The Traveler Read online

  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 teeth 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.

  A scratching sound. Claws on the floor. Six feet away, the third hyena was getting to its feet. Although its chest was still wet with blood, it was preparing to attack. Hollis threw the rifle at the splicer and ran for the hallway. He shut the door behind him, but the hyena ran at full speed and smashed it open.

  Hollis reached the bathroom, shut the door, and braced his body against the thin plywood, holding the knob with his hand. He thought about climbing out the window, then realized that the door wouldn't hold for more than a few seconds.

  The splicer hit the door hard. It popped open a few inches, but Hollis pushed backward with his feet and managed to slam it shut. Find a weapon, he thought. Anything. The Tabula had scattered the towels and toiletries across the bathroom floor. Still braced against the door, he knelt down and searched desperately through the clutter. The splicer hit the door a second time, forcing it open. Hollis saw the creature's teeth and heard its frantic laughter as he pushed the door shut with all his strength.

  A can of hair spray lay on the floor. A butane cigarette lighter was over by the sink. He grabbed them both, stumbled backward toward the window, and the door slammed open. For one heartbeat he stared at the animal's eyes and saw the intensity of its desire to kill. It was like touching a live electric cable and feeling a snap of malevolent power surge through his body.

  Hollis held the button down, spraying the hyena's eyes, then clicked the lighter. The cloud of hair spray caught fire and a stream of orange flame hit the splicer. The hyena screamed with a gurgling yowl that sounded like a human in pain. Burning, it staggered down the hallway toward the kitchen. Hollis ran into the exercise room, picked up a steel barbell rod, and followed the splicer into the kitchen. The house was filled with the sharp odor of scorched flesh and fur.

  Hollis stood near the doorway and raised his weapon. He was ready to attack, but the splicer kept screaming and burning and moving forward until it collapsed beneath the table and died.

  Chapter 43

  Gabriel didn't know how long he had been living underground. Four or five days, perhaps. Maybe more. He felt detached from the outside world and daily cycle of sunlight and darkness.

  The wall he had created between being awake and dreaming was beginning to disappear. Back in Los Angeles, Gabriel's dreams were confusing or meaningless. Now they seemed like a different kind of reality. If he went to sleep concentrating on the tetragrammaton, he could remain conscious in his dreams and walk around them like a visitor. The dream world was intense—almost overwhelming—so most of the time he looked down at his feet, glancing up occasionally to see the new environment that surrounded him.

  Within a dream, Gabriel walked on an empty beach where each grain of sand was a tiny star. He stopped and gazed out at a blue-green ocean with silent waves falling on the shore. Once he found himself in an empty city with bearded Assyrian statues built into high brick walls. At the center of the city was a park with rows of birch trees, a fountain, and a bed of blue irises. Every flower, leaf, and stalk of grass was perfect and distinct: an ideal creation.

  Waking from one of these experiences, he would find crackers, cans of tuna, and pieces of fruit left in a plastic box next to his cot. The food appeared almost magically and he never figured out how Sophia Briggs was able to enter the dormitory room without making any noise. Gabriel ate until he was full, then he left the dormitory room and entered the main tunnel. If Sophia wasn't around, he would take the kerosene lantern and go exploring.

  The king snakes usually stayed away from the lightbulbs in the main tunnel, but he could always find them in side rooms. Sometimes they were intertwined in an undulating mass of heads and tails and slithering bodies. Often they lay passively on the floor as if still digesting a large rat. The snakes never hissed at Gabriel or made a threatening move, but he found it unsettling to look at their eyes, as clean and precise as little black jewels.

  The snakes didn't hurt him, but the silo itself was dangerous. Gabriel inspected the abandoned control room, electric generator, and radio antenna. The generator was covered with mold that clung to the steel like a fuzzy green carpet. In the control room, the gauges and panels had been smashed and looted. Electric cables hung from the ceiling like roots in a cave.

  Gabriel remembered seeing a small opening in one of the concrete lids that covered a launch silo. Perhaps it was possible to crawl out of this hole and reach the sunlight, but the missile area was the most dangerous part of the underground complex. Once Gabriel tried to explore a launch silo. He became lost in shadowy passageways and almost fell through a gap in the floor.

