Mission (44 page)

‘I hope you're not going to tell me he walked across the Atlantic,' said Miriam.

‘He wouldn't have to,' I replied. ‘He could have made his way across the Kamchatka Peninsular and down through Alaska.'

‘Very clever,' she said. ‘And then what – back the same way?'

I shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. Thor Heyerdahl is supposed to have proved that the Polynesians reached the Central Pacific from South America. Maybe he worked his passage on one of their reed boats, or hitched a ride in one of the Nazca hot air balloons.'

‘You're crazy,' yawned Miriam.

‘No, listen,' I said. ‘Just suppose The Man
did
come to America. It could mean that the Mormons were right after all. The angel Moroni who called on Joseph B. Smith could have been Michael or Gabriel, or maybe some other Envoy from the Empire.'

‘That's true,' she agreed. ‘On the other hand, Joseph B. Smith and his friends may have made it all up because they liked having women round the house waiting on them hand and foot.' She signed off with a kiss under my ear and settled down to sleep.

I switched off the lamp on my side of the bed and lay there in the dark, reviewing various aspects of the mess I'd got into. And I wondered whether it was wise to go ahead with my two-week sabbatical. Now that I had McDonald on my back, it made good sense to head for the hills. But what would that solve? There were another four weeks to the Feast of the Pentecost – always assuming that that was when this time-twisting misadventure was due to end.

And that led me, once again to consider the idea that The Man might not be time-travelling in the accepted sense. That the theory of simultaneity that Miriam and I had constructed and which he had confirmed might only be a convenient device to bemuse us and, in so doing, enhance the omnipotent image of the Empire and our liege-lords, the Celestials, who had allegedly ordered the history of the Universe since the Creation. There was no doubt in my mind about The Man's ability to disappear from twentieth-century Manhattan. But the fact that he did so was not proof that he reappeared in an earlier, still-existent time frame of this planet's history. He might merely have transferred to an extra-temporal dimension adjacent to our own. One of the other wavelengths he'd talked about.

So why, you ask, did he turn up on Easter Saturday, broken and bloodied from the Crucifixion? Simple. Without the stigmata how could we unbelievers have recognised him? His appearance, the timing – it all helped us make the right connections. And would lead us think that he had been catapulted from the rock tomb into the twentieth-century. That was his story too. But there was no
proof.
At the beginning, he had said it was an accident. Now it was part of the plan. How many more times were his mission orders going to be revised?

I was not trying, by means of this conjectural manoeuvre, to deny our peripatetic visitor his place in world history. As far as I was concerned he was still The Man. But these renewed doubts allowed me to regain control of my destiny. For if Time was
not
simultaneous, then we could dump the book analogy overboard. The battle between ‘Brax and the Empire was not a foregone conclusion. The issue was still in doubt. God, the Presence, or Whoever, did not have my life-plot filed away in some cosmic computer. I was still able, along with the rest of humanity, to choose what I would or would not do. To listen to what The Man had to say, or go to hell in a handcart.

It was a typical ‘Braxian thought but since I had allowed him to creep back into my loins it was only natural he would try to worm his way into my head and gain control of my mind. And it was so much easier to surrender. Sleep clogged my brain and broke up my train of thoughts. I turned over, tucked the quilt down between our bare backs and went out like a light.

Somewhere around three o'clock, I surfaced from a dreamless void and my sleep-sodden brain slowly became aware of a bluish light coming from the living-room. At first I thought that Miriam had got up and put on the TV then I realised that she lay asleep beside me. I dropped my head back on to the pillow and considered getting up to switch the damn thing off and it occurred to me it could mean that The Man was back.

