Vision
Also by N. D. Hansen-Hill
Static
Elf
Trolls
The Light Play Trilogy
Light Play
Light Plays
Lightning Play
The Grave Images Series
Grave Images
Graven Image
Grave Imagery
Gravely Imaged
The Trees Series
Trees
Crystals
Mud
Shades
Fire
Light
N. D. Hansen-Hill
Vision
©Copyright November 2001 by N. D. Hansen-Hill
First published electronically in 2001
by Argyle House Press
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover painting and design by N. D. Hansen-Hill
Printed and bound in Australia by Digital Print Australia, a division of The Bureau (SA) Pty Ltd.
ISBN: 0-9582023-9-7
Parade Books, an imprint of Argyle House Press
Print edition published June 2002
To Gordon L. Hill, Sr.
Vision
The blind illusion of logic bent,
Clarity strewn when reason went,
Torqued and bloodied thoughts adrift
A truth-entangled genetic rift.
So, clear the head and fill the mind
As past and present are left behind,
Blow the then and blast the now,
History shorn in a shattered vow.
Enter the beasts and demon spawn
To manipulate the naive pawn,
Genetic mayhem and twisted schemes
Cursed in parabnormal dreams
Where prophecy rules the first is last
Death reverts to life aghast,
Insanity reigns - there lies the fault,
Only murd'rous mayhem can force a halt.
by N. D. Hansen-Hill
Prologue
The day was split - overlain with the shuddery thunder of a heavy tread on sedimentary soils.
Soils that were soft and non-impacted.
Soils that were still new.
He stood there, blind and deaf to any world but this. His vision was trapped here, while his body lingered in a world a hundred million years - maybe several hundred million years - away.
Past experience had warned him not to move. In a place like this it could be deadly. Because, over the aeons, so many of the land's physical features had changed.
What you see is not always what you get...
He could only watch, paralysed by his vulnerability, as the monstrous shape came toward him. His eyes fixed on the long talons, the ripping teeth, the daggerlike spine - almost like a scorpion's stinger - at the end of the tail. The stinger was what caught and held his eye. He forced himself to focus on it, as the creature did a series of bounding leaps in his direction.
It can't see me, he thought, trying to bolster his confidence.
It didn't do much to help. Because there was a gleam in the predator's eye now, and Dustin could swear it was aiming right for him.
The mud slapped with each heavy step, and now, there was mud flicked in his eyes. Flicked in his eyes and flecked on his face. Sweat on his skin and terror in his heart.
The mouth opened so fast, he knew he'd never stand a chance. No hope to outrun it on terrain he couldn't even see.
Not true. It's because you see too much...
It's not here! You're not here!
But it didn't help. He was in a world stinking of methane and sulphur, and rotting meat on three-inch teeth. Where enormous lizards snapped jaws at man-sized morsels.
And it didn't do him a damn bit of good to tell himself he wasn't here.
Because he'd never tested it before. He'd learned not to move, because his own world could kill him. But he'd never deliberately sought to place himself "somewhere else".
His existence had never been at risk before...
I can't sit here and be eaten...
The monster was confused by his stationary pose. It was accustomed to having its prey flee, squealing. At the very least, it was expecting some evasive manoeuvre: head bobbing, counterattack, dodges - something any prey with a gram of intelligence would do.
And, suddenly, it was no good. "I need out!" he hissed urgently. "Josh!"
It was the panicky squawk the creature had been waiting for. The eyes widened, and in that second, Dustin knew it was going to strike. The jaws snapped once, and he wasn't imagining the saliva. As the head lunged forward in a snake-like strike, he dove to one side.
But the tail moved even faster.
This time, when the man's mouth opened, it wasn't with shrieks of terror - it was with an even shriller howl of pain.
***
Chapter One
"Dusty!" Someone was shaking him roughly.
Josh.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes, I can hear you," Dustin replied mechanically. He waved a hand in front of his face. "His breath was better -" He squinted his eyes open, peering at his surroundings. Dried, reddish soil. Bright blue - not the sullen overcast of dinoland.
There was a note of tension in Josh's voice. "Did you see one?"
Dustin wiped his face. "Could be-e..." He dragged it out, but Josh's sigh made him snigger. Put him out of his misery. "Nasty things, those Drepanosauruses -" He left it hanging, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Sweat, and something else. A gritty something, that stank of sour soils.
Josh's hand gripped his shoulder so hard it hurt. "You saw one?!" He twisted him around so Dustin was forced to look at him. "Did it -" At this point Josh swallowed hard, his voice barely above a whisper. "Did it have a spine?"
"Yeah -" Dustin said, a little distractedly. He was thinking of the weight behind the impact. The force of the blow that had left him stunned.
Or stung... There was a tingle of pain in his leg - like the nerve-jabbing sting of a cold sore.
No way. That's impossible, he thought, trying to calm the lurch of panic that sent his heart racing again. I'm an observer. Only an observer.
The pounding of his heart was suddenly matched by a throbbing pulsebeat in his left leg. The throb gave way to a searing, stabbing jab that shot down between his toes and back up to just beneath his jaw. "Josh -" he gasped, his eyes widening. He gripped the front of Josh's shirt with his fist. Dustin's face was white, his teeth clenched.
"Shit, Dusty!" Josh said worriedly. Was he having a heart attack or something?! "What's wrong?"
Dustin grimaced, but pushed himself up, so he could look at his left leg. See, he told himself, an icy wash of relief running through him. All normal. The relief lasted until the next agonising jolt of pain hit him. This time, he felt it in his gut, too.
Can't be, he thought, through chattering teeth. Only in your imagination...
He gripped his thigh. He sensed Josh's panic, but he could hear his voice only dimly through a fog. "M-Make it stop!" Dustin grunted, unaware that he was saying it aloud.
"Make what stop?!" Josh almost yelled at him. "Tell me what's wrong!"
The back of his pants leg was wet. Must be marsh mud, Dustin thought, confused. He lifted his fingers to look. The tips were bright with blood.
"What the hell!" Josh shrieked, hitting the panic button. He forced his voice down a notch. "W-What have you done now?" He pushed Dusty over on his side - afraid of what he was going to find.
There was blood soaking through Dustin's jeans. Blood leaching into the arid ground. A lot of blood. But, it could have been worse - undoubtedly, would have been worse - if there hadn't been a stopper in the hole.
It was so coated with blood, that at first he couldn't figure out what it was.
"I-Is it bad?" Dustin asked.
"No," Josh lied. It was a tooth - or, maybe, a spine.
Josh's mind rejected it. It can't be... Reason told him he should leave it in, to help control the bleeding. But something else - some other instinct - told him bleeding wasn't the worst of Dusty's problems. Better to make it bleed... With a shaking hand, he grabbed the back of the "tooth" and started to yank it back, out of the hole.
It didn't want to come. It had gone all the way to the bone.
Josh's gorge rose. Maybe into the bone -
"Good," Dustin was saying, and it took Josh a moment to realise he was responding to the "No". It bothered him that Dusty couldn't feel what he was doing.
Dusty was still talking, but he didn't sound right. "Josh," he muttered, "feeling a little weird..."
His voice trailed off. His bloodied hand went limp. Josh swore he could feel it, when Dusty's head flopped down, onto the soil.
*
"What do you mean, you 'helped him set it up'?" Ren asked him angrily. "In other words, you set him up! You know what he's like!"
"I know," Josh admitted. "But when he heard what I was looking for - so I'd know whether to push for funding..." His words tapered off, a little dismally. It sounded like he was making excuses. "You're right, Ren. He knew it, I knew it." He shook his head, his own eyes glassy. "I didn't know it could touch him like that! Hell, he didn't know it himself!"
"It shouldn't have," she replied, staring out the window. "It never has before." She turned, to meet Josh's eyes. "You know how I knew, don't you?"
"The telepathy thing?"
"Don't sound so dismissive, Mr. Clairvoyant. Of course, it was the 'telepathy thing'." She rubbed her left leg. "I even felt it when it jabbed him," she whispered.
"Don't tell him," Josh warned.
She shook her head. For one who was supposedly "sensitive", Josh could be so dense. "Of course I won't," she said impatiently.
Josh grinned. "I get it. Because of the affection thing."
She averted her eyes. "Ridiculous," she grumbled.
"Hey - at least you're finally admitting you can read minds," Josh told her annoyingly.
"Hardly. Merely sympathy pains, brought on by -"
Josh smiled, and put an arm around her. "- your sympathy for your subject."
She nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
"You know, some day Dusty will get his mind out of the past, and back into the present where it belongs."
She couldn't believe she was hearing this from him. Her expression said as much.
"Oh, I'm not saying he shouldn't visit the past from time to time -"
She snorted.
"- but he doesn't like it any more than you like 'picking up vibes'. Do you realise I'm the only one of us with appreciation for my 'gift'?"
"Since nobody else appreciates you," she said with a slight smile, "I guess you have to start somewhere." She added, "Did you forget Dainler? He 'appreciates' his gift, too - that's why he has a limo." Ren sounded disgusted.
At the coffee machine, she turned Josh's way expectantly.
"F7," he supplied.
There was a flicker of annoyance in her eyes.
He grinned. "I had one earlier," he explained, with mock innocence. "Dainler and I aren't in the same class. He stops 'em from being buried, and I dig 'em up."
She handed him his coffee, then punched in her own. "You know," she whispered, with a shiver, and a glance toward the ICU. "If he doesn't feel better soon, I might give Erik a call."
"Dusty won't like it."
She looked over at him, her own eyes moist. "Better than having to communicate through Merrie. Besides, " she added, "if I don't, you can bet Valterzar will."
*
"Hey, Dusty." Ren put a cool hand on his hot forehead, jerked it away, then, with trembling fingers, put it back again. So hot. So weak. When she touched him, she could feel the burning in his veins.
Oh, crap. It was the signal. She'd halfway hoped it wouldn't be there, because it scared her witless. It had only happened once before. With her sister. Maggie had fallen from a tree and was bleeding when Ren had found her. She'd touched her and held her and cried her eyes out, while Maggie had screamed the whole time to go get Mom. In the end, it had been Maggie who'd had to run for Mom, and Ren who'd had the broken arm.
Ren had never spoken of it to anybody, but something had changed that day, between her and her sister. Maggie was two years older, and wary of a sister who could finish her sentences. As she grew up, and began to develop that secret life that all teens have, she'd grown as far away as she could from Ren. And, ever since that day in the orchard, there'd been a wariness between them.
Dustin's eyes opened, and he looked at her. "Knew it was you," he murmured. "Must be psychic."
Ren brushed a kiss across his lips, then took his other hand in hers.
He sighed, and she knew he was glad to have her there.
If he hadn't been so dazed, he might have realised what she was doing. Realised how much she might be risking. Might even have realised why she was willing to risk it.
It was a risk, too. Josh would be furious, and feel more guilty than he did already; Dainler would feel violated, as though she'd intruded on his turf; Valterzar would smile and be pleased that he could add one more note to her file. And Dusty? Would he carry the same wary flicker in his eyes that Maggie had? Because she'd intruded far beyond his stray thoughts, and into his blood and bone?
"Kitten?" he murmured, a trace of alarm in his voice this time.
"It's okay, Dusty," she whispered, trying to hide the huskiness in her voice. The quaver that might give away her fear. Because this was Dainler's gift, not hers. She'd always been afraid to use it. At heart, Erik Dainler was about as sensitive as stone. He could shunt away all the disease and injury because he never let it touch him. He never got involved with his clients; never took on their pain or their aches or their angst. She'd asked him about it once, wanting to know how he could heal without identifying with his clients' pain. Erik hadn't always been this cold or distant, so he'd somehow developed this shell, this insouciance. She'd wanted to know how - needed to know how - because it was a way of protecting herself, in case anyone got too close.
Like now.
A flicker of awareness told her Valterzar was getting impatient with the delays. They were only allowing them in one at a time, and he wanted to "assess" the situation himself. It was more than that, though. Josh was going nuts out in the waiting room, which made Valterzar irritable. Josh was blaming himself for this, but he couldn't produce the spine the doctors had asked for. Because they would never understand how a spine, that should have been buried for a hundred million years - that should have become stone long since - could carry fresh toxin. How it could contain living cells. And antagonistic proteins.
Shit!
Kithren didn't wait any longer. Dustin was unconscious again, and his skin looked waxy. His breath came in uneven shudders.
"Love you," she whispered, close against his ear - relieved that he'd never know how she felt.
A thing can be over-analysed. She ought to know. Science was her business.
Ren closed her eyes, tightened her grip on his hand, and let his feelings come.
*
The scream of the monitor brought Josh to his feet. "Oh, shit!" he gasped, wiping his eyes roughly with his hand. He and Valterzar raced down the hall. They ran into the IC unit just in time to hear the nurse shout angrily, "What the hell are you doing?!"
It did, indeed, look like mayhem. Ren was leaning against the bed, one hand tangled in the cords, wires, and tubing running from Dustin's body. She'd triggered the alarm, and in that moment, Josh knew she wasn't even aware of doing it. Awkwardly - too sensitive in her current state to tune out the nurse's frustration - her hand fluttered to free itself of the paraphernalia.
