Love Children Read online

  The woman, though half her face had been blown away, though she had been hit many times and had danced like a crazy marionette from the multiple impacts, though she was covered with a crimson sheen from her wounds, still clung to the baby as she fell. Her one remaining eye was wide open in an expression of accusatory hatred and horror. He stared at her as his patriotic resolve and righteous determination disintegrated, as his upbringing and training and whatever else had held his sanity together flowed swiftly out of him as if into a vast moral cesspool. He dropped to his knees, then flat onto his back. Then he lost consciousness.

  Paul almost blacked out too, not from the pain in his stomach or his own weakness, but from the intensity of the empathetic link.

  The other presence had disappeared; Paul could not feel it at all. He didn't know what to do. Should he go back to his room and lie down again? Should he try a door-to-door search? He walked up and down the hallway listening.

  From inside one room he heard the sound of conversation.

  When he opened the door a thick pungent cloud of hashish smoke burst into the hallway. Peering through the haze within, he saw several hippies cross-legged on the floor in a circle. One of them held an ornate hash pipe with a long metal stem curved like a snake. They all turned their heads fearfully towards the door as it opened.

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  "What do you want?"

  "You scared the shit out of me."

  "I thought you were the Afghani pigs."

  "Don't you know enough to knock before you open a door?"

  "Sorry. Wrong room." Paul pulled the door shut; he heard someone on the other side bolting and locking it.

  Paul heard an inward moan, felt a flash of fear, and momentarily saw the woman's face after she'd been shot. The single remaining eye had a burst blood vessel near the pupil, a tiny orb with bright red rays like the sun. The cornea was a rich chestnut brown; under other circumstances it would have been considered a beautiful eye. Its expression went beyond pain. Paul had felt like that himself once before. As the sense of loss welled up within him tears began to trickle down his cheeks, and an ache stronger and deeper than the ache from the food poisoning gripped his stomach.

  It seemed whoever was broadcasting these signals was drifting in and out of consciousness.

  Paul stepped out into the chilly evening. A lone street light shone with a pale yellow glow in the distance, at the end of the alley on the main road. But Paul didn't walk toward the light; cautiously he groped through the darkness deeper into the narrow passageway until he came to a wooden door on the side of the path opposite his hotel. He pulled the metal latch and entered; a bare low-wattage light bulb hanging from a wire dimly illuminated the damp corridor. He passed two doors and stopped before a third. This was the place.

  I must be crazy, he thought. I'm chasing a paranoid hallucination. Maybe I'm really still up on the Himalayan ice and I'm dying and this is some kind of weird pre-death nightmare.

  Graffiti had been carved and painted onto the door until it was a splinter-filled splash of psychedelic color.

  Paul knocked. No answer. He knocked louder. Still no answer. Paul could sense that whoever was within was wide awake now, but too frightened to move.

  Paul tried the latch. It wasn't locked.

  Someone sat on the bed, leaning against the wall, his back propped up with dirty pillows. Long tangled blonde hair and a blonde beard framed his gaunt face, his sunken cheeks, and his wide frightened eyes under protruding bushy brows. The outline of his bones and the tiny bruise-colored patterns of his veins could be clearly seen on his scrawny arms and hands.

  Paul spoke with his inner voice. "Can you hear me?"

  The man just stared. The room smelled of stale hashish, though no paraphernalia was visible.

  "I know you can hear me. What's your name?"

  The wide-eyed stare turned into an expression of inquiry.

  "Who's the woman?"

  "The woman. You saw her?"

  "I saw her. I felt her."

  The man closed his eyes and sighed deeply. "The woman. I don't know her name. She's dead. Except in here." He tapped the side of his head with a forefinger. "She lives in my head. She's just as alive as anyone I meet walking on the street. She lives with me in my own private hell. I sent her to hell and she took me with her."

  "What happened?"

  "We were wasting the village. It was routine. I never questioned my motives. I followed orders. I didn't like everything I saw but I thought we were right. Then I fired on her and something hit me. It was like I wasn't me anymore, I was her. I saw what she saw, I felt what she felt. I felt the bullets. I felt the fear, the hopelessness. Son of a bitch. I couldn't take it. I went nuts."

  "And then?"

  "I spent a few weeks in a hospital, then I got discharged. I could have gone home but I went to Bangkok instead. I don't know how I ended up here. Just wandering. Who the fuck are you? And how can you get inside my mind?"

  "It's a long story. Can I help you? Are you hungry? Or thirsty?"

  "Help me? Hell, I'm beyond help. I can't eat; I can't sleep. If I do fall asleep, she's right there waiting for me. So I stay stoned until I pass out but that doesn't help either."

