Текст книги "Illusion"

Автор книги: Фрэнк Перетти

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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

She squeezed her eyes shut, plugged her ears, braced herself, hit a button with her toe …

Everyone heard the noise, like a short string of firecrackers all popping at once. A puff of smoke and fire from the pod caught their eyes. The petal doors had blown open. They cheered, shrieked, as …

Mandy dropped out of the pod into blinding sunlight, spreading her arms and legs like a sky diver as the rush of air unfurled streamers and a long train from her costume. The doves were like a cloud deck below her. They filled her vision and disoriented her a moment—she felt as if shewere rushing backward and they were standing still. She was floating.

The crowd saw an angel with a glimmering, silken comet’s tail free-falling.

An apparatus like a trapeze trailed just behind and below the doves, suspended from the grid by wires so fine they had to be assumed more than seen, and slowed by flags of silk to keep it trailing, in the clear. Before anyone had time to complete the thought: Uh-uh, never, no way …

As Dane took another blow to his body that sent his radio flying but managed to land a punch of his own, bloodying Clarence’s nose …

As the hourglass trickled down to its last grains of sand …

As Moss and DuFresne were just realizing they’d missed their chance to cover up the retrace …

Mandy brought one more object into her realm of control, that trapeze behind and below her. The birds kept moving, she kept dropping, it appeared she would fall right into the last several rows of birds …

She stretched her arms out front. Feather-light, composite clamps—Dane’s brainchild, Emile’s craftsmanship—shot out of her sleeves like open claws.

Her hair was curled now, fluttering above her head. She had this style when she and Dane did the Carson show in 1989—she was thirty-eight.

The last row of doves slipped under her and she fell past, body flattening out, arms extended. She could see the maw of the volcano, larger now, a circle filled with flames. Heat struck her face.

The trapeze rigging was racing past, the lines marked with fluorescent stripes for her reference, counting down, counting down, getting closer.

She tucked her chin to see the trapeze. Here it came …

Oh, Lord, if I’m to live …

A microsecond early. She lowered her arms six inches—

The trapeze slammed into the clamps, her hands fell free, she dropped below the trapeze, the trapeze yanked the harness lines out of the slots in her sleeves until they terminated at the torso harness sewn into her costume and went taut. The jerk was mushy but enough to pull her arms and legs down into a crawling position, enough to make the birds sink a little from the added weight, but the birds recovered, she straightened into a graceful flying pose, and …

She was flying under their wings, trailing a long train and streamers of silk.

A fluttering to her right caught her eye. She grinned. Bonkers and Lily, wings beating, were flying their own formation with her. She looked to her left. Carson and Maybelle.

Well, where Momma Dove went, they went. That’s just the way they were.

Dane didn’t see the ultimate payoff of his design, but he heard the roar of the crowd, and it was not the sound of horror at something gone tragically wrong; it was the frenzied, jumping-up-and-down jubilation at something that had gone incredibly right.

Well, Clarence could drop the pod now.

The other guy—Lemuel. Dane only saw a peripheral corner of him when a lightning bolt hit him in the back of the neck. The next thing he knew, he was on the asphalt beside the crane. He couldn’t move, but he could look up.

An angel was flying by, suspended under a cloud of doves.

Maybe I’m dead,he thought. Maybe I’m in heaven.

Emile was just about to order the drop …

Mr. Stone had his orders. He lunged for the button.

The pod dropped, the open petal doors causing it to invert like a shuttlecock on the way down. Only half the audience saw it fall, but all heard the explosion when it hit and saw the fireball. Wow!

Emile went back to watching Mandy and her doves make a climbing turn, circling around to make one more pass by the bleachers and over the crowd.

In the background of Mandy’s mind it was her fortieth birthday. She opened Dane’s gift to her: the most beautiful diamond wedding ring she ever saw. Dane said, “It’s about time you had a really nice one.” That was 1991.

In 1992 she was in his arms, weeping at the news he’d brought: her father, Arthur, had passed away suddenly, a failed aortic valve.

The rest of her mind was on her doves– Easy now, right turn, that’s it, stay together, let’s give ’em a show—and where in God’s universe she was going to find and join up with the Machine. That timeline, that certain fold in space, was like an elusive word on the tip of her tongue, something she knew she knew but couldn’t remember. What happened that day? She was afraid, she was drugged, she ended up in Dane’s pasture, then his living room … how? What did I do?

