World Walker 1: The World Walker (15 page)

"Sid was an incredibly patient man," continued Walt. "Which was lucky, because I would have driven anyone else crazy. I threw myself into the training for the first few weeks. Every day, I'd spend hours sitting with Sid while he used Manna. But he might as well have been asleep for all the sense I could make of it. I couldn't sit still for five minutes. My mind would race. I'd start thinking about my life before I met Sid. It had been dangerous, sure, but at least I was out there doing something, not sitting silently next to the oldest Jew in Chicago. I'd get frustrated about life drifting away, all my opportunities going down the plughole. Fortunately, I was as stubborn as they come. Every time I thought about leaving, I'd remember the alternative - a brief encounter with a professional strangler - and I'd sit my ass back down. And slowly, real slowly, I started to feel something. It's different for everyone. For me, it's like a buzz - a vibration - I feel it in my face, behind my eyes, in my cheekbones. And one day, while we were sitting there, I stretched out with this buzzing sensation."

Walt stopped talking. Seb turned toward him and noticed immediately that the area near Walt had darkened again. A silence had suddenly captured the space around them. It felt like a physical presence, reality becoming a movie still. A newspaper tucked behind the seat in front of Walt slid slowly out from the pouch, falling between them. It opened and the pages moved although there was no breeze, just the subtle waft of the AC. As the newspaper reached the center pages, four sheets peeled away and floated upwards, folding as they did so. Seb watched corners furl and edges tuck under, the movements crisp and precise. Within a few seconds, the first two sheets had become perfect simulacra of tropical fish, swimmingly lazily around the car. The effect was so startling that Seb took a breath to convince himself they weren't underwater.
 

The other two sheets came together and rapidly took on the outline of a hungry predator stalking its prey. A perfect scale model of a great white shark began circling the oblivious fish. It was so realistic that Seb flinched when it flicked its powerful tail and passed close to his face. It was as if someone had shrunk a real shark and wrapped it in the LA Times before releasing it into the wild. One of the fish was near the door handle on Walt's side of the Chrysler. The shark lunged with incredible speed, its mouth opening, then shaking violently from side to side as it ripped the fish apart. Confetti drifted around the car.
 

Seb realized he was seeing more than just the darkening effect he had noticed the previous night. He could make out smoky dark tendrils coming from Walt's head and body connecting with the paper shark and the surviving fish. Walt looked over at him.

"You feel it, don't you?"

Seb nodded.

"Reach out," said Walt, "try to take over the shark."

"How?" said Seb.

"I have no idea," said Walt, "only you know how."

"Well, thanks," muttered Seb, but he turned back to the shark just the same, which was now hovering close to the thick glass screen between them and Steve. He let go of his thoughts and just watched the shark, carefully letting mental distractions slide away from his awareness. Nothing happened. Disappointed, he slumped back in his seat. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the sensation when he escaped from Westlake, the way he'd seemed to become one with the door, the car. He opened his eyes again, feeling an echo of the fear he'd felt on that highway the day before. He felt a surge of...something...head away from him toward the shark.
 

With a noise like an explosion, the glass screen shattered, tiny lumps of safety glass falling to the floor of the car. Steve swerved violently and the Chrysler left the road. The rear of the car twitched violently before jackknifing. Seb lurched against Walt as the car side-swiped a utility pole before coming to rest in a cloud of dust about 20 feet from the highway, its rear suspension causing it to sag drunkenly in the dirt.
 

Steve was out of the car first and opened the door next to Seb to let them out. They walked around the vehicle and assessed the damage, Walt holding a silk handkerchief to his face as the dust began to settle.

"You ok?" said Seb. "I'm sorry, I don't know what happened." Then his mouth dropped open. The car he was looking at wasn't a Chrysler 300. It was a Lincoln Continental, but bigger, sleeker, and more luxurious than any he had ever seen. And it was white, not black.

"What the-?"

Walt smiled. "I'll explain in a moment," he said, his fingers tracing a huge dent in the side of the car where the impact had buckled the metal. He shut his eyes and laid a hand flat on the side of the car. For a moment the air seemed to darken and Seb thought the metal began rippling under Walt's hand. Then the older man frowned, shrugged and stood up again.

