I am not my father, John had said to Ariel.
I know you’re not, she’d replied.
He’d said that someday he would tell her the whole story, and she’d said she would wait until he was ready to tell it.
But that song… John, who feared nothing, feared that song.
Yet he didn’t say throw it away. He didn’t say crumple the paper and burn it, or tear it into strips and leave it in a motel’s trashcan when they drove away.
No. Ariel understood he was giving it to her to finish.
But she had fear too, and her fear was that she might make a mistake, that she might mess it up in some way, that the meaning and purpose of it might be ruined because of a slip of the human hand, or an imperfection of the human mind. Nothing created by a human was perfect and nothing could be perfect. But what did the girl at the well want this song to say? What did she want it to be?
“It’s called Ground Zero.”
“What?” Ariel asked.
“That’s the title of my new project. My rock opera.” Gherosimini was standing beside her, and a few feet away Nomad stopped in his inspection of all this old junk to listen, and True walked over to hear, and Berke had been scowling at the presence of a drum machine in the effects rack but she too cocked an ear in the old hippie’s direction, and across the studio Terry had been about to touch the cool white beauty of Lady Frankenstein when he heard the words my rock opera. He turned away from her, and walked nearer her creator so he might hear.
“It’s a work-in-progress,” Gherosimini said. “I’ve got some bits and pieces done. You want to hear them?”
“No,” Ariel said, and Terry almost hit the floor. But he understood when she added, “We’re working on something very important. I don’t think we should have anyone else’s lyrics and music in our heads right now. Thank you anyway.”
“Okay.” Gherosimini looked disappointed, but he shrugged. “I understand. You don’t want to muddy up the well.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she answered.
“Ground Zero,” said True. “It’s about Nine-Eleven?”
“Oh yeah, man. It’s about Nine-Eleven, and Nine-Ten, and Nine-Twelve, and Nine-Nine, and every day.”
“Every day?”
“Right. It’s about the war that goes on every day, Mr. Manager Man. Every hour, every minute. It’s about the quiet war. The one that doesn’t make headlines until something terrible happens, and people are left trying to make sense of why it happened. They’re left wondering how they thought they could’ve known the nice guy who lives down the street. The same guy who woke up one morning and took a gun over to the shopping mall. The student who barricades other kids in a classroom and opens up with an assault rifle. The decent woman who can’t stand the pressure anymore, and she hears voices in her head telling her to drown her children to give them a better life. That’s Ground Zero.”
“What’s Ground Zero?” Nomad asked.
“Human suffering,” said Gherosimini. “Ground Zero of the soul.”
Nomad glanced quickly at Ariel but her gaze was fixed on their host, who said to Terry, “Go ahead. Don’t be shy. You’re not the first one to find her, but you’re probably the youngest. She’ll appreciate a young touch.”
Terry didn’t move. He was still registering what Gherosimini had said about his rock opera.
True spoke up. “What war are you talking about?”
“The war.” Gherosimini stared at True for a few seconds. He wore a faint sad smile. “The spiritual war,” he said. “The war between the spirits, man. For the souls of people. For their minds and hearts. For their hands, because that’s what they really want. One to build, and one to destroy. Without human hands, they’re nothing. Don’t you get it?”
“You mean good versus evil, right?” Berke asked. “The cosmic wrestling match?”
“This one isn’t fixed. It isn’t predetermined. And okay, call it good versus evil. The light against the dark. The creation versus the destruction. I don’t know what it is…but I believe it is.”
Ordinarily Nomad would’ve thought the acid bomb was about to drop again, but now… after what they’d been through…especially that Connor Addison freak…
The angels are very disturbed with her, that trailer park nut had said.
It seemed to Nomad that the trailer park nut thought he was listening to a higher frequency than what was actually running through his comm line. He was picking up the low-down from Radio Stone Church, or from wherever the dark things on the other side of the glass sent out their bulletins to the branded.
