She gasped slightly, but Lanier waved her off until the medics were just about to leave.
"It's OK," he told her calmly. "There was a lot of blood where I found him."
At that moment, Lanier noticed the two men, each carrying a briefcase, who stood solemnly at the door. The medics were wheeling Senator Randell out, and the other two gentlemen stepped aside to let them pass. Outside Lanier's home, a helicopter waited, its blades churning slowly.
Francis Lanier stood before the two men. They walked into the workroom, looking grim, but also relieved. Lanier addressed them. "I think he'll pull through. I wouldn't worry. It's like this with most of them. But as you can tell, it was a nasty one." He gestured to the blood on the floor.
Blood covered his pants, boots, and his hands. None of it, though, belonged to either Senator Albertson Randell or Francis Lanier, for both had returned unharmed.
The first man, tall and thin with a graying mustache, was Senator Verne Roberts from Massachusetts. He smiled, holding out his hand. "You don't know what this means to us, the service you've done. We can't afford to lose a man like Senator Randell to this awful disease in this day and age. I'm sure you understand. We do appreciate your work."
Lanier momentarily thought back to the world, the strange dreamlike fantasy, from which he had rescued Albertson Randell. The two officials before him couldn't possibly know where Randell had gone upon hearing Bartok's
Concerto for Orchestra
at a concert in New York.
A city in an enormous wall that circled the world. And the blood, the fighting
…
"Just see to it that his immunization card is updated when he comes out." He didn't smile, but the two men took no immediate offense. Lanier did not know who the other man before him was. An aide to Senator Roberts? Someone from the Pentagon? "Make sure he always has his Baktropol near. If he's as important as you say he is, you should see to it that he takes care of himself."
Christy showed them out to the helicopter that was impatiently swirling up dust and grass from the two acres that served Lanier as a front lawn.
When she came back in and sealed the door, Lanier looked at her, making a face. "What the hell is that smell?"
She wafted by him, rather nonchalantly. "We had another quake while you were under going after Randell," she announced. "That's part propane and part good old L.A. air you smell."
He opaqued the large picture window that opened up to the small ranch he owned in a secluded arroyo in Malibu Canyon. The window faced the rear of his home, and afforded a calming view of scrub oak, pine, and transplanted dwarf maple. The fields of his uncultivated ten acres paled in the harsh summer sunlight, and had just recently become a fire hazard. But when Congress orders a special helicopter for one of its members, the threat of a brush fire from an emergency vehicle's engines becomes somewhat insignificant.
"Damn," Lanier swore as he unbuttoned his shoulder holster that contained his British-made Malachi. "Look at that." He pointed out the window.
It was supposed to be fog. That was one of the principal reasons he took the land option here in Malibu Canyon, expensive as it was. The mountains usually fought back the stifling smog that poured out of the L.A. basin. But lately it was losing the struggle. Today was one of those days.
Christy tossed some papers on Lanier's desk, pushing back her long blond hair from her shoulders. "You got three emergency runs this morning while you were gone. I turned them all down. About that time, we got the shake. It wasn't too bad, considering. Jack Reynolds rushed down here to patch up the propane tank while you were under. But we couldn't find the leak in the filtration system." She smiled at him. "But it's somewhere."
Lanier sat in an oversized Day-Glo beanbag chair on the floor. It gasped as it enfolded him. He coughed and frowned.
"Is it safe to breathe in here?" He turned up his nose.
"Of course it is. Think I'd stay here all morning with those boring medics and those two goons of Randell's from Congress? They were here during the tremor. Didn't bat an eye. You were lucky, though."
"What do you mean?"
"Randell's wife flew into L.A. International just to see if you needed any assistance."
"Great." Lanier rolled his eyes. Christy brought over a tumbler of iced tea.
"And the Hollywood freeway and the Ventura are down in a dozen places, so she's still in Los Angeles. Somewhere."
Very tired, he squinted. "How bad was the earthquake? I can't feel things like that when I'm under. Did it make the scale?"