  "What's your name?"

  "Chuck. Chuck Townsen, from Texas. Currently from Hell. Looks like I got a one-way ticket."

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  Chuck's trapped, frightened eyes stared at him from behind tangles of blonde hair. "Just don't leave me alone, man. Just don't leave me alone."

  * * *

  In Tehran, Iran, Paul's stomach started acting up again.

  They'd traveled by bus, from Kabul to Kandahar to the Iranian border, then from there to Mashad to Tehran. They'd checked into the Amir Kabir, the Hippy Hilton, full of low-budget travelers on their way to or from the East.

  As soon as they walked into their room Paul fell onto the bed. "I can't go out; I just don't feel up to it."

  "Come on, man, I'm hungry."

  "So go find some food. You must have managed somehow before I came along."

  "When you met me in Kabul did it look like I'd been eating? She's still there. She's waiting for when I'm alone."

  "She's just a memory. Memories fade with time. You're sorry for what you did; there's nothing more you can do. You can't bring her or her kid back. You just have to lay off the guilt and get on with things."

  Chuck shook his head.

  "You can do it. Look..." Paul switched to mental communication. "Go somewhere close by; I saw a kebab place around the corner. We can keep in touch."

  "I don't know..."

  "Go on. You need to."

  "Okay. Okay. I'll try." The woman's shattered bloody face with its one staring eye started coming into focus.

  "No," Paul said. "Resist it. Think of the lake." He'd encouraged Chuck to construct an alternative image in his mind to combat the recurrent nightmare. Detail after detail had been added until it had the clarity of a three-dimensional postcard. It was one of Chuck's favorite childhood fishing spots: a beautiful deep-blue lake surrounded by tall trees, with ripples from feeding fish and reflections of the trees and the lighter blue of the sky on the calm surface. "Yes. That's right. Just keep it in mind. We'll do it together. Now go ahead."

  Paul followed Chuck's progress from the room to the crowded, smoke-filled hotel lobby, down the steps and out to the street, along the sidewalk and into the restaurant. He ordered rice and beef kebab, and when the food came started eating ravenously. When Paul realized that Chuck's mind was no longer on his fears, he relaxed, and almost immediately fell into an exhausted sleep. For some reason, as he drifted off, he thought of Persian rugs covering the floors and the walls; as he marveled at the intricacy of the work, he wondered how long it took to make one. It must be a meticulous process, weaving the various colors into the design, thread after thread, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month…

  * * *

  This time
it wasn't a vampire but a dinosaur. Paul was running through the jungle, but his legs kept going slower and slower until he almost had to pull himself along. He spotted the ruins of an ancient temple, overgrown with vines and other plants whose roots grew into the cracks between the huge stones. From the shadowed interior he watched the Tyrannosaurus Rex lumber closer, its footsteps causing the ground to tremble, its ponderous head moving from side to side above the treetops, seeking him. Perhaps it wouldn't notice; perhaps it would pass by. But he backed into the darkness in terror as it stopped, and a gigantic reptilian eye filled a window above him, and he heard the beast's breath exhale with a loud prolonged hiss.

  * * *

  When Paul awakened, fear of the menacing apparition in his nightmare lingered in his mind; he felt that if he opened his eyes it would be waiting with its fang-filled gaping mouth. As his consciousness gradually returned he realized that dark presences like the ones that had stalked him in Nepal surrounded him. Chuck was there too, but his mind tried to back away from contact. He was obviously terrified; he'd lost all self-control. His awareness was filled with the woman's blood-splattered accusatory face, the baby's shattered limp body, the horror of spinning spinning spinning in the void of the abyss...

  Without opening his eyes, without moving his lips, Paul asked, "Chuck, what's happening?"

  "I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry. Oh shit, she's come back. She won't go away."

  Paul sensed part of the story: three men had approached Chuck while he was eating, had quietly sat down and begun to talk. At first, caught up in his meal, he hadn't fully paid attention, but then he had realized who they were.

  "They threatened me with prison, man. Can you imagine, me alone with her in a dark place, with no way of escape, nowhere to run. I couldn't take the thought. They told me they didn't want to hurt us; they just want to talk to you. These guys are powerful, man. They can make your ass disappear. Just cooperate."

  "I trusted you." A picture of Judas kissing Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

  "No. No. It's not like that. Oh, damn."

  Paul looked around. A thin balding man in a gray business suit sat on the opposite bed; the other two, tall and burly and dressed similarly, as if in uniforms, stood near the door.

  Outside, mullahs began the chanting call to evening prayer.

  "Your name is Paul Traven?" The man on the bed pulled out his wallet and flipped out some official-looking identification. "My name is Howard Finwinkle, from the State Department. We want to ask you a few questions."

