The Dark River Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PRELUDE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  ALSO BY JOHN TWELVE HAWKS

  COPYRIGHT

  for my children

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Dark River is a work of fiction inspired by the real world.

  An adventurous reader can touch the sundial hidden beneath the streets of Rome, travel to Ethiopia and stand outside the holy sanctuary in Axum, or walk through Grand Central Terminal in New York and look up at the mystery on the concourse ceiling.

  The aspects of the Vast Machine described in the novel are also real or under development. In the near future, both private and governmental total information systems will monitor every aspect of our lives. A central computer will remember where we go and what we buy, the e-mail we write, and the books we read.

  Each attack on privacy is justified by the pervasive culture of fear that seems to surround us and grow stronger every day. The ultimate consequences of that fear are expressed in my vision of the First Realm. Its darkness will exist forever and it will be opposed—forever—by compassion, bravery, and love.

  —John Twelve Hawks

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  In The Traveler, John Twelve Hawks introduced readers to an ancient conflict going on beneath the surface of our day-to-day world. This conflict involves three groups of people: the Brethren, the Travelers, and the Harlequins.

  Kennard Nash is the leader of the Brethren, a group of powerful individuals who oppose any change in the established social structure. Nathan Boone is the secret organization’s head of security. The Brethren are called the “Tabula” by their enemies because they see both humanity and human consciousness as a tabula rasa—a blank slate on which they can scrawl their own message of intolerance and fear. In the eighteenth century, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon: a model prison where one observer could monitor hundreds of prisoners and remain unseen. Both Nash and Boone believe that the computerized surveillance system being created in the industrial world will allow them to establish a Virtual Panopticon.

  For centuries, the Brethren have tried to exterminate the Travelers: men and women who have the power to send their energy into one of six realms. The realms are parallel realities that have been described by visionaries from every faith. Travelers return to this world with new insights and revelations that challenge the established order and the Brethren believe that they are the primary source of social instability. One of the last surviving Travelers was Matthew Corrigan, but he disappeared when the Brethren’s mercenaries attacked his home. His two surviving sons, Michael and Gabriel Corrigan, lived off the Grid until they discovered that they also had the power to become Travelers.

  The Travelers could have been exterminated many years ago, but they’ve been protected by a small group of dedicated fighters called Harlequins. Matthew Corrigan was once protected by a German-born Harlequin named Thorn who was killed in Prague by Nathan Boone. Thorn’s daughter, Maya, was sent to America to find the two Corrigan brothers. Maya is supported by a French Harlequin named Linden, and she often thinks about the legendary Harlequin Mother Blessing, who has disappeared. When Maya visited Los Angeles, she found two allies: a martial arts teacher named Hollis Wilson and a young woman named Vicki Fraser.

  As the story continues, Michael Corrigan has gone over to the Brethren while his younger brother, Gabriel, is hiding with Maya, Hollis, and Vicki. At New Harmony, the Arizona community started by Matthew Corrigan, storm clouds cover the sky and snow begins to fall….

  PRELUDE

  S nowflakes began drifting down from the darkening sky as the members of New Harmony returned to their homes for dinner. The adults working on a retaining wall near the community center blew on their hands and talked about storm fronts, while the children cocked their heads backward, opened their mouths, and spun around trying to catch the ice crystals on their tongues.

  Alice Chen was a small, serious girl in jeans, work boots, and a blue nylon parka. She had just turned eleven, but her best friends, Helen and Melissa, were both twelve going on thirteen. Lately, the two older girls had been having long conversations about childish behavior and which boys at New Harmony were stupid and immature.

  Although Alice wanted to taste the snowflakes, she decided that it wasn’t very mature of her to twirl around with her tongue out like the Lower School babies. Pulling on her knit cap, she followed her friends down one of the paths that crisscrossed through the canyon. It was difficult to be grown-up. She was relieved when Melissa tagged Helen, shouted, “You’re it!” and darted away.

  The three friends dashed down the canyon, laughing and chasing one another. The night air was cold and smelled of pine and wet soil and the faint odor of a wood fire down by the greenhouse. As they passed through a clearing, the snowflakes stopped falling for a moment and swirled around in a circle—as if a family of ghosts had lingered to play among the trees.

  There was a distant mechanical sound, growing louder, and the girls stopped running. Seconds later, a helicopter with Arizona Forest Service markings roared above them and continued up the canyon. They had seen helicopters like that, but always in the summer. It was strange to see one in February.

  “They’re probably searching for someone,” Melissa said. “Bet a tourist went looking for the Indian ruins and got lost.”

  “And now it’s getting dark,” Alice said. It would be terrible to be alone like that, she thought—getting tired and scared as you trudged through the snow.

  Helen leaned forward and slapped Alice on the shoulder. “Now you’re it!” she said. And they started running.