In 1995 her periods became sporadic, her life became pointless, applause irritated her, and Dane couldn’t do anything right—and right now she was having a hot flash.

Moss and DuFresne had a debacle in front of them and deadly power in high places pressing in from behind.

“As I was trying to tell you,” said Moss, “if we kill her short of the retrace we’d have to rework the numbers manually. It would take years.”

DuFresne shot back, “But if she finds the Machine’s timeline with that much mass …”

Silence.

An idea. Moss ventured, “Can we, can we cripple her? Wound her so she can’t think clearly, so she can’t do … whatever it is she does?”

DuFresne barked into his headset. “Stone! Mortimer!”

Stone and Mortimer had just slinked away from the crane and into the crowd when they heard the order. They looked skyward, reached inside their jackets.

chapter

52

Local time: 14:18:47.

Mandy and her doves were half a lap around, slowly climbing. Far below to her right were the parking lot and bleachers filled with ant-size people; to her left, beyond the flat roofs of a retail center, was the vacant lot. She’d visited that site and knew how to find it, but it sure looked small from here, and a long way to go.

She could feel the years passing. Her hair was shorter now, in the style she settled on somewhere in her late forties. Her costume was feeling tight.

Stone and Mortimer left their guns concealed. Not here, around all these people. They’d have to follow her, look for a chance.

Dane watched her circle back around, the doves blending into one huge wing, making a beautiful fly-by for all the folks with all their cameras. Now it made sense, and didn’t bother him, why nobody noticed him lying there on the pavement shorted out like one big funny bone.

“Dane! You okay?”

It was Andy and Big Max. Of course, they could never stay hidden behind the stage, not with Mandy giving the world a show it would never forget. They grabbed him and yanked him to his feet without looking at him, and he didn’t look at them either. As the sight and the incredible sound passed directly overhead they let go of him and he almost collapsed but grabbed on. “Did you see those two guys?”

“What two guys?” Andy still wasn’t looking anywhere but up.

Dane held on to Andy, waiting for his legs to remember they were there. He swept the area.

Oh, brother.There they were, running after Mandy as she turned south.

He tried to run after them—his legs didn’t know how to do that. He returned to the pavement, hobbled back to his feet—his feet had to be down there somewhere—limped after Clarence and Lemuel as they cleared the parking lot and dashed into the street, stopping and slowing traffic, weaving through.

Mandy’s brain was like a city coming out of a blackout; lights were coming on everywhere. She knew so many friends, recalled so many shows …

Below her, two doves flew down toward the rooftops, then four more … five more. How did she lose them?

Mind on the doves! Stay with them!

Reach for the Machine. Feel that day. Run for the ranch.

She passed over the street, over the retail center even as she saw herself on Robin Hill Road in the shadow of the aspens, looking up that long driveway toward that beautiful house, building the rehearsal stage, unpacking the crates of illusions in the barn …

I helped packthose crates!

But the Machine!That timeline was ungraspable, like a rainbow backing away.

She was gasping for breath and so were the doves.

What did I do that day? If I could only remember.

One thing she did remember: the Horizons Hotel. It was her and Dane’s last gig before …

They were going to drive to Idaho.

Moss leaned toward the monitor. “Oh, don’t tell me. Are we getting lucky?”

DuFresne and the others could see the same thing: fewer bars indicating deflection of time and space, a shrinking number of timelines.

“She’s losing it,” Moss reported. “More retrace, less deflection, less influence on the Machine.”

“How long does she have?” DuFresne asked.

“Not very.”

Dane was getting his legs back as he stepped off the sidewalk and into the traffic, got one car to stop, then another—the bumper tapped him off balance; he put his hand on the hood to recover. A Corvette almost ran him over, but the guy behind the Corvette stopped and waved him through. He made it to the other side, looked up just in time to see Mandy’s flying carpet disappear over a women’s clothing store. The two guys had just dashed around a corner—a distant corner. He ran again, pushing against his age, like running uphill. He might never catch them, but he would try. If he caught up they might kill him, but at least he’d be keeping them busy.

He rounded the corner. There they were, still running, looking for a chance.

