Man Hunt (28 page)

"No, she's with him right
now
," Monica said into the satphone. "She's just about to get into his car. I have no idea how I'm going to track them down. I need some
help
, Gertrude. I only know his first name. 'Charles' something or other.

She waited, listening. Gertrude's voice on the other end of the line was surprisingly clear but somehow thin nonetheless. Gertrude had already told Monica about her own success with a man in blue who had caused trouble the day before.

Was it really only yesterday Josie and I left the island?
Monica had thought.
It seems like a week ago. So much has happened since then.

Gertrude's story had been unnaturally long-winded, but the end of it had been important. Her dealings with the man in blue had led inadvertently to the discovery of a final clue tipping Gertrude off to the location of the black men's newest hideout.  This meant a raid of the black sector was going to happen within the week. Gertrude laid out the basic plan of it, apologizing to Monica that she likely wouldn't be back before they made the kill. Monica, of course, had hid her great disappointment, but Gertrude's follow-up news– a bold and sweeping plan to take care of the Lorraine problem– more than made up for it. Gertrude, it seemed, had had an excellent past two days. Monica's news about Josie was turning her almost giddy with joy.

"Yes, my car's here in town," Monica continued, "but I followed her on foot for the past couple of miles. I couldn't do it by
car
, now could I? She'd see me, hear me! I never dreamed she'd succeed so
fast
. How do you think she knew where he'd
be
? She hasn't been making contact with her hometown before now, has she? I do believe, Gertrude, sometimes we give these girls too
much
freedom when they go recruiting. Sometimes I don't know where they are for ten or twelve hours at a
time
. Why, a girl could get into any
number
problems all unattended like–"

She stopped, listened.

"Yes, Gertrude. Of course, Gertrude." She looked at a digital bar on the satphone's tiny screen. "Oh, plenty. More than three-quarters. You can call me back any time."

She paused and listened some more.

"Well it's a good thing she never sleeps," she said. I need that man's name as soon as
possible
, Gertie. How are you going to convince her you need–"

She stopped, listened, and smiled.

"Excellent. You are a marvel, Gertie. Call me soon. I'm on my way back to the car now. Now listen, I've been thinking about sessions with any future girls with this problem. I believe I've learned something invaluable from Josie here. She seems to be
particularly
susceptible to… Gertrude? Hello?"

She hung up the phone and started jogging back to her car.

"Fucking bitch," she mumbled under her breath. "I hope to God you know what you're doing. And to think I'm missing a raid for this damned girl."

CHAPTER 14

Obe woke not with a start or sweating, but with more of the same desperate uncaring that had been swimming through him before sleep had finally come. Something had wakened him, though he couldn't decide what. The sky, he saw, was once again black with its speckled millions. The rain had finally stopped.

"My name is Obe," he mumbled into the pre-morning darkness, and his heart broke at the sound.

He wriggled out from the thorny rose bush and sat up slowly, first on one elbow, then soon with his arms folded across his knees. He looked into the blackness in front of him, listening to the water crash on the rocks below and the powerful, hot wind blow past his ears.

He pictured himself standing and walking to the cliff edge, his toes breached over into the wide space below, perhaps feeling the earth beginning to crumble while his feet slid slowly forward. He squeezed his legs tighter where he sat, and the Cliffs of the Moon seemed to respond with their washing, blustery song of desperation.

"
Hey! Obe!
" The voice shout-whispered to him from afar through the thicket of bushes. For the briefest of moments he thought it was just more of his own damaged mind talking to him in the voice of the waves below. But no, it was a real voice. The calling of his name had been what had woken him.

"
Terd?
" Obe whispered back. It could have been anyone, but in his isolation Obe's subconscious called forth one of the only persons from the Family of Blue who had seemed decent to him. No one answered. "
Leb?
" Obe asked again. "
Is that you?
" He wondered why he was whispering, yet he didn't dare speak too loudly. His eyes peered uselessly into the deep darkness. He could see no one. The moonlight was covered by clouds but the field was polka-dotted with the white of giant roses nevertheless.

"
Show me your sneakers, Obe.
" The voice had moved. It was surprisingly closer, yet he hadn't heard any footsteps. He decided he must have misheard the first time. His eyes continued straining into the darkness.

Then a twig snapped, loud and crisp. It was even closer than the voice had been a moment ago, and Obe knew now he hadn't been mistaken. Someone was definitely approaching, coming for him. He got to his feet, beginning to feel nervous. He still couldn't see anyone, but now he thought he heard branches moving from even closer than the twig had been. He stepped backward, away from the sound, and tripped over an exposed root and fell into an immature rose bush. The tiny thorns scratched his arms and dug through his jumpsuit into his legs and back. He was sure he heard the voice laugh as he struggled to get out.

When he emerged, Obe could see a dark figure standing twenty feet from where he had slept. It didn't look like Leb or Terd. Both were thinner, smaller.

"I don't have the sneakers anymore," Obe told the figure. "Rein stole them from me." The figure didn't move, didn't speak. "In the alley," he added, "after groceries."

"
I'm not here for the stupid sneakers, Obe,
" the stranger said in a continued whisper
.
"
I have news. News about your brother.
"

The words were a hammer dropping. Obe stopped his anxious feet. He tasted a tartness seeping into his mouth, and his ears listened desperately to total silence. Even the wind and pounding waves seemed to have disappeared.

"What do you know about my brother?"

The figure advanced as it spoke again. "
He's tall, isn't he? Dark hair, blue eyes?
"

Blue?
Obe wondered.
Were they?
"I… I guess."

