Ben's car was weaving all over the dusty road.
Good thing there's no traffic, he thought with black humor. If I pass out and wreck it, I won't kill anyone but myself.
Passing out seemed like a very real possibility.
He'd guessed from the amount of time Sofie had allowed herself, and from her car not having been left in any obvious place, that she planned to drive all the way from central California to New Mexico. He'd decided to do the same, in the vain hope of overtaking her short of her destination. But he didn't have Sofie's stamina. He'd been exhausted from the drive even before he had to begin using his Avataric powers. Now he'd been straining for hours to make himself and his vehicle invisible to the U.S. military, but visible to Sofie. He'd never before attempted to sustain the illusion of invisibility longer than fifteen minutes.
Ben had lived with near-constant pain for a decade, ever since Justin had wounded him with an anointed blade. Wounds like that would never completely heal. When the U.S. entered World War II he'd been supporting himself as a carny freak, displaying his blue blood and open wounds as anomalies for which he had no explanation. His draft board had declared him 4F. Today, the cramps in his belly and the steady ache in his left arm were a maddening distraction. And he suspected that the jostling on the bad road had started the abdominal wound bleeding again, sapping his strength.
I'm so close to the site that Sofie could be nearby, not letting me see her. She may simply decide to squash me like a bug.
No, don't think that way! She knows I'm no threat to her. I can't stop her from going through with her plan, not by force. I have to believe she'll want to talk to me, if only to gloat.
Even as he struggled to retain control of the car, he began having flashbacks. In his mind's eye, he saw again the horrific vision Belyakov had shown him...of events in this desert, on this day.
A klaxon, then a blast that was beyond belief. He shuddered. A successful test of the most deadly weapon ever known to man.
The Preacher - Justin - chiding me for having "fled the wrath to come." He meant what he was saying. But the line's being a quote from John the Baptist was also a hint that he was the precursor of someone else - the Antichrist, the Omega.
That was a vision of what would happen if I did what I intended at the time, submitted myself to carny justice for having killed Lodz. I meant to pick the number six, so I'd surely die.
Is it possible that in that reality, the Justin of July 1945 was no more evil than he was in this July 1945?
He would still have been a Dark Avatar. So it's understandable that his eyes would have gone, briefly, demon-black in his fury at seeing me - the potential ally who'd copped out by choosing death.
A Justin who hadn't been weakened by what I did to him in the cornfield...
Might he have accomplished what I hope to accomplish today, by force rather than persuasion? And died in doing it?
If so, it was cold comfort. Force might have worked for an unimpaired Justin, but it couldn't work for Ben.
He had only a general idea of what Sofie planned. But that was enough to curdle his blood.
All the Avatars had used their powers to learn about the Trinity project in New Mexico. The superweapon in development, the atomic bomb. None of them had welcomed it. Ben had been appalled by its potential to claim millions of lives. Sofie, and initially Justin, had been furious because ordinary humans were making such a breakthrough without the aid of Dark Avatars. In essence, they were being put out of a job.
The scientific principles behind the bomb were sound. Ben was sure no Avatar could prevent the device's working.
Sofie had something else in mind.
x
x
x
Suddenly, her car appeared - parked at an angle to block the road, directly in front of him. Ben slammed on the brake just in time to avoid hitting it.
Sofie was watching from the roadside, her expression unreadable. In spite of their decade-long enmity, in spite of everything, his heart skipped a beat when he saw her. It always did.
He struggled out of the car - refusing to grimace with pain - and did his not-so-successful best to stand erect as they sized each other up.
The mother of his child was, like him, dressed in faded jeans and a worn, shapeless shirt. Her dark hair had more gray streaks and her face more lines than when he'd last seen her; plotting to destroy humanity was evidently just as stressful as trying to save it.
Either of them could in theory have used their power of illusion to show the other a more attractive visage. But they were already expending an enormous amount of energy to hide themselves and their cars from the military.
