Текст книги "Illusion"

Автор книги: Фрэнк Перетти

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A nasty-looking pair of leg shackles were laid out on a tumbling mat immediately below the pod. Mandy stepped up and a crewman clamped them around her ankles as Dane explained, “These shackles are safety-wired so they won’t fall off and hit you on the chin and embarrass you in front of all those people. Make sure the safeties are in place before they hoist you up. Now, this cable hooks to your body harness …”

Dane kept explaining, she kept rehearsing and testing. With her ankles shackled and her hands cuffed to a chain about her waist, she lay down on the mat and the hoist took her up, feet first, until she was hanging upside down with her face even with Dane’s.

“How you feeling?” Dane asked.

“Like a bat,” she answered.

“Your weight should be on the harness, not your ankles.”

Her ankles felt fine. “Good to go.”

“Okay.” Dane almost touched her. She couldn’t touch him, she was handcuffed. He renewed his business-only face. “We’ll see you upstairs.” He said to the hoist man, “Up slowly.”

The cable raised her. With her chin to her chest she could look up past her feet and see the pod about to swallow her like a man-eating plant. To one side she could see Dane hurrying up the scaffold stairs to meet her at the top.

An invisible guide wire kept her turned toward the rear of the pod and the escape hatch. Feet first, she slipped inside until her feet rested on the pod’s ceiling. She hung the chain that bound her ankles on a hook in the ceiling, and a quick outward roll of her feet tripped the shackles open. “Legs are free,” she said, then pressed a button with her toe to close the six petal doors. They whirred shut below her, a soft cradle came up against each of her shoulders, and she was sealed inside, in the dark.

She heard Dane’s voice right outside.

“Okay, cuff release.”

Bending her elbows triggered the cuffs—they slipped off.

“Hands on the grips,” he told her. “Cable release when you’re ready.”

On either side of her, at shoulder level, was a short handgrip. She grabbed on. The grip on the right included a small lever she compressed with her hand. Click! “Cable free.”

“Now drop your knees toward your chest …”

Her knees pressed against the panel in front of her but nothing happened. “Uh, am I doing this right?”

“Your knees should be pressing against the panel.”

“They are.”

“Oh, brother!” Dane yanked a packing bolt from the escape hatch locking mechanism. “Attention, everybody!” All the techs and observers on the floor looked up at him. He held up the bolt for them to see. “This packing bolt should only be in place during transport of the pod. Be sure to flag it and remove it before the stunt. Got it?”

They were embarrassed. Good thing. Seamus looked disgusted, but with good reason.

“Okay,” he called to her, “knees against the panel.”

She kneed the panel and it popped open. She pushed against the grips, lifting her body, and with one quick tumble, she was out on the platform. High fives.

“Is she out?” came Seamus’s voice from below.

Mandy peered around the mirror system that would hide her escape and gave him a thumbs up. He looked astounded, then delighted.

Okay, so more than just the illusion was working.

Twelve days before Mandy’s premiere …

Dane met with Preston Gabriel, Emile DeRondeau, and Keisha Ellerman in a tree-shaded picnic area behind an elementary school near Preston’s house.

“Mandy’s checked out in the pod,” Dane reported. “All systems are go.”

Emile asked, “Go? Going?”

Keisha told him, “ ‘All systems are go.’ It’s old astronaut talk.”

“Ohhh.”

Dane asked Preston, “Comfortable with the big room show?”

“It’s coming together on schedule. Emile’s building the sets and I’ll bring up some effects from LA. We’ll be ready for the premiere.”

“So Keisha, what’ve you got?” Dane asked.

Keisha opened her sketchbook. “The Grand Illusion involves these two designs …” She flipped to the pages. “This one, in black leather with silver tunic, is in keeping with the macabre, medieval aspect of the stunt’s opening. The cuff release is integrated into the waistband, and I’ll include some extra banding around her ankles as she requested. It’s cut with a little extra room to fit over this one …” The flowing, angelic costume in glimmering white got an immediate reaction. “This was her idea, something totally opposite the black outfit to express a metamorphosis from death to life, escaping this world and soaring to heaven. The train and the streamers fold up against her back inside the leather suit, and the quick change deploys in less than a second.” Keisha loved the thought of it. “Like a butterfly from a cocoon.”

“Weight?” Preston asked.

