World Walker 2: The Unmaking Engine (3 page)

“Everyone got out?” said the giant monkey. In perfect unison, they all nodded. Immediately after doing so, they all collapsed into piles of dirt, leaving twenty square yards of ground looking like it had been targeted by an army of moles.

The Monkey God smiled. “Best head for home, then,” he said, “I’m starving.” He turned away and vanished.

***

Two days later, Harvey and Sally Foster boarded the first of three planes that would return them to New York. Once home, they celebrated their close brush with death in the only way they could think of, barely leaving their apartment for four days straight. Besides enjoying himself immensely, Harvey was increasingly puzzled at his lack of breathlessness. An appointment to his oncologist on the fifth day home provided the answer. Harvey’s cancer was gone. No rational explanation, no apparent danger of it returning.
 

“A religious man might call it a miracle,” said the doctor, shaking Harvey’s hand vigorously. His particular branch of oncology made delivering news of this sort very rare indeed. His smile was broad and unforced.

“That he might,” said Harvey. “That he might.”

Chapter 3

Mexico City

Meera Patel drew heavily on the fat joint she’d just rolled, inhaling deeply, then exhaling a small sweet smelling cloud of blue-gray smoke. She picked up her beer and smiled through the haze at the woman opposite her.

“You know you don’t-,” began the woman.

“Don’t need to smoke this stuff anymore? Don’t need to drink this? Now that I’ve begun to use Manna? Yeah, I know, but I still like it.”

The other woman smiled and took a sip of water.

“Wasn’t what I was going to say. Far from it. I was going to say you know you don’t need to hide anything from me. You must know by now, you’ll find no judgement, no censure. The Order was never really a religious organization.”

Meera frowned slightly at this.

“Ok, I know what you’re thinking, Stephanie” said Kate, “but any social grouping based around communal meditation was bound to pick up some religious trappings after the first thousand years.”

Meera shifted uncomfortably in her seat. There were things she hadn’t told Kate, it was true. Her real name being one of them, along with her real face. But only because doing so would endanger both of them. She had finally accepted Seb’s admission of his immortality. Still didn’t know how she felt about it, but she had accepted it. However, letting Kate know Seb’s true identity, or any part of the incredible events that had led them to finally take refuge in Mexico City, was a risk she could never take. She thought briefly of the mysterious Mason, the man who had masterminded her kidnapping and torture; the man who had intended to keep her a prisoner for the rest of her life. If he ever found her, he would kill her. And he would kill anyone she’d been in contact with. She probably knew more about Mason than anyone outside his organization. Which was virtually nothing. But she doubted he would see it that way.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” said Meera, taking Kate’s hand, the older woman’s fingers darker than her own caramel skin. “You must know that by now.”

Kate returned her smile. “Of course. But I can feel it eating away at you, whatever it is. I’ll be ready to listen should you ever feel ready.”

“Thank you.”
 

Meera looked up at the stars, only a few of which were visible through the light pollution of the city. She remembered sitting on a roof with Seb back in LA. Back when she could still sing in public without risking her life. Back when Seb was a regular human being.

“Time to go home,” she said, getting up and stretching. They walked across the roof together and headed into the apartment building. The building was five stories high. The top floor had eight fairly traditional apartments, only three of which were occupied. The fourth floor had been knocked through to make a big open space. It was a meditation room. There were dozens of prayer stools and cushions stacked against one wall, but they were covered in dust. One small area near the center of the room had been kept clean and usable. The third floor would have been a huge surprise to anyone who had never encountered the Order and their abilities. It was a garden; lush, green and fragrant. Or, at least, it had been so, once. Now, like the floor above, it showed signs of neglect, many of the plants dead. Only one corner looked well-watered and lush, with healthy tomato plants alongside corn, eggplant, zucchini, onion and a selection of herbs. The second floor was a communal dining area, with long tables able to seat more than fifty people. A smaller table near a large picture window was clean, the rest in various states of disrepair and decay. There was a pile of soil in the corner. Meera had watched members of the Order use it to produce delicious food in seconds. It still looked like magic to her, when she saw the dirt transform into a plate of sushi or a bowl of dal. She herself had shown no ability to do the same, despite her training in Manna use. Her gifts with Manna lay elsewhere.

