Sedona Conspiracy

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ^{THE GOLDEN MAN}

They ate Mexican uptown and went back to Nataly’s shop. Marie was working the counter when they entered, and smiled at what she thought was secret knowledge.

They went in the back and Nataly made green tea. Eric put her loaned book down on a table.

“Have you finished it already?”

“I’ve put myself to sleep with it the past three nights.”

“Oh, it bored you.”

“Not at all. Well written, and easy to read. Very interesting.”

“But you don’t believe any of it.”

“Sorry. I guess I have a bookkeeper’s mind. The distances between stars are just too huge. I doubt we’ll ever get together with other intelligent societies, even though I think it’s likely they exist. And if they were here, I don’t see why they’d pick on places like Sedona, or some guy’s front yard in Switzerland. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t see why distance is important,” said Nataly, and poured tea. They sat down at a round, glass-topped table with a plate of cookies on it. “I mean, alien societies could be far advanced and have ships that travel much faster than ours.”

“Up to a fraction of light-speed, sure, but mass goes to infinity as you reach light speed. You can’t go beyond that.”

“I’ve heard of Einstein, Eric. I just think there are a lot of things scientists don’t know yet. It limits our thinking. What if we had a way to travel across a galaxy in the blink of an eye? Then we could all get together.”

“That’s why science fiction is so popular,” said Eric, and bit into a cookie. “No limits there, and good entertainment.”

“I think it’s fun to think about things like that,” said Nataly.

She leaned close, and munched a cookie between sips of tea. Her eyes fixed on his, flecks of emerald green swimming in dark brown. “You didn’t believe in auras either, until you saw mine. Didn’t that change you?”

Eric reached over and touched her cheek. “I don’t know what I saw, but I sure haven’t forgotten it.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t need an explanation?”

“No.” He touched her chin with a finger, and she grabbed it. Her eyes seemed to darken, and flecks of green were enhanced by it. Eric felt a small ache in his chest.

“I don’t either,” she said, and kissed his finger. “When can you come over again?”

“I don’t know. The next few days look bad.”

“Oh.”

“I mean I’ll let you know in the morning. I might have to be out of town.”

“Okay.” She looked down at Eric’s fingers clenched in her hand. Eric wondered if she could feel his strong pulse in it.

“I’ll try, I promise. I want to come over. I like being with you, Nataly.” Oh, man, why did I say that?

Nataly brightened, squeezed his hand. “That’s what I really wanted to hear.” She reached out and caressed his cheek. Eric felt blood rush to his face, and for an instant time seemed to disappear as he experienced a brief lapse of consciousness like a waking dream.

Eric blinked. “Sleep was tough last night. I couldn’t turn off.”

“Dreams?”

“Yeah, that too. Bizarre stuff. I was flying in one of them, arms stretched out like I was a sailplane. Then I was talking to a guy with gold skin. We were having what I thought was a deep, philosophical conversation about something, but when I woke up I couldn’t remember any of it. Had trouble getting back to sleep after that, kept hearing every pop and creak in the house.”

Nataly frowned, and fumbled in her purse. “I can give you something to help you sleep. I use it myself.”

“I don’t use sleeping pills,” said Eric.

“Oh it’s not that. More of a relaxant. Here, try it tonight, two tablets at bedtime. It’s herbal.” Nataly took two pink tablets from a vial in her purse, wrapped them in a piece of paper napkin and handed it to him.

“Okay,” said Eric, and put the little package in his shirt pocket to appease her. Inwardly, he had no intentions of taking any pills for sleep. Deep sleep made you vulnerable. Deep sleep could make you dead.

They finished their tea, and rinsed out the cups. “I’ll call,” said Eric, tilted her chin up and kissed her softly. Nataly leaned into the kiss, and then grinned at him. Marie gave him another grin at the front of the shop when he left.

There were four cars in the parking lot. A man sat behind the wheel of a silver Mercedes. He’d been looking at Eric, but looked down when Eric saw him.

John Coulter.

Eric walked straight to the Mercedes, and tapped on the driver’s side window. Coulter looked up, smiled, rolled down the window.

