As he looked down through binoculars while the copilot flew the plane, Colonel Max Shear had a glimpse of a bedraggled cat sitting fifty yards or so behind the still-blazing rear section of the aircraft, trying to wash itself. For some reason the sight of the cat gave him a bad chill.
He signed off with Los Angeles Center.
"I want to express on behalf of myself and my crew deepest condolences to the loved ones of those who have lost their lives in this terrible tragedy, and we certainly wish the injured Godspeed in their recovery."
E
den was so dazed she could barely walk.
"Mom ... Dad ... did you see them?"
"Riley was behind me," Geoff McTyer said, guiding Eden with both hands toward his car. "Betts ... I'm not sure. But they must have got out." He wiped his upper lip, surprised to find that he was trickling blood from one nostril. "Eden, how did you
know
?"
She looked at him. She was pale to the tips of her ears. Geoff thought she was going to pass out.
"But ... I always know."
When he saw her eyes drifting up beneath the lids he shook her hard, not knowing what else to do. She was subject to seizures, Betts had told him, although he'd never witnessed one.
A battlefield pollution clotted the air where they walked on parking-lot asphalt, passing through knots of survivors. Kids had climbed onto the roofs of SUVs and supersized pickup trucks, the highest vantage points. They were looking back at the hellfire in the stadium with a kind of holy glee. But the norm was shaky knees, pallor, tears. Shrieking outbursts as wandering friends or relatives found and fell into one another's arms.
Eden was recognized, stared at, avoided. As if the calamity had been her idea.
She snapped out of her swoon when they reached Geoff's car, a blue Taurus convertible. The top was down.
"Mom ... Dad ..."
"I'm going now. I'll find out." He wiped more blood from his nose and put her in the front seat. Eden curled up in fetal position, arms crossed protectively over her breasts, head against the padded door. When she looked at him again her eyes were the color of old milk, curdled from terror.
"You're bleeding!"
"It's okay, it's nothing," he assured her. "Stay here, Eden. Understand? It's big-time shit back there."
"Yes. All right. But what if ... they can't be ... you know I tried ..." The sun was at high noon, but she was shaking.
"You were great," he said soothingly. "You saved a lot of lives."
Some of those who had made it out of the stadium were getting into their cars and SUVs and trying to drive away. Two vehicles crunched together. The trivial collision caused a ripple of amusement, as if they all needed a laugh. A woman with a poignantly distracted smile walked by holding a violin case saying, "Has anyone seen Bud? I can't find Bud." Other names were in the air, a frantic threnody from searching parents. "Ashley! Cody! Josh! Shariki!" A man wearing a red, white, and blue armband was shouting, "Civil Defense! This is a class-one Civil Defense emergency! Terrorists! The National Guard is being mobilized. Terrorists! Terrorists!" A Catholic priest with a ruddy sweating face jogged past Geoff carrying the vestments of the Last Rites. "Ahmad! Melinda! Sparky!" Not much smoke in the air, but still there was a lot of vomiting going on, as if they'd all been drinking from a poisoned well. The voiding of stomach contents was almost a form of communion. It had a life-affirming tone.
Geoff unlocked the trunk of the Taurus, took out a blanket, and covered Eden. She gathered it close around herself. He put on a navy windbreaker with POLICE stenciled in white letters across the back and a baseball cap, hung his shield on a chain around his neck. He had a first-aid kit, flares, and a roll of yellow police-line tape in the trunk. He took it all with him. An EMT truck was making its way through the parking lot, starting and stopping, alert to erratic drivers, vehicles backing up and nudging forward, creating impasses, intricate patterns of disorder. Geoff glanced once more at Eden, who hadn't budged, then hitched a ride on the back of the truck to the crash site.
"E
den?"
The voice seemed to be coming to her through a waterfall. A familiar voice; she'd been listening to it just that morning, on tape. It was her own voice.
"Go away," she said, not having the strength to lift her head. "I don't want you here. I didn't ask for you."
"Yes, you did. Or I wouldn't be here. You ought to know how it works by this time."
"Just leave me alone."
"I wanted to tell you," her voice went on, "Riley's okay. I got to him after I turned the sprinklers on. Sprained his back or something, butâ"
Eden looked up then, at her own face. Her doppelganger was just outside the car, looking down at her. She was wearing a graduation gown that she had appropriated from one of the grads when the panic began.
"Mom?"
"Don't know yet. I'll scout around."
"Mind your own business."
"You're not being fair. I'm doing what you wanted me to do. Why do you have to be this cranky, every damn time?"
"Because. I don't, I have
never
needed you."
A gasp of indignation. "I saved Riley's life. And all the others, they were just standing around like slaughterhouse cows until the sprinklers came on."
"Yeah. That wasâquick thinking. Okay. You're right. I'm sorâ
please
go and find Betts, I'm so worried!"
"Eden?"
"What?"
"Do you think I could come out more often, and not just when it's like, you know, you're having one of your episodes?"
"Good Lord
no
."
Her voice in reply sounded wounded. "You could have sent me to Portland. Maybe I could have done some good there:"
"Nobody would have
believed
you. And youâI mean Iâwould have beenâ"
"When you're gay, they call it 'outed.'"
"I know what 'outed' is. I couldn't do anything about Portland because I didn't know where the device was, what it looked like. I tried. I just couldn't
find
it in time."
Eden began to sob.
"Oh, don't." Her other voice. "It makes me want to cry too."
"You ... wish."
"I don't have feelings, is that what you mean? Feelings of my own. Well, I've got news."
"You're not supposed to be anything butâ"
"A duplicate of my homebody. But what if that isn't good enough for me anymore? Eden, would you at least do one small thing?" Eden was silent, disapproving. "A favor. After all the good I've done for you. It's so important."
