The Puppet Master

'Who?'

'I did. At least I caused the shock that killed him. I think his health was already weak though.'

Martti stared at her.

'You asked whether the spirit that attacked you at Tusayan might attack one of us again. He won't.'

He. 'You mean . . . That was him? In the hearse?'

'That was his body.'

'How could you tell?'

'You know or you don't. Besides, he was with it, so to speak. Not in it, but with it. Sort of surrounding the hearse. He's going along with it to the crematorium.'

She'd said it as matter-of-factly as if discussing a trip to the supermarket. She started the van then and pulled back onto the highway. He wouldn't ask how she knew. She'd only say 'you know or you don't.'

'It's not so uncommon for someone to have an attachment to their body after it's died,' she went on. 'For a little while. That's one reason it's cruel to mutilate a corpse.'

'What about cremation?'

'Formal cremation is all right. It's dignified and clean.'

'And you say he won't attack one of us again.'

'Right. We touched when he passed. Communicated. He's not interested in that game any longer. At all.'

Neither spoke for a while. Tuuli drove well and fast, yet her eyes seemed to rove the countryside, drinking in what she saw. Finally Martti asked, 'What kind of life is it that's lived subliminally? Wouldn't it be like going along for the ride? Being a spectator while your subliminal self does the driving in a closed-off compartment?'

'It's more like piloting a spacecraft,' she said, 'setting the course while the computer does most of the navigating and runs the systems. You can change your mind about where you're going, though. The main decisions are yours.' She chuckled. 'And the computer is part of you, anyway.'

She glanced sideways at him. 'That's how you walk, you know. Your leg movements, your eye-foot coordination, all those things are subliminally controlled. You tell your body where you want to go, and how fast, and it takes you.'

He nodded, marveling as he often had at this quadrilingual person who'd grown up partly in an arctic mining town, and partly on a backwoods farm in Finnish Lapland. Who'd come alone to America at age eighteen to work as a domestic, with no one to turn to for help and counsel. And who, at age thirty-one, spoke American fluently, even colloquially, and made more money than lots of engineers.

He wondered what course she was flying, and what role he played in her trip. Or for that matter, he thought, what course I'm flying. Do I even have a destination? Inwardly he grunted. If I do, it's subliminal.

His thoughts went to the hearse. 'The guy—the being in the hearse,' he said, 'with the hearse . . . What'll he do when his body's been cremated?'

'He'll leave. Go to the other side, the astral universe you might call it, and review his life and actions. That's probably the basis for the concept of purgatory. Eventually he'll recycle; be born as someone new.'

'Why did he act like he did? Why did he try to kill me?'

'He was angry; psychotically angry. He'd controlled DeSmet, and Masters, and the one in charge of the hit team at the airport. And probably others. He'd taken them over.' She glanced again at her husband. 'You know who he was, of course.'

Martti nodded. 'I think so. Leif Haller.'

It seemed to him there was no other explanation. If he was right about that, then in a way, Haller had been Christman's murderer, though it was beyond proof. He'd killed Christman and maybe Cloud Man, and all those people in the apartment house. Haller. So intelligent, so hard-working and charismatic, yet he'd failed. Pretty much all down the line, really.

Or had he? Even before he'd taken up murder, he'd had an impact on a lot of lives. Apparently a good impact in many cases. Like Christman had. And provided a place for people who were looking for one.

But that hadn't been much of a funeral procession. Back in '95, when his dad and mom had been buried, more than a thousand people had turned out, a sixth of Ojibwa County. The funeral service had been held on the courthouse lawn, because no church in Hemlock Harbor was nearly big enough. Even so, they'd spilled over into the parking lot. If his dad had known in advance, he'd have been embarrassed.

Martti wondered how Leif Haller would have felt, in the heyday of his Institute, if he'd known his funeral procession would be only four cars and a hearse. Of course, almost everyone thought he'd died in Wisconsin a dozen years earlier.

Ray Christman's memorial service drew thousands of the faithful, even though his dying, his murder, had broken his image and shown him fallibly human. They still thought of him as the inspired genius who'd given them the new gnosis. In the case report, Prudential hadn't included the role the Merlins had played in Christman's church. Martti had checked with them. Both had said no, and it wasn't actually pertinent to the case anyway.

Who would know when Vic Merlin died? Who outside his circle of friends? Not many. And the Merlins' wouldn't care, he felt sure of that.

Maybe, Martti thought, he should spend some time with the Merlins, or the Diaconos. They were obviously remarkable people with remarkable abilities. And good people. If he did spend some time with them, would he change the way Tuuli had changed? How changed was she, though? Now that he stopped to look at it, she wasn't basically changed. Just overhauled, tuned up. . . .

Maybe someday he'd do it, spend a couple of weeks with the Diaconos. A weekend with Vic, anyway. But just now he'd live his own way. Maybe that's what he was supposed to be doing. Anyway he was good at what he