Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (3 page)

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THE AERIAL car started toward the peak, swinging up the slope and quickly leaving the embrace of the lower tramway station.
Cree gripped a pole as she looked out over the heads of the kids who had pressed themselves against the windows. Ahead stretched
a steep rocky incline almost bare of vegetation; below, beyond the concrete planes and angles of the station, the flat valley and the streets of suburban Albuquerque began to open and fall away. The southern slopes of the
Sandia range came into view, tinged pink by the westering sun, their rocky turrets set against hard shadows.

Space. Light. Rock. Sky.

A grand land, Cree realized. A place of heroic proportion. There were fifteen other excited sightseers standing with her in
the car, but their chattering stopped as the ground dropped away and a gulf of air opened beneath their feet. Everyone was
experiencing the same awe. For a long moment there was a collective suspension of breath broken only by the hum of the drive
machinery. Then the kids' excitement boiled over in exclamations of astonishment, and people started talking again.

The views mesmerized Cree, but she couldn't suppress her apprehension. Drama aside, Mason would have some reason for meeting
her on Sandia Peak when any coffeehouse or hotel lobby would have been sufficient. He always had a reason. It no doubt had
to do with "instructional value," but Mason's motives were mysterious and would remain so until he revealed them. And then
he'd stick it to you hard and enjoy watching you squirm. There was a sadistic quality to Mason and his methods.

So why take the effort to see him?

Actually, the answer was simple. Whatever he had in mind, it would be something eye-opening. Mason Ambrose was a genius, a
pioneer in psychology in Cree's estimation as important as Freud or Jung. He was also a brilliant teacher, infinitely giving
and subtle and patient despite what could seem a purely self-absorbed and confrontational style. In Cree's case, he'd served
as guide, guru, and therapist as much as teacher. He'd had the insight to accept her as his research assistant seven years
ago, even though he'd seen her for the damaged merchandise she was. When she'd applied for the internship advertised in the
Harvard grad school bulletin, she had been a widow for almost three years, still deeply wounded by the loss of her husband,
crazy and sick with it. The grief alone would have undone her, but the way she'd found out about Mike's death—his appearance
in Philadelphia at his dying moment, three thousand miles from the Los Angeles car wreck that killed him—had upset all her
beliefs about the world. About life. When she'd come to Mason, she'd been lost and frightened, a spiritual seeker floundering
and flailing in her quest to find answers to life's mysteries. A swimmer about to go under.

Mason had seen all that in his first glance. He'd spent two years redirecting her anger and fear, merging them with her hunger
to learn and helping her focus them on her work. He'd goaded or finessed her into disciplining her talents. He'd helped her
accept that her urgent fascination with the paranormal was not compulsion but passion, not useless but crucial. Most important,
he'd believed in her and affirmed that the empathic techniques she used to commune with ghosts and those haunted by them were
valid and necessary.

But his methods were, as he liked to put it, "rigorous." He'd plunged her into experiences of the paranormal that drove her
nearly to insanity. One of the first, long before she was ready for such an encounter, had been the New Jersey motel ghost.
She'd lived in the squalid, piss- and cigarette-stinking room for a week as she slowly got to know the revenant of a serial
killer whose dying moments consisted of remembering his murders. Mason had seemed to relish every detail, including Cree's
terror and distress.

Huge tubes of blue steel intruded suddenly across her field of vision, jolting her out of her recollections. Just as startled, the other passengers gasped and laughed uneasily. The tramcar had reached one of the
support gantries partway up the mountain, and as it came to the peak of the first swoop of cables and changed incline it bounded
gently, suspending gravity and leaving Cree's stomach hanging. The gargantuan tower's passing revealed how fast they were
moving and how high they were.

Below, a vast space had opened between the car and the slope. To the west, the grid of Albuquerque's streets stretched out
on a plain so flat it could have been pressed by some titan's rolling pin. Beyond lay a breathtaking sweep of desert, slightly
hazy with distance, bounded at the far horizon by purple mountains.