The rubble-strewn lot looked much bigger because she was nearly over the top of it, but also because the birds were tiring, starting to sink. Five or six more peeled off the rigging and flew toward the ground, obviously exhausted and just wanting to set down somewhere. She’d lost them, couldn’t find them, couldn’t call them back. Was this going to mess up the weight thing?

Take hold, girl! Finish the show, find your way back.

She steered her remaining doves onward, toward the empty lot. Some of them were getting confused, just following their buddies. The ground was coming up.

She remembered.

The dove anklet. She wore it the morning of their trip because it had come to symbolize new beginnings, God’s hand in their lives.

That morning, Dane was still finishing his coffee and toast as they walked to the car.

“I’ll drive,” she said.

He tossed her the keys to the BMW.

Local time: 14:23:19.

What Dane wouldn’t give for some oxygen! He couldn’t draw enough breath, couldn’t get his legs to hurry anymore. He made it to the sidewalk across from the vacant lot. Clarence and Lemuel had already made it to the other side and were positioning themselves amid the rubble, looking for a chance.

She was sinking toward the bricks, brown dirt, crumbled foundations. The Machine … still so far away. The memory of that frightening, dopey, wonderful day seemed far away too, as good as lost.

Oh, sweet love, I wanted so much to see Idaho again, to start the new season of our lives. I couldn’t wait.

She remembered driving the BMW, seeing Las Vegas for the last time—and then …

A disturbance, a ripple in space, made her look down. Two men were running amid the rubble, looking up at her.

Faces she would never forget.

The Machine hummed so loudly it turned Moss’s and DuFresne’s heads. The whole room resonated, quivered with the tone. The monitor went crazy with colors, waves, graphs. The deflection figures shot to a new high.

Dane got across the street just as the dark guy, Lemuel, reached for his gun. Dane hollered—gasped, mostly—“Stop! Don’t you … do that!”

Clarence rolled his eyes, plainly fed up as he positioned himself to block anything Dane might try.

Oh, great.

Lemuel had his gun in hand and was aiming.

Dane kept running. What else could he do?

She saw Lemuel aim at her, then a puff of smoke. A dove fell through the rigging and spiraled behind her. She felt it struggle, die, and slip from her hold.

No!Every muscle tensed, her hands trembled. Her eyes darted everywhere, but of course she was wide open with nothing she could do, no place she could hide.

The doves shuddered, out of sync.

Don’t lose the doves!She reached, held, tried to keep the fear at bay. God, help me!

She remembered.

The gravel against her face as they held her down. The stab of the needle. The tire iron in her hand.

Animal terror.

Moss’s hands were poised above the keyboard, but everything was happening so fast. “Convergence,” he said.

“What?” DuFresne asked.

Was the guy deaf? “ Convergence!Her timeline, the Machine’s timeline!”

“Stone! Mortimer! Shoot her!”

Dane had to get to Lemuel before he could line up another shot.

Clarence held his hand up. “Now, take it easy, old man! There’s nothing you can do.”

Well, nothing that would actually work. Head down, Dane charged into Clarence, who easily sidestepped and threw him aside.

Dane!Dane was down there! She saw him go tumbling and another puff of smoke from Lemuel’s gun. She was with the dove, guiding it, when the bullet took off its wing, she felt its agony, and lost hold. It fell past her in death, spinning toward the ground.

Dane got up again, went for Lemuel, trying to stop him, trying to save her …

The white paddock fence became so vivid she could touch it. In clear, crystalizing memory she half climbed, half leaped over it. The pasture grass whipped against her legs as she ran for the ranch house, for home, for him,reaching, reaching …

Lemuel caved in Dane’s guts with his elbow and Dane fell backward, losing awareness, his vision darkening.

Moss was pounding keys, trying to cancel the timeline and normalize deflection. The Machine pushed back, canceling his commands, directing energy toward the timeline, increasing deflection.

He was arm-wrestling with the girl!

Clarence was cocky enough to turn his back. Dane landed a kick that bent Clarence’s knee and made him buckle, if just for an instant. In that instant he went for Lemuel again.

Lemuel pointed the gun at him.

