Then it burst out of nowhere, like chrome gleaming at the torn edges of a car after a wreck:
I had turned and seen the man standing under the light. I started to run but then stopped, knowing I couldn't escape him. Odd, I should have thought that. I was a fast kid, and could dodge like a chicken. The man was suddenly closer, but the footsteps I could hear were not his, but mine, echoes of something that had already happened, as if things were being presented in the wrong order, and causality were breaking down.
Then he was there, a yard away, looking down at me. I saw his face for the first time: It was not unkind, but it was not a usual face. "Quickly," he said. "Come."
I saw six men approaching from the other side of the street, where a silver car was parked. All six dressed the same and all walked together, and they didn't look right. They didn't seem bad, it wasn't that, but I knew whom I'd rather go with.
The man grabbed me by the arm and I let him drag me down the sidewalk, still staring back at the other men and wondering why they didn't run, too. They could have caught us if they wanted to, but instead they seemed to be getting slower, though their movements never changed.
I had to turn around again to keep from falling over, and I saw something weird was happening. The street was sparkling. It was like someone had turned on a million tiny spots of light embedded in the nicks in the road; there were strange lights in the sky, too, oddly shaped, moving in random directions. There were now two people ahead of us on the sidewalk, just standing, as if waiting for the man and me to pass. They were motionless, but their bent shapes looked a little familiar. Then I realized who they were.
My grandparents on my father's side, the ones who were dead. As we got closer, they started to move, like film cranking into motion: Nan smiled, and Granddad reached out toward me. I saw the hair on the back of his hand, the distinctive pattern of liver spots, and looked up to see his eagle face, the few combed-back gray hairs.
Even at that age I knew instantly that these were not mere images. My grandparents were really there. I wasn't in the least afraid, though I would be if I saw the same thing now. I thought: "That's cool—I'll be able to tell Dad that Nan and Granddad are okay." And then we were past them, and everything went white.
The world switched off like a light, and I was somewhere else. It wasn't that I couldn't remember what happened—it was more that what had happened didn't exist. It was gone; it was different; it was somewhere else. The memory stopped there for good.
As it faded, I saw a smeared vision of verdigris and ice, as if it were something I was passing on the way back to the present day. I heard a voice, and realized it was Deck's. He was talking quietly, reassuringly. For a moment I was afraid, twitchy, and I craved a Kim. Most of all, I wanted someone to come and either kill me or set me free.
Then I was standing on the corner of the school yard again, a little distance from the streetlight. I blinked and shivered, realized I was back in the real world, back in my time.
And that we weren't alone.
Helena was standing two yards away, gun trained steadily on a man standing in the lamp glow. I recognized him now. He looked the same as he had when I was a child, and as he had in the diner and in Ray Hammond's study. He looked calm, unafraid, beyond every and any thing.
"It's okay, Helena," I said. "He's one of us."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"You tried to go back" the man said.
"No. I tried to remember."
"Same thing" he said.
"Where are my friends?"
"They're there. You remember them, don't you?"
"How do I get them back?"
The man shrugged. "You should go back to LA. I might be able to help, I might not. There are more of them than there are of me."
"But you're more powerful, right?"
"So they say. Doesn't always work out that way."
Keeping her gun firmly in place, Helena turned to me. "Any chance of my being introduced here, Hap? Your social skills always were kind of basic."
"Sorry," I said. "Helena, this man is an alien."
"Thank you," she said, and turned back to face him. "Okay, alien motherfucker, put your hands where I can see them."
The man raised an eyebrow, but slowly pulled his hands out of his pockets and raised them. "Does that make you feel safer?"
"Patronize me, and I'll blow your head off."
"Helena," I interposed gently, "I'm not sure this is the way forward."
She stamped her foot. "He just appeared out of nowhere, Hap. You know how I hate that kind of thing."
"He didn't. He came out of my memory."
"Memories exist only in people's minds. Hap. They're just little flashes of electricity sparking in a mess of Jell-O."
