EIGHTEEN

"Are you saying you found another Teleport?"

 

Davy came down to breakfast reluctantly, timidly. It had been three in the morning on the East Coast when they'd returned from Nigeria, and after Hyacinth had left his room, he'd felt limp with exhaustion. Though not in the way I'd thought I would be.

When sleep had finally come, it brought nightmares of small plane crashes and burning villages, towering natural gas flares bending from on high and torching house after house. At one point in the horrid stew of images, he'd seen Reverend Ilori bent over the coals of his burning church, cooking a large lizard on a stick. He turned to Davy and said, "Good eating!"

When he stuck his head into the breakfast room there was no sign of Hyacinth, but the room wasn't empty.

Conley was sitting at the table, alone.

"Well, the math is bizarre and nobody believes my data and I can't tell them the circumstances."

Davy blinked, relieved.

Bad enough that I've turned a monster loose, he thought, thinking of Roule. I'm glad I don't have to eat breakfast with one. He'd gone along with the recovery because the kidnappers really were bandits. He'd seen the newspaper reports about the attack—seven guards and a secretary killed during the abduction—and he'd thought he was actually doing a good deed.

Davy looked suspiciously at Conley. His recent encounter with Hyacinth made him reexamine the man's words. "What do you mean, 'can't tell them?' "

Conley looked up blinking, clearly engrossed in his physics puzzles. "Am not allowed to."

Davy jumped to the other side of the table, standing right behind Conley. With his right hand he grabbed the neck of Conley's shirt from behind and shoved down as Conley tried to scramble to his feet. With his left hand he ripped Conley's shirt open, exposing the man's left shoulder, collarbone, and upper chest.

The scars were there, both of them. He prodded with his finger and felt the hard lump under the skin.

Conley, realizing what he was doing, stopped struggling.

Davy released him and walked slowly back around the table.

Conley glared at him. "I really liked this shirt!" Pointedly, he popped a dangling button off its last strand of thread and dropped it in his shirt pocket.

Davy pursed his lips. "Your scars are older than mine, but not as old as Hyacinth's. How long ago did they put it in?"

Conley poured himself some more coffee from the thermos carafe. "You saw Hyacinth's scars? Wow."

Davy felt himself blush scarlet. "Is it everybody here? Everybody who comes in contact with Simons?"

Conley shuddered slightly like a horse twitching off a biting fly. He stared at the opposite wall and said, "Not only did I track your mass moving from station to station, but every time you jumped, the gravitational signature actually overlapped for one hundred and thirty to two hundred milliseconds. It was as if you were in two places at once, which is impossible, of course."

Davy sat down and shook his napkin out before placing it in his lap. "Must be anybody who knows Simons. Inner circle stuff."

Conley shook a packet of artificial sweetener into his cup. "So it confirms my previous hypothesis. You aren't really disappearing and reappearing. You're opening a gateway, a hole between the two space-time locations. Because the hole persists, I'm getting my doubled mass reading—through the door."

Davy poured himself coffee. "I think I know what you mean."

Conley looked up from stirring his coffee, the spoon dangling in his hand. "Really?"

"Yeah. For instance it seems like we're in the same room right now but from the conversation, we're actually a million miles apart."

"Think about it! Don't you know what this means? If you could open such a hole and leave it open? At the least, it means unlimited energy. You could end droughts by diverting flood waters from one part of the planet to parched riverbeds elsewhere. Add a hydroelectric generator and you'd get energy as well. Hell, open a gate between a low altitude reservoir and an upper one and you have perpetual energy."

"Perpetual motion?" said Davy, a skeptical look on his face. "Where does the energy come from?"

It was Conley's turn to blush. "Well, where does the energy come from for your jumps?"

Davy shrugged, "Ah, that. Well, each time I jump every hot beverage on earth loses a millicalorie of heat."

Conley stared at his coffee for a second before smiling. "Well, that's a thought. We should measure the net energy in your departure and destination environments."

"Yeah—imagine what global warming would be like without my efforts!"

Conley sighed. "I take it you don't really know where the energy comes from?"

"I take it you don't know which of the staff here have implants in their chest?"

Conley stopped talking and ate his breakfast. Davy glared at him for a moment before fetching his own from the sideboard. When he was done, Davy said, "I'm going to the beach if it's okay with you."