Cree gawked like the rest of the passengers. What was it about the Southwest? Maybe the New Agers of Santa Fe and Taos had
it right after all, and it was a magical land, a place of Earth energy convergence. She had spent only a week in Arizona,
three years ago, and had never been to New Mexico, yet the place felt familiar, as ifthe size and smell and feel of it had
been latent in her blood for a lifetime. The light was stronger, purer. The sun was more immediate and commanding. Here on
the Sandia ridge, the mountains were carved with gullies and clefts as expressive as the lines of ancient faces. Between dense
stands of pine, towers of rock thrust naked from the escarpment; you could feel the geology here, millions of years of tectonic
and mineral processes exposed to the eye.

That's what it was, she decided:
Time
itself was here. And time was big and there was lots of it. Good to remember.

Cree's ears popped for the fourth time. Another gantry loomed, and again the car did a hydraulic-suppressed lurch before beginning
its final ascent. Three minutes later, they swung up into the arms of the receiving station, bumped softly, and eased to a
stop. She stepped out with the other passengers onto a platform hung out over the nearly vertical slope. Just above was a
small visitor center topped by the huge red wheels of the tram machinery, paused now; to the left lay a series of red-painted
wooden decks, joined by stairs and ramps and cantilevered out over the mile-high cliff.

Below was the whole world.

The space and scope and light walloped Cree. She bellied up to the railing, feeling as if she'd stepped out on an airplane
wing. When she fought off the vertigo and remembered to inhale, she found the air sweet and crisp and twenty degrees cooler
than at the bottom.

The tourists had mostly dispersed by the time she pulled herself away from the rail and scanned the platforms for Mason and
Lupe. She spotted thern on the farthest deck, past the restaurant, and began walking the meandering ramps toward them. Mason
was staring outward at the grand view, but Lupe's round head swiveled as Cree approached. Wordlessly, she turned Mason's chair
so he faced Cree.

He looked Cree up and down with eyes disconcertingly quick in his slack, fleshy face. After a long moment he tipped his head
back toward Lupe. "I told you she'd ripen well! A fine, lush bit of woman flesh if there ever was one. I am always right in
these things. Always." His voice had once been a rich and dignified baritone, but it hadn't survived the ruin of the rest
of him.

Lupe regarded Cree disapprovingly, as if blaming her for Mason's lack of propriety.

"Hello, Lupe," Cree said. "Hello, Mason." Some physical contact seemed called for, but Lupe offered no opening, and the thought
of touching Mason repelled her. When she put out her hand, Mason brought it briefly to his lips.

He wore an expensive charcoal suit tailored to minimize his growing deformity, but it couldn't hide the deterioration that
had taken place since last she'd seen him. Though he was no older than his early sixties and his hair was still mostly black,
his big body appeared to be collapsing in upon itself. He lurked deeper in his chair, chin nearly riding on his chest. His
high, square forehead and strong jaw were well formed but now only made him all the more grotesque, a parody of the handsome
man he'd once been. A thin green cylinder of oxygen was strapped to the chair, Cree noticed, its clear plastic tube and nose
feeder looped on one of the handles.

"Your lecture was superb," Mason gurgled. Looking up at her exposed his face to the sky, and the light seemed to give him
discomfort. "You struck precisely the right tone for speaking to the great unwashed of academia in terms their rigidly compartmented
little intellects could grasp. Yet never the bald, craven appeal to the popular taste we see so much of these days." The big
head twisted to the side again and he said to Lupe, as if scolding her, "I told you she would mature. I told you she would
shine!"

"So what brings you to Albuquerque? Surely not the conference—"

"I live not far away now—Santa Fe. To the extent that I can be said to
live
" Mason chuckled. "Or to do so in any one place. I am mostly between here and Switzerland. Returning to Geneva tomorrow, in
fact. One of the reasons I contacted you. It was most fortuitous, your coming at this time. Still enjoying Seattle? Your little
outfit, what's it called . . .?"

"Psi Research Associates."

"—is it doing well? Doing a brisk business in ghastliness?"

"Yes."

"And your partner—the engineer, the physicist . . .?"

"Edgar Mayfield."

"Yes, our good Dr. Mayfield. Has he recorded the irrefutable physical evidence he so ardently desires?" Mason's expression
conveyed his low opinion of Edgar's technological approach to paranormal research.

