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  "Does everyone agree?"

  A silence. Then...

  "Good. A team of twelve can leave for Goa as soon as possible and establish a base."

  "I'll go."

  "Me too."

  "And me."

  "I need to continue my search."

  "I'll come with you."

  After the details of who would go with the base team and who would roam were worked out, there was another silence. Then all twenty-four, as one voice, said, "I love you." And they opened their eyes.

  Chapter 6

  Interlude In Athens

  First had come the traditional salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olives, and slabs of feta cheese, the mashed eggplant salad, the strained yoghurt with garlic, the fried octopus, and other assorted appetizers, along with retzina wine; then had come grilled fish and more wine; then had come sweets dripping with sugar syrup. The conversation about local scandals, relatives, work, sports, and politics was frequently punctuated by bursts of raucous laughter. Everyone talked at once, trying to out-shout each other to make their point.

  Between the fish and the sweets Sunny quietly left the taverna and followed the sandy path to the shore. Through the calm clear water she could see the sand of the seabed mottled with patches of weeds and rocks.

  It had been like a moment of blankness. She'd been dreaming about something - exactly what, she couldn't remember - and suddenly a white brilliance had interrupted, and she'd awakened. At first she didn't know where she was. She called for Paul; she wanted him to catch her before she drowned in the emptiness. But when she regained full consciousness she recognized the photos on the wall, the stuffed animals and old schoolbooks on the shelves, the pink flowers on the curtains, and she realized she was in her old room at her mother’s house.

  All morning she'd had a premonition that something was wrong. She'd seen Paul writhing in pain on a bed in a small hotel room; she'd seen an oriental woman being attacked by soldiers. Everything was vague; she didn't know if it was her imagination, or perhaps an aftermath of her forgotten dream, or fantasies born of her constant feeling of apprehension.

  But she sensed something else as well. Was it an invitation? Was it a call like the song of the ancient sirens, luring sailors to their doom? But it did not seem to be malevolent. It seemed intriguing, exciting, interesting, challenging, thrilling, but not threatening. What did it mean? And what did it have to do with Paul, and with Jason and Jasmine, and what had happened to her in Nepal?

  She'd been lying low, trying to be polite, to keep the peace, to avoid confrontation with her mother. That's why she'd accepted the invitation to have lunch with her relatives. But as she sat and listened to the small talk she felt an almost irresistible urge to get up and walk out and not come back, to follow the beckoning tickle or hum or whatever it was in her mind and heart.

  So as she walked along the beach in the hot afternoon sun, she was torn between the urge to run home and grab her backpack and hit the road again, or to resist the impulse and continue to wait until she heard from Paul.

  Chapter 7

  Interrogation

  As Paul gazed out the window at the rolling hills of tall shimmering grass and wind-sculpted scrub, and beyond at the solid gray wall of fog steadily advancing over the metallic-blue water towards shore, the doorknob turned and Howard Finwinkle entered with a heavy-set man dressed in a uniform-like blue suit. They helped themselves to the armchairs, leaving a straight-backed wooden chair for Paul.

  "Sit down. Please." Finwinkle waved his hand. "This is Louis Frazer of the Defense Department. Sorry you were kept here in the dark. We wanted you to rest up after your journey and recover from your stomach disorder. Feeling better?"

  "I'm fine." Paul sat. Since he'd been detained in Iran he'd been surrounded by people who had dark spirits like those he'd fled from in Nepal. He'd decided to play along as much as possible while looking for a way of escape. Since arriving at this mansion in the Santa Cruz Mountains near San Francisco, he'd sensed something even stranger and more confusing, something he couldn't quite bring into focus; when he tried to probe mentally he encountered a nauseating opaqueness.

  "In military terminology this is a debriefing," Finwinkle continued. "We know that you met some unusual individuals in Nepal. We need to know everything about these people, every detail you can remember. We can take as long as necessary. This is a matter of utmost importance to national security."

  "Why?"

  "We'll ask the questions," Frazer said.

  Finwinkle continued. "You met two young people, a man and a woman. What were their names?"

  "Look," Paul said. "I have legal rights. Am I being charged with a crime? Or are they? I don't have to answer any of your questions without a lawyer present."

  Finwinkle sighed. "This is a special investigation, Mr. Traven. No, you are not charged with a crime - unless you refuse to cooperate. The utmost secrecy is imperative, but we'll tell you as much as we can." He looked at Frazer, who nodded. "These people you met, well, they may not be human. Now, I know that may be hard for you to believe, but maybe you did notice something unusual about them. They may have deceived you in some way into thinking they were friends, but the fact is, they are very dangerous. We have reason to believe they have certain...abilities. They may have even been able to manipulate your thoughts, project images into your mind, distort your perception of reality, even cause you to have paranoid delusions."