"Conley looked vaguely up at the ceiling and said, "Turn on the beach keys, please."

A wall-mounted intercom said, "All clear."

Davy shivered. He thought he was watched always, but it was nasty to have it confirmed.

Conley nodded at Davy. "Listen for the whistle—he wants to talk to you later."

"He? Your master? Simons?"

Conley looked away. "He's flying in. They'll want you locked down when he lands."

"Yes, Renfield."

Conley looked puzzled and raised his eyebrows.

"You guys need to read more. Go Google it. R, E, N, F, I, E, L, D. To narrow it down add the search term 'Stoker.' " He jumped directly to the beach.

It's an odd duck that doesn't know who Renfield is.

The wind was strong out of the east, parallel to the beach, tearing the long ocean swells to rags as they broke. Davy sat in sun-warmed sand in the lee of a rock, sheltered from the stinging wind-borne sand.

The tide was out. He stared at the smooth expanse of wet sand and thought about tramping out a message for passing spy satellites, DAVY HERE, in letters twenty feet on a side. It would be visible but, even if his jailers let him do it, what were the odds of the right SatIntel analyst reporting it to someone who was sufficiently in the know?

He thought about what Conley had told him, about keeping the gate open. He pictured putting his hand in a full bathtub in Stillwater and simultaneously putting the same hand in the cistern in the cliff house—holding the gate open—having the water flow through from bath to tank. Would beat hauling buckets.

The whistle blew and, reflexively, he jumped back to his room, in the square. Conley was already there, the padlock in his hand. "Time to put on the manacle, I'm afraid. They're on final approach."

Davy put the manacle on around his ankle. He let Conley examine it for snugness, snap the padlock shut, and check that the lock was definitely engaged.

Conley didn't stop there—he followed the chain to its floor anchor and verified every link. "Secure," he said to the mirror.

It was another half-hour before Hyacinth came in the door and double-checked the chain and lock. Only then did she hold the door for Lawrence Simons to enter, a file folder in his hand. After Simons was seated, just outside the radius of Davy's chain, she took up a station against the wall. She didn't speak and she didn't look at Davy.

"Good morning, Mr. Rice. Good morning, Dr. Conley."

Davy watched Simons's face. The man smiled as he spoke but it struck Davy that the politeness was a shell, spoken like some barely understood foreign language. He knows when to use the phrases but he doesn't really understand why.

Simons continued. "I don't think we'll be needing you at this time, Dr. Conley."

Conley blinked, then said, "Of course. I'll be in my office." He left quickly and, Davy thought, gratefully.

After he was gone Simons turned to Hyacinth and said, "If you'd see about that other matter, my dear."

Hyacinth nodded and left.

Simons put on the polite smile again and said, "Nice work there in Nigeria."

Davy nodded slightly. "Have you known Mr. Roule long?"

Simons tilted his head as if considering. "I've known of him for several years. But I don't think I've ever been in the same room with him. He's not a direct report."

"Ah, so he is one of yours?"

"He is unaware of the connection."

"What happened to the kidnappers?"

Simons shook his head. "Bit of a botch, really. The army leveled the island and pumped thousands of rounds into the surrounding mangroves but they didn't come up with a single body. Closer coordination was called for."

"To keep them from leveling the mission?"

Simons looked at Davy like he was from another planet. "To insure the destruction of the kidnappers."

Hyacinth came back in and nodded to Simons. "All off, sir."

"You're sure?"

"I unplugged the AV board. All video and audio feeds are dead until I plug it back in and I locked that room. I have the only key on site."

Davy remembered the day the welder had blown the circuit breaker—how Hyacinth had talked to the mirror without response. He filed it away.

"Very good, Hyacinth." Simons shifted in his seat, turning his attention fully upon Davy.

"As I understand it, you can teleport to any place you've been previously."

Davy shrugged. "Within reason. I have to have sufficient recall of the place. If I haven't been there in a while, I need my memory jogged."

"Jogged? How jogged?"

"By going there again, by some more traditional means." He paused for a second then added, "Or images—photos or video."

Simons took a folded page from his file folder. "I see. How fresh is your memory of Caracas?" He handed the sheet to Davy.

