The Edge of Ruin (21 page)

Pamela drifted through the crowd, picking up fragments of conversation. Much of it centered around the power vacuum that was forming at the heart of the federal government. Rumor had it that the White House was divided, with some staff urging the President to address the nation, set up an international conference, take action. Another faction argued that what was occurring could not be handled by ordinary human agencies, and so a stream of religious leaders were parading through the West Wing. There was a nod at inclusiveness, but most were of the president’s traditional Protestant denomination.

Wilder rumors circulated around the Pentagon that the military was planning to take control. No, the President would be imposing martial law, it wouldn’t be a military coup. Congress dithered, passed resolutions, debated, tried to pass additional spending bills, hire more police, reinstate the draft, demand the president work with our European and Asian allies. In short nobody seemed to have a clue about what to do.

And Pamela realized that all these people had gathered because they thought maybe her brother would know. She circled back to Richard, and found him in a knot of agents.

“… talk to local law enforcement,” Richard was saying.

“And tell them
what
?” a woman agent asked, and her tone was sharp and brittle.

Richard’s tone stayed patient and even. “To keep visible. Maintain a presence in their towns and cities. If we’re AWOL it will only add to the sense of fear and chaos. We’re the guardians, the bulwark against chaos,” Richard concluded, and amazingly it didn’t sound pompous or overly dramatic because he believed it so totally.

Maybe he didn’t become a policeman just to outrage the family
, Pamela thought.
But then why did he?

“We got a report out of South Dakota that angels have been appearing in some little town, and the people have been giving them their children,” said a burly young man wearing a SWAT gimme cap. “By the time a team arrived from Pierre they found the town deserted. Everybody was gone, two thousand people, just gone. Poof. Their sheriff and deputy didn’t help them.”

“Crime is up everywhere,” another man offered. “Way past what any of us can cope with. The President needs to mobilize the National Guard.”

“And I ask again,” the woman broke in. “To do
what
?”

“Yeah,” came a mutter from the back of the crowd. “The National Guard worked so well down in Virginia.”

Richard dragged a spoon back and forth through his untouched gumbo. He had lost that certainty and fervent zeal, and had what Pamela thought of as the stricken fawn expression.

“I’m going to be meeting with senators and representatives,” Richard said. “We’ll find someone who’ll … who’ll …”

“What?” a voice demanded.

“Listen,” Richard said.

“I don’t want ’em to listen. I want ’em to do something.”

“Okay, folks, let’s go into the study,” Franklin called.

All the hard-faced cop types shuffled into a room at the back of the house. Pamela was carried along with them. French doors offered a view across a small backyard crowded with a swing and slide set, a sandbox, and a big gas grill. There were a surprising number of books on the shelves, and the desk was dominated by a twenty-three-inch computer monitor. Cables snaked from the computer to the sixty-inch flat-screen television hanging on the far wall. A skinny man whose hair was rumpled like a pale brown haystack slouched in the desk chair, keyboard on his lap, fingers flying across the keys. He appeared to be playing an online game.

Franklin laid a hand on the bony shoulder of the man at the computer. “Ready, Danny?”

“Yeah, like, ages ago.”

“You’re sure they won’t suspect?” Syd asked.

Danny made a face and pressed the palm of his hand against his chest. “Am I not the best? Seriously, I built in a trapdoor, and set up an automatic routine to imitate a hacker. They’ll be chasing my little myth while we take a look at the satellite feed.”

“Okay,” Syd said vaguely. “I guess that makes sense.”

There was the quick clatter of keys, and an image stabilized on the computer screen and the television. From her vantage Pamela couldn’t see the monitor. Unfortunately she had a great view of the television. The largest topographical features—hills, a cliff face—were veiled in mist … or smoke, it was hard to determine which. Deep within the shifting tendrils of gray was the outline of a massive structure. But the form seemed subtly off, making it very hard for her brain to make sense of the image. Figures that defied description moved through the coiling mist.