"Ren!" Josh yelled. He sensed she was wide open, like a raw wound. Defenceless. It didn't take much to figure out what she'd done for Dusty. Josh remembered kidding her about being "too sensitive for her own good". His words came back to haunt him now, as she turned to look at him. The pain in her eyes made him suck in a quick breath.
Ren, though, suddenly wasn't breathing at all. She gasped, and there was only a quick, occluded whine. Her hand went to her throat, and she stumbled away from the bed. Even now, she didn't want Dustin to see...didn't want him to know...
Fuck it, Ren! Why?
Josh reached for her, but Valterzar was quicker. He caught her as her knees folded and stretched her out on the ground. He checked her airway then bellowed, "Get me a trach kit!" to the nurse. "STAT!" Then he tossed Josh his phone. His teeth were almost gritted as he ordered, "Punch four. Tell Dainler that if he doesn't get here soon, the first person he'll have to heal will be himself."
*
"I thought you said it was Mallory," Erik Dainler complained. He grabbed Ren's hand, dropped it, then paced the room. "I can't," he muttered. He ran nervous fingers through his hair.
Lawrence Valterzar had regained some of his cool. He was personally monitoring Ren's functions, and he turned now to look coldly at Dainler. "Why not?" His voice was chilling.
"Because it's Ren," Erik said, and Valterzar guessed that for once he was being honest. Dainler was afraid to heal her because he didn't think he could keep his distance.
"Because she's a sensitive?" Did he think she might give it all to him?
Dainler cleared his throat. He shook his head.
Valterzar saw his expression and nodded. "I understand." The man had feelings for her. He didn't think he could distance himself because some part of him didn't want to. He looked at Dainler. "You know she did this for Mallory?"
"Then maybe you should get Mallory in here, so I can get started," Dainler said brusquely.
For the first time since Erik Dainler had arrived, Lawrence smiled at him. An unselfish gesture. "Well-played," he replied, knowing that Erik would understand.
Erik kissed Ren's hand, then smiled back. "Just think of all the points it'll make me," he said.
*
Lawrence Valterzar had never wanted to work with this group. He'd trained in medicine, and gone on to specialise in psychiatry and organic brain dysfunction. And then, one day, he'd been called in on a consultation. A James Wickham had been admitted with severe bruising and lacerations. He claimed he'd been "stoned", but in the Biblical, rather than the modern, sense. Lawrence had thought it owed more to the latter, but he'd refrained from saying so.
He'd been in James' room when the tapping on the window began. The almost frenetic beat of tiny pebbles had given way to a glass-spidering assault by rocks and concrete. Then, the first of the invaders had beat down the barriers.
The rocks came on. Lawrence rang for help, yelled out the door, and danced around the room, trying to get clear. He flung the covers over James' face, but he couldn't forget the terror in the man's eyes. It was a rather graphic reminder of why he'd bothered to get into this gig in the first place. James Wickham needed help - and here was Lawrence Valterzar cowering behind a chair.
It made him mad - mostly at himself, but furious nevertheless. He saw himself as a coward and a sham - running when someone needed him most. He stood up, and faced the barrage head on. The first concrete block grazed his cheek, and a heavy rock pounded his shoulder. If anything, his anger escalated. James, meanwhile, was screaming almost hysterically under the covers - undoubtedly wondering why Fate had tossed this particular curse his way.
Lawrence Valterzar couldn't recall when he'd been so angry, and the fire burning in his gut upped another notch. Whereas fifteen minutes ago he would have hesitated to do anything that might affect his prestige or community standing - that might make others "wonder" - at the moment he didn't care. As a seeming boulder headed directly for his face, something lodged in his gut.
He knew with certainty he could end this. He opened his mouth and roared, "Stop this!" The boulder stopped mid-flight, shuddered slightly as though fighting his orders, then dropped, motionless, onto the floor.
All around him it was like rocken rain, rather than the pelting assault that had been taking place before. All the pebbles, stones, chips of concrete, and restless gravel dropped in a pinging resonance to the floor. Some bounced, landed and rolled, but none of them responded to anything but gravity.
"Easiest cure I ever effected," Lawrence had muttered.
At the sudden silence, James had pushed the sheet off his face and looked a little warily around the room.
"Was that the first time?" Lawrence asked him.
"You mean was I a 'virgin' rock target?" James asked. There was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
It told Lawrence more than James realised. That he could be amused by this meant he was, in some regard, accustomed to it.
His panic, of a few moments before, suggested he'd sensed an "episode" coming on.
If there was ever a case study for organic causes of brain dysfunction, it was this one. Though whether an ability to catalyse kinetic outbursts could be considered a dysfunction, was open to question; in Lawrence's book, it was certainly an aberration. He had a sudden stirring of interest, not the least of which was motivated by his own response to the rock toss. Why had he been so certain he could end it? Where had that conviction come from? It was hard to discount that particular feeling of burning energy that had lodged somewhere in his gut.
Whatever else, it was certain the rock assault had ended at his words. Was that because James' brain had suddenly picked up the message, and certain activators had been turned off? If James was able to turn this off, wouldn't a sense of self-preservation have triggered the impulse long before this? At a time when he was being personally pelted, and there was no one around to help him?
Lawrence had found the thought that some part of his own brain had acted physically upon the rock storm quite alarming. In all the self-analysis he'd done during his training and afterwards, he'd never uncovered a potential for psychokinesis - or anti-psychokinesis, as the case may be. If he had, he would have found a way to discount it, ignore it, or attempt to rid himself of it.
But now he was trapped. He had to know why.
Still, he hadn't been the one to initiate or enlist the other members of this particular "Cluster". All it had taken was his proximity to James that day, his success in stopping the rockstorm, and some research that was the preliminary to a study he was going to effect on anomalous conditions. It had dangled a carrot, and someone had snatched at it.
And, just like a carrot, someone had snatched away his roots, and transplanted him elsewhere. He couldn't exactly say his reputation had "gone to seed", because there's a certain credibility in working for a government affiliate - but his security was shot to hell.
As much as he'd wanted to explore the human brain before, now he realised there are a lot of things you're better off not knowing...
*
"Ren's down for the count. Anyone tell you?"
Of course, they hadn't. Valterzar had left it to him, the weasel. Josh supposed in its own way, it was a kindness, so that Dustin wouldn't have to hear the "why" from anyone else.
Dustin grabbed Josh's arm. "Where is she? What's wrong with her?"
Josh noted the panic and hid his smile. Good. About time Dusty let her know how he felt.
Ren had never admitted it, either - until today. Today, she might as well have danced on the table for the subtlety of her gesture. She'd done something that went against her principles - for Dustin. She'd put herself at risk, and opened herself in a way that had left her vulnerable. She must have suspected she wouldn't be able to walk away from this one - that she'd have to endure either Valterzar's wrath or his helpful hands - and to someone with her streak of independence, that must have been a difficult surrender. Businesslike relationship replaced by an embarrassing intimacy, if Valterzar insisted on acting like a doctor.
Plus, she'd put Dustin in an impossible position, which must have made her own nearly untenable. He was being given a choice to be excessively grateful, which she would have found abhorrent; to be furious at what he would consider near-suicide; or to be forced into admitting some kind of emotional attachment for her before he was ready.
Josh didn't have to be very sensitive to guess that the last person Kithren Magnus would want to see on waking was Dustin Mallory.
Josh hauled Dustin out of bed and into a wheelchair. He felt another twinge of guilt as Dustin flinched. Ren might have the venom, but Dustin still had the hole in his leg that went with it.
Josh covered his dismay with a griping, "Hurry up, Dusty!"
Dustin nodded. "Ready!"
The last one she'd want to see, but the one she needed most.
*
"It's Lawrence Valterzar's group."
Charles Smythe smiled. "'Rockhead Valterzar'?"
Marc Jekkes nodded. "The only Valterzar I'm unlucky enough to know."
"Tell me again who's in the Cluster."
Jekkes looked at the chart. "Dustin Mallory, James Wickham, Joshua Wingot, Erik Dainler -"
"- the prima donna," Smythe interrupted.
Jekkes grinned. "- Meredith Feiderman, and Kithren Magnus. In order: retrocognition, PK, clairvoyance, bioPK, mediumship, telepathy."
"What?" Smythe asked sarcastically. "No astral flyers? How could we have been so remiss?" He shook his head, and asked, in the same incredulous tone, "How did I ever get this job?" He nodded toward the chart. "Isn't Magnus a plant scientist?"
"Yep. PhD plant pathology. Works at the university - pathogenic fungi."
"Good. We'll need her. Mallory's in graphics, and Wingot's a paleo man?"
"Feiderman's the only one in the group without a PhD - and she has two Masters' degrees, in philosophy and Eastern religions. She writes award-winning children's books."
"Bright group. What's Wickham's specialty? Besides rockstorms, that is."
Jekkes looked at the text and chuckled. "Geology."
"Oh, Christ!" Smythe grinned. "We've been trying to figure out how Mallory gave the Drepanosaurus such physicality. He's been doing a 3D image for Wingot, by the way. Have you seen it? It's unbelievable. Amazing the parallels, here. Mallory spends most of his work hours creating 3D work that strives to emulate 'reality'. Then, in his personal '3D world', he is merely observing, and it somehow becomes his reality. I would have thought PK on the injury if Wingot hadn't saved the spine."
"Any theories on the 'physicality' so far?"
"Only one with any credibility. We think during the episode, he and Wingot were touching. Shoes, a hand on the shoulder - something like that. Wingot wanted this so badly he could taste it. It's possible they only came in contact when Mallory flung himself to one side - at the moment of impact. Between Josh Wingot's clairvoyance, and Dustin Mallory's retro ability, they were able to extend the boundaries."
"So, what happens now?"
"None of the players realise how much we know - including Valterzar. His people wouldn't believe how zealously he guards their privacy - with one exception."
"The prima donna?"
Smythe grinned. "Yeah. In Dainler's words: 'too much privacy, and I wouldn't be riding in a limo.' We're thinking of teaming some of them up, and creating situations that might stimulate a repeat performance of Mallory's and Wingot's fiasco. Besides, Mallory's been getting a little dissatisfied. It might be a good time to give him something to think about."
"Isn't that a little hazardous?"
"We're paid to extend the boundaries, then find a use for it, Marcus. We could use some fresh alternatives to conventional military action right now. Something beyond the piddling clairvoyant surveillance or PK number crunching." He read Jekkes' next question in his eyes. "It doesn't matter whether they approve or not. None of them would be alive right now without our intervention. They would have become stats on the infant mortality rolls. Just a few more unexplained crib deaths."
"But wasn't it covert activity that initially put them at risk?"
Smythe shrugged. He told Jekkes, a little irritably, "And we could argue aboriginal rights, interment camps, and black suppression, too. Ancient history. The point is, an effort was made to rectify the situation. It was Symbio - and by extension, the 'government' - who supplied the 'therapy' that kept them from becoming victims. We've also supplied money for their education, run counter to any obstacles their 'conditions' might have created, and covered for them when 'accidents' have put them at risk, like Ren Magnus' overblown response at the hospital today."
Jekkes commented, "So, their lives would have been hell without us, whether they know it or not."
Smythe hesitated, then said bluntly, "And so, Marcus, whether they like it or not - they're ours."
*
Dustin lurched out of the chair before Josh had even brought it to a stop. It was the sight of her, his Kitten, lying there so still that shook him. He looked up, quickly checking the room. He caught Erik Dainler's eye with a look of relief. "Thank God," he whispered.
"Nice to finally get the respect I deserve," Erik remarked.
But Dustin wasn't listening. Valterzar felt almost embarrassed watching this. Mallory was nearly as exposed as Kithren Magnus had been.
Or was he? Again, it made Lawrence Valterzar wonder. Was he seeing more than someone else would? Because he knew them - or because his instincts were more refined than most? He'd been wondering it for a while now. The way he'd been hired, and some of the probable reasons behind it. The way he'd been a damned good psychiatrist - because he could frequently guess what his patients were thinking; anticipate their needs. Had Dustin and Ren really shared their feelings so openly, or was that just the way he was seeing it?
Dustin brushed his lips across her forehead, but there was no response. "Is the respirator -?"
Valterzar nodded. "Keeping her alive," he said quietly. "We have to do this now, Dustin." He smiled at him. "Give her a kiss for luck, and let's go."
Dustin bent and kissed her on the lips, then nearly toppled over on his bad leg. Erik caught him, and perched him on the edge of the bed. "One patient at a time," he pleaded, grinning. "Please."
"Will it interfere?"
"Probably," Erik said reluctantly, taking another glance at Ren. "But sit back against the pillows and hold her anyway."
Dustin wrapped his arms around her and brushed his lips against her hair. "Ready," he said. "Let's do it."
Erik nodded. He closed his eyes, rested his hands on Kithren's middle, and let himself go.
***
Chapter Two
There's no way I'm ever going to do it again. Not a chance.
