Conspircaies

'You finished with that?'

He scanned the area to see if he could catch someone watching him.

No one…at least no one he could see.

He handed her the phone and moved on. He wished he were done with this job. It was making him crazy.

8

Jack returned to his hotel room and hauled the crates out of the bathroom. He propped the lids against the headboard of his bed and made a stab at assembling some of the Erector Set-type struts, but soon realized the job required an extra pair of hands. He tried to decipher the scrawl in the corner of the smaller lid but it didn't make much sense.

Frustrated, he sat on the bed and stared at the two crates full of puzzle parts. He thought of Vicky. She loved puzzles. Under normal circumstances, this might have been a fun project to tackle with her, but something in his gut didn't want Vicky anywhere near these crates.

After a few more hours of haunting the conference areas, he was hungry. He couldn't bear the thought of another meal in the coffee shop, so he wandered out and found a place on Tenth called Druids. A pint of Guinness and a steak had him in a somewhat better state of mind and body by the time he returned to the hotel,

He was halfway to the escalator when he saw Frayne Canfield rolling toward him across the worn carpet of the lobby. He wore a bright green shirt that, along with his red hair and beard, gave him a Christmas look.

'Have you found Sal yet?' Canfield said.

Jack tried to look barely interested. 'You mean Professor Roma? Who told you I was looking?'

'Evelyn. Lew. I've been looking for him too. Any, luck?'

'Nope.'

'Maybe we can look together.'

Is he really looking for Roma, or trying to keep an eye on me? Who's he working for?

Then he remembered that Canfield had been the first to mention this Otherness stuff. Maybe Jack could pump him about it, and maybe he'd slip—maybe he'd drop something about Melanie in the process.

'Maybe,' Jack said. 'We had a long discussion about the Otherness yesterday, and I wanted to get back to it.'

'The Otherness, ay?' Canfield's bulging eyes narrowed as he looked up at Jack. 'And how you're tied into it?'

Jack fought to hide his shock. What have I got—some sort of sign around my neck?

'We, uh, never got that far into it.'

Canfield looked around. 'Well, if you want to discuss it, this isn't the place. My room or yours?'

Jack considered that for a second. If he went off with Canfield, he might miss Roma. But finding Roma was looking pretty iffy; Canfield was a sure thing. He didn't want Canfield to see the mystery crates and their contents, however.

'Yours,' he said, and didn't offer an explanation.

As Jack followed him to the elevator, he glanced up and saw Jim Zaleski and Miles Kenway huddled in a comer, heads close in deep conversation. They stopped talking as they spotted Jack.

Kenway called out, 'I'm expecting a photo to be faxed to me any time now.'

Jack gave a thumbs-up and kept walking.

So Kenway had taken his advice about getting visual confirmation on the Roma here and the Roma in Kentucky. That could be very interesting.

'What photo?' Canfield asked.

'Just a mutual acquaintance,' Jack said.

Jack and Canfield rode up in silence, with Canfield busily gnawing at a fingernail, and Jack trying to avoid looking at his flannel-wrapped legs and the disconnecting way they moved beneath the blanket. He couldn't help thinking about what Melanie had said to Lew about what was wrong with those legs…

You don't want to know.

Canfield's room was laid out exactly like Jack's. In fact, it could have been Jack's…except it had no weird green crates lying about.

'Let's see now,' Canfield said, grinning through his Hagar beard and motioning Jack to one of the chairs. 'Where were we?'

He sat there snacking on fingernail and cuticle crudites as he regarded Jack with too-bright eyes. He seemed more wired up than usual. Salt-rimmed crescents darkened the armpits of his shirt.

'Yesterday you and I were in the 'Children of the Otherness' zone—inhabited by you and Melanie Ehler,' Jack said. He settled into the chair, dropping to eye level with Canfield. 'Later Roma said something about my supposedly being 'marked by the Otherness.''

'Not supposedly—the mark is there and you know it.'

You can see it too? Jack thought, stiffening. He shrugged with as much nonchalance as his tight muscles would allow.

'Do I?'

'Of course you do. Open your shirt and I'll prove it.'

'Sorry. Not on a first date.'

Canfield didn't laugh. 'What's wrong? Does it disturb you that your scars might link you to me and my birth defects?'

Jack repressed a shudder as Canfield's legs stirred under the blanket.

'Whatever scars I have came along long after my birth. You told me yourself that your defects happened before you were born. I don't see any connection.'

'Ah,' Canfield said, raising a well-chewed index finger. 'But what made your scars? A creature, right?'

Jack stared at him. He knows too? Finally he said, 'Where do you get your information?'

'About the Otherness creatures?'

Why doesn't he call them by name? Jack wondered.

'Yeah. How do you know about them?'

'Melanie and I sensed their presence last year. Just as I sensed those scars on your chest, we became aware of the Otherness creatures approaching from the east.'

That's right, Jack thought. The rakoshi had come from the east…from India…by freighter.

'I get the impression you never saw one.'

'I never had the honor. We searched, but we never could locate them.'

'Lucky for you.'

'I don't see it that way. I could consider them almost…brothers. After all, they too were children of the Otherness, like Melanie and me, although they contained far more of the Otherness than either of us.'

'The Otherness…I'm getting real tired of that word.'

'Well, it's a perfect name, really. The Otherness represents everything that's not 'us'—meaning the human race and the reality we inhabit. Melanie thinks it's vampiric in a way, sucking the life—the spiritual life—out of everything it encounters. Monstrously dark times will ensue if and when it takes over.'

'And how would it manage that?'

'Sneak in when the other side's not looking. It can't charge in because the current landlord's got it locked out, but it's always there, hovering just beyond the threshold, keeping an eye on us, making tiny intrusions, creating strange, fearful manifestations, using its influence to sow discord, fear, and madness wherever and whenever it can.'

'Like through the folks downstairs?'

Canfield nodded. 'Some people are more aware, others less, but each of us knows—I don't care whether it's in our preconscious, post-conscious, subconscious, in the most primitive corners of our hindbrains, in the very cells of our bodies, we all sense this battle raging. And that subliminal perception has been reflected in human religions since earliest recorded history: Horus and Set, the Titans and the Olympians, God and Satan. The war is out there, and it's been going on since the beginning of time. We're aware of it. We can sense the Otherness on the far side of the door, we can smell its hunger.'