Cathedral of Dreams (27 page)

Two other men and a woman entered. They were all dressed in the uniform of the day. Both men were smaller-built than Rodger, and the woman was even more petite. She had shoulder-length blonde hair. The men both had short gray hair.

Rodger stood and motioned for the others to sit down. They stepped around Keith and went all the way to the other side of the table to sit facing him. “Doctor Mike, Rene, and Charles,” Rodger said as introduction. He turned his attention back to Keith. “And this is Keith.”

The others nodded. Keith raised a hand and said, “Hi.”

“May I?” Doctor Mike asked while reaching for Keith's hand.

“Sure.”

The man took Keith's hand and turned it so that he could see the wound where the chip had been removed. “Healing nicely,” he said.

Rene didn't wait until Keith had his hand back to ask her first question, “Who is the boy with the blood seeping out of his forehead?”

“It's a bullet hole,” Keith said.

The team looked at one another and then back at Keith. “How do you know that?”

“I don't know for sure. That's just what I thought. We all think that way.”

“All? You've been in contact with others who have seen the boy?” Rene said.

“Escapees. Yes.”

She looked down the table at Rodger. “How many residents have left the building?”

“Last count that we know of was one hundred and six,” Rodger said.

“I never met that many, but it could be so,” Keith said. “Actually, that's what I wanted to tell you. Many of the escapees are holed up with a man named Bradley who is planning an attack on Newcity.”

“When?” Charles said.

“I don't know. But now that I got away from him, we suspect soon.”

Charles got up from the table and made his way to the door. “I'll take care of this now. You can go on. I'll be back.”

Rodger nodded his approval then leaned his elbows on the table. He breathed a sigh before asking Keith his next question. “What else can you tell us?”

“I don't know much.”

“Tell us more about the bullet hole, as you call it,” Rene said. “How did you come up with that?”

“I didn't come up with it. That's just what it looked like and how I started to think of it. Like I said, the others saw it the same way,” Keith said.

“Did they recognize who the boy was? Did you?”

Keith stared at her. Her eyes were blue and inviting, but the skin around her eyes, her cheekbones, and her mouth were tight with what looked like long hours of stress, and not so inviting. He lowered his eyes and mumbled, “You know who the boy is.”

“But we don't know where he came from,” she said.

“Here,” the angel with one wing said from the other end of the table.

Keith glanced at her when she spoke.

“No,” Rene said. “Is he in here?” She looked up at the security camera in the corner. “This is being taped?” she said more as a question than a statement.

Rodger nodded to assure her.

“How are you doing this?” Doctor Mike asked. “You're not chipped.”

“I'm not doing anything,” Keith said. “I was hoping that you could tell me what was going on.” He realized that they had never seen the angel, only the boy, and wondered, just as they did, whether the image was being recorded or not.

“The new chips,” Rodger said.

Doctor Mike looked distressed. “You're always trying to blame it on the technology, but this is not the chip. There is something different about him.” The doctor pushed back his chair but didn't get up. “For God's sake, he doesn't have a chip.”

Rodger did get up. He went to the door and opened it. Stepping outside he yelled, “Danny, is that boy's IFI in the conference room?”

“No sir. It's only the four of you.”

Rodger came back into the room. “But you see him,” he said to Keith.

“No. He's not here.”

Rene glanced at the end of the room. “Someone's in here. I can see it in the way you glance over and in your expression. Who is it, then? Who do you see?”

“The angel,” Keith said answering the question.

The angel shook her head.

“What?” Keith said.

“An angel? What's he look like?” Rene asked.

“Never mind,” Keith said.

The angel stepped around the table and Keith followed her movements. Rene watched him closely as he did so. It was almost as though she could see the angel too, by following what Keith did. The angel said, “I'm sorry about this, Keith. It's what you might call self-discovery.”

Keith closed his eyes.

“What's he saying?” Rene asked.

“What's she saying,” Keith corrected her.

Doctor Mike and Rodger sat quietly as Rene probed with another question. “What does she look like? Does she look like Nellie?”

Keith laughed. “No, nothing like Nellie. Nellie's dark skinned.”

Rodger jumped from the table and went outside the door. Keith heard him tell someone to find all the dark skinned women in the complex and to round them up.

“You can't do that. She didn't do anything,” Keith said when Rodger came back.

“She's an accomplice. Now, what else is there? Why can't we see this angel?” He tapped a finger on the table.

Rene leaned back in her chair and glared at Rodger. “You are bent on screwing this up, aren't you? Would you just let me do my job here?”

Keith looked back and forth at them. He knew now that they couldn't see or hear he angel, so he directed his next statement directly to her. “Is Nellie going to be okay?”

The others stopped talking and pinned their attention to Keith.

The angel shrugged her shoulders. “That may be up to you,” she said.

“How? You can't tell me that now. I've been following you. You've got to help.”

“Oh my God,” he heard Rene whisper. “They're arguing.”

