Sorrows of Adoration (74 page)

“I believe you mean
‘whomever’,” Jason said in a dark tone.

“Just tell us what you
found already, sheesh,” Trish complained.

“Two years ago, Dr.
Steele sent out an urgent memo out that anyone working on her
‘special project’ was now under severe food restrictions while at
work, which pretty much come down to not eating anything that can
last in the stomach for any time as a viable seed or plant
material. I can’t find any other internal notes or memos about it,
but it does coincide with the reported disappearance of one of the
lab assistants, Yuko Hansuke.

“The local paper says
her roommate reported her missing when she didn’t come home, and
Dr. Steele told police Hansuke was feeling ill and left early,
which her passcard record confirmed. An article two days later says
her car was found just off of I-90 near North Bend, and then a
couple of months later her decomposed body was found downstream in
the Snoqualmie River.”

“So, what, you think
Dr. Steele killed her?” Trish asked.

“No, he thinks Gaia
did,” Jason said.

“What? Why? How?” Trish
asked, but even as she spoke the words it was clear by her
horrified expression that she’d gleaned the answer.

Don explained, “If Gaia
can make anything grow, then it’s reasonable to assume she can do
so even if the source material is currently inside—”

“Oh my god, don’t say
it! I just lost my appetite for a week!”

Don nodded. “Maybe
Steele dumped the body to avoid questions that would expose her
ugly little secret project. Gaia might have a level of power that
we’d never considered before.”

“You have absolutely no
evidence that she even knew she was hurting someone,” Jason said
defensively. “You know very well I can sense familiar people far
away, even behind walls, and unfamiliar but emotionally charged
people at a distance. Maybe she can sense plants the same way,
which is why they’ve got her so far down in the first place, and if
someone came down the elevator having just eaten—”

“Please,” Trish
said.

Jason paused and then
rephrased his argument. “If someone brought vegetation down the
elevator, it could be that Gaia sensed it, locked on to it, and
started trying to use it to get herself out of there. That’s a
perfectly rational reaction to captivity. If someone had me locked
up you’d better believe I’d grab at any chance for escape despite
how I feel about killing.”

“The thing is, Jason,”
Trish said carefully, “you feel that way because you made a
decision not to be a solider anymore. We don’t know anything about
Gaia, really, including how she feels about killing us mortal
types.”

“She killed some people
in India,” Don reminded him.

“No,” Jason retorted
but then admitted, “not intentionally, not like a murderer. She
defended herself and others. Let’s clarify that right now, shall
we?”

He rose, hurried down
the little stairs into the ballroom and then up the matching ones
opposite, and whisked past the pool table and through the arch into
the gallery. He grabbed a key from on top of a cabinet, unlocked
the glass door, and withdrew a battered old journal from a stack of
books.

He strode back through
the rooms until he found Don and Trish tentatively entering the
ballroom from the parlour. He waved the book at them and said,
“Shall I read from my ‘father’s’ journal then?” He roughly flipped
through the pages until he reached one dated March 17, 1923, and
then read aloud:

I have finally found
the boy Tushar, who of course is a boy no longer, but a man now
with children of his own. He is no doubt the same lad cited in
Prasad’s account of the events near Cawnpore in 1903, for I can see
the resemblance clearly from the photo despite the weathering of
age upon his face.

I had feared in
approaching him that he would not wish to speak of it, for it had
been a bloody event and no doubt entirely traumatizing to behold,
especially in light of the reaction of the British forces who had
dispersed the populations of both villages involved.

On the contrary,
however, to my relief Tushar was all too happy to tell the tale to
any goras who actually believed him.

He recounts that
Annapurna came to his village in late summer of 1902 to the delight
of all, for they had heard tell of her miracles in other villages
before theirs. Though their harvest looked to be weak—albeit not so
poor as it had been in the famine previous—Annapurna only needed to
stand among the crops and raise her hands. Tushar wept as he
recounted how the leaves strengthened and turned a deep, rich
green, how the vegetables became so plump that all mouths watered
at the very sight, and how the air filled with the scent of a feast
to come.