"Best thing you can do is get straight back on the horse," he said. "Look, son, I'll be honest with you, what you just did in the car would have been beyond my capabilities after a year with Sid. You need to learn some control before you hurt yourself. Or someone else."

Seb looked at the crumpled metal and the shattered glass still covering the back seat. He remembered tapping into a sense of fear the moment before the glass had exploded.
 

"Don't worry," he said, "it'll be a while before I try anything like that again."

Walt turned toward him and shook his head.
 

"You don't get away that easy," he said. "We need this car back on the road and I haven't paid a mechanic's bill in a long, long time."

"What?" said Seb, "you want me to...?" He gestured at the car and Walt nodded.

"No," said Seb. "I'm more likely to make things worse."

Walt shrugged.

"It's a write-off," he said. "How much worse can you make it?"

Seb grimaced. "You really want to find out?" he said.
 

Walt said nothing, just moved away from the damaged car. Seb took his place by the crushed wing and put his hand on to the damaged metal.

"Ok, then," he said, "it's your dime."

He closed his eyes, thinking back to the sensation he had felt when his body seemed to merge with the car door in LA. Nothing happened. He tried to remember his exact mental state...that was easy enough: he'd been terrified. So maybe fear was the key. His mind flashed back to the fear he'd felt when the two soldiers had raised their weapons the day before. There was a bang. He opened his eyes. The Lincoln was 15 feet away, tracks in the dust where the tires had scraped across the rough surface. Seb looked round. Walt and Steve took a step back. He walked up to the car and knelt next to the dented metal again. He closed his eyes.
 

Maybe fear isn't the only emotion that can trigger this...Manna
. He briefly wondered what might happen if he allowed himself to get angry. What might rage produce? For the first time, the fear that had gripped him intermittently since Westlake had started pursuing him took on a new aspect: fear of what he himself might do. His lack of control might be seriously dangerous to anyone nearby.
 

Taking a deep breath, Seb turned his attention to the movement of air through his nostrils into his body and back out again. The thoughts whirring around his mind, the unanswered questions, the fears and hopes for what the future might hold - they all began fading into background chatter as his attention on his breath deepened. He offered up a silent prayer of thanks to Father O'Hanoran for teaching him Contemplation when he was a teen who might have ended up pursuing a very different path. More quickly than usual, he reached that place of emptiness. He tried to reach out toward the car with his mind, but it was like grabbing a handful of mist. He could feel a presence again, a hum of possibility under the surface, like the charged atmosphere before a huge storm. He was about to try reaching out again, when he had an idea. He gently allowed Bach's prelude to begin sounding in his mind. Bach had always elicited strong emotions in Seb. Emotions he couldn't name. They just rose up inside him in response to that particular arrangement of the twelve notes in the Western scale. As he listened internally to the music, the composition seemed to provide a structure through which he could reach out again with the Manna. This time - as his mind stretched out - it was as if the metal gave way like butter. There was a moment when his awareness seemed to expand; his sense of self shrinking. He was unworried, calm, doing what needed to be done right now, this moment.

"Well," said Walt from behind him, "that's a pretty nice job."

Seb opened his eyes and stood up, stepping backward from the car. There was no evidence of any damage. In fact, the Lincoln looked like it had just rolled off the production line. It gleamed in the sun, the alloy wheels painfully bright.

"I even prefer the color," said Walt. Seb looked again. The car was a deep midnight blue. Three minutes earlier it had been white.

Walt narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to one side as if listening.

"I wonder..." he murmured. Picking up a rock, he hefted it in one hand for a second, then snapped his arm back and threw it at the Lincoln. It sailed through the air before landing squarely in the middle of the hood, bouncing off and leaving an egg-sized depression with some surrounding scratches where the bare metal showed through.

"What are you doing?" said Seb, but Walt just held up a hand, his eyes never leaving the car.
 

Seb looked too. The dent began to move, the area around it looking briefly like water rippling on the sunlight. Within a second the hood was perfect again, no evidence of the damage visible.

"Thought so," said Walt. "Wonder how long it'll last?" He walked over to the car and held the door open for Seb. Steve's impassive features showed no surprise at what he'd just witnessed.

