The Traveler fr-1 Page 32

  “This used to be the staff dormitory. I stayed underground for a few weeks when I was doing my first population count of splendida.”

  “And I’m supposed to live here?”

  “Yes. For eight days.”

  Gabriel looked around at the bare room. It reminded him of a prison. No complaints, he thought. Just do what she says. He dropped his knapsack on the floor and sat on the cot.

  “All right. Let’s get going.”

  Sophia moved restlessly around the room, picking up pieces of broken concrete and flicking them into a corner. “I’ll run through the basics first. All living things carry around a special kind of energy called the Light. You can call it a ‘soul’ if you want. I don’t worry too much about theology. When people die, their Light returns to the energy that surrounds us. But Travelers are different. Their Light can go away and then return to their living body.”

  “Maya said that the Light travels to different realms.”

  “Yes. People call them ‘realms’ or ‘parallel worlds.’ Once again, you can use any term that makes sense to you. The scripture of every major religion has described different aspects of these realms. They’re the source of all mystical visions. Many saints and prophets have written about the realms, but the Buddhist monks living in Tibet made the first attempt to understand them. Before the Chinese invaded, Tibet was a theocracy for more than a thousand years. The peasants supported monks and nuns who could examine the accounts of Travelers and organize the data into a system. The six realms aren’t a Buddhist or a Tibetan concept. The Tibetans are simply the first people who described the whole thing.”

  “So how do I get there?”

  “The Light breaks out of your body. You have to be moving slightly for the process to happen. The first time it’s surprising-even painful. Then your Light has to cross four barriers to reach each of the different realms. The barriers are composed of water, fire, earth, and air. There is no particular order to cross them. Once your Light finds the passageway through, you’ll always find it again.”

  “And then you enter the six realms,” Gabriel said. “So what are they like?”

  “We’re living in the Fourth Realm, Gabriel. That’s human reality. So what is our world like? Beautiful. Horrible. Painful. Exhilarating.” Sophia picked up a shard of concrete and tossed it across the room. “Any reality with king snakes and mint chocolate-chip ice cream has its good side.”

  “But the other places?”

  “Each person can find traces of the realms within their own heart. The realms are dominated by a particular quality. In the Sixth Realm of the gods, the sin is pride. In the Fifth Realm of the half gods, the sin is jealousy. You need to understand that we’re not talking about God, the power that created the universe. According to the Tibetans, the gods and half gods are like human beings from another reality.”

  “And we’re living in the Fourth Realm…”

  “Where the sin is desire.” Sophia turned and watched a king snake moving slowly down a conduit pipe. “The animals of the Third Realm are ignorant of all others. The Second Realm is inhabited by the hungry ghosts who can never be satisfied. The First Realm is a city of hate and anger, ruled by people without compassion. There are other names for this place: Sheol, Hades, Hell.”

  Gabriel stood up like a prisoner ready for a firing squad. “You’re the Pathfinder. So tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

  Sophia Briggs looked amused. “Are you tired, Gabriel?”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “Then you should go to sleep.”

  Taking a felt-tip marker out of her pocket, Sophia walked over to the wall. “You need to break down the distinction between this world and your dreams. I’m going to show you the eighty-first path. It was discovered by the Kabbalist Jews who lived in the northern Galilee town of Safed.”

  Using the marker, she wrote four Hebrew letters on the wall. “This is the tetragrammaton-the four-letter name of God. Try to keep the letters in your mind when you start to go to sleep. Don’t think about yourself or me-or splendida. Three times during your sleep, you should ask yourself, ‘Am I awake or am I dreaming?’ Don’t open your eyes, but stay within the dream world and observe what happens.”

  “And that’s all?”

  She smiled and began to walk out of the room. “It’s a start.”

  Gabriel pulled off his boots, lay down on the cot, and stared at the four Hebrew letters. He couldn’t read or pronounce them, but the shapes themselves began to float through his mind. One letter looked like a shelter from the storm. A cane. Another shelter. And then a small curving line that looked like a snake.