Pamela had seen her share of special effects movie monsters, computer magic designed to terrify and disgust. Compared to what she now saw slithering through the shrouding mist, the special effects houses might have been working with hand puppets and paper cutouts. What she was seeing was
wrong
and dangerous, and she responded to it at the most basic of levels. Fear shivered deep in her gut; her breath came shallow and quick. She wanted to run, to hide, to cry, to scream.

“We’re down to orbital cameras now.” Franklin’s voice carried through the room. “People come apart—mentally—in there. Then we tried sending in predator drones, but they all crashed.”

“Technology doesn’t work where there’s an Old One, or that much magic,” Richard said.

Around her there was a soundless reaction like the shifting of muscles on some large animal from the thirty people crammed into the room.

The image clicked away from the cliff face, and there was a flare of golden light. “There!” Richard said. He pointed. “Can you magnify that?”

More clicks, each one making the image larger, brought into focus a curving wave of glass resting in the center of a small meadow. Inside the glass there was a pale glitter like gold and diamond dust. On one side of the glass structure loomed a great gate. On the other was a black opening that hung in the air. The image on the television flickered and rolled as Danny sent commands to the satellite cameras and tried to get an angle into the opening.

“That’s the best I can do,” the computer tech said.

There was another shift from the crowd, and this time a murmur of distressed comments, for what they seemed to be seeing was a distant sun against a backdrop of stars.

“What the hell is that?” someone called.

“A galaxy far, far away,” someone else replied. There was a smattering of hollow laughter.

Richard said something to Franklin and Syd. A man in the crowd called, “Speak up, we can’t hear you.”

Pamela saw the blush as Richard turned his back on the television and faced the crowd.

“I said, they don’t seem to have altered the terrain around Kenntnis. And he doesn’t seem to be guarded.”

“Does the acres and acres of crazy-making crap count?” Sam asked blandly, and Richard’s blush got even deeper.

Franklin looked over at him. “Syd says if we free this Kenntnis guy these gate things will vanish. Is that true?”

“I don’t think it’s quite that easy,” Richard said. “But their effects will certainly be diminished. And we’ll have the help of somebody who knows how to close the gates, and fight the Old Ones. He’s done it before. A long time ago.”

“But nobody can go in there and keep functioning,” another person called from near the back of the room.

“Speaking of, could we turn that off?” a woman standing next to Pamela said as she pointed at the television. “It’s making me …”

She couldn’t seem to bring herself to say it.

Apparently female machismo wasn’t limited to Sam in this crowd. Pamela said it for her. “Afraid. It makes us afraid.”

Danny looked to Franklin, who looked to Richard. Her brother nodded. A few keystrokes and the screen went dark. Syd looked over at Richard. It was strange for Pamela to see people looking to her brother for guidance.

“Richard, do you suppose people like me and Sam, people who’ve been touched with the sword—do you think we could go in?” Syd asked.

“The sword doesn’t make you brave. It just makes you sane,” Richard said gently.

“And if you’re sane you’ll probably want to run away from the monsters,” Sam added. This time there wasn’t even a titter of gallows laughter from the people in the room.

Richard looked seriously up at Franklin and Syd, then swept the assembled agents with an intense blue-eyed gaze. “And while they can’t feed on you after you’ve been touched, or use you to power their magic, they can kill you.”

Franklin laid a hand on Richard’s shoulder and addressed the people filling the room. “Look, the director’s AWOL. We’re getting orders out of Justice that are just plain nuts. I saw what this sword did for Syd.”

Syd grabbed his daughter and pulled her forward. “And Sam.”

For an instant the young agent hesitated, then grudgingly admitted, “Yeah, he … it fixed me.”

“Well, I’m going to do it,” Franklin resumed. “Anybody else want to join me?” He looked around. There were confirming nods from everyone.

Richard had the hilt of the sword in his hand. The room went very quiet. People watched him with varying degrees of skepticism, fear, and dread. He drew the sword, and skepticism vanished. Pamela leaned back against the wall and felt her shoulder blades grate against a framed plaque. Each time the sword was drawn now the musical overtones became deeper, stronger, and more resonant.