Sofie looked hot and tired.
After a beat, she saved Ben the trouble of thinking of an opening line by saying curtly, "Unless you've switched sides, you're a fool."
He took a deep breath. "I haven't switched sides. And maybe I am a fool. But you're not - and I know you aren't suicidal, either. So what are you doing in the middle of the intended blast zone?"
"You just said it - the intended blast zone." Her lip curled in a sneer. "I have to be here to affect the explosion. But as long as I'm here, I have the power to move it. To make the blast take place somewhere else, not harming a hair on my head." As an afterthought, she added, "Or yours, for that matter."
Ben suppressed a moan. Just as I feared. He asked carefully, "So are you planning to make it...recoil? Kill the scientists and military carrying out the test?"
"I thought of that," she acknowledged. "But I decided I'd be wasting the potential of a perfectly good bomb."
This time, he couldn't suppress his gasp. "Tell me you're toying with me."
"Afraid not."
"Sofie - do you mean to have this test wipe out a population center? Some innocent American community?"
She shrugged. "There's nothing innocent about any of them."
"For God's sake," he whispered, "tell me. Where do you intend it to strike?" Alamogordo? Las Cruces? Is she capable of killing that many people?
She folded her arms, looked straight at him, and said, "San Diego."
Ben was speechless for a full minute.
When he found his voice, he said, "How - how can you -?"
Sofie took the question literally. "I'm sure that if I have a clear picture of San Diego in my mind - and I do - my powers will enable me to move the blast that far. It's really no different than moving Justin's stupid door into the cornfield."
"No different than moving a door?" By now hot tears stung his eyes. But he fought for calm, and made himself ask, "Why San Diego?"
Sofie gave a grim smile. "Since I couldn't stop humans from developing the bomb, I mean to hurry them along toward destroying themselves with it.
"The U.S. Government won't understand what's happened, but there's no way they'll admit a test of theirs went so horribly wrong. If I hit a coastal city, they'll blame it on Japan."
"Japan? But -"
"Of course," she continued implacably, "by the time the U.S. has overrun and devastated Japan, so many experts will have discovered Japan couldn't have done it that they'll need to come up with another story. At that point they'll claim it was the Soviet Union.
"When the dust has settled after this war, the Soviet Union is sure to be America's greatest rival. And it's an Asian power as well as a European - as near our west coast as our east."
"But why would the Russians bomb San Diego?" Ben demanded. "Especially now, when we're still allies?"
Sofie was unfazed. "It doesn't have to make sense. After all, the U.S. Government will know it wasn't them. They'll just need a scapegoat. But it's sure to set the two countries on a collision course, and one of them will really bomb the other as soon as it has the capability."
"All right, all right." He had to admit the plan itself did make a grisly kind of sense. "But Sofie, why do you want to send the world hell-bent toward destruction when our son has to grow up in it?"
She'd obviously thought of that. "He doesn't have to grow up in the United States!
"Humanity will kill itself off, Ben, but not so quickly that Adam won't have a normal life span. I'm moving on, but you can step in and raise him. By the time he's an adult, he'll see the handwriting on the wall, and he won't bring children of his own into the world."
Ben couldn't imagine a bleaker future.
But ascertaining Sofie's plan had never been more than the first step of his.
x
x
x
"Sofe," he said gently. And yes, he saw a flicker in her eyes, a hint of reaction to the old, intimate nickname from her carny days. "Why do you want to kill so many people? Why do you want to destroy humanity? I'd like you to give me reasons."
And do it fast - time is running out. He'd go crazy if he kept looking at his watch, but he knew they had little more than an hour before the planned detonation.
She frowned. "Why? They've rejected the guidance of Avatars -"
He shook his head. "Forget Avatars. You're a person, Sofe, a person with free will. You can go against your Avataric nature if you want to.