  He fell into a deep sleep, and then he was awake or half awake-he wasn’t sure. He was looking down at the tetragrammaton drawn with red-colored sand on a gray slate floor. As he watched, a gust of wind blew God’s name away.

  ***

  GABRIEL WOKE UP covered with sweat. Something had happened to the lightbulb in the dormitory and the room was dark. A faint light came from the corridor that led to the main tunnel.

  “Hello!” he shouted. “Sophia?”

  “I’m coming.”

  Gabriel heard footsteps enter the dormitory room. Even in the darkness, Sophia seemed to know where she was going. “This happens all the time. Moisture seeps through the concrete and it gets into the electrical connections.” Sophia tapped her finger on the lightbulb and the filament lit up. “There we go.”

  She walked over to the cot and picked up the kerosene lantern. “This is your lantern. If the lights go out or you want to go exploring, take it along with you.” She studied his face. “So how did you sleep?”

  “It was okay.”

  “Were you aware of your dream?”

  “Almost. Then I couldn’t stay in it anymore.”

  “All this takes time. Come with me. And bring that sword with you.”

  Gabriel followed Sophia out into the main tunnel. He didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping. Was it morning or still night? He noticed that the lightbulbs kept changing. Eighty feet above them, wind was rattling the leaves of the Joshua trees and pushing the blades of the windmill. Sometimes the wind blew strongly and the lights burned brightly. When the wind faded, the only power came from batteries, and the bulb filaments glowed dark orange like embers from a dying fire.

  “I want you to work on the seventeenth path. You brought along that sword, so it seems like a good idea. This path was invented by people in Japan or China: some kind of sword culture. It teaches you how to focus your thoughts by not thinking.”

  They stopped at the end of the tunnel and Sophia pointed to a patch of water on the rusty steel plates. “Here we go…”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Look up, Gabriel. Straight up.”

  He raised his head and saw a drop of water forming on one of the arched girders above them. Three seconds later the drop fell off the girder and splattered on the steel in front of him.

  “Draw your sword and cut the drop in half before it hits the ground.”

  For a second he thought that Sophia was teasing him with an impossible task, but she wasn’t smiling. Gabriel drew the jade sword. Its polished blade gleamed in the shadows. Holding the weapon with two hands, he got into a kendo stance and waited to attack. The water drop above him grew larger, trembled, then fell. He swung the sword and missed completely.

  “Don’t anticipate,” she said. “Just be ready.”

  The Pathfinder left him alone beneath the girder. A new water drop was forming. It was going to fall in two seconds. One second. Now. The drop fell and he swung the sword with hope and desire.

  42

  After the confrontation at Michael’s apartment building, Hollis went back to his martial arts school on Florence Avenue and taught a final day of classes. He told his two best students-Marco Martinez and Tommy Wu-that he was turning the school over to them. Marco would teach the advanced students and Tommy would teach the lower ranks. They would split the c
osts evenly for the first year, and then decide if they wanted to continue the partnership.

  “Some men might come here looking for me. They could be real police officers or maybe they’re using fake identification. Tell them I decided to go back to Brazil and rejoin the fighting circuit.”

  “You need money?” Marco asked him. “I got three hundred dollars back at my apartment.”

  “No. That’s okay. I’m expecting a payment from some people in Europe.”

  Tommy and Marco glanced at each other. They probably assumed that he was dealing drugs.

  Hollis stopped at a grocery store on the way home and wandered up and down the aisles tossing food into a shopping basket. He was starting to realize that everything he once thought was a big decision-leaving the church, traveling to Brazil-had only prepared him for the moment when Vicki Fraser and Maya walked into his school. He could have turned them down, but that wouldn’t have felt right. He had been preparing for this battle all his life.

  Driving down the street to his house, Hollis kept looking for strangers who didn’t fit into the neighborhood. He felt vulnerable when he opened the driveway gate and parked his car in the garage. Something moved through the shadows as he opened the back door and entered the kitchen. He jumped back, then laughed when he saw Garvey, his cat.