Pamela had now gone past tired to total exhaustion. Not because it was after eleven at night but because of fear. What she had seen sapped her, and turned her worldview to chaos. She wanted to get this over with, go back to the condo and hide under the comforter. But somebody had to do it. It had to be said.

“Richard,” she called sharply. He looked over at her. “What about the children?”

R
ICHARD

T
he water in the swimming pool was bathtub warm. Pretty soon my strokes had slowed, and I was taking a breath every two strokes instead of every four. Only the pain as my wound pulled and tugged kept me awake.

The hilt hung on a lanyard around my neck, and it felt like it was trying to drag me to the bottom.
Man falls asleep in swimming pool. Drowns. Film at eleven.

And the sword would be the thing that tipped the balance.
I tried not to read significance into the thought.

Back home I would have left it rolled up in a towel. But not here. Here it was never leaving me.

Pamela had fallen asleep in the car on the drive back from Franklin’s. Even her terror over Sam’s breakneck driving style hadn’t been able to keep her awake. One particularly fast turn sent her falling against me. I had clasped an arm around her shoulders to steady her, and had the disorienting sense of protectiveness. Who knows, maybe some day we’d actually like each other.

Whoa, let’s not go too far here.

I kicked harder. The sound of the churning water was both muffled and hollow in the echoing, tile-lined room. We’d gotten back to the condo at 1:00
A.M.
, but my sleep had been disturbed by the memory of crying children. The adults had experienced the sword, so they knew how much it would hurt, but most hadn’t been discouraged. Only one woman had refused, saying she didn’t want to deny her child his dreams and imagination. She had taken her son and left.

Her argument had actually shaken me. Maybe kids did need pretend games and imaginary friends to develop normally. What if the sword took that away? I didn’t understand this weapon, and the man … creature who could have enlightened me was well out of reach. Which left me relying on my own judgment, and my choices so often sucked. Fortunately, Franklin was made of sterner stuff. He shrugged off the woman’s objections as dumb.
“Hell, I can still imagine. In fact I can imagine a whole hell of a lot. More than I’d like.”

I had warned that he might not feel that way when his children were crying in pain. But again Franklin had brushed if off. “
It can’t be any worse than a vaccination for school, and this is more important than a damn shot for whooping cough.”

So, in addition to reassuring me, the conversation had also provided me with a way to describe what happened when I used the sword.
Being inoculated.
It beat every other phrase people had come up with. When Cross called it “the touch” it sounded sleazy. When Pamela called it “submitting to the sword” it sounded like an S&M sex act. Dagmar had suggested “the dubbing,” but that was even worse. “Inoculated” worked.

I tucked, somersaulted, caught the side of the pool with my feet, and pushed off again. Estevan’s shadow fell across the water. What a life—rich as hell, and I had to be guarded around the clock. Boy, that’s living. The deep end seemed a long, long way away. The muscles across my shoulders and down my triceps shivered with effort. It was time to admit defeat. I sidestroked over to the ladder, pulled off my goggles, and climbed out.

Estevan held out a towel. I dried off. Next he held my robe. It felt so odd to have people waiting on me. I muttered a thank you, and we left the pool and gym area and headed for the elevators. It was inevitable. It was karma. It was kismet. We met Shih Tzu Man and his dog on the elevator. He was clutching a long pooper-scooper, and he treated us to his usual glare. The little dog seemed to be calming down about us. She just sniffed our ankles. Though Estevan looked like he wanted to drop-kick the little thing. The dog looked up at him. He looked down at her, and she reverted to form. She backed up against her owner’s legs and started yapping. Naturally that was when my cell phone started to buzz and vibrate. I pulled it out.

“Oort.”

“This is Senator Aldo’s office.”

“What?”

“Aldo, Senator Aldo.”

Holy shit! Aldo.
The senator from Nebraska held no official leadership position, but his influence went wide and deep. He was one of those figures the American people, whether Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Apathetic, seemed to embrace. Members of his own party deferred to him, the loyal opposition feared him, and the president heeded him. He sat on the Intelligence Committee and Foreign Relations, and he chaired the Armed Services Committee. It meant he’d most likely been briefed about conditions at the gate. The fact that he was calling me was significant.