"I'm not presuming to say you should. But you should decide based on your own feelings and beliefs. And I'd like to know why you, Sofie Bojakshiya, have so much hatred and bitterness in your heart."
He hoped she'd respond to the challenge.
He'd sometimes been able to dispel hatred and bitterness simply by looking into a troubled person's eyes - and beyond them, into the soul. But he knew the Omega would be a tougher nut to crack. He'd have to reason with her, if he could get through to her at all.
At least she was paying attention. She said, "I notice you called me Sofie Bojakshiya. Not Crowe."
"Yes. I know you killed Justin - and left your wedding ring behind." Then he hastened to assure her, "You won't face any legal consequences, if you're concerned about that." He couldn't help remembering that he had once killed Justin, and the man had only come back to life because Sofie revived him. "His death will be blamed on a heart attack."
"In a sense, that's exactly what it was."
Ben nodded, conceding the point. An attack, directed at his heart.
He knew Sofie had always hated Justin. She'd brought him back to life, obtaining the necessary life-force by reaching out with her mind and killing an already injured, unconscious Varlyn Stroud. But she'd only done it because she coveted Justin's power base. She'd made herself indispensable to him, then gotten him to marry her - a marriage in name only - as a way of legitimizing her expected child and keeping the child from Ben. At the time, Justin had been as anxious as she was to deny Ben his child. She'd hoped that she'd be able to take over her husband's movement and dispose of him. But despite his ill health (caused by his own unhealed wound and the blade still in his chest), he was the one with the charisma, and she found that she couldn't supplant him. In the end, he'd denounced fascism and racism, and led his followers back into the mainstream.
Ben was about to mention Sofie's hatred of Justin - understandable, given his rape of her mother - when she suddenly spoke up. "You ask why I'm bitter? Like you said, I'm Sofie Bojakshiya. And there's no justice in this world. My people, the Rom, have been persecuted for centuries."
"That's true," Ben said quietly, "they have been persecuted. But you spent years allied with a group that was just as hostile to the Rom as it was to Jews and other minorities. If they'd known your origin, they would have persecuted you." For years, Justin himself hadn't known the truth about Sofie.
"That's water over the dam," Ben continued. "What matters now is that if you destroy humanity, your Rom people will perish along with everyone else."
He caught a glimpse of doubt in her eyes. But then her expression hardened. "Come to think of it, the Rom have never done a damn thing for me. Mama had an extended family, but when she was crippled, no one but her sister Anash came near us. And Anash? She took care of Mama till I was five - five! - and then dumped the job on me. I never saw or heard from her again. I can barely remember her."
Good, Ben told himself. We're getting closer to the core of the problem.
He'd been standing since he got out of his car. He was sure he was bleeding - he'd begun to feel lightheaded - and he wanted desperately to sit down on the running board. But he refused to give in to his weakness. Think of her, not myself.
He asked carefully, "Was anyone ever good to you, Sofe?"
"No!" After a moment's pause, she admitted, "Maybe that's putting it a little too strongly. But -" Then it all came out in a rush. "The fact is, my life was in ruins from the start. Justin raped my mother, and that got me stuck caring for an invalid, and I was never loved or wanted by anyone."
Bingo.
He said, "I remember you telling me, back on the road to Damascus, that if you ever met your father, you'd kill him."
"Yes. And I finally did." She gave a defiant toss of her head, but he saw she was blinking back tears. Not for Justin. For the years of feeling unloved and unwanted.
He sensed that he needed to go back to the very beginning, to discuss the rape. He could only pray that he had enough time in which to do it.
"Sofie, this may sound strange, but I hope you'll hear me out.
"I'm not trying to justify what your father did to your mother. Nothing can excuse rape. But if you let yourself understand what happened, you might find it in your heart to forgive him.
"I think you're picturing the fortysomething Tattooed Man, the Usher of Destruction in all his demonic glory, raping Appy out of sheer savagery. It wasn't like that. Justin was still in his teens - a divinity student, of all things. Probably a virgin. He wasn't used to the feelings he was having, didn't know how to cope with them.