“Well, Eric, how are you?”

“Are you following me?”

“No. I went next door to get my glasses adjusted, but the parking lot there was full. I see you’re discovering our new-age shops. Have you met the owner of this one?”

“Yes. Leon took me to a party at her home. You and I met there. Remember?”

“Isn’t she a beauty? I haven’t had the privilege of meeting her.”

“Well, I’ll have to introduce you sometime. Are we still on for Monday?”

“Ah, well, it’s actually fortunate us meeting like this. I was going to call. Can we put it off until Friday? Two other cancellations messed up my schedule. That’s why I’m in town today.”

Right. “Sure. Same time and place?”

“Yes.” Coulter smiled. “Bring a pen. I’ll have a contract for you to sign.”

“I’ll do that,” said Eric, and stepped back as Coulter started his car. The Mercedes backed up, turned, and headed south on 81A, tires spitting red scree in the parking lot.

Leon was in the office when Eric returned. Eric told him about meeting Coulter.

“I don’t like it,” said Leon. “He was supposed to be out of town. He might be watching us.”

Eric bit his tongue to keep from telling Leon what Mister Brown had said about Coulter. “He’s a dirty guy, Leon, hiring us to do dirty things. We have no reason to trust him.”

“I know. Eyes open, mouth closed. You armed?”

“Yes.”

“I did notice the hard lump when I brushed by you yesterday. Hear something?”

“No. It seemed like the right thing to do. You?”

Leon smiled, lifted a pants leg to show the Smith .41 holstered at his ankle. “Want me to follow you on Friday?”

“I don’t want to chance it, but you might want to pick him up after the meeting and see where he goes. We need to find out who he’s working for. If possible, we should put a twenty-four-hour tail on him.”

“There’s a gallery next to the restaurant. I’ll be in the parking lot, and follow him when he comes out. I won’t use the Humvee.”

Eric sat down on the edge of Leon’s desk. “Any progress on what happened to Johnson?”

“Not a clue,” said Leon. “Military round, standard weight bullet. Someone just out of boot camp could have fired it so accurately at that distance.”

“Someone young. He ran like a rabbit,” said Eric.

Leon blew out a breath of air. “Things are heating up, but I don’t see why. The only thing new is you coming here. What else could it be?”

Eric’s decision was made before he realized it. “Yeah, there is something. We got a new instruction manual for Sparrow.”

“I know that from Davis. It still isn’t complete,” said Leon.

“No, but there are some leads. I got inside Sparrow, Leon, opened it up. There’s some kind of strange energy field inside. We’re trying to identify it. People think I’m a wunderkind for opening it up, but it was just luck or intuition or both.”

Leon frowned. “I won’t ask when you did this; the answer would probably irritate me.”

“Yeah, it would.”

“Still don’t trust me?”

“I’m trying to. Davis is on the take, and you’re pretending, and now I’ve had an offer. We don’t get paid top dollar, Leon. I have no illusions about the temptations of bribery.”

Leon nodded. “Okay, that’s honest. Can’t say I haven’t had the same thoughts about you. I guess actions will have to speak for us. Let’s start with Friday.”

Leon held out a hand, and Eric grasped it. No limp greeting for the garden club ladies, the handshake was bone hard.

They went back to work at their desks, doing a mix of local cover and agency work. Eric had asked Gil for information on John Coulter, and sent a reminder. Two new portfolios were assembled and sent, and there was a call of thanks from an excited artist who’d just received a check for eighteen thousand dollars.

Eric followed Leon down Dry Creek Road, turned in first, and garaged the car. An overhead camera the size of a laundry marker watched him unlock the door to the house, and enter it. Four other cameras watched him move from room to room, checking the placement of hair-sized threads at strategic places. In the basement, he played the day’s recording of all cameras, and then erased them. Nothing was amiss. No phone calls had been received, and there was no electronic news from Gil.

The house was terribly quiet, and the walls seemed to be moving closer together. Eric put on a classical CD at low volume, put two potpies in the oven and boiled some frozen vegetables. Eating alone was again a thing to be dispensed with quickly, as it had been since the divorce. Thinking about Nataly, imagining her sitting across the table from him, helped.