In mind, spirit, memory, Mandy was running forever and ever … longing, reaching, looking up through drug-darkening eyes at a man and a woman in the window of that beautiful house … together … where she wanted to be … where she belonged …

As she fell into the grass …

As she fell toward the broken bricks and concrete …

She reached so hard a shudder went through the birds …

Through Dane.

Through the Machine.

And Dane was somewhere else.No Lemuel, no vacant lot, no noise, no pain … no body? He rode on waves of colors, fell into shadowy crevasses, passed through brightness, darkness, sounds from his memory he heard all at once, far away. He was floating, suspended … in between… .

A warning flashed on the monitor, catching Moss’s eye. Mandy’s collective mass now exceeded that of the Machine by 185 pounds.

“Yes!”Moss exclaimed, getting everyone’s attention. He answered the question in their eyes. “She’s yanked Collins into her collective mass, trying to save him. She’s ruined the gravitational equivalency!”

“Meaning?” DuFresne demanded.

“Meaning no timeline trade today, folks! She’s just killed herself and her husband.” Moss leaned back, relieved. “Too bad Parmenter didn’t see that one coming—”

But then, at that instant, the Machine’s clock indicated 14:24:09, and Moss and everyone else saw the adjustment the Machine made—by prior programming.

Jerome Parmenter was no longer lying on the bed in the next room. With a flash he appeared in the Machine, sitting on the bench holding a box, and he was looking out through the glass with a strange, gotcha kind of smile.

The monitor proclaimed it: gravitational equivalence had been restored. The masses were balanced.

Lemuel spun, looked, pointed the gun in all directions as if he still had an enemy, but he didn’t. He looked up. Engulfed in an eerie, tea-stained atmosphere, Mandy and her doves hovered, wavering as if seen through heat waves, their sound slowed and muffled, the motion of the wings hardly discernible.

The Machine, with Parmenter inside, was distorting like rubber, bending, twisting, warping. The deep HUMMMM was shaking the floor.

Moss leaped from the console. “Run! Get out! Get out!”

Mr. Stone and Mr. Mortimer just stood there. They’d never seen anything like it.

There was little about the collision Mandy could have remembered. She didn’t see the other car plowing through the intersection against the light. Her head hit the airbag before she had any awareness of an impact.

But she did remember entering the intersection.

The last thing the Machine’s monitor indicated was a unity of timelines.

And then the room filled with flames, flashing and flying about the room like spirits, converging in spirals on the Machine, enveloping the platform, the bench, the glass, the cables—as Parmenter sat inside and watched.

DuFresne made it out first. Moss and Carlson were blocked by the other men crowding the door. Carlson was in the doorway and Moss was only a few feet inside the room when the shock wave hit.

In the hospital lobby, the floor heaved and then dropped under Arnie’s feet, depositing him across a couch and in the lap of a gentleman fortunate enough not to be standing. Everyone else ended up on the floor. The magazines hopped off the coffee table, the phones and monitors flew off the reception desk, plants fell over, pictures came off the walls, and people screamed, covering their heads, covering each other, crawling for cover. The place was in chaos.

The television fell on its side but the picture still worked. Arnie stared at the screen, aghast. It was like seeing the space shuttle Challengerblow up all over again.

* * *

The crowds at the Orpheus were on their feet, their mood gone from awe and jubilation to wide-eyed, drop-jawed shock. First there was that wondrous sight, the magic flying carpet made entirely of white doves, and then … a flash, a fireball, and a sonic boom that shook the ground, rattled and echoed through the hotels, and hit the crowd hard enough to knock some of them over.

Even if Mr. Stone and Mr. Mortimer survived the blast that flattened them into the ground, they did not rise to flee before a shower of flaming metal, shards of glass, blazing lumps of plastic, and smoldering circuitry came down on them like a shower of meteors, burning, melting, blackening the ground, and spewing smoke.

Emile was spellbound, watching through binoculars. Like everything else this day, planning and expecting this were one thing; seeing it was far, far beyond that.

As the last burning shred of metal hit the ground, he got on his radio. “Dane? Dane, come in. Dane, do you read me?”

Nothing.

Dane awoke with a start, lying in bed in Preston’s home. Daylight streamed through the windows. What on earth?

With horror and disbelief he saw the time: 2:25—in the afternoon! How could he have overslept that long? Why didn’t anyone call him? Where was everybody?

