Wednesday April 5 2006
Escondido
Sarah Rainmaker sat cross-legged on her grandmother's replica bed, hands in her lap, waiting for dawn. She'd spent the night awake but turned inward, almost in a trance. Some part of her consciousness had registered the opening and closing of her door twice during the evening, and once in the middle of the night, but her callers only looked in from the doorway and withdrew.
The dawn brought Anna's incredible artwork to life. Sarah sat placidly through the show until it ended, then rose and headed for the shower. She scrubbed until her skin glowed, then padded down the hallway, naked and unconcerned at this early hour. Then she slipped on a simple cotton dress without undergarments, and padded barefoot downstairs to the kitchen. As soon as she reached it, though, she became certain that she shouldn't eat, that the fast she'd begun yesterday noon was giving her strength. She settled for a sip of water, and headed back into the hallway.
From the telephone stand, she picked up a spiral notebook and a pencil, and returned to the small kitchen table. She drew out a chair and sat, arranging the items in front of her. She placed her palms on the table on either side of her tools, and stared at the blank paper for a few moments. Then, she tentatively picked up the pencil and began to draw.
-0-
Bobby woke alone in bed for the first time since Sunday. He rose and crossed the hall to look in on Sarah. Her bed was empty and made. He dressed, brushed his teeth, and headed downstairs, and found that, at six A.M., he was the last up. Anna sat alone at the dining table, wearing a hoodie with the hood up over her head, staring at nothing. The others, his dad included, were standing in the kitchen with cold breakfast and coffee, watching Sarah at the little table with a pad and pencil.
She was sketching, carefully making each line in a way that made Bobby think of calligraphy rather than doodling. "Kat, can you get me a current weather map off the computer?"
"Aerial? How big?"
The pencil lifted off the page for a few quick scribbles in the margin. "Oh, here to the border, mountains to the sea. No, make that international waters. Satellite photo's good. If you can throw in isobars, even better." Softly she said, as if to herself, "I just need to know where everything's at, so I can find a starting point."
He craned his neck to see her work. There were formulae and calculations on the margins, and some sketches that looked like meteorological notes. But the central item on the paper was a carefully drawn stylized bird that looked like it belonged on a piece of pottery or beadwork.
"It's just a focus," she said absently, as she thickened the line on an outstretched wing. She never looked up from the paper and the pencil never ceased its careful progress. "Everything seems to revolve around it, somehow."
He leaned close. "Can I do something, Sarah? Can I help?"
"Maybe later, baby. Not now."
He felt lightheaded. He sat down next to Anna at the dining table. "All right. What the hell is going on? I prayed for you guys to get along. I should have remembered God enjoys His little jokes. Did you hear what she called me? And she's been laying her hand on my chest the way you do. The first time she did it, it gave me goosebumps. What are you doing to her?"
She looked up at him from the shadow of the hood, eyes wide, and shook her head gently. "I'm not doing it, Bobby. She is." She looked towards the open door to the kitchen. "She's paying me a great honor, is my shikasin. I studied her to learn how to win a man's love. Apparently, she's looking to me for tips on how to keep it."
-0-
Sarah moved the pencil along the paper, but it almost seemed as if the pencil was moving itself, and she was just hanging on. She stared down at the drawing as if it were a television screen, showing her images of alternate worlds.
Several sheets of paper and clear Mylar dropped on the table next to Sarah's pad. "What's this?"
"Aerial map. The clear overlays are pressure zones in the same scale and location; just line them up and drop them on top."
"Hmp. It's so handy having a computer geek for a sister." She glanced up, and saw that the others had left; the two of them were alone. As she heard the big redhead start to turn away, Sarah said, "Caitlin."
Her tone brought the other girl short as if on a tether.
Sarah kept her eyes on the tabletop. "That day in the hall at school, I did something impulsive. But not the impulse you thought. At home... My parents' house, that is… I kiss my sisters on the mouth all the time. That's all I meant it to be."