Davy unfolded the sheet and studied it in silence. It was a color printout of the central areas of Caracas, major avenues only, with several points of interest highlighted and an overlay of the subway system.

Simons shook his head. "You were there last July for the NSA. You delivered several cardboard boxes."

Indeed? Davy looked up surprised. Simons knew that much. "All right. I have a site at the Metro station at Plaza Venezuela. Also at the Parque Central."

"Not Bolivar Plaza?"

"I wouldn't go there in an armored car."

"Surely in daylight?"

"Well, perhaps in a large group, in daylight."

"The airport?"

Davy shook his head. "It's been seven years. I had no business there and since the coup attempts and the strikes, it's not been one of my, shall we say, pleasure destinations."

Simons waved his hand and said, "Surely you didn't take the boxes to a public metro station?"

"Close. The agent-in-place parked a moving van in a nearby alley. I jumped the boxes into the back of the truck. Then I closed the padlock on the door and left. They picked the truck up twenty minutes later. They never saw me. They don't know how the boxes were delivered. They weren't supposed to." He looked at Simons. "Neither were you."

Simons ignored the last. "Did you know what was in the boxes?"

"You don't?" Davy had known. He also knew roughly what its purpose was, else he wouldn't have moved it. But he didn't want to share that with Simons.

"I know. Paper."

Hyacinth frowned. "Documents? They used him for FedEx?"

Simons shook his head. "Brightly colored paper. Venezuelan Bolivars. The price was falling even then. They sent several million."

"Why not dollars?"

"Traceability. They were setting up a network of informants on both sides."

Well, that's what they told me. Hope it wasn't another attempt to destabilize the government. He didn't think it was. "Do you work for the NSA?" Davy said.

Simons laughed. "Of course not, silly boy. Like Roule, they have no idea of the relationship."

"You don't work for them," Davy said slowly. "But sometimes—"

"Exactly. Sometimes they work for me."

Davy shuddered. He couldn't help it. Visceral—that's what it was, and Simons watched with a faint smile on his face.

"So, your NSA file—and let me tell you, it was very difficult getting a copy—says you're the only known teleport. What other lies are in the file?"

Davy raised his eyebrows. "Oh stop it. Am I still beating my wife? Don't you have better things to do with your time? Who came up with this approach—Conley?"

"The facts dictated it." Simons crossed his legs and tilted his head to one side, continuing to watch Davy steadily.

Davy stared back. He narrowed his eyes. "Are you saying you've found another teleport?"

"I am."

"I don't believe it. I've been actively looking for ten years. Who is it? Where are they from?"

Simons shook his head. "You're very good. You haven't shown yourself capable of this level of deception before. You had us all fooled."

"You think I'm lying?" He shrugged. "Okay, feel that way. There are really twenty-seven other teleports. My gang, and when they catch up with you you'll wish you'd never been born."

Simons frowned. "Now see? You're so clearly lying when you say that, that your ability to dissemble about the other teleport surprises me. How is it done?"

"The lying? Or the teleporting?"

"Who was the first to teleport? Was it you or was it your wife? We know from the file that she was held by the NSA during your first 'interactions' with them, yet she didn't escape. Either she couldn't do it then, or it was very deep cover."

"My wife?" Davy laughed, but it died almost immediately as the implications settled in. "What on earth makes you think she can jump?" Davy couldn't help it—he found his voice rising. If they thought Millie could jump she'd be an even higher priority target for Simons. Not just as a way to control Davy but as a spare.

"She was trapped in a hotel room in Virginia. My people were in the hall, outside the window, and in both adjoining rooms. They were monitoring her movements acoustically through the wall. When the point man went through the front door, the monitor heard a splash from the tub. Her clothes were there—she was gone."

Davy's eyes widened. "No way. Your people are hosing you." Or you are hosing me.

Simons had tilted his head to the other side. "Hmmm. We must consider the third possibility, I suppose."

Davy was there before him but he kept his mouth shut.

"That she couldn't jump before, but now she can."

What do they hope to gain with these lies? "What was she doing in Virginia."

"Looking for you." Simons took another sheet of paper out of his folder and pushed it across to Davy. It was a poster with Davy's picture, a shot he recognized from their stay in Tahiti. It gave the rough time and place of his disappearance and asked for anyone who had information to call the number below. However, the number had been cut out of the paper with a razor blade or X-Acto knife.