"News says it was centered up the coast about fifty miles or so. It only reached 6.5. The freeways that went down were loose anyway from last year's shake. Then some pipes broke somewhere in Pasadena, and now there's a big fire. It'll be on the news tonight, I'm sure."
He eased off his bloodstained boots. "Doesn't sound like a 6.5 to me. I suppose they're lying to us about the Big One coming up again."
Christy looked indifferent. "They probably wanted to cover up the failures of the Andreas blasting. They never should have tried blasting the fault lines to relieve pressure. The Big One's sure to happen any day now." She dropped the matter, but grinned all the same, as if it were a joke on somebody and only she knew who.
Lanier always did like her oblique sense of humor. Too bad that his best friend, Charlie Gilbert, married her before he could get his foot in the door. But Taoist that he was, he accepted all things before him. Particularly the funny things. And Christy helped with that. The Andreas blasting wasn't funny, but it did make a few bureaucrats look foolish, especially since it was done in an election year. A lot of people in Washington and Sacramento were suddenly out of jobs because of it. You just can't fool Mother Nature, Christy said.
"Did you shut down the transmission?"
"As soon as it played through. How was it? He looked pretty ragged."
Although it was a fifteen-minute flight by helicopter into Thousand Oaks, Lanier knew that he'd have the medical readout on Albertson Randell by the end of the day regardless of his own judgement of Randell's condition, mental or otherwise.
"Well," he began, "I had done a Bartok only once before."
"Right," she said. "The
Sonata for Two Pianos
last year. It was the mayor of New York, I believe."
"That's the one. But this time it wasn't nearly so strange as the mayor. Then again, I guess it was." He rubbed his eyes. He related to her his mission to retrieve Albertson Randell from the throes of Liu Shan's Syndrome. He told her of the city within a huge wall in which he had found Randell. And the river of blood.
Christy frowned disapprovingly. "Mrs. Randell, on the video, didn't seem at all happy about having you do this in the first place. She said that he could stay put for all she cared. I guess the gossip has gotten to her, too."
Lanier cranked himself up from the bright yellow beanbag chair and walked over to the liquor cabinet. The assorted bottles were only for his visitors, or the families of his patients, since his particular talent involved having a vibrationally attuned body that had to be clear of any drugs. He only allowed himself a light tea that he had imported from Britain every year, which was fine either hot or cold.
He clinked some extra ice into his tumbler.
"Well," he said, "We've gone through the 'hidden' lives of our Congressmen before and it shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that they fool around as much as anyone. It just wasn't important to me since I don't particularly care for his politics. He was just another mission."
He thought for a minute, sipping tea. There were many people in Randell's fabulous world-girdling wall, most of them women. Lanier couldn't recall recognizing anyone familiar. If any were images of Randell's alleged lovers, he had no way of knowing. He set down his drink.
"I was only doing my job. He could've been a street cleaner for all I care."
Lanier's house was extraordinarily quiet. It had to be. Back up in this valley was one of the few places in southern California where he could find a place that didn't vibrate with the incessant shudderings of freeway traffic. The canyon itself still only accommodated one highway and boasted enough side-detours and smaller canyons that one could get away if one tried hard enough.
And Lanier tried and succeeded, now that being a Stalker—one who was immune to the Syndrome—brought him enough money from the government. No longer did he have to live and work in Los Angeles proper to earn his keep as a real estate counselor.
He looked across the room to the indiscreet console of equipment built into the wood-paneled wall to see what the indicators held. Everything was still. No vibrations anywhere that would disturb his meditations.
"Any other damage, other than the ventilation?"
Christy saw him glance toward the delicate instruments. "No, none. The traffic dropped to almost nothing, since most of the interchanges back in town are pretty gummed up. But, no. I checked as soon as the tremor died down."
He walked over to check the gauges. It was essential that his "transmission room" be as quiet as possible when he worked, since the crudest vibrations interfered with his "stalking."
Christy read his expression as he checked.
"It would have been bad if the music stopped in the middle, wouldn't it," she asked.
Lanier merely nodded, taking another swig of tea.