"I-"
"But I suddenly realized what you must have thought was happening, and I… That's why I stopped. And why I was so reserved with you afterwards. I was ashamed." She gave a tiny shrug, barely more than a twitch. "You're lovely to look at, but so are my sisters. Straight girls are just eye candy; they're not my type, literally. I've never tried to turn one. I'm not a predator."
"And I'm not a lesbian, Sarah." A hand came to rest on her shoulder. "But it was nice, just the same. You made me feel cared about and wanted, and I so needed to feel wanted just then. Even though it never would have gone any farther, and I was uneasy about it later, wondering what you might do next – walking on eggshells around you sometimes, really." She caught a whiff of shampoo, something floral and girlish that seemed very out of place on a redheaded Amazon, but perfect for a girl who slept with a pink teddy bear. "I should have figured it out. I should have talked to you, at least, long ago, but I was afraid you'd misunderstand."
Sarah reached up to rest her fingers on the girl's hand. "Well, aren't we a pair of ninnies. I've missed you."
The hand on her shoulder squeezed briefly. "Likewise, sister. Let's not make that mistake again."
-0-
Bobby climbed the stairs to the roof, eased the door open, and looked out without leaving the doorway. He'd expected to see Sarah standing up on the roof somewhere, but she wasn't visible anywhere on that flat black expanse. The morning sun was just warming the rooftop, and a steady breeze drifted over the walls and played with his hair.
"Up here." Above and behind him, on top of the stairwell housing. "No need to be stealthy, Bobby. I felt you coming."
He stepped out and looked up. She stood on the roof of the little structure, facing south. The breeze stirred tendrils of her hair and sent them floating like wisps of black silk. She didn't look down at him.
"Sorry." He moved back towards the door. "I know you said you needed to be alone. I just had to check up on you."
"No. Stay." Her gaze and voice were miles away. "I was wrong to keep you away. I'm stronger with you here."
Combining power, somehow? "I can get the others."
"No." She smiled at the horizon. "I'm sure it only works with you." She raised her arms in an odd position: upper arms horizontal and straight out from her sides, forearms vertical, palms forward. Instead of making her look like a stickup victim, it gave him the impression she was feeling the wind on her palms. She pivoted to the east, slowly, her arms in the same position.
"Can we talk, Sarah?"
"Maybe a little. I may not make sense, or I may not answer at all."
"What are you doing now?"
A moment of silence, then: "Questing. Tuning in. Establishing uplink, I don't know. There aren't any words. Not in English, anyway." She added softly, "I'm sure the People had words once. But if they're not forgotten, I never learned them."
She turned east and changed her arm position. Now they were spread out from her sides in a graceful arc, palms out and up. He thought of souvenir-shop statues of Indian chiefs spreading their feather capes like wings. "It's so big," she almost whispered. "Layers. Currents. Motion everywhere. Everything moving everything else." She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the morning sun. "The Father. The source of all power, the engine that drives it all." She turned slowly to the west. "Ocean, place of nurture and growth. Mother." She dropped her chin, inhaled deeply, and let it out in a breathy sigh that sounded almost sexual. "There. Yes, there." He felt embarrassed, as if he'd walked in on her to find her in bed with a stranger. Her head drifted sideways slightly. "That's where we begin."
She opened her eyes, staring off towards the distant sea. She lifted one foot high and brought it forward, stamping down heavily. She did it twice more, throwing her arms forward at the same time, as if reaching for something. "Heh. Heh. Heya," she said softly.
It wasn't a dance. But it reminded him of one, much simpler than the ones performed at Native American festivals. An idea came to the surface of his thoughts.
Gen isn't something new, at least not all of it. Some of it must be very old. A long time ago, there were People who really could call the rain. Other People watched them at work, and thought the magic was in the movements, not the people using them as a focus. Over time, they made a ceremony of it, with costumes and music. Then the talent faded away; the genes diluted or fizzled out somehow, and all they had left was the ritual, still meaningful maybe, but stripped of its old power. And whites looked at it and saw quaint superstition.