His intake of breath was sudden, surprising. The picture was from the cliff house bedside table. He felt tears well to his eyes and he blinked them away. He tried to make his voice light, uncaring. "Ah. Well, it's not a milk carton." She made it out of the cliff house. The relief was painful, overwhelming, and he knew it showed in his face. So what—Millie was all right and she wasn't in their hands.

Why are they trying to convince me she can jump? Maybe Millie had faked something. He'd seen magicians do some pretty convincing fakes in the past. "To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only jumper there is. You sure the NSA isn't spoofing you? Maybe your people were listening to a tape recorder?"

Simons's eyes narrowed for the barest second before his expression returned to its customary urbanity.

He isn't sure, Davy realized.

Simons turned to Hyacinth. "Please fetch Miss Johnson."

Davy didn't recognize the name.

"Yes, sir." She left.

"You trouble me, Mr. Rice. Your field test in Nigeria was quite promising. It is my hope that you'll continue to make yourself useful, but, in the event you choose not to, I want to make absolutely clear that the consequences will be severe."

Davy tensed. Was he about to be punished for supposedly concealing Millie's ability to teleport? Well, if they activate it, I'll aim for his very expensive suit.

When Hyacinth came back she held the door. His old friends Thug One and Thug Two came through the door, each holding the arm of a figure dressed in a short-sleeve, ill-fitting, dark green jump suit. The hands were cuffed in back and they had a black cloth sack over her head. Once the door was shut, Thug One pulled off the hood revealing the woman's face. She was a black woman who blinked rapidly in the sudden light and her lower lip was bleeding. She looked familiar to Davy. Then her eyes squeezed shut in a prolonged blink before reopening, and her tongue thrust wildly out of her mouth.

"Sojee?" It'd been over three months but the facial twitches were unmistakable. "What did they do to you?"

Sojee looked at him blankly, then smiled. "My angel!" Her face was transformed, bloody lip and all. She tried to step forward but her escorts pulled her back. Bitterly, she said, "They took my coat."

Thug Two, the redhead, was holding a bloody handkerchief to his beak-like nose.

Simons frowned. "What happened?" His voice was mild but both guards looked nervous.

Thug Two said nasally, "She head-butted me, sir. In the nose. I knocked her back, off of me."

Simons's voice was scathing. "You know what she did in D.C.! Did you underestimate her because she's a woman or black?" Simons looked at Davy. "I swim in a sea of incompetence. It's no wonder we haven't caught up with your wife."

Davy was watching Sojee. Besides the split lip she looked okay. Well, she looked like Sojee. Her facial spasms were as severe as ever and the way she stood there, her head tilted to one side, he suspected she was listening to voices. "What happened in D.C.?"

Sojee smiled again. "The Blue Lady and I whupped 'em when they came for us. I would've finished 'em 'cept the FBI pulled me off."

Davy looked back at Simons.

Simons closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Davy said, "Who is the Blue Lady, Sojee?"

Sojee frowned. "What? The Blue Lady! The one who comes from the sea to protect us." She pointed down at the poster on the table. "The lady who was handing out those. She said she was your wife."

"Millie?"

Sojee nodded.

"She is my wife. But why 'Blue Lady?' Was she sad or is it something else?"

"Yes and yes."

Davy shook his head, his mind racing. "How long have they had you? Are they mistreating you?"

"They lock me in a heated room with a shower and a toilet. They stick meals under the door on trays, three times a day. It's horrible."

"Enough!" said Simons. "Take her back."

Sojee looked down at Davy's shackle, then at Simons. Her mouth made a silent oh. "I see." She jerked her head over toward Simons. "Satan's minion, the demon king."

Simons waved his hand and Thugs One and Two put the hood back over her head and pulled her back out through the door. When it had closed again, Simons said, "She may think her conditions are bad now, but I invite you to consider how much worse they could be."

Davy had a hard time not laughing in Simons's face. Sojee hadn't been complaining—she'd been boasting. Compared to the streets, the cell was like heaven... for now.

Simons continued, "They're idiots. Brutal idiots." He looked into Davy's eyes. "But for all that, they'll do exactly what I say. And, after the head-butting incident, they'll probably enjoy it."