I shook my head. "Not the way it works." I looked at the man. "Is it?"
"Indeed not," he agreed.
"Then why can't I remember being there? Why can't anyone remember it when they get back?"
"It's impossible. It's like trying to write in black marker on black paper."
"Yeah, very good. Very gnomic," snarled Helena. "Hap, what do you want me to do?"
"Put the gun down," I said. "It wouldn't do any good anyway. He's not even really here."
"Hap, did your mother slip something weird in the lemonade?"
"You should listen to him," the man said. "He's right, and sooner or later he's going to work out what he's talking about."
"Don't you patronize him either," Helena snapped. "That's my job."
I took a step closer to her, so we were together, and she reluctantly lowered the gun. You'd have had to know her as well as I did to understand that she was very frightened.
"So how come I can hear what Deck's saying," I asked, "if I can't go there?"
"Special case," the man said. "Because of what you're carrying in your head. Never happened before. It's one for the record books."
Didn't make any sense to me, but I pressed on anyway, "What's the big deal over Hammond?"
"They had plans for him. Laura Reynolds messed them up."
"What kind of plans?"
"You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."
"Try me. I've got a high credibility threshold."
"Just be thankful they failed. Hammond wasn't the right one."
"For what? You guys planning to invade?"
"Why would we do that?"
"Why would you abduct people? What's that achieve apart from scaring the shit out of them?"
He shrugged. "It's a game. One I don't play anymore."
"Bully for you. And by the way, that's bullshit: You abducted me."
"A long time ago. And did you have such a bad time?"
"I can't remember."
The man spoke quickly and firmly: "And you never will, Mr. Thompson. That's the way it is, and it can't be changed. It's not my doing. So just leave it. You'll understand soon enough, but then you'll be dead and the knowledge won't be much use to you anymore."
"Is that some kind of threat?"
"Of course not. I don't want you to die. I have a personal interest in you: We met when you were young and had a chance to understand. I can't help you with that. The act of telling makes the truth a lie because of all the filters the tale has to pass through. You see through the veils by waiting for the wind to push them aside, not by describing them. That's what the others are trying to do, and I can't condone it. It will only make things worse."
Helena turned to me. "Oh, how lovely, a seminar. Are you taking notes?"
I ignored her. "Back at Hammond's you knew Travis's name. So you know what really happened to Hammond, and you also know I'm going down for it."
"My hands are tied," the man said. "I'm not exactly from around here. That's for you to sort out. And if you'll take my advice, you might want to start right about . . . now."
Suddenly I heard the sound of tires on tarmac. I glanced down the ground toward my rental car, and saw a red Lexus speeding toward it. The Lexus stopped; two men jumped out. Even from that distance I could tell they were earthlings, and that they were carrying guns. The men peered into our car, saw it was empty, and then looked up and made us.
When I turned back to Helena, she already had another gun out, and was standing with one in each hand. She was alone.
"Where'd he go?" I asked, dumbfounded. My head was still spinning from trying to absorb what the man had told me, and also from a small and pointless relief that at least someone who appeared to be in some kind of authority knew I hadn't been the one who'd murdered Ray Hammond.
"Just disappeared," she said. "What an asshole."
Together we watched the two men as they approached, pulling weapons out of shoulder holsters. They were standard-issue heavies, shoulders shaped by long-ago weight training, stomachs by too much recent beer.
"What do you think?" I asked Helena as I got out my own gun and slapped a new cartridge in. "This going to be settled with a polite conversation?"
The first bullet zipped past, flying right between us.
"I doubt it," she said, and started firing.
At first the men stood their ground, obviously thinking they were dealing with a couple of amateurs instead of just one. Most people miss with a good proportion of their shots, especially at twenty yards. Helena doesn't. Helena doesn't miss if you blindfold her and lie about where you've put the thing she's aiming for.
This rapidly became clear, and the two heavies leapt in different directions like a wave hitting a jagged rock. One clambered over the fence into the school yard. The other slid behind a car.