After several minutes, something changed. She was still chanting, but now her arms were lifted to the sky. Suddenly she gave out a loud "Hah!" and threw her arms down, bowing her head.
The wind died.
She held the pose, silent. He didn't dare break the hush with so much as a shoe scrape; he froze, breathing shallowly through parted lips.
The breeze puffed, died again, and came back from a different direction.
She turned slightly to the south, still looking towards the distant sea. She lifted her hands away from her body slightly. "It's started. It needs careful watching, and there won't be much to see for a while, but it's all in motion." She shivered. Then she shivered again, harder. "C-cold."
He got a hand on the top edge of the structure and pulled up. Aside from her shaking, which was getting worse, she didn't move. "Don't t-t-t-touch me. Not even my hair."
"I won't." he heated the air around her, to the temperature of a blanket straight from the dryer. The quaking subsided. "Guess that's why the pros do it around a fire."
She nodded, still looking off to the horizon. "I'm not creating a fraction of the energy it's drawing. I'm just redirecting it, starting a bonfire with a handful of dead grass. The energy it pulls from me is hardly a token. Still, I feel like a small fuse in a very heavy circuit."
"So we're done up here?"
"You are. But not me, not even close." Her eyelids drooped. "It's started. But it's got a long way to climb up the chain of cause-and-effect before it's strong enough to feed itself. Anything could tip it back, smother it. I have to mind it carefully." Her voice grew distant again, as if she kept drifting in and out of the world. "Later, when it's served its purpose, I may have to knock the props out from under it to put it out. It may be self-sustaining by then."
"Self-sustaining? You mean, like a real storm?"
"No." She shook her head slightly. "Like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. Permanent."
A monster hurricane anchored off the coast of Southern California; wouldn't that put a dent in the tourist trade. Then he thought it through. It would change prevailing winds and ocean currents, change weather patterns all over the world; turn farmland into deserts, and deserts into swamps. Change the seasons. Melt the ice caps, or send the glaciers marching down from the Poles. "Cripes, Sarah. You're really playing with fire."
"Exactly what I told myself when I climbed into your bed." Her hair was floating out behind her like a banner now. "I don't think I should go with you," she went on. "I doubt I can control it properly if I'm in the middle of it. I need to keep my distance. Tell Eddie I'm sorry. I was honestly looking forward to buddying up with him." The corner of her mouth lifted. "Maybe next week we can go bowling or something. Best go now. I don't need the power boost you give me anymore, but I need focus more than ever, and you're a distraction. A wonderful distraction, but a distraction."
He felt himself grinning like a kid. "What, no goodbye kiss?"
"I'll kiss you twice as hard when you get back. Shoo."
Approximately 1 mile northwest of Miramar Reservoir
"So this is the hidden hangar for the Batplane." Eddie stared out the van window at the huge warehouse complex at the intersection of two busy interstates. It looked like a million square feet under roof, fronted by bustling loading docks and open sheds, surrounded by miles of tall chain link fence. A parade of trucks, some empty, some full, rolled in and out along the wide driveway. Fork trucks roamed the asphalt, buzzing in and out of the buildings. The employee parking lot along one side of the building covered acres, and was nearly full. "Don't you have any secret hideouts that look like secret hideouts?"
"I hope not. The best place to hide something is someplace no one will think to look." The L-man turned into the parking lot, cruising down the aisle past all the parked cars, headed towards the back.
"We're almost back in La Jolla." Kat stared out her window at the parked cars without really looking at them. "Miramar can't be more than a couple of miles away."
"An escape vehicle's a lot more useful if it's close at hand. That's why I'm going to move it after this, if we don't wreck it."
