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  * * *

  When Paul turned off the overhead fixture the outside security floodlights filled the room with a pale ghostly glow. He moved his cot to the darkest corner. After he had closed his eyes he focused on Chuck. "Are you there?"

  "I've been waiting. Man, I'm confused. They spent hours today trying to convince me how dangerous you are. Then they gave their pitch: they asked me if I'd like to help save the world from people like you. They're real convincing, man, and they have films and photos and all kinds of evidence. I don't know what to think."

  "Chuck, you know what the truth is, don't you?"

  A pause, then, "Sure, I know."

  "It's dangerous and you're afraid. I understand that. Now listen: did you tell them about the telepathy?"

  "No. No, really, I didn't."

  "Don't. It's our only advantage. Okay, let's talk about the woman."

  "I don't know if I'm up to it."

  "It'll never be easy. Let's take the plunge. Go back to that time. Come on. We're together. I won't leave you."

  "I'll try, man."

  Creeping through the jungle, sweat tickling forehead, nose, and neck; arms aching from gripping his weapon so tightly; looking from side to side searching for the enemy, all the shades of green, of leaves and vines and shrubs and towering trees blending together into an emerald blur. Then in the clearing ahead the rice fields and the village. Exterminate the enemy nest, they'd been ordered.

  He feels her before he sees her. Then he is her, trying to hide with her baby in the thick foliage. She panics and runs.

  "That gook's got a weapon, Townsen. Get her."

  The sudden order snaps the connection. He chases her, stumbling through the underbrush, branches slapping his face. It does look like a weapon, but he knows it's not. He senses her terror; his awareness flips back and forth from him to her, her to him; he wants to stop the pursuit and run away and hide but his training in obeying orders overrides his conscience.

  When Chuck had finished reliving the incident and only the woman's mangled staring face remained, Paul said, "She had the talent to communicate mentally like we do."

  "How could she?"

  "We don't know why someone can and someone can't. I met a little beggar girl in Nepal who could speak very clearly to my mind." Paul smiled, remembering Asha, and hoped she was safe. "So you and this woman were wide open to each other, and you hit each other full blast with the intensity of your emotions. Obviously it was a terrible shock; neither of you were prepared. I can understand your guilt. Once you're in someone's head it's hard to hate them. Did you ever experience telepathy before this?"

  "I didn't even believe in it."

  "Maybe the life-and-death situation brought it on. I don't know." Paul paused, then said, "Chuck, I think you need to apologize to her."

  "What the hell good will that do? She's dead."

  "If she's so dead then why does she still seem so real to you?"

  No answer.

  "Just look her in the eye and tell her how you feel. Spill your heart. Let her know you're sorry. Let all the pus drain out."

  "That's crazy."

  "No more crazy than being haunted by the bloody corpse of a shot-up Vietnamese woman. Give it a try."

  "Okay. Okay." Paul sensed him focusing on the woman's image. "I don't know how to say this; I'm not good with words. I just want you to know that I'm sorry as hell that I shot you and your baby, and if I had to do it again I wouldn't. I was following orders and I thought that's what I was supposed to do, but now I realize that there's something beyond that. I'm sorry. If I was there again and you and your kid were still alive I'd try to help you. I really would." Then Chuck said to Paul, "Well, that's a load off my chest. Now what?"

  "Now we work on getting the hell out of here."

  Chapter 8

  Awakenings

  Martin Lewis sat down in his swivel-chair and looked at the desktop in front of him: adding machine, telephone, leaning tower of file folders, cup full of pens and pencils and markers, dried brown circles of spilled coffee, notepad covered with calculations, phone numbers, and doodles. He came in every weekday at eight, did things until lunch, came back and did more things until five, then went home. He stuck up his middle finger at the file folders. "Fuck you," he said. They didn't respond. "Go away," he said. They didn't move. "Last night there were half as many as there are this morning," he muttered. "And tomorrow there will be twice as many more. They're like a fast-growing fungus."

  He wanted to at least look out a window to break the monotony, to be able to see the blue sky, patches of green below, maybe a few circling birds. But in the normal scheme of things, fresh out of university as he was and with no practical experience, he wouldn't be promoted to a desk near a window for at least a few years. I've got to put a picture on my desk to remind me there's still a natural world out there, he thought.

  And then there was India. Why had he been thinking about India lately? He'd watched a few documentaries about it, and occasionally he'd listened to Ravi Shankar when he came on the radio, but to Martin India might as well have been the moon. Until recently, that is, when he began to hear something, or see something; no, it wasn't exactly hearing or seeing. It was like a subliminal hum and it kept reminding him of India.

  He'd borrowed an atlas from the research department. He skimmed the index until he found the right page. Big place, India. He'd heard of a few of the cities: Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay. He ran his finger absentmindedly down the page, then stopped. His eyes fell on a word that seemed to throb like a heart and flash like a strobe light as he recognized it. He'd never heard of the place before, but as he looked at the name now he felt like it was home, like he'd known it all his life.

