C
harlie stood on the front porch staring over the Chiasso Lake to the peaks beyond. Unlike the previous April, the weather this spring was almost perfect. The air held the incredible mix that was possible only here, in southern Switzerland. The sun carried the Mediterranean punch of heavy heat and low humidity. But the slightest breeze, so long as it came from the north or the west, held an alpine edge. Afternoons like these carried the incredible mix of fire and ice.
He wasn't out here to admire the view. He just wanted to avoid any further arguments with Gabriella. Her face danced in the air before him. She flashed in reflections off the pond's surface. She was there in the flowers. Birds sang, but Charlie heard her voice from happier times. Moments when he managed to hope that they might actually find a way to be together.
Times like these, he feared each day only pulled them farther apart. He could not say exactly why. But Charlie had learned to trust his gut. And right now, his gut was telling him that the lady was lost to him.
Their paths might remain in parallel for a time longer. But the gulf between them was impassable. Sooner or later, she would go her way. And that new way would be along a path he could not follow. What that might be, he had no idea. But standing here, isolated by what was about to come, Charlie found himself staring into a void that the woman would probably never fill.
“Charlie.” Elizabeth Sayer walked down the villa's stone steps and followed the path around the lake to where he stood. “We need to talk.”
“Can it wait?”
“No.”
“All right.” Charlie pointed them to a bench out of the sun. Most of the team found Elizabeth Sayer hard-going, a prickly pear whose center offered no real reason to take the trouble. But Charlie knew enough of the woman's past to admire her for making it this far intact.
“Not here.” She led him around the southern side of the house.
“I need to get back.”
“This won't take long.” She stopped where a narrow strip of green separated the villa from the stone wall. This side of the house held no windows. It was as isolated a place as they were going to find on the grounds. “Is Gabriella going to shut us down?”
“Of course not.”
Elizabeth's hair was so white as to appear silver in the shade. Her features were an odd mixture of femininity and cold refusal, as though everything delicate and pliable had been frozen into a rigid core. Her gaze was as direct as her words, and as unbending. “Don't be so sure. She's scared enough to go off the deep end. She's already sent away the students scheduled for this week's trial runs.”
“We're facing a crisis. We will deal with it. Life will go on. And our work with it.”
Her gaze was intent enough to peel away his skin. She must have found what she was looking for, because she nodded once. “All right.”
“Is that what you wanted to see me about?”
“No. I have a problem.”
Charlie searched his memory, could not recall another time when she had even suggested such a thing. He came up blank. “Tell me.”
“Something's been happening inside my ascents.”
“Since when?”
“This is day three.”
He felt the cold sweep up from his gut to grip his throat. “It started the same day Brett did his disappearing act?”
“The same hour. He was in one chamber. I was in the other.”
“What's happening?”
She apparently found it easier to address her words to the side wall. “I ascend. But when I hear the instructions to open my
other
eyesâyou know the point, right?”
Charlie recalled the first time Gabriella had spoken those words to him. And shivered tightly with want. “Of course.”
“When I do, I'm in a room. It's all white. There aren't any windows or doors. There's no way out. Jorge's been talking me up. When he says to go do what I'm slated to do, I bang on these invisible walls. It feels like I'm bruising myself at some core level. So I told him to stop. Now I just stay. There's a white table in the middle of the room. On it is an envelope.” She stopped and blinked hard.
Charlie could hear the breath passing through her clenched teeth. “What happens then?”
“Somebody else is in the room. It's me. At least, she looks like me. She's standing on the other side of the room. She's smiling at me. She says, âTake it.' That's all. Just two words. When I don't, I feel as though I'm crammed back inside my body.”
“How many times has this happened?”
“Seven times. Well, six like I described.”
Charlie realized what she wasn't saying. “You opened the packet.”
“Envelope. Yeah. I did.”
“You should have checked with us first. Especially with Brett like he is.”
“Gabriella would have said not to do anything.”
“You don't know that.”
“I did what needed doing, Charlie. And the only way it was ever going to get done. By myself. What other option is there? You have some way to climb in the white room with me?” She looked away. “So today I went in and I opened it.”
“And?”