The perimeter fence separated the lot from the rest of the property, but here in the back, a rolling gate was set into it, secured with a chain and padlock. Mr. Lynch passed a key to Anna; without a word, she jumped out of the shotgun seat, unlocked the gate, pushed it open for the van to pass through, and closed and locked it behind them while they waited for her.
Eddie watched her climb back in. She'd been acting strange and quiet all morning, staring off into space half the time, and hardly speaking, giving short answers to direct questions and then lapsing into silence again. If she hadn't been what she was, he would have thought she was stoned. He eyed Anna's outfit: loose slacks, ball cap, bulky hooded sweatshirt with the oversized hood pulled up over her head, nearly hiding her face. "How come you're the only one not dressed like a commando?"
"In case one of us has to expose herself to public view, like I just did. But there's another reason. I'm not dressed to fight because I'm not going with you."
"What?" Kat leaned forward. "But you said you were."
"I said you'd need my help. You'll get it. But I'd rather explain later, before you leave."
On this side of the fence, a broken brick road led off to the distant rear of the building. The rest of the area looked like an old junkyard, with rusted-out machines poking up from among the weeds. The noise and activity of the warehouse was all on the street side; here, the building was so quiet he could hear bird calls. They bumped along the overgrown roadway towards the corner of the building.
The back of the building looked even more desolate. The brown land and derelict structures seemed to continue to the horizon. The skeletal framework of an overhead crane stretched across the back of the building; high overhead, the rusted-out cab hung suspended over several equally rusty sets of railroad tracks almost invisible among trash and weeds. The whole huge building was sided in white sheet metal panels, but one at the near corner had come loose, exposing dark brick underneath. "What is this place?"
"It's the original warehouse. The truck terminal out front was added decades later. All the goods arrived at the rail terminal back here and were loaded onto trucks for local distribution. When truck transport took over deliveries to the depot too, this part of the building was abandoned. Building new truck docks out front was cheaper than refurbishing the rail docks, and more convenient."
He turned the van up a steep ramp and onto a raised apron of concrete, wide as a road, which ran all across the back of the warehouse. "The crane still works, or did when we brought the plane here. The track will take it inside the doors."
"We didn't bring anything to haul the plane on."
"We're taking off from here. If it's still in one piece after the mission, and circumstances permit, I've got another place to put it, nearer home."
The doors were set in the center of the back wall. They were big sliders, about forty feet wide by twenty high, and didn't look like they'd been opened since Reagan was president. The L-man handed Anna another key, and she got out to pop the padlock holding them shut. She got her fingers in the crack between them, opened a shoulder-wide gap, and pushed them apart like Samson bringing down the temple. Heavy they might be, but they rolled smooth and quiet until they thudded into their stops.
It was dark inside, but the square of daylight from the open doorway revealed a rough block wall about thirty yards beyond. The L-man put the bus back in gear and rolled inside. Anna reached around the doorway and flipped a switch. Overhead lights came on, dimly at first until the big bulbs warmed up.
The space was about ninety feet deep, thirty high, and stretched away on either side of the doorway to the building's side walls, maybe a hundred yards each way. He noticed that the brickwork walls ended at the corners, and didn't extend across the back of the building; the back outside wall was just sheet metal and girders. The wall that divided the space from the rest of the warehouse was cement block, and stretched from floor to ceiling with no openings he could see. The mortar joints were extruded and sloppy, so he knew he was looking at the untooled back of the wall. It made him think of some secret room between the walls of an old house. "Hard to believe putting this up was cheaper than rebuilding the docks."
The L-Man pointed the van's nose hard right as Anna got in. They rolled towards that end of the room, towards a semi-sized shape that bulked under a tarp at the far end. "It wasn't, really. But I wanted the space, and it was a plausible excuse."
"So they just built it for you? A fifty thousand square-foot secret room. You know the owner, or what?"
"I say hello to him every morning in the mirror." They reached the covered object, and parked against the wall nearby. The tribe... no, team… piled out. The L-man turned to Rox. "The tarp. Would you do the honors?"
