Fire Will Fall

  VS in NJ today ... HERE tonight ... 1 mile from HERE.

  VS has Fire. 911911911. Check script.

  "You forgot to tell him that Chancellor has prisoners and he's injecting shit into them and wanting to expose them to the Real Deal," Tyler says.

  "I suggested almost as much when he was here, and he refused to comment."

  "Ungrateful little henpecked morons," Tyler notes of the New York squad, but I do not want to get sidetracked into complaints.

  "I do not think this is Hodji's fault," I say. "He works for a huge agency."

  "So who am I supposed to be mad at?" Tyler persists.

  I do not know and only recite a truth, not meaning to make him angrier. "In a big agency, there is no one to assume blame."

  "Tell that to my sorry ass when it gets separated from my head and they show it on the Internet. I'm done with Big Agency." He leaves the room again. He perceives he has won something. I feel I will have won something only if I don't stop to look for someone to blame. Blaming, in a government with its many rules, is like swinging at shadows.

  But he reappears again moments later. The sad truth is that we cannot resist what we do, given what we know. It would be as much folly as a lifeguard refusing to save a drowning person because he has been fired from beach patrol duty.

  I put all the chatter into a script for Hodji with no note or signature. I do not encrypt it, believing he will check his e-mail quickly. But as I hit SEND, images fill my head of him acknowledging his son's complaints for hours which, in this country, would be considered the honorable thing to do.

  HotKeys joins Omar and VaporStrike suddenly, and I watch with impatience as their hellos contain jokes about foot fungus. Then

  Omar0324: Be quick with what you have to say. I cannot remain here much longer.

  HotKeys: I am tweaking programs to help catch your v-spies. In the interim, the only way we can think to verify whether or not USIC is onto us is to post people at various locations that might attract USIC attention.

  Omar0324: Such as the convention center.

  HotKeys: And the amusement pier across the street. They have photos of some of the better-known USIC agents. None were seen. But you will never believe who was.

  Omar0324: Don't dawdle. I'm running out of time.

  HotKeys: Two of the Trinity Falls victims.

  Omar0324: The teenagers???

  HotKeys: Two. Pasco recognized them from the cover of People.

  Omar0324: What in hell were they doing at the site? I thought they were too sick to leave their hospice.

  HotKeys: Apparently the peace and quiet is suiting them already. They were taking photos in front of the convention center.

  A long pause follows, in which both Tyler and I sit frozen. We would understand that these men would devour People magazine as well as Time and Newsweek in order to fully congratulate themselves, but it still strikes us like gunshots smoking out of the screen to hear them refer directly to the Trinity Four.

  I shoot off another e-mail to Hodji:

  2 of Trinity 4 wandered into Colony 2. C2 very near to C1. New log-in Pasco spotted them.

  I hit SEND, in spite of feeling that perhaps the extremists are wrong and they saw others who resembled them. I nudge Tyler. "Go to your room and see if any of the Trinity Four possesses an e-mail address yet." I have read in People and heard from Hodji that the CEO of Dell has sent them each a laptop along with hopes for a speedy recovery. Perhaps they have started to use e-mail again.

  I call Hodji again, and his line still rings busy.

  Their chatter has gone into more exchanges.

  Omar0324: You must be mistaken. Or perhaps they visited the amusement rides. They are teenagers, and some days their health is possibly sufficient for this.

  HotKeys: I have considered that. It just took his mind apart to see them standing there. He said he recognized the boy first—the older of the two—and then the dark-haired girl you found so strikingly beautiful that day you saw her sleeping in the hospital. He thinks the girl snapped a picture of him.

  I send Hodji more mail:

  Scott and Cora seen in C2.

  I hear Tyler's keys clattering to see if he can drum up an e-mail address.

  Omar0324: He's a moron. I suppose he was flitting about without a hat or glasses even.

  HotKeys: That's fine coming from a man who condones experiments on swans. Do not panic. It is possible they were simply taking a stroll and shooting pictures.

