False Memory (46 page)

None of that happened.

The car traveled two blocks before turning left at a corner, onto a main street.

Long after the Saturn was out of sight, the doctor stood in the middle of the alleyway, staring into its wake.

The wind buffeted him. He welcomed its cold blasts, as though it might blow the confusion out of him and clear his head.

In the outgoing waiting room earlier in the day, Dusty had been reading
The Manchurian Candidate,
which the doctor had planted with Martie as a wild card that, if ever played, would add an acceptable measure of excitement to this game. Reading the thriller, Rhodes would experience little frissons of fear too piercing to be explained by the tale itself, especially when he found the name
Viola Narvilly,
and he would recognize odd connections to the events in his own life. The book would start him thinking, wondering.

Nevertheless, the possibility that the Condon novel alone would spur Dusty to make great leaps of logic, leading to his understanding of the doctor’s true nature and real agenda, was so remote that there was a far greater likelihood of astronauts discovering a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise on Mars, with Elvis chowing down in a corner booth. And he could see no—underscore that:
no—
chance whatsoever that the housepainter could have deduced all this
in one afternoon.

Consequently, there must be other wild cards that the doctor himself had not stacked in the deck, that had been dealt by fate.

One of them would be Skeet. Skeet, with a brain so addled by drugs that he hadn’t been entirely programmable.

Concerned about the apprentice painter’s reliability, Ahriman had come here this evening expressly to establish a suicide scenario in Skeet’s sub-subconscious and then send the wasted wretch toddling off to self-destruct before dawn. Now he would need a new strategy.

What other wild cards in addition to Skeet? Unquestionably, others had been played. However much Dusty and Martie knew—and their knowledge might not be quite as complete as it seemed—they had not put together a major portion of the puzzle with just the book and Skeet.

This unexpected development didn’t appeal to Ahriman’s sporting spirit. He enjoyed some risk in his games, but only manageable risk.

He was a gamester, not a gambler. He preferred the architecture of rules to the jungle of luck.

61

The trailer park huddled defensively in the high wind as though anticipating one of the tornadoes that always found such places and scattered them across blasted landscapes for the wicked delectation of television cameras. Fortunately, twisters were rare, weak, and short-lived in California. The residents of this park would not have to endure the practiced compassion of reporters torn between thrilling to a big story of destruction and admitting to what drams of human empathy had survived their years in service of the evening news.

The streets were laid out in a grid, one exactly like the next. The hundreds of mobile homes on concrete-block foundations were more alike than not.

Nevertheless, Dusty had no difficulty recognizing Foster “Fig” Newton’s place when he saw it. This community was wired for cable television, and Fig’s was the only trailer with a small satellite dish on its roof.

Actually, three satellite receivers were mounted on Fig’s roof, silhouetted against the low night sky that was painted a sour yellow-black by the upwash of the suburban light pollution. Each dish was a different size from the others. One was aimed toward the southern heavens, one toward the northern; both were stationary. The third, mounted on a complex gimbal joint, tilted and swiveled ceaselessly, as if plucking tasty bits of elusive data from the ether in much the way that a nighthawk snatches flying insects out of the air.

In addition to the satellite dishes, exotic antennae prick-led from the roof: four-and five-foot spikes, each featuring a different number of stubby crossbars; a double helix of copper ribbons; an item resembling an inverted, denuded metal Christmas tree standing on its point, with all branch ends aimed toward the sky; and something else like a horned Viking helmet balanced on a six-foot pole.

Bristling with these data-gathering devices, the trailer might have been a spaceworthy extraterrestrial ship crudely disguised as a mobile home: the sort of thing that callers were always reporting on the talk-radio programs that Fig favored.

Dusty, Martie, Skeet, and Valet gathered on an eight-foot-square porch covered by an aluminum awning that might, after takeoff, deploy as a solar sail. Dusty knocked on the door when he couldn’t find a bell push.

Clutching his blanket-cloak, which flapped and billowed in the wind, Skeet resembled a figure from a fantasy novel, following the trail of a fugitive sorcerer, exhausted by adventure, long harried by goblins. Raising his voice to compete with the wind, he said, “Are you really certain Claudette’s not sick?”

“We’re certain. She’s not,” Martie assured him.