He rinsed his dishes, put them in the dishwasher with their cousins from breakfast and meals of the previous day. Some brainless sitcom was on screen when he turned the television set on, and he flipped channels for twenty minutes before turning it off. One of Nataly’s loaned books remained on the coffee table. He’d read it, but looked through it again: strange lights over Sedona, magnetic vortices, portals to other dimensions, aliens living in his own backyard, blah, blah, blah. He snapped the volume shut, put it on the coffee table and leaned back in the embrace of an overstuffed chair. For a moment he dozed, but came back startled by a sound from the basement that could have been a door opening or closing. He pulled the Colt Modified from its underarm holster, snicked off the safety and pulled the hammer back from half cock. The floor creaked once as he padded to the basement stairs on stockinged feet. The downstairs lights were still on. Eric put his back to the wall, went sideways down the stairs, gun leveled.

The door to the tunnel was closed. When he first glanced at it, Eric detected blurred movement to the right, but when he looked directly nothing was there except two boxes and a broom in a corner. He unlocked and opened the tunnel door. Nothing. Closed and locked it again. He was not feeling foolish; instincts honed by twenty years of life-threatening work were telling him to remain observant. He sniffed the air, but there was nothing obvious. The quiet was absolute. He stood motionless for minutes, eyes scanning back and forth. Even as he ascended the stairs again, the Colt held lightly in his hand, he felt an apprehension about having missed something.

Eric sat down in his chair again, put the Colt on the table in front of him. He sat that way for an hour, feeling as if he’d had six cups of strong coffee. And when the telephone rang, a shudder ran through him from head to toe.

“Hello.”

“Hi. Just called to say good night. I’m going to bed early.”

It was wonderful to hear her voice. “Not me. For some reason, I’m jumpy tonight.”

“Take the pills I gave you. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Every sound makes me hyper-alert.”

“The pills will help. Do you have to go out of town?”

“No. I would have heard something today, but it could be anytime.”

“How about tomorrow night?”

“Sure. Why don’t we eat at my place? I’ll fix you a pot pie, and show you my etchings.”

“You live on those horrible things. Okay, pick me up at five. Marie can close up.”

“I’ll be there. Sleep tight.”

“You too. Bye.”

A click, and Nataly was gone, but suddenly the world was good again. The jumpiness was still there, but didn’t seem important anymore. His watch said ten, early for bed, but if he stayed up his hyper-vigilance would only get worse, and for no good reason he could see.

The little piece of folded napkin was still in his pocket. He unfolded it, took the two pink tablets Nataly had given him to the kitchen and washed them down with a glass of water.

He undressed, and brushed his teeth, checked the doors, windows, the video recorder downstairs. The pills seemed to be working, the jumpiness fading, and no more imagined movement in his peripheral vision. The house was thankfully quiet when he finally crawled into bed at ten-thirty and turned off the bed stand lamp. He felt relaxed; a tingling that began in his toes and worked its way upward. He heard a car go by outside his house, recede in the distance. From far off came a mournful call of a dog or coyote on the prowl.

There was a lapse of consciousness for some length of time, and then he was aware again. His eyes were closed, his skin warm against the sheets. When he willed his eyes to open they didn’t respond. He wondered if he was on the edge of dreaming, but could smell traces of cooking odors in the air. He felt a tingling again in his legs, a pleasant feeling, and he sighed.

The vision began with a sound like gently bubbling water, and then it was as if a curtain was raised on a brightly lit stage. Eric felt the muscles of his closed eyes tighten at the brightness. There was a pale blue sky, a giant eye of emerald green hovering there above a golden man. The man was seated in lotus position on a green rug that floated on a layer of mist over an endless pool of bubbling water. He was dressed from head to toe in a net of shimmering white cloth that filtered the brightness of his golden skin.

Eric realized with a start that he was looking at himself, though the eyes seemed extraordinarily blue.

“Hello,” said the man, and smiled. “We’ve not formally met before, though I’ve wished for it.”

