A Charmed Place (36 page)

"As if!"

He smiled and said,
"Okay, outta the car, Your Awe
someness. I'm late already. Be good, now."

"Da-ad.
You sound like Mom!"

She wriggled out of the car, slammed the door, and didn't look back. His little girl, growing up fast. He watched her fall in with a couple of shrieking girlfriends w
ho seemed both much less nervous and
much more hyper than Tracey.

All day, Michael had watched bemused as his daughter prepared for the big event. After their early hit-and-run shopping trip downtown, she'd spent an amazing number of hours silvering her nails and mixing and matching every piece of jewelry she owned with every scrap of clothing.

As near as he could figure, she hadn't been able to make up her mind, because she walked out of his condo with two earrings in each ear and a dozen bangles on each arm. As for the dress she was wearing, it was too damn short—but still a lot longer than Frieda's. Since Tracey ended up looking more or less like her two girlfriends, Michael assumed that she was happy with her outfit, even if he was not.

A blaring horn from the car behind him on the circular drive sent Michael hastily throwing the Bee
m
er in gear. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a snot-nosed dipshit letting out a carload of other snot-nosed dipshits and then peeling rubber trying to impress them with his drag racing skills. Feeling suddenly old, Michael glanced over his shoulder in time to see his daughter enter the doubled-doored entry under the massive portico of the brick colonial.

She'll be fine, he told himself.

She'll be fine.

****

A four-car pileup on Route 93 played havoc with Michael's schedule as well as his mood. By the time he pulled into the parking lot at the Brookline Institute, he was in the grip of another crushing headache and feeling downright psychotic.

Geoffrey Woodbine wasn't pleased.

"I've been trying to reach you for hours,
'' the director said, walking around to his desk and picking up the phone. He punched a button, then waited.

"I told you," Michael explained, as reasonably as he knew how. "I had to take my daughter to a party. It was vital that she be fashionably late." He stroked his temple. The pain there was relentless.

"He's here," Woodbine said into the phone. "Give us ten minutes to get it together
... I don't care what you tell them. Ten minutes!" He hung up the phone, then turned to Michael and arched a silver eyebrow.

"Fashionably late?" he said with an icy stare. "Was that necessary?''

Michael exploded. "
For god's sake, man
, don't you remember what it's like to be fourteen? Those things count, you know!"

Woodbine glanced at the open door to his office, then walked over to close it. In a more jocular voice, he said, "Why
didn't you answer you cell,
in that case?"

"I junked it," Michael said.

Actually, he'd hurled it out the-window of the Beemer after calling
Rosedale
and having
Maddie
not pick up. She was there. He knew she was there. She was there with
him.
She'd monitored the machine, and she hadn't picked up. Were they in the middle of it? Lying in their afterglow? He'd find out. He'd find out, or he'd die trying.

"Michael? Are you hearing what I'm saying? I am pointing out to you that we have three gentlemen
from the Pentagon
sitting in a small, very stuffy sender booth and staring at their watches. They will not be returning after today. Michael? They will make their recommendation to fund or not to fund based on the results of today's testing. Do you understand?"

In fact, Michael had to make a real effort to register what Woodbine was telling him. He looked up in sullen response. "Why bother going through with the test, in that case? It sounds like they've made up their minds not to continue."

"You're being defeatist, Michael. That is not good. As you know, the last time anyone bothered to check, the CIA had paid consultants over twenty million dollars to try to locate the whereabouts of MIAs, plutonium in North Korea,
as well as in Iran
, among other missions. What method did these consultants employ? Remote viewing, Michael. As you know.

"What you do not know," Woodbine went on to say, "is that one of the men sitting in the sender booth used to work in the CIA. It's because of him that this project was funded in the first place. He's more than willing—"

"To throw our tax dollars around?"

"Cynicism is counterproductive," Woodbine snapped. "You need to go in there and concentrate. I want you to forget about everything else on your mind," the director added with a meaningful look. "
All
of it. It's idle distraction. Concentrate. And—just as we've discussed—I'll take care of the rest. Can you do that?"

Still balking at the do-or-die stakes, Michael said, "It's these drugs, Geoff. They're killing me."

"Nonsense. The drugs you're taking are natural memory enhancers. Their use is widespread in
Europe
; the side effects are minimal. I suggest to you that your headaches have nothing to do with the drugs, and—perhaps?—everything to do with your reluctance to carry out your part of our bargain."

Michael's mood turned hostile again. He wanted to slit Woodbine's throat. He hated him, hated everything about him, from his imperious manner to his clipped, vague accent. "You're full of shit," he said. "I practically black out sometimes."

"Take the drugs and have them analyzed by a lab, then," Woodbine suggested. "You'll find the ingredients available in health food stores both here and abroad."

"Oh, sure, have a lab analyze them. And how do I do that between now and the test? Psychokinesis?"

Michael hated the way he sounded to himself: whining, sneering
... afraid. He wasn't afraid. Whatever else he was capable of, it wasn't fear. He'd come too far, done too much, to bow to fear.

With a massive effort, he pulled himself back together for the forthcoming test. "Let's go," he said, standing up. "I'm ready."

Woodbine gave him an appraising look. Laying his hand on Michael's shoulder, he said, "I believe you are. Good."

They walked together toward the lab, down halls of a building that seemed eerily quiet. "It's like a ghost town in here," Michael quipped, trying to ease the tension he felt.