No more retro visits.
A normal life.
"No way in hell," he told Lolita. She fluffed her feathers at him and came in for a scritch, her big hooked beak dangerously close to his ear. She was really annoyed by his uneven gait these days.
"Don't give me attitude," he told her. He balanced on his good leg and rubbed with a couple of fingers behind her yellow crest. "If you didn't weigh so much, we could both manoeuvre better. Good boy," he muttered, but his mind was elsewhere. They'd stitched him up, given him antibiotics, and let him go home on the second day.
Erik had claimed he was too spent after Ren's healing to do any more, but Dustin knew him better than that. He was pissed off, and Dustin figured it had something to do with Ren, and the way she'd nearly killed herself trying to help him.
As though I had any say in it. Dustin frowned a little as he considered what she'd risked. He didn't blame Erik for being angry. He was angry, too, but he didn't have anyone to direct it toward, except himself.
She'd risked a lot. It had been a long time coming. He'd never wanted to make the first move. He'd decided a long time ago he didn't have anything to offer her. His life could be hell at times, when he stepped into a backwards world. He couldn't move, couldn't see what was happening in his own time. Instant fool - out of sync. One unwary step and he'd appear more of an oaf than he already did. Tumbling down stairs as he was dodging to avoid a wayward cart.
Which was foolish in itself. Until three days ago, the past had never reached out to bite him. He had to admit the physicality of that last event had scared him shitless.
When he felt better, he might talk it out with Josh. Lawrence would want him to talk it out with him, but Dusty baulked at that. Valterzar was a psychiatrist. He'd listen, say little, and shove it into a report.
Dustin didn't want it. He'd never asked for psychiatric help - or any other kind of help. He hadn't even realised till a few years ago how strange that was. There'd always been someone there - someone who came in, and yanked him out of the middle of a busy street when he froze halfway across, lost in Never Never Land. Someone who explained away the incidents, or rang him up to see how he was doing during those times despair had rendered him nearly housebound.
But, normal people didn't have "helpers", or "managers" who came out of nowhere. It was funny how he hadn't known. How the people he hung out with most were those like himself. Ren, Josh, Erik, James and Merrie had been his friends for years - since they were kids. He gravitated toward them, because they, like he, were hiding. Trying to function in a normal world while hiding the phenomena that sprang at them out of the woodwork. Only Erik had decided to come out of the black hole. He'd gone public, and it had been shortly after that that Valterzar had shown up on the scene. That was six years ago now.
Now, Dustin worked a job that was "safe". Stationary. Just him and his computer, some workmates, and an office that didn't go spinning off into the Middle Ages or Jurassic Park if he took a wrong step. And, recently, he'd begun to hope again. Maybe Ren. Just maybe.
Ren and me. He grinned. She'd been dropping by every day, with little gifts for him that were somehow just perfect. Drawing pencils, special watercolour paper for his printer. She was the most beautiful - and certainly the most special - aspect of his life.
The next instant he was worrying that she had another motive entirely. She was one of his closest friends, and naturally, she was concerned about his health. So concerned that she'd taken some of it off him.
He was glad she came. He was as worried about her as she seemed to be about him. Whatever Erik had done, though, had enacted a cure. She looked great.
He sighed. Boy, did she look great...
But, he had to admit that he still didn't feel right. He'd phoned the doctor because he had a fever, and they'd reminded him he was on antibiotics, and told him to call them if he was still hot tomorrow.
He knew what Valterzar would say. "Just give me a call and I'll drop by." That, however, was not what Dustin Mallory wanted. He didn't want his keeper fetched, or his life arranged around him. He wanted to go through channels, just like anybody else.
"If you're sick, Lolita, call the doctor," he muttered. Damn if he didn't feel crappy. He couldn't eat, and he hadn't slept since he'd woken up in the hospital ward. He knew he was almost at the point where any doctor would do - even Valterzar - but he was too damn stubborn to give in. "Call your own doctor. Not some trumped-up, glorified, psychologically-perverse quack." He rubbed Lolita under her wing. "Good boy."
"Harsh words. By the way, she's a girl," a voice reminded him.
"Nice of you to knock," Dustin said sarcastically.
"And make you jump off your deathbed? No way." Josh grinned. "You can treat me like royalty next time." He nodded toward the injured limb. "How's the leg?"
"Know you'll find this a little 'hard to swallow'," Dustin retorted, "but it almost feels like I got bit by a dinosaur."
"Shit, you're a lucky bastard." Josh sighed. "Even if it was just a sting." The way he said it made it sound like a negligible bee had somehow found its way up his pant leg.
The weird thing was he meant the "lucky bastard" part. "Excuse me if I pound your face in," Dustin told him. He reached out a fist, lost his balance, and nearly toppled onto his face. Josh caught him and steadied him. "What happened to the stinger, anyway? I might want to put it in my trophy case."
A little sheepishly, Josh pulled a drawstring bag out from inside his shirt.
Dustin snorted. "You're kidding!" He shook his head. "I don't believe you! Shouldn't it be in a lab or something?" He hooted. "What is this? A totem against evil spirits?"
Josh ignored him. He undid the string and reverently drew the spine halfway out of the bag. "See?" he said, in a hushed whisper, his voice awed. It also held a trace of envy as he added, "Do you know how lucky you are? I'll need a detailed account of everything you saw -"
Dustin rapped him with a crutch. "Lucky, am I? (rap) If I'd come back limbless (rap), you could have written a (swing - miss) fuckin' paper (hop - rap) on it!" He shook his head at the gleam of acknowledgment in Josh's eye. "You are going to write a paper!" He raised his voice, some of his own amusement gone. "Are you out of your mind?! They'll crucify me!"
"I'll keep your name out of it..."
"Until the paparazzi, or whatever they are, get their hands on it! How many people in the hospital records have had a dinosaur tooth -" At the look on Josh's face, Dustin added a derisive "- or whatever - pulled out of their hides?"
"They don't know!" Josh explained. "I told them it was a pointy rock." He watched Dustin's agitated pacing. It would have been pacing, anyway, if Dusty could synchronise his crutch and leg actions. After observing him for a while in silence, he asked, "How're you feeling?"
"Great," Dustin growled at him. "They'll crucify me!"
"You said that." Josh went over and coaxed Lolita off Dusty's shoulder and onto his own arm. "Good girl, Lolita." Dustin wasn't looking too good. In fact, he looked damn sick. Josh realised he'd been so wrapped up in the thrill of discovery, that he hadn't been all that observant. "Want a drink of water?" he asked now, as he urged the cockatoo back onto her perch.
Dustin nodded gratefully. "Thanks."
Josh was gone for nearly a minute. When he came back, he had a glass of water, and a couple of pill bottles. "Let's see: anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, painkillers. What do you need?"
"A good night's sleep and some peace and quiet," Dustin replied. He wobbled slightly.
Josh took one of the crutches and helped him over to the couch. "You're pretty hot," he remarked. He smiled slightly, anticipating Dustin's retort. It didn't come.
Instead, Dusty only shivered and muttered, "I don't feel 'hot'."
"You don't look so hot, either," Josh replied. Dusty's face was flushed, and his eyes slightly glazed.
The phone rang. "Could you get that?" Dustin asked. The phone seemed a long way across the room.
Josh was carrying on quite a conversation, but Dustin tuned it out. He was staring, rather blankly, at the wall. It took him a while to realise he wasn't thinking about anything.
Correction. He was thinking about how much his leg hurt, and how much he wasn't going to think about it.
"Let's go," Josh said curtly. He helped Dustin to his feet and pulled an arm over his shoulder.
"What's up?" Dustin asked, confused.
"You are. All the way out to the car," he muttered, half-carrying him down the hall. "They cultured the bacteria in your leg -"
"From the spine," Dustin said confusedly.
"Yeah," Josh said worriedly. "They've never seen it before. They're going to hit you with some other antibiotics."
"Who was on the phone?" Dustin asked.
"Valterzar. He wanted to come by and pick you up, but I told him I'd handle it."
Dustin took it about the way Josh had figured he would. He pulled away and leaned back against the wall. "No. He's not my doctor. I've talked to my doctor," he said quietly, "and he suggested I come by tomorrow."
"This isn't something to play with, Dusty."
"He's management. I don't need a manager." Dustin hobbled back down the hall. The heat in his body inflamed his temper. "It's a free country!" he yelled at Josh. "Who do they think they are? Why would they tell Valterzar first, before they'd tell me?!"
Josh followed him down the hall. At Dusty's words, though, he stopped. "I don't know," he admitted. "The 'Bail-Out Squad'. Because we're not normal -"
"But don't you see it?" Dustin roared. Today, because of Ren, because of the dreams he'd dared to hope for, it was more important than ever. "We'll never get a shot at it, Josh! Not if we don't make a stand now!"
"But it'd make a hell of a lot more sense to make a 'stand' when you can stand up!" Josh bellowed back. He lowered his voice slightly. "I'll call Erik -"
"Fuck Erik!" Dustin yelled. "He's an easy out. Always the easy out! We never take responsibility for the havoc. Fuck it all!" At the expression on Josh's face, he slammed a fist into the wall. "I don't need a manager," he repeated, but most of his anger was gone now, lost in something resembling despair. "I just want to live, Josh," he whispered. "Really live."
"I'll take you to another hospital. No Valterzar. No connection - to anything. They can call for the results. Just come with me, Dusty." He put a hand on his shoulder. "Come with me," he urged.
Dustin stared at him for a moment. His eyes looked so glassy with fever that Josh wondered how he was seeing.
"It's a friend thing," Josh assured him. "No easy out. Friends help each other."
Dusty nodded slowly, and let Josh take his arm. "Just do me a favour," he said, with a trace of a smile.
"What?" Josh tugged Dusty's arm over his shoulder. Dusty sagged against him and Josh boosted him up.
Dusty turned his head and grimaced at Josh. "No dinosaurs," he begged.
Josh grinned back. "Wouldn't think of it," he said.
*
"I can't go now."
She realised, as soon as she'd said it, that she'd been too blunt. Now they'd want an explanation. She wasn't stupid or naive enough to think they hadn't already checked her current work projects, to see whether she could be spared without jeopardising her employment. They were always very careful about that. If there wasn't a good enough explanation, and if she persisted in her refusal, then they'd find a way to "convince" her.
She wondered whether the others received calls like this. Urgent requests for help couched in a neediness she couldn't refuse. They knew how sensitive she was; how a negative answer would haunt her later. It was only lately that she'd also begun to wonder whether that negative feedback was also predetermined and set up - against the unlikely contingency of a refusal. Feedback modelled and analysed to offer maximum regret, so refusals wouldn't become the norm.
The last time, refusal had been succeeded by immediate fill-in duty at an Australasian plant pathology conference. Since she'd been planning to attend anyway, there was no excuse she could use not to lecture. After all, Fusarium was the subject of her research, and she was considered an expert in her field.
As a student, she'd managed many of the lectures the same way a lot of the other students did: by tape recorder. There were some classes she couldn't miss, of course, but she'd always had a very small exam room to test in. It wasn't until later that she wondered why and how she'd been singled out for exam privileges. With the egocentricity of the young, she'd come to the conclusion it must owe, at least in part, to her superior grades. After a while, she'd taken it in her stride and not bothered to ask why. The alternative was too uncomfortable in many instances for her to tolerate; the interference, with everyone in the lecture theatre so tense and agitated, nearly unbearable. It destroyed her own focus, so she couldn't concentrate. Wrong answers, and right answers, anger and angst were being flung at her from all directions. She'd nearly flunked out her first quarter.
But then, it had all changed. She'd learned to substitute the tape recorder for her presence, and transcribe the lectures in peace, and exams had somehow been arranged to minimise her problems. She'd been so grateful that she hadn't allowed herself to consider too deeply the whos and whys - then. She'd graduated magna cum laude, and gone on to do a doctorate.
Conferences were considered an important part of professional development, and she'd figured out a way to manage those, too. Generally, with the focus on the lecturers, the situation differed from those university classes where attention was frequently scattered. A third of the crowd at a conference might be students, but at that point, they were out to impress potential employers. It made a lecture scene nearly bearable for her. That, and the fact that what she couldn't bear she could recoup from abstracts and transcripts of the talks. Acceptable, and definitely more tolerable.
Except when she was the lecturer. She had a feeling they'd set her up for it as surely as they'd set her up for singular exams. With the intense focus centred on her, her mind was no longer her own. She'd prepped for her talk, of course, but she could never have prepared for those moments behind the podium. Never have known how scattered her concentration could become, or how desperate she'd feel as her own thoughts were displaced by those of a hundred others. How the tension of a speech-giver could give way to panic as she spoke words that weren't her own, but fragments of others' thoughts. Or how much angst she'd feel as her hard-won professionalism was ripped apart in front of her peers, and her reputation ridiculed by the unheard laughter of the students. In the end, her focus had given way completely, and she'd gone into deep shock, and collapsed on-stage, in front of everyone. They'd carted her away by ambulance, made some excuse about delirium brought on by a recurrence of malaria, and flown her home.