  Chapter 5

  The Plan

  The twenty-four of them sat cross-legged in a circle, eyes closed, hands joined. To an outside observer they would appear to be silent.

  "I found my father, but my mother appears to be dead. Suicide. What a strange thing. I really can't grasp it. I felt a little of the pain my father felt, but still..."

  "I found both my parents, but they would not believe who I was."

  "I'm still searching. They appear to have disappeared. Perhaps they committed a crime and are attempting to elude authorities."

  Others shared accounts of what they'd been doing during the past weeks. Then...

  "The pain you mentioned earlier: I felt it too."

  "So did I."

  "What is it? And why is it so strong in the outsiders but it doesn't seem to exist in us?"

  "It has something to do with their isolation from one another, and their inability to properly communicate."

  "But why can't they? Physiologically we are no different."

  "They haven't learned how."

  "We could teach them."

  "Could we? I don't think it would be that easy. You've seen what's happening: the confusion, the violence, the anarchy. How could we get through all that and educate four billion people?"

  "Well, of course we couldn't start with four billion, but with just a few. Then those few could help us reach others, and so on."

  "Yes."

  "That's not why we came."

  "Isn't it? Who knows why we really came? To search for our parents, yes. But is that the only reason?"

  "I feel like I can't go and leave them in this mess."

  "I feel the same way."

  "There's another problem, you know. The Furens are here."

  "Yes. I sensed them too. And I think they know we're here. We were followed. We escaped easily, of course, but we gathered they'd been here for some time. They've probably been trying to infiltrate clandestinely in politics, law enforcement, finances, and communications. It's hard to say how successful they've been."

  "We have the means to return home whenever we want. I think we should prolong our stay and see what we can do to help."

  "So do I."

  "Yes."

  "I agree."

  "Has anyone been able to communicate mentally with the outsiders?"

  "I did with a few."

  "So did I."

  "I did with my father. I don't know what brought it on. He took some drugs; it could have been that. Or perhaps the desperate situation. Or I was wondering if the talent was hereditary."

  "But we were chosen at random."

  "Were we? We don't know for sure."

  "That's a point. If it’s hereditary, though, then we should all have been able to communicate with our parents. I couldn't."

  "I got through to someone, but she wasn't my mother. She was a stranger."

  "I made contact while having sex."

  "You had sex with an outsider?"

  "I had sex with an outsider too. While we loved it felt as if we'd be able to mentally communicate, but it didn't quite work, at least not with words."

  "Some people seem to be naturally more open to it than others."

  "Yes."

  "I have another theory: what if it's contagious?"

  "Like a disease?"

  "Well, perhaps prolonged proximity helps."

  "Or it could be a combination of talent, proximity, and training. That remains to be seen. The main question is: what do we do now?"

  "I've been considering the contingency of us deciding to stay. If we want to begin educating those most talented in communication, we have to find them somehow."

  "We can't just walk around searching; that takes too much time."

  "Far too much. We can't advertise, at least through normal channels, but perhaps we could try something abnormal, or super-normal."

  "What do you mean?"

  "If several of us simultaneously sent out the same mental signal, the power of the signal would increase exponentially."

  "What kind of signal?"

  "A call to meet somewhere. A certain time, a certain place. Most outsiders wouldn't even hear it. Some would hear it but it wouldn't be clear. Some would hear it clearly but for some reason wouldn't come. But a few might just make it to wherever we choose as a meeting place. And those would be the ones we'd work with."

  "What if too many people showed up?"

  "That's doubtful, but we'll just have to take it step by step. For simplicity we’d have to stick to one language, probably English; that would cut down the numbers. And we could choose a place that's not too easy to get to."

  "I like the idea."

  "We could have one team, perhaps half of us, broadcast from the location we select; then the rest could roam around in teams of two, broadcasting as they went."

  "It might work and it might not, but we could try."

  "Where?"

  "How about the San Francisco Bay area? There's a lot of psychic activity there these days."

  "Too modern. It doesn't take an effort to get there. We have to screen them somehow."

  "The Alaskan wilderness?"

  "Too remote. If the place is too isolated, a large group of people will stick out and attract too much attention."

  "I have an idea. How about India? I know a place where young people gather every year in winter from all over the world, so a crowd wouldn't be unusual. But at the same time, travel conditions are rough en
ough that most people wouldn't want to attempt the trip."

  "Where in India were you thinking of?"

  "A place called Goa, on the west coast. It's less populated than most of the country, no big cities, beautiful beaches. In two months, on December 25th, occurs the international holiday of Christmas. Goa gets a lot of visitors then. I suggest we focus on that date."