Turning to Dusty, the kid said, “But you told me she was sick.”

“It was a lie, something to get you out of the clinic.”

Disappointed, Skeet said, “I truly thought she was sick.”

“You wouldn’t really want her to be ill,” Martie said.

“Not dying, necessarily. Cramps and puking would be enough.”

The porch light came on.

“And bad diarrhea,” Skeet amended.

Dusty had a sense of being studied through the fish-eye lens in the door.

After a moment, the door opened. Standing on the threshold, Fig blinked behind his thick spectacles. His gray eyes were made huge by the magnifying lenses, brimming with the sorrow that never left them even when Fig laughed. “Hey.”

“Fig,” Dusty said, “I’m sorry to bother you at home, and this late, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Sure,” Fig said, stepping back to let them in.

“Do you mind the dog?” Dusty asked.

“No.”

Martie led Skeet up the steps. Valet and Dusty followed.

As Fig shut the door, Dusty said, “We’ve got big trouble, Fig. I might have gone to Ned, but he’d probably strangle Skeet sooner or later, so I—”

“Sit?” Fig asked, leading them to a dinette table.

As the three of them accepted the invitation, pulling chairs up to the table, and as the dog crawled under it, Martie said, “We might’ve gone to my mother, too, but she would just—”

“Juice?” Fig asked.

“Juice?” Dusty echoed.

“Orange, prune, or grape,” Fig elaborated.

“Do you have any coffee?” Dusty asked.

“Nope.”

“Orange,” Dusty decided. “Thanks.”

“Grape would be nice,” Martie said.

“You have any vanilla Yoo-hoo?” Skeet asked.

“Nope.”

“Grape.”

Fig went to the refrigerator in the adjoining kitchen.

On the radio, as Fig poured the juice, people were talking about “active and inactive alien DNA grafted to the human genetic structure” and worrying about “whether the purpose of current Earth colonization by aliens is enslavement of the human race, elevation of the human race to a higher condition, or the simple harvesting of human organs to make sweetbreads for extraterrestrial dinner tables.”

Martie raised her eyebrows as if to ask Dusty,
Is this going to work?

Surveying the trailer, nodding, smiling, Skeet said, “I like this place. It’s got a nice hum.”

After Nurse Hernandez was sent home with a promise of a full night’s pay for two hours less work than she had been contracted to provide, after Nurse Ganguss was repeatedly assured that there was nothing their movie-star patient required at the moment, and after Nurse Woosten found a few new excuses to display the gymnastic abilities of her sprightly pink tongue, Dr. Ahriman returned to his unfinished business in room 246.

The actor was in bed, where he’d been told to wait, lying atop the covers in his black bikini briefs. He stared at the ceiling with as much emotion as he had brought to any of the roles in his string of colossal hit pictures.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, the doctor said, “Tell me where you are now, not physically but mentally.”

“I’m in the chapel.”

“Good.”

During a previous visit, Ahriman had instructed the actor never again to use heroin, cocaine, marijuana, or other illegal substances. Contrary to what the doctor had told Nurses Ganguss and Woosten, this man was now effectively cured of all drug addictions.

Neither compassion nor a sense of professional responsibility had motivated Dr. Ahriman to free the patient from these destructive habits. Simply, this man was more useful sober than stoned.

The movie star would soon be used in a dangerous game that would have enormous historical consequences; therefore, when the time came for him to be put into play, there must be no possibility that he’d be parked in a jail cell, awaiting bail for narcotics possession. He must remain free and ready for his appointment with destiny.

“You move in elite circles,” said the doctor. “In particular, I’m thinking of an event you’re scheduled to attend ten days from now, Saturday night of next week. Please describe the event to which I refer.”

“It’s a reception for the president,” the actor said.

“The President of the United States.”

“Yes.”

In fact, the event was a major fund-raiser for the president’s political party, to be held at the Bel Air estate of a director who had earned more money, garnered more Oscars, and risked contracting a sexually transmitted disease with more would-be actresses than had even the late Josh Ahriman, King of Tears. Two hundred of Hollywood’s glitterati would pay twenty thousand dollars apiece for the privilege of fawning over this ultimate politico as they themselves were daily fawned over by everyone from famous talk-show hosts to riffraff in the streets. For their money, they would get, alternately throughout the evening, both an ego rush so tremendous it induced spontaneous orgasms and a deliciously perverse feeling that they were nothing more than servile pop-culture scum in the presence of greatness.