Covered her ass, her reputation. Saved her. Bailed her out.
But the lesson had been learned. Thwart the "system", and you were in for it. They might cover for you afterwards, but you'd have to pay first.
It had been the single worst moment of her life.
Until recently - when she'd seen Dustin in that bed. She'd realised then that she valued his life more than her own. It was why she didn't want to leave now, when he was so sick.
It wasn't hard to guess it was also the reason why they were so insistent that she go.
*
Dustin never remembered the drive to the hospital. All he was aware of was the endlessness of it. He was so hot he would cheerfully have shed his skin, if someone had asked. And then he thought someone had, and he remembered arguing - telling them to leave his skin alone - but they poked and prodded him anyway.
When he woke up, the room was dark. Then, his vision cleared, and he noticed the nightlight, above his bed. The agitated beeping of the monitor assured him he was still alive. The way his body felt assured him that Josh had respected his wishes. No insta-cures. Dustin felt a brief surge of pride, and gave a wide smile. I can do this, he thought.
"Never figured you for the gutsy type," came a cool voice from his right.
Erik.
Dustin's nigglings of pride burnt out in a surge of anger. He didn't know who to be angrier with: Josh or Erik.
Dusty turned to look at him - his mouth opened to comment. He snapped it shut when he saw him. Erik looked exhausted. There were circles under his eyes, he needed a shave, and his clothes were wrinkled. "How long have you been here?" Dusty asked.
"Three days, five hours, and -" Erik looked at his watch, "- eighteen minutes. Josh said you didn't want to go for the cure, but -"
"But what?"
Erik shot him an embarrassed grin. "People don't always know what's best for them." He shrugged. "I was scared to leave," he admitted baldly. He came over to the bed and rested his hand on Dustin's arm. "You gonna live now?"
Dustin didn't know what to say. This was the old Erik - the one he used to know, before he got rich and famous. Dustin could only nod, and grin.
It was enough for Erik. "Good," he said, giving his arm a quick squeeze. "'cause I'm leaving now." His eyes were moist as he turned back, at the door. "Welcome back, my Friend."
*
"But we want to know why -"
Valterzar stood up abruptly. Fatigue was making his temper short. Not only was Dustin his responsibility, he was a friend - even if the man didn't know it. "It's covered," he snapped, knowing that he sounded far from the psychiatric professional they'd hired him as. "If he wants to go it alone, it's his business -"
"We have a certain investment in his welfa-"
"His right," Valterzar practically growled at him. "He's not under arrest, is he?" His eyes narrowed. "I didn't think so. That means he still retains the rights of a self-governing, self-determining individual. I respect his decision." He headed for the door. "Enough said."
"You can be replaced," Smythe warned him.
"Probably," Valterzar told him, shrugging. He stood there for a moment, thought it over, then said, "Try telling someone who gives a damn."
Without another word, he turned and walked out of the room.
***
Chapter Three
"Don't look so distracted," Josh told her. He grinned as he added in an exaggerated whisper, "People will begin to think you're strange."
They were walking down a muddy street, lined with narrow, tin-roofed houses. Ren was reading as they went, but Josh was doing an on-going battle with a persistent pig. It was a young boar that had broken out of somebody's pen and it kept coming around, to sniff his boots. Ren thought it was hilarious. Josh thought it was a pain in the ass.
"They'll be too busy looking at you and the pig to notice." She continued searching through a report on gene therapy.
Josh was bored. He discreetly kicked the pig out of the way for the fourth time. It gave an irritated squeal and turned on him.
Thank God for steel-toed boots. "You could've helped me," Josh complained.
"I don't want to smell like pig."
"What's so interesting, anyway? Not that I really care."
"Triggers." She glanced at him, uncertain whether to tell him what she'd been thinking. "Have they ever sent you out with anyone before?"
"No. What're you thinking? That I'm the 'trigger' for what happened to Dusty?" It was what he'd been worried about himself.
"Or vice versa."
"One drawback - we've spent time together before. Most of our lives, in fact. Never had any results like that."
"I know. That's what's bothering me." She lowered her voice. "This is about genetic triggers. Maybe we have built-in timers, set to go off." She looked embarrassed. "I know it sounds stupid, but I wonder. Two years ago, and that thing with Erik. You and Dusty." She hesitated, then closed her eyes. Josh guessed she was checking their surroundings for negative feedback, to see whether anyone was monitoring them. "I just don't want to stir up anything, or give them any ideas."
Josh's jaw was set. "They shouldn't have trained us as scientists if they didn't want us to do some self-analysis. Do you really think we might have built-in detonators?" With Ren, you had to take these things seriously. You never knew whether it was something she'd come up with on her own, or that she'd "picked up" from someone else at Symtech.
"All I'm saying is that we should watch out." She put the paper back in her bag. "Dusty's right. I'm sick of being a victim. It makes me feel so - so -"
"Wimpy?" Josh asked.
She grinned. "Yeah. The 'predictable' doesn't help, either."
"I think, for the moment, I'll put your little trigger idea out of my head." Josh looked at her in disgust. "Or - I would - if certain people hadn't made such a big deal about it."
She was still smiling. "Well, you did ask."
"'You asked for it'," he mimicked. He complained, "Now, all I can see is your damned paper in the background."
"I put it away," she told him.
"Big deal. With me, it doesn't matter. My brain's focussed on it."
"Better than focussing it on that pig's backside," she told him.
He grimaced. "Stop that!" he hissed. "You're driving me nuts."
She grinned. "Here's another one for you: did you ever think maybe the reason we're so predictable, is that they have someone precognitive on their team?"
"I hope Dusty never marries you," Josh told her irritably, but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. "You'd drive him crazy, inside of a week."
*
She was, indeed, the merriest person he knew. Meredith Feiderman was as intense a personality as any of the others - and just as much in denial, Lawrence Valterzar thought. In her, though, it took the form of a zestful appreciation for life.
Lawrence walked up to her door, grinning as he noticed the new paint. The colours had changed yet again. This time, the panels were bright yellow, with a lavender frame. Cheerful. Alive. Enough to ward away the most fearful of spirits.
He wondered if it was enough to bring her peace. Merrie was a frenetic goer and doer. In the six years he'd known her, Lawrence had been constantly on the watch for burnout. He knew what drove her, but couldn't help but admire the ways she'd found to manage it. Her house was nearly always filled with people. That was the other thing about Merrie - her dread of being alone.
She'd explained it to him once. "It's not loneliness," she'd sighed, after a particularly frenzied round of people, painting, and partying. "As long as there're people present, I don't have to worry about their state." At his blank look, she'd added kindly, "About whether they're alive - or dead." She'd grinned a little flippantly then. "They're just people."
It sounded like a sensible approach. Sometimes her flippant remarks seemed to be the only sensible thing about her. As long as she kept moving, and didn't linger too long on anything, she didn't have to think. She fed herself and her constant guests with a seemingly endless quotient of children's stories, which she illustrated herself - all in the bright colours she so favoured in her surroundings. Merrie had a brilliant mind when channelled, but she didn't take any chances. She made sure the stimulus was present, to occupy her brain, before she'd let down her guard. And because writing could be such a solitary occupation, she ensured hers wasn't, by doing her artwork and prose in company.
Lawrence also knew about her education. She hadn't used her comparative religion studies to delve more deeply into her "gift". She'd used them to protect herself - to find some way to control it. Not for Merrie the obscurities of ectoplasmic artforms, or the etheric darkness of oblique pentagons or magic. No - Merrie had found a way to live, without dwelling upon her body's preoccupation with death.
He knocked, and Merrie answered the door herself. "Dusty okay?" she asked quickly.
"Why?" Lawrence quipped. "Did he come calling?"
She grinned in appreciation, then threw her arms around him, and gave him a spontaneous hug. "Glad you're here, Zar. Everybody's leaving in five." She kissed the side of his cheek, then whispered in his ear, "I don't want to be alone, you see."
"What happens if you goof up? And everybody takes off to a better party?
"There are no better parties," she said confidently. "And if my public vanishes, I go out." She gave him a kiss on the other cheek, then nestled against him. "Or else I call my Zar," she murmured. She pulled back, to look him straight in the eye. "He's never failed me yet," she said.
*
Ren looked out over the arid landscape, but all she could see were skeletal paloverdes, saguaros, ocotillos, and a scattering of mesquite. "This is ridiculous," she muttered. "I'm supposed to be checking for fungal damage."
"That white leftover certainly fits the bill," Josh told her, pointing to an ocotillo. "That's damage, if I ever saw it."
She snorted. "I was hoping to see something a little more generalised - patterns of damage, that kind of thing. I'll have to check them close-up."
"One by one?" Josh asked, dismayed.
"Do you complain like this when you get out your toothbrush and scrape for dinosaur rubble?"
"Point taken. Watch yourself," he warned. "There's a snake under that rock - and that one." He pointed to a rock on her left. "Scorpion."
Ren moved back a little gingerly, until she was clear. "Safe now?"
Josh nodded. "Far as I can tell. If it's so obvious there's no big fungal problem, then why are we here?"
"I have to assume it's a serious request, Josh." She admitted, "Makes me feel less used."
"Used for your brain, rather than your 'brain'." He indicated a large, flat rock. "Scorpions," he said, with a mock shiver. "Lots of 'em." As he followed her around it, he asked, "What fungus is this, anyway?"
"Fusarium oxysporum. A mycoherbicide used for biocontrol. It's been in development for years. Two-sided assault on the Colombian drug trade - against the coca plants, and the cash flow for insurgents. Not too nice for the locals, though."
He looked up quickly. "Why? Ups the violence?"
"Fusariosis. People with immune deficiencies are susceptible to toxins in the fungus. Unfortunately, they've found poor diet can compromise the immune system into a susceptible state. In poverty-stricken areas it can be fatal."
Josh frowned. "How bad is it?"
"Seventy-six percent mortality, in one study."
"Biowarfare."
"It could be viewed that way. They didn't tell me all this, just in case you're wondering. Once I knew what I was searching for, I looked up the rest."
"Why here?" Josh looked disparagingly at the miserably sparse plant numbers, somehow eking out a living in dust-dry soils. "I mean, far be it from me to forego a chance to dig, but..." His expression said it all.
Ren shrugged. "Collateral damage? If they're having me look for it, it must mean some got away." She grimaced. "I don't think they have too much to worry about. This isn't exactly fungus heaven." Poking a finger warily between the spines of a saguaro, Ren added, "Even if it took out one, it'd take a bloody miracle to hit another susceptible host. I don't even know if it can affect cactus."
"That would have been a good thing to look up," Josh said practically.
"I wasn't exactly given much time -" she began.
Josh just looked at her.
She laughed. "Okay! I admit it! Once they told me what I was looking for I got so involved considering the possibilities that I didn't do all my homework. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"It'll do for a start." Josh scanned from horizon to horizon. Pretty open ground. "This area used to be underwater. Did you know that?" He scanned the arid surface, searching for unusual features. He pointed to a distant lump of rock, reddish sandy soil, and scrubby creosote. "That one looks promising."
"Not for fungus."
Josh had a glint in his eyes. "I'm not looking for fungus."
"If a stegosaurus seeps out of the sand, I'll let you know." Ren followed him down off the rocks then said, "Go for it, Josh. You might never get this 'opportunity' again." She looked around at the heat waves rising off the dried sand and sighed. "I'll just be strolling through, checking leaves and stems."
"Watch your pit stops."
"Peeping Tomases?"
Josh grinned. "That's Peeping Joshes, and I wouldn't have felt the need to warn you. Rattlesnakes."
"Oh."
"Yeah. Has to do with ambient temperature. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, they prefer a little shade. I'd hate to see you get a bite in the backside."
"Glad you know the desert. Thanks."
"See you at the Plesiosaur." Josh set off determinedly for his lump of dirt in the distance.
"Don't let the mirages bite!" Ren yelled, turning back to the ocotillo and pulling out her magnifying lens. She focussed it carefully on the leaf, then made a note in her PDA. She yelped when her specimen caught fire.
Her phone buzzed. "Did I hear a distant cry of dismay?"
She twisted to look at him and gave him a big thumbs up. "Just set my leaf on fire."
His chuckle sounded like hissy static in the phone. "That's what Dusty said you do for him - and here, I didn't believe him."
*
"What about your nights?"
"You mean, when I run out of money?"
He looked slightly shocked at that, and Merrie chuckled. "I don't mean whores, Zar," she laughed. "Male or otherwise. I meant when I'm broke, and there's no more food or entertainment."
He saw the sadness in her eyes and knew this was one of the rare times she'd truly let down her guard.
"My nights are indescribably terrifying."
He put an arm around her, and she leaned back into it. They were on the couch and he knew damn well this wasn't professional behaviour, but he damn well didn't care. In defiance of his ethics, he tightened his grip, a glint in his eyes. Ethics be hanged...
She went on, trying to explain. "They're just people, but I'm selective about the people who enter my house."
"Didn't you say they turned up anyway? Came to your parties?"
