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Waiting to strike no matter what I believe."
She unlatched the door and got me out of the car. I noticed that it was a
Porsche 964. Not bad.
I stood and took a step up the brick path. I walked well enough. What made me
unsteady was the urge to flinch at every wavering shadow, at every flitting
insect and bird. The breeze blowing up the back of my hospital smock didn't
help much, either.
"Those people programmed the fears in, and you can reprogram them right out
just as easily. That's what psychotomimetic drugs are for. Programming and
metaprogramming. Better than hypnosis."
She used some pretty long words for an accountant. My suspicions weren't
exactly lying quiescent....
The house was no mansion. It sat up on a hill overlooking Silver Lake, one of
many. The construction looked mid-twenties, maybe early thirties. She kept it
in good repair. Two stories, white paint. A garden ran from the driveway to
the front door, split by a brick walk.
She offered me her arm. I accepted it for reasons perhaps ulterior. She looked
beautiful despite the rough treatment she had obviously received.
"Where'd you rent the car?" My mind had regained enough of its fortitude to
wonder how the hell Ann had escaped her kidnappers.
"It's registered to a Reverend Morris Beathan."
I grinned even though my legs were feeling like unvulcanized rubber.
"What did they do to you?"
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"More or less what they did to you." She fumbled about in her purse for the
house keys. "They took me to the monastery and grilled me about you, about the
contract, about Emil Zacharias, the TV evangelist. They thought locking me in
a stuffy confessional for hours would make me crack. I pretended to and gave
them a bunch of creative nonsense to keep them paranoid."
"Uh... Such as?"
She pulled out a key ring made of silver and turquoise and unlocked the door.
"I told them that we were making a horror film. The rumors were designed to
build interest in the movie."
I frowned. "They bought that?"
"No. That was when they took me out, shot me up with junk, and locked me in
the rectory with a little guy for a guard. I guess that's all they figured I'd
need." She rattled the key loose and pushed the door open. "When I was done
with him, he couldn't have broken his celibacy vows if he'd tried."
"The drugs seem to have worn off faster for you than they have for me." I
stepped inside and watched my head spin.
"Are you kidding?" she asked. "I'm sailing the stratosphere!" In the subdued
light of the hallway, I saw that her pupils were the size of dimes.
"Less than a novelty to you, I presume?"
She grinned giddily. "When I was a young, sweet, impressionable child of
sixteen I consumed a greater variety of drugs than most people are comfortable
pronouncing. I was always the only person in my group who could drive wasted."
She closed the door and set the deadbolt. "When they started the injections, I
was sort of grateful for the free vacation. They didn't expect me to be able
to function."
"Why weren't you so resourceful when they first grabbed you at the bar?"
She shrugged. "They had the drop on me with guns. They didn't seem to care
whether they killed me or not. So I went along."
My drug-sensitized nose immediately bore an assault by a riot of scents. It
smelled as if we were in a flower garden in spring. I felt safe, reassured,
cozy.
"What is that smell?"
"Just some flowers and stuff. Come on."
She led me through a hallway done up with the sort of knickknacks a woman
accumulates. She sat me in the living room on a high-backed wing chair. The
place had a few bookshelves with a fair amount of books. That's the way I
gauge people, I suppose. The fewer the books, the stupider and duller the
person.
She wasn't dull. Her actions revealed that much.
"Anyway," she continued, clanking around in the kitchen, "I snuck out of a
window and into the courtyard and hotwired the first car I could get to."
"You have good taste in cars."
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"I was on my way to call the police when I saw you."
"Forget the cops-they're just priests with guns."
I heard her laugh lightly. In a moment she appeared with a cup of coffee.
"Black?" she asked.
"Black." I took the cup and let the hot liquid warm my insides.
"Feeling better?"
"Yeah." I stretched and slid back in the chair. "I saw a whole lot of bad
things back there. In my mind. I've seen worse in real life. I'll get over
it." I let out a breath, took another sip of brew. My hair may have been
getting younger, but I wasn't. I felt old and rattled.
Ann went back into the kitchen and reappeared with her own cup. She pulled up
a chair next to mine and sat. A shaft of morning sunlight hit the lower part
of her dress, shotgunning silver and gold pinpoints around the room. Her hair
hung in straggles caused by drying sweat. She'd been through a lot and came
out looking like an angel slumming it among mortals.
I felt a few degrees less than mortal. The house was too cheerful to reflect
the way I felt.
"They mean business, Dell."
"If they meant business, babe, we'd be under the churchyard by now." I
finished the cup and set it aside. "Here I thought I'd just draw some pay for
a few weeks from a flush eccentric. Next thing I know, someone's taking it
seriously!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]