They fell to their
knees in praise, but the great Annapurna would not accept it. As
she walked from the field her eyes were sad and she could not be
consoled, though she most graciously accepted a meal and lodging at
the home of one of the elders. She went from field to field about
the town in the next weeks, bringing everything to the same degree
of perfection and asking nothing beyond basic shelter in return.
She declined all requests to celebrate her magnificence but told
them she was greatly fatigued and wished for a quiet place to spend
the winter months. She pledged in return to ensure their spring
planting would be strong and viable, so the villagers of course
granted her request and gave her use of a small hut of her own.

She blessed them
through the winter with local foods grown entirely out of season,
and the villagers in turn brought her meat and cheese, but
otherwise she kept to herself and did not long entertain any
visitor.

But before the next
planting, men came from another village; they too had heard that an
incarnation of the goddess Annapurna was about and had come to beg
her to visit their village, which, like all others, had lost many
to the great famine and was only beginning to recover. They pleaded
that the British were not helping as much as promised and that
their need for her was dire. They offered her splendid items of
gold and even a necklace with an enormous ruby, but she spurned
them and said she would come only after she’d fulfilled her promise
to Tushar’s people.

The men became angry
and brandished guns and knives. Tushar said Annapurna was not moved
by their threats, though the women ran away with their children.
Tushar’s mother tried but failed to drag him away as she fled with
his younger siblings.

The men of the village
brought forth their own weapons, and despite Annapurna’s demand
that they all cease, a fight broke out and shots were fired.

Tushar was enraptured
as he recounted how the goddess knelt upon the ground, her fists
upon it as if she were clenching a rug, and beneath each fighting
man there grew a tangle of grasses and vines, encircling their feet
and legs, up the length of their bodies and knocking the weapons
from their hands.

But one man held fast
to his gun and shot Annapurna. She fell, and a heavy silence came
upon the land as she bled into it.

They all gasped when
she rose from the pool, tore her bloody dress away from her waist,
and looked upon her wound, which closed before the eyes of all. The
men wept, for they knew they had done a great evil. She caught the
bullet in her hand as divine magic forced it out of her pure form,
and she cast it to the ground, saying, “I came to help, to sustain
life in the names of those whom I have loved and lost, but I see
now that here too there lies only greed and hate and pain upon
pain.”

She waved her hand,
and the vines that bound them wilted away. The men fell to the
ground, except one who ran to one of the dead and screamed, “My
brother! My brother is dead! A curse be upon you all!” Then he
picked up his brother’s gun and aimed it at another man, but before
he could shoot, with a flick of her arm Annapurna brought forth a
tree from the ground that pierced his chest, killing him.

Two others cried that
she was not Annapurna but a demon stealing the form of the great
goddess, and they ran at her. Again she moved, and again life
sprang from the ground to entangle them, but this time it went
about their throats and strangled them dead where they stood.

All
the men fled, but Tushar stayed hidden behind crates. He watched
Annapurna go amongst the bodies and regard them all without
affection as she waved her hands, making all that she’d grown
wither and crumble to dust
. But
then she sat amongst them and wept until villagers returned
with British soldiers from the nearby camp en route to
Sikkim.

Tushar said his heart
broke when he heard Annapurna lie to the British, saying she was a
Christian missionary from Canada, that her name was Anne Parnah but
that the villagers had concocted a tale of her as the pagan goddess
Annapurna, and that they foolishly believed their unexpectedly good
harvest was due to her. The goras believed her, of course, and
gladly took her away as they set about relocating the villagers to
prevent further skirmishes.

Jason snapped the
journal shut. “Do you see? She was trying to do good. There’s no
reason to believe she’d harm anyone unnecessarily. Even I still
believe in the right to kill if necessary for self-defence or the
defence of another. If they’ve got her locked up, I’m going to set
her free, with or without your help or blessing.”