As much as he hated hospitals, he thought he needed to check into one when they got back to Austin. He was going to have his head checked for brain tumors and even if they didn’t find anything he wanted to lie on one of those beds that move up and down and get plenty of sleeping pills and feel-good drugs and watch simple-minded television until all this was the hazy memory of a particularly bad dream.
“At Ground Zero,” Gherosimini said, speaking now to Ariel, “is where the war really happens. Everybody in the world suffers. Everybody knows some kind of pain, of disappointment or frustration. Because that’s the world. Things don’t go like you want them to. The richest man in the world and the most beautiful movie star…they know it. Nobody gets out without knowing it. And see, one side tries to winnow in, and drive a wedge to widen the crack that pain makes. Get in there, in the soul and the mind, and tell you you’re a failure, and everybody else is taking your share, and people are laughing at you behind your back because you’re a fucked-up old has-been with a heart full of regrets. Whatever they need to say, however they need to say it. And ohhhh yeah…they are real pros at what they do. But the other side wants to heal the crack. Not going to tell you there’s never going to be any more pain or disappointments, or unfairness, because that would be a lie. It’s a world of humans, so you’ve got to expect human failings. And that’s just how it is.”
“But,” Gherosimini continued, in a quieter voice, “the side that wants to heal the crack won’t do it for you. Maybe it’ll nudge you a little bit, or show you the first step on a path, but it’s not going to hold your hand and take you all the way. That’s your decision, and you’ve got to do that yourself. Why?” He turned his bright lights upon True and let the question hang.
“You tell me,” said True when Gherosimini’s silence went on.
“Because,” the genius of the 13th Floors said, “one side wants you to be weak and spread weakness around like a plague, and one side wants you to be strong and help other people find their own strength. But first you have to find it in yourself. That’s my opinion, Kemosabe.”
“Why should they even care?” Berke asked. Her voice sounded ragged. There was wildness in her eyes. “If these things are really out there, why should they even fucking care about us?”
“You’d have to ask them that question, sister. I doubt you’d get an answer. I never have. Maybe it’s a game, but that would only be our word for it. Maybe it’s a struggle of honor. Maybe it really does mean something, in the scheme of things. But I’ll tell you, I don’t think it’s for nothing. If I did… I wouldn’t be writing a rock opera about it, would I?”
Nomad looked at Ariel again, and this time she met his gaze.
“I need to ask you two,” said Gherosimini. “Have you been fighting? Like with the fists? And the eye and the nose got in the way? Yeah, one thing about being in a band never changes: the more passion, the more smashin’. But, you know, you need to feel the love.” He turned away and walked over the cables and between the keyboards to Terry. “Go on, man. What’re you waiting for? She needs some attention.” He pulled the swivel chair from his workbench and parked it in front of Lady Frankenstein, and Terry sat down.
The small red lights on the console burned steady, except for one at its center that slowly beat…beat…beat.
Terry began to play, just a testing of chords the way his grandmother had taught him.
Lady Frank
enstein spoke. At first her voice was like one fresh from slumber, a little slurry, a little slow. She was, after all, up in her years. Her action was not the quickest. She had been in her prime long before the disco era, and now hers was the voice of a woman who had lived fully and freely with her long hair wild in the hot sparkle of the lights, her eyes glittering with expectations and opportunities, yet now she was graying and a little somber, and she wore a scarf of black velvet around her neck because she didn’t really like the way her neck was evolving, darling, and she thought she would sit over there away from the lights and tonight—one night only—just be content to watch the dancers pass.
As Terry played first a variety of chords to get the feeling of the keys and then went into his self-written song ‘Under My Window’, about a young man who watches a beautiful girl go past everyday but can’t find the courage to speak to her, he noted the red light at the center of Lady Frankenstein’s console had begun to beat faster. And faster still.
What Eric Gherosimini had said was the truth. She did appreciate a young touch.
