Fiction 1, Chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5

"See, I have set before thee this day life and good,

and death and evil;..."

Deuteronomy, King James' Bible

GRAND RAPIDS, MANITOBA:

"Who the Hell is Bruno whatsisname?"

That was of course, Uncle John. We weren't in the camper. We were in a rowboat out on Lake Winnipeg. It was the logical conclusion to the sanitizing process, making sure that he hadn't been followed to the meet.

"He's an Italian named Tedeschi, Uncle, and a Catholic Monsignor. As a Papal Legate, he has the same privileges as a diplomat __including immunity. Dupont says he speaks English like a Brit and he was probably the last one to see your nephews alive, according to the Frenchman."

John McGovern looked up at me, skeptically. "How do you know he's telling you the truth, Richard?"

"You said it yourself, Uncle. I'm a 'dookerer,' a seer. Remember?"

Actually, the French cleric had been so terrified of my anger and so anxious for my approval, that I could only be sure that he hadn't covered for anybody else. He had painted himself virgin white, of course.

Still, there was a lot of information for us in the blame he had ascribed to his employers. One thing was sure: There was no way he could betray me to them. He didn't know anything about me anyway, and he was a dead man if they even got an inkling that he had been questioned. They'd do him just on general principles.

The old con-man was not very thrilled at what he considered insolence coming from anyone, much less a junior. But before he could respond, I headed him off. "We had an understanding, Uncle. The Frenchman understood me very well. And he knows that I can always find him again."

"And exactly how can you be sure of that, lad?" he asked sarcastically. "We've got a Frog and a Wop that talks like a 'slimy' and this Institute with the 'Canadian Shield' thing. It's a lot to have on your plate. Suppose the Frog just skips?"

You will just have to forgive my Uncle John for his bigotry. It's very impolite but he doesn't know any better __unfortunately__ and really means no harm by it.

"Well, that would be hops, I think. But he had a little accident, Uncle. It seems that he broke his legs while landing his plane, and the floats and his radio were damaged too. So he's not going anywhere for a while. He shouldn't be missed by Orlando for at least two weeks, and then it would take a month for them to find him. As a matter of fact, he was very grateful to me for helping him with the splints."

As a matter of fact, he had been.

Now let me tell you what happened to the McGoverns in Elphingstoke.

Uncle John and Mickey drove up together in one pick-up and Jack in the other. Jack is what we call a "hardnyuck," literally a hard head __or figuratively, a hard man in his dealings with others. A violent man, you might say. He's thirty __ten years older than Mickey__ and there were two lovely lockeens born between them to his late mother Molly, bless her soul.

Jack McGovern was born back when Travellers had lots of options, when the land was more amenable to our lifestyle. Everybody's numbered now, of course, even America's children. But then, no one among his clan worried whether Jack went to school for twelve full years __as long as he learned to read, write and count. The Life would assign his lessons and grade his tests.

He doesn't have a criminal record, unless you count misdemeanors under an alias. Hell! He doesn't have any record, good or bad. No grammar school graduation, no high school at all, no draft card, no legitimate driver's license, no social security card, no medical insurance, no income tax returns, no history, whatsoever. If it wasn't for a baptismal certificate, and the fact that you can touch and see him, he would not exist.

I don't wish to make light of homelessness, but Travellers made a viable lifestyle out of it long before it became so popular.

That was then: this is now. It's not viable any more. Some of my clan have only two choices: extreme poverty as a non-entity, or a life of hopefully petty crime and a wish that your soul gets its lease renewed someday.

We are not talented at being poor. Maybe that's a gift, reserved for others.

Jack is one such example of a man with two choices; a man with no future, no matter which is taken. Mickey is not. Ten years might as well be the difference between the Jurassic and the Cretaceous. The dinosaurs are dead, there is just no place with enough room for them to lie down.

John's eldest boy even tried gammy-grannyin for a while, when things got really bad. I'll not explain that. It's not a thing most of us admire, and not for a man like him. Now, instead, he prowls the night to prey on street scum, crack pushers and the rest of that pack. Sooner or later, they'll find a place for him to lie down __probably sooner.

Still, it's a living, and it soothes a brooding conscience; for the gammy-grannyin, you know. We all seem to be caught up in violence these days, though; not just the Travellers here, but all Americans. I don't know what things are coming to.

I used to have a hope that my little hobby __forging documentation__ might make a difference for some of my cousins, but it is so much easier to change the appearance for a moment, than the reality for a lifetime.

Hopes sustain the soul. Then, a terrible thing happens.

Some of them come true. And nothing is forever.

Let's go back a week. Uncle John and his future, Mickey, proceeded to their assignment, a little corner of nowhere known as Elphingstoke. Jack followed them, a latter day shotgun guard, watchful and wary of enemies.