I rolled out from under the quilt, groped my way into my robe and padded out of the bedroom, my eyes almost closed in a desperate effort to cling onto sleep. To the point where they didn't even snap open at what they saw in the living-room. Was it a dream? I don't know. I'm still not sure. But the light wasn't coming from the TV set. It came from two palely glowing humanoids that stood on either side of The Man. About six foot three inches in height and dressed in a kind of unisex coverall – like racing-drivers wear. Only these two
weren't covered with advertising. I know they had eyes, a nose and a mouth but beyond that I can't tell you what they looked like. If I had to name a face, I'd have to say John Philip Law who played the angel in
Barbarella.
But more almond-eyed. More – Pharaonic. Not that it really matters because, as The Man said, each of us sees angels the way we imagine them to be. That's why many of the secret gospels that were suppressed by Rome claimed he had the power to change his appearance and emphasised that no two observers saw him in the same way.

The Man's companions had this soft light raying out through their bodies. All the details seemed to be in soft focus. I suppose I should have been shocked, flabbergasted but, for some reason, I just took it all in my stride. As I've explained, I had this feeling I was dreaming. I greeted The Man with a wave of the hand and scratched my chest. ‘Hi, can I get you guys anything?'

‘No,' said The Man. ‘We're just passing through.' He introduced his two companions. ‘This is Michael, and this is Gabriel. I don't see them as you do. How do they look?'

‘Tall, and radioactive,' I said. We exchanged nods but I didn't attempt to shake hands. ‘How are things going?'

‘Fine,' replied The Man, ‘We've been attending to a few things in the up-when. I was on my way back to Jerusalem and I thought I'd better stop off to tell you not to worry. Everything's going to turn out just fine.'

He said he would never he to me but I venture to suggest that the truth of that statement depends very much on one's own particular point of view. But once again that is with the benefit of hindsight. What I said was – ‘I'm glad to hear it. Does that mean you're taking care of McDonald and Jeff Fowler? And how about Linda? Is she going to give me trouble?'

‘We're being called down-when,' said The Man. He patted my arm just below the shoulder. ‘Talk to them. But don't wait too long. There's not a lot of time left.'

‘But how?' I heard myself ask tiredly. ‘What am I going to say?'

The Man gave me a confident nod. ‘You'll think of something. I'll try and get up over the weekend.' The way he talked, you could almost believe that the Empire had leased the
Time Express
and was running a shuttle service.

Michael waved his hand. ‘Be seeing you.'

‘Yes, sure,' I said. Without thinking what that particular exchange
might mean, or even noticing whether his lips moved.

Gabriel just nodded.

‘One last thing,' said The Man. ‘When you get up, don't miss the news on the radio.'

I nodded sleepily. ‘Okay …'

And they were gone.

I stood there for a few minutes while my eyes got used to the dark then shuffled back to bed. The whole encounter had such a strange, off-beat quality I'm almost certain it was a dream and that, in fact, I never got out of bed. But then what are dreams but other dimensions of being? That extend from the plane of temporal existence into the realms of the infinite.

The alarm woke me at a quarter-to-seven. Miriam stirred briefly then went back to sleep. I forced myself out of bed, hummed away ten minutes of my life under the shower then padded into the kitchen, put fresh coffee into the percolator and loaded last night's dishes into the sink so the cleaning lady wouldn't have a fit. I pressed the ‘On' button of my Sanyo portable as I went past into the living-room in search of a pack of cigarettes and mulled over the strange dream I'd had about meeting Michael and Gabriel. Normally they fade away almost as soon as I wake up, but the details of this one stuck in my mind.

When I returned to the kitchen, the seven o'clock news had begun. I listened mechanically as the newscaster ran through the morning's headlines. Global news, national news; nothing much had changed since yesterday. Then came the local stuff. It wasn't the first item. These things never are. But during the night, the police and municipal authorities had been bombarded with hundreds of phone calls from people who claimed to have seen a giant UFO hovering above the city. JFK, La Guardia and Newark Air Traffic Control had all reported picking it up on their radar screens but a USAF spokesman at the Pentagon had said that the signal had been caused by freak conditions in the magnetosphere.

Which was just as well, because the estimated size of the spaceship was twice the length of Manhattan Island …

I took Miriam in a cup of coffee and described my nocturnal encounter with The Man and his two luminous side-kicks.

‘Why didn't you wake me?' she snapped.