  A NIGHT-VISION device and a thermal imaging sensor were mounted on the underside of the helicopter. The NVD collected visible light as well as the lower portion of the infrared spectrum, while the thermal sensor detected the heat emitted from different objects. The two devices sent their data to a computer that combined everything into a single video image.

  Eighteen miles from New Harmony, Nathan Boone sat in the back of a bread delivery truck that had been converted to a surveillance vehicle. He sipped some coffee—no sugar, no cream—and watched as a black-and-white vision of New Harmony appeared on a monitor.

  The head of security for the Brethren was a neatly dressed man with short gray hair and steel-rimmed glasses. There was something severe, almost judgmental in his manner. Policemen and border guards said, “Yes, sir,” when they first met him, and civilians usually lowered their eyes when he asked them a question.

  Boone had us
ed night-vision devices when he was in the military, but the new dual camera was a significant advance. Now he could see targets both inside and outside at the same time: one person strolling beneath the trees and another washing the dishes in the kitchen. Even more helpful was that the computer was capable of evaluating each source of light and making an informed guess whether the object was a human being or a hot frying pan. Boone saw the new camera as evidence that science and technology—indeed, the future itself—were on his side.

  George Cossette, the other person sitting in the truck, was a surveillance expert who had been flown in from Geneva. He was a pale young man with a great many food allergies. During the eight days of surveillance, he had occasionally used the computer’s Internet uplink to bid on plastic figurines of comic book heroes.

  “Give me a count,” Boone said, watching the live feed from the helicopter.

  Concentrating on the monitor, Cossette began to type commands. “All sources of heat or just the humans?”

  “Just the humans. Thank you.”

  Click. Click. Fingers moving on a keyboard. A few seconds later, the sixty-eight people living at New Harmony were outlined on the screen.

  “How accurate is that?”

  “Ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent. We might have missed one or two people who were on the edge of the scan zone.”

  Boone took off his glasses, polished them with a small flannel cloth, and watched the video a second time. Over the years, Travelers and their Pathfinder teachers had preached about the so-called Light that existed inside every person. But real light—not the spiritual kind—had become a new method of detection. It was impossible to hide, even in the darkness.

  SNOWFLAKES CLUNG TO Alice’s hair as she entered the kitchen, but they melted before she pulled off her jacket. Her family’s house was built in the Southwest style, with a flat roof, small windows, and little exterior decoration. Like all the other buildings in the canyon, the house was made of straw—bales had been stacked into walls, skewered with steel rods, and then covered with waterproof plaster. The ground floor was dominated by one large area with a kitchen, living room, and open staircase that led to a sleeping loft. A doorway led to Alice’s bedroom, a home office, and a bathroom. Because of the thick walls, there was an alcove around each window frame; the one in the kitchen was filled with a basket of ripening avocados and some old bones found out in the desert.

  A pot boiling on the electric stove gave off steam and fogged up the window glass. On a cold night like this, Alice felt as if she were living in a space capsule dropped to the bottom of a tropical lagoon. If she wiped the moisture away from the window, she would probably see a pilot fish gliding past white coral.

  As usual, her mother had left a mess in the kitchen—dirty bowls and spoons, stems from cut basil, and an open flour container just waiting for the mice. Alice’s black braid swung back and forth as she moved about the kitchen, putting away food and wiping up crumbs. She washed the mixing bowls and spoons, and then placed them on a clean towel as if they were scalpels on a surgical table. When she was putting away the flour, her mother came downstairs from the sleeping loft carrying a stack of medical magazines.

  Dr. Joan Chen was a petite woman with short black hair. She was a physician who had moved to New Harmony with her daughter after her husband died in a car accident. Every evening before dinner, Joan changed from jeans and a flannel shirt to a long skirt and a silk blouse.

  “Thanks, honey. But you didn’t have to clean up. I would have done all that…” Joan sat in a carved chair near the fireplace and placed the magazines on her lap.

  “Who’s coming for dinner?” Alice asked. The people at New Harmony were always sharing meals with each other.

  “Martin and Antonio. The budget committee has to make a decision about something.”

  “Did you get bread at the bakery?”

  “Well, of course I did,” Joan said. Then she fluttered her right hand as if she were searching for a memory. “That is, maybe I did. I think so.”

  Alice searched the kitchen and found a loaf of bread that appeared to be about three days old. Turning on the oven, she split the loaf in half, rubbed both sides with fresh garlic, and drizzled on some olive oil. As the bread roasted on a steel tray, she set the table and got out the serving platter for pasta. When she was finally done, she intended to walk silently past her mother to protest all the work she had to do. But when she approached the chair, Joan reached out and touched her daughter’s hand.

  “Thank you, dear. I’m lucky to have such a wonderful daughter.”