She shrugged, and he unconsciously brushed his lips across the top of her head.
"But the stats are against them. They're outnumbered by the living, even if it's only one extra." She took his hand. "It's when they get me alone..." Her voice tapered off.
"What? What do they do?"
"Angry, Zar?" she asked, smiling up at him. "Don't be. Not all people are 'nice', and even if they are, certain situations can set them off."
"The bully syndrome."
"Is that a real syndrome, or are you talking down to me?"
He grinned. "Talking down to you. Keeping it simple, so even you can understand."
She laughed appreciatively.
"Tell me why they bully you."
"Because I'm so open they use me, but then they see me as the living's greatest wimp, because I'm so easy to circumvent. Even nice people watch violence, Zar - and get a thrill out of it, too. Very few will stand up to a bully in school. Most will decide he's on the winning side and go with him instead."
But, Lawrence had latched on to her mention of violence. "What kind of violence? Poltergeist activity?" He glanced around the room, searching for signs of damage. It looked as it always did: colourful, full of lovely, glitteringly gaudy fairy hangings, crystals, flowers, fluffy cushions, and cheerful furnishings. So vital. So Merrie. He smiled.
Her next words knocked the smile right off his face.
She sat forward and lifted her shirt. There was heavy bruising across her rib cage, and when she pulled up her sleeve, he could see what looked like a bite mark. She wouldn't look at him, but he knew there'd be terror in her eyes. "H-He attacked me last night, when I was asleep." A sob escaped, and she scrunched up her fists. He knew she was angry with herself for that sob, that sign of weakness. It took her a moment to regain control, and he didn't say anything.
Because, she wasn't the only one fighting for control. Her "Zar" had just been swept with a nearly overwhelming urge to do violence to whomever, or whatever, had harmed her.
He guessed it was the next admission that had really crushed her, though - even more than a singular entity's decision to violate her. Lawrence knew how she loved people, and surrounded herself not only for protection, but enjoyment. She worked hard at happiness for others, and in return, people flocked to her.
How could they resist?
She was used to being liked, and though she could admit to aberrance in an individual, she expected something different from the majority. Some sign of friendship, maybe even support against a challenge. Apparently, last night she'd found neither, and he guessed she'd been trying all day to make excuses for them. To rationalise away her terror. Hence, the "greatest wimp" and "winning side" comments. Now, she sighed, her expression dismal as she showed him her back, and the scratch marks there. He could barely hear her when she whispered, "The worst of it was, the others were all cheering him on."
*
Her phone buzzed again, and Ren jumped. She'd been concentrating so hard she'd tuned out everything else. "Yeah?" she asked distractedly.
"Are you drinking your water?"
"No."
"Well, get on it. Heat stroke's a killer."
Ren lifted her head, to stare blankly at the distant horizon. "That's not why you called," she said. "Do you need me?"
"I think so," Josh told her. "I'm beginning to realise why they needed us both."
She stuffed her specimens into her bag; moving rapidly while she held the phone in place with her shoulder. "Want I should use the earpiece, so I can stay on-line?" She zipped the pack and slung it over one shoulder, then started jogging in Josh's direction.
"Better not waste the battery," Josh warned.
"Wait!" she puffed. "Why?"
"Why not waste the battery? You stupid, Woman?"
"No!" she panted impatiently. "Why the two of us? For back-up?"
"No-o," he said slowly. "Triangulation."
*
"You won't be alone tonight." It was a statement. Lawrence Valterzar had seen a lot in the last six years. Cheery furnishings and bright knickknacks grew shadows in the night, creating their own sense of threat. Reds bled into black. Darkness travelled. In Merrie's case, the air around her took form.
He recalled the near-desperation with which Dustin had confronted his illness. He'd heard his words, as he thrashed in delirium. They'd let Erik "come out", because he'd arrived almost before they'd realised what he was doing. His theatrics had diminished his usefulness to them, but had done a lot to enhance the "psychic" image, so they'd let him go. Dustin wouldn't find it that easy. He was a cripple, who was bound by the complexities of his own mind. As much as he might find it abhorrent to rely on someone else, he'd always have to have someone there, to bail him out.
Lawrence wondered what they'd do to convince him. He still remembered the time they'd nearly shattered Ren. He'd been newer then, but it had still seemed like overkill for refusal. Nothing had been said, but he'd known, much as Ren had, that it was a setup. The difference was, he'd still been naive. He'd only figured it out after-the-fact. After Ren had already suffered through it.
That incident had made him question everything. Paranoia in the making. When James Wickham's "accident" with the rocks had triggered a call for psychiatric intervention, why had he been summoned? He had his own practice, and although he was listed on-call for the hospital, his name was way down the list. Had everyone else been busy? Or had there been a specific reason for the call - to him?
Now, as he found himself peering around Merrie's apartment, he recalled some of the horror stories he'd seen. Could she be living over some ancient graveyard? Had someone set it up so her gift was "active"?
He was lost in his thoughts when Merrie nudged him. They were still on the sofa, and he knew he had a decision to make. He wasn't about to leave her, but he didn't want to be just one more person to use her, either. It wouldn't be like that, but she'd never be sure, and he guessed she'd take any out he offered if it could see her through the night without fear.
"I'm never 'alone', Zar. That's the problem." She admitted, "I'd walk the streets before I'd let him at me again."
She didn't have to translate. She wasn't talking about a casual stroll - she'd go whoring, if that's what it took, to keep herself from being alone.
Lawrence's lips curved in a smile. "That won't be necessary," he said. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, staring at the curve of her lips.
Not ethical, Valterzar.
"My Zar," she said, rubbing her hand against his chest.
To hell with it. "Or maybe it will -" He bent his head and kissed her, and then just kept kissing her. He started with her mouth, then nibbled and kissed down her jaw, and the line of her neck. Damn, she tasted good!
Merrie was breathing heavily now; her eyes dilated. But she pushed him away - holding him off with a trembling hand. He had to know. It wouldn't be fair if he didn't know. "He-He won't like it," she whispered. Her eyes were wet now - fierce with wanting him, but not prepared to have him go in defenceless. "He'll fight you -"
She averted her head and stood up, on shaky legs - taking a few steps to widen the distance between them. It hurt her to say this. She'd wanted him to love her for so long. Longer than the eternity she sometimes glimpsed in the shadows. Now, he was willing, and she couldn't let him - because it wouldn't be right. She took a shuddery breath and forced a smile. "I didn't tell you, just so you'd -" She shook her head, unable to finish.
"I know you didn't." He could read her so clearly. She wanted so much to do the right thing. It went beyond any fears of karmic requital. It was her innate decency, coming to the fore.
He moved over to her slowly. "There are 'things' I can stop," he told her. "Rockfalls, for one. Who knows what else?"
"Things you can stop?" she whispered. Her arms were around his neck now, as his lips moved with that irresistible nibble along her neck.
"Many things," he murmured, picking her up, and burying his face for a moment in her breasts. "But this -"
He kissed her long and hard, then gave her a half-smile as he kicked open her bedroom door.
"- isn't one of them."
*
"So much better to be on this side of things for a change," someone said.
Dustin opened his eyes. "How'd you know I wasn't asleep?"
"I'm an expert at feigning sleep. Anything to avoid discerning eyes - after one of my 'episodes'."
Dustin smiled. "Expert at feigning everything."
"Heard you refused 'The Dainler's' help. The way he tells it, he hung out here, suffering from champagne- and limo- deprivation, while you insisted on healing naturally." James Wickham grinned. "Made it sound as though you tortured him."
"Have to admit, though, it was good to see him when I woke up. Just like the old days." Dusty grinned at James. "Been to any good 'rock and roll' parties lately?"
"Aren't we snide. It's obvious how much you have things under control." James' voice lowered dramatically. "Don't know if I can trust you, even now..."
"Look who's talking! When you tell someone you live a 'stone's throw' away, you really mean it!"
James burst out laughing. "Never could hold onto it when you were around, Dusty." He plunked down in the chair, and some of the amusement faded from his voice. "They want us to do a job together." At Dusty's expression, James said, "Believe me, I understand how you feel. I'm so dependent on the fuckers I can barely screw myself -"
It was Dusty's turn to laugh. "What do they want? A 'fresh' sample of Cretaceous granite? If it's dinosaurs, I'm not going to sit there while you fling rocks in their faces -"
"Rocks aren't my only forte," James argued. "Just what I'm famous for." He leaned back and put his hands behind his head, and his feet up on the bed. "It's all very innocent. Supposedly, they need a 3D animation of an eruption. I'm the expert on all things geological, and you're the graphics man. To get the feel, we're getting an all-expenses paid trip to some remote, volcanically active island. Remote from here, anyway."
"Isolated," Dusty commented.
James nodded. "Very. The trip's short-term - just to give us the 'feel' of fire and brimstone. The problem is, they know it's a trek I'd kill for."
"And they need to find out whether I'm still in the fold. Valterzar coming along?"
James shook his head. "Zar's -" he began.
Dustin looked at him strangely.
"Merrie's word," he explained.
Dusty nodded. "Ah-h."
James grinned. "Anyway, Zar's been standing up to them. Had it from Merrie."
"She's getting pretty chummy with him, isn't she?"
"She'd get a lot more chummy with him if he'd let her."
Dustin thought about it. Merrie was generally a pretty good judge of character.
James saw his expression and laughed. "Can't have all the women!" he complained. "Isn't Ren enough?!"
"It's not Merrie I'm wondering about." Dusty hesitated, then blurted, "Ren hasn't been around." He heard something like self-pity in his voice, and clamped his lips shut.
"And here you did all that big, brave suffering, and she didn't even bother to come and watch." James was smiling again. "What a waste of angst."
Dustin looked embarrassed.
"For your information, she's too far away." He sobered. "She's with Josh - in Mexico."
"Another 'field trip'?" Dustin asked, worried.
"Unfortunately, yes. If it helps, Ren only went once she knew Dainler was here."
Dustin smiled.
"Symtech has it all set up to maximise their results," James said, somewhat bitterly. "Pairing us off to see what happens. Josh and Ren, you and me, Merrie and Zar."
"Zar?" Dustin asked.
James looked amused. "Haven't you guessed? Come to think of it, I don't think old Zar knows it himself. Whether he realises it or not, Valterzar is one of us."
***
Chapter Four
Josh made her sit in his shade and drink some water. "You're going to look like a broiled lobster," he remarked.
"I feel like one," she said, lifting her face as the faintest of breezes swept her face. "Damn it," she sighed. "Just a teaser." As she shifted, the rocky sand crackled and crunched beneath her hiking boots. She closed her eyes to dream of more breezes. "Tell me about -" she began. Her eyes popped open and she told Josh, "There's someone...a man. It's close."
"Good," Josh sighed. "Because I'm getting the wreckage."
"A plane?"
"Yeah. Stay here, while I go about 100 metres that way." He headed down the slight incline, moving nearly at a jog across the sandy soil. Ren listened to the crunching steps, and watched the untouched surface marked with the pattern of his boots. When he waved at her, she punched in his number. "What direction do you get?" she asked.
"Northwest. What about you?"
She focussed on the wavelength of that other individual - the one who was emitting all kinds of distress and fear. "Just east of north," she said.
She could hear the smile in Josh's voice. "See you there," he replied.
*
"What do you think you're doing?" James had to scoot the chair to one side so Dustin could finish climbing out of the bed. The plastic at the base of the chair legs gave out an obnoxious rubbery squawk that grated on his nerves. "Damn, but you're rude! Still visiting, you know."
"And I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying it." Dustin turned his back, hopped over to the closet, and pulled out the small suitcase Josh had brought over - when was it? two days ago?
"Duty call. If I'd known it was going to make you crazed I would've waited." James lifted his eyebrows when Dusty got impatient with the IV stand and yanked out the needle. "Excuse me, but I don't think that's part of your therapy."
"I should've known that my stunt with Josh would have some kind of backlash," Dustin said angrily, as he tugged on a shirt. "Either that, or this is payback for Ren's healing efforts. Moving her far away so she can't be contaminated by my 'fight for freedom'."
"Damned insurgent," James said calmly. "Maybe they want to switch the mix to find out if Josh is the trigger."
"Or me. Doesn't that worry you a little?" He perched on the edge of the bed and gingerly slid his sore leg into his pants.
"Hey, I work in geological time. Old rock, new rock, what do I care? If you're going somewhere, you'd better take along a prescription. Unless you prefer being dead."
"More complications. There must be some prescription written up somewhere, if they planned on having me go off, filming volcanoes."
"Animating them. No gyrating lava or tapdancing pumice, please. Besides, that was a future event. Say, two to three weeks in the future. Something to occupy your mind while you healed."
"Or convince me to run to Erik for help." Dustin was stuffing miscellanea out of the drawer into his bag now. "More manipulation. Even when we think we're fucking them, they're actually fucking us." He sounded tired, and he sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Calmase," James told him.
"Not likely," Dustin said grimly. He went to stand up again, but he just didn't have the strength. "I'm not going to go running -"
"Silencio. It's obvious you're not running anywhere." James forced him back into bed and propped his leg on a pillow. "Bueno."
