still, yes, but will also be dead?”
She looked at him. He looked at her. In that moment, something, perhaps about the vow of marriage itself that is sacred reasserted itself, and the union decided to continue on… at least for the while. “Was that a question?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. She raised hers. He opened his arms. She went in.
“Something so complex has happened—it’s like I’ve glimpsed a level of life that’s normally hidden, where there are other motives and meanings, that never normally come to light. And somehow, Marcie and I—and you and I, Katelyn—are connected on that level… and it’s all to do with our boy, somehow, I know that. I know it and I love him and I love us, Katelyn, oh my God, so much.”
“We’ve got to be with him,” she said.
They walked together from their dark bedroom. Out the east window, which overlooked the field where the thing had appeared, an enormous moon was rising. By its light, silver with frost, she could see the whole field, wrapped now in the familiar mystery of an ordinary night. She looked up toward higher space, the glowing dark of the deep sky. There were stars, a few, battling the flooding moonlight.
Perhaps he was right. Maybe his struggle was, in some way, true. Maybe a shadow was there, one that you couldn’t see, but that was nevertheless very real, the shadow of an unknown mind from a far place.
He came beside her, put his arm around her. “They’re watching,” he whispered.
She leaned against him, wondering what the future would bring. He might be going mad. It happened to people in middle age, and for a psychology professor to become psychologically abnormal had a certain irresistible irony to it, did it not?
Then again, maybe aliens were the answer. Certainly, the video was odd and disturbing. It had provided him an inventive excuse, she had to give him that.
“Come on,” she said. She pushed away from him, and went back downstairs to rejoin the tormented odyssey of her son.
PART FIVE
The Ministers of Death
No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
FIFTEEN
LAUREN WATCHED THE COLONEL AS he moved back and forth, back and forth. She’d never seen him like this, all of his rigorous professionalism gone, his eyes flickering from place to place like an animal looking for escape from a cage.
“Where’s Andy? Andy is supposed to meet us here.”
“Andy is gone.”
“And you don’t know where, of course.”
“No, sir, I had no idea he would leave.”
“You know your problem, Lauren? You’re naive. Relentlessly damned
“I—sir, I did everything I could. I only backed out of there because I had no choice.”
“You didn’t think to detain Andy?”
“Of course not! Why in the world would I do that?”
“You don’t have the whole picture, I grant you that. With all his years in the hole, working with you empaths, Andy knew a little more than you do.”
“Has he, uh, what has he done?”
“Run, you damned fool!”
“Don’t you take that tone with me.”
He gave her a look that made her step away from him. He’d never been a pleasant man to work with, but he seemed violent now, and she did not like this, she did not like it at all.
They were standing in his smoke-stained office. The fire department had saved the house, but the facility below was a total loss.
“I want to know the truth of this thing, Lauren, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t think I’m getting it from you.”
That made heat rise in her cheeks. She did not like her own professionalism challenged. “My report is correct in every detail.”
“Don’t you understand what happened, even yet?”
“Of course I do. There was a grass fire, it spread to the air intake, and flammables in the air dryers ignited. That’s the official verdict and it’s also the truth.”
“Then where’s Adam?”
“Excuse me?”
“You do understand that there were no remains.”
“Well it was incinerated, then. He was, I mean. All they pulled out of there was ash, anyway. Black, sodden ash, I saw it.”
“It’s been gone through and there are no remains!”
“He burned!
“The skeleton is made of a metal that’s quite indestructible. But we did not find that skeleton down there, and the rubble was sifted through screens. It was very carefully gone through, Lauren, so I think you must be lying to me.”
“You’re beneath contempt, you know that?”
He backhanded her. The blow came unexpectedly, a flash in her right eye. For a moment, she was too stunned to understand what had hit her. Then she did understand and a torrent of pure rage filled her. “That’s a violation,” she said, trying to force the anger out of her voice, “and I’m going to put you up on charges for it.”
She realized that he was laughing in her face, then that he was withdrawing a pistol from underneath his tunic. She was very quick of mind, which is one of the reasons that she was effective with Adam, and that quickness enabled her now to recall the rumors that people could get into lethal trouble in these deep black programs. Within perhaps three seconds of the weapon appearing—in fact, before he even had it fully out, she had turned and left the room.
Leaping down the stairs, she brought all of her considerable athleticism to bear. She hit the floor, staggered—and heard a gigantic roar. She knew what it was a shot. He was trying to kill her. She dashed across the hall as a second shot crashed into the wall beside the door. It was close, she could feel the heat of it on her cheek. He was a damned good shot, getting that close from that far away with a .45.
She got the door open and another shot rang out. She ran down the sidewalk and out into the middle of the street. She had to get this out in public, that was her only hope, and keep enough distance between them to make a hit a matter of luck. Fifty feet, at least. Closer and he would not miss.
She ran down the middle of the street, zigzagging and not making the mistake of looking back. Damn this neighborhood, it was too damn