  Omar0324: Of the convention center. Our convention center.

  VaporStrike: I said, do not panic. I tend to think HotKeys is right. What are the alternatives? That USIC told teenagers their secrets?

  Omar0324: Impossible, the way Americans protect their young.

  VaporStrike: And these are sick teenagers. Would USIC send them to Colony Two to do their dirty work?

  Omar0324: Thank you, my friend. You speak wisdom. I will dwell on this tonight, when sleep eludes me as usual, and see if I can think up some other explanation. Maybe Chancellor will have one...

  I have not found Chancellor online yet with this motley crew, and I quickly dog-leash HotKeys, hoping they will meet up in some other chat room.

  I finish the script after they log off and send it to Hodji, though I accompany it with one final message:

  Cora and Scott are not in danger.

  My conscience is burdened, and I feel I should not disrupt his chance to make amends with his son if I can help it.

  I remember that I am supposed to patch my own IP address so that it does not register to our server, where the billing address will be this house. I feel more general anxiety than a feeling of being unsafe. However, I wish USIC had sent us a secretary instead of a nurse to ease their consciences. Miss Alexa has a firearms license, which makes us feel safe and secure, except there is the problem that she cannot be here all the time. There are trips to the grocery and the CVS, and visits to family and friends, which any nurse would want in order to keep her sanity.

  When I mentioned this hole in the protection to Hodji, he had wanted to come over and be with us during those hours. However, he was very busy with other tasks, and he also made the sad mistake of saying "I'll try to baby-sit you guys" to Tyler, whose response indicated that such terminology has a negative connotation in English. He said that "Hodji could baby-sit his own ass," and he would hot-wire the house with bombs and subterfuge to protect us. I do not believe Tyler would be so stupid as to hot-wire his own house, and I have not seen him engage in any activities involving wires. Only cleaning supplies.

  But the fact that the hole in the protection plan had never actually been addressed led me to open my control panel to install a patch on our IP address and hide our location, just to be safe.

  I am halfway into the task when Tyler hollers to me. "Cora added a few lines to her blog, and there's now a guest registry."

  I go in to him, feeling a greater urgency to contact the girl, though I have no idea what to say. I sit on the edge of Tyler's bed. He sits in the chair, and I look at her beautiful picture, taken by some nurse at St. Ann's. She is sitting up on her bed, in a black tank shirt and lounge pants, making what Americans call the peace sign at the camera.

  Tyler leans sideways, clutching his chest. "Be still, my heart."

  "Hush." Under her photo is some language about leaving the hospital yesterday, but she does not mention where she has gone. I sense this is wise. She started the blog several days ago, and already she has had two thousand visitors. It will be a popular web page.

  "Send her a message through the registry. She was in there just today. Maybe she will be back soon," I say. Then, "Get up and let me write it."

  He pulls up his other desk chair for me to sit in. He does not like others to sit their bottoms where his bottom will sit. He has his own chair in the dining room also. I am happy that, at least, he does not argue with me about who should write this note.

  Dear Miss Cora,

  I start, and decide to keep it stra
ight to the point, like my usual e-mails to USIC.

  Were you in a certain city today shooting pictures of a convention center and an amusement pier? If so, which city? It is important, and hence, you must let me know your movements. Yours most sincerely, The Kid

  When I met Miss Rain and Owen, Roger would not let me identify myself as the Kid. I took up Scott Eberman's hand in the ICU and told him all about myself, but he was in a drug-induced coma and heard none of it. And I feel I am violating some sacred boundary by contacting Cora. Hodji would not like it, but Hodji is busy speaking with some other boy.

  "Do you think this will frighten her?" I ask. I do not want to intrude upon what peace and quiet the State of New Jersey is trying to secure for them.

  "We need to know. Just send it."

  I hit SEND and wait and wait. Obviously she is not online, and I have no idea when she will come back. I wonder if anyone, among the people we are trying to help, has time for us.