God help his enemies. No one else can. He is a predator.

They fished about six hours a day __separately__ using different guides sometimes or on their own. In due time, they closed in on the Farm. It was simple: They just wanted to go where no one else went to fish, and it had to be explained to them why they could not or should not. A few drinks before, during or after the fishing, and the guides or other friendly fisherman would fill their ears. There was no need to ask about the Farm.

Uncle John would say something like, "That's a likely piece of stream north of the lumber trail there, ain't it."

The other man would blow through his pipe stem before packing the bowl and lighting up. "It's all right as long as you keep off the far bank, Johnny. It's posted, of course, but the snotty bastards don't like us fishing folk either." The smoke signals that he sent up on lighting his pipe would accentuate the laid-back natural philosophy behind the words.

John would explore the question. "What can they do, Bob? We do no harm, you know, and we got a right to walk the water, surely."

And Bob, or sometimes Sam, or Jerry would say something like, "Oh, we got rights, but they got barbed wire. They got guns, and the Law. You snag your line on the far bank, just cut it, eh? The constable, he's thick with 'em, lookin' to hire on when he retires next year. He'll be sorry, but you'll be fined for trespass, maybe held overnight in the cellar. Mark my words, Johnny, it don't pay to mess with 'em." The pipe tobacco had a sickly sweet odor.

Uncle John's face lit up at that. "Hiring on, you say. Would there be work there for a carpenter, or maybe as a watchman? I've done that a time or two, you know, in the City. My boy, Mickey, he's a good fruit picker and a fast man on the packing line, too."

The other man spat on the floor. "Them guards is all fookin' Dutchmen, or somethin', and they won't take on nobody but the local folk as laborers, anyway. Their farmers is all Ukrainians from Alberta. Besides, your Mickey will be an old man before he packs a piece of their fruit."

"Why's that, if I might ask?"

"They grow good looking crops there. And fruit, too, eh? But it's just for seed. And maybe it's not so good for you, either. That's why they got the guards and the fences, they say. A couple of Cree kids in the early days snuck in and took a bit for the table. You know: just to help out at home, eh? Well, they didn't die, but they was sick as dogs for days. Wouldn't have known a thing about it, except that the emergency squad had to take 'em to hospital and pump 'em out. The landowner who leases the Farm to the Institute said it's the fertilizer, or somethin'. Some greasy foreigner named Orlando, of all things."

"That's a terrible thing, man," John agreed. "Were they all right then, after?"

"Oh, aye. Except for the youngest. But, he might have been simple to start with, I don't know."

He yelled into the kitchen of the little bar, "Belle! What's the name of them woods runners. You know, the ones whose kids came down with somethin' from the Farm. Was about six years back, eh?"

The answer rang out like a trumpet, "It was the Parkers, Bob. The ones up near Lascoux. You know: the oldest kid's a dwarf. Must be twenty-five now."

The local man was reflective.

"I forgot about Billy Parker, Johnny. But his legs was short from when he was a boy. It was nothin' to do with the Farm."

John McGovern could sound principled, without sounding indignant. "Well, it still don't sound right to me, my friend. Dutchmen, you say. I'll bet they hang together in a place like this; too snooty to mingle with us peasants. And Ukrainians, they're born shit-kickers, you know. They cut their teeth on a plow, I hear."

"You can say that again, Johnny. Oh, I could tell you stories, I could."

"Have another drink, Bob."

Bob thanked him kindly and knocked the dying embers from his pipe into the ashtray.

"Would you care for another petit-four, Mr. Scott?"

Turning toward the source of that hospitality, Uncle John discovered a petite lady of not quite sixty, with a determined smile among her pleasant features. They had been introduced briefly, earlier, before the service.

"Yes, I would, Mrs. Hunnicut. Thank you kindly. And I'm going to get some more tea for myself. Would you care to join me?"

"Oh, thank you. I don't believe that I've seen you in our church before today, Mr. Scott. Your son is such a handsome boy, too. I hope your wife wasn't ill today."

"Well, Mrs. Hunnicut, it's really Reverend Scott, John Sluyters Kennedy Scott. I retired from my pulpit last year in St. John's, The Reorganized and Reformed Dutch Anabaptist Church of Newfoundland. I'm afraid to say that I decided to travel as far away from my little Dutch assembly as I could for a while."

"Oh, that's so interesting, Reverend. But about your____"

"Well, I just arrived two days ago, looking for a nice place to settle down, you know. It's so nice to get away, of course, but I find myself thinking about those hardheaded Dutch more than I thought I would."