The tarp floated up and drifted sideways, sliding off the object underneath. It was an aircraft, for sure, but different from anything Eddie had ever seen. It looked like the child of a Stealth bomber and an alien spacecraft. The flat black fuselage was a flattened oval in cross section, and the wings were folded and rotated flat against the sides, like the wings of a nesting bird. The tail was split in a wide V, and hardly stuck up past the cockpit. It was tiny for a cargo plane, but it looked super compact and dangerous. "What is this thing?"
"Prototype troop transport, a type sometimes called a 'direct-action penetrator'. For covert or quick-strike teams," the L-man said. "Never used. By the time it was finished, we weren't in conflict anyplace with defenses tough enough to warrant putting it in the field. It's fast and quiet in flight, and it's got the radar signature of a sparrow. It can drop a squad into a secure LZ, and you'll never know it was there. Or, if the LZ's hot, it can appear out of nowhere, clear its own landing area, and hold it until the troops come back, or even provide air support. Official designation was CIV, Covert Insertion Vehicle. But the people who ran the trials on it called it The Dragon." He turned to Kat. "It was built to fit on an oversize flatbed, barely. Not much head room."
He noticed Anna hadn't bailed out with the rest of them to gawp at the plane. Instead, she'd opened the back doors of the van and pulled out a big duffel and slung the strap over her shoulder. She was walking around the plane, headed for someplace behind it. He followed her and saw a small roofed enclosure built against the end wall, about the right size for an office, with a blacked-out window and a single door. Since its walls were brick as well, he figured it dated back to when the place was a shipping dock, and open to the elements.
By now, everyone had noticed, and were starting to trail her. Bobby said, "Anna. What are you doing?"
She paused at the door. He noticed she hadn't thrown the big hood back, even though they were under cover. "Kids. I'm going to go in there and change." Something in the tone of her voice gave the simple statement an unsettling weight.
"You said you weren't coming with us." Kat's eyebrows pushed together. "What are you changing into?"
"Someone else." She looked like she was about to try something scary-thrilling for the first time, like riding a coaster, or skydiving, or sex. "You all know this is more than a rescue mission. We mean to convince IO they're under attack from a new and unknown group of Genactives trying to form a resistance movement. Now that the 'globetrotter' diversion is burned, we need a new one to keep IO chasing shadows, or we'll never live in peace. You know the man we're going after is an old friend of Jack's who still works at IO. He's been pretending to be working undercover among the Gens, and 'discovered' this new threat. He's been selling the story to his bosses, and nearly convinced them. But they're a suspicious bunch. They think he may be playing them, so they're holding him prisoner until he delivers a new-type Gen. So we're going to give them one, but not me. They need to be convinced I'm part of a larger group, so they need to see there's more than one of us. If we can give them one hard push, we'll take them off-balance and make them afraid to disbelieve."
She looked earnestly at each of them from the shadow of the hood. "You've got to play along, and you've got to be convincing. We don't have much time to practice. The only way this will work is if you can watch me go in there, and pretend I went out the back door and someone who looks like me walked in. Can you do it?"
They looked at each other uncertainly. "Sure," Bobby said. "What do we call you?"
Anna lifted a corner of her mouth. "I'm sure she'll introduce herself." She stepped to her husband and tipped her face up for a quick kiss; he flipped the brim of the ball cap carefully to reach her. "Bye, love. Be careful. All of you be careful, and I'll see you at home." She turned, so quickly the duffel swung on her shoulder, and disappeared through the door.
"Never gonna work." Rox shook her head. "What's she going to do, put on a wig and glasses? They'll see through it in a heartbeat."
"I don't know," he said. "When she came home with the L-man, I wasn't expecting anybody but her in that car, but I still didn't recognize her until she said something. Did you?"
"No," she said slowly, "but this time we know it's her, and the first time one of us calls her 'Anna' instead of 'Jane,' or whatever, the game's up."