  Goa.

  It was crazy. He simmered for a few days while he thought of India, dreamed of India. All the little irritations welled up in him like a blister. Nothing made sense any more at work, though he kept going through the motions. Then one morning he came in and glared at the file folders, then he looked up at all the other employees busy typing and writing and folding and stapling and phoning and faxing and God knows what else. What am I doing here? he thought.

  He got up, went to the manager's office and walked in without knocking and said, "I quit. I'll pick up my closing check tomorrow." Then he walked out without waiting for a reply, grabbed his coat, and left the building.

  * * *

  Mildred Winters slowly and methodically placed the cards one by one on the desk. She usually played Solitaire for hours every day as she sat alone in her room at Bright's Senior Citizens' Home, but this morning she couldn't concentrate on the game. Her left hand paused in mid-air, trembling. "Goa," she said aloud. She often talked to herself, since she seldom had a companion. "Where could it be? Somewhere in India, that's for sure. What an amazing thought, that I would go to India. How odd, how incredible." She looked around suspiciously, then reached under the table. Her fingers ached as she pulled loose an envelope that was taped under the drawer. She opened it and looked through the bills inside: ones and tens and twenties and even a few hundreds. "I wonder if this is enough for a ticket. Well, it will have to do. I need to get going. I don't want to be late." She tucked it beside her in the wheelchair, got her coat from the closet and draped it around her shoulders, and headed down the hallway.

  She never made it past reception.

  * * *

  Webber Clark yawned, put his hands behind his head, and stared into the darkness. He heard the clack of the guard's footsteps on the polished floors and the rattle of the keys at his belt. He never slept very well, but lately he hardly slept at all. Sometimes he imagined the chemicals being injected into his body and wondered how much pain he'd feel. He'd never been afraid of pain, but now that his execution day was so close, he was afraid of what was beyond the pain. The other members of Bloodclub had nicknamed him Titan, because of his size and the way he could throw people around in a fight. He'd been found guilty of the murder of two kids half his size and half
his age who'd sassed him in front of his friends. He'd chuckled at the trial about all the killing he'd done that he'd gotten away with. With that black pit of death so close, it didn't seem so funny anymore.

  And who would have thought that a scrawny white boy busted for corporate fraud would have become his best friend? One night he was half-conscious, sweating, moaning, thinking of death and hell and poison needles and pain, and he heard a voice in his head. He thought he'd gone over-the-edge pure crazy, but the voice was clear and he understood all the words: "Are you all right?" And they talked, and the communication calmed his nerves and became a link with sanity in a place where sanity was a rare commodity. At first he didn't even know that Randy Whittaker was white, though he suspected it; and afterwards he didn't care anyway. Randy was the first white man he had ever trusted; come to think of it, he was the first person he had ever trusted, period. Now, every night after lights-out, though their cells were three levels and two buildings apart, they talked.

  "Hi, Web. I'm here."

  "Hey, Randy. Shit, only three weeks left."

  "You could still get a reprieve."

  "Not fucking likely."

  "But possible. Let's hope for it."

  "I sure as hell would like to know what's happening in India."

  "You've been hearing it too?"

  "Man, I can't think of nothing else: India, India, India, all day long. A place called Goa."

  "That's right, Goa. I've heard of it before. It's on the west coast. Nice beaches, the books say."

  "What you think it's like there?"

  "Palm trees, white sands, delicious tropical fruits, pretty naked girls."

  "Now you're talking. But you talking about India or heaven? I always figured India was kinda like Harlem or Watts but the people looked different."

  "Well, it's not all like that. Goa is a former Portuguese colony, a little better off than most of the country. I mean I've never been there, but I've read about it."

  "Wow, man, for another chance... I never gave a fuck about another chance before because I figured if you get served shit on a plate who wants seconds? But now it's different. This is way different, man, can you feel it?"

  "It's strange, really strange. But unless we can bring off a jailbreak it looks like we'll sit this one out."

  "Shit."

  "Yeah."

  * * *

  As Jimmy Thornberg sat in the circle of students in the dormitory room he wondered why he'd taken the mushrooms. Every trip had been getting worse. He didn't have good ones at all anymore. For a while they'd been tolerable, hopeful. He never took the psychedelics just for fun, he always had an ulterior spiritual motive. He wanted to discover some truth; he wanted to see the bright eternal lights through cracks in the universe; he wanted to have all the confusing puzzle pieces come together and form the answer. It never quite happened. Every time, his coherency crumbled just before the magic moment, and lately it was worse: he would lapse into paranoia, hear malevolent voices in the background music, sense animosity in the spirits of his companions.