"And they weren't the normal feelings of a normal young man. He was a Dark Avatar - and not even a 'normal' Dark Avatar. He was destined to father a female Avatar who'd be the Omega, the 'Last.'
"I've researched his family history. And Appy's. Both families had a remarkable concentration of Avataric blood! I'm convinced that Justin was destined to father a daughter by Appy, because that was the only pairing that could produce the female Avatar. I think they both felt a compulsion to mate that went way beyond what couples normally experience. But Appy's psychic powers showed her enough of Justin's future that she was terrified of him.
"I'm not saying he couldn't have restrained himself. But he was driven by what may have been the strongest compulsion a man had ever known. And like I said, he was still in his teens."
He needed to stop to catch his breath. A white-faced Sofie said softly, "When you and I..." Her voice trailed off.
He realized she wasn't going any further, so he nodded and said, "Yes. I think we felt something similar that night in the truck. I was destined to father a son by you to prevent my ever fathering an Avatar. While we were together with Carnivale and there didn't seem to be any rush, we didn't feel anything unusual. But after you'd made up your mind to leave, the compulsion kicked in.
"We both wanted the same thing, so there was never a question of rape. But I've asked myself, what would I have done if you suddenly said 'Stop'? I think I would have stopped, hope I would have stopped. But I can't be sure. And if I had stopped, it wouldn't have been any feather in my cap, because the good decision would be easier for a Light Avatar.
"Suppose I'd decided to stop, and you wanted to continue and knew you had the power to force me to keep going. Are you absolutely sure what you would have done?"
She made him wait almost a minute for the answer. But at last she muttered, "No."
Then she said stubbornly, "But even if it's true that my parents were driven to produce a daughter, it doesn't follow that they knew it, or that anyone ever wanted me."
"No, it doesn't," he admitted. "But consider this. Your mother was a powerful psychic. She must have foreseen exactly what your birth would do to her. She could easily have had an abortion - but she didn't.
"That tells me that by the time she foresaw what would happen, she thought of the fetus in her womb as a person. And she wanted you. She probably already loved you."
He could see that Sofie was shaken. She'd apparently never thought of the foreknowledge and the abortion option. But still, she gave a vehement shake of her head. "Later - she hated me! She tormented me. And she started that fire deliberately, trying to kill me."
Ben shook his own head. "She loved you, and all she ever wanted was to protect you. Because she was so handicapped, she couldn't find better ways to do it.
"Yes, she did try to kill you. But that was a last resort, an attempt to end your life before you could do things that would cause you to lose your soul. And she was willing to take her own life along with yours."
He thought she was softening. But then she drew herself fully erect and said harshly, "It doesn't matter. My whole life has been one rejection after another."
Ben had to rest a hand on the hood of his car to steady himself. He looked down - and saw that while his shirt and jeans were too baggy to show stains, blue blood was dripping onto his left shoe.
One way or another, I only have to keep myself going for another half hour or so. Just don't faint.
He wasn't sure what Sofie had been referring to, but he hazarded a couple of guesses. "I think your Rom family pulled away because they were afraid. They were all Vectori, but they didn't know it, and your mother was the only one who was 'different.' It had nothing to do with you.
"And after you grew up, something went wrong between you and Jonesy, didn't it? But he risked his life to rescue you, twice! Maybe, being what you are, you didn't really need rescuing either time. But he didn't know that.
"I had the idea you two were in love before the fire. Maybe you never realized he pulled you out of it? After you wandered off" - unconsciously headed here, even then? - "and I found you on the road and brought you back, you and I started becoming close. Just as friends, in the beginning. But maybe Jonesy was hurt because you hadn't said anything to him after the fire, and he thought you were getting together with me, and that was why he turned to Libby -"
"Uh, no." Sofie looked uncomfortable. "I knew he'd saved me, and I thanked him. But the truth is that before the fire, I'd done something mean to him and Libby. I won't go into the details, but neither of them deserved what I did.
