I told him I'd cover the meals too, and pay him two hundred a day. It was the least I could do and be professional, and my client was responsible for expenses. I'd call him later regarding departure time, and where and when to pick him up.
Then I looked in the catalog for the clairvoyant rated most reliable. His name was Seamus Waterford, and I was in luck; he lived just half an hour down the coast in San Diego. I called, got a sound-only connection, and five minutes later had an appointment for that afternoon. I had time for a tuna sandwich at Morey's, then drove to the Tamarind Station for an air shuttle to LAX. The hourly flight from LAX to Lindbergh Field at San Diego took twenty- eight minutes, and a cab to Waterford's address twelve more. I was there almost twenty minutes early, but I'd come prepared. I sat on the edge of a big planter across the street, and read my way into a pocket novel, one I'd read half a dozen times before: Poul Anderson's novelization of
Then I went and rang Waterford's doorbell. He answered it wearing a heavy bathrobe, stocking cap down over his ears, and a scarf! I could hardly believe it! It was hot in his apartment—close to ninety, I'd guess.
He waved me in, a tallish, skinny Irishman with red cheeks that made him look feverish, and tufted reddish blond eyebrows. There wasn't a drop of sweat on his face. I wondered if his disorder was mental or physical. I was almost afraid to go in, as if it was catching. 'Come in! Come in!' he said with an Irish accent, and waved harder. 'Before you let in the cold!'
I went in. It must have been about 75 degrees outside, almost perfect shirtsleeve weather. Once I was in, he relaxed. 'Would you like some lemonade?' he asked. There was a big pitcher of it, maybe three liters, half of it ice, on a table by stacks of books and papers.
I told him no thanks. Somehow I didn't want to eat or drink anything there.
He gestured at an ancient recliner upholstered with something leatherlike. It looked as if it might fold up and eat me, but I sat. After pouring himself a tall lemonade, he sat down across from me and swigged most of it noisily at one go, as if dying of thirst. Then he gestured back at the littered table. 'I'm writing my book,' he said genially. 'Now. What can I do for you?'
'Have you ever heard of Ray Christman?'
For a moment he frowned in thought, then, 'The cult leader!' he said. 'I've known people he'd got in his clutches! What about him?'
'He's disappeared. He may have gone into seclusion somewhere, or been abducted or murdered, or simply died. I hoped you could tell me.'
Waterford frowned slightly for a few seconds, then said, 'The man's dead. I can tell you that much. Dead long enough, he's either reincarnated—become someone else, some infant—or he's absent from the material realm. Beyond that I get nothing at all.
'Is that all you want?'
I told him yes, and wrote a credit transfer on his PC, using my company card number and intersig. A minute later I was out the door, wondering if I'd just been had. Two hundred dollars for that! Plus the time and air fare. I was in the wrong business—had the wrong talent.
20
OVERFLIGHT
Tuuli flew back to Arizona on Friday afternoon. On Saturday, Hamilton and I rode an AirWest express flight to Portland, then Oregon Air to Eugene. The office had already chartered an outfit at Eugene to fly us over the church's property in the mountains east of town.
The pilot assigned to us knew about the Hideaway and where it was. When Hamilton asked about possible SAMs there, she looked at him as if he were crazy. If the Gnosties shot up an overflight, she said, even it couldn't hire enough lawyers to save its ass. Even given the near silence of modern skycraft, private property
Twice in the past, a pilot had been accused by Christman and the church. The first time, the court threw the case out on the basis that the church's witnesses weren't credible, and this was upheld by the appeals court. A result, I suppose, of the church's reputation for public lying, and for using the threat of costly litigation to intimidate. The second time though, the evidence was electronic—radar and radar-directed video photography—as well as visual. The same court fined the same pilot, and told him another such instance would bring more than just a fine. It would confiscate his skyvan and operator's license, and lock him up.
Our first overflight was 2,500 feet above the lodge, and we saw no sign of occupancy except for a surface bus —a crew bus—and what Hamilton said were the caretaker's house and the security barracks. The next pass was at 1000 feet. We didn't see any sign, IR or otherwise, that a security patrol was out. No radar was operating, either. In fact, there was no electronics at all operating on the ridge. It looked as if a skycar could land on it at night and never be noticed.
And most important, what appeared to be the boundary fence ran along the ridge crest, which was about 100 feet wide. The fence was only about 30 feet from Christman's observatory. Yes, the pilot said, property lines sometimes ran along a ridge top. She called a topographic map onto her screen; the land on the other side belonged to the Willamette National Forest.
Which meant we could land on the ridge without trespassing on church property.
21
A REVIEW FOR BUTZBURGER
Butzburger came into my office on Monday morning just as I was getting ready to call Dr. Hjelmgaard at the University of Minnesota. 'Mr. Seppanen—Martti,' he said. 'I'd like to stand you to lunch today and discuss some aspects of your investigation.'
Considering what it had already cost him, and how far I seemed to be from the information he wanted, that was understandable, but I didn't have to look forward to it. 'Would it be all right to talk about them now?' I asked. 'My terminal gives me access to things I might want you to see, and you won't have to wait.'
He nodded, looking as if he preferred it that way himself. I guessed then that he was going to be critical, and the invitation had been to soften the criticism. 'Yes, that would be fine, Martti. If you'll agree to have lunch with me afterward.' He sat down in a chair beside my desk. 'I'm concerned with the lack of progress thus far. Not that I'm criticizing you for it. You and Mr. Katagawa made clear at the beginning that progress was likely to be slow and uncertain, and I can understand why. But— Last Friday I found an expense statement for consultation with a psychic, a Mr. Waterford. And there'd been one earlier with a Mr. Sigurdsson. Under the best of circumstances, I'd feel uncomfortable about paying money to psychics. In a situation where progress has been so slow, it occurred to me that it might have been a matter of desperation.' He shrugged slightly. 'If things have gone that badly, it might