“Ten and one-half ounces.”

He nodded with a smile and wrote it down.

“The harness is sewn into the gown in this waistband, in the sash, and in the bodice. And these slots running along the tops of the sleeves will hold the torso rigging and trapeze clamps.”

“Those clamps are nearly ready,” Emile told her.

“What about the rigging?” Dane asked Emile.

Emile looked at Preston, who shared his concern. “The weight turned out to be a problem. We’ll have to go with a smaller-size filament. It’ll handle the load but it’s tougher to keep from tangling and obviously it’s tougher to see.”

“We’re sewing it up right now,” said Preston. “We’ll test it tomorrow and give you a report.”

“Fantastic.”

“So how’s she enjoying the hang gliding?”

Dane allowed himself a grim chuckle. “It’s the only thing that doesn’t make her nervous.”

chapter

48

Ten days before Mandy’s premiere …

Hands on the control bar and take off running. Feel that big kite lifting, pulling on the harness. Step off, ride on the air. You’re a bird.

It was Mandy’s second solo, and none too soon. She sailed close to the mountain slope, picking up speed, rocks and scrub blurring under her and looking close enough to tickle her belly. Down the slope was an SUV parked on a dirt road, its tailgate open, its cargo space filled with cages of doves. Preston Gabriel stood ready.

She’d reached through time and space and guided her doves plenty of times before, but never from a hang glider, and never quite as many.

Preston released the birds—twelve this time—and they fluttered from the SUV like tiny angels, wings flashing in the sun. They were circling, orienting, looking for her. She veered slightly left to keep them to her right.

“C’mon, birdies!” she called. She reached, wide awake, eyes open, much of her mind on her own flying.

There! She found Carson, her veteran, el primo. He responded right away, flying in the envelope of her invisible hand, power climbing to meet her. Maybelle and Lily followed him as they always did; Bonkers came around from one of his search circles, made eye contact, and came from behind. She had them, could feel them, and they could sense her, their Momma Dove. Now for the others. She’d worked with them on the ground and gotten them used to the effect. She hoped the training would stick in flight.

It did! First one, then two, then another one, then three more, then the rest all responded to her interdimensional touch– Oops! Not that way, over here!—and followed as she swooped past the SUV and Preston Gabriel waved.

She caught an updraft and could feel the sudden lift in her stomach. C’mon, birdies, c’mon!

They followed her in no particular formation, just flying along, playing a game.

Okay … Carson, take the lead… .

She reached and guided Carson to a point straight ahead of the wing, then set Lily and Maybelle wing-to-wing behind him. Bonkers happily slipped into the rear of the diamond formation.

Now for the point of the exercise: could she handle the rest of the birds and still have enough awareness to fly the glider? She still had envelopes around the others and extra copies of herself to keep track of things, so she and some other shes—she didn’t count how many, she was too busy flying the glider—went to work putting this dove here, those two over there, arranging, arranging, holding in place, aligning– wow, what a trip!The doves seemed to like it. They certainly weren’t alarmed. Maybe they felt sheltered, as if back in their nests.

The moment came. She got them into formation, the diamond out front, four wing-to-wing on the left in a swept-back line, four wing-to-wing on the right in a swept-back line, one big, graceful migratory V aligned perfectly with the glider’s leading edge—and they were holding formation! She could feel, touch, guide each and every one of them, and they were letting her, easy and steady, just doing what birds do.

It was weird, but oh, so beautiful!

Eight days before Mandy’s premiere …

Preston Gabriel had to strike a few deals and grease a few palms, but he got what he wanted: use of a rubble-strewn vacant lot where an old hotel had been imploded and a new one would soon be built. The lot was one of the few open areas left in town, and as luck and Providence would have it, only one block from the Orpheus. Wearing orange reflective vests and hard hats to look like they belonged there, Preston and a crewman walked the empty ground and looked back at the Orpheus to get a compass bearing. According to the weather forecast, the winds should be light and favorable. A little prayer might help.

The day before Mandy’s premiere …

VOOOOM!

Now, that was one impressive volcano. When the forty propane jets ignited and filled the crater with flame, the effect made Dane jump. He could feel the heat halfway up the bleachers. Andy the stage manager had warned all cast and crew to clear the stage for the burn, and with good reason. The heat was enough to singe their hair if not worse.