"I know exactly what you mean, Reverend. They're such troublemakers, the men are. There are quite a few living here, up at the Farm. And the women, well, I really can't say. And how is Mrs. Scott feeling, by the way?"

Uncle John hadn't needed to act for this part. I've heard his voice catch, and seen the moisture in his eyes when he speaks of Aunt Molly. "My wife is in Heaven now, Mrs. Hunnicut. She passed away four years ago. And sometimes it seems so hard to have faith that there is a Divine purpose for the taking away, as well as for the giving."

Mrs. Hunnicut managed to look sad at that news, even though her heart gave a flutter on hearing it. "Oh, how sad! Please call me Agatha, you know, I'm only, well fifty or so, and I feel so silly you're calling me Mrs., like I'm still teaching and would you like one of these sticky buns? I made them myself at home and there's no preservatives, not that____"

He smiled and said, "Well, I'm John, then. After all, I'm retired now."

She returned his smile shyly, still unsettled, and hesitant to speak again for fear she would not be able to stop.

"Would you like to go for a walk, Agatha? I miss having someone to walk with, and it's tiresome to walk by oneself, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes." It was more of a sigh than an answer. She was lost. Her dreams would never be the same again.

As they left the little church hall, he leaned close to her left ear and said, "You'll have to tell me about your Dutchmen and I'll tell you about mine. If there's anything scandalous, I'll just say a silent prayer because __between you and me__ they're really a rough and ready lot, aren't they. Not like the Ukrainians."

She giggled, almost like a schoolgirl.

They walked up the road, side by side. Before the evening was over, he would take her arm for a moment or two, helping her over the rough spots, while they walked and talked.

Mickey was in trouble. He was blonde, he was handsome, he was not shy, and he was obviously hanging around the store to make time with the girl working behind the counter. And he was striking out.

Mickey couldn't know it, but the store clerk -her name was Allison- was happy for his company. At first she was worried about the man hanging around outside, but the basic innocence of the boy inside soon put her at ease.

Since the attack by the three Indians earlier in the month, and the subsequent double killing, the idea of having company around was quite welcome, in fact. There had also been a sexual assault on a ten year old Indian boy only a month before, up at Wabowden. The general populace, Indian and whites alike, had taken to cleaning their rifles to soothe jagged nerves.

Every once in a while, a girl of her own age would enter the store and make a purchase, and Mickey would listen with half an ear to their conversation, hoping to learn something that would give him an opening. So far, he'd had no luck. The girls talked of haircuts, boys and of girls lucky enough to get to go to college, or find some other way to escape Elphingstoke.

If he'd had more experience, Mickey would have recognized that the young lady was still a virgin at twenty, unwilling to get caught up with her girlfriends in the pregnancy trap. At the age of fifteen, Allison had set her wards out not only against the blandishments of sweet-talking tourists, but against the urgent supplications of the hornier local boys, who still needed a mother more than a lover in her opinion.

Allison was not a girl who could be sweet-talked into anything, especially the back seat of a car or the bed of a pick-up.

Still, Mickey would try to start up a conversation, and the girl would answer pleasantly enough, even smile at him. And that would be the end of it. There was no ring on her finger, it wasn't that. He wasn't being fresh or pushy, it wasn't that. She just wasn't interested; it was definitely that.

She doesn't look like a Lesbian, he thought. She's pretty, not just cute; too serious, though. She fills those jeans till they're going to bust and she's got nice big boobs, too. You could see some cleavage when she bent down to pull out a paper bag. It kind of makes up for her little gut and big thighs. That strawberry blonde braid that curves around her neck and teases the place where her shirt buttons, three from the top, that's not hard to look at either.

A scattering of freckles across the young lady's face authenticated her hair color, in lieu of better evidence. He moved closer to the counter, afraid that she would notice his erection.

It went like this:

Mickey would come up with an opener like, "Anything going on around here this weekend."

She'd smile, a big white smile that showed a little bit of pink gum. He'd noticed the first time that she smiled, that her full lips were slightly chapped under the crimson lipstick, and she would wet them every now and then with a quick dart of her tongue. It drove him crazy.

Then she'd say something like, "Not really. You could check the paper, though. Keep the cup, if you're going to have a refill. It's only thirty cents."

And she'd go on to find something else to unpack, or stack, or clean. Mickey had never realized how much work there was for a convenience store clerk to do, things that had nothing to do with waiting on people. She's a damned good worker, he thought, and he was surprised even as the thought occurred, that it played any part in his evaluation of her.

Even her full first name would still be unknown to him, if it wasn't for the name tag that said, "Allison." A beautiful name __just right. The girl friends had called her "Allie," which didn't do her justice. Every once in a while, she'd catch a glimpse of Jack waiting around outside or sitting in the truck. Every once in a while, Jack would look up and see her.