"No.
No
, again. For the last time. I will
not
give you a name."
"Because you don't trust me! What have I ever done to deserveâ"
Eden looked reluctantly into her own eyes. Saw nothing there but guile. Which made the customary rebuke easier.
"The Good Lady told me, in no uncertain termsâ"
"But, Eden.
Why
can't you trust me? Have I ever been less than loyal? You know in your heart I would never do anything that would hurt you."
"For the absolute we-will-not-discuss-this-again
last time
: no. Now go and make sure Betts is okay. That's an order."
Eden blinked once, slowly. When she opened her eyes the doppelganger had vanished.
She realized that a little band of survivors was watching her, from a discreet distance. Young adults her age, some still wearing their sodden graduation gowns. Among them was a girl she knew slightly, Kelly or Ashley or Kimberly. But her memory was fuzzy right now. Kel or Ash or Kim fastidiously wrung out the hem of her gown while gazing at Eden. None of the watchers smiled at her. No one seemed delighted to still be alive. Their reaction was more of a surly acceptance of their luck. One girl, hands clasped below her bosom, drying blood at the root of her nose, gazed steadfastly at the sky. Anticipating further chaos, or possibly a surprise appearance by God to annul the preceding event. Others, furtive, spoke in whispers. About her, Eden believed. Or maybe they were talking about the doppelganger, her mirror image. So that cat was out of the bag.
Eden, feeling a buzz at the back of her neck, turned her face from them. Behind her a cameraman from one of the local TV stations had approached the car and was zooming in on her. Sunlight glinted on the camera lens. Eden winced as if shot, ducked her head, and slid down in the seat.
"Why don't we get out of here?" someone next to her said.
Eden looked the other way and saw a diminutive Chinese woman sitting behind the wheel of Geoff's car.
"What?"
"I've got maybe ten minutes," the Chinese woman said. "Could be less. Kelane's badly burned. Plus a crushed pelvis. The shock is too much. She won't make it."
"What? Who?"
"Sorry about the crash. That wasn't my bad. We would've made the runway okay. A smooth landing. I reprogrammed the autopilot, like Kelane said. But that other plane came out of nowhere. Probably some dentist on his day off."
"What are you talking about?"
"Let's go somewhere else. You've attracted too much attention already." The engine of the Taurus roared. The car lurched forward, scattering those in its path. They saw Eden Waring in the right front seat with a blank expression on her face, next to her a Chinese woman whose forehead and glossy bangs barely rose above the top of the steering wheel. She appeared not to be in control of the car. The Taurus steered itself, on a zigzag course out of the disorganized parking lot, one of the madder aspects of a day that no one who had been in Red Wolves Stadium was ever likely to forget.
"There's something about riding with the top down," the Chinese woman said, hands in her lap, the steering wheel turning according to mysterious directions.
"You're a doppelganger, aren't you?" Eden asked.
The woman shrugged in a melancholy way. "How did you know?"
"Not hard. All of you like your little tricks. Driving with noâslow down!"
"Why? We won't hit anything."
"Isn't that what you thought about the DC-10?"
Kelane Cheng's dpg looked sulky for a few moments. "What's that over there on the hill, a park of some kind?"
"Memorial gardens," Eden mumbled.
"Cemetery? Peaceful. It ought to do."
The Taurus stopped short for a wailing ambulance from a neighboring town that made a turn off a main thoroughfare.
"No headstones," the dpg observed as the Taurus drove them through the gates and along a gently winding drive.
"Only markers. They can be marble or bronze. Not more than twelve inches long by six inches wide. There are covenants and bylaws you have to agree to before they let youâ"
"Move in?"
She was a cheeky bitch, like her own doppelganger. Eden had had enough.
"Stop the car."
"Why?"
"My head is killing me. I'm going to be sick."
The Taurus slowed gradually and pulled over into the shade of several oak trees. The day simmered with the dry rhythm of cicadas. On this hilltop there was a drifting sweetness in the air from apple trees in bloom, from nearby flowerbeds and freshly adorned grave sites. South of the main campus of Cal Shasta half a mile away the wreckage of the DC-10 smoldered darkly. Red and blue lights flashed on dozens of police cars and emergency vehicles. A medevac helicopter zoomed over the cemetery, heading for the disaster zone. Eden held her head until the throbbing noise receded.
"I guess there's a lot you still need to learn," the dpg conceded. "How old are you, twenty-one?"
"Almost twenty-two."
"But you
will
learn. Otherwise Kelane wouldn't have directed us to you."
"Key-lawn-ee? Would you
mind
? Just who the hellâ"
"Kelane Cheng. The Avatar. But she's dying. Maybe it's what she planned. I don't get told everything. Anyway, not to keep you in suspense. You're the Avatar now, Eden. Ta-da! Congratulations."
"Whatever that means."
"It means you're a goddess in human form. But you knew that already."
"Bullshit," Eden said; an instant before she went rigid from shock. "Greater than all the adepts, once you've had a little more seasoning. The common people will be attracted to the special glow that's yours alone. Star quality. They'll beat a path to your door, bearing gifts."
Breath came back into Eden's body. "I'm only interested in being me. The rest of it sounds like trouble."
Eden got out of the car and went down on all fours, forehead resting on sun-warmed grass. Her stomach heaved. She threw up, a prolonged effort, then rolled onto her back, groaning. Her stomach muscles hurt, but the tight band that seemed to be cinched around hear head eased its grip.
When she opened her eyes she saw the doppelganger standing over her, vibrations frizzy and awry; she was cobwebbed like a bad TV picture.