Emile, who sat beside him, asked, “What do you think?”

Dane had to force himself to look at Emile’s creation, the conical top of a volcano about 15 feet across and 6 feet high, the right size to dominate center stage and incinerate a pod dropped down its throat from 150 feet. Had he the presence of mind he would have said it drew curiosity, looked big budget, created anticipation, would be fun to watch, brought thrill to the stunt … but he couldn’t find the words.

He could see her through the blackening glass, crumpled over the steering wheel, the deflated airbag curling at the edges, melting into her face.

The volcano was setting afire the disposable fake trees near the crater’s edge. The effect was meant to frighten and add an element of danger. It worked. Dane looked away from the flames. “Impressive, Emile. I mean, reallyimpressive.”

Emile had to speak up over the simulated, amplified roar of the eruption. “As good as I could do for the money. I told Vahidi it didn’t have to be this big, but he’s concerned about the other volcano in town. He wanted something that would compete. Are you okay?”

The heat, the sound, even the smell …

Her hair crinkling, vaporizing down to her scalp … steam and smoke rising through her blouse.

“Well, let’s give it a go,” he said, just wanting to get it over with.

Emile radioed the crane operator, “Let her go.”

One hundred and fifty feet above the volcano, a dummy test pod hung from the cable. When the crane operator released the hook, the pod fell—it seemed to fall forever—and landed in the volcano with a carefully engineered crash and explosion that produced a ball of fire and a shower of fireworks. The pod was incinerated, just like that.

Just as planned, without a hitch. Dane felt sick. “Can you turn it off, please?”

“Sure.” Emile spoke into his radio, “Okay, kill the volcano.”

The volcano died with a smoky mutter, the shards and splinters of the fallen pod still flaming in its throat.

Here and there around the stage and bleachers, cast and crew applauded. Dane only wished he could have been stronger.

Emile must have read his face. “Dane. It’s okay. It’s going to work out.”

Of course, he thought, she won’t be in the pod. She’ll be long gone.

They’d run everything, starting at two o’clock, and the whole show took twenty minutes from Mandy’s magical appearance in the maw of the volcano—no fire at the time—to her soft-as-a-feather landing back on the stage in her hang glider, her doves circling about her. Turning on and testing the volcano came afterward just in case something unforeseen occurred that would have posed a danger. Nothing unforeseen happened.

Not that it couldn’t.

Mandy, out of her costume and back in her jeans and jacket, came back on the stage. With an assist from Andy, she inspected the smoldering embers of the dummy pod in the volcano. When she looked up at Dane, he could tell it was for reassurance. He could only send her a thumbs-up and mouth Emile’s words “It’s going to work out.”

They were ready to roll.

The night before Mandy’s premiere …

Mandy returned with Parmenter to the canopy in the desert, the 35.76 concrete blocks, and Parmenter’s preoccupied rattling about Bakers and Kileys and numbers that meant nothing to her. Dane was not there, on purpose. They all agreed, even though it pained her, that having him close quelled her tension, eased her longing, blunted that particular edge of unrest that she needed to … how did Parmenter put it?

“Remember,” he said, helping her tape the sensors in place once again, “we need to reproduce as closely as we can the conditions of that day. Anything you can recall, any feelings you may have had, you need to bring those back because they are what brought you within reach of the Machine’s timeline.”

That daywas the day she was ambushed but escaped and, in a drugged stupor, fled to Dane’s ranch—at least that’s what she understood to have happened. Having been in a drugged stupor, she just plain didn’t remember it, and that was the problem—and yes, they had considered drugging her again to reproduce that condition; but decided that wasn’t the prime condition, being ambushed and in danger of death was.

All she could do was her best, just try to be scared, as if a killer were chasing her. It sounded like Method acting, something she hadn’t quite mastered.

“Now remember,” Parmenter was saying, “until the Machine is recalibrated, you have primary control. It will change its settings to accommodate whatever you’re doing. The real challenge will come during the retrace. The Machine will be recalibrated and you’ll be on your original timeline, but you’ll still have to control the Machine from there, which is going to be trickier.”

“Got it,” she said, not wanting to hear it all over again.

“We’re ready.” He said it again into his headset, as if Moss needed to be told separately, “Loren, we’re ready.”

