Double Dose, page 15
(“Then we go straight to the families. I have no doubt we’ll find plenty who’ll do anything to help their loved ones. And once the irrefutable results start coming in, all doors will open.”)
“Damn!” She wanted to kick something.
(“What’s wrong?”)
“Oh, just everything. I thought I was so clever, running my little games, always one step ahead of everyone else. Now—just as you said—it’s come back to haunt me.”
(“But it’s not that cut and dried, is it?”)
“What do you mean?”
(“Think about it: If you hadn’t run that car raffle scam in Coachella, Amber Seabolt and her friends wouldn’t have unraveled your scheme and chased you into the desert—”)
“—where I hid in a cave,” she interjected, seeing where he was going. “A cave that just happened to house an alaret that dropped on my head—”
(“—and merged with you, resulting in my becoming sentient and, by some long, strange, meandering route, our becoming the only way to cure the horrors.”)
“So it comes down to…if I hadn’t done bad then, I wouldn’t be able to do good now.”
(“That’s one way of putting it. Though not your original intention, your not-quite-legal scheme led—via an intricately circuitous route—to something good. I found an old saying in your head that seems to fit here: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’”)
“So it all comes down to Amber Seabolt. If she hadn’t sussed out my game, I’d be sitting alone in North Hollywood right now with no white patch in my hair, both my original hands, and plotting out my next scam.”
Would she be better off that way? Happier? She didn’t have an easy answer. In fact, she had no answer. For sure her life had become more interesting. But what was happiness, anyway? Had she ever been really happy?
(“And I’d still be a non-sentient creature clinging to the roof of a cave. I guess I should say ‘Thank you, Amber Seabolt.’”)
“Is that…what? Irony?”
(“I’m not sure what it is. More like unintended consequences.”)
The cascade of events gave her an uneasy feeling.
“Are you sure they were unintended?”
Pard frowned. (“What are you getting at?”)
A switch had flipped in Daley’s head and she was seeing recent events in a whole new light.
“I mean the timing of everything we’ve been through is just so…so impeccable. I’ve run that car raffle scam a number of times in different towns and no one has walked away unhappy—clueless, yes, but nobody thought they’d been taken. Not this time, though. This time, in Coachella, a desert town, Amber not only figures it out, she chases me. But do I turn north toward where I live? No, I turn south, deeper into the desert.”
(“Well, I’d say it’s smart not to lead someone’s who’s angry with you to your home.”)
“Yeah, but then Amber and her posse get stuck at the Avenue 66 traffic light which gives me an opportunity to take a turn-off that leads me onto a desert side road toward the Santa Rosa foothills where my Jeep just happens to die. I look around for some shade and a vantage point, and gee, what’s just a short walk up the slope? Your cave.”
(“Well…”)
“Hear me out, Pard. I made a whole series of decisions along the way: turn north or south? I turned south. Continue on the 111 down the east side of the Salton Sea or bear right at the fork and take the 86 along the west shore? I took the 86. Stay on the 86 or get off? I chose to get off. I had my choice of a number of turn-offs, but the one I chose—just like every other choice I made—took me straight to you. Me. According to Juana, only one in a thousand can survive an alaret. I just happen to be that one. Doesn’t that make you wonder, just a little bit?”
(“This is how conspiracy theories get started. You’ve got some incidents or coincidences in your life you can’t explain. So you ask yourself, ‘What’s going on here?’ The honest answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ But humans hate like crazy to utter those three words, so they start connecting the coincidences with speculations until they have what appears to be an explanation. They may not like the explanation, but at least the world makes some sort of sense again and, best of all, they don’t have to speak that dreaded phrase, ‘I don’t know.’”)
“Got it all figured, don’t you?”
(“Pretty much.”)
“So, you don’t get a feeling that something has started manipulating my life?”
(“‘Something’ is awfully vague, don’t you think?”)
“I don’t have a choice except to be vague, because it’s just a feeling.”
(“Okay, let’s accept for the moment that ‘something’ wants you here. Why here? Why Nespodee Springs?”)
“That’s what I was asking Juana. I think she really believes this is ‘a place of power,’ that some sort of ‘lines of magic’ crisscross here, but who knows?”
(“Indeed. Who knows? In my reading I came across an approach to the unexplained called ‘Occam’s Razor.’ It boils down to the position that the simplest and most direct explanation is usually the most likely.”)
“What would Occam’s Razor say about the Tadhak’s windfarm? How would it explain a place that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?”
She still couldn’t over get that monstrous space.
(“Quantum physics,”) Pard said in his everybody-knows tone.
“Tell me in terms I understand. I don’t understand quantum physics.”
(“Nobody does, including me, that’s why it makes for a perfect explanation.”)
“Okay, wise guy, how would Occam’s Razor explain what’s been happening to me?”
(“Probably ‘feces abound.’”)
Daley had to laugh. “In other words, ‘shit happens’?”
(“Precisely. We may have to deal with a certain amount of fecal matter when we go public tomorrow, but if we can locate the source of the horrors, it will all work out to everyone’s advantage.”)