Maybe that's it, thought Mickey. Maybe Jack's bothering her. I ought to mention it to him. I thought he was supposed to stay out of sight. No, I'd better not. It sounds like I'm making excuses. Anyway, she probably doesn't like men. Mickey was disappointed with the whole universe at that point for its collusion in that kind of serious blunder.

Then four men drove up to the store in a pick-up __the kind with a crew cab__ and piled into the store; big men bursting with energy. He thought, they bounce around a lot, seeing as how they're as old as Jack, or maybe even older. They could be lumberjacks. But everybody looks like lumberjacks up here, even some of the women.

One of them pushed him aside getting to the coffee maker, slopping some of Mickey's coffee on the floor.

"Hey, watch it, Clown," the boy said, before thinking it over. "Try looking where you're going, huh."

Another timber worker walked over to Mickey and looked down at him.

"You got a problem with that, kid?" The man's voice sounded like a bear in a cave.

Mickey knew he should keep his mouth shut, so he said, "Yeah, I do."

It had almost come out right.

Another one of them came over and now there were three of them all around him, towering over him, making him feel like a little kid. So Mickey hit one of them __the one in front__ as hard as he could on the jaw, as fast as he could. If he had waited any longer, he would have chickened out in front of the girl.

Two of them grabbed Mickey's arms. The one in front, who was scarcely dazed at all by Mickey's right overhand, started to undo his garrison belt. There was a bitchin' Harley on the big chromed buckle.

Mickey couldn't look away from that one-pound mace in the ham-handed fist, slowly drawing the two-inch belt from the Levi loops. He was terrified.

"Jack!"

The bells on the door rang out violently at the same moment as Mickey's shout, and the huge man in front of Mickey turned furiously at the interruption, while he began to wrap the leather strap around his fist.

Jack walked into the store, directly over to the fourth bully boy, who was trying to corner Allison behind the counter. Allison was wielding a carving knife like she knew what she was doing with it, weaving it in lazy-eights in front of her. She constantly varied the pattern and speed of her airy tapestry to keep her assailant guessing.

Everybody's eyes were on Jack, even Allison's. He gestured to the man directly in front of him with his index finger, a beckoning.

The other turned away from the girl and moved closer to Jack, unafraid of the nondescript man who confronted him. Jack McGovern was smiling slightly, something that Mickey had not seen in the last six years. Of course, Mickey had never seen his brother at work.

Jack bent slightly forward, his arms at his sides, hands relaxed and open. He spoke softly, so softly that even the man he was speaking to __only three feet from him__ could not hear what he said.

And he was smiling that little smile.

Jack's target advanced his left foot to move just a little closer, so that he could hear. But the next sound that he heard was not from Jack. It was "pop!" and that sound came somehow from his left knee. Before the man's head could drop forward and allow him to see what had happened, the heel of Jack's cupped right palm arrived under his jaw, just about the same time as the agonizing pain from his broken kneecap.

The driven head snapped up, but could not move fast enough to evade the main force of the jack-hammer thrust. As the power of Jack's right shoulder fell in line with his extended arm in a follow-through, a last impetus was added that knocked the body beneath the whip-lashed head completely off its feet, seeming to travel back faster than the blow itself.

The other three were prevented from seeing the complete assault by the broad back of their companion. Blocked partly by the counter, even Allison had only seen Jack's arm shoot out like a piston, before the man in front of him was flying back into the creature about to beat the young boy. The only thing she could liken it to was the ram on a powered log-splitter.

The two loggers holding onto Mickey let him go, and stepped back reflexively __to get a better view. The one who had been about to brutalize the boy with his leather-wrapped, buckle-edged fist tripped backwards over the falling body of Jack's first victim.

Mickey sidled around the fallen men and moved quickly toward Allison.

His brother stepped on the fallen leader's right hand, still wrapped in the belt, buckle dangling, and used his other booted foot to smash the man's nose flat. As blood spilled from the squashed nose onto the vinyl flooring, the man who would have beaten Mickey to a pulp held his left hand before his face in a placating gesture, shaking his head, as if to say, "No more. No more, please."

But then the fallen logger whipped that left hand around behind his back, toward a sheathed knife on his hip. To do that, he rolled over to his right as far as the pinned-down hand would allow. While he lifted his head to glare directly into Jack's cold eyes, my predatory cousin struck again, without hesitation.

Jack McGovern's right boot lashed out again, landing on the point of the logger's jaw with such speed and power that the mandible was audibly broken and several teeth crushed on the left side. The tip of the downed man's tongue was severed, as the mean mouth became a snapped trap for it. Torrents of blood poured from the crushed nose and the torn tongue as the battered head hit the wooden planks of the floor.