Obviously relieved to see the effort, Woodbine smiled and said, "It's Friday evening; they're all at the bars. So—your daughter is at a party," he added, making a connection that Michael didn't care for at all. "They grow up so fast, don't they? I still can't get over how very much she resembles you. A bright girl, quite intuitive. The resemblance is striking, really."

"So they say," Michael answered, dismissing the subject. He was trying to keep himself focused.

"And she's staying on the
Cape
with her mother for the summer?" Woodbine asked pleasantly. "I envy them, getting out of the city for so long. I enjoyed myself last week. Which reminds me. Have you thought about bringing in your daughter for that interview? I've been interested in doing this project, as you know, for well over a year. If only you had allowed me to—well, never mind. But now that the funding is a reality
, I need to move immediately on
finding suitable subjects for the study."

"It's up to my ex-wife," Michael found himself saying.

"And how does she feel about it?"

"She's my
ex-wife
, damn it! Didn't you hear me?"

"I'm sorry," Woodbine said, taken aback. "It was a simple question."

"It amazes me that you had to ask it! You were at the fund-raiser. Did it look as if Maddie and I were best friends?"

Woodbine gave him a cool look and said, "I got the distinct impression that there were still feelings between you."

"Did you! Gee. Maybe you're actually psychic, after all."

The sneering remark caught Woodbine off guard. He gave Michael a sharp look and said, "Let's just stick to the script, okay?"

****

Fifteen minutes later, Michael was isolated in the test area, hooked up to the EEG, and ready to begin the final remote viewing experiment. In the adjoining room were the targets of the test: fifty photographs of everyday objects scissored at random from a J. C. Penney catalogue and sealed in individual envelopes.

Michael had wanted to test in early evening because that was the time of day when distractions fell away for him. In early evening he could focus. In early evening, he had a much better chance of imagining the contents of a sealed envelope in another room.

But it was late evening now. He didn't like that, and he was unhappy at his distress. Still, unhappy or not, he had to shut out the negative vibrations. He had to concentrate. Woodbine was absolutely right about that.

The pad of drawing paper sat on the table in front of him, daunting in its blankness. Three pencils without erasers were lined up like an honor guard alongside the tablet.

Concentrate.

He knew that Woodbine, in an effort to pander to the government observers, had departed from normal procedure by letting them—and not the Institute's staff—choose the objects from the catalog and then seal them in the envelopes. Woodbine himself was not present at the time the selections were made, just before Michael's scheduled arrival. Amazing, how that one degree of separation had jolted Michael's confidence.

Concentrate.

He could hear Woodbine's voice saying it.

The test was not complicated. After each envelope was opened, a buzzer was to sound. Michael, alone in the subject enclosure, was to envision the object from the envelope. He was to draw a rough approximation of that object on the p
re-
numbered sheets of the tablet in front of him. If he was not able to envision the target, he was to "pass" by drawing a line through the sheet.

Concentrate.

He tried to sweep away thoughts of the day: Tracey, jumping up and down when he said she could
accept the last-
minute invitation.
Thank you, Daddy, thank you.
Maddie on the phone, bothered that Tracey was under his control for the weekend.
Remember our pact, Michael; we have to be consistent.
The animal sounds of the teammates charging across the lawn.
Whoo-whoo-whoo.
Maddie on the machine, her voice cool and remote.
No one is in now, but if you
'
ll
leave your name and number
...

Concentrate.

Someone was in her now; who was she kidding?

Concentrate.

The buzzer sounded. It caught Michael by surprise. How long had it been? He looked at the clock. He looked at the blank sheet. I'm number one, said the sheet. Guess what I am?

Concentrate.

After a fierce effort, too fierce, he began to scrawl a—a what? A tine? A dinner fork?

A pitchfork. He drew a handle on it, bold and big, and tore the sheet from the pad, then placed it face down in the plastic bin on the table. He pressed his buzzer; he was into it now. Next?

Almost immediately, the buzzer from the experimental room signaled him again. He repeated the process but tried to slow down, to push less, to let the images come at their own pace.

Something in a bathroom
. 
A sink
?  A
towel? A toilet! Toilet humor! He could hear Tracey saying it: "Ee-yew! How totally gross!"

How totally Pentagon.

****

The fog that was lurking offshore all day rolled in sometime after supper, wrapping its clammy arms around
Rosedale
and its garden.

Inside the cottage, Maddie and Dan had finished turning the rooms inside out in their search for the address book, and were focused instead on the computer disks in the plastic storage case marked "backup." Dan was at his laptop, methodically examining each and every file on each and every disk. It was slow, tedious work, but Dan had the discipline—and the computer background—to keep at it.

Maddie, on the other hand, had little to do. She felt frustrated, but also subdued: the fog had dampened her mood much more than the failure to find the missing address book. Without an immediate goal, she found herself wandering from window to window, staring into nothingness, occasionally pinching off a spent bloom from the pink geraniums rioting in the window boxes.

She gazed into the fog where the lighthouse should have been and said pensively, "If the tower were lit, I'd feel better somehow."

"How long has it been?" asked Dan, tapping commands into the keyboard.

"Oh, gosh—I was, let me think, Tracey's age when the Coast Guard decommissioned it. I guess there wasn't enough boat traffic to justify the operating expense. We were all so sad the day they dismantled the lamp, boarded up the house, and moved out. My dad took pictures—hey, I'd forgotten about those! I could've used them for my talk."