“There was this flash of images. Each time I felt like I was hooked into a power station. Each image detonated like a bomb. I have no idea how long each lasted, and it doesn't matter. They are tattooed on my brain. When it was over, the room was gone. And so was the woman. Like I had been kept in that room for a purpose. And now I was free.”
“Do you want to tell me what you found?”
“Why do you think I'm standing here?” She described what she needed.
When she was done, Charlie summarized just to make sure he understood. “You want Jorge to reprogram an iPod so that it contains both the vibratory patterns and the instructions for an ascent.”
“Does that sound crazy?”
“I think it sounds brilliant. Did you ask Jorge?”
“He'll do it if you give the okay.”
“Tell him I said it's fine.” He waited. “What else?”
“I have to take a trip. Los Angeles. And then Santa Barbara. I need to leave tomorrow.”
Charlie could see Elizabeth was very scared. This was totally new. Elizabeth was their in-house warrior lady. All armor and cocked weapons. He asked, “Do you want some company?”
Only when Elizabeth released the tension she'd been carrying did Charlie realize how frightened she'd been that he would let her make the trip alone.
S
hane was still seated in the sports complex café with Trent two hours later when the call came through from Murray Feinne. Shane lifted her cell phone from her battered shoulder bag, checked the readout, and asked Trent, “It's the lawyer. So how does this conversation turn out?”
“I already told you.” If Trent was weary from Shane's repetitive questions, he did not show it. “I saw what I was shown. Nothing else.”
She hit the button, said, “This is Shane.”
She watched as across the table Trent turned toward the rear door and said her name to the sun-splashed glass.
Shane.
“This is Murray Feinne.”
“Hold on just one second, please.” She lowered the phone. “Look at me, Trent.”
Trent turned back. “What?”
“You didn't know my name?”
“Not until you just said it.”
“You didn't think it might be good to know who I am before you offer me a partnership?”
“You said you weren't comfortable with my questions.”
Shane stared at him a moment, lifted the phone, and said, “I'm here, Murray.”
The lawyer said, “I think it would be good if you and your partner came to my offices in LA.”
“Why not meet here in Santa Barbara?”
“I have just one client in your area. My offices are here.”
She felt a certain shift in the atmosphere, as though a tornado was forming, one only she could see. The air grew dense with the friction of compressed energy fields. “Los Angeles is a long way to come for nothing.”
“You want to do business with me, but you're unwilling to travel two hours down the freeway?” Murray waited. When she did not respond, he pressed, “Maybe you're not as professional as I thought, Ms. Schearer.”
“Here's what I think. You didn't call to set up a meeting. You called because you've already checked out my partner's work. And you want to do a deal.”
“I told you before. I don't feel comfortableâ”
“This isn't about comfort zones, Murray. This is about profit.”
The attorney was silent a moment. When he came back on the phone, his voice carried the same metallic tint she had last heard after whipping the lad all over the court. “Will three o'clock tomorrow afternoon work?”
“Hang on.” She cupped the phone. “Any reason why you can't take a meeting tomorrow afternoon in Los Angeles?”
“I teach a class. It finishes at twelve. But I don't have a car.”
“Neither do I.” That time of day, the journey from Santa Barbara to downtown LA should not take more than two hours. But she said to the phone, “Sorry. My partner and I are free from noon onward, but we don't have transport and it'll takeâ”
“I'll send a car. The driver will be in touch.” He hung up.
Shane made a process of settling the phone down on the table. “He's agreed to work with us. In a manner of speaking.”
Trent exhaled a long breath. “So it's happening.”
“You doubted it?”
“Not exactly.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Well, yes. In a way.”
“You're not a closet nutcase, are you? I mean, there's not some mental or emotional deficiency I need to know about.”
“No.”
“You don't self-diagnose major diseases on a daily basis.”
“No.”
“Or consider yourself a witness to alien abduction.”
“No, no.” He froze. “Unless you think . . . No.”
“You think this was aliens?”
“I told you. All I can say is, the algorithm and the images were delivered by what appeared to be an older version of myself.”
“In the classroom where you teach physics.”
“Tensor calculus. Yes.”
“I didn't mean to offend you, asking about mental defects. But I need to know. I mean, we're talking about a partnership.”
“You can ask me anything you want.”