"Physical evidence, quite a bit. Irrefutable—that's up for argument."

"But he hasn't succeeded in winning your heart with his efforts, has he. Because, one can safely assume, you're still searching
for your dead husband and remaining chaste as a statue of the Virgin Mary." A glint of malicious amusement lit the hooded
eyes.

Cree tried not to stiffen. "You know, Mason, I've never considered your sadism to be your most admirable characteristic."

"And just what would that be, Lucretia—my most admirable char­acteristic?"

Cree was tempted to say something hurtful. But, as she'd inventoried on her way up, she did admire a great many things about
him. Even now, even as he did his best to be offensive, she could feel something noble in him—synesthetically, it came across
as a rich crimson-and-peach- toned glow, steady and fine, just visible beneath the blackened, warted surface of his affect.
Mason was the ultimate frog prince, always awakening her desire to free him from his enchantment, too ugly to bear to kiss.
He was a hideous, aging man being eaten alive by some unknown malady, collapsing upon himself in a wheelchair, and he broke
her heart.

In any case, rule one with Mason was you couldn't let him get under your skin. The only way to get by was to stay yourself.
Show him you were above his provocations, which, she had to believe, were nothing more than oblique affirmations of affection
and intimacy.

She touched his hand. "That you're easily disarmed by candor and affection. It suggests you have a human streak in you somewhere.
That you're not the monster you think you are."

Lupe snorted at that, and Mason joined her with a chortle, chin hard against his chest. When he recovered, his big face hardened
quickly.

"Lupe, I will need a moment to speak with Cree in confidence."

Lupe's mahogany eyes locked accusingly on Cree's before she took her hands from the wheelchair grips and removed herself to
the railing.

"If you wouldn't mind, Cree—" Mason gestured toward the far corner of the platform, an acute angle jutting well out over the
cliff face.

Cree rolled him away from Lupe, feeling the woman's incomprehensible resentment. At the corner, she stopped the chair and
came around to face Mason, leaving him oriented toward the vast space. Far below, another tramcar was inching up past the
giant blue gantry.

"Do you know I can still stand?" he asked conversationally. He didn't look at her, just stared out at the bigness.

"No. I—"

"I could grab the railing and pull myself up right now. Not for long, of course." His voice was flat, almost disinterested,
and Cree wondered why he was telling her this. "I could even throw myself over. In fact, I come here whenever I'm in Albuquerque
just to savor that knowledge."

She gave him an exasperated smile. "Mason, how about skipping the high drama? Just tell me why we're here."

"Do you know why I might want to do that?"

"I can think of a lot of reasons why someone might—"

" No—why would I, Mason Ambrose, choose to fling myself over and stain the rocks down there with my brain matter?" Now his
eyes were on her, and they seemed very deep, like holes to some subterranean pit. Whatever he wanted from her, his intensity
was disturbing. Forty feet away, Lupe stood at the rail, watching them from the side of her eyes. Beyond her, the tramcar
slid silently up the cable.

"You're trying to upset me. But it won't happen. Sorry."

He shook his head. "Come along, Lucretia! You're the most talented empath I've ever encountered. You know emotions and longings.
You
see
them. What do you see in your old mentor?"

She appraised him. There were so many possibilities: that living as a toad in a wheelchair had become intolerable, or that
by throwing himself over the edge he'd have some control over himself, otherwise denied him in so many ways. That his noble
and good parts wanted to be free of the awful things in him. That his disease was progressing and promised a life of unbearable
pain.

Possible, she decided, but too obvious, not what he wanted from her now.

"I don't know," she said finally. "Maybe that you want to know what happens
after
—what's on the other side. That your curiosity is that strong."

Mason looked flattered and proud of her in a proprietary way, the folds around his mouth puckering. "Oh, you unabashed romantic.
You poor naive idealist." He turned his head to frown across the deck at his assistant, and his voice turned into a snarl:
"What makes you think I wouldn't do it just to get away from Lupe? Or to punish her? Look at her! My grandfather's old cowhide
razor strop had more
give
than that woman!"