  The room spun round and his fears mounted like an approaching orgasm. Something evil was in the room, outside, all around. Something he couldn't define, something from somewhere far away. Underground burrows, fetid breath, eyes tinged red. Satan? Was Satan calling him from the music? Face flushed, heart pounding, Jimmy looked around. Nobody else moved; they all stared into the midst of the circle as if they saw something that he didn't. Were they privy to a sinister secret of which he was ignorant? He had to run, but his arms and legs were limp and wouldn't respond. The room and everything in it swirled, swirled, swirled and everything fell into the center as if flushed down a toilet. It was all shit: the students and their minds and hearts and ambitions and dreams, the university and all its headstuffing knowledge, his family and his father's nine-to-five zombie-job and his mother's machinelike housework and the endless broken-record sameness, his babyhood and toddlerhood and kindergarten and gradeschool and highschool and learning to walk and talk and falling down and bleeding and peeing his pants and jerking off for the first time and studying and failing at sports and dating and why did he come here anyway and it was all shit. But if all that was shit, then what was real? And that was the most frightening thing of all, because there was no answer.

  As soon as his brain functioned well enough to move his limbs he went to his room, but he didn't sleep. All night he felt the dark spirits outside. They were not directly concerned with him, but they were doing evil things and they were all around and it was frightening and depressing.

  The sun came up. He drank orange juice; his face and lips were numb but each swallow of juice exploded in his mouth with tangy taste. Outside, as if in another universe, the students with their stacks of books went to their classes.

  He could go to the city and wander Haight-Ashbury, or catch the Dead at the Filmore. No. That was just more of the same. That was just another but different kind of plastic social scene. He knew that wasn't what he had to do.

  But how could he get to Goa, India? He was flat broke; he was almost out of cigarettes and couldn't even buy another pack. What the hell. One foot in front of the other, that was the only way. He pulled his backpack out of the closet, rolled up his sleeping bag and tied it on, threw in a few clothes, toiletries, and books. He smoked a joint, then chewed and swallowed the roach. With the charred resin taste still in his mouth he hoisted the pack onto his back.

  He paused on the sidewalk, wondering what grand gesture of farewell to give the university. "May you smother in your own dung," he muttered, and headed for the nearest freeway entrance.

  * * *

  As four of her children sat at the table eating buttered toast and jam and corn flakes and milk, Margaret Kavenaugh finished preparing three sack lunches: tuna fish sandwiches for Debby, peanut butter and jam for Linda, ham and cheese for Fred Junior. She added apples and bags of potato chips. "Come on, you're late," she said, and as they filed past her with their schoolbags she gave them a kiss and handed them their respective meals.

  When the door slammed for the last time, three-year-old Joey, his face and cheeks a solid smear of strawberry spread, tipped over his glass of milk, which flowed across the formica and poured like a mini waterfall over the edge of the table and onto the floor. As Margaret reached for the mop the baby began to cry. "Go wash up, honey," she told Joey.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed nursing little Betsy, Margaret went over in her mind the morning's chores: laundry, housecleaning, shopping, etc., etc., etc. Fred Senior had left early as usual and wouldn't be back until after dinner. Sometimes it's too much, she thought. Always the same thing. No days off for me. She thought of her children. Okay, okay, it's worth it. There are compensations. But I sure wish I could go to Goa. I'd sure like to know what's happening there. It's something special, something mysterious, something unique. I wonder if I'll ever find out.

  Joey came in smiling, his shirt front soaked, trailing water drops behind him. Margaret chuckled, amused at his expression but still thinking of India, her thoughts suspended between both worlds.

  Joey paused, cocked his head to one side as if puzzled, and said, "Mommy, where is India?"

  Her mouth dropped open and her skin tingled. The baby, sensing her mommy's surprise, paused in her nursing, then continued sucking.

  In her mind, Margaret said slowly and clearly, "Joey, can you hear me?"

  "Yes, Mommy. Where is India?"

  "Far away, honey. Far away."

  * * *

  Asha had only a vague idea where India was, but she could clearly hear the call to go there. She knew that it had something to do with Jason and Jasmine and the inside voice and her adventure with Paul and Sunny. As she sat at the base of the temple holding her begging bowl she pondered these matters. Her primary concern was Prem. She didn't know if he was old enough to be able to make such a long journey, a journey from which they might not return for a long, long time. She wasn't concerned about food; they could take
their begging bowl, and what worked in one place must work in another as far as getting the bowl filled. They still had Paul's sleeping bag, so they were prepared for adverse weather. But it was the sheer enormity of the venture itself that intimidated her. India was another world. One thought about India as one would think about life after death, or dancing among the stars, or entering the luxurious villas that the rich inhabited. It was something to be thought of but not indulged in. Still... Jason and Jasmine had been real, as had Paul and Sunny. The memories she retained of these special friends assuaged the sharp pains of her constant frightened loneliness. And the call she heard in her mind to go to Goa by Christmas was real, as real as the temple bell above her or the rattle of a coin in her aluminum bowl or the bellow of buffaloes or the voices of the passers-by.