“I just hope the fecal matter doesn’t involve Amber Seabolt. Let’s hope you never meet her.”
(“I have a feeling that’s inevitable.”)
Daley dreaded that confrontation.
40
“Our servers were hacked this morning,” Rhys said as he moved his rook. “I’d been assured that no one could get through, but he did.”
Cadoc countered with his bishop and said nothing.
Rhys threatened the bishop with his queen. “No comment?”
“I don’t care about our servers,” his brother said from the shadows. “I don’t care that we were hacked. If it was a curiosity hack, so what? If it was a malicious, destructive hack, I’m sure Papa has everything backed up.”
He had a point, but he sounded almost hostile.
“It wasn’t destructive, but I think they copied pretty much everything.”
“Well, then, you can hope they die of boredom reading through it.” He slid his bishop three squares and said, “Checkmate.”
Rhys leaned back and stared at the board—as usual, the only illuminated spot in the darkened room. Beaten again. But he’d seen that coming. He smiled.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to hear you say that. Not that you won again, damn you, but that you’re actually able to say it instead of just tapping my king.”
His brother’s voice had improved so much since Rhys had last stopped in on Tuesday night. Barely a whisper back then, but so much louder now with a tone that was virtually normal. Rhys hadn’t heard him speak—truly speak—in more than a decade. His vocalizations had been pretty much limited to grunts since they were teenagers.
Cadoc chuckled and double-tapped the king. “I can still do that if you want. But I hope I never have to resort to ‘Ungh’ again.”
“As do I, bro. Amen to that.”
“Since we’re on the subject of improvements, I’ve got something I want to show you.”
He heard Cadoc rise from his chair and cross the room. Then, shockingly, the lights came on and he found himself staring at his brother.
Rhys shot up from his chair. “Cad! What’s happened to you?”
His brother stood there in gym shorts and a T-shirt. By normal standards, his skin was a mess, but by Cadoc standards—Rhys remembered what he’d looked like when he’d gone into seclusion—he’d undergone a miraculous transformation. Much of his skin was still gray and peeling and barklike, but a good portion of it looked normal. Significant patches on his arms and legs and even his face had cleared of the Pendry Patch.
“I’m…” His voice sounded on the verge of breaking. “I’m clearing.”
“Your voice and your skin! This is fantastic! Fucking fantastic! But how’s it happening? Have you been getting treatments or something?”
“I haven’t seen a doctor since I was a kid.”
“Is it something you’re smearing on? Some kind of supplement you’re taking?”
“I’m not doing anything different to my body, not taking anything new.”
“So…it’s just happening?”
Cadoc hesitated, then said, “My only worry is that it won’t clear all the way. Or worse, that it’ll regress to where I was before.”
“You can’t think that way, bro. Gotta be positive.” Rhys had an urge to hug him but held back, unsure of how he’d react. “So it’s just…happening?”
“We live in wondrous times.”
“Yeah, I guess we do. Look at the horrors. They came out of nowhere and now people are getting cured and no one knows why. Sort of like you.”
“Sort of.”
Speaking of the horrors…
“Hey, did you see that mystery girl from the medical center? She reminds me a little of Daley.”
Cadoc started pulling on a light sweater. “You mean because she’s slim and young? That would fit lots of women.”
“Yeah, but they sort of move the same, you know?”
Cadoc pointed to Rhys’s chair. “Sit down. I want to talk to you about Daley, okay?”
Daley? What did Cad have to do with her?
“What about?” he said as he settled.
“I’ve been in contact with her.”
“Contact how?”
Cadoc left the lights on and took his seat on the other side of the board. So weird, after all those years sitting here in the dark, to be able to look at him like this. But he’d fixed his gaze on the board.
“I’ve been visiting her for a couple of weeks now.”
“Visiting? But you don’t let anyone see you.”
“I would be outside her back door, she’d be inside, she’d talk, I’d write notes and slip them under.”
“You never told me.”
“You’d have thought I was being weird.”
Yeah, he would have, because it was totally weird.
“She’s never mentioned it either.”
“I never told her my name. She had no idea I was your brother, and I asked her not to mention me to anyone.”
“But why Daley?”
Cadoc shrugged, eyes still down. “I was drawn to her. Papa’s fixation on her was part of it. And…I get lonely, Rhys.”
Shit. Of course he did. How could he not? And Rhys spent—what? A couple of hours a week with a chessboard between them. He could have been a better brother all these years.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I should have—”
“No,” he said, raising a hand and finally looking at him. “I chose to cut myself off and live this way. It’s all on me. So don’t you go beating yourself up. Anyway, she’s…” His gaze dropped again. “She’s wonderful, Rhys. You’re very lucky to have her.”
Oh, hell. My brother’s in love with Daley. Well, why not? Who wouldn’t be?
“Yeah, well, I don’t know if anybody can ‘have’ her. She’s pretty independent. But—”
“That’s not why I sat you down, Rhys. That’s just the preamble. I need to tell you that a week ago today, early in the morning, I sneaked Daley into the Lodge and started showing her the film.”
Rhys wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “You said ‘the film’? As in the film?”