"After the fire, I told him I was sorry, and he said he believed me. But he also said he didn't want to have anything more to do with me."
Ben needed a few seconds to absorb that. "Oh. So you'd hurt him, maybe hurt him badly, even before he risked his life for you the first time...
"Other people besides you have feelings, Sofe. Sometimes a person can be so wounded that he's afraid to risk letting the other person hurt him again. But Jonesy still cared about you, cared deeply. Not only did he risk his life for you in the fire, he did it again when he was actually married to Libby." Then he felt he had to ask, "You do know about his trying to save you from Stroud, don't you?"
She hung her head. "Yes. I'm sorry I shot him. I...wasn't quite myself at the time. I'm glad he recovered."
"So can you see it now?" he asked urgently. "People haven't been rejecting you, at least none that I know of."
That was the wrong thing to say. When she looked up, her eyes were blazing. "You rejected me! Have you forgotten you walked out on me after we made love? That was the worst rejection of all!"
Ben was stunned.
Did she believe that at the time, he wondered, or convince herself of it later?
When he managed to pull himself together, he said earnestly, "I never meant to hurt you! The way I saw it was that you'd deserted me.
"Think about it. You knew that during that sudden storm, I had to help Jonesy secure the tents. Not only was he my boss, it was work that had to be done, to protect the carnival. I should have thought of it myself.
"By the time I got through, you were in your trailer, sound asleep. I had really expected you to wait for me in the truck, and I was a little bit hurt that you didn't. But I put that out of my mind. I just looked in the trailer to make sure you were there, safe. I didn't presume to wake you, or crawl into bed with you without an invitation.
"And in the morning, I went on ahead to Damascus to find my father. I looked in on you before I left, but you were still asleep. I remember that I kissed you.
"If you'd just asked Samson, he would have told you I meant to come back. In fact, I thought you'd know that from my having taken the Carnivale truck. There'd never been any question of my staying with my father permanently, settling in Damascus. But if I had intended such a thing, I would have told Samson I was leaving and hitchhiked to town - not stolen a vehicle."
He didn't add that in his later disillusionment, he'd suspected that she had seduced him in hopes of getting him to agree, not just to leave with her, but to steal the truck. If a single carny had absconded with a truck, Samson would have sent pursuers after him or her. But if there were two thieves, capable of spelling each other at the wheel, he probably would have let them go rather than call in the law.
What he said - truthfully - was, "I hoped you wouldn't leave. And I was sure you'd at least try again to persuade me to go with you. I couldn't believe it when Lila told me you were gone."
He knew she'd been listening intently, but he still wasn't sure she could see his side of it. So he went on to explain, "I wasn't just searching for my father on a whim. Do you know who Management was?"
That took her by surprise. "Management? You mean, do I know who the person in the trailer really was? No! I haven't thought of him in years."
"Management was an Avatar," he told her. "He was Justin's father and your grandfather, but he didn't know he had any living descendants.
"He was the Light Prophet before me. I was already aware of some of my responsibilities as an Avatar, and Management was guiding me. He insisted I find my father. So I had a lot on my mind, a lot of pressure on me.
"But I swear I didn't want to hurt you. Or lose you."
Sofie was silent, with eyes downcast, for so long that he wanted to scream.
Instead, he said, "There's...one thing more, Sofe. I didn't want to tell you this, because it'll sound like I'm tooting my own horn, and I hate that. But I have to make you see that I've always cared about you."
She looked up at him now, and he realized her cheeks were already stained with tears. But when he hesitated, she said hoarsely, "Go on."
He had no choice.
"Back in the cornfield all those years ago, when I was badly wounded and Justin thought he'd won, he told me you were dead. I understand now that he'd sent Stroud to kill you, and wrongly assumed he'd done it. But at the time, I had no reason to doubt what he said.