Kate and Meera stopped at the first floor door. This floor was a collection of offices with an uninviting waiting room, opening up to the street. The building had once housed an insurance office, and the Order had left the first floor as it was.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Stephanie,” said Kate. “Give my love to Peter.” ‘Peter’ was ‘Stephanie’s’ shy boyfriend. A writer. Somewhat eccentric. A bit of a recluse. Seb kept contact with anyone connected to the Order to a minimum. The unique Manna which filled his body, so much more advanced than any other sources of Manna, was invisible to even the most sensitive User, but he didn’t want to risk provoking any kind of curiosity.
 

Meera kissed Kate on the cheek. Kate was strikingly beautiful; tall, graceful and precise in her every movement. Meera constantly felt like a clumsy child in comparison. Kate looked like a woman who’d reached her fifties and had got to a point where intelligence and compassion showed on her features as plainly as her head-turning good looks. Meera looked into those dark eyes and wondered how old she really was. She gave Kate a quick smile and walked into the street.

The Order had fallen apart over a period of a few months during the previous year. Despite its lack of dogma, rules, ritual, and a complete lack of ‘holy’ scriptures, its members had reacted with awe, hope and excitement when, according to their most senior member in Northern America, the messiah they had been waiting for had arrived. Three words had underpinned the entire history of the Order, the only words left to them by their founder, who had lived in what was now modern-day Syria, a few centuries after the birth of Christ. The words were Learn, Teach, Wait. The Order had followed the implications of each word faithfully for centuries. The members learned by paying attention in meditation, or contemplation. They taught those who sought them out, passing on the simple timeless truths that led to inner engagement and a new way of encountering and shaping reality through the use of Manna. They waited for another Visitor to pass on its gift to another human being, just as it had to their founder. And—finally— it had happened. For a few glorious weeks, the Order was boiling over with excitement at the news from America. A new age was about to begin. Then, suddenly, a cell just outside of Las Vegas had disappeared overnight, as if it had never existed. Eleven members of the Order erased without trace. Diane, their leader and Lo, considered by many to be their next leader, were among those who’d gone. And, a few days later, the almost incomprehensible news. Seb Varden was dead. The messiah had been killed.
 

Kate watched Meera walk away until she was out of sight. As always, the younger woman had started singing as she left. Meera was a bit of a mystery, even to someone with Kate’s long experience. She was the only person to actively seek out the Order in a year, just walking in off the street as if guided there. She just claimed she felt drawn to them, and Kate never questioned her further. Meera had seemed unsurprised by her initial exposures to Manna, which was very unusual. The revelation that the Earth was covered with sites containing an ancient power that certain individuals could manipulate was unsettling to everyone, at first. But not Meera, apparently.
 

Kate walked back into the office—that was how all members of the Order referred to their Mexico base—climbed the stairs to the third floor and used Manna to produce a large cup of green tea. It was late, and Miguel and Sarah—all that was left of the Order in Mexico City—were asleep upstairs. She sat alone at one of the long tables, remembering it full of people eating, smiling, talking. Despite her gifts for equilibrium and acceptance, she felt a small pang of regret for what they had lost.

Kate first exposed Stephanie/Meera to Manna eight months previously. The young woman had quietly and calmly accompanied Kate to the Thin Place they used near Casa Negra. The nineteenth century mansion was long abandoned and considered haunted, so it was given a wide berth by locals, and all but the most fearless tourists after dark. The tourists themselves were easily frightened off by some peripheral movements and some low growling. It made for a good story when they got home. The south-east corner of the building was out of sight of the main street and the most discreet place to absorb Manna. Kate had knelt on the floor and put both hands on the ground, like a Muslim at prayer. As she deepened her breathing and opened her senses, she felt the familiar tingling in her fingertips as the rush of power entered her body, every individual cell glorying in renewed contact with Manna. She’d noted the expression on Stephanie’s face as she’d stood up and brushed the dirt from her hands, still trembling slightly. Stephanie had seemed excited, yes, curious, a little scared. All of which was to be expected. But she had also seemed sad and distant.
 