Davy felt his stomach roiling. "You'll have to spell it out."

"You're right," said Simons. "There should be no chance of misunderstanding. It goes like this: when I said the consequences of non-cooperation would be severe, I was talking about more than just for you personally. Ms. Johnson will also face those consequences and Hyacinth will deliver the results to you one finger joint at a time. Do I make myself clear?"

Davy made his face go blank. "You do."

Simons stared at Davy for a moment, silent, considering. Finally he said, "Very well. Let's talk about Caracas."

 

They served him lunch in his room, but Conley didn't come back in with the key until the afternoon was almost gone. As he removed the padlock, Conley said, "I've thought up some experiments to try, but we'll have to wait until they've finished with you. Day after tomorrow, perhaps?"

"I suppose." Davy rubbed his ankle. "So, they haven't told you?"

Conley held up his hands. "Apparently it's not my concern, so I'm happier not knowing."

Davy gestured at the shackle. "I take it Simons hung around for a while?"

"Golf, I believe. He flew in to play golf. Now he's gone, though."

Davy shuddered. Busy day for Simons. Fly to Martha's Vineyard. Taunt prisoner. Threaten torture to innocent victim. Eighteen holes of golf. Fly back to wherever. A minion's work is never done. He gave his attention to Conley. "Umm. Well, what kind of experiments?"

"Thought we might try jumping back and forth between two different places, quick as you can, oscillating so to speak."

"More like vacillating. Like I can't make up my mind where I want to be."

"Yes. We know there's some persistence of the phenomenon, perhaps we can actually get the gate to stay open."

Davy thought about this. "How will you tell? How can you measure it?"

Conley frowned. "By what flows through, I suppose. I might put a weak radio transmitter by one location and a field strength meter at the other. If we can get the signal strength to stabilize—"

Davy nodded. "Got it." His felt his heart pounding and a rush of adrenaline coursed through him. Got it! He wondered if Conley had thought it through. The impulse to glance at the mirror was almost overwhelming but he mastered it.

Conley nodded back. "Well, we'll try it when you're back, unless you want to try something right now."

Davy shook his head. Simons told him they were waiting for the electronic keys to be flown from Nigeria to Caracas. Apparently the soonest the KLM flight could get to Venezuela was six o'clock but there was serious doubt as to whether they'd made the connection in Amsterdam. There was very little chance they'd need Davy before tomorrow but he wasn't going to tell Conley that. "They told me to hold myself ready."

He felt safe in this lie. They'd turned off the cameras and the microphones after all. Or they said they did. He didn't really doubt it, though—it wasn't as if they'd been trying to get Davy to say anything revealing or incriminating. Simons had been the one doing all the talking.

What, then, was the point? What topic of the briefing did they not want on tape? Well, they did threaten to chop Sojee's fingers off joint by joint. He remembered other things said and done in this room, ostensibly when the cameras and microphones were operating. No, it's something about Caracas.

Conley was still looking at him, hefting the weight of the padlock in his hand. "You all right?"

Davy blinked. "Oh. Yeah. Just thinking about that stuff you said you didn't want to know about."

"I don't ask. Don't tell."

Davy exhaled. "You be nice to me or I'll start telling you everything I know. And, of course, I'll tell them I told you."

He'd meant it as a jest, something to get the conversation off of the notion of a gate, but Conley blanched and dropped the padlock to the floor. "Shit." He stooped to pick it up and when he stood again his eyes were wary.

Davy felt compelled to say, "Just kidding, man. Really."

Conley put the padlock on the dresser and said, "I'll go work on my notes. Later." He opened the door partway and sidled through.

That was weird.

He turned his thoughts back to Sojee. He hadn't gotten any sense of another prisoner in the mansion. They'd told him he had the run of the public rooms when he was allowed out of his room but he'd been warned away from any locked door. He'd also been told specifically never to enter the room behind the mirror again on pain of confinement to the square.

He couldn't get into the attic—the door was steel and locked. He was looking down the steps into the basement when Hyacinth showed up, an amused look on her face. "Miss Crazy Face isn't in the building, Lover. She was well away from here even before lunch." She spread her hands. "We're not stupid."

No. Unfortunately.