  "Nepal is full of weirdos."

  "Don't play games with us," Frazer said in a low threatening voice. "You know damn well who we're talking about."

  "Yes," Paul said. "I know who you're talking about. But it's your word against theirs. Who's to say who's right?"

  "You little..." Frazer began.

  "Wait." With a remote control unit Finwinkle lowered the lights and turned on a TV and video machine. The image on the screen jiggled and wavered; it had obviously been filmed with a hand-held camera. Strings of seemingly random numbers and letters lined the top and bottom. At first there was an empty hillside like the one Paul had seen outside the window; it appeared to be dusk. "This is in some hills not far from here," Finwinkle said. As the darkness deepened, the picture became tinged with red. Suddenly a vehicle shaped like a horizontal teardrop cruised into view, hovered over the grass, and lowered a ramp. Figures that appeared to be human, dressed in nondescript modern clothing and carrying small handbags or briefcases, descended in groups of two and quickly walked off into the darkness.

  "We were caught off-guard," Finwinkle said. "We weren't prepared to apprehend. But we tracked them the best we could. And we managed to get enhanced close-ups of some of them." The images of eight faces enlarged into two rows of portraits. Some of them were indistinct, a jumble of tiny squares like a puzzle that didn't quite fit; but some were more clear, and one of these zoomed up to fill the screen.

  It was Jason.

  "This is the man you met in Nepal, isn't it?" Finwinkle said. "He had a fake U.S. passport and other identification. He was traveling with a woman of the same age; unfortunately her picture isn't so clear. We followed them, but they always eluded us and stayed one step ahead. They traveled to San Francisco, then Los Angeles, then on to India. Bombay, then Goa, then Madras, then Delhi, then on up to Nepal. Do you recognize the route?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Don't act stupid because we know you're not," Frazer said.

  "The route you took on your way to Nepal. It wasn't until you met up with them and we began to investigate your activities prior to the meeting that we put it all together and realized that at the same time we had been tracking them, they had been tracking you. So that's what we want to know: why?"

  "This is crazy."

  "But you met them, didn't you?"

  "Yes, I met them."

  "Didn't you wonder why they initiated contact with you? Here you were, over forty years old, middle-aged, traveling alone, not the type of person who would be approached by kids like them. Did they act li
ke they knew you or had some special reason to get to know you?"

  Paul hesitated. He was becoming confused. The Himalayas, the snowfield, the acid... Jason had come from nowhere, acted like he knew where Paul would be, said he was a friend. And then Jasmine, a complete stranger, climbing in bed with him and then linking with his mind somehow, touching off some sort of psychic ability he never knew he had. Then his flight from the dark spirits. And how did Sunny fit into all this? God, how he missed her.

  "Mr. Traven?" Finwinkle leaned forward. "Was it a chance encounter or did they seem to know you?"

  "I... I... I don't know. I never thought about it before."

  "What were their names?"

  "The boy's name was Jason and the girl's name was Jasmine. That's what they told me anyway."

  "Do you have any reason to believe they were lying?"

  The two strengths: unity and honesty. When their minds were joined there was nothing between.

  "Do you think they were lying?"

  "No."

  "Well." Finwinkle stood, then Frazer. "You might need a little time to remember all the details. But don't take too long. We don't know their intentions, and we don't know the extent of their power. We'll talk again soon."

  * * *

  Paul was taken to a two-story guesthouse across a wide stone courtyard from the larger main house. His room was sparsely furnished: a cot, a metal folding chair, and a square wooden table on which was writing paper and a pen. The door had been removed from the adjoining bathroom. Metal bars had been recently bolted onto the stone window sill.

  I'm in prison, he thought, as he heard the door being locked from the outside. The bedsprings squeaked as he sat down. Sunny is going to think I deceived her, that I wanted to give her the slip so I made up a story. I wish there was a way to contact her. Damn.

  He got up, paced back and forth, sat down again.

  I wonder what they want me to write? Everything. They want me to spill my head onto the paper. The hell with them; that's too much work. Let them force it out of me. But the question is: how much force are they prepared to exert? They seem pretty determined to get the information they want. But are they who they say they are? Finwinkle seemed to have the proper credentials as we breezed through customs. But why are they holding me here like this? And what is this other sensation I feel, stranger and more confusing than the dark spirits? It's something beyond my mind's orientation, like on an acid trip where you shy away from the edge of total chaos.