“Nothing whatsoever will deter you from attending this party for the president,” the doctor instructed.

“Nothing.”

“Illness, injury, earthquakes, nubile teenage fans of either sex—neither those distractions nor any others will prevent you from being on time for this event.”

“I understand.”

“I believe that the president is a particular fan of yours.”

“Yes.”

“On that evening, when you come face-to-face with the president, you’ll use your charm and manipulative skills to put him instantly at ease. Then, induce him to lean especially close, as if you intend to impart an irresistible bit of gossip about one of the most beautiful actresses present. When he is very close and most vulnerable, you will seize his head in both hands and bite off his nose.”

“I understand.”

The trailer was indeed humming, as Skeet had noted, but Martie found the hum more annoying than nice. In fact, an auditory tapestry of electronic buzzes and purrs and sighs and tiny tweets wove through the air, some constant in tone and volume, others intermittent, still others oscillating. All of these sounds were quite soft, whispery, never shrill, and the combined effect was not dissimilar to sitting in a meadow on a summer night, surrounded by cicadas and crickets and other insect troubadours as they sang of bug romance. Maybe that was why the hum made Martie itchy and gave her the feeling that things were crawling up her legs.

Two walls of the living room, of which this dining area was an open extension, were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves holding computer monitors and ordinary televisions, most aglow and streaming with pictures, numerical data, flow charts, and abstract patterns of shifting forms and colors that made no sense to Martie. Also on these shelves was a large quantity of mysterious equipment featuring oscilloscopes, radar-display units, gauges, light-snake tracking graphs, and digital readouts in six different colors.

When everyone had been served juice, Fig Newton sat at the table, too. Behind him was a wall papered with star charts, Northern and Southern Hemisphere skyscapes. He looked like a hillbilly cousin of Captain James Kirk, skippering a bargain-basement version of the starship
Enterprise.

The mascot of the space command, Valet, lapped water from a bowl the captain had provided for him. Judging by his happy attitude, the dog was not bothered by the trailer’s hum.

Martie wondered if Fig’s perpetually flushed face and cherry-bright nose resulted from the radiation emitted by his collection of electronic gear, rather than from exposure to the sun during his day job as a housepainter.

“So?” Fig asked.

Dusty said, “Martie and I have to go to Santa Fe, and we need—”

“To be energized?”

“What?”

“It’s an energy locus,” Fig said solemnly.

“What is? Santa Fe? What kind of energy locus?”

“Mystic.”

“Really? Well, no, we’re just going to talk to some people who might be witnesses in…a criminal case. We need somewhere for Skeet to stay for a couple days, where no one would think to look for him. If you could—”

“Gonna jump?” Fig asked Skeet.

“Jump where?”

“Off my roof.”

“No offense,” Skeet said, “but it’s not high enough.”

“Shoot yourself?”

“No, nothing like that,” Skeet promised.

“Okay,” Fig said, sipping his prune juice.

This had been easier than Martie expected. She said, “We know it’s an imposition, Fig, but could you make room for Valet, too?”

“The dog?”

“Yeah. He’s really a sweetheart, doesn’t bark, doesn’t bite, and he’s great company if—”

“He dump?”

“What?”

“In the house?” Fig asked.

“Oh, no, never.”

“Okay.”

Martie locked eyes with Dusty, and apparently his conscience was as guilty as hers, because he said, “Fig, I’ve got to be really straight with you. I think there’s going to be someone looking for Skeet, maybe more than one someone. I don’t believe they’re likely to show up here, but if they do…they’re dangerous.”

“Drugs?” Fig asked.

“No. It has nothing to do with that. It’s…”

When Dusty hesitated, struggling to capsulize their bizarre plight in words that wouldn’t strain Fig’s credulity to the breaking point, Martie took over: “Crazy as this might sound, we’re caught up in some mind-control experiment, brainwashing, a conspiracy of some—”

“Aliens?” Fig asked.

“No, no. We—”

“Cross-dimensional beings?”

“No. This is—”

“Government?”

“Maybe,” Martie said.