  By now the Tabula realized that a black man had fought three of their mercs in an elevator. Hollis figured it wouldn’t take long for their computers to come up with his name. Shepherd had used Vicki to meet Maya at the airport. The Vast Machine probably had the names of everyone in the local Jonesie church. Hollis had broken with the church several years ago, but the congregation knew that he taught martial arts.

  Although the Tabula wanted to kill him, he wasn’t going to run away. There were practical reasons for this-he needed to receive his $5,000 payment from the Harlequins, and remaining in Los Angeles also matched his fighting style. Hollis was a counterpuncher. Whenever he fought in a tournament, he always let his opponent attack at the beginning of each round. Taking a punch made him feel strong and justified. He wanted the bad guys to make the first move so he could destroy them.

  Hollis loaded his assault rifle and sat in the shadows of his living room. He kept the TV and radio turned off and ate breakfast cereal for dinner. Occasionally Garvey would wander in with his tail in the air and give him a skeptical look. When it got dark, Hollis climbed onto the roof of his house with a foam-rubber pad and a sleeping bag. Concealed by the air-conditioning unit, he lay on his back and gazed at the sky. Maya said the Tabula used thermal imaging devices to look through walls. Hollis could defend himself in the daytime, but he didn’t want the Tabula to know where he was sleeping. He kept the air conditioner on and hoped that the heat of the electric motor would obscure the warmth that came from his body.

  The next day, the postman brought a package from Germany: two books about Oriental rugs. There was nothing between the pages, but when he cut open the covers with a razor, he found $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills. The person who paid the money included a small business card for a German recording studio. On the back of the card, someone had written a Web site address and a friendly message. Lonely? New friends are waiting for you. Hollis smiled to himself while he counted the money. New friends are waiting for you. Harlequins. The real thing. Well, he might need backup if he had another encounter with the Tabula.

  Hollis jumped over the wall and talked to his backyard neighbor, a former gang leader named Deshawn Fox who sold custom tire rims. He gave Deshawn $1,800 to buy a used pickup truck with a camper shell.

  Three days later, the truck was stored in Deshawn’s driveway with extra clothes, canned food, and ammunition. While Hollis was searching for camping supplies, Garvey got into the attic crawl space. Hollis tried to tempt the cat down with a rubber mouse and a dish of canned tuna, but Garvey stayed hidden in the rafters.

  A power company truck appeared and three men wearing hard hats pretended to fix the electric line on the corner. A new postman also made an appearance: an older white man with a military haircut who rang the doorbell for several minutes before he went away. Hollis went up to the roof right after sunset with his rifle and a few bottles of water. The streetlights and pollution made it difficult to see any stars, but he lay on his back and watched the jet planes circle the approach pattern to Los Angeles airport. He tried not to think about Vicki Fraser, but her face floated through his mind. Most of those Jonesie girls stayed virgins until they were married. Hollis wondered if she was that way or if she had secret boyfriends.

  He woke up around two o’clock in the morning when the driveway gate made a faint rattling sound. Several people vaulted over the locked gate and landed on the concrete. A few seconds passed and then the Tabula mercs kicked in the back door and entered the house. “Not here!” voices shouted. “Not here!” A plate shattered and a cooking pot hit the floor.

  Ten or fifteen minutes passed. He heard the back door squeak shut, then two cars started their engines and drove away. It was quiet again. Hollis slung the assault rifle over his shoulder and lowered himself down from the roof. When his feet touched the ground, he clicked off the rifle’s safety.

  Standing in a flower bed, he listened to the muffled bass thump from a passing car stereo. Hollis was just about to jump over the wall to Deshawn’s house when he remembered the cat. Maybe the Tabula mercs had scared Garvey out of the attic when they were searching the place.

  He opened the back door and slipped into the kitchen. Only a small amount of light came in through the windows, but he could see that the Tabula had trashed the place. The closet door was open and everything in the kitchen cabinets had been dumped onto the floor. Hollis stepped on shards of a smashed plate and the crunching sound startled him. Be cool, he told himself. The bad guys are gone.