  He fell into a disturbed sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness. He saw...burrows. Not burrows like those of rabbits or prairie dogs, but rather burrows of shining walls and subdued lights. And something moved in the tunnels, but not a vampire or a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Something different, very different.

  Then he saw the woman: face half shot off, glaring accusatory eye, holding a mangled lifeless baby. He heard a scream.

  He opened his eyes but then, noticing for the first time what appeared to be the lenses of cameras in two corners of the room, closed them again, and called out with his mind, "Chuck!" He felt a nearby presence trying to back away, hide, somehow avoid him. "Chuck. I know you're here. Listen to me."

  "Leave me alone."

  "Chuck, you need to help me. Where are we? Who are these people?"

  "Go away."

  "Listen carefully, Chuck. I don't know what they did to you in Iran to make you turn me in..."

  "They said they'd put me in a dark place, man, and not let me out. Alone with her. They knew, man, they knew. They had the files from the hospital in Thailand; they had tapes of me jabbering away in one of my fits of paranoia. They knew everything. They said if I didn't help them find you they'd put me away for good."

  "Okay, Chuck. Now you need to help me, but we have to be careful. Don't move and don't talk out loud. We can't let them know we're communicating. Are you locked up?"

  "Yeah, man. I'm locked in a room with bars on the windows."

  "Me too. We'll have to wait for a chance. What do you say? Are you with me?"

  "I don't know. I don't know. I'm scared, really scared."

  "Me too. But you know what? You help me and I'll do everything I can to help you get rid of the vision of that woman."

  "You're bullshitting. You can't do anything."

  "I'll try."

  A silence, then, "I didn't want to help them. I really didn't. You were the closest thing I had to a friend for as long as I can remember."

  "I know. We're still friends. Now listen carefully: you have to go along with them, play their game. They need to think you're theirs."

  "They're not like us, are they? They can't get into our heads."

  "No. I don't think so."

  "I don't know if I can do it. I don't feel so good."

  "I'll help you. We'll do it together."

  * * *

  This time Frazer was absent. "Paul Traven, born in San Diego," Finwinkle read. "Only child. Family moved to San Francisco at age five. Exceptional student in Primary School and first few years of High School, then your grades start dropping. Attended one year of University, failed half your classes, dropped out. Traveled around Southern California and Mexico, came back and worked at various odd jobs, traveled around the States. Quite the wanderer."

  "I was reading Kerouac a lot at the time."

  "Came back to the Bay Area again and got married to a Linda McMettner. Six months later you broke up, she attempted suicide and ended up a semi-vegetable in a mental asylum. Why?"

  "None of your business."

  "Everything is our business. Please cooperate."

  Paul sighed. "She got pregnant. We had plans to travel together and didn't want to be tied down. She had an abortion."

  "That was illegal, wasn't it?"

  "Yeah. So then afterwards, she regretted it. I did too. We just couldn't stay together. I left. I didn't hear what happened to her until much later."

  "Then it's more of the same. Traveling, transient employment. You never stayed anywhere more than a few years. History of drug abuse: mostly marijuana and LSD."

  "How do you know that?"

  "We know. We did some research. But we can't connect all this data. Why were they after you? That's what we need to figure out."

  Paul shrugged.

  "I want you to tell me about the time you first met them. Where were you? What happened? Give me details."

  "I was trekking in the mountains."

  "The Himalayas, in Nepal."

  "Yes. I fainted in the snow and Jason found me."

  "Jasmine wasn't with him?"

  "No. He helped me down the mountain. We met her in Pokhara."

  "What caused you to faint?"

  Paul remained silent.

  "Were you high? Had you taken drugs?"

  "I don't have to answer any incriminating questions."

  "Listen, this goes way beyond a drug bust. I'm not a narcotics agent and I'm not concerned with your personal vices unless they affect this situation. But we need to know this."

  "I'd taken some acid."

  "LSD."

  "Yes."

  "How much?"

  "I can't give you a scientific measurement if that's what you want. I bought it from a guy on Freak Street. It was blotter acid. I took five hits; that's four more than I should have."

  "Why?"

  Paul shrugged again. "I wanted to get very high."

  "Okay. So when you met Jason did anything unusual happen?"

  "I was stoned out of my mind."

  "But do you remember anything?"

  "Bits and pieces. I don't know."

  Finwinkle closed the file folder. "That's not good enough. Mr. Traven, we have drugs that can make you spill everything until your head's empty. We are authorized to use sleep deprivation, fasting, hypnosis, and other more extreme methods if necessary. This is a matter of not national but international security. We are trying to give you a chance to cooperate voluntarily. I urge you to take the opportunity for your own sake."
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