Back in the lab, Moss was at his station, watching the graphs and readings on the monitors. “And … may we have a word in private?”

“Yes, I’m on the headset. Go ahead.”

“I suppose her vitals are what we want: her blood pressure’s up, her heart is racing. But I’m getting nearly flat readings from the Machine. She’s not getting through.”

“Any suggestions?”

“I suggest you stop yakking so much and just let the kid work it out.”

“Oh. Yeah, you might be right.”

Mandy stood facing the stack of blocks, trying not to calm down in any general sense, but in one particular sense. She had to have singleness of mind and will, but at the same time be agitated and, if possible, distraught. Verrrry simple.

Parmenter sat down and just smiled at her. “Go ahead. I’ll be quiet.”

One goal of tonight’s session was to manipulate the blocks, all 35.76 of them, at the same time and see what that felt like, ifshe could even do it. She pretended they were doves and reached for the first block just as she reached for Carson while in flight. There. That was easy. As she and Parmenter watched, it lifted off the stack. It felt heavy to her, just like a big ugly concrete block, but it was floating, moving wherever she wished it to go, back and forth, turning on an axis.

Okay, now for the second one. No problem. She’d done this with hula hoops, microphones, bottles, spinning quarters, tennis balls.

She kept going, lifting three at once, then four, then five. Eventually she had ten of them circling the remainder of the stack like old movie Indians attacking a wagon train. Parmenter was excited as he watched, but he kept his promise and stayed quiet.

Thirty-two blocks all swarming around like bees was wild, very crowded, and scary enough to make Parmenter back away. The biggest trick was to keep them swarming without hitting each other, which got to be like that old rub-your-tummy-and-pat-your-head game, a lot to keep track of. It helped to keep splitting her mind into subminds that rode on the back of each block as if she, she, she, she, she, and all the other shes were driving ugly, 42.5-pound bumper cars.

After 32, then 35.76 were no bigger deal.

Now. Could she control all these blocks and be distraught? She kept driving the blocks and driving the blocks as she let one more thought come in, that of dangling at the end of a cable 150 feet off the ground. That didn’t make her distraught, just nervous. She thought of Dane, the aspens, the white fence, the big ranch house on the hill …

Oh, brother.She could sense her Deltas and Bakers and Candlestick Makers falling off.

Yep. Parmenter was frowning as he watched his monitor and listened to his headset.

“No, no,” said Moss, “she’s holding steady on the accumulated mass, but her corridor isn’t moving. She still has a discrete timeline.”

“Should I say anything?” Parmenter asked.

“You could try saying ‘Boo.’”

She tried remembering Clarence and Lemuel, how conniving they were, how much it hurt to be zapped with a taser and jabbed with a needle. That got her dander up, but that was anger more than fear. She thought of escaping from them and running back to the ranch—the ranch? Where’d the ranch go? She’d lost it.

“Umm …” Parmenter said. “Is there something I could do that would frighten you?”

The blocks broke free and clunked to the ground. Mandy bent in frustration, hanging her head. She felt so tired.

Parmenter got something from Moss through his headset. “Yes, right, I’m getting the same thing here.”

Moss scanned his monitors once again, a curious smile on his face. “Well, she is getting there, she’s a little closer each time.”

Parmenter came back, “But how long can we keep this up? The others are …” He lowered his voice, apparently to keep Mandy from hearing. “You know the situation there. We can’t keep DuFresne and his bunch on hold forever, and we certainly can’t keep a lid on what we’re attempting. Sooner or later it’s going to come to light and we’ll miss our chance entirely.”

Moss nodded, smiling more broadly. “I know. I think you’re right.” He looked over his shoulder.

Immediately behind him, face lit by the monitors, was Dr. Martin DuFresne. He was hearing every word over a speaker and nodding in amused agreement with Parmenter’s appraisal. Next to DuFresne was the man they all referred to as Carlson. The project team knew little or nothing about him except that he was the one who brought large sums of cash in a briefcase on a regular basis and acted as if he and the people he represented owned the whole project, which, for all practical purposes, they did.

Moss continued, “But I think she has enough on her mind right now. She has a premiere tomorrow. You can’t expect her to handle all this tonight.”

Parmenter nodded to Moss, who couldn’t see him, then addressed Mandy. “You’ve done very well, just moving along step by step. Don’t be discouraged. We’ll get there.”