‘Come on, gimme a break,' I said. ‘I'm not even sure I was awake myself.' I told her about the city-sized UFO that had been hurriedly
explained away by the Air Force.

‘Do you think it was real?' she asked.

I shrugged. ‘After what you said last night, I'm not sure if I know what that word means.'

Dream or no dream, it was clear that The Man knew about the tug-of-war I was having with ‘Brax. Or was it
his
tug-of-war – and was I just the ribbon around the rope that was swaying back and forth across the line? Overnight, he had produced Michael and Gabriel, cast the shadow of one of the Empire's longships over New York city and had provided circumstantial evidence that those feet, in ancient times, had been fleetingly shod in blue jogging shoes and black fifty-fifty nylon and wool mix socks.

As I rode downtown in Jake's cab, I remember wishing an archaeological team could have dug those withered treads out of the strata containing the rubble of the first-century city. It would have been indisputable proof of his time-travelling. The trouble was, no one would have accepted it. In the same way that scientists could not bring themselves to accept the evidence of the Turin shroud.

I met Brad in the lift. He, Joe and I are always the first three in. Joe and I like to start work early. Brad comes in because the mailroom is a lot nicer than where he lives. He was carrying a radio-cassette player that looked big enough to hold two car batteries.

Brad flashed a set of teeth that would cost someone like me at least two thousand dollars. ‘Hey,' he said. ‘How about that flyin' saucer. D'ya hear about that?'

I nodded. ‘Yes. Did you see it?'

‘Nahh,' he said. ‘How come these things always turn up when ‘most ever'body's asleep?'

I grinned at him. ‘It's to stop guys like you stealing their hub-caps.'

‘Yeah …' His eyes gleamed. ‘Twenty-six miles long. Boy … imagine trying to park that fuckin' thing.'

‘Right,' I said. I didn't tell him I knew the owner.

Linda made it to the office around a quarter to ten and kept herself busy with the tapes I'd left on her desk. Finally, she stuck her head around the door. ‘Have you got a minute?'

I switched on my Mr Nice Guy smile. ‘Sure. Come on in.'

She crossed the carpet as if it was a minefield and when she got to my desk she seemed unable to decide what to do with her hands. ‘Listen,' she began. ‘About what happened yesterday. I didn't know that Gale was going to try to – well, you know – '

‘That's okay,' I said. ‘Nobody got hurt. And, in any case, there was nothing I could tell her. She already knew it all.' I blunted the barb with an understanding smile but it still cut deep.

‘Now wait a minute,' she said. ‘If I'm going to get fired, I don't want it to be for something I didn't do. She called me yesterday saying she needed to get in touch with you urgently. You hadn't said when you might be back so I suggested she try the bookshop. After all, you hadn't told me to keep her off your back. As for that business about Abraham Lucksteen, maybe I did speak out of turn but you should have taken me into your confidence. I've always made a point of knowing who all your clients are and what cases we're dealing with. When I got this call all I did was check the files to see if I could have made a mistake. Since we didn't have any record of the guy I didn't see any harm in saying we didn't represent him. But I did not give out any confidential information.'

‘I know,' I said. ‘Don't worry about it. Really.'

‘Well, that's easy to say,' she insisted. ‘But I'm getting very confused. I think I ought to tell you I had a long talk with Gale last night and she told me about these blood samples that have got some guy called Fowler jumping up and down. Why did you tell him the blood came from someone who was supposed to have died when you knew all along that it came from Sheppard? What's wrong with him? Is he carrying some kind of plague or something?'

It was a good question. Because in a way, he
was
carrying something that could be regarded by the ‘Braxian world as a fatal disease – Truth. But like its companion, Honesty, it could hardly be described as contagious. ‘Brax had done his best to make sure that most of us were immune to both.

‘If I'm going to go on working for you,' continued Linda, ‘I think I have the right to know exactly what it is that you and Doctor Maxwell are covering up. I'm not asking out of morbid curiosity. I'm concerned. I mean he was such a nice guy. So tell me – is Sheppard in some kind of trouble?'

I shook my head. ‘No. But I could be.'