"You know I got the drop on him and killed him. When I was about to do it, I realized I could heal myself - only partially, but better than nothing - by draining his life-force and drawing it into myself. I was sure that if I didn't do that, I wouldn't get out of the cornfield alive. I'd pass out, and either bleed to death or be killed by Justin's henchmen before my friends could reach me.
"But I thought of you, and I couldn't leave you dead and save myself. So I willed to use the life-force to bring you back to life, and didn't draw any of it into myself.
"Since you weren't really dead, I'm sure the life-force never went anywhere. It died with Justin. But I lucked out, because I collapsed with my worst wound pressed against his body, and that pretty much stopped the bleeding. Plus, his henchmen were too scared to come into the cornfield at all, and Samson found me in the morning."
He managed a weak smile. "So I didn't die. But I want you to know that I thought I had a choice, and I tried to give the life-force to you."
He'd been afraid she wouldn't believe him. But as he spoke, her eyes had widened in horror. Now she exclaimed, "So that's what happened!" Her voice shook as she went on to tell him, "After I understood more about Avatars, I wondered why you had to be carried out of that cornfield, still unconscious. I knew you'd been conscious long enough to drive the blade into Justin. And I thought that even if you'd never heard of the concept of draining someone, instinct should have told you what to do. Ben, I'm so sorry!" Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.
"It wasn't your fault," he told her. "But now I have to explain one more thing.
"After we left New Canaan, I was no better than semiconscious for weeks. By the time I could have ordered a search for you, Jonesy had caught up with us and told Samson what you'd done to him. I didn't understand what was going on with you, but it seemed clear you didn't want our help."
Having said that much, he found himself blurting out more. "I will admit that back in '35, I was so young and inexperienced that I didn't know whether I was in love with you.
"But I was. And I still am. I've never stopped loving you."
Sofie stared at him for a long moment, but he couldn't read her expression because his own eyes were filling with tears. Then she choked out, "I...I think...I've always loved you too." Her tears came in a flood.
Ben tried to go to her. But he was so wobbly that when he stepped away from the car, he almost fell. Sofie had to lunge forward and catch him in her arms. "Ben? Oh my God!"
He somehow steadied himself. But Sofie had been jolted out of her fit of weeping, and he couldn't stop her from pulling his shirt up and seeing the blood-soaked bandage.
He tried to make light of it. "Like they say in the movies, 'Just a flesh wound, ma'am.' "
Sofie wasn't amused. "I know this couldn't have been healed completely. But it would have been some better, wouldn't it, all these years, if you'd taken Justin's life-force?"
"I don't know." He really did.
"Is it always this bad, Ben?"
"The bleeding? No," he assured her, "that's from the bumpy roads and the stress. But I was addicted to painkillers for years, a part of my life I'm not proud of. I weaned myself off them. Lately I've just been killing some plants once in a while, to buy myself a few hours' rest."
Her eyes lit up. "I can help you!" she said eagerly. "I have some powers you don't, and I'm sure I can get rid of the pain for you permanently, without harming humans or animals -"
"Sofie." He couldn't let this go on. He took her firmly by the shoulders, and made her look directly into his eyes. "I didn't come here for a healing. You know what I came for."
She seemed suddenly to shrivel up. Her already pale face went chalk-white, under the endearing freckles he'd somehow forgotten. How could I have forgotten her freckles?
At last she said, "Yes. You're right. I don't know what I was thinking of. I don't want to kill people, in San Diego or anywhere else! But..." He felt a tremor run through her. "Ben, you may not understand. I can't make the bomb not go off. All I can do is move it, or let it explode here."
He said steadily, "I've known that all along."
"I can't move the blast to a place I've never seen close up, like Antarctica or the surface of the Moon. There isn't any place I could move it to where I could guarantee no humans would die. And if you're imagining I can move us -"
He shook his head. "No. I understand how that power works. An Avatar can move energy or particles, and reassemble the particles, like you did with the door. But no living thing can be taken apart and reassembled without killing it."
