A Darker Place (13 page)

From the journal of Anne Waverly (aka Ana Wakefield)

The following morning Anne crossed the border into Arizona, and returned to winter. Working her way south through California, she had seen a concentration of spring akin to the time-lapse film of an opening flower. In the Pacific Northwest the first bulbs had been pushing their determined heads into the cold; by northern California the almond blossoms were out; in the central part of the state the glorious full blush of spring flaunted itself from every apple orchard, every wisteria-draped fence, every front garden, and by the time Anne entered the desert it might have been a Portland summer.

Not, however, in Arizona. The only sign of burgeoning life Anne could see from the window of the roadside coffee shop where she sat with her hands wrapped around a hot cup of coffee was the spray of flame-colored flowers on the tips of the ocotillo cactus, and even those had tufts of snow weighting them down.

For the past half hour she had amused herself with watching snow flurries approach from the west. They began as a dark shadow on the distant rise of the highway, a clearly drawn line that advanced steadily toward her. The thin sunshine would be blotted out and a whirl of thick flakes would pat against the glass for a minute or two before the flurry swept oh by, leaving the road clear but for another dark line moving down the far-off rise.

Driving conditions were disconcerting but not dangerous, as long as Anne took shelter among those other refugees from the northern winters, the trailers from Idaho and the recreational vehicles with Manitoba plates. They all lined up obediently in the slow lane, nose to tail
at three miles above the speed limit while the interstate big rigs thundered past on the outside, sucking at Rocinante and the other frivolous beings with the vacuum of their passing. What had driven Anne to seek the shelter and coffee of the dubious-looking restaurant was not hazard, but comfort: Rocinante’s heater, a vestigial entity at the best of times, seemed to have retreated entirely into the shell behind the back bumper.

The coffee was stale, but the buckwheat pancakes Anne had ordered with so little confidence turned out to be fresh and fulfilled the requirements of their kind to combine a hearty mealiness with the miraculous ability to absorb more maple syrup than any other substance known to science. The café had even disdained the modern notion of miserly glass jiggers of syrup in favor of the traditional metal flip-top jug, so that the final bites Anne lifted with her fork were as thoroughly saturated as the first had been.

It was tempting to stay within reach of this unexpected oasis and use the anticipation of what the cook would do with other diner staples—chicken-fried steak, say, and apple pie à la mode—as a means of getting through the heater repairs (standing with her head in Rocinante’s innards and her backside hanging out in the snow). However, it was not to be; much better to make use of the repairs later, when they could become something more than mere repairs.

With a sigh, Anne dropped a tip on the table, carried her tab to the register, and pushed back out into the winter.

Even with long underwear, her new yellow recycled-soda-bottle pullover, a padded jacket, wool hat, and gloves, the cold was pervasive, and Anne stopped every hour to thaw her fingers over a cup of wayside coffee.

The original plan, Glen’s plan, had been for her to pass through the town of Prescott and meet her local
contact there. However, vague memory told her that Prescott was at a considerably greater altitude than the road she was on now, and a parking-lot conversation with some tourists getting out of a snow-laden camper had confirmed that yes, Prescott was picturesquely deep in snow. However, the couple assured her that the roads were clear and safe all the way to Phoenix, and urged her not to miss the experience. It was an appointment she had in mind, not an experience, but she thanked them anyway.

She did, after all, have chains for the tires, as well as warm blankets and plenty of food if she got stuck, and although she would have welcomed a real excuse to bypass the local agent who was charged with keeping an eye on her, she thought a few inches of snow a coward’s way out.

So she drove to Prescott and found it as pretty as advertised, although the snow in the streets was treacherous, its fresh white purity concealing frozen slush and a substratum of slick ice from an earlier melt. She negotiated a parking place and picked her cautious way into the designated place of meeting, and found a table.

Her contact arrived before her coffee did. He was even younger than she had thought when she spotted him through the steamed-up window of his car in the street outside, and she watched without enthusiasm as he came in the door and ran an elaborately casual eye over the crowded restaurant before doing a theatrical double take at the sight of her. He pasted a look of astonishment onto his fresh young face as he wound through the tables in her direction. An actor, he wasn’t.

He greeted her by her new name, saying his own as if reminding her of it while he pumped her hand up and down and expressed his pleasure and surprise at seeing her in Prescott. He looked about nineteen, red-haired, jug-eared, earnest, and eager to get things right, and she
hadn’t the heart to tell him that probably half the people in the room knew that he was the local FBI man.

Instead, she played her part. She invited him to sit down and maintained her side of the meaningless conversation until he was satisfied that the neighboring tables had no interest in them, at which point he lowered his voice to get down to business. It did not take long to reassure him that yes, she had his phone number memorized; yes, she would call for help if she needed it; yes, she knew how to keep in touch with Glen; and no, she did not need anything. She took a few minutes to explain to him just what she wanted: no interference, no drop-ins, no clever surveillance. His disappointment was profound, but with the authority of Glen McCarthy behind her, she was satisfied that he would not try to put together his own operation behind her back. She relaxed and thanked him nicely, and told him again that she would definitely call if she needed anything at all. Then she left him to pay the tab.