Jack turned his attention to the closer of the remaining two. This time he spoke just a little louder.

"Take them with you," he said easily.

The others were stunned by the sudden resolution. The nearer man tried to peer into the caves behind Jack's eyes while he weighed his options. After an eternity of consideration that lasted about a second, the man facing Jack shivered one mighty shudder and walked around __well clear of him. His companion almost immediately joined him in carrying their friends out to the pick-up.

The surviving loggers had to make two trips. Neither Mickey nor Jack helped, or paid them any further attention at all, for that matter.

Jack was just looking at the girl, standing in front of the counter, no longer smiling. Regular features, average posture, average size, brown hair, brown eyes. There was nothing to suggest anything exceptional in him. He just looked at the girl with the strawberry-blonde braid and she couldn't pull her eyes from his. The carving knife was still in her left hand, forgotten.

Mickey somehow broke the spell he was under. "What did you say to that first guy, Jack?"

Jack just shook his head, looking at the girl, memorizing her. She seemed __to Mickey__ to be frozen in fear of Jack, unable to turn away.

"Let's go pick up Dad, Mickey." That was all he said to his brother.

"I'll be back for you when you close up." That was all he said to the girl who would be with him for the rest of her life.

That's the way the week went for the McGoverns.

All in all, they had learned all that could be learned about the Farm, without penetrating it. And penetration was out of the question. There were better ways to go further.

After the green plane took off __with Father Dupont in it, presumably__ there was little for them to do in Elphingstoke, so they decided to come down to Grand Rapids to wait for me.

Uncle John explained to Agatha about his call from Bangladesh and gave her some flowers as a parting gift.

Mickey took some comfort from his remembrance of heroism. He would pose once in a while in front of the mirror, trying to look tough and say, "Yeah, I do!" at the same time. When there was no one else in the motel room, naturally.

Jack had brought Allison with him and Mickey bunked in with his Father.

Chapter 6

"And yet do I take too much upon myself

because I help those I love after their death,

when most they need a friend?"

Heracles Mad, Euripides

GRAND RAPIDS, MANITOBA:

It took two full days to debrief my cousins.

We met in the woods this time, careful to check our back trail. I had a two pound Dacron tarp and a ground cloth from my pack, in case of rain. And we did need it for one of the afternoons.

There was the pleasant atmosphere of a family picnic about our conferences, what with the Thermos bottles of laced coffee and the sandwiches. Oral would not have approved, no matter how much he thirsted to join in.

Allison took a little time to relax in my presence, naturally. The last time she had seen me, I had left two bodies for her to sweep up. She and Jack spent most of those two days looking at each other, though. Not hugging or holding hands; just looking. A bright and cheerful girl __normally animated with the rest of us__ she and Jack seemed to enter a trance-like state in each other's presence. I don't think that I've ever seen anything quite like it. It was to be hoped that they enjoyed it. It wasn't exactly endearing to me at the time.

By then, the packet of research had been delivered to Dozer for me, and there was also a steady stream of information flowing into the electronic mailboxes of Eric Lindner and Richard Quirk __as well as the answering service of Gerardo Laguna, the scribbling scourge of Jehovah's enemies. The service stored any faxes received for me without printing them out, and I picked them up nightly over the fax/modem.

There were electronic acquaintances __some real and some virtual__ checking news files, airline reservations, corporate charters and boards of directors, land titles, customs and immigration, even Church records. Everybody's on computer, even God.

The real acquaintances worked on a barter system. In the last few days, I had called in a lot of favors and passed out a lot more of my own. Even to MacArthur Park. He no longer owed me so big for the CIA thing.

That's too long a story to tell here, by the way. But the reference is pertinent, unfortunately.

The local news was reporting considerable unrest among the Indian peoples of the north country.

The unsolved murders of two Indians several weeks before, along with a manhunt for a known Indian companion __still missing__ had strained racial relations in the area. There had been several apparent reprisals by Indians, none of them fatal so far.

My modem in the camper rang. For a minute, it didn't register and I automatically moved to pick up the non-existent handset. There was nothing but a high pitched whine coming from the speaker. The modem answered the call automatically.

This wasn't supposed to happen. A call to either of the telephone lines that I was usurping should only ring on the pay phones that they were attached to. They couldn't ring in the camper. Then I relaxed a little, with a small grim smile replacing the nervous tic I was beginning to develop. If it wasn't the Amityville Horror, it could only be MacArthur Park.

Sure enough. The monitor cleared and there was a graphic image on my screen __something about Kim-chee take-out: If it isn't buried in the ground for six months and delivered within thirty minutes, you get it free.