Helena kept firing as we ducked behind a car of our own. "He's a lot of fucking help, this alien friend of yours," she muttered as we squatted and reloaded.
I peered around the end of the bumper: One of the heavies was trying to crawl out toward us from behind his own shield. "He gave me the code to Hammond's records," I told Helena, squeezing a shot off. The heavy disappeared again very quickly.
''Yeah, but why'd he do that? What's it to him?" There was a splintering crump as the rear windshield of the car blew out. Helena turned and fired two shots at the fence.
"I don't know" I said.
"And who are these guys?"
"I don't know that either" I said. "Why don't we go find out?"
She winked: "You take the guy behind the car." We waited out four more shots and then heard two dry clicks.
We leapt to our feet and peeled off around opposite sides of the car, spraying bullets. I kept firing as we ran forward: heard a scream from beyond the fence, and saw Helena dodge off to vault over it. For a moment I stopped firing, the gun trained on the air about six inches above the trunk of the second car. I was expecting him to wait a second, figure I was reloading, and then pop up. I was wrong. This guy had decided that he'd had enough. He was suddenly up and running, sprinting away back down the street. I ran after him, but he had too much of a start and was going to make it to the Lexus way before I did.
I aimed carefully, shot him in the thigh. The impact swung his leg around behind him, sending him into a complex and rather balletic turn that ended with him crashing into the fence..
He kept hold of his gun and tried to roll into a shooter's position, but I was already standing over him. "You could do that," I said. "On the other hand, I could blow your head off. I don't know how much you're getting paid, but it would have to be a lot."
"Screw you," he snarled, and struggled to point his gun up at me. I swung a kick at his wrist: It connected and the gun went skittering across the street. If I ever have a son, I'm going to tell him to practice this whole kicking thing. It really comes in handy.
"Let's wait and find out what happened to your buddy, shall we?" I said. "Might help structure your next couple of responses." I stood on his hand and waited for Helena, who was wandering over toward us.
"He's dead," she said apologetically. "Sorry."
"You see?" I said to the guy on the ground. I could tell that the pain from the wound in his thigh was beginning to pitch in hard. "You're lucky you got me. Could easily have gone the other way."
"Fuck you, motherfucker."
"Charming" said Helena.
"Who sent you?" I asked.
"Fuck you."
"He's really rude, isn't he?" Helena said.
Keeping my foot where it was, I reached down and searched his jacket pockets. Came up with a wallet. No driver's license, but an access card. For REMtemps security.
Suddenly I'd had just about enough of Stratten, of gun-toting aliens, and just about everything else.
"How did you find me?" I asked, and kicked him in the stomach. "How?"
Helena reached out a hand toward me. I shrugged it off, my vision melting with fury. I kicked the guy in his injured leg. Then, grabbing his jacket, I pulled him off the ground and shouted right in his face: "How the fuck did you find me?"
He spit at me; grinned. Keeping my hold on him, I punched him in the face with my other hand. "You're going to tell me," I said right up close. "And if it involves my parents, it's going to be the last thing you ever say."
"Didn't need them this time." The guy smiled. A trickle of blood ran out of his nose. "Lots of people want to turn you in. But next time . . . Well, hey—we know where they live."
I let him fall back to the ground, pulled my gun out. "Hap, no," Helena said urgently. "Don't do this."
"I want you to take a message to Stratten," I told the guy, and dropped his security pass on his chest. "A real simple message. I am fucking fed up with being chased, shot at, and generally fucked around. Either Stratten gets out of my face, or I'm going to take him down."
Police sirens screamed in the distance, heading our way. I guess the residents of Cresota Beach don't hear that many gun battles. In LA they just turn up the TV.
"Only thing I'm going to tell the boss is that I'm going to kill you so dead, it'll be like you never lived," the man said, his voice low and very serious. "And that I'll throw in your family for free."
"Bad answer," I said, and shot him in the head.