  Near the empty fuel tanks for the electric generator, he found a forty-two-y
ear-old copy of a Phoenix newspaper, the Arizona Republic. The paper was yellowed and brittle at the edges, but still legible. Gabriel spent hours on the folding cot, reading news articles, want ads, and wedding announcements. He pretended that he was a visitor from another realm and the newspaper was his only source of information about the human race.

  The civilization that appeared in the pages of the Arizona Republic appeared to be violent and cruel. But there were positive things as well. Gabriel enjoyed reading an article about a Phoenix couple that had been married for fifty years. Tom Zimmerman was an electrician who liked model trains. His wife, Elizabeth, was a former schoolteacher who was active in the Methodist church. Lying on the cot, he studied the couple's faded anniversary photograph. They smiled at the camera and their fingers were intertwined. Gabriel had been involved with various women in Los Angeles, but those experiences felt very far away. The photograph of the Zimmermans was proof that love could survive the fury of the world.

  The old newspaper and thoughts of Maya were the only diversions. Usually, he walked into the main tunnel and met Sophia Briggs. A year ago she had counted all the snakes in the missile silo and now she was taking another census to find out if the population had grown. Carrying a can of nontoxic spray paint, she would find a snake and mark the specimen to show that it had been counted. Gabriel got used to seeing king snakes with neon-orange stripes on the tip of their tails.

  ***

  HE WALKED DOWN a long passageway in a dream, then opened his eyes and found himself lying on the folding cot. After drinking some water and eating a handful of wheat crackers, he left the dormitory room and found Sophia in the abandoned control room. The biologist turned and gave him a sharp, appraising look. Gabriel always felt like a new student in one of her college classes.

  "How did you sleep?" she asked.

  "All right."

  "Did you find the food I left you?"

  "Yes."

  Sophia saw a king snake moving in the shadows. Moving quickly, she sprayed a band on its tail, then counted the specimen with her hand clicker. "And what's going on with that lovely water drop? Have you split it with your sword?"

  Not yet."

  "Well, maybe this time, Gabriel. Give it a try."

  And then he was back at the wet patch of floor, staring up at the ceiling and cursing all of the ninety-nine paths. The water drop was too small, and too fast. The sword blade was too narrow. This was truly an impossible task.

  In the beginning, he had tried to concentrate on the event itself, staring at the drop as it formed, flexing his muscles, and gripping the sword like a baseball player waiting for a fastball. Unfortunately, there was nothing regular about what happened. Sometimes the drop wouldn't fall for twenty minutes. Sometimes two drops would fall within ten seconds. Gabriel swung the sword and missed. He muttered a curse, and tried again. Anger filled his heart so intensely that he thought of fleeing the silo and walking back to San Lucas. He wasn't the lost prince of his mother's stories, just a foolish young man ordered around by a half-crazy old woman.

  Gabriel felt as if today would bring only more failure. But standing alone with the sword for several hours, he gradually forgot about himself and his problems. Although the weapon was still in his hands, he didn't feel like he was holding it in a conscious way. The sword was simply an extension of his mind.

  The water drop fell, but this time it seemed to fall in slow motion. When he swung the sword, he was one step back from his own experience, watching the blade touch the water drop and cut it in two. Time stopped at that moment and he saw everything clearly—the sword, his hands, and the two halves of the water drop drifting off into opposite directions.

  Then time began moving again and the sensation disappeared. Only a few seconds had gone by, but it felt like a glimpse of eternity. Gabriel turned and ran down the tunnel. "Sophia!" he shouted. "Sophia!" His voice echoed off the concrete walls.

  She was still in the control room, writing in her leather notebook. "Is there a problem?"

  Gabriel stammered as if his tongue didn't work anymore. "I—I cut the drop with the jade sword."

  "Good. Very good." She closed the notebook. "You're making progress.

  "There was something else, but it's hard to explain. It felt like time slowed down while it happened."

  "You saw this?"

  Gabriel looked down at the floor. "I know it sounds crazy."

  "No one can stop time," Sophia said. "But people can focus their senses far beyond the normal boundaries. It may feel like the world is slowing down, but it's all going on inside your brain. Your perceptions have been accelerated. Occasionally, great athletes are able to do this. A ball is thrown or kicked through the air and they can see it precisely. Sometimes musicians can hear every instrument in a symphony orchestra at the same moment. It can even happen to ordinary people who meditate or pray."

  "Does it happen to Travelers?"