"The keys made it to Caracas but we're giving the boys the night off. Jet lag. We'll go oh-eight-hundred—that's nine in Caracas. Set your alarm or, if you want, you can leave a wakeup call with me. I'd be glad—"

Davy jumped away, back to his room, without letting her finish. He was hoping she'd find it as annoying as any other person who'd been cut off in mid-sentence. But I doubt it. Hyacinth would see his reaction as her victory.

Let her. If Hyacinth thought she was in the driver's seat, she'd be less vigilant.

Maybe I should sleep with her. Let her have her way to put her off guard. He felt his body responding to the thought. You just want to get laid. Stop rationalizing. He called up the memory of Brian Cox's blood splashing across his face in the rain and the scars above and below Hyacinth's collarbone. The ache subsided.

A shower is called for.

He started the water running before undressing. The boiler in the basement was huge, but it took some time for the heated water to run through the pipes to the third floor. Once it reached his bath, though, the supply was unlimited. Long showers had saved his sanity. After the messy and shameful episodes when they'd trigger the device, it took a long time under the water to feel clean again.

But another thing he'd noticed: when the bathroom door was open and the shower was running at length, it filled the bath with clouds of steam and coated the mirror in the bathroom with moisture.

It blocked the camera.

Before, he'd used that privacy to cry, to rage, and to masturbate. Now, it was time to use it for something else.

Slowly, to start. He began with a simple jump of a mere three feet, from one end of the tub to the other. He stood relaxed, his feet spread. There was a shower mat but it didn't extend the entire length of the tub and he didn't want to fall on his ass. He took a towel from the rack and spread it over the uncovered part of the tub. Wet, it clung to the enamel and he felt more confident.

He changed his orientation with each jump, always facing toward the opposite end of the tub. He stepped up the pace, jumping twice a second easily, three times a second. His vision spun. The two shower walls, one with the showerhead and controls and one with a towel rack, blurred together and then the figure appeared, like a ghost in the mist, facing him, there and not there.

"Shit!" He shoved his right hand out and recoiled away. The shower head banged into the back of his head, the water valves stabbed into his butt. The figure in front of him also threw an arm forward, flinching backward, and vanished.

Oh. Despite the scrape on his posterior, he started laughing.

It's like a Firesign Theatre record: "How can you be in two places at once when you're really nowhere at all?" He remembered a time right after they'd begun conditioning him when he couldn't face himself in the mirror. No mirror. Can you face yourself now?

It took him a moment to get it again. He was struggling and his knees were getting weak. Jumping had never tired him before, but this was draining. He was about to give it up again but there he was, blurred, two sets of features overlapping, like the showerhead and the towel rack blurring together. He reached out cautiously with his right hand—both of them—and his fingertips touched, solid, yet with an underlying vibration, a shaking. He dropped his hand and stared at the face.

Not a mirror. It wasn't what he was used to. He had regular enough features but apparently there was enough asymmetry to render the features familiar yet strange.

Push it. He changed his destination, trying to hold onto his original post at the showerhead end of the tub, while switching the other terminus to the Aerie.

His ears popped hard and the shower curtain swirled around him at a sudden gust of wind. The difference between the sweltering hot shower and the icy unheated air broke his concentration and he found himself standing completely in the Aerie. The governor kicked in and he was back in the bathtub, on his knees, vomiting up part of his lunch.

It had only been an instant—the device had kicked on in warning mode. The bathtub had already been his intended destination and he counted it a great victory that he hadn't flinched back to the square to vomit in front of their eyes.

He cleaned up with the shower still running, the steam still swirling, washing the vomit down the tub drain. He hoped they hadn't heard the retching over the noise of the water. The tub clean, he stood with his head tilted up, his mouth open, letting the water run into and out of his mouth, rinsing the taste, soothing his throat.

When he bent over to turn off the water, the room swam, and he had to steady himself against the wall to keep from falling. He thought it was the heat at first, but realized quickly that he felt drained—exhausted. He did a sketchy job of drying himself and staggered, more than walked, into the bedroom. He stared at the dresser across the room but it seemed unimaginably far. He dragged the covers back on the bed and let himself fall.

He struggled to think. Did they drug me? It was nearly dinner time and he'd last eaten five hours before. He felt like he'd been awake for days and, despite an overt effort to keep his eyes open, he plunged into sleep.