  TWENTY-TWO

  CORA HOLMAN

  SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002

  3:50 P.M.

  WOODS

  WHEN I HAD NOT HEARD THE SOUNDS of Mr. Steckerman's calling for at least fifteen minutes, I realized I was far from the house. With the black clouds forming above the trees, I turned back in the direction I'd come from, hoping to find the main trail again. I scanned the tall trunks and tumbling summer bramble on both sides, though I had a feeling Rain had not come this far.

  I looked for eyes in the bramble like I had seen earlier today and felt thousands of pairs watching me. But my mind was in such a state of confusion about Aleese, my father, and terrorists that I knew better than to play into it too strongly. I only spun once, and seeing nothing but woods, I started calling.

  "Rain? Rain!" My camera, which had become a security blanket of sorts, was back at the house, and I gripped at the pit of my stomach where it would have hung. I wasn't sure where I was ... couldn't see the main trail forming anywhere in front of me.

  Aleese is enjoying this, my weary brain noted, and I even spoke to ward off feelings of helplessness. "If you're going to show up, do something constructive and don't be a pig. Show me out of here."

  Then I felt silly. I sat down on a log to gather some strength and try not to be negative. Somehow, I was still four-star, even after the hells of seeing terrorists with my own eyes and being so possessed as to take pictures of them. It helped me to consider that maybe this lengthy list of medications we were on was actually working. Dr. Godfrey had explained to us that the same protocol in different bodies would produce slightly different results. I suffered with the most side effects, but that was not nearly so bad as to be knocked down with low white-cell counts and the chronic headaches that poor Owen dealt with.

  I was merely exhausted. I started to wonder if my weary bones would carry me back. I saw something red flash and gasped. Just a blotch, which disappeared behind some bramble, but it sent me slowly to my feet.

  I listened for the goats. One of them had been baa-ing when I left the house, but it sounded off to the left and I had gone right. I thought if I could hear it, I could find my way back.

  But the woods were deadly still. Something flashed again to my right, this time looking more orange. Orange ... a color worn by hunters ... Might someone think I was a deer and shoot?

  "Hello?" I yelled and repeated it after a lengthy silence.

  This time a normal voice hollered. "Cora?"

  Henry Calloway. Miracles. Thank you, Aleese, for once.

  He appeared out of the brush just ahead of me in a rusty red Astor College sweatshirt—the school's colors being red and white. Still, my knees were Jell-O.

  He ran up and put an arm around me to stop my swaying. He pointed ahead. "That's the main trail I came down. It's harder to see in the summer when everything's alive."

  "Whew," I huffed. "I was starting to think—"

  "You were lost? Look, let me give you a present." He handed me a cell phone. "This is my personal cell. The college also gives me one, so I have two. Please. Don't ever come out here again without it. If you use it only for emergencies, I won't get charged a thing."

  He pulled out a second phone, dialed the first, and once it rang, he hung up. "Now you have my number in your 'calls missed' box. Use it anytime you wish."

  I thanked him, staring at the little phone in wonder. A dozen of the richer students in schools had had cell phones last year.

  I jumped out of my skin as the phone rumbled in my palm.

  "Answer it," he said. "Just pull it open."

  I managed to pry it apart and put it to my ear. "Yes?"

  "Henry, did you find Rain?" It was Marg.

  "No. Not yet. Marg, this is Cora."

  "Then I suppose Henry found you."

  "He did. Here..." I handed the phone to him and continued to lean into his tall form in relief. He guided us down the path while laughing pleasantly, telling Marg the phone was now mine and it was the least he could do.

  "It might rain before we get back to the house. She might come in drenched. Maybe you should run a hot bath or something."

  When the phone was back in my grip, he said, "Tomorrow I'll come back here after I do some work in the morning, and I'll take you on a tour of the trails if you're up for it. They're not difficult to follow. In fact, I'm going to spray the trees with blue paint. As long as you can follow the blue circles on the trunks, you'll know you're not lost."

