Veil

Chapter 15

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Veil? Can't you tell me what this is all about?"

Veil glanced at Sharon, who was studying him from where she sat at the far end of the conference table in her suite of offices. There was confusion and hurt in her pale, silver-streaked eyes, and she was staring at him as if he were a stranger—a reaction Veil found perfectly understandable, since he had been going out of his way to behave like a stranger. Something about the atmosphere surrounding the Institute, and particularly the hospice, was very disorienting to him, he thought. There was not only the mystery of the Golden-Boy to be solved, but also a mystery within himself— a riddle that had only posed itself since he'd agreed to be Jonathan Pilgrim's guest. It was as if there were something in the air over these two particular mountains that made him open and trusting in ways he had never before been in his life. Now he felt betrayed, not only by Pilgrim—and possibly by Sharon and Henry Ibber—but also by his own instincts. He had been wandering around in a mental fog, displaying the kind of doe-eyed innocence that could get him killed, and he had resolved that it was going to stop.

"Veil, did you hear me?"

"Not now, Doctor."

"Doctor? We're getting rather formal all of a sudden, aren't we?"

"I want to wait until Pilgrim and Ibber get here so that I won't have to repeat myself."

"Henry will be here?"

Veil nodded. "I asked Pilgrim to bring him over."

"Veil, what's wrong?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out. It's time to sort out a few things."

"But—"

"Kendry?!"

Veil turned to face Henry Ibber, who had stopped just inside the door to the conference room. Ibber's high, shiny forehead glistened with perspiration, and the mouth below the drooping black mustache gaped open with astonishment.

"Come in and sit down, Ibber," Veil said curtly. It seemed that Pilgrim had not told his investigator who wanted to see him, and Veil wondered why.

Ibber's dark eyes suddenly flashed with anger. "What the hell are you doing here, Kendry? And who are you to be giving me orders?"

"Go ahead, Henry." Jonathan Pilgrim's voice, soft but insistent, came from the doorway just behind the large-framed Ibber. "Do as he asks."

Ibber thrust his stocky shoulders forward and glared at Veil for a few moments, then abruptly walked across the room and sat down at the table, next to Sharon. Pilgrim, walking casually with his hand in his pocket and a faintly bemused expression on his face, entered the room and sat down at the end of the table closest to where Veil was standing, apart from his two colleagues.

"It's your show, my friend," Pilgrim continued, turning to Veil. "Let's do it."

"We'll do it, all right, Colonel," Veil said, his voice hard. "You've been jerking me around since I got here. I don't like being 'handled,' and I want to know why you felt you had to do it. I also want to know what part you expected me to play in this spook show you've got over here."

Pilgrim glanced sharply at Sharon, who blanched and put a hand to her mouth. "The tape," she said in a husky voice. "He's heard the tape."

"You're damn right I've heard the tape. I've also had a very interesting chat with Perry Tompkins, who was kind enough to show me his latest paintings. That means it's time to tell me the name and rules of the game you've been playing."

Veil had been speaking to Sharon, but the woman was still staring wide-eyed at Pilgrim. "Jonathan, I'm so sorry. I never thought—"

"Don't worry about it, Sharon," Pilgrim said easily as he lit a cigar. "It's not your fault. I'm the one who brought him over here. I knew it was risky, but I couldn't think of any other place to put him where he'd be safe. He'd have eventually found out, anyway; hell, I'd have told him. It's just bad timing."

"My God, Jonathan. He's the one, isn't he?"

Pilgrim looked at Veil and winked broadly. "That's him."

"Come on, Sharon," Veil said. "Are you trying to tell me that you didn't know or guess? You were the first person I was supposed to see. Does the Colonel always use his director of near-death studies to conduct garden-variety interviews on the other mountain?"

"No, but—"

"I'd told her that we had a couple of people out sick," Pilgrim interrupted. "She really did just make the connection, Veil. She saw Perry's work, but she's never seen yours. You've heard the tape; I wanted Sharon to work with you because I needed her special perspective, but I didn't want her to know why. I wanted any discoveries about you to be made independently, not by somebody like me—looking for and hoping to make them."

"Excuse me," Ibber said, looking back and forth between Sharon and Pilgrim. "Would somebody mind telling me what this is all about?"

"Sorry, Henry," Pilgrim said with a shrug. "I'm afraid your time is being wasted. Veil was quite insistent that I include you in this meeting, so I brought you over. I don't think he'd have believed me if I told him that you didn't have the slightest notion of why I really wanted him here."

"Your real reason for wanting me here isn't the point, Colonel. Somebody tried to kill me, remember?"

"I remember," Pilgrim replied softly.

Veil turned to face the Institute's chief investigator. "Ibber's the man who ran my background check."

"Just a minute, Kendry!" Ibber shouted as he leapt to his feet. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"You'll know when I accuse you of something," Veil said without emotion.

"I checked you out the same as I do, or someone on my staff does, every other individual who's invited to the Institute. I wrote up my report and submitted it to Jonathan. Period."

"You knew that the man who tried to kill me was a Mamba—an Army assassin."

"So what? That was none of my business."

"Then what were you doing there when Parker questioned me?"

"Parker wanted another witness. In case you didn't notice, he and Jonathan don't get on too well."

"Jonathan?" Sharon's voice was trembling. "What is all this talk about killing?"

The Institute's director removed the cigar from his mouth and pointed it like a spear at Veil's chest. "It's still Mr. Kendry's show; let him direct it the way he wants."

Veil felt the first stirrings of doubt, and he frowned slightly as he studied Pilgrim's face. "They really didn't know about your plans for me, did they?"