And why was he lying in bed fully clothed, the keys to Preston’s car still in his pocket? He even had his shoes on.

Whatever happened at the hospital—earthquake, gas explosion, terrorist attack—everyone agreed it happened under the building. The fire department was on its way. Four security personnel streamed down the NO ADMITTANCE stairways to a locked door, used clearance badges to get through, and stepped cautiously into the hallway.

No smoke. No apparent damage.

The big double doors appeared intact. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Okay,” said the chief of security, “heads up.” He went to the keypad.

For the other three, this was scary but tantalizing. Even though they had access to every other part of the building, none of them had ever been allowed down here.

The chief swiped his card through the slot, and the doors opened.

They hit the floor, arms covering their faces, sure they were goners …

… as hundreds of white doves exploded into the hallway, panicked and flapping, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, careening down the hallway.

Dane sat on the steps that led from the house into the garage, the keys to Preston’s Lexus in his hand. He distinctly remembered parking the car in this garage the night before, but now it wasn’t there. Stolen? Arnie took it? Preston came and got it?

Then … the next strange thing: he remembered getting up that morning, driving to the Orpheus, checking the pod, running through the routine with Mandy, deciding not to rehearse the hang glider.

So how did he get here?

Emile got a mike from the sound crew. “Thank you so much for being a part of our amazing show today with the one and only Mandy Whitacre! Please walk to the nearest exit and have a great day here in the Entertainment Capital of the World!”

He gave the mike back to the sound guy, put on a different hat and jacket than he’d been wearing, and slipped away through the crowd.

Vahidi was collaring anyone he could find. “Where is she? What happened? Where’s Downey?”

Everyone was still in shock, with no answers. He never found Seamus Downey. He never would.

Dane went back into the house, walking slowly, dazed by the memories spontaneously popping up and replaying in his brain. Mandy flying under all those birds. The volcano, and then there was a fight—

Ouch! Somebody hit him while he was standing in the hallway. He looked around– Oof!Another blow, and it hurt. No one was there but he remembered: Clarence! He beat the snot out of me!

Zap! He went numb, then his feet hurt, his knees complained, he was out of breath … Oh! That car almost ran over me!

By the time he got to the living room he’d suffered more pain and bruises and a blow to his stomach that put him on the floor. But he remembered where it all came from, right up to the point when Lemuel pointed a gun at him.

So this is what it’s like. Mandy, you are one incredible trouper!

But what’s happened? What’d I miss?As he lay on the floor dabbing blood from his mouth and thinking he might throw up, he recalled, The TV stations were there!

He crawled to the entertainment center, grabbed the remote, and brought the big screen to life.

The cameras were focused on the nearly empty bleachers, the crowds milling around and leaving, the stage with the dead and silent volcano.

Kirschner and Rhodes were still there, talking it up.

“… and we’re still trying to find out exactly what happened. This, pardon me, but this does not look like part of the act, Mark.”

“No, Steve, it sure doesn’t. There’s damage, fire, no sign of Mandy Whitacre the magician.”

A remote, handheld camera was circling the burning wreckage. Fire trucks and firemen were there, hoses dousing the flames.

Kirschner went on, “You all saw it, that incredible flight of thousands—it had to be thousands—”

“Oh, at least,” said Rhodes.

“Thousands of doves and Mandy Whitacre suspended, flying beneath them, and now … we can only guess that this wreckage is all that’s left of the secret mechanism by which that illusion was accomplished.”

“And something went terribly wrong.”

“But we don’t know what, and it could be some time before we do know.”

The two announcers kept talking away, describing what was plainly visible on the screen and telling everyone they didn’t know anything.

Then Kirschner interrupted himself. “And as we look across the—Oh, my God!” Pause, some mike noise. “You won’t believe this. We’ve just been informed there’s been a major explosion at the Clark County Medical Center. Fire crews are on the site now, and … hang on to your hats: there are … thousands of dovesin the building!”

It hurt to run again, but Preston also had his Jeep Wrangler in the garage, and Dane had the key.