  The kitchen was in the back of the house. A short hallway led to the bathroom, a bedroom, and the workout room where he kept his exercise equipment. At the end of the hallway, another door led to the L-shaped living room. The long part of the L was where Hollis listened to music and watched television. He had turned the small side area into a place he called “the memory room,” where he kept framed photographs of his family, old karate trophies, and a scrapbook about his professional fights in Brazil.

  Hollis pushed open the door to the hallway and smelled a foul odor. It reminded him of an unclean cage at an animal shelter. “Garvey?” he whispered, suddenly remembering the cat. “Where the hell are you?” Cautiously, he moved down the hallway and discovered something smeared on the floor. Blood. Shreds of fur. Those Tabula bastards had found Garvey and ripped the animal apart.

  The smell got stronger as he reached the door at the end of the hallway. He stood there for a minute, still thinking about Garvey. And then he heard a high-pitched laughing sound coming from the living room. Was it some kind of animal? He wondered. Had the Tabula left a watchdog in his house?

  He raised the rifle, jerked open the door, and entered the living room. Light from the street was diffused by the bedsheets he used for curtains, but Hollis could see that a large animal sat on its haunches in the far corner near the couch. As he stepped closer, he was surprised to see that it wasn’t a dog but a hyena. It had broad shoulders, stubby ears, and a large powerful jaw. When it saw Hollis, it bared its teeth and grinned.

  A second hyena, one with spotted fur, stepped from the shadows of the memory room. The two animals glanced at each other and the leader-the one by the couch-made a throaty growl. Trying to keep his distance, Hollis moved toward the locked front door. He heard a barking sound behind him-like a nervous laugh-and spun around to see another hyena come out of the hallway. This third animal had stayed hidden until Hollis had entered the living room.

  The three hyenas began to move into a triangle with him at the center. He smelled their foul odor, heard claws click on the wooden floor. Hollis found it difficult to breathe. A feeling of intense fear surged through his body. The leader made a quick laughing sound and bared his teet
h again.

  “Go to hell,” Hollis said, and fired the rifle.

  He shot the leader first, turned slightly and fired a burst at the spotted hyena near the memory room. The third animal leaped through the air as Hollis threw himself sideways. He felt a sharp pain on his upper left arm as he hit the floor. Hollis rolled to his side and watched the third hyena spinning around to attack. He squeezed the trigger and hit the animal at a low angle. Bullets cut into the hyena’s chest and it was knocked back against the wall.

  When Hollis stood up, he touched his arm and felt blood. The hyena must have slashed him with its claws as it jumped forward. Now the animal lay on its side, making a deep wheezing sound while blood bubbled from a chest wound. Hollis looked at his attacker, but didn’t get close. The hyena stared back at him with hatred in its eyes.

  The coffee table was lying on its side. He went around it and examined the leader. Bullet holes were in the animal’s chest and front legs. Its lips were pulled back and it seemed to be grinning.

  Hollis stepped into a pool of blood, smearing it across the floor. Bullets had cut through the spotted hyena’s neck and almost severed its head. Hollis leaned down and saw that the animal’s yellow-and-black hair covered a thick skin that was almost like cowhide. Sharp claws. Strong muzzle and teeth. It was a perfect killing machine-quite unlike the smaller, cautious hyenas he had seen on nature shows. This creature was a distortion, something bred to hunt without fear, compelled to attack and kill. Maya had warned him that the Tabula scientists had learned how to subvert the laws of genetics. What was the word she used? Splicers.

  Something changed in the room. He turned away from the dead splicer and realized that he could no longer hear the wheezing sound coming from the third hyena. Hollis raised the assault rifle, then saw a shadow moving on his left side. He spun around just as the leader scrambled to its feet and leaped toward him.

  Hollis fired wildly. A bullet hit the leader and knocked it backward. He kept squeezing the trigger until the thirty-round clip was empty. Reversing the rifle, Hollis ran and began beating the animal with a hysterical fury, crushing the splicer’s skull and jaws. The wooden stock cracked, then broke away from the rifle frame. He stood in the shadows, clutching the useless weapon.