I used to like his little jokes.

It was a simple message: Phone home alone.

Cute, really cute.

I was alone. A call to my fax line sent and received a fax. My data line sent and received data. Well, that left nature's own.

"Hi, Dick."

"What do you say, Mac?"

"Got to make it short. I'm borrowing Tele-Net for the occasion and it wouldn't be polite to linger. Morty sends his regards, secretly, as befits his job classification. You touched on a couple of sore points, Tedeschi and the Institute __on the NSA Watch List__ and picked up a Company tag on each. They've tapped into you at your home, too. Fortunately for both of us, they can't touch your remote rig."

"I guess we're encrypted, Mac. It sounds good, though. Compression factor must be high. We sound digital, maybe 100,000 b.p.s., effective. How much room do you have for over-sampling?"

"Good guess, paleface," he congratulated me. "And I'm using a factor of four times over-sampling. Glad to hear you've still got some of your faculties. Incidentally, I've diverted the line. We're bouncing all around the continent."

"Any chance they'll get anything out of this, Mac?"

"Only if you count headaches. By the way, there's a late addition from the Firm. They've added the Ukrainians to the Watch List. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence."

"How many new tags in that batch, Mac?"

"Over a hundred."

"Did you get the anomaly sources?"

"Yes."

"Squirt them over, O.K.?"

"O.K.. Here it comes. Ten seconds____"

"____Got it, Mac. Thanks. Anything else?"

"Yeah, Dick, one thing. A year ago, it was 'Quirk, who?'."

"So?"

"Right now, it's 'Quirk, the loose cannon'."

"Anything you can do to take the pressure off?" I asked him, hoping against hope that there was still some credit owed on my page of his balance sheets.

"Not really, pal. I'm afraid the rumor is true. Got to go, now. It's time to for me to shut down and dig in. You too, if you know what's good for you. Take better care of yourself, O.K.?"

"____Goodbye, Mac."

It really hurt to look out the window. The two base-plates under the pay phones were now on the ground, burning with the fires of thermite __trading their aluminum for the iron in ordinary rust__ in an accelerated reaction. You can generally tell thermite by the color; it's very sad.

When Dozer and the Otter had left me in the middle of nowhere it felt lonely, which for me is like a drowning man complaining about the taste of the ocean.

Mac was bailing out on me.

Now, I felt like bitching about the ocean's dampness, too. I was catching the coldest chill from that dampness and I couldn't stop shivering. A blanket wouldn't help. All the blankets in the world would not help. I knew it was true what Mac had implied. I was out of control. I had lost it and I didn't even know what it was I had lost.

I knew when.

I remember two evil men, big and small, killing and being killed, being beaten and stabbed, drowned and burned __and taking up weapons to stamp out that evil. Physical weapons, emotional weapons, mental weapons. But it might have started before that, a certain morbidity, perhaps, equating survival with betrayal.

That was then: this is now.

I was the one out of control now, not my enemies; I could see that. It was I. Looking back, it was obvious; easy to see what I was blind to, going forwards.

I had killed two boys, one of them in cold blood. I had tortured an old priest. There were excuses. Maybe it would even turn out that I should have done those things; I don't know. But to do them as a matter of course, without making any moral decisions beforehand; that was not what I had once believed in.

If she could see me now, she would be appalled, I thought. What the hell am I doing?

Mac couldn't know those things yet, but what he did know was enough to scare him already. The torture hadn't even been for a good cause; just to dig out information that I didn't already possess __not even for vengeance. In another few days a different approach might have turned up even more, for all I knew. There was no doomsday deadline here. None that I was aware of, at any rate.

I was sure now, of what had been wrong then. Still, I knew that I no longer had any standard to judge the moment __at the moment. Except expediency. The standard of an engineer, or the standard of a machine.

And I knew why.

I had been cautioned early, much younger than most of James Quirk's descendants. I'm not saying that Travellers believe in reincarnation or possession. It's just that those who dooker spend more time than most glancing back in time. And those descended from James Quirk, the Traveller, have more reason than most to be looking over their shoulder.

Doubt took hold of me, a doubt that could kill. There was a vacuum in me, suddenly filled by an overwhelming rush of Time; slashing, cutting as it poured over me. Future shock.

It was too much.

I tried to split my mind in three.

That's hard to explain. It is something only Travellers can do naturally, as far as I know __although the others don't exactly know what it is that they do. They think that it's normal for eight or nine people to have two or three different conversations going, everybody talking and listening at the same time with full comprehension.

I did open my mind.

But I was not three. I was four and three is the limit.

A battle that had never ended, raged on:

The Hierophant of the Tarot, Lugh to an Irishman, seated on a throne, the Priestess, Artio, standing behind with her hand on His shoulder. My grandmother, trying to save her soul and mine.