Shane leaned back in her seat. From recessed speakers, the Steve Miller Band sang an anthem to living in the USA. The jogging machines and Exercycles and Stairmasters lining the balcony were filling with the after-work crowd. Beyond the glass wall at the café's far end, another crew fought it out with racquets and balls. Trent sat motionless, watching her with eyes like frozen smoke.
She knew she should be talking about paperwork, probing more deeply, trying to get a better handle on what had just happened. But what she said was, “When I was a kid, I read a cartoon about some cowboy who lassoed a twister and rode it into the sunset. I haven't thought about it in years.”
Trent nodded with his entire upper body. “I know exactly what you mean.”
T
he Campione Institute's formal dining room was twenty-eight feet long and nineteen wide. The high ceiling was fashioned from broad mahogany boards that matched the pillars between the three tall windows. The view of sun-dappled peaks and blue waters was hidden behind heavy drapes. Recessed lighting rimmed the ceiling. Normally this chamber was reserved for multiple test subjects, or when Massimo and his group did a joint ascent. Otherwise lone ascenders used either the room now occupied by Brett or one of the upstairs rooms. But Charlie wanted to stay close to Brett, and the monitoring equipment and leads snaking across the floor would have made it impossible to move a second bed into Brett's room. Now that he was lying down, though, he wondered if he had made a mistake.
Gabriella noticed his unease and asked, “What's the matter?”
Charlie didn't want to say what he was thinking, which was, he felt like a Ping-Pong ball inside a packing crate. Just waiting to get
bounced around the big empty space. “Elizabeth has to go to America. She wants me to travel with her.”
“Why?”
“She's scared.”
Gabriella stopped in the process of uncoiling the leads. “Elizabeth? Afraid?”
“Yeah. That's what I thought.” Charlie related what she had told him about the ascents. “I don't know if there's anything to her concerns. But I want to be there to offer what support I can. And there's something more.”
But Gabriella wasn't hearing him. “Why hasn't she said anything about these ascents?”
“She was worried you might tell her to stop.”
“She was correct.” Gabriella gestured to the man imprisoned within the room next door. “What was she thinking?”
“Elizabeth was right to do what she did. Her only mistake was to go it alone.”
“Has it even occurred to you that there might be a connection between her experiences and what's happened to Brett?”
“Yes, and I've discounted it. And has it ever occurred to you that the last thing we should do is allow our actions to be dictated by fear?”
“What if the fear is justified?”
“What if there is no connection whatsoever between Brett's condition and his ascent? What if we need to keep this isolated problem in perspective and not go flying off the handle?”
The coils of leads lay forgotten in Gabriella's lap. “Is that what you think? That I'm overreacting?”
“Not yet, no. But you would if you tried to freeze further research.”
“Perhaps we should. At least until we know what has happened here.”
“That would be a terrible mistake. If we let our enemies stop our research, they have already won.”
Gabriella looked down at the bundle of wires. “We should not be discussing this now.”
Charlie kept his response to himself, which was,
Actually, we're not talking about the real problem between
us at all, we never have, and it looks like
we never will.
Gabriella said, “What we're trying to do is already dangerous enough without adding a disagreement to the mix.” She reached over and checked his pulse. “You need to be focused and relaxed.”
Charlie resisted the urge to pull away. “I'm good to go.”
“Perhaps we should wait.”
“No. I'm ready.” And now he was.
This entire discussion had never been about Elizabeth. At least, not for Charlie. He needed to separate himself from his feelings. He had to take an emotional step back from the draw he felt every time he was in Gabriella's presence. Especially now, when just looking at her was enough to force the flowers of remorse to bloom.
Facing the unknown threat, confronting whatever had locked Brett down tight, was dangerous enough already. He needed to focus. There was room in his world for just one thing. Emotions would only cloud his judgment.
Gabriella said, “Are you sure?”
Charlie settled back on the bed. He had never been after resolution. He was after distance. “Let's lock and load.”
Gabriella walked him through the ascent's stages. She could do nothing about the soft musicality of her accent or the allure of her fragrance. Charlie shut his eyes and recalled other ascents, hearing her almost sing the words that counted him up and out of his body.
“Charlie?”
“I'm ready.”
Charlie's headphones filled with the now-familiar rush of sound. Gabriella said, “I am beginning the count now.”