When Stephanie had copied Kate’s actions and followed her training to control her breathing and settle her thoughts, Kate had watched closely as the threads of Manna left the earth and, to a User’s eyes at least, lit up her entire body. Kate let out a gasp when she saw Stephanie’s face in the moonlight. It had changed—it was no longer the American Chinese features she knew so well, but an Indian or Pakistani face. Quite beautiful, with a shock of wild black hair. But not Stephanie. The vision flickered, then was gone. It was Stephanie again, getting up from the ground, shivering and grinning.

“Wow! This stuff is better than coke! You ever try coke? Probably not, right, holy lady and all that, but, man, what a buzz! Woa, I could take on the world and his uncle, shall we run back to the office, I don’t think I can walk feeling like this…I’m going to stop talking now, ok?”

Kate had just nodded, silently. They’d walked back to the office in silence, Stephanie giggling occasionally. Kate couldn’t help feeling she’d just seen the real woman beneath the mask. But how could this novice change her features without Manna, without training, and—strangest of all—without Kate having any idea of how she was doing it at all?

The lights were all off when Kate finally went to her room on the fifth floor. There was a clay pot full of soil on the windowsill. She poured the dregs of her tea into it, followed by the cup. It dissolved into the earth and was gone.

***

Meera walked quickly through the streets. It wasn’t the safest part of Mexico City, but she had two distinct advantages over most lone females. One was the subroutine Seb2 had coded into her DNA. If her body showed indications of high stress—Seb had described it as monitoring her “
periaqueductal gray, the part of your midbrain which regulates defense mechanisms”, but she hadn’t really been listening—a signal would be sent and Seb would Walk to her. She’d never had to use it, mainly because of the other advantage: her own Manna ability.
 

Meera had turned out to be a natural Manna user, but her talent was an unusual variant on something fairly common in the Order. She was a Sensitive, could tell where other Users were, knew when Manna was being used nearby. But where her ability differed was that she could accurately predict the actions of non-Manna users with a fair degree of accuracy. The Manna she carried surrounded her like a cloud, rather than being held within her body until she used it. Her awareness stretched out to the edges of the cloud, which extended about a hundred feet in every direction. Within the cloud, she knew if anyone was angry, fearful, happy, or guilty; she knew if they had noticed her. As she knew, Manna was made up of human-manipulated alien nano-technology, rather than magic (a belief still held by many), she assumed the information she received was due to the detection of pheromones released by those around her. She always knew if they might mean to harm her. Which gave her plenty of time to get away. Or at least, it had worked that way so far. And knowing Seb would be there if her own defenses failed, reassured her, although she’d rolled her eyes when Seb had suggested it. Couldn’t have him knowing how much she still feared being found by Mason’s men.

She ducked into a maze of narrow back alleys, knowing which of them had opportunistic muggers waiting in them and which didn’t. She sang as she walked. She missed singing with the band. She had a small recording studio in the apartment, and had built quite a following online with tracks posted under an assumed name, but it wasn’t the same. She knew Mason was likely to have heard it, and possibly tried to track her, but Seb assured her it was utterly impossible. Anyone trying to pin down her IP address would be sent on a never-ending global wild goose chase.
 

She walked into their apartment just before midnight. As she crossed the threshold, her face and body changed, morphing instantly from Stephanie to Meera. She’d chosen her ‘outside’ face one long night just before they moved to Mexico City. As Seb had changed her features in front of the mirror she’d laughed herself into hysterics more than once, insisting he make her look like Imelda Marcos, Mama Cass, Janis Joplin and Grace Kelly, amongst others. She’d eventually settled on the relative anonymity of Stephanie, based on a face they’d found online in a 1980s college yearbook. Seb had chosen Peter, a tall Brazilian man in his forties. They could be themselves in the apartment, but only there.