Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (20 page)

He read my mind and said, "The fracas at
Glendale? Yeh, I been thinking about that, too. Wondering if she'd
staged it just for you. Maybe you barged in at an indelicate time.
Could they have heard you coming?"

"Could have
seen
me coming," I told
him. "All the way from Catalina."

He said, "Well, it's a worry. Keep it in
mind. She'll be taken into custody as our first official act,
tomorrow. Then we'll know what—oh, something else. Couple of L.A.
cops are sitting back here on the road. Came down to talk to our
Dr. Harrel. It's that Cunningham girl."

That one jarred me. I said, "It's making
less and less sense, Greg. Are you saying that... ?"

"Naw, I'm not saying anything. Just the cops
are here and they want an interview. They're about to wrap the
case, along with about nine other identicals, and think they have
their man. But you know L.A. Very thorough. And apparently there's
some little question regarding Cunningham and Harrel. I guess
Harrel may have been the last one to see her alive—other than her
killer."

I said, "Goddamn it."

He said, "Yeah. Walk up the road with me?
Let's try to keep these guys happy awhile longer."

The sun was setting as we took that stroll,
and that seemed somehow symbolic of something or other. I was
feeling heavy in the heart and leaden in the feet, my thought
processes whirling.

Well, after all, it had been a dizzying case
right from the beginning. And, it seemed, was getting nothing but
dizzier.

The L.A. cops were nice guys. One of them, a
Sergeant

Richardson, I knew vaguely from another
time. They were understanding and cooperative, and we just stood
there beside their car, the four of us, in relaxed conversation.
Souza had already done his federal number on them and they
understood that something large was on the pike here.

They were given to understand that I was
"inside" the case and that Jennifer as well as Professor Donaldson
would be available for "an interview" in the early future, although
that stuck in my throat somewhat since I had seen no evidence
whatever of Donaldson's presence there.

Souza walked me halfway back to the house.
As we were parting, he cautioned me again about Jennifer. I assured
him that I would keep the eyes open, then I told him that I was
getting ready to participate in an experiment with the scientists.
I was feeling really ragged, so his response did nothing to help
that. "Just hope you know what you're doing, pal. Sounds like the
Russkies blew themselves to hell."

I told him, "I haven't the foggiest notion
what I'm doing, Greg. Haven't even met this Donaldson, yet. Have
you?"

He said, "No, but the way
I get it, he talks regularly with Washington by phone."

Jennifer was still in my craw. I said, "Damn
it, Greg, how could this woman be anyone but who she says. She's
been working with these people since... since..."

He said, "Just since this, I get it. She and
Donaldson are the only locals, except for old man Summerfield and
his wife."

I asked him, "What do you know about them,
Greg?"

He replied, "Not a hell of a lot. Haven't
seen the file. He's got a lot of bucks, I know that. Been like a
patron of the sciences for quite a few years."

I said, "Maybe there isn't any
Donaldson."

"There damn sure
better
be," he
growled.

We stared at each other
for a moment, then I took a deep breath and said, "Guess I have to
see this through, Greg. Let's just play it where it
lays."

He gave a loud sigh and said, "Well, I have
the easy part. Just have to keep the lid on for..." He looked at
his watch. "...for another fifteen hours. Then this entire mountain
becomes a military zone."

I said, "That's what the other side did,
isn't it? What did it buy them?"

He replied, "Just tell me if it's really
flying saucers. I want to see one."

I chuckled soberly and told him, "So keep
your eyes open and your pecker up, pal. You might see most
anything. Did you notice what they've done to the bubble?"

Just then Fred hove into view, red of face
and huffing with exertion. Souza got the first word in as we turned
to greet him. "Check out?" he inquired tersely.

"Not much left to check," the marshal
replied. "Major fear now is a forest fire. Crews on the scene,
though, so... Did you call it in?"

"Sure I called it in," Souza said. "Just
hope you got enough for a positive ID of some kind."

Fred said, "How would we get that, Greg?
Even if anything comes through the fire... Want a KGB badge?"

Souza grinned as he
replied, "I'd settle for that."

"He'd settle for that,
sure," Fred told me with a solemn wink. To Souza: "Forget it, they
came to kill and be killed. There'll be nothing in those ashes to
deposit on the Kremlin's doorstep." He went on up the drive, halted
and turned back to inquire, "Coming?"

"Be right there," Souza
replied, then said quietly to Fred's departing back, 'To kill and
be killed. Crazy world. Crazy." He looked at the domed roof, then
said to me, "Damn thing does look like a saucer, don't
it."

"It is," I told him.

"What?"

"Well... a dish, anyway. Culture dish."

"What's that mean?"

"It means," I replied, "that maybe we have
not yet seen the start of crazy."

Chapter Twenty-Three: Jinnshine

They had an arrangement of concave mirrored
surfaces set up in irregular spacing all about the perimeter of
that great room. Each was maybe three feet wide and nine feet high,
must have been twenty or more of them, mounted via ball sockets
onto heavy, wheeled frameworks and controlled from an electronic
panel that was located in the bar area. Connecting electric cables
snaked all over the floor, apparently to avoid some very precise
geometric arrangement of the furniture. A large, heavily
upholstered and comfortable looking chair was placed at the
precise center of all that; it was presently covered with some sort
of plastic sheet that appeared to be coated with a metallic
reflecting substance.

I could not help but be
struck by the geometric arrangement. My mind leapt back to the
browsing at Holden's bookshelves and the presence there of occult
books; this arrangement bore a striking resemblance to the
sorcerer's magic circle, or mandala, with the round glass walls
forming the outer circle and the furniture arrangement serving as
geometric designs within the circle. I picked out two sharp
equilateral triangles, superimposed in opposition to form a
six-pointed star, and there was a "circle within the circle" effect
created by a large round plastic sheet—similar to that adorning the
central chair—which had been placed over the carpet to cover the
center of the room.