The Chariot, driven by the god of War, Ned, with the Devil standing behind him. My grandfather, using her gifts as well as his own. Evil always, and sometimes berserk.

The Hanged Man. Maybe myself; possibly the Burning Man. The Hanged Man was the one suspended upside down, awaiting the arrival of a visualization that would free him.

Part of me was also __somehow__ contained in a blazing Crown of Thorns on his head, pressed over his eyes like a cruel blindfold. That's not a Tarot image, of course. It belongs to the other Hanged Man, the upright one called the Christ.

Who or what is the Burning Man? It's a long story. A little later.

I'm much better now.

I know all psychopaths say that, but it's true. If I didn't have a significant __for want of a better word__ conscience anymore, then I knew that I would have to get one, like the Tin Man and his heart. It wouldn't be an emotional, moral one. It would have to be intellectual, ethical.

That would take a long time to work out; so I put it on the back burner.

If it was time for Mac to go into hiding, then it was time for me to lay low too. I knew that. There was a vague and abstract hope that he would be safe from my enemies, and a very concrete case of rampant paranoia.

Maybe Mac had done worse than bail out. It could be that he had sold me out, but didn't have the stomach to string me along for "Them." My brain stem __an evolutionary survivor as far back as our reptile ancestors__ went into overdrive and all of the cerebral functions bowed out gracelessly in favor of their limbic relatives.

I grabbed the documentation and my print-outs, the note-book computer, a few tricks, the shotgun and the rucksack. It hurt me to leave the heavy hardware, but that's life for you. Most of my technology would have to stay __along with a few booby traps and some tell-tales around the trailer. The family and Dozer both knew that they should stay out if there was no response on the CB or at the door.

For two whole days wilderness formed the moat to my castle __a camouflaged tent. After thirty miles of trails and backtracking, my panic subsided but not my fear.

It turned out that I couldn't sleep in the tent and only fitfully outside. I feared the unknown too much to surround myself with blinding walls of cloth. The first night held a poor night's slumber, but at least that sleep was not deep enough for my customary dreams to smother me.

There were different visions out there though; some by day and some by night. And I read the Tarot occasionally during the days, mostly to pass the time. Three groups of three of the Greater Arcana regularly showed up:

The Tower, the Fool, Justice;

The Hanged Man, the Magician, the Hermit;

The Wheel, Judgement, Death.

It's not that the cards had no meaning for me. They had every possible meaning for me. My mind exhausted itself in the effort, trying to make some sense of what had happened and what would happen.

By the second night, I had calmed down enough to build a discreet campfire in a small clearing and the thought occurred that I might actually sleep in the tent that night. The tightly woven trees around me offered more than enough concealment for the fire.

Still_____

A cheery campfire? No!

The front was warm, sure, but the back was cold __cold as ice. And that cold back owed little to the thermometer, feeling itself naked and alone, defenseless against the wind and the wide, wide world. Every noise, every rustle, every snap jostled the spine, Every breeze presaged the advance of danger.

The fire itself was a small council fire in a space cleared of needles and free of roots. It was backed by a slab of wood covered with aluminum foil, to reflect more heat toward me. A candle and some cones had started it easily, with squaw wood __dead lower branches__ catching and lighting the larger pieces.

I dozed a bit in front of it.

A clamor woke me, sounds of large animals moving all around in the woods.

Trapped!

The fire flared up, far too bright to look at directly. But the firelight added sight to the sounds now; they were bears. No humps; so they were black bears, which are no less dangerous than grizzlies in confrontation.

I had never before seen or heard of two adult bears together, really together. Solitary, except for the act itself of mating, any proximity between adults can only be a coincidental grouping, not an association. And now I, or rather the fire, was surrounded by at least a dozen huge bears. All of them faced the flame, down on all fours between the trees that ringed the clearing, necks raised and heads bowed at the same time like supplicants.

My eyes still could not face the fire directly; it was even brighter than before. Out of the corner of one eye, though, I could see Her there, the White Lady.

She was crying silently. White robes extended down to fully cover her feet, and the Goddess __if such she is__ seemed to be sitting on some invisible bench over the fire. The Lady began to speak, silently as well, but still I knew what she was saying:

Child of Time, Son of Dana,

what is born in thunder must die in thunder.

In thunder will you vanquish those who confront you.

In thunder will you be struck down by one who does not.

Taranis will be your judge and the Roth Remach your fate."

She faded from sight and the fire died suddenly.