Pilgrim grunted softly. "Now you've got it. I'm curious as to what it is you think you know. Do you believe that one of us is responsible for the attack on you? All of us?"

"Make your point, Kendry," Ibber said in a voice still heavy with anger.

Veil wheeled on the investigator. "Did you find anything in my background that you thought was particularly interesting?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. I suspected that your military record had been doctored, and I included that in my report. Again, so what? Picking up on things like that is what I'm paid to do."

"Did you tell anybody else?"

"Why should I tell anybody else? What the hell makes you think you're so goddam important, Kendry? As far as I was concerned, you were just another subject for investigation."

"You didn't know that your boss really wanted me here as part of near-death studies?"

"I don't have anything to do with near-death studies, Kendry. This is the first time I've ever even set foot on this mountain. And I still don't know that what you say is true. All I hear is you talking."

"It's true," Pilgrim said, his voice flat and slightly distant. "In fact, I have been running a game on Veil, and he has every right to be upset. His mistake is in thinking that there's some connection between that game and another problem he and I have to deal with. He's wrong, and I think he's beginning to see that. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find him willing to let the two of you go on now about your own business."

"I'd prefer to stay," Ibber announced as he abruptly sat down in his chair. "Kendry dragged me over here, and now I think I have the right to know what's going on."

"Henry," Sharon said quietly, touching the investigator's arm, "I really think we should both go."

"It's all right, Sharon," Pilgrim said casually. "Half my cat's hanging out of the bag, anyway, so we may as well all hear Veil drag out the rest of the beast. Assuming that's all right with him, of course."

"Oh, Jonathan," Sharon breathed, "it's so personal."

Ibber cleared his throat. "Jonathan, would you like us to leave?"

"I told you that was up to Veil," Pilgrim replied distantly. "He's in charge."

"Why did you want me for near-death studies, Jonathan?" Veil asked quietly, ignoring Ibber.

Pilgrim motioned for Veil to sit down at the table, but Veil shook his head. "If there's a connection between why I wanted you and that other business, I'll be damned if I know what it is," Pilgrim said easily. "I told you that."

"Why didn't you tell me you were a Lazarus Person?"

"Nobody but Sharon knew. Now, of course, you and Henry also know. The reason for my keeping it a secret is very practical. A moment ago you referred to near-death studies as a spook show—"

"I apologize for that remark," Veil said quickly, glancing at Sharon.

"No need. That would be the reaction of most people. As I've indicated to you, for now much of the Institute's prestige is linked to my personal prestige and integrity. I can't afford to be linked with a 'spook show,' even if that 'spook show' is, in my opinion, probably the most important research in which we're involved."

"Why did you feel that I had to be 'handled'? Why have you been lying to me all along?"

"Because the discovery of what you are couldn't be rushed. The moment I saw the similarity between your work and Perry's, I understood the significance. But you had to be peeled like an onion; if you were aware of what I wanted to know, it could interfere with the process."

"What is the significance?"

"Don't you realize it yet?"

"I've had a few other things on my mind, Jonathan. Also, frankly, I'm not sure I give a damn—not if it won't help answer the other questions I have. We've already decided that I'm not a Lazarus Person."

"And that is precisely what makes you so important, Veil." Excitement was beginning to hum in Pilgrim's voice. "Despite the fact that you've never had a near-death experience, except as an infant, you display most of the characteristics of Lazarus People—including the rarest trait of all, soul-catching."

Ibber started to say something, but Veil cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. "Go ahead, Jonathan. Please."

"In many ways you act like a Lazarus Person, even though you aren't. The close rapport you've felt with me from the beginning is typical; Lazarus People tend to recognize and like one another. My guess is that the brain damage you suffered as an infant did to you what the near-death experience does to Lazarus People as adults; it literally ripped apart some psychic barrier between your conscious and unconscious states of awareness. Your dreams take you to a special place, and you've painted pictures of it."

"What about Perry Tompkins?"

"A unique case, like you—but different from you. With Perry we're dealing with a giant, a man with artistic talent and sensitivity almost beyond words. That talent—goosed, if you will, by his approaching death—is his ticket to this special place. You both travel there, but by different routes."

"What 'place,' Jonathan?"

"It's the place beyond the gate, Veil. The paintings you and Perry produced—that's exactly what it looks like. I know, because I've been there. You and Perry keep poking your heads, your collective consciousness, into a land of the soul I could only reach by dying."

Veil turned quickly toward Sharon when he heard her gasp.

"Oh, yes," Pilgrim continued, also looking at the woman. "I've been through the gate, Sharon; just one more thing I've felt the need to lie about. I still don't understand quite how, but I did manage to wrench myself back through—back here. But I was there, on the astral plane. It's where Veil and Perry travel, in their own separate ways, on the vehicle of imagination, and it's where they will go when they die."

Veil swallowed and found that his mouth was dry. "Astral plane, Jonathan?"

"Oh, hell!" Pilgrim snapped with more impatience than Veil had ever seen him display. "And you, of all people, wonder why I keep secrets. Call it what you will. I use the term 'astral plane'; others would call it something else. There are a thousand different names for it, I'm sure, and it's been part of humankind's collective racial consciousness since we dropped out of the trees and crawled into caves. It spawned religion, feeds art, and was the midwife of science; insistence on the quaint idea that the place must have some kind of caretaker, and disagreement over how the caretaker mows the lawn, has broken our bones, spilled our blood, and pretended to offer hope at the same time as it crushed love and life. The fact of the matter, put as simply as I can manage, is that I needed you here so that I could try to prove that heaven exists."