"Imagine if you could patent that," said Walt. "You'd make a fortune."

Steve started the engine. Walt tapped the newly replaced security glass. It slid smoothly down.

"Someone on that train might remember seeing you leave," said Walt. "And this Lincoln is not the kind of car you forget. It's still supposed to be just a concept car. I had to pull a few strings to get it. So I gave it a little disguise. Then I had Steve drive us a few miles south. Anyone looking for you will guess you're headed for Mexico in a black Chrysler. I'm a magician, Seb. I just made you disappear."
 

Roswell. New Mexico. That
is
where I need to go. But maybe not straight off, if Westlake thinks that's where I'm going.

"So where are we heading?" said Seb, as the big Lincoln swung around to face the other way.

"My place," said Walt. "Las Vegas"

Chapter 15

Los Angeles

Bob knocked back a shot of bourbon, the liquid burning his throat as it chased the seven bottles of beer he had already sent down there. He held up his finger for a refill.

"Are you sure you need another?" said Rachel, owner of the Heroes And Villains Bar and Grill. Her clientele had tended toward the Villains end of the market as the neighborhood got rougher and the only grill in the place these days was the one she pulled down at the end of the night to stop the window getting a brick through it. Bob was a regular - one of her favorites. He had even shared her bed occasionally. Tonight, though, he was worrying her. He'd never been a serious drinker. One or two beers then home, Marcie barking goodnight as he headed down the street. Now he was drinking with a kind of grim determination she didn't much like.

"Give me a break, Rachel," said Bob, only slurring his words very slightly. "I know my limits. One more and I'm going home, anyway."

Rachel suddenly realized what was missing. The first thing Bob usually asked for was a bowl of water to take outside for his dog.

"Where's Marcie?" she asked. Bob looked up and held her gaze before sighing and staring at the empty shot glass.

"She's dead," he said and slid the glass toward her. She put her hand on his and placed the bourbon bottle in front of him.

"It's on the house," she said. He looked up again and nodded at her, not trusting himself to speak. Rachel moved away down the bar and found some glasses to polish. She hadn't run a bar for thirty-five years without learning how to tell when someone needed some space. She watched Bob refill his glass and drain it.

It had happened the previous night. Bob had decided a little research into Westlake and his mysterious soldiers might help him understand what Seb had got himself into. And he didn't believe he was being watched, despite Westlake's threat at the station. It had to be a bluff - the sheer expense of 24 hour surveillance on someone pretty much guaranteed it. About 20 minutes internet research had uncovered nothing of interest. In fact, he'd found nothing at all. No Westlake listed anywhere, despite trying various government departments. He had half-expected it. The sort of work Bob suspected Westlake to be involved in required a degree of invisibility.

Bob had stopped to brew fresh coffee then changed tack. He trawled through some conspiracy sites, looking for sightings of military personnel with no traceable link to the US Government. Things started to get more interesting. Sifting through various reports after dismissing the obvious paranoid fantasists, there were three or four instances in the last year where unidentifiable military types had been seen in action. All of the reports were categorically denied by the military and no evidence could be presented to prove otherwise.
 

One report in particular caught Bob's attention. Three years ago, an Idaho farmer claimed to have shot dead an intruder who was part of a group of armed men he'd seen advancing on his house. He had called it in to the local sheriff and, when he'd arrived, had led him to the edge of his field where they found the corpse of one of his horses. Ballistic evidence had matched the bullet to the farmer's rifle, but he had sworn blind the gun wasn't his - he claimed they must have been switched. What made the story interesting was the sheriff's statement. First, he'd pointed out that it was a full moon - hardly a night where someone might mistake a horse for a man. Second, the farmer was an ex-Navy Seal. His testimony was detailed, thorough and convincing. Third - and most compelling for Bob - the Sheriff had heard a helicopter as he left for the farm. The official report had been unable to reach a definite conclusion. Bob wondered why the Sheriff or farmer hadn't pursued it further, but a quick search of their names revealed they had both died with three months of the incident: the previously healthy sheriff from a heart attack and the farmer in a car wreck.