"
He used to play catch with you by a stream. Only you used rocks.
"

A sledgehammer. Obe wanted to speak. He could only swallow.

"
And he used to look at the clouds with you. You found pictures in them.
"

"Yes!" Obe couldn't have stopped his eagerness if his life had depended on it. "You've met him? Where? When? What town did we live in?" He paused and sent a tiny glimmer of a prayer towards Orion, who was now blessedly visible just inches above the approaching figure in the lowermost Southern sky. "Did he look for me when I disappeared?" His tongue followed up by beginning its incessant fluttering of clouds and silver and he stopped it with an aggressive verbal groan.

The figure stopped moving and Obe took an instinctive step forward. The distance was still too great to see a face, but now he could see that it was a big person. Huge. Whoever he was, he had clearly spent a lot of time in a gym to look that way, and Obe wondered if it had made him tougher after all, if he had been harder for the women to break. He couldn't remember anyone in the Family who had been that size.

"I don't know how to say this, Obe,"
the figure said
.
The whisper was gone now, though the voice was somehow softer. More controlled, perhaps. "I didn't meet him back home. I met him here. In green sector. Your brother is on the island
.
"

This was no hammer. This was an anvil. An oak tree. A meteorite. Obe felt his knees weaken and saw only swirls of black and gray before realizing he had swooned back to the rock-infused ground.

"No," Obe said. His vision was clearing but his head was still spinning. "He can't be here. He's… he's home."

"I know what you must be thinking," the stranger continued in his oddly secretive voice, "but I'm sure you're the one he was talking about. I saw you looking at the clouds before. He thought you might still do that. I guess they didn't steal
every
memory from him, huh?" The figure laughed weakly. Obe didn't reciprocate.

"Your eyes, Obe… they're different colors, right? He said his brother had two different colored eyes. It was the one thing he remembered more than any other. And when I heard some guy in blue sector had the same condition, well, I came looking for you. In case it was the same guy."

"My eyes?" Obe repeated. "He remembered my eyes?" The stranger didn't say anything. "Who are you?" Obe asked. The stranger didn't answer right away.

"Does it really matter? I just came to deliver that message. How are your feet?"

"My feet?" Obe said, still too stunned to think rationally. "Fine," he lied. "Better. I…" Obe wondered if his brother's feet were sore because his green sneakers had been stolen, perhaps even by this mammoth man in front of him. "I ripped them up pretty bad," he finished.

He wanted to ask so many questions. His brother's face. His brother's name– but no, even his brother wouldn't know that– his island name, then. His jumpsuit. Or the clouds. He could ask about the clouds. But when he opened his mouth, the only question that mattered came out.

"Is he still alive?"

The figure didn't say anything for a long, long moment. Obe heard only the constant song of surrender sent out by the Cliffs of the Moon. "I don't know," the stranger said, "but…" and trailed off into silence.

"But what?" Obe asked. His head was clearing now and anger was suddenly surfacing to mask the fear. "
What
for God's sake?!"

"Well, he… he isn't a very good runner, Obe. I'm sorry, but he looked like he was having a hard time of it. When I met him I thought he wasn't going to last long. That was… almost two weeks ago. I don't even know if he's still–"

"Never mind!" Obe shouted. "Don't say it. I don't want to hear you say it."

"Alright. I won't say it." But of course the stranger didn't have to. Obe already knew.

The dark stranger paused another moment then mumbled, "I'm sorry."

Then, without another word, whoever it was turned and walked smoothly through the field of white roses. There was no sound. Whoever he was, he walked with the slow, purposeful stride of any hunting cat. He didn't stop, didn't turn around. He only vanished step by step into the darkness until Obe was left alone with only the warm wind and the luring, crashing melody of the Cliffs of the Moon.

Obe didn't know he was walking towards the sea. He barely saw he had even moved. But suddenly there he was, with his toes over the edge just like had pictured minutes before. The slab of stone marking the start of the cliff shone in the dim moonlight, still wet from the recent rain.

He looked down at the hard, black rock. It called to him. He welcomed it.

"How could he be here?" he asked the rock. It did not answer.

"What did
he
do to get here? Why are we both so…" he paused, thinking.  "…sick?" The rock did not answer.

"He's going to die before I will," he told the waves. They didn't answer, either, and the low thudding sound began again then, echoing across the empty hills and swallowed by the empty bay.

"I must find him. Save him. Give him my food." The waves didn't remind him he had no food. They only fought with their brethren and crashed on their rocks. The thudding turned into a shuddering, repeated flap like a single hand of steroid-enhanced applause.

"He's already dead, isn't he?" he asked. The crescent bay did not answer. The water only took, impassively, whatever he gave it. The flapping sound grew to a crackling echo of rotors. In seconds it rose in pitch and in volume and in presence until he could hardly hear the crashing waves. The wind suddenly blew straight down and hard instead of softly across the field. Rose bushes waved violently back and forth. White roses popped off their branches and dove over the edge of the cliff to their deaths below. The child's bright laughter sliced through the sudden din and stabbed at his heart.

"Who is that?!" he screamed. But the Cliffs of the Moon didn't answer him. That wasn't its job. The helicopter that wasn't there carried the child that once had been. They were just above him now. Ten or twenty feet. No, only three. He could jump and grab the black bar of the landing gear. He reached up, looked up…

But there was only the sky, black as spilled ink and just as forlorn. The cry, the pierce of delighted glee, repeated and echoed. The rotors of the helicopter blew down his hair, his hat, his billowing swim trunks. They blotted out the world. There was nothing else except the chaos of sound and wind. Nothing except that single shout of pure joy.

His foot slipped. He fell forward. He plummeted through the air and