It was his own voice, but affected, and Eric suppressed a laugh. He could feel the cool air in his bedroom; hear the occasional creak as the house settled in the night. “This must be a waking dream,” he said, and felt his lips move. “I know I’m not asleep.”

“Not exactly,” said the golden man, “but in this state you can receive the information I have for you, and remember it when necessary. We don’t have much time. There will be a disturbance, but you will not come to harm. You must focus on what I have to say, and we’ll protect you.”

“We? You’re me; I can see that, an interesting illusion I’m conjuring up for myself. Nataly’s new-age stuff is getting to me. Interesting.” Eric could not remember being so relaxed, and willing to go along with the flow of what was happening.

The golden man’s voice was sharp. “This is not some amusing dream. Now listen to me carefully. The star craft you call Sparrow must be flown again, and you must fly with it. The information you need is here; it’s only necessary that you look at it, and it will be stored in the proper place in your mind.” The man made a swirling gesture with one hand, and a framed page of text and symbols appeared to one side of him. The text was already scrolling when Eric looked at it, accelerating as he focused, a near blur of text and diagrams rushing past his view. He was drawn to it, mesmerized, though other things suddenly tempted his senses. He felt motion in the air around him, and there were sounds: a rattling, a crack like a hammer hitting stone, a pounding on a wall or floor in his house.

“Concentrate!” said the golden man.

It was more than pounding. It was the sound of a struggle coming from the basement. Eric’s eyelids fluttered, and flashes of darkness obscured for one instant the data scrolling in front of him.

“Ignore it! You’re safe! We’re nearly finished!”

There was a crash, and the pounding stopped. Eric smelled a strange, coppery scent, and the blur of words and diagrams suddenly ceased. The golden man stared at him with concern, but had not changed his position. The large, emerald eye above him was gone. Eric felt uneasy by its absence, and wondered why.

“The danger is past. I’ll make a small correction when we’re finished,” said the golden man. “Your confusion is understandable. Don’t be alarmed by it.”

“Don’t be alarmed? I’m in a waking dream, talking to myself while something or someone is crashing around in my house, and my legs and arms won’t move and I’m supposed to be reading something that’s a blur to me. Who or what are you?”

“I’m you,” said the golden man, “the essence of you, if you wish. I hope we can meet again, just the two of us, but for now I must channel for our friends. What you do for them you do for yourself, and for all humanity. We are honored.”

“You’re a figment from my reading and Nataly’s new-age mysticism, all of it. Enough of this, now. I’m going to sleep.”

The golden man closed his eyes, and nodded. “That is best for now. I’ll complete my task, reinforce what has been given to you, and give you a restful sleep with simple dreams. But in the future I hope you’ll think of me, and search me out again. We have issues to discuss.”

“Sure,” said Eric, and again felt his lips move. A strange scent remained in the air, and there were faint scuffling sounds close by. He tried opening his eyes, moving legs and arms, but nothing would respond. His mind was suddenly fuzzy, and as consciousness faded he felt his right leg jerk once.

When he awoke in the morning he was instantly alert, jerking back the covers and leaping from the bed. Everything he’d experienced the night before was instantly remembered. He checked the doors, the windows, even the floor around his bed. Nothing was disturbed. He browsed the kitchen, the bathroom, found a faucet dripping slowly, and tightened a cold-water handle to stop it. The lights on the alarm clock on his nightstand blinked at him. There had been a power outage or surge in the night. He looked up at one corner of the ceiling, saw the faint red spot of light from the camera there, still on, but the recorder could have been affected. If there had been loss of power, the alarm clock indicated it had been shortly after eleven, soon after he’d retired.

His suspicions were confirmed when he went down to the basement. The video recorder was off, sitting on standby, and the tapes ended just after eleven. He remembered the sounds he’s heard, and he’d been without surveillance, totally vulnerable, yet nothing had happened to him other than a bizarre waking dream.

He turned to go up the stairs again, and saw a dark spot at the inside edge of the lowest step. He touched it, felt a soft crust, then liquid. The color was right; he sniffed at the liquid on his finger.

It was blood.