"Well," he began quietly, "I hope the 'copter makes it through all the shit in the air. It probably would have been suicide if they tried to wheel him out of here in an ambulance. What a wreck he was."
"Before or after?"
He looked at her. "Very funny." Christy was no politico either.
But Lanier was still thinking.
If the music being sent from Christy's transmission board into the transceiver in my ear
wasn't
recorded fully, I wouldn't have gotten to Randell. Or
…
He let the thought pass. It hadn't happened to him yet, but the "experts"—if ever there could be said to be any—said that it was just possible to get stuck in the mind of a man lost to Liu Shan's Syndrome and forever wander the world that mind had created for itself. But being a Stalker, immune from the Syndrome's effects, he didn't believe a word of it.
The idea was only unpleasant when Lanier reconsidered the river of human blood inside the wall city. When he had chased the fleeing Randell outside onto the grassy, sloping piedmont, he knew that he could have spent the rest of eternity under that wonderfully blue sky and not minded a thing. Except that he would be there with Albertson Randell and Bartok's
Concerto for Orchestra
. As a Stalker, he could come and go as he pleased, fortunately.
Lanier shivered suddenly. Christy, about to go back into her own office in the rear of the house, caught sight of it. Lanier gently put the glass of iced tea down.
"Again? So soon?" she asked.
"No, I was only thinking back to the place where I found Senator Randell."
"You shouldn't do that. It might bring it on again."
"I know," he smiled. "But not too likely. Not with me, anyway. I wouldn't be paid so much for being able to do what I can if I would slip into the Syndrome as easy as most." He paused, almost as if catching his breath. Christy watched every nuance his face made. "But sometimes …"
"Yes," she said. "I know." They looked at each other momentarily. They both understood. Christy knew all too well what Liu Shan's Syndrome did, and what Fran Lanier always underwent to pull people out of it.
Two years ago, when Lanier moved out to southern California to retain his anonymity as a Stalker, his best friend and lawyer, Charlie Gilbert, called him up as soon as the video was installed. He had a problem.
His girlfriend, Christy, whom Lanier only barely knew at the time, had succumbed to Liu Shan's Syndrome at a modern dance concert at Palo Alto. Everyone in the theater was surprised, since to get into the hall for the performance in the first place, patrons had to have a clean immunization card. Even at the time, Lanier was swamped with government rescue requests that ranged from bishops to princes, to the sons of millionaires. Even farmers and laborers in the Yucca Valley had tried to track him down. A waitress from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, needed him to find her mother. Everyone needed him, it seemed.
For Francis Lanier was one of eighteen hundred of the most sought-after Americans of the century.
Liu Shan's Syndrome fed off the emotional variances of its victims, especially when spurred on by any form of music. And everyone likes music. Lanier was one of a small community of people immune to the disease that manifested itself as Liu Shan's Syndrome. When individuals would succumb to its effects and literally vanish from sight, he would meditate on the music and "go under" to return as many people as he could to the real world. In times like these, this usually meant scientists and politicians first, and special cases second.
Yet the Syndrome was relatively new to the west coast of the United States when Christy went under. In his sudden shock, Charlie Gilbert himself nearly vanished where he sat next to her in the theater, enjoying the rare performance of the ballet company, taking in the fragrance of the perfume he had only that day bought for her: the dance company had come out in semi-shadows, and the small touring orchestra unfolded the fragile melodies of a nearly forgotten work. The work was not originally meant for the dance theater, but it had become the strategy recently—almost by governmental decree—to combine music with some other medium in order to provide some kind of distraction and retain more control over the emotional states of the audience.
In the beautiful, lilting second movement, one of the male dancers, symbolizing Autumn, reached sweepingly over the sleeping form of a frail young woman. He lifted her on balmy winds. He carried her through dreams of the passing seasons. And Christy Cooper sighed, then vanished with a sudden
pop
! as air rushed in to fill the space she occupied next to Charlie.
The audience went wild with fright. The orchestra stopped and the house lights showered everyone with a bold, vivid luminescence. The dancer in the arms of Autumn swooned.