"Then don't do it." The L-man turned and started towards the big doors.
"Hey! Where are you going?" Rox took a step after him.
He waved her off. "I'll be right back with the crane. Once it's inside the building, I'll likely need some help. All of you stay here and out of sight." He walked on, and disappeared into the sunlight.
"This isn't metal." Kat was examining the plane, running her hand over the matte-black skin. "And I don't think this is paint. It's what it's made of."
"Let me see." He laid a hand on it, and sank in. Tough and springy. Non-metallic. Single layer, about three-quarters of an inch thick. No coating. No seams or fasteners. He withdrew his hand, and watched the black skin fade to normal. "You're right. It's one big casting. Or maybe they grew it, I don't know."
Bobby's attention wasn't on the plane. He was looking at the block divider wall, and maybe thinking about what was on the other side. "Hard to get your head around it. The kind of money he's got. How many places like this do you think he owns?"
"Well, he doesn't keep all his cash under the mattress. Bet this place makes him money, besides."
Kat nodded. "He told me once that he's worth more now than when he met us, even after all the money he's spent. Did you ever dream you'd end up a rich man's son?"
"No." Bobby's mouth and eyes tightened. "I used to dream my real mom and dad would show up all hysterical over finally finding me, hold me like they'd never let me go again, and take me home to live with them forever. The last time I had it, I was eleven years old."
In a bedroom with plywood nailed over the window, and a hasp and padlock on the outside of the door. The little hairs on Eddie's forearms and the back of his neck rose, thinking about Bobby as a kid in that place.
A grinding screech from outside and a bunch of loud pops like gunshots sent them all pelting towards the doors. Kat reached the opening before the rest of them were halfway there. She looked up and yelled, horrified, "Oh, God. Roxy!"
They reached the door; Kat pointed. The Man in Black was dangling by one arm from the tilted cab of the crane, thirty feet up. The whole rig looked ready to fall to the ground at a hiccup. The L-man seemed to be okay; he was cussing in three languages, sounded like, and even the English had a lot of words he hadn't thought the old guy knew.
Rox reached up towards the cab, making one of her weird hand gestures. "Mr. Lynch! Let go, I've got you."
The L-man released his grip and drifted down to the ground as gently as a passenger in an elevator. He looked up at the cab and the bird's nest of snapped cable sprouting from the big spool alongside. "Well, that's that. Guess thirty years outdoors with no maintenance was a little too long." He picked his way through the weeds to the dock where they stood.
"How are we going to get it out?"
"There are ways." The L-man clambered up onto the apron. "We'll just try to pick the best one."
They made their way back to the plane. "I could push it," Kat suggested.
"That still leaves the problem of getting it off the dock. Roxanne, can you lift it so we can push it over the edge without burying the nose?"
"Let's see." The triple-sleeved shocks on the landing gear telescoped to a ridiculous length as the body rose. "Heavier than it looks." When the underside was eight feet above the ground, the left wheel lifted an inch off the concrete, then the machine settled back on its gear. Rox looked pained, and there was a sheen of perspiration on her upper lip. "It's the biggest thing I've ever floated, but I think I can do it."
"I could lift it." Kat started to duck under the plane.
The L-man stopped her with a hand on her upper arm, but quickly let go, as if her skin was hot and singed his fingers. "I'm sure you could, but you might damage it. You can't reach both underbody hardpoints at the same time."
"I don't think it makes any difference. I could even pick it up by a wing."
"I'm not saying you're wrong. But this is our only ride." He looked at it. "I could fly it out, I suppose."
"'Fly it out'."
He turned to Rox. "Didn't I say? It's a VTOL aircraft, like a Harrier. I could land it in our back yard. The yard wouldn't look like much afterwards, though, unless I dial the engines way down. The exhaust is hot."
"Wayull, now." A new voice from the office, sort of twangy. "You all been waitin for me?"