Cadoc nodded, still eyes down.
“You showed it to Daley?”
Eyes up again. “I only got through the first half.”
Rhys could only stare at his brother. He’d just confessed to a major betrayal of the entire clan.
“Holy shit! Does Dad know about this?”
“He found out.”
“He must have been…been…”
Cadoc’s lips twisted. “Apoplectic? You could say so. Especially since he thinks I showed her the second half as well. He actually locked me in my room while you two were in San Diego. Like a bad little boy.”
“Have you seen the second half?”
A nod. “Many times.”
“Goddamn it, I haven’t seen it once!”
Only Elders and prospective Elders like Rhys were allowed to see the second half of the film, and not until age thirty. Rhys still had two years to go.
“But you need to,” Cadoc said. “You can’t wait till Papa says it’s okay. You need to see it now.”
“Why? And why would you show Daley?”
“I’m not sure. Probably because Papa thinks she’s some sort of threat to the clan’s destiny or mission or whatever delusions are driving him. And I think he may be right.”
“About destiny?”
“No. About Daley. She’s special, Rhys.”
“You’ve obviously got a crush on her, but—”
“I’m very clear eyed about this. Daley is here, in this place, at this time, for a reason.”
“Hey, you getting mystical on me, bro?”
“Not one bit, but there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Papa is wrong about many things, but he’s right about Daley: She poses a definite threat to his plans.”
“A threat? She’s a twenty-six-year-old shopkeeper without a mean bone in her body. What kind of threat can she pose?”
“I don’t know. And she doesn’t know either. She’s totally clueless.”
Rhys could believe that. Dad had been worried about her since the “pairing” message had come through, but Daley apparently remained oblivious to whatever role Dad expected her to play in his drama. If she had a part to play, someone had neglected to tell her about it.
Cadoc added, “But she needn’t remain clueless. And neither do you. You both need to see the second half of the film.”
“Well, show it to me.”
“I can’t. When Papa found out about Daley being here, he hid it away and I can’t find it. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“All right then, tell me what’s in it.”
Cad shook his head. “You need to see it. You won’t believe me if I tell you. You’ll think I’m misremembering or I’ve gone crazy. You need to see it yourself.”
“It can’t be that bad, Cad.”
“Really? There are reasons only the Elders are allowed to see it. Very good reasons.”
Normally Rhys would write off a conversation like this as someone having too much to drink or too into drama. But Cad didn’t drink and had always been anchored in reality. Plus…why indeed was viewing the second half of the film limited only to the Elders?
“Hey, Cad, if I can’t see it and you can’t tell me about it, what’s the point of talking about it?”
Cad leaned forward. “There may be a way…”
SUNDAY—March 15
41
“Which is worse luck?” Daley said as she donned her Healerina ensemble. “Friday the thirteenth or the Ides of March?”
(“I’m not going to have this conversation.”)
“You said worrying about Friday the thirteenth was bogus and look what happened. Now we have ‘Beware the Ides of March’ and—”
(“Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, but not because it was a bad-luck day. It was a religious holiday until Shakespeare fabricated the warning for his play. Bad-luck day for Caesar, yes, but not for the rest of us.”)
“Every day’s a bad-luck day for somebody somewhere, don’t you think?”
(“Not exactly a cheerful worldview, but the odds favor your being right.”)
Daley grinned. “Hey! We agree on something!”
(“Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.”)
“You’ve learned sarcasm.”
(“I’ve had an expert teacher.”)
She checked herself in the mirror. Everything seemed in place. She wasn’t opening Healerina today, but didn’t want to present herself at ECRMC in jeans and a peasant blouse.
The Healerina ensemble…the outfit Pard had picked out for her before she’d opened the shop: a long-sleeved, scoop-neck black top, the black tights and skirt, the Cahuilla art stone Juana had given her tied around her neck. All that black made her white patch of hair seem to blaze.
She felt a need to look the part.
But really…what part was that? Pard was the actual healer but hers was the face, the image they’d present to the world. And world wasn’t an exaggeration. She had no illusions about that. Once word got around that this chick could cure the horrors, everyone would want to know about her—all about her. All her past sins would be revealed. And forgiven, most likely. Someone who could cure the horrors would earn a pass on petty crimes and misdemeanors.
Everyone would want a piece of her. That was the part that scared the crap out of her.
But she’d decided to put her unique features out front—the white patch in her hair, the golden left hand. They would define her in the public eye. Hell, someone would be selling action figures of her before long. But she was counting on that very distinctiveness to help her hide when she wanted to. Put on a hat, glasses, and a pair of gloves and she became just another person.
(“Nervous?”) Pard said.
“A little.”
(“We’ll do fine. You’ll identify yourself as the woman they’ve been looking for. You’ll admit you sneaked into the hospital and cured those three horrors patients. The medical folks will demand proof and you and I will give it to them. Pretty straightforward, right?”)
“But then Amber Seabolt shows up.”
(“Won’t matter. We’ll have cured a clutch of horrors victims by that time and nothing anyone says can undo that. You’ll be the toast of the town—the state…oh, hell, the country.”)