Sofie was thinking aloud. "If we make ourselves and our cars visible, the cars will be seen from the air. I can't believe the military won't put the test on hold while they check it out. We may have to let them pick us up, but we can talk our way out of it."
Ben could finally look at his watch. He had to tell her, "I'm sorry, but it's too late for that. I've seen their schedule. They've finished their last checks of the area by now. If we arranged dozens of cars to spell out S.O.S., it wouldn't do any good.
"I knew when I came in here that if I could change your mind - but couldn't do it quickly - we'd be goners."
"This is why I called you a fool!" she burst out. She was weeping again. "I half expected you to show up here, but not in a goddamn car. I know you're skilled at astral projection. And you've kept yourself and your car shielded all this time - I wasn't helping. So you're powerful enough that you could have come in your astral body and stayed just as long. Why in God's name didn't you keep your physical body in a safe place?"
Ben said bluntly, "Think about that, Sofe. Remember where you were emotionally an hour ago. You may have called me a fool. But would you really have listened to me if I wasn't putting my life on the line?"
That brought her up short. She looked at him for a long moment, then said wretchedly, "No."
"It's all right," he told her. He shuddered. "I can't imagine urging you to let yourself be killed, while I had my body stashed in a 'safe place.' If I did such a thing, I'd never be able to live with myself. I came here prepared to die."
He had in fact believed that if he failed to sway her, she wouldn't let him leave alive. Even when she told him he could step in and raise Adam, he'd been sure she'd go back on that promise when she had time to think. She would try to protect Adam, but only through mailed instructions to Iris.
If she'd let Ben live, and he'd rushed to the authorities and demonstrated his own supernatural powers, they wouldn't have dared dismiss his claims about her.
But he'd seen no point in doing that initially. It would have precipitated an out-and-out war between Sofie and the military, and she would have killed him before he could thwart her a second time.
Now he gathered her in his arms, wishing he could shield her from the blast as he'd shielded his car from aerial observers. "We're together, Sofe. And we've defeated the evil and the weakness that exist in all of us. Nothing else matters."
"You're right," she agreed, in a voice that was small but steady. "Humans may or may not use this new weapon in war. But the only people to die today will be the two of us."
He found himself wondering about that other possible history, the one in which he'd let the carnies execute him in 1934.
Would Justin and Sofie have fought till they both fell dead - perhaps at this very moment, in this very spot?
The test would have proceeded, as it will now. The outcome would have been exactly the same.
Except that Sofie would have been damned.
And that difference makes all the years of struggle and suffering worthwhile.
But thoughts of a conflict between Justin and Sofie reminded him of a question that had been nagging at him.
"Sofe? There's something I don't understand. I know you've always been a good mother. So why did you let Adam see you kill Justin?"
She pulled away from him, and gazed at him in apparent shock. "I didn't, Ben! Adam wasn't in the room."
From somewhere behind Ben, a boy's voice spoke up. "Yes, I was, Mom."
x
x
x
Sofie let out a shriek.
Ben spun around in time to see Adam emerge from behind his car.
"Ben!" Sofie screamed. "Did he stow away in your car?"
That terrible thought had been the first one to flash into Ben's mind as well, even though he knew it was irrational.
"I'm not here in my flesh-and-blood body," the boy said solemnly. "Just a thought-form."
As good a term as "astral body," Ben thought distractedly. Maybe better.
But this means he really is some kind of Avatar!
At one and the same time, he was heartbroken at the thought of Adam's being an Avatar - he wouldn't have wished that on anyone - and grateful for this chance to have a few last moments with his son.
Sofie was still wailing, and he hastened to assure her, "He's telling the truth. I phoned Iris from Alamogordo to check on them. She said Adam had been quiet and withdrawn, but he was definitely there with her. Physically there - he'd been eating his meals."