“We’d better,” she said as she peeled off the sensors.

Dane sat alone in Preston’s dining room going over his checklist one last time, page … after page … after page. Every item was already verified and checked off twice by himself, Preston, and Emile, but if he wanted to sleep at all tonight, he would have to go over it one more time just in case that one little thing that slipped everyone’s mind would come to his. By God’s grace, if it was there he’d think of it before he fell asleep.

The doorbell rang. At nearly eleven P.M., that did not feel right. Preston was on the road somewhere between LA and Vegas, and of course he wouldn’t ring the doorbell. Dane wondered if Preston kept any firearms in the house, but it was a little late to be thinking about that, and maybe a little paranoid.

He went to the door and looked through the peephole.

Well … !

He had to crack the door open and put his finger to his lips—Parmenter said the house might be bugged—but after that, he flung the door open and gave Arnie Harrington a hug.

* * *

It was Parmenter’s turn to sleep overnight at the lab; he’d worked and bargained and made offers to make it happen that way, and Moss seemed only too happy to sleep in his own bed that night.

Well and good. Parmenter had things to do he didn’t want anybody to see, such as weighing himself on a medical scale he’d borrowed from upstairs, then combing carefully through his office for his notes, files, and hard drives, all the essential secrets of the Machine’s development and how it worked. He put them all in a box, then weighed himself holding the box.

Not quite.

He threw in a paperweight and two manuals.

Too much.

He took out the paperweight.

Okay. Within limits.

Just after midnight, two semitrucks exited the Las Vegas Freeway and turned up a street one block from the Orpheus. They belched, rumbled, and hissed onto the rubble-strewn vacant lot and parked side by side. Preston Gabriel and two of his crew hopped down from the cab of the first one; three more of his crew climbed down from the cab of the other. They would sleep in the trucks that night, but first they had a lot of prep to do.

Dane took Arnie for a walk through the neighborhood and told him enough to keep him awake worrying. The rest, he supposed, would have to wait until a day long after tomorrow when the story would have an ending. With Arnie tucked in on the living room couch, Dane turned in, easing into the big four-poster in Preston’s guest bedroom. He set the alarm for six in the morning, clicked off the lamp …

And lay sleepless for a little while, dwelling on an image that hovered in his mind—a snapshot that still existed in an album back in Idaho: Mandy, not in a glimmering gown on a big stage, exulting in the thrill and applause of her audience, but in pants and a top she made herself on a portable sewing machine they took everywhere with them on the road, standing at an outdoor picnic grill in a public park, cooking up their dinner. They had no roof over their heads other than a travel trailer, no future beyond a month or two of low-paying festivals, county fairs, or Grange hall gigs, and yet there she was, flipping burgers and boiling green beans, her heart chained to his for the distance. That was forty years ago.

Only the Lord God could have brought him such a woman. He never could have found her himself, never could have known hers would be the kind of love that would last so long and still be so tenacious despite a gulf of age and memory. She was a kid who didn’t even know who he was, but still she came looking.

He hadn’t thought of it in these terms until now, but maybe this was why he always opened doors for her, let her take his arm when they walked, stood when she entered the room. Loving her had always been easy, but somewhere along the way he just knew he had to honor her.

Mandy was numb with exhaustion, one blink away from sleep, but at long last she was alone and it was quiet, and after tomorrow nothing would matter the way it did now. She knelt by her bed.

“Dear Lord, I gave you my life a long time ago and I meant it, so whatever it is, or was—only you know—it’s yours. Near as I’m allowed to know, most of it’s already happened and it’s like I missed it, so I hope you don’t mind my praying backward—I figured I could since time is all messed up anyway—but I hope I lived my life well and you’re pleased, and … whatever my life was—and you know and I don’t, so I’m just saying this, just asking—if it’s okay with you, could it really be true? Could I please have lived my life with Dane? Could I please have been his wife? That’s the only way I can imagine it, and that’s what Dane and everybody tells me, so I hope that’s your way of seeing it, too. I hope we had a great life together.

“But even if I was never in love with him, and even if we were never together, thank you for letting me meet him and love him for just a little while, as weird as it was. I pray you’ll always take care of him and reward him for being the wonderful man he is. He treated me really well. Just wanted to say so.

“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She climbed into bed and turned off the light.