The bears backed away noisily into the woods and then turned and departed. After a few minutes, a silence settled on my forest clearing that was as still and pervasive as any I have ever known. And a certainty within myself that I had thought lost forever. However dire the consequences; at least there was a direction for me to place one foot at a time in front of the other, as well as a conviction that there was at least a useful __if limited__ future before me.

There were, on the surface, more questions raised that night than answers provided. The most obvious one was: What good are visions or hallucinations if all they tell you is not to stand under a tree in a thunderstorm?

Dana had been the Goddess of the Tuatha de Danaan, an ancient people of Erin, a mystical race of magicians who were called by later inhabitants, the Sidhe. They were long vanished; it happened sometime between legend and history. And I am a half-breed Traveller of no particular religious inclination or mystical talents. A faker, a con-man. Perhaps a victim, or a focus, but certainly not a source of supernatural forces.

What connection could there be?

Taranis was God of Thunder and Lightning, and the Roth Remach was sometimes called his "Wheel of Judgement," and sometimes the "Rolling Wheel of Thunder" or the "Wheel of Light."

I shivered.

Once, I had judged a man. And executed him.

The wrong man. And used a jury-rigged weapon to do so, one that was inspired by my knowledge of the Roth Remach myth.

Truly, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I destroyed the wrong man then, in fire and thunder. No, he was not an innocent. But he was the wrong man; he could have been an innocent. The corpse had died only once for himself, but the Burning Man, the wrong man, burns over and over in my dreams. And I know this in spite of the fact that my dreams are too terrible to remember in detail on waking.

My fate was settled and I could only go on to meet it. I will win my battles, I thought, and then, somehow, lose. Lose what? My life? What else did I have?

Small loss! Why panic?

Turning in, I knew that I would be safe for the night. One night only and then I must return to the quest of the White Lady. The conviction has persisted, as well, of a geas imposed that no forest __this or any other__ would serve as a refuge for me until I had somehow cleansed my soul.

Reentry into the civilized delights of rustic Manitoba was not accomplished without a certain amount of trepidation and a lot of eyeballing through binoculars.

It's not easy to find vantage points in the North Woods, but __on the other hand__ the cover is superb. I was recovering from my depression, and over-compensating by going a little manic. "Top of the world, Ma; top of the world."

All right! There was a premonition of defeat.

There was also the promise of victory first. So I would be safe for the moment. All I had to do was watch out for thunder. And the trailer was untouched, unobserved. I had been sure that I could trust Mac. What a guy!

There was even a bottle of Irish whiskey in my trailer and I'd earned a drop of it, I thought. Was it real, what I had seen the night before? More than likely not, of course. I'm about as crazed as a man can get and still walk upright.

Nobody knows that better than I do.

Kind of hard to explain away all the bear droppings, though, and the fur rubbed off on the rough bark where they had scratched themselves. It seems much too vulgar a way to validate such a fantasy, but there you have it; that's my life in a nutshell.

I called my people and told them where to meet me.

* * * * * * * * * *

The old priest crossed himself at the conclusion of my revelation. He was slumped more than usual now.

I was standing tall, in front of him. "What do you call that, Father? An epiphany, perhaps."

"Madness is what I would say. Or the Devil's deed, to take advantage of a disturbed mind."

I laughed at him, cheerfully __ and sarcastically. "You believe that God answers prayer, don't you? Well, judging by our relative circumstances __as bad as mine are right now, they're a hell of a lot better than yours__ She has done more for me without prayer, than He has done for you, with all your crossing and blessing and mumbling and crying to Him."

He shook his head wearily. "Christians do not believe that God is either male or female, pagan. Or that He will be found in idols such as yours."

To tell the truth, I have always loved this kind of soapbox bullshit. "Amazing!" I said dryly. "The same holy statues that portray your beliefs vividly are somehow miraculously transformed into superstitious idols when they portray another's. You can lie to yourself, old man, but not to me. Your God has every bit as much testosterone as Jupiter or Zeus ever had. Incense is just another kind of male deodorant, I think."

He smiled at that, surprising __disappointing__ me. "We could both use something like that now." The smile faded as the priest sighed, "It is you that I feel sorrow for, trapped now just as I am trapped. At least my release is near at hand."

No use denying the obvious.

"You feel sorrow for me, do you?" I had to smile at the thought. "Very well then __just to be agreeable__ I will also."

But it was time for me to take back the initiative. "You know, your release may not be altogether as pleasant as you anticipate, Priest. As bad as things are now, they can always get worse. Have you considered that?"

He looked up at me slyly, question for question. "Could that be thunder I hear approaching?"

I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the bench next to him, ignoring the malodorous stenches of injury and captivity. I was enjoying his company more than I ever could have imagined.

Damnedest thing, I thought, I could like this man. It's almost a pity he has to die so soon.

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