Her voice—feminine, warm and knowing—flowed from two external speakers, one on each side of her. It was like someone singing, a cool clear tone, but then he could hear a voice beneath a voice. Suddenly there were multiple voices, and he realized it was how much pressure he put on the keys. Soft, a single voice; harder, harmonic doublings and triplings. Lady Frankenstein was not just one woman; she was a female universe.
And then the most amazing thing. Eric Gherosimini came forward and stood at Terry’s side and began to play right-handed along with him, and the voice was different—darker, maybe a little more rude—under his fingers, and Terry thought there might be heat-sensors in the keys themselves, something that transferred personal energy into the circuits and created the mood ring effect he’d heard about, that Lady Frankenstein’s voice—many voices—changed according to the emotional state of her player.
He wanted to stop playing and ask Gherosimini how this could be. He wanted to know if within Lady Frankenstein’s rapidly-beating heart there was a thermoacoustic element that translated human heat into sound. He wanted to know how her circuits were laid out, and he wanted to see for himself the intricate bundles of wiring that veined her together.
But no.
No, really, he did not.
Because she was what he knew to be the reason something had been awakened in them all, as children. Something they had heard and kept that other children had not. Something they still had, hidden away in a place of safety.
She was magic.
Listening to the music, hearing the voices of an angelic choir with a few bad girls among the bunch, True grunted and said, “Just when you think there’s nothing new in this old world.”
Ariel turned her head, as if to catch those words in her ears before they evaporated for all eternity. “What’d you say?”
“I said just when you think there’s nothing new.”
“No,” she told him. “That’s not all of it.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. He was rewinding his memory when Stereo dropped the chewie and started barking furiously toward the front of the house. The dog jumped over cables and multi-plug boxes like a champ and ran through the open door, still barking his lungs out.
Terry and Gherosimini kept playing, and Lady Frankenstein kept singing in a dozen swirling harmonies.
“What’s wrong with your dog?” True asked. “Doesn’t like music?”
“He loves music.” Gherosimini’s eyes were heavy-lidded, drugged by the voices. “Got great ears. But he doesn’t like cars.”
“Oh,” said True, and then it hit him.
“Neighbor drove by,” Gherosimini said. “Maybe Wally on his ’cycle. Stereo hates it.”
But he was speaking to empty space, because True had already moved and was on his way out of the studio. True looked to neither left nor right. He was unzipping his leather bag and putting his hand on the .38’s grip as he reached the front door, where Stereo was raising canine hell in an effort to get out. That had likely been how Gherosimini had heard their arrival. True went to the window, pulled aside the bamboo blinds and saw nothing but brown waves of dust floating in the air.
He eased the safety off his pistol and cracked the door open. Stereo wasn’t in a mood for caution; he pushed out like a barking battering-ram. Then True walked onto the shaded porch and looked for the car that wasn’t there.
Only dust, and Stereo in the middle of the road, legs splayed, barker aimed toward the south.
The two generators created a continuous thunder. It echoed off the rocks. True looked to his right at the pair of trailers. The dust didn’t go that far. He might be a little nearsighted, but he could see a VW van parked in front of one trailer. Alongside the other was an ugly old hulk that looked like an AMC Gremlin, up on four blocks. A friend of his had owned one of those in college. A death-trap, True had called it when parts fell out of the engine one day as it was being driven. Parked beyond the Gremlin was a motorcycle.
He turned his face toward the south. Stereo had stopped barking and was sniffing at something that scuttled from one rock to another.
Stereo was used to the muffled noise of the generators inside the house, True thought. But only a dog with great ears could detect the sound frequencies of a car or motorcycle through the acoustic tiles.
A car had pulled up in front of the house and then backed away. Probably had turned around on the other side of the snakespine curve. Its driver had surely noted the end of the road where the trailers sat.
True rechecked his cell. No bars, no service in this box canyon.
“What’s the problem?” Nomad peered out through the door. He had to talk loud.
“Do me a favor. See if you can get a signal on your phone.”
