A Darker Place (21 page)

Two days after the basketball game, on Ana’s fourth day at Change, she drove into Sedona to order the switch for Rocinante’s heater and to fill a shopping list of incidentals that Amelia gave her. “Just a few odd things” nearly filled the bus, and Ana could only be grateful she hadn’t been asked to do a week’s shopping.

She also mailed a packet of photocopied pages from her journal, sent a roll of film off to a mail order film developer that was actually a branch of the FBI, arranged at the post office to have general delivery mail forwarded to Change, and finally wrote a note to the mail service in Boise to give them her new address.

She had found it disconcertingly difficult to write in her journal about Jason, knowing the attention Glen and others would devote to it. She was very aware of how her unexpurgated reaction to the boy would sound: like some strange, distasteful, even bizarre infatuation of a middle-aged woman for a handsome young boy. Leaving him out entirely would have made for a suspicious gap, but writing about him naturally, about an interesting young male person the age of a grandson, was remarkably difficult.

In truth, though, Jason was interesting, even intriguing;
the fact that she was a woman on the brink of menopause did not negate who he was. Still, she downplayed the intensity of her reaction to him, took care to include descriptions of the other boys as well, and trusted that neither Glen and his people nor any potential snoop sent by the Change community to look through her things would notice the difference.

She took dinner in Sedona, in a quiet restaurant with white linen on the tables, where she had red meat and red wine, and two cups of dark coffee with her dessert. Then she drove back down the long, narrow, unlighted road to the Change compound.

At the first hint of morning, Ana rose and set off for her red-rock viewing post.

It had rained the day before, and the morning felt soft against her face. Her footprints had been wiped clean from the sand, but she had been this way several times now and she knew the places where she needed to walk around rather than go straight and be forced to turn back, and she remembered the narrow break between the shrubs that seemed to go down but then turned and took a shortcut to the top.

The last part was a bit of a scramble, around the back of the flat boulder and pulling herself up to the top: It was there that she met Steven. She came up, puffing and grunting with the effort, to find a man sitting on the other side of the rock—seated in
her
place—in full lotus position, watching her appear bit by bit over the edge of the stone slab. She did not notice him at first, since her eyes were watching for handholds and sleepy reptiles, but she plunked herself down in triumph, kneaded her bad knee two or three times to encourage it, and then suddenly became aware of a presence behind her and
whirled around, narrowly avoiding precipitating herself backward off the cliff she had just come up.

“Good heavens,” she said breathlessly. “You startled me.”

“I apologize,” he said in a voice as calm as his posture. “You’re just in time for the sun.”

It had been light for some time, but the high rocks to the east of the compound kept the sun at bay for twenty minutes or so after the shadows stretched long across the adjoining desert. Ana had discovered this her first morning, and had come to anticipate this second, private sunrise into the compound below. Slightly disappointed, but reassured that this man was not a threat, she took a seat at the other edge of the rock from the stranger and waited for the show.

The first thing to light up was the three-bladed wind-powered electrical generator on the ridge of hills west of the compound. The light traveled steadily down the metal struts of the tower until it hit the base and spread, flowing along the low hills and bringing to life the brilliant red rock and dark vegetation, and for a couple of minutes a bright spot of light reflecting a piece of discarded glass.

Now the compound itself was touched. The first part of Change to be illuminated was the peak of the glass dome that capped the hub building. Sunlight spilled gradually down it, round and full and red as the hills, and then the other buildings were lit, and the paths, and the darkness crept away, loosing its hold on the parking area, the square guest quarters, and finally retreating to the very foot of the hill below them. The sun was up. Ana let out a small sigh of satisfaction. The man seemed inclined to agree.

“‘Truly the light is sweet,’” he said in a voice that rolled the syllables, “‘and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.’”