"But that means..." Sofie's voice trailed off, as she drew the same conclusion he had.
"Mr. Hawkins?" Adam said politely.
"Uh - yes, Adam?"
"Is it okay if I call you Dad?"
Ben was struck speechless. Sofie's gasp told him she was as stunned as he. He finally managed to choke out, "Of course! But when - how -?"
"I've seen you in dreams all my life," Adam informed him. "And I've always known you were my father."
Ben belatedly realized that when Adam had told him about Justin's death, he'd never used the words Dad or my father. He'd always referred to Justin by the personal pronoun he.
"It was just one of the things I never told anyone," Adam was saying. "Like not letting anyone see what I really am."
"Wh-what are you?" Sofie asked in a tremulous voice. But she didn't wait for an answer. "And what did you mean about having been in that room?"
The boy frowned. "I need to explain that. I'm the one who really caused Justin's death.
"I knew you wouldn't kill him in front of me. And I knew he knew that. So I let him see me and you not see me. That way he felt safe in trying to stop you, and you went ahead and killed him."
Ben felt as if he'd been kicked in the gut. Or ripped open with a scythe...again. Sofie whimpered, and he put his arm around her.
What sort of monster have we created?
Aloud, he said carefully, "I don't understand, Adam. Why did you want Justin dead? I know he was always good to you."
Adam looked up at him; the boy's eyes appeared to glisten with unshed tears.
"I didn't want Justin dead! I loved Justin. I've never wished anyone dead.
"I had to do what I did, to save the world.
"If you and Justin were both alive, Dad, you would have teamed up to stop Mom from doing what she meant to do today. Used your powers to stop her, without changing anything in her mind or heart. You wouldn't have killed her, because it wouldn't seem necessary. If Justin suggested it - and he probably wouldn't have - you would have talked him out of it. No one would have died today, and you would have thought it was a good outcome.
"But Mom would have kept getting stronger and stronger, more and more evil, till no one could control her. And then the world would have been doomed.
"I couldn't just tell Justin not to help you today, to make you deal with Mom alone. Not when it would almost certainly turn out...like this. He wouldn't have listened to me.
"No one ever listens to kids."
"We're listening now, son," Ben said softly. "And everything's all right. We understand, and we love you." He was weeping, but he'd never felt prouder or more at peace.
"That's right, Adam," Sofie chimed in. "Don't ever have any regrets. Thank you for having had the strength to make that hard decision."
"I think we can speak for Justin, too," Ben told the boy. "He would have been willing to sacrifice his life, if he understood that it was necessary."
Adam nodded. "I know."
"But now..." Ben glanced at his watch. "You have to leave, son. This isn't a good place for you to be, even in your thought-form."
"I need my parents," Adam said, with a hint of stubbornness. Then he continued mournfully, "All the kids in the world need their parents. I wish the grown-ups would stop fighting with each other, and think about what it's doing to the kids."
Ben could only murmur, "Amen."
And then the klaxon sounded.
Ben yelled, "Get out of here, Adam!" He heard Sofie yelling too.
But Adam made a sudden grab for Ben's left hand, and for Sofie's right. "Join hands!" he commanded. "With each other, and with me! Now!"
There was no time to argue. Ben would have preferred that the boy not experience the blast, even in his "thought-form." But at least Adam couldn't be hurt physically; he wasn't really there.
Ben was in fact surprised that he could feel Adam's small hand in his. Astral bodies were usually insubstantial. But he remembered that he'd felt Scudder's hand, too - on his neck, on that long-ago night when he'd tried to kill himself in a graveyard. In a place called Loving.
Sofie's left hand slipped into his right; he saw that she'd joined hands with Adam as well.
The circle was complete.
A family, Ben realized, amazed to find himself part of such a thing. The three of us finally together, united, if only for one fleeting moment.
And then they were swallowed up by the light.