I asked Esau, "Where the hell did you guys
come up with this arrangement?"

"We are trying," he replied, "for a precise
focus. Some minor refinements may be necessary as we go along. We
shall have to wait and see."

Wait and see, my ass. I knew what this was.
I said, "Why don't you just ask Merlin about that?"

He gave me a patient smile and replied, "I
am still having difficulty with you, Ashton. I never know when you
are joking."

I told him, "It is not now, Esau."

He took a long, exaggerated look about the
room, then said, "Yes, I suppose I see what you mean."

"It's a mandala," I said accusingly.

"The universe is a
mandala," he replied musingly. "Something in the subconscious,
perhaps, that—Jung thought so. Tried some mandala therapy on some
of his patients, I do believe. Churchmen must have divined
something there, too, though probably in the wrong spirit." He
laughed. "Did you catch me there?"

I had to grin. "Caught you, yeah. You're
getting downright sophisticated, Esau."

He was very pleased with that comment. "It's
true, just the same. The stained glass of cathedrals are rampant
with mandala geometry."

I said, "So are the rituals of Hindus and
Buddhists. But—"

"It's universal," he said, closing the
discussion and moving away to help position another piece of
equipment.

Universal, yeah, I told
myself, but how did it get into the subconscious in the first
place? Who told all those geeks and gooks and priests and ordinary
people who see them in their dreams that this particular geometry
holds some sort of universal significance?

Anyone in recorded times who'd ever tried a
bit of black magic had tried it in a circle just such as this one.
Witch priests and priestesses to this very day do their numbers in
such circles, perform ritualistic sexual acts in there, invoke
charms and spirits and magical feats in there. Eastern mystics
meditate and levitate and oscillate in there, African witch doctors
draw them in the dust with a stick and commune with the spirits in
there.

Now these guys, these space-age creation
physicists, expected me to invoke the jinn in there.

So, okay. I would try to do that.

"It begins," Esau announced calmly, and gave
a nod to the guy at the control panel.

The computer-driven
concave mirrors at the perimeter began their weird, undulating
rhythm—almost a "scooping" motion into the atmosphere of the big
room. Several other instruments, the function of which I had
absolutely no notion, began a low, droning hum.

I was seated in the
central chair, with the metallic sheeting beneath me, both in the
chair and at my feet. Laura and Jennifer sat to my right and left,
respectively, their chairs positioned slightly to the rear and
angled toward mine. Esau sat facing me from a low couch, about six
feet away, Holden beside him. Except for the guy at the panel, the
others were scattered about in what appeared to be a random pattern
but which actually formed the geometric configuration noted above,
all facing me and more scintillating than ever.

The guy at the panel was softly calling out
numerical values at roughly ten-second intervals. After about a
minute of that, Esau asked me, "Are you getting anything,
Ashton?"

I was "getting" something,
yeah. A slow-motion
deja vu
tingle, beginning low in the spine and spreading
upward, the kind that usually gives you a sudden shiver but this
one was even shivering in slow motion.

I reported to Esau, "Something, yeah. Moving
up the spine. A sort of shiver."

He looked elated but the voice was calm and
controlled as he instructed me, "It's a controlled interaction. I
knew it. Try to cooperate. Don't fight it."

And Laura's voice, at my
right ear 'Try to relax and invite it in, Ashton. If you get
disturbing static, try to hold through it, see if it will
subside."

I was beginning to get "static," yeah,
plenty of it—except that it really did not sound like static after
the first burst, more like a cacophony of discordant voices all
sounding at once, like in a crowded bar during happy hour with all
that shrieking and babbling...

The guy at the panel was still announcing
numbers but his voice began to sound like an anesthetist's as he's
counting you down to dreamland, growing fainter and more distorted
moment by moment.

I heard Esau gasp and call my name, repeated
several times, but I just did not feel like responding, and I heard
him say, to someone, "He's all right, he's through it," but I
didn't know what the hell I was "through" and I did not care.

It was the quickest drunk I'd ever known—and
I've tried a few of those in my time. I was soaring, feeling no
pain whatever—feeling, actually, sublime or exalted or whatever it
is when you're just ecstatic all over—post-orgasmic ecstasy, maybe,
relieved and happy and fearless and warm and good.

And I was light, I had no weight, I was in
zero-gravity and free-floating. But I could examine that
intellectually, as though it were happening to someone else, and I
could marvel at it and wonder what was next.

And the
wondering
seemed to produce a whole
new train of phenomena. I rushed through some sort of brightly
colored vortex in which was spinning with me all the things I'd
ever done and dreamed of doing, all the things I'd ever seen or
wanted to see—and shit I heard music, the most beautiful damned
music, and I was directing the Boston Pops through
Scheherazade
—yet with
all of this, at the same time marveling at it and trying to
intellectually process it, I was aware also that I was talking a
streak, in mathematical symbols and equations.

I would hear Esau's voice:
"Wait, give that again, was that
E
to the minus tenth?"

I would be processing that
while not really caring if I answered him or not, all the while
knowing also that I did not know how to respond even while hearing
my voice respond, "
E
to the minus tenth
squared
," or some such; I don't know
now what the hell I was saying.

At the same time, and in
the same mental space, I was getting screwed out of my brains by
forty beautiful women—no, really, precisely
forty
and all at the same time—while
simultaneously pursuing a deeply meaningful dialogue with none
other than Socrates, in
his
tongue
, no less.

I could even marvel at the psychedelic
patterns and wonder how many of my neurons were firing all at once
at a given time, and I remember trying to calculate how many could
fire at once without destroying the brain.