Beginnings are crucial, first impressions far-reaching, and Ana was alive to the knowledge that her success or failure in the Change community began at this moment. A quotation from Ecclesiastes, that crusty Old Testament compiler of epigrams and wisdoms, was not what Ana would have expected, and she ransacked her memory for a worthy reply. She decided on Psalms, to be safe.

“‘Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.’”

“The righteous?” the man said in what she hoped was mock disapproval, and called on Luke, “‘There were certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.’”

“‘When one rules justly over men,’” she told him, “‘he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth upon a cloudless morning.’

“You’re Steven, aren’t you?” she added.

It was the man’s turn to sigh, and although his was a noise of faint regret, as if at a burden resumed, there was a smile at the corners of his eyes. His voice changed as he dropped the game of quotations, becoming lighter and more clearly American.

“I am. And you, I believe, are Ana Wakefield.”

“How did you get up here?” she asked curiously. “I didn’t see any footprints.”

“I levitated.”

Ana could not tell if he expected her to believe this flat statement or if he was making some subtle joke. She smiled uncomfortably, but he seemed occupied with the process of unwrapping his limbs, stretching hard with his hands on his ankles and his face pulled down to touch his knees, and then rising. He stood for a moment, surveying his domain and allowing Ana to run her eyes over his tall, muscular body, and then turned his head to look at her.

“Shall we go down and see if they’ve kept any breakfast
for us? You could probably use some after your excesses of last night.”

“What do you mean?” Ana demanded.

“Meat, alcohol, and strong coffee have a tendency to leave a person needing more the next day. Part of the cycle, of course,” he said with a smile, and turned to go.

The steep climb down left plenty of opportunity for Ana to assemble her thoughts. He was waiting for her at the bottom, and politely let her come up beside him before he set off for the road.

“I hadn’t realized that there was a Change member working in that restaurant,” she said.

“Which restaurant is that?”

“The French place on the road to Cottonwood.”

“La Rouge? As far as I know, none of us work there.”

“So how do you know what I had for dinner?”

He bent his head around and presented her with a grin of pure boyish mischief. “People like you always have a last meal of meat and booze before they confront the decision of whether or not to join us. A last fix of toxins before the threat of the purity regime.”

“People like me,” Ana repeated.

“Seeker Ana? Isn’t that how you think of your role here?”

Ana fought to conceal the deep shock she felt. Did he know who she was? Or was his analysis general? God, she’d never thought her mask could be ripped off so early in an investigation, but the double meaning of Steven’s words was frighteningly close to the truth. It triggered panic alarms and the too-vivid recollection of the last time her duplicity had been suspected.

“My role,” she managed to choke out.

“You’re, what, closing in on fifty? And here you are, still wandering around in your Volkswagen bus, still experimenting
with this and that. Don’t you get tired of it?”

The massive relief Ana felt when she realized his seeming knowledge of her was mere speculation made her want to sit down suddenly. It also served as a sharp warning against complacency: He could not have been back in the compound for more than a few hours, yet he knew all about her, one insignificant woman who happened to wander in off the street. The man’s intelligence-gathering service was as efficient as it was inconspicuous; she must never let down her guard.

“I haven’t found what’s right for me yet.”

He heard the quaver in her voice, if not the cause for it, and his smile deepened.

“So you thought you would try Change, to see if we are ‘right for you.’”

“Actually, I came here more or less by accident. If there are any accidents,” she added dutifully. “I was in Sedona and I met Carla at the crafts gallery. She invited me to stay here for a couple of days while I fixed the heater in my bus. I’ve been trying to help out in the kitchen and filing papers in the office, so as not to be a burden.”

“But you will be on your way when you have warmth again.” It was not a question.

“Well, I thought I would. I don’t really have any definite plans.”

He ignored the implied request for an invitation to stay. “The real reason Carla asked you here was because of Dulcie. She doesn’t talk much for anyone but her brother. And now you.”

“I gathered that, afterward; Teresa said something about how disturbed Dulcie had been when she and her brother first came here. I don’t know why the child decided to talk to me.”