"What are you on about?" Dustin asked irritably.
"Practicing my Spanish. Don't worry about it. I'll do the talking for you," James said with exaggerated kindness. "'Mi amigo es muy gordo.' Things like that."
"'My friend is very fat'?"
"Loses something in the translation."
"'Gains' is more like it. You're coming to Mexico with me?"
"I'm a volcanophile. I can't deny my calling."
"We'll look for one in Mexico. C'mon, Jamie. Maybe I'll find you a nice rock."
"Some incentive," James retorted sarcastically. He gave a dramatic sigh. "I should've known the only pyroclastics I was going to get on this trip were your half-baked ideas."
*
Merrie was asleep in his arms, her head on his shoulder, one hand on his chest. Lawrence Valterzar was feeling raw - as new and exposed as an open wound. The only thing was, it didn't hurt - yet.
But it would. He'd read too much, seen too much. Talked to too many patients. Witnessed too many of life's failures in the voices of those who'd suffered emotional turmoil. It was this - this angst - that had kept him at a distance for so long.
Except, he could no longer live vicariously. His avoidance had gone from being the pure gesture of the objective observer, to the unhealthily vicarious role of the voyeur. If he'd denied what he was feeling for this woman at his side, after she'd so willingly exposed her spirit to him, he would have been wronging her - and himself. She hadn't confided in him because she needed a friend, or because he was supposed to be the one with solutions. She'd spoken because he was her "Zar", and she was vulnerable. In too much pain and fear to continue the charade. She'd needed him - not the role he'd agreed to play.
He loved her. He'd loved her and denied it for so long that he'd no longer known which was stronger - the truth or the lie. Until, for the first time, she'd needed him, and it broke down all the barriers. Her need had made it natural - easy, even - to surmount any obstacles his logic laid in his path. Things like ethics, and keeping his distance in order to perform his job; the problems of viewing all members of his "Cluster" in an equal light, so that he could make judgment calls without discrimination. His responsibility to make himself available to the others, when all he could think of was being with her.
Now, his being with her was about to be challenged. He could sense it coming, even as she lay innocently asleep. From what she'd said, he guessed that there'd been little sleep for her recently - that she'd fought off the advances of her admirer by giving him no openings. It was only when exhaustion had trapped her that he'd sneaked in, to catch her unaware.
In those moments, Zar was more naked that he'd ever been in his life. If he'd felt vulnerable moments before, it was nothing to what he was feeling now.
It was filling the corners of the room. A condensation of space that made the dimensions of the room so much smaller. So dense, and chill.
Like the confines of his coffin. Zar sensed it - the bitterness, the twisted anger that could only be assuaged by tormenting the weak. Pseudo-strength bought by diminishing others. Zar moved to wake her, to warn her, then paused. The bully would taunt, would threaten if she were awake - but he wouldn't show himself. He needed to use a weakness to bring himself forth. Then, he'd manipulate that weakness to belittle a woman.
With him, it would always be women. Zar knew him then. Just another predator who preyed on a woman's trust. Zar's eyes narrowed. Come in, he pleaded. Come in. Something savage was stirring inside Zar, as he lay there, deceptively silent, and stared at the gathering darkness through narrowed lids. The churning inside owed nothing to nerves - if anything, it was anticipation. Zar fought to suppress a smile.
Some part of his brain was trying to shout a warning, but he ignored it. "That" part of his brain didn't know how to handle this, but there was some instinctive part that did. Some part that was actually looking forward to it.
Come in...
Merrie stirred now, and stiffened, as she sensed the violence in the room. She reached for him but he shook his head. "Best if you don't touch me," he warned. He stood up, naked, but feeling far from vulnerable now. The darkness gathered around him.
It was trying to crowd him. Waves of billowing black with odd glimmers of light that could mould a hand, or an arm. Pseudo-humanity attempting to prove itself through an act of remembered virulence. Zar wanted to laugh as it attempted to jostle him - to crowd him much as a knife-wielder might in a dark alley. "Wanna rumble?" Zar said harshly. He was actually smiling, as, palm-extended, he shoved his hand into the densest mass of swirling black. "Die, Fucker," he said calmly.
The black began to whirl faster, and Merrie covered her ears against the wails that filled the room. The black condensed still further, becoming swirling strings of black matter - thick, gooey, with a viscousness that flowed back and forth between layers.
Zar squinted and slowly drew his fingers into a fist. As his fingers curved, they seemed to draw the black with them. The gyrating vortex upped in intensity, but it now had an irregular wobble that grew worse as the vortex narrowed. As his hand closed, the blackness tore into his fist with a whine reminiscent of swift-singing wind.
It disappeared, with a tremendous bang that shivered the walls of the room.
Zar dusted off his palm distastefully, then turned to look at her. It would be a while before he could calm down. His adrenaline was still pulsing, and some of that primitive sense of domination was still with him.
She reached for him, but he shook his head. "If I take you now, it won't be love," he warned her in a growl. Lust, pure and simple. The need to dominate. To rape, if that's what it took to make her his.
She had to know.
She pulled back the covers and spread her legs. As he mounted her in a frenzied, passion-pounding release that bore no resemblance to their former lovemaking, her insides swelled to meet him, and she came, again and again. Not love? With Zar? She whispered huskily, "It is for me."
*
They could have warned us, Ren thought worriedly as she hauled her sweaty body across yet another empty-looking swathe of desert. Josh was emitting similar patterns of worried impatience, and the beginnings of frustration. There was a huge difference between liberating a few leaves from a plant, and liberating a person from a downed plane.
I'm not that kind of doctor! She hoped Josh was better versed in first aid than she was. The mini kits they were carrying in their packs were hardly stocked to cope with a severe injury. The most they could hope for was to keep the man alive while they broke radio silence and called for help.
They should have asked Erik along. Maybe they thought he wouldn't go - or maybe they thought the pilot was already dead.
Josh was of a different opinion. She punched in his number. "I don't think you should be so negative, Josh. If they didn't care, they wouldn't have sent us."
"Will you cut that out!" he complained. "I let down my guard for an instant, and you're in there, picking my brain!"
"It wasn't that way. I was thinking how hard this might be, and what may have motivated them to send us instead of Erik. And your thoughts sort of 'sifted in'." She sounded slightly embarrassed.
Josh was hot and sweaty and frustrated. "Maybe. It's still unethical."
"What about those times you described my underwear to Dustin?" she flared.
"That was years ago -" he began.
"Are you trying to tell me you never do that kind of thing now? You never meet somebody and pry, just a little, to see what they're made of?" There was silence on the other end. Ren added, "Seems to me I recall, just last week, some jokes about Dr. Armadillo's -"
"Arbuthott's," Josh corrected.
"- Arbuthott's inadequate lecture notes. Something about how lucky he was to bullshit his way through it." She sniffed loudly, into the phone. "I thought we were working together," Ren went on sadly. "I mean that, Josh - I never would've pried. I-I didn't mean to."
"That's okay, Ren. I was just giving you a hard time. Don't take it so hard -" He went quiet when the sound of her laughter came buzzing through the phone. He grinned and shook his head. "I'll get you for that one, Magnus." The tone of his voice changed. "Ren, how close are you?"
"Dammit if I know! Why?"
"I think I've found it," he said seriously.
She took a nervous breath. "Wait for me, Josh. I'll hurry." She tuned into him for a moment, sensed he was deliberating going in without her, and added, "Promise me. Because if you damn well hurt yourself, I'm probably going to have to heal you - and you'll have to live with that!"
It was circuitous, but he got it. "All right," he grouched. "But quit picking the flowers and move your butt."
Ren smirked, shoved the last of the plant samples in her pack, and took off at a run.
*
"Could you ask the nurse for something? For pain?" Dustin leaned back against the pillows.
"No problem." At the door James hesitated, looked at him obliquely, then said jokingly, "Don't go anywhere, okay?"
Once the door had swooshed closed, Dusty counted to five, then climbed back out of bed. He snatched up the IV bag and its replacement, plus the antibiotic infusion that was meant to feed into it. Enough to get him to Mexico, then he'd find a pharmacy to refill the prescription. He wrapped the lot in a spare shirt and then in a plastic bag.
There was no way he could carry the suitcase. Instead, he popped it open, snatched up his wallet and phone and headed for the window. After checking for foot traffic, he tossed out the crutches, then eyed the distance to the ground. One floor. No problemo.
James would be pissed off, but he'd get over it. He'd also know why. He'd want to put the trip off. Jamie was a bugger for caution. No wonder, given the nature of his gift. He'd want to wait, until Dustin was stronger.
It didn't matter that Jamie was right. Because he hadn't been there when a dinosaur had come charging out of the past and into the present. Dustin doubted whether even the evidence of his holey leg could get through to James or Merrie or Valterzar. It was like happening on an accident, after the victims had been patched up. Erik might have some idea, because he'd done some of the patching. But the others wouldn't. As much as they might object to being experimented on, they wouldn't really know what they were dealing with.
Any more than Symtech did.
Dustin was more scared than he wanted to admit. He and Josh had spent lots of time together, but this kind of thing had never happened before. Oh, Dusty had bouts of retro, but nothing with the "graphic" intensity of those moments in the flatlands.
He had to know. He wouldn't be able to sleep until he knew. Whether it was a fluke, weird timing, their proximity, sunspots, or the way his life was going to be from now on. Whether standing on a nonexistent road would send a chariot careening into his body, or if landing in an empty field would end with a broadsword in the butt. Whether something about him had changed, to bring his "retro" into the present.
If he was the catalyst for this, then they shouldn't be pairing him - with anybody. And he certainly shouldn't be considering pairing himself permanently with Ren.
Which made an impromptu trip to Mexico foolish, irresponsible - perhaps, even, reprehensible. A disaster, from the antibiotics he needed for his leg to the uncertainty about what he'd do when he got there.
When it came down to it, though, none of that mattered. Because Ren was there, and Josh, who was one of his closest friends. If he was worried about them, he had every right to pay them a visit.
He swung down from the window, gritted his teeth and let go.
He lay there, his world momentarily eclipsed by pain. Then he grabbed his plastic bag and his crutches and forced himself to his feet.
Every right in the world...
*
Lawrence Valterzar clicked "End" then sat there, tapping the phone against his chin. He was trying to decide what to do. They'd alerted him, of course, as soon as Dustin had left the hospital.
Lawrence stared a little dubiously at the phone. Despite their threats, they apparently had no intention of firing him.
The first person he'd phoned had been James Wickham. James had sounded surprised - so surprised that Lawrence suspected he knew exactly where Dustin had gone.
It would be easy enough to trace Dusty's movements through Symtech - to track his credit cards or ATM, but that's not the way Lawrence wanted to do it. Not if he believed his own claims that Dustin Mallory was both independent and self-determined.
This wasn't merely an extension of Dustin's independence day - he was headed somewhere. After all, he'd pulled off the self-save, without Erik's intervention. He had no need to leave unless he had somewhere better to go. Lawrence could think of only one place that would seem "better" to Dustin - and that was wherever Ren happened to be.
Once again, Lawrence felt that repugnance at interfering with the man's life. He'd hate it if someone did it to him. Why did they have to follow Mallory around as though he were a child?
Because he was acting like one? Taking off, telling no one where he was going to be?
And if I wanted to do that?
Why not?
Why shouldn't he? Dustin was smart - maybe he had all the logistics worked out. If he wanted to visit his girlfriend in Mexico, who had the right to stop him?
And if his girlfriend's engaged in some government brouhaha that doesn't bear close examination? Who draws the lines then?
Lawrence was in a bind. If he sent people in to bring Dustin back, it could alienate him from the man forever. That wasn't something Lawrence wanted to do. Not only did he consider Dusty a friend - he had a lot of respect for him, too. A token of that respect had been his own nonappearance at the hospital while Dustin was recuperating. That way, there could be no misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Lawrence had hoped he'd made it clear that noninterference was the new status quo. That help would only be forthcoming if Mallory wanted it.
In its own way, it was a fantasy, because Charles Smythe and Marc Jekkes were not about to allow Dustin or any of the others to wander around unprotected. They had too much to lose through a misstep - whether by their charges or to them. That was what was getting them now: Dustin had managed to lose his "protectors", too.
Which made the question of whether Lawrence Valterzar was going to Mexico merely an exercise in rhetoric. For all intents and purposes, he was already on his way.
*
Dustin knew he had a major problem. He'd already run into two Olmecs and a couple of Santa Anna's men. He'd nearly been hit by a bus, because a steer had charged him somewhere in the centre of town. Now, he was in the middle of a square, surrounded by women in long dresses. So far, nothing out of the past had tackled him, but the present was a far greater threat. Usually, his episodes were intermittent. Today - probably due to the medication he was taking - he'd had three episodes in as many hours.
