed tears as she looked at him “—you could help me. But, Uncle Dale says that you’re leaving? Quitting? I mean—it isn’t because of me, is it? Because I didn’t get back in touch after we . . .”

  “No!” Stephen swallowed. He badly wanted another drink. “It’s just . . . maybe I do have the ability to . . . under certain conditions, to, uh . . . well, to do what I did. But that doesn’t mean it’s something I want to do. I mean, to use a corny example, if I had a talent for being a sumo wrestler, I wouldn’t necessarily want to spend my life bashing sweaty people on a mat. I might be good at this, but I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”

  “Stephen,” Winderson said, looking at him with a kind of amazed disbelief, “don’t you get it? You succeeded! You were a great success! No one else has done so well! The man you were sent to influence did just what he was supposed to do—within minutes! Totally reversing his earlier position! It can’t be a coincidence.”

  Stephen looked from Winderson to Jonquil. “You know about all this?”

  She nodded slowly, looking a little puzzled. “Ye-es. Some of it. Enough. It’s like advertising—or salesmanship. But psychic. Psychic influence on economics.” She winced and pressed a button for a nurse. “I need some morphine.”

  “My boy,” Winderson went on in a hushed voice, his hand on Stephen’s shoulder, “you succeeded—and that meant so much to us. We’ve been searching for someone with the gift, the ability to succeed at this, for a long, long while. The last one—well, now that you’ve succeeded at this—there’s something so much more important we need you to do. Something that will change the world, and save Jonquil’s life.”

  A young male nurse with a crew cut came in. “Can I help you, miss?” he asked.

  “I need a little more medication—the pain.”

  “Sure, I’ll—I’ll get that. I mean, I’ll get the doctor. He can . . . do that.”

  He hurried out, glancing at the bodyguard. There was something odd about the nurse. Stephen shook his head.

  Then Jonquil took his hand, and the touch sent a shock of lurid electricity into him right down to his groin. “Stephen—I don’t know if I’m being attacked, but I know there’s something you can do to help me.”

  “I—I’d like to. Of course. But I don’t see what I can do.”

  “You can go there, to the invisible world . . . find the right place in the spiritual ecology.”

  “Spiritual ecology?”

  “A sort of technical term,” Winderson interrupted hastily, glancing at her. “From psychonomics.”

  Jonquil licked her lips and went on. “I need your help—in that world. There’s a thing called the Black Pearl. . . .”

  “The Black Pearl . . . ?”

  “I know it sounds weird . . . but this thing—this object—is a kind of mirror that can show me how to get well. And to get to it you have to go there. You have the gift that’ll take you there. We haven’t got anyone else talented enough. You are our retriever.”

  “But,
that world, real or not—it’s all a mental place. You can’t bring an object back. Objects there don’t exist in the same way, from what I can tell.”

  Winderson nodded. “That’s true, but this thing won’t be an object here. Not in the usual way. Nevertheless, you can make it appear here.”

  Stephen stared out the window. There was the freighter, still coasting slowly by. It was made of metal, and it was real. There was San Francisco Bay. It was cold, and you could drown in it. It was all real. “I . . . don’t know if I can keep my sanity if I go there again.”

  She squeezed his hand and drew him closer; her lips parting as she looked directly up into his eyes. She looked at him that way for a moment, panting almost imperceptibly. Then, heavy lidded, she said, “You’re strong, stronger than you know. I can feel it. I felt it from the moment we met.” She looked away, embarrassed.