He parked and limped from three blocks away, past curious onlookers, police cars with lights flashing and radios squawking, fire trucks standing by with nothing much to do and, as he came within a block of the hospital, doves, more doves, and all the more doves the closer he got, as thick as soapsuds in the trees, on the sidewalks, on the overhead wires, on the street signs, fence railings, everywhere. The firemen and police were working around them, wading through them, with no apparent plan as yet what to do with them all. News crews were arriving, cameramen were leaping from their vans. Hospital personnel in uniforms, coveralls, candy striper outfits, even scrubs, stood around, ambled around, clustered in little groups to watch and guess what had happened. Some played with the birds, all of which were notably tame around people.

Police were stretching out their yellow tape, but Dane went to some candy stripers and let his bruises and bleeding speak for him. The candy stripers helped him along, slipping through the barrier and directing him to one of the hastily set up first aid stations. From there he directed himself into the milling crowds, scanning, jumping to see over heads, picking up information from conversations on every side.

There had been no major damage—things were knocked over, spilled, and broken, but nothing a mop or broom couldn’t handle. There was no fire, no loss of electrical power, the patients were all safe and were not going to be evacuated. The birds were the biggest problem as far as anyone could see.

The going story was that something had happened in the basement. The rumors included a gas explosion, a mental patient with a bomb, a terrorist with a bomb, a boiler explosion, a localized earthquake, a faulty foundation, and a sinkhole. No one knew for sure because the basement levels were restricted, only people with the right clearance could go down there, and those people weren’t saying anything.

Of course, the main question spreading all over the campus was the birds and how they got there. The name “Mandy Whitacre” and the words “Grand Illusion” were popping up.

The main door was open. Orderlies and janitorial staff were herding and shooing doves out the door with brooms.

“Dane!” a voice whispered behind him. A hand on his shoulder jerked him around. It was Arnie, wearing a jogging outfit and a billed cap. He immediately took off the cap and jammed it down on Dane’s head, the bill so low it blocked Dane’s eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I woke up back in my bed in Preston’s house, back where I was at six this morning.”

“Don’t look around, just walk! This way!”

“It had to be Parmenter. He must have known I was going to get pulled into Mandy’s collective mass. He had the Machine spit me out someplace safe—more than nine hours ago.”

“No, I mean, what are you doing here? Are you crazy?”

“Have you found her?”

Arnie walked him under the ribbon and toward the trees on the edge of the visitor parking. “Oh, yeah, right, we had a lovely reunion in the lobby while all hell was breaking loose. You kidding? The place is nuts right now. They’ve blocked off the basement, all the doors, everything.”

“We’ve got to find her.”

“No, you’vegotta get out of here, that’s what you’vegotta do. The place is crawling with cops and cameras and everybody’s asking questions. And the two of you seen together? Eeesh! Why don’t you just hang a sign on her? What are you thinking?”

They ducked on the other side of a tree, keeping their faces toward it.

“We were wondering what happened to you. One minute you’re there, the next minute—man, what didhappen to you? You look like you had a scrape with somebody.”

Dane nodded. “Twice.”

“Ehh. Figures. Nothing halfway about you.”

Dane tried to look around the tree, but Arnie yanked him back. “Hey! Stick with your own plan. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

“She’s got to be here.” He nodded toward the doves. “They made it.”

Arnie chuckled and wagged his head. “I hope to shout they did, and not a feather out of place.” And then, just taking in all the doves, he had to laugh. “Dane, you always were the idea man, I gotta tell ya!”

“Thank Parmenter.” Dane smiled, not in joy but in hope. “And Preston must have called in a thousand favors.” His attention lingered on some doves perched in the branches above them.

“Well let’s get you out of town. I’ve already gotten some calls, people wondering if you were mixed up in this.” Arnie noticed Dane staring. “What?”

There were four doves perched side by side. They were fidgeting, nodding, and bobbing in Dane’s direction, as if they knew him. He spread his arms out straight.

They flew down and perched on his arms, two on the left, two on the right.

Arnie did a jaw drop—then stood in front of Dane and the birds, trying to hide them. “What do you say we get ’em out of here?”

“They’ll let you hold them.”

Cradling a bird in each hand, they stole away.

On the far side of the hospital, as firemen, police, animal control people, and hospital maintenance personnel hurried through a loading door with a variety of fish, bird, and butterfly nets, a maintenance lady in coveralls and billed cap walked by them carrying a broken lamp. She dropped the lamp into a Dumpster beside the loading dock, then continued toward the street, not looking back.