“Then tell me what's going on so I can tell them,” he said.

“They won't have any idea what you're talking about. They don't now,” she said.

“Then help me so that I'll know.”

“I can only help if you know what to do. Don't you see?” She turned around to go back to the other end of the room.

“What kind of angel are you?” Keith said. “You only have one wing.”

“Wings?” Rodger said.

“You tell me what kind of angel I am,” she said. “You tell me what I'm supposed to do. Tell me, and I'll do it,” she said.

“Get me out of here.” Keith stood.

Rodger ran for the door and blocked it. “You're going nowhere.”

Keith turned to the angel and motioned to her with his palms up as though asking her what she was going to do next.

“When it's time,” she said. Then the angel faded away as though she had never been in the conference room at all.

“Dammit,” Keith said. He looked around the table at the others.

“She's gone,” Rene said. She stared at Keith. “You're disappointed. Your,” she seemed to have trouble saying the next word, “angel … has left you.”

“She'll be back,” Keith said.

“You're not sure of that, are you?” Rene said.

Keith wanted to cry. His emotions were jumbled. He had been led to this place, now he wanted out and there was no going anywhere. “I'm hungry,” he said quietly.

Rene reached for his hand, but he pulled both of them onto his lap. She looked up at Rodger, still guarding the door. “He isn't going anywhere. Get him some food.”

The food came fairly quickly, and for the next fifteen minutes everyone stayed quiet as he ate a sandwich. This gave Keith a chance to think about what was going on. He had been shown how to escape, had collected the others, and had reentered without any trouble. Well, hardly any trouble. And he had been guided to this central office. The people here wanted answers from him, yet he had none. He asked his angel and she had no answers. Keith sat up in his chair and pushed the plate to the side. He took a drink of water they had brought with the sandwich.

The others leaned toward him. “What is it?” Rene asked.

“You have the answers,” Keith said. “I'm here to get the answer from you.”

“Preposterous,” Rodger said about the same time that Doctor Mike said, “Insane.”

“Perhaps not,” Rene said. “It's like a puzzle, isn't it? A riddle. None of us has the whole piece.” She looked over to the others then back to Keith. “Only you can solve it. Somehow, your openness will allow you to put the pieces together like we can't do. To us, the answer is ineffable. That's it, isn't it?”

Keith glared at her. “Tell me what you know.”

“We don't know much,” she said. “At least we don't think we do.”

“I'm not sure I like this,” Rodger said.

“Let her go.” Mike sat back in his chair and said, “Go on,” to Rene.

“About ten years ago, we began to get the IFI of the boy. We didn't know what it was. We sent security forces to find him, but he disappeared every time we got close.” She shrugged, “The cameras can't see everything. Many of them don't even work anymore. We didn't replace them because it didn't matter. Everyone was under control. The chips worked great.

“Anyway, it took us a while to figure out that the boy was caused by some sort of a glitch in the computer system. We had our best software guys trying to figure out where the image came from, but no one could find a blip of any kind in the programming.” She stopped talking. “Any questions so far?”

“Did you recognize the boy at that time?” Keith said.

“No. He was still an IFI. You've got to understand. Those things show up every once in a while. With a system this large and this complex you get all sorts of things happening. We'd get images of these spheres that would show up. They looked like bubbles. Or streaks of light. Rainbows across the screens. Little things that we didn't worry much about. You get used to them. But the boy was human. That was a complicated image to create. At first the IFIs of the boy were a little fuzzy and only appeared once in a while. They got clearer though, and eventually they were showing up a lot. Never two places at once. It was like he really was human.” She tapped the table in front of her similar to how Rodger did earlier. “And to make things worse, a few years ago the first group of people escaped. We got a glimpse of them following the boy. That's when we started to worry.

“We had everyone on staff psychologically tested to be sure this wasn't an inside job.”

Keith waited for her. He knew she was deciding how to go on. “Everything,” he said, “if you expect me to help you figure this out.” So far, he had nothing but the fact that the system had created an image. So what?

“Bradley worked for us then. He didn't test well. We asked him to leave.” She looked down the table at Rodger. “You have to understand. We hire people from outside quite often. As we need them. Bradley was good. But this wasn't the place for him. He had a lot of family outside and didn't agree with what we were doing in here,” she said.

“What
are
you doing in here?”

“At the beginning, running a business, a very symbiotic business with the outside world. Now, Newcity is like its own country. We work to maintain ourselves. We import and export less and less, we…”

“He doesn't need to know our economic situation, Rene. Just get on with the escapees and the IFI sightings,” Rodger said. “And wrap this up soon. I'm not sure I like it.”

“Fine,” Rene said, turning back to Keith.

Doctor Mike interrupted the conversation. “These guys thought it was the new chips. We're always updating them. But the first escapees were all old-chip residents. So, that couldn't be the problem. But you need to tell him that.” He jerked his head toward Rodger.