He'd never make it to wherever Ren was at this point. That was the other thing: he had no way of knowing exactly where she was. He'd somehow thought, given their natures, that some kind of "psychic beacon" would flare up in the muddle of his mind. It was obvious now that the painkillers had worn off - boy, had they worn off! - that he hadn't been thinking clearly. At the rate he was going, he'd be more likely to see what happened to her yesterday, than today...
Gooseflesh danced across his skin, and some of the weariness left his face. He'd never tried it, but it might just work. He grinned, and flagged down a taxi. Time to go back to the airport.
*
"What do you see?" Ren asked him.
"Why are you whispering?" Josh asked. "Afraid a stray lizard might hear?"
"There's a man in there," Ren explained, "so don't be cynical."
Josh looked dubiously at the wreckage. The small cargo plane had slid along the desert floor, then ploughed into one of the sandstone mini mounts. It was more than a little crunched, and layered with sandy soil and rock. "He's not going to be too healthy," Josh remarked unhappily.
"How's your first aid?"
"Probably on a par with yours."
"You realise that doesn't say much. Can't you focus on a medical manual or something?"
He realised she was halfway serious. "No real focal point. What about you?" he asked hopefully. "Any chance of getting internet access on your phone, so we can get some ideas?"
She shook her head. "The best I could do is send out the emergency signal, and hope they hear it."
Josh nodded, and started across the rubble. "They never leave us alone, and then the one time we'd really like to see them, they play hard to find."
"Maybe they didn't expect us to wander so far away from where they'd sent us."
The rocks crunched under Josh's feet, making each step uncomfortably loud. "Wish I could tiptoe," he hissed. He squatted down and began to paw at the soil that was blocking the door. "Hotcha-la-lacha!" he complained. "And this is in the shade."
"Why are you whispering?" Ren asked him. Josh shrugged. "I'll try the other side." Her crunch, though quieter, was still too conspicuous. Why am I worried about it? she thought.
The answer filtered into her head the next second. She'd been interpreting the victim's mindset as indicative of pain, panic, terror. She'd just realised something else: this was not a "nice" man. He had murder on his mind.
Ren came tearing back around the fuselage, and ran smack into Josh, who'd been running back the other way. The thud stunned them both, and they splayed on the ground.
"Didn't your 'telepathy' tell you where I was?" Josh griped.
Ren was panting in the heat, and she jerked her hands away from the burning soil. "He's a bad guy, you jerk!" she hissed to Josh.
He nodded, rubbing his head where it had hit the metal. "And he has a gun," Josh replied. He looked warily at the bent fuselage. "What the hell are we going to do now?"
*
He'd never tried "directing" it before. He'd never had a reason to. The closest he'd come had been that time with Josh, when he'd tried hunting for his dinosaur.
Should that be a warning? Was that what had gone wrong? Had he been concentrating so hard that he'd not only brought part of the past into his head - he'd brought part of himself into the past?
Not the happiest conclusion, but it might be one he could live with. As long as he didn't willingly call events forth, they might remain what they were before: a glimpse, a scene, a small enactment of the past.
Sooner or later, I'm going to have to test it out.
It sounded like a good excuse for doing exactly what he wanted to do. Common sense told him he'd be a lot better off running his "tests" in a less public location, with a suitable back-up. That plan had several marks against it, though: the only ones who would really tolerate the "testing" were the very people who might interfere with it. And, if his back-up included someone like Valterzar, any feedback would soon be in a report on somebody else's desk.
If it's me, all by my lonesome, who caused this - his hand pressed the sore spot on his thigh - then it was on a "need to know" basis only. In Dusty's mind, the only people who needed to know were Josh and Ren. Josh, so he wouldn't have to worry about himself any more, and Ren because she needed to make an informed decision. If necessary, he'd inform her, tell her he'd try like hell not to do it again, and see if she'd take him on, flaws and all.
It sounded good - almost enough to excuse his present bout of stupidity. Besides, what was one more botch? Dusty smirked. He'd created a climate for himself - an atmosphere of freedom. Dependency be damned. I can do this.
If he could just focus, on Ren or Josh...
Obviously, it'd be easiest to pick up on Ren. All the rest of his body was focussed on her. Why not that part of his brain, too?
They would have picked up a rental car. Dustin headed for the rental desks.
He was a little surprised at his own enthusiasm.
Don't get cocky.
Remember what happened last time...
But it did little to daunt him. His excitement was building. This was only the second time in his entire life he'd actively summoned a "vision", and the last time it had been a "roaring" success. He grinned. "Roaring" in all aspects of the word.
He realised this was also one of the few times he'd actually felt free. The freedom he'd gained at the hospital, or even by leaving it - was a farce. He'd spent his life working around his retrocognition; trying to survive the episodes; trying to hide how much he was haunted by the past from everyone around him in the present. He'd played the bumbling fool who tripped and fell and was laughed at or pitied, for a clumsiness he didn't possess. He'd been crippled by his loss of focus on this world because he was grasping the next. Was it really possible he could control it?
If I can focus enough to bring it in, logic suggests I can control an episode - make it on my terms. He knew better than to think he could stop them. When they came, it was like something opening inside that burst into being.
But if I can control the "when" and the "where", then I really will be free. Gooseflesh rode his skin once more, and his eyes glinted with excitement.
He sat down on a bench, and watched the rental desk. The more he considered it, the less risky it seemed. Hell, the world hadn't changed much in the last three days. He should be able to manoeuvre all right, too, if he needed to follow them.
He rubbed his hands together. History, and none of it ancient...
It was all a matter of mindset. The feeling was easy to recognise. Most of the time when he felt it, he was trying to avoid a "lapse". Right now, he'd welcome one.
Ren. His Kitten.
He wondered, if they went their separate ways, if he'd just vegetate, using any newfound control to replay the scenes with her, again and again...
Focus, Dustin.
It sometimes made him sick - almost like motion sickness - at the sudden transition of time and place. It was something he'd begun to emulate in his graphics work, but some customers had complained. Too much vertigo, they'd claimed. Throws the viewer off-balance.
If they only knew the number of times he'd ended up on his knees...
It was happening now and Dustin clung to the bench; glad to see that it, at least, was remaining the same. The people, the luggage, even some of the signs, did a fast-whirring fade-out that made him giddy. Dustin was beginning to realise that a total transition was easier on his equilibrium than this half-assed skipping he'd somehow initiated. He closed his eyes and focussed on Ren. Any more jouncing and bouncing and he'd toss his cookies - right here in the middle of the airport.
He counted to three and opened his eyes - and she was there.
*
"We can't just 'leave him to it'!" Ren complained. "He's a human being - despite his warped personality."
"He's an armed human being," Josh retorted. "Armed and alarmed do not a good combination make."
"Wish we had Jamie here."
Josh snorted. "What do you expect? Him to whip that gun right out of the creep's hand?"
Ren flared. "Or something else, to distract him -"
"You're nuts!" Josh told her. "You can't stop a bullet with good intentions!"
"At least I have 'good intentions'! 'So gather your fungus and let them come get him'," she mimicked. "What kind of compassion is that?"
"I don't need to show compassion for someone trying to kill -"
Their argument was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. It was muffled by the fuselage, but still loud enough to make them both jump back.
A voice rose plaintively from inside the plane. "Will you shut up?!" it shouted. "Or the next one's through my head - so this 'creep' can put his 'warped personality' out of its misery!"
*
He tried to remember that she wasn't seeing him the way he was seeing her. In some ways, it made him feel like a sicko - as though he was some perverted voyeur watching homespun movies. To rid himself of the less than virtuous thoughts that were suddenly running through his head, he studiously ignored the curve of her breasts, the way her butt looked in those jeans -
Stop it!
He switched his eyes to Josh's face, and it brought a smile to his own. Apparently, Josh and Ren had been arguing again. Now, it was over who was going to drive.
"I've driven desert roads before!" Josh was saying. "Do it all the t-"
"'Deserted', I'd trust you on. Curved, I won't," she interrupted.
Dustin could feel his grasp slipping slightly. He came in closer and tripped over something he couldn't see. His slipped on his dark glasses. He'd learned a long time ago people would forgive a blind man any degree of clumsiness. One on crutches they'd do their best to avoid.
Where are you going? Say something...
They wouldn't want to, because it was supposed to be hush-hush.
That didn't bother Josh. "Where do you think Chihuahua is?" he asked angrily. "Why do you have to be so damned difficult?"
"I'm being reasonable -"
Dustin couldn't resist. He leaned forward, and brushed a kiss across those agitated lips.
Ren froze, mid-word.
"What?" Josh asked, a little alarmed at her expression. "What is it?"
"Dusty," she replied. In that instant, she looked right at him. "Are you okay?" she asked.
All Dustin had time for was a smile. In the next moment, she and Josh and that brief glimpse of history, were gone.
***
Chapter Five
Josh looked from the dented fuselage to Ren and smirked. "Don't we feel stupid!" he said.
"Speak for yourself, Joshua." She smiled at him irritatingly.
"Shut up, Kithren." He yelled to the guy inside, "Where's the best place to get in?"
"Why did they send stupid people?" the man complained in response.
"I think that means he wants us to use the door," Ren said. She grabbed a piece of debris, wrapped it with her shirttail and started digging.
It took them nearly an hour to clear the door enough to open it. By that time, the sun was beating down on their backs. They were both soaked in sweat with blistered hands. Ren didn't know if the blisters were more from the work or the heat.
"What's taking so long?" the man asked. "It's like an oven in here."
"You're lucky there's a door left to clear," Josh retorted. "And as to that 'stupid people' comment? We weren't the ones flying the plane."
"Good one, Josh," Ren said.
"I have my moments," he said.
*
His world spun back in another violent swirl of colour and noise. This kind of purposeful retrocognition seemed to wobble his brain. Even after a glimpse of his surroundings told him he was back where he'd started, the vertigo continued. Dustin stood there, eyes closed, leaning on the crutches. He remained still, trying to tune out the anxious inquires around him. He shook his head, which only made it worse.
The truth was, he was terrified to move. He'd never had vertigo like this before.
He was going to lose it. He knew it right now and there was nothing he could do. His flesh had that ice-cold feel and his stomach was churning. The next moment, there was a hand under his arm, holding him up. "Take the crutches," someone said. Then, whoever it was held a bag while Dustin heaved his guts out. It was mortifying, damn weakening, and it seemed to take forever. At the end of it, he couldn't even stand.
There were bodies on either side of him now, hauling him out of the airport, and a familiar voice said, "Way to be discreet, Dusty."
The next second Merrie's despair cut through his distress. She sounded shocked - appalled, even. Horror-stricken. "Zar!" she gasped. "Josh - Ren!"
They halted, and Dustin realised it was Valterzar on his right. He could feel his muscles tense.
"What about them?" Valterzar asked worriedly. But this was Merrie talking, and they already knew. Even Dustin knew - but until she said the words, there was still hope.
No hope. She'd started sobbing; rough, choking gasps that came from deep inside. "Josh and Ren - they-they're dead."
At her words, Dustin opened his eyes. He tried to focus on her, and for a brief moment, their eyes locked. Then, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he sagged into their arms.
*
They were gone. All of them. It took Erik only a few minutes to realise that what he was feeling was panic.
It was stupid. Old friends, yeah, but he could live without 'em. He'd been practising that very thing for the last four years. Practised it so well, in fact, that he'd alienated Dusty and James. Josh thought his showmanship was amusing, but Ren - the only one he really cared about impressing - was disgusted with him. She thought he should be doing it for free. Merrie didn't make judgment calls, but then, she had too much other shit to deal with to worry about minor matters like ingratitude and greed.
Erik went to visit her a lot. Despite his claims to the contrary, it gave him a good feeling to think he could absolve a failure at her door. A friend to tell him it was okay - that failures came in the life and death business both.
Even if you're getting paid well for your successes...
Merrie's specialties were in distractions for the living and the dead. She, like he, was caught somewhere in-between. Between his guilt, his efforts for people that sometimes left him feeling soiled, and his occasional losses, Erik needed all the distractions he could get.
There'd been a time two years ago when his ego had gotten out of line. He'd found he was beginning to hate some of the people he was working on, and believed he could pick and choose - selectively heal. For a kid who'd grown up with a staunch religious upbringing - which had become even stauncher once his parents realised what he could do - his healing had seemed like some kind of gift from God. He'd healed scraped knees on the playground, bloody noses and papercuts. Only, he couldn't heal his own. His efforts were frequently repaid with fists in the face - with punches and pounding and kicks in the butt. Then there'd come the day when one of the persecutors had scraped a knee. He'd looked at Erik expectantly: Heal me, you little dickweed. Erik couldn't refuse him - his religious upbringing wouldn't allow it. "Turn the other cheek." But, something had gone wrong.
The scrape hadn't crusted and healed over - it had begun to bleed and bleed, the ripped portion spreading halfway down the bully's calf. Erik jerked his hands away, but by that time, both he and the bully were screaming.
They'd moved him to a special school after that. Very special, but he'd met the best friends he'd ever had. People who were troubled by phenomena, just as he was. He could relax and be himself.