Anne shambled out of the restaurant feeling like a curmudgeon—no, like a bear: a vastly experienced, irritable, wily old bear disturbed too early from a winter’s sleep. She climbed behind the wheel, and paused to tug Rocinante’s stained mirror around. Same old lines on her face, same new brutal haircut on her head; she made a face into the mirror, baring her teeth and growling at her misted reflection. Where on earth did the government find so many fresh-faced youngsters? she asked herself sourly, reaching down to turn the key, waiting for Rocinante’s engine to rattle into life. And why do they all have to be so damned cute?

Christ, Anne, she thought. Don’t be disgusting. What the hell is wrong with you?

It was at that point that she realized that something was awry. Sardonic self-criticism and easy mild profanity should not be her response; those were straight from the
voice of Anne Waverly, and Anne had no business here. Ana Wakefield was proving very tardy in taking her place behind Rocinante’s wheel.

Anne sat in the bus, not aware that the engine was running, staring unseeing at the cracked plastic of the steering wheel and searching internally for the person she had once been: interested, gentle, patient, contemplative Annie, now Ana, a Seeker who believed rather than analyzed, who was open to ideas, not cynical about motivations, concerned with the individual and the immediate, not with patterns and theories.

Ana had to take over; it was as simple as that. There was no way Anne Waverly could act the part in Change without endangering herself and others, because it would be an act, and obvious, and dangerous as hell.

Gradually, imperceptibly, her fingers and toes grew colder and her breathing rate slowed, and the analytical scholar she had forged, through defense as much as inclination, took a small step back, and then another. Ana Wakefield was born in that bus in the snow, as curiosity began to awaken.

First off, she had to forget the details. She had never heard of Steven Change, never seen an aerial photograph of the Arizona compound or a photocopy of its building application, never reviewed the community’s Web site or studied its tax returns. These were all things she should not know; that would only trip her up and get in the way of her innocence.

Instead of facts, she had to concentrate on how she felt about Change, to open herself up and make her mind receptive to its nuances. She already had the impression of Change as a growing, energetic, interesting group of people with a strong leader filled with original ideas. Yes, she knew that Glen had reservations, and yes, an ex-member had complained at great length about the secrecy and limitations he had encountered, but that did
not explain the almost excessive openness the community displayed when it came to the school or to visitors to its frequent retreat sessions, nor did it account for the presence of a number of educated, intelligent people—a professor of economics, a doctor, several schoolteachers, and a rabbi—who had dropped out of their former lives to join the community. Granted, even the most critical of minds could become gullible, open to the point of emptiness when confronted by the mumbo jumbo of another discipline. And she could not forget that boy’s odd and disturbing nightmare drawing of the man in the giant pear-shaped drop surrounded by monsters. Still, Change promised to be sufficiently complex to be interesting.

Who knew? Ana might even learn something there.

Ana became aware that she was sitting in Rocinante staring out at the plowed drifts of snow, and had been for some time. She shook herself mentally and reached for wheel and gearshift, then hastily drew back her bare hands and patted her pockets until she found her gloves. Once they were on, she put Rocinante into first gear, drove out of the parking lot, and turned toward Jerome.

It began to snow along the narrow, mountainous road, but the fat flakes seemed to be blowing about rather than sticking, so she pressed on. The flurries dove toward her hypnotically, a moving tunnel she was driving into. Oncoming cars startled her with their nonchalant speed, but she was also encouraged by their presence—if they contained irritated drivers forced to return by a road closure ahead, one of them anyway would surely give her some sign as to the hopelessness of her progress.

Trees and sheer cliffs and the infinitely reassuring white lines of the road made up Ana’s world, and she started singing to herself as a means of keeping alert and talking aloud to Rocinante about the camber and slope of the surface, the unseen depths off to their right, the speed of the oncoming madmen, and the weather.

Coming around one sharp and completely blind turn, she was plunged into icy horror when her entire windshield was suddenly filled with a Winnebago out of Minnesota, its driver trying to avoid the overhanging cliffs by driving along the centerline. She slapped her hand onto the horn and her foot gingerly on the brakes, bracing for the impact. The driver of the tin box seemed to think her panic unjustified; he clamped his hand onto his own horn in reply, drowning out Rocinante’s thin wail, and pulled his vehicle just enough to the right that they passed each other with nothing more than a tap on the back of Rocinante’s side mirror and a certain momentary insecurity of the right-hand tires.

Ana furiously rolled down the window and shook her fist at the behemoth, but he was already around a corner, gone from sight, and the only recipients of her indignation were the equally frustrated drivers of the mud-stained pickups and four-wheel-drive vehicles caught behind the man from Minnesota. Ana rolled up the window, shivering from the combination of cold and adrenaline, and deliberately forced her mind back to the road ahead.

With her eyes on the pavement, fighting to separate what she needed to see from the constant distraction of the swirling snowflakes, she noticed nothing else of interest the rest of the way down from the mountains aside from a handful of small waterfalls and one valiantly blooming shrub, its pink blossoms looking a bit stunned against the gray stone and white snow.