“She may simply have been ready, and you were
there,” Steven said. Ana would have liked to claim credit for an ability to restore the voluntarily mute to speech, but she had to admit that he was probably right.

“She seems an intelligent child.”

“It is her brother who interests me,” he said bluntly, a sweeping statement that managed to discount not only Dulcie, but Ana and even Carla at one stroke. She stifled a protest, realized what she was doing, and stifled, too, her sudden amusement at the exchange. Steven did not notice, just kept walking and talking. “Have you met Jason?”

“Briefly.”

“I think that is the most that can be said for any of us, that we’ve met Jason briefly. He came to us on a court referral last month, some minor brush with the law but with no parental presence or relatives to assume custody. The boy has been handed a bucket of shit by life, and he’s managed to turn it to pure steel. It will be interesting to see what he can make now that he has been given the proper tools.”

They were nearing the compound now, and very shortly their private conversation would end. Ana turned over her options. She needed to do something that would make an impression on Steven, set her apart from all the other Ana Wakefields who drifted in to sit at his feet. This was a natural human urge, to demonstrate one’s superiority to the masses, but it was also essential for Ana’s more covert progress. She caught at the phrase he had used concerning Jason and cobbled it together with an assortment of hints and images that Change had set floating through her subconscious, and came out with a lucky hit.

“Funny how some kids are burned up by life, while others in the same situation are just hardened.”

Somehow they had come to a halt and were standing face-to-face. And a very beautiful face it was, too, Ana
realized, strong, square, and brown, with deep brown eyes, sun-streaked hair curling down onto the collar of his jacket, and a closely trimmed beard with faint flecks of white in the mustache. A lot of religious men, be they cult leaders or ordained ministers, cultivated the Jesus look, but this one was Jesus the carpenter, not Jesus the wimp, a six-foot-three-inch workingman, with an emphasis on man.

The sheer masculine power of Steven’s personality set off all kinds of alarms in the back of Ana’s mind, even as Seeker Ana was melting into a pliable mess willing to sign away any part of her soul the man might desire.

Hold on, Ana
, she told herself sharply.
Watch your ass, you dumb female
.

Something changed in the back of Steven’s eyes. There was a slight but definite shift from aloofness to interest in his manner toward her, perhaps even a hint of respect.

“That is very true,” he said, and then, “you’ve taught kids, I think?”

“I’ve been a teacher on and off during my life. And a student.”

“I think you ought to stay with us for a while, Seeker Ana,” he said with the air of making a pronouncement. “You might learn something here. You might even have something to teach us.”

She had to be satisfied with that, because David Carteret, the woodworker and shop teacher, was coming out of the hub building, had spotted them, and was approaching with purpose in his stride.

But before David reached them, Steven paused to drop one more little bombshell.

“I hope your knee isn’t too sore from the climb.”

To give the impression of omniscience, a person had only to pick up some small clue (a slight limp or a wariness toward the community) and present it casually as a
known fact with long-understood implications. Palm readers and sideshow telepaths did it all the time, but Ana had never known a spiritual leader better at it than Steven.

“First levitation, now mind reading,” she replied. “Are you going to tell me how I hurt the knee, too?”

“You would probably call it an accident,” he answered thoughtfully.

He was really very good; naturally she would call it an accident, if for nothing other than to deflect interest, though whether it was an automobile or skiing mishap, the act of an assailant, or an accident of birth, only she—and by implication, Steven—would know.

Yes, Ana would have to be very careful around this man, but at least he represented a worthy adversary.

David came up to them then, with a problem for Steven, but before he turned to go, Steven paused to look deeply into her eyes. “I hope you stay with us, Ana. If you do, you will be expected to strip yourself of the ornament you are wearing around your neck.”

When Ana got back to the compound, she removed the moon from her neck and added it to the contents of the buckskin medicine pouch hanging from Rocinante’s rearview mirror. That afternoon Ana moved into a room in the central compound; the next morning she was given a job.