  "Thank you," I said. "For everything."

  "I'm happy to help." We walked along the main trail in silence, him moving at a slow enough pace to keep me from getting winded again. I was not uncomfortable in the silence. I spoke merely to try to recover the escape-from-reality feeling I'd had with him last time.

  "Mrs. Starn ... she said you have a cabin out this way?"

  "Yes. It actually belongs to the college, and, generally, more experienced researchers get them. But after I came up with the ten thousand in research grants, I think they looked at me a little more carefully." His laugh was uncomfortable, laced with humility. I liked it.

  "Are you ... going to study the body of the one Kellerton children there after you exhume it?"

  He squeezed my shoulder as if to say, No bad thoughts allowed. "Great heavens, no. I'll do that in the medical center's forensics or pathology lab with two dozen or so curious researchers looking on. I have to handle that one carefully, as it ought to bring some good press. Good press brings more research funds."

  "Sounds so exciting."

  "Right now, I'm actually helping a friend with his research, allowing him to use my cabin. He's in the geology department, interested in tsunamis—tidal waves. He believes one struck New Jersey sometime in the past thousand years."

  I ceased to lean on him, devouring this news with interest. "You seem to have the most interesting life," I said. "I could just get lost in the stories you tell."

  "Then I'll be sure to bring you plenty more. I'd love to invite you to visit the cabin. I'll find out if I can. The problem would be my partner's soil samples. They're being tested under various laboratory conditions. Do you know what spores are?"

  I had heard the word. "Something in the air?"

  "Actually, spores come from plants and soil. But they're not good for the lungs, and even I wear a mask around his samples." He proceeded to tell me how there were limestone tracings in all two hundred of his friend's soil samples, which had been taken from as far north as Sussex County, as far south as Cape May, and as far west as Cherry Hill. Limestone tracings indicate that the soil has been underwater, he explained, and the amount of limestone can reveal how long ago the submergence was.

  "My associate keeps coming up with less than a thousand years," he said, "which is indicative of extreme trauma to the area."

  "Wow. A tidal wave in the Atlantic?"

  He went on about their theory, all the while comforting me over the impossibility of it happening again in our lifetime. No stress, just interesting imagery. It made the walk go quickly, and we w
ere actually about two hundred feet from the house when Marg came out in running pants and shoes.

  "I'll leave you in good hands and call tomorrow," he promised me.

  As he turned to leave, Marg said, "Mr. Steckerman spotted Owen and Rain down on the flat rock by the pond. She had stopped crying, he said, and he didn't want to interrupt a conversation that wasn't making her cry by barging in as a visual reminder of what had made her cry."

  "Smart thinking," I said.

  "I'm going to tell them to come in, and then try to get a jog in before it rains."

  I looked at the darkening sky. "You might have to make it a sprint." She looked like the athletic sort.

  "Will you be okay until I get back? Are you symptomatic?" She laid the back of her hand to my face.

  "No. I was coming a little unglued before Henry came to my rescue." I sighed. "I guess you could say I'm not a woods person."

  I watched her jog off in the opposite direction from Henry, then I watched him walk down the trail as far as I could see before I turned to the house ... back to my sickness, my thoughts of Aleese, talk of USIC and medication, and everything that weighed so heavily on my shoulders.

  TWENTY-THREE

  SHAHZAD HAMDANI

  SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002

  3:42 P.M.

  UPSTAIRS

  I AM GOOD AT THE WAITING GAME, but my sense of urgency to hear from Miss Cora makes me impatient. I sit in Tyler's extra desk chair watching him swat at the corners of his ceiling with a long-stick feather duster when I hear the rooster crowing from my room.

  I wander across the hall to my terminal. It seems too soon for Omar, but I remember HotKeys is trying to catch v-spies, which might be too tempting for him to stay away. It is Omar, and as only twenty-some minutes have passed, I feel he has simply left one Internet café and walked a quarter mile to another. He is off of a new server.