  "Travelers are different from the rest of us because they can learn how to control this kind of intensified perception. It gives them the power to see the world with an immense clarity" Sophia studied Gabriel's face as if his eyes could give her an answer. "Can you do that, Gabriel? Can you push a switch in your mind and make the world seem to slow down and stop for a while?"

  "No. The whole thing just happened."

  She nodded. "Then we have to keep working." Sophia picked up her kerosene lantern and began to walk out of the room. "Let's try the seventeenth path to help your sense of balance and movement. When a Traveler's body is moving slightly, it helps the Light break free."

  A few minutes later they were standing on a ledge that was built halfway up the sixty-foot silo that had once contained the facility's radio antenna. A steel girder about three inches wide crossed the length of the silo. Sophia raised her lantern and showed him that it was a thirty-foot drop to a pile of abandoned machinery.

  "There's a penny on the girder, about halfway across. Go pick it up."

  "If I fall, I'm going to break my legs."

  Sophia didn't seem to be worried. "Yes, you could break your legs. But I think it's more likely that you'd break both ankles. Of course, if you land on your head, you'll probably die." She lowered the lantern and nodded. "Get going."

  Gabriel took a deep breath and stepped sideways on the girder so that his weight was on the arches of his feet. Cautiously, he began to shuffle away from the ledge.

  "That's not right," Sophia said. "Step with your toes pointed forward."

  "This is safer."

  "No, it isn't. Your arms should be extended at a ninety-degree angle to the girder. Focus on your breathing, not on your fear."

  Gabriel turned his head to speak to Sophia and lost his balance. He swayed back and forth for a moment then crouched down and grabbed the girder with both hands. Once again, he started to fall until he threw his legs outward and straddled the girder. It took him two minutes to return to the ledge.

  "That was pathetic, Gabriel. Try again."

  "No."

  "If you want to be a Traveler—"

  "I don't want to get killed! Stop asking me to do things that you can't do yourself."

  Sophia set her lantern down on the ledge. Stepping onto the girder like a tightrope walker, she moved quickly to the middle of the girder, bent down, and picked up the penny. The old woman jumped a few feet into the air, turned around completely, and landed on one foot. Quickly, she returned to the ledge and flicked the penny in Gabriel's direction.

  "Get some rest, Gabriel. You've been awake much longer than you think." She picked up her lantern and headed back to the main tunnel. "When I come back down, we'll try the twenty-seventh path. That one is quite old, thought up in the twelfth century by a German nun named Hildegard of Bingen."

  Furious, Gabriel tossed the penny away and followed her. "How long have I been underground?"

  "Don't worry about that."

  "I'm not worried. I just want to know. How long have I been here and how many more days do I have left?
"

  "Go to sleep. And don't forget to dream."

  ***

  GABRIEL THOUGHT ABOUT leaving, then decided against it. If he left early, he would have to explain his decision to Maya. If he stayed for a few more days and failed, no one would care what happened to him.

  Sleep. Another dream. When Gabriel raised his eyes, he was standing in the courtyard of a large brick building. It appeared to be some kind of monastery or school, but no one was there. Pieces of paper were scattered across the floor and the wind blew them up into the air.

  Gabriel turned, stepped through an open doorway, and entered a long corridor with smashed windows on the right side. There were no dead bodies or bloodstains, but he knew immediately that people had been fighting here. Wind pushed through the empty window frames. A sheet of lined notebook paper skittered across the floor. He went to the end of the corridor, turned the corner, and saw a woman with black hair sitting on the floor holding a man in her lap. As he came closer, he saw that it was his own body. His eyes were closed and he didn't appear to be breathing.

  The woman looked up and brushed her long hair away from her face. It was Maya. Her clothes were covered with blood and her broken sword lay on the floor beside her leg. She held his body tightly, rocking back and forth. But the most terrifying thing was that the Harlequin was crying.

  ***

  GABRIEL WOKE UP in a darkness so absolute that he found it difficult to know if he was dead or alive. "Hello!" he shouted and the sound of his voice echoed off the concrete walls of the room. Something must have happened to the electric cord or the power generator. All the lightbulbs had gone out and he was a captive of the darkness. Trying not to panic, he reached beneath the folding cot and found his lantern and a box of wooden matches. The match flame startled him with its sudden brightness. He lit the wick and the room was filled with light.