  SCOUTS WERE IN position at the perimeter of New Harmony, and the rest of the mercenaries had just left a motel in San Lucas. Boone e-mailed a message to Kennard Nash, the current head of the Brethren. A few minutes later, he received a response: The previously discussed action is now confirmed.

  Boone called the driver of the SUV carrying the first team. “Proceed to Point Delta. Employees should now take their PTS medication.”

  Each mercenary was carrying a plastic packet containing two pretraumatic stress pills. Boone’s employees had nicknamed them “pits pills,” and swallowing them before an action was called “taking your pits.” The medication temporarily immunized anyone entering a violent situation against strong feelings of guilt or regret.

  The original research concerning PTS was done at Harvard University when neurologists found out that accident victims taking a cardiac drug called propranolol had decreased amounts of physiological trauma. Scientists working for the Brethren’s research group, the Evergreen Foundation, realized the implications of this discovery. They obtained a grant from the U.S. Defense Department to study the drug when used by soldiers in combat. The PTS medication inhibited the brain’s hormonal reactions to shock, disgust, and fear. This lessened the formation of traumatic memories.

  Nathan Boone had never taken a PTS pill or any other kind of trauma medication. If you believed in what you were doing, if you knew you were right, then there was no such thing as guilt.

  ALICE STAYED IN her bedroom until the rest of the budget committee showed up for dinner. Martin Greenwald arrived first, knocking softly on the kitchen door and waiting for Joan to greet him. Martin was an older man with stubby legs and thick eyeglasses. He had been a successful businessman in Houston until his car broke down on the freeway one afternoon and a man named Matthew Corrigan stopped to help him. Matthew turned out to be a Traveler, a spiritual teacher with the power to leave his body and travel to other realities. He had spent several weeks talking to the Greenwald family and their friends, then had embraced them all at one final meeting and walked away. New Harmony was a reflection of the Traveler’s ideas—an attempt to create a new way of living that was apart from the Vast Machine.

  Alice had learned about Travelers from other kids, but was uncertain how it all worked. She knew that there were six different worlds, called realms. This world—with its fresh bread and dirty dishes—was the Fourth Realm. The Third Realm was a forest with friendly animals, and that sounded great. But there was also a Realm of hungry ghosts, and another place where people were always fighting.

  Matthew’s son, Gabriel, was a young man in his twenties who was also a Traveler. In October, he had spent a night at New Harmony with a Harlequin bodyguard named Maya. Now it was early February, and the adults were still talking about Gabriel while the kids argued about the Harlequin. Ricky Cutler said Maya had probably killed dozens of people and that she knew something called the Tiger Claw Variation: one punch to the heart, and the other guy was dead. Alice decided that the Tiger Claw Variation was a big fake invented on the Internet. Maya was very much a real person, a young woman with thick black hair and ghostly blue eyes who carried her sword in a tube hanging from her shoulder.

  A few minutes after Martin arrived, Antonio Cardenas thumped on the door and walked in without asking. Antonio was a swaggering, athletic man who had once been a contractor in Houston. When the first group moved into the canyon, he had built
the three windmills up on the mesa that provided the community’s electric power. Everyone at New Harmony liked Antonio; some of the younger boys even wore their tool belts in the same low-slung way he did.

  The two men smiled at Alice and asked her about her cello lessons. Everyone sat down at the oak wood table—like most of the furniture in the house, it had been built in Mexico. The pasta was served and the adults began to discuss the issue before the budget committee. New Harmony had now saved enough money to buy a sophisticated battery system to store electric power. The current system allowed every family to have a stove, a refrigerator, and two space heaters. More batteries would mean more appliances, but perhaps that wasn’t a good idea.

  “I think it’s more efficient to keep the washing machines up at the community center,” Martin said. “And I don’t think we need espresso machines and microwave ovens.”

  “I disagree,” Joan said. “Microwaves actually use less power.”

  Antonio nodded. “And I’d like some cappuccino in the morning.”

  AS ALICE CLEARED the table of dirty dishes, she glanced at the wall clock over the sink. It was late Wednesday night in Arizona, which meant Thursday afternoon in Australia. She had about ten minutes to get ready for her music lesson. The adults ignored her while she quickly pulled on her long winter coat, got her cello case, and went outside.

  It was still snowing. The rubber soles of her work boots made a crunching sound as she walked from the front door to the gate. A six-foot-high adobe wall surrounded the house and vegetable garden; it kept out the deer in the summertime. Last year, Antonio had installed a large gate with carvings of scenes from the Garden of Eden. If you stood close enough to the dark oak wood you could see Adam and Eve, a flowering tree, and a serpent.

  Alice pushed the gate open and passed beneath the archway. The path up the canyon to the community center was covered with snow, but that didn’t bother her. The kerosene lantern she carried swung back and forth as the snowflakes kept falling. Snow covered the pine trees and mountain mahogany; it transformed a pile of firewood into a mound that looked like a sleeping bear.