It was only when he'd tried to be more than himself that he'd run into trouble again. His success had led him to think of his former allies as failures. Worse than that: fools. He wanted to leave them behind to wallow in whatever subjugation Symtech put on them, while he moved on to bigger things. He'd become so sure of himself and his own abilities that he'd opted to up his prices and deselect the undeserving.
He'd had two incidents that he'd never forget. He'd made a woman's tumour grow by mistake, and occluded a man's arteries. He'd tried to think of it as a bad week, when cosmic forces were somehow aligned against him, but he knew the next time, as his hands hovered over a diamond-studded beltbuckle, that it wasn't anything external.
It was him.
His hatred and self-disgust were mutating his healing into something else. It was the bully in the playground problem all over again. Only this time, he had a feeling the "bully" was his own distorted self-image. He'd taken the role of judge on himself, and he was meting out punishments to his clients.
He'd lowered his hands quickly, before he could damage the diamond belt-owner's health further.
Symtech had bailed him out of his failures - all without a word, of course - which had made him realise he was nowhere near as "free" as he'd claimed. He hadn't killed anyone; merely made their lives a whole lot more uncomfortable, and surgery a lot more imperative, which had almost been enough to make him discount it. Almost - but not quite. He'd no longer gone into a healing flippantly.
And he'd no longer been selective about whom he was going to heal.
Now, though, as he knocked, again and again, on Josh's door, he realised how close he'd come to losing more than his healing spirit. Where were they? Just like with Dustin, Erik wanted to be there, to back them up.
As much as he'd once wanted to leave them behind, he now regretted whatever decision they'd made, to leave him.
*
The metal had buckled in the crash. "More goddamn complications!" Josh complained. "You still alive in there?" he bellowed.
"You're taking so long I was gonna ask you the same thing!"
Ren scowled. "It's so irritating, to have an ungrateful victim."
Josh just glared at her.
"Don't give me that look! If we had the truck, we could have been out of here an hour ago! And we wouldn't have to walk back across the goddamn desert!"
"They said 'sneak'. How the hell can you sneak with a goddamn truck?"
She didn't say any more - just looked around till she found a metal rod they could use as a crowbar. With both of them heaving and tugging, the door finally gave, with an enormously loud cracking boom. Josh and Ren gave, too, landing in a heap as the door was sprung open.
Josh got up into a crouch, then poked his head into the cabin. "Yoo hoo!" he yelled. Frowning, he climbed in. Ren came in behind him. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
They called, they threatened, they cajoled and in the end they gave up. The fungus was there, Ren was certain, in the doctored rice that stood in bags along the fuselage. But that was all.
The cabin was empty.
*
"It's been twelve hours," James remarked. He watched Valterzar adjust the IV and take Dustin's pulse. Zar checked his pupils again, took his temperature, then rolled him on his side and checked the dressing on his leg for signs of suppuration.
James got the impression Zar was busying himself to take his mind off his concerns - and his grief. Jamie didn't have to be telepathic to realise Josh's and Ren's deaths had hit Valterzar hard.
"He should be in a hospital, but that's not in the programme," Valterzar told him. "I'm doing all I can, short of calling Erik."
"Erik'll be here," Merrie told him. "You don't have to call him."
James looked at her doubtfully. He didn't say it, but she knew what he was thinking.
"He had a lot of resentment to work through, but he misses you, Jamie. All of you."
James settled back in a chair. "How can you tell?" he asked Merrie. There was more than a trace of bitterness in his voice. Josh, Ren gone. Dusty could well be on his way out. Somehow, he'd never thought his circle of friends would be narrowed down to Merrie, Erik and "Zar". He wanted to cry, but he couldn't. Wanted to yell, but that was out, too.
I'd settle for punching someone's face in -
He was looking in the mirror. All of a sudden, a vase full of artificial flowers flew across the room and slammed into the glass, shattering it. Valterzar shot him an angry look.
James merely slumped further in the chair. "Pardon," he said flippantly.
"Better you than someone else," Zar retorted, deliberately turning his back. Unwilling to turn his frustration on someone else, James had shattered his own reflection.
Suddenly, James couldn't stand it any more. "I need to know how it happened," he told Merrie.
"Merrie -" Valterzar began.
"Please," James whispered.
"It's all right, Zar." She sat down on the chair, and took an unseeing look around the hotel room. Zar knew she was trying to steady herself enough to speak without crying again. She sighed deeply, then described that last, horrific scene. "A crashed plane. In the desert. J-Josh had holes in-in his b-back."
"And Ren?" It was Dusty's voice. He was lying there, one hand clasped over his eyes. His voice was husky. "What happened to Ren?"
"Her head," Merrie cried, tears now pouring down her face. "The bastard shot her in the head."
"No - he - didn't," Dustin whispered.
Valterzar folded Merrie in his arms. His voice was raspy with unshed tears. "I'm sorry, Dustin." It was obvious he meant it.
Dusty lowered a trembling hand. His eyes, moist and bloodshot, met Valterzar's determinedly. "He hasn't - and he won't," he said firmly. "Because I'm going to stop him."
Valterzar opened his mouth to argue, and then it just hung open. There was a glint in Dustin's eyes that told Zar the man meant it. Merrie must have thought so, too. She took a shuddery breath, her expression sad, but at the same time, hopeful.
It was Jamie who spoke up, though. He'd seen the determination in Dusty's eyes, too, and it had reminded him of his own, just before he'd slung the vase across the room. Stranger things had happened... He told Zar, "You heard the man. Leave a note for Pretty Boy Erik, and let's get going. We have a plane to find."
*
"We may have a problem," Marcus Jekkes said. Smythe had told him to take a seat, because his agitated pacing was getting on his nerves.
Jekkes wondered how nervous Smythe would be, after he heard the report. It would be Smythe's fault, for setting his people up, but Jekkes would bear some of the brunt. It was his job to point out hazards. He'd missed a big one.
"What?"
"We're running counter to a drug control programme - for eliminating illegal crops."
Smythe snorted. "We're helping to find the fucking plane. In other words, to clean up their mistake. They're field-testing an unauthorised mycoherbicide: one that's being labelled a 'terrorist' threat to agriculture."
"They didn't bother to mention any hazard - until now."
"Fusariosis? Magnus will pick up on that one."
Jekkes shook his head. "They had a self-destruct order. If, for any reason, the plane went down, the plane and its payload were to be destroyed."
"A suicide mission?" Smythe sounded incredulous. "Over a mycoherbicide?"
"Nothing so drastic. The pilot could bail out, but if the plane didn't blow up on impact, the pilot was expected to eliminate any evidence."
"And any witnesses?"
"Dead. Same thing with anyone attempting to interfere. The pilot is a commando, operating under special orders. He'll do whatever it takes to ensure his mission is carried out."
*
Dustin was absolutely silent as they climbed into the trucks. Valterzar didn't even bother trying to change his mind. If Dusty truly thought there was a chance for altering the outcome, it was worth attempting.
"Humouring me?" Dustin asked as he stretched out across the back seat. It was the first time he'd spoken since he'd announced his intentions.
"Probably," Lawrence told him. His smile, however, belied the coolness of his tone. "About now, I'd prefer to grasp at straws than face the truth. Give me a healthy dose of unreality." He put the truck in gear, then looked in the mirror. "You okay?"
Dustin gave him a thumbs up. At this point, with his head pounding, it sure beat a nod.
Lawrence went on, "For the moment, I'd like to think we're 'exploring our options'. So, get some sleep if you can. When it's time, I want to make sure you're up to the challenge."
They'd driven for a while when Dustin's voice sounded from the back. "I owe you," he admitted. "Thanks."
"That's my job," Lawrence replied, and Dusty was sure he picked up a tinge - just the tiniest trace - of bitterness in the other man's voice. If James was right, and Valterzar was "one of them", he was probably feeling pretty resentful right now.
Dusty realised how amusing it would be if "Zar" was a fellow psi-guy, and didn't even know it. "You know, a 'czar's' a kind of tyrant," he joked.
Lawrence glanced at him in the mirror, caught the glint in Dusty's eyes, and his lips creased in a smile. "Suits me," he said.
*
He was determined to find them. If they were all gone at the same time, it made sense that they were all in one place, sent at the behest of the "agency".
Erik had decided a long time ago not to let Charles Smythe screw with his head. Smythe was merely the latest in a long line of insensitive cretins who tried to wield other people's abilities like some kind of sword. It had been "test" - "test" - "test" for years, but the real "tests", Erik suspected, had been how well they'd handled themselves with members of the public - how well they could function in camouflage.
It hadn't started out that way. Years ago, each of their mothers had been given an illicit drug at twelve weeks to "sustain" a difficult pregnancy. Unfortunately, the compound was found to greatly increase the risk of a crib death during the first six months. Worried about their offspring, the parents had opted for supplemental treatment. Erik wondered whether they would have taken their chances instead, had they realised how much they'd have to worry about later.
It had been hell for kids like Ren, who had normal siblings. Erik still didn't know which of the treatments had set them up for what each of them had become, but he guessed the prenatal treatment had been a primer, and the postnatal some kind of genetic stimulant for proteins that would "switch on" specific areas of the brain. James had spoken angrily about "gene therapy" and Erik knew he had good reason for his anger. If Dusty and Ren had suffered for their "gifts", Jamie had had it worse. Now, he could control his temper, but when he'd first come to their school, his anger had been, quite literally, all over the place.
That school had saved their lives. It had been a first opportunity to relax, to find peace, to be "at home". They were encouraged to develop their abilities, and taught how to hide them.
A scam. Set up, all the way. Given hell, taught to be hellions, then made to be grateful for the opportunity to be among other, similarly hellacious personalities. All a farce.
To some extent, it had backfired. Erik knew they were supposed to be some kind of team, and the word "Cluster" had been used within his hearing once or twice. Each of them had a different skill that could be called upon to complement the others. In the beginning it may have been something less profit-oriented and more humanitarian - maybe even an honest attempt to correct a pharmacological mistake. But for a long time now, there'd been a commercial aspect to it that had made Erik cynical enough to want to take the profit-making for his healing into his own hands.
But Symtech would be making its profits elsewhere. Even now, it might be trying to recoup some of its investment in this particular Cluster. Erik knew they'd take advantage of anything he'd offer: not only was he one of the "Cluster", but his interest could only prove beneficial to the others - some security for the investment. As he went in, unannounced, to visit Charles Smythe, his reception was much different from the greeting six years ago when he'd declared his independence. Smythe appeared not only pleased, but greatly relieved, to see him. Within fifteen minutes he'd booked Erik on a flight, arranged his hotel and transport, and given him a general idea of where to look.
As he sat on the plane an hour later, Erik had to admit that Smythe's eagerness, and the degree of cooperation, was enough to scare him nearly out of his wits.
*
They found the truck. It was easy enough, in the end. Zar, keeping a cautious eye on Dustin's condition, decided it was no time for playing games. He asked Symtech for help. The GPS led them right to it.
From there, Zar had expected it to be hit and miss. If the plane had been easy to find on satellite reconnaissance, they wouldn't have needed Josh and Ren. Symtech had even been amenable to his suggestion that they check the satellite photos.
It was then they had baulked. Not initially, when he'd put in his request - afterwards, when they'd had time to see the photos. Zar could only conclude that something about the scene had changed. Their hesitancy wasn't because they were still confused about the plane's location. They were recalcitrant because they now knew exactly where it was.
Maybe they could even see the bodies. Zar thought fast. It was obvious they could see something. He ended the call, and sat quietly, his hands on the steering wheel, to work it through.
"They know where it is," he told Dusty. "Only they won't say."
"Bodies?" Dustin asked in a hushed voice.
"Maybe. Could be a report from the murderer."
"Who's mos' influechal?"
Zar heard the slurring, and was out of the seat in a flash. He pulled open the back door and told Dustin, "Let me see your eyes -"
"Don'!" Dustin tried to push his hands away.
Zar waved Merrie and James over from the other truck, and punched in a number on his phone. "Most influential?" he repeated calmly to Dustin. "Right now, Erik is." Zar left Merrie to cradle Dustin's head in her lap, and pulled James aside. Zar told him firmly, "I don't know how you'll do it, but I want you to hold him in stasis, James."
"Where and what?"
"Bleeding in the brain. The pressure's building. He's -" Erik's voice came on the line, interrupting him. Zar spoke into the phone. "We're on the outskirts of Tres Hermanos, Erik. How far away are you?" Zar listened, then said, "Get a helicopter. Be here within the hour. While en route, make a call to Smythe and get the coordinates for the crash site. Tell him if he doesn't, you won't be able to meet us to heal the others."
"Zar!"
Dustin was vomiting now, and Zar said quickly into the phone, "Hold it!" When Merrie nodded to him, he put the phone up to his ear. "I'm back." He listened to Erik, then retorted, "Of course it doesn't make sense! Lie, for crissake!" He ended the call and turned back to James. "My guess is the bleeding's here." He tapped the left side of his head. "Can you do it?"
"What if I cut off the blood flow?" James asked worriedly. "What then?"
"Then his brain will die. And Josh and Ren won't be the only ones we lose this trip."
***