“Jason,” Trish said
gently, “of course we’ll help. We just need to be careful and
sensible. I know that’s a bit weird coming from me, but that’s how
important this is.”

“I understand
that.”

“I think we should
break for dinner,” Don suggested. “With what appetite we have left,
anyway. Then we can figure out what to do later.”

“At the very least, I
want to go down there and see what’s going on for myself,” Jason
said. “She can’t hurt me in any permanent way.” He turned to take
the journal back to the cabinet and left them standing there.

After he gently closed
and relocked the glass door, he turned to the enormous portrait
hanging on the wall to his right. He sighed and closed his eyes,
knowing if he looked too long it would draw him in as it always
did, and someone would have to come fetch him for dinner. He didn’t
want to deal with that, so he forced himself to leave.

* * *

Late that night, after
an exhaustive session of reading, hacking, and discussion, Trish
said, “Okay, I think we’ve got a plan, then.”

“A risky plan,” Don
muttered.

“That’s why you get to
stay with the first van,” Trish retorted.

“I still think it’s too
dangerous for you to go in there.”

“Oh god, not again.”
Trish groaned.

Jason raised his hands
and firmly declared, “We’ve been through that. I’m not thrilled
either, but she made her point about me needing her in there, and
I’ll keep her safe. With Dr. Steele away on conference this week,
we need to move now.”

Trish said, “So let’s
summarize what we need to do over the next couple of days. Jason,
you’re going to have Judy book a hotel suite and a rental van in
Seattle, and then I’ll book the second van with one of our
generalized corporate cards. Don, you’re going to file the flight
plan with the FAA so we have our fake-Seattle-meeting alibi all
wrapped up with a pretty bow.”

“Will do,” Don said.
“And I’ll schedule it as another test of the plane to add extra
veracity, since we haven’t flown three people that far since the
last solar cell upgrade.”

“It’ll be safe, though,
right?” Jason asked.

“Oh definitely. I
wasn’t even going to officially test it after such a small
upgrade,” Don said. “It’s just an excuse.”

Jason rubbed his eyes.
“Do we have an excuse for why we’d rent a gas van instead of the
usual electric limo service?”

Trish thought for a
moment and then muttered, “Fuck. Judy’ll notice. And she’ll notice
if you book it yourself too. Damn it, I’ll book the hotel and van
and tell her I’m using my credit card perk points if she asks why.
Then if anyone notices I booked a gas van, I’ll say it was part of
the perk package, or something. We’ll cross that bridge if we come
to it.

“Anyway, I’m going to
find that blonde wig I wore at Halloween a few years ago, plus dig
out some various-sized clothes so if anyone is down there we can
get them into something inconspicuous when we leave. Don, you’re
going to get us two lab coats that don’t have any of our labs’
names on them, one that’s too big for me and one too short for
Jason, so it makes us harder to accurately describe should anyone
notice us.”

“I’ve got that in my
notes. Don’t worry.”

“And lucky thing you’re
in need of a haircut anyway, Jason, so arrange to get it cut as
soon as we’re back. Remember not to shave tomorrow morning or the
day after so you’ll have major bush-beard going.”

“I know,” Jason
replied. “Maybe I should work from home once I’m really fuzzy so
nobody notices at the office. Nobody will care the first day, but
after that someone’s bound to comment.”

“Yeah, go in tomorrow
but not the next day,” Trish agreed. “In fact, when I do my
preliminary set-up of how I’m going to fuck up their security
cameras, I should do that from here too, just in case.”

“It could appear
suspicious if we all stay home a lot, so Don should still go
in.”

“I will,” Don replied.
“I’ve been putting other things off, so I’ll be conspicuously
around.”

“Okay,” said Trish.
“Jason, promise me you’ll stick to the plan to drain and drop her
if we get her out and she goes crazy.”

“I said I would.”

“But I know you’re not
happy about it.”

“I’m never happy about
using my ability to knock out anyone, but I recognize the utility
and importance of that aspect. Bear in mind that we don’t know if I
can affect her at all.”