Nomad tried it. “Nope,” he reported. He saw a shadow pass over True’s eyes. His heart gave a kick. “What is it?”
“Listen,” True said. “We probably need to leave here. Right now.”
“You’re starting to freak me out, man.”
“My job is to keep you alive. If I need to freak you out to do that, I will.”
“I thought your job numero uno was to catch Jeremy Pett alive and put him in a psych ward.”
True watched the curve. Dust was still floating up from the road. Wasn’t there a song called ‘Dead Man’s Curve’? He wished he hadn’t remembered that. He made a move for the door, Nomad retreated to let him pass, and as True walked back to the studio where a chorus of ladies still sang he zipped his bag up.
“Guys,” he said, “we’d better hit the road.”
“Oh, man!” Terry cried out. He stopped playing and Gherosimini stopped and Lady Frankenstein stood silent but her red heart was still pumping hard. “We can’t go now!”
“What’s wrong?” Ariel asked, getting the distinct feeling from both True and John that all was not right in Blue Chalk.
“We need to hit the road,” True repeated. “Yes. Now.”
“Man, come on!” Gherosimini approached him. “You need to stay for dinner. I make a mean pot of chili and I’ve got some fabuloso magic mushrooms to share.”
“We can’t stay for dinner, thank you. Terry, let’s go.”
“Please, True!” Terry had swivelled his chair around, unwilling to leave it. “One hour! Please!”
Berke said tersely, “Shit’s hit the fan. Am I right?”
True looked at the faces that watched him. They were waiting for an answer. He worked his hand on the leather bag, feeling the reassuring shape of the gun. Not much use against a rifle at long range, though. But they couldn’t stay here. Not forever. Maybe it had been somebody lost, just driving. Yeah, right! But it might have been. Everybody believed Jeremy Pett was in Mexico. So why did he think that Jeremy Pett was sitting in his car on the other side of that snakespine curve? His car? The white car that had gone past the turnoff? Then what had happened to Pett’s dark blue pickup truck?
“Cool it, M
r. Manager Man,” Gherosimini urged. “Give Terry his hour. Anyway, if you don’t like mushies I want you to try some kickin’ ganja I got last time I was in Jamaica.”
“Jamaica?” Nomad asked incredulously. “You?”
“Yeah, me.” An expression of understanding spread across the old acid-head’s face. He gave a wide grin. “Oh, man! Did you think I was…like…destitute or something? Far out! Listen, back in the ’80s I sold a few of my ideas to Roland and they built some keyboards around them. My accountant says I’m worth more than the Six Million Dollar Man. I’ve never let any of my bandmates know. They’re good guys, but some of ’em are slackers and they’d be on me for money. I take Stereo to Jamaica every year for a couple of months. Love the ocean. Deep-sea fishing, rum, good smokes, all that. Next year I’m having a contractor come out and remodel the place while we’re gone. Converting to solar power. Terry, you play any Roland gear?”
“I’ve got a JV80.”
“I’m in that,” said Gherosimini. “Like I told you, it’s all good.”
True looked down at the floor, at his black wingtips.
He didn’t know what to tell his band. He hoped his mouth would figure it out when he started speaking, because his brain was only doing a half-ass job.
“Berke,” he said, “we’re good here for a while. You know me. I just get a little anxious when we’re not moving.” He directed a quick glance at Ariel, who also knew him. Then he looked at Terry.
“How about thirty minutes?”
Terry thought about it. He cast an eye over the beautiful keyboards that most people in the world never knew existed. So many to play, and so little time.
“I can live with that,” he decided.
“Good. That’s very good.” True nodded, and again he touched the shape of the .38 in his leather bag. It wasn’t much use against a rifle at long range, but it was all he had. A thought came to him. “Ever do any hunting?” he asked Gherosimini. If he was a fisherman, he might be a—
“Hate guns,” Gherosimini answered. “Worse than Stereo hates cars.”