Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (78 page)

    
The music was savagely propulsive, but the
movements of the faithful were as tightly choreographed as a Middle Eastern
Falun Gong, and some appeared to defy gravity. One movement, at which the women
were especially adept, required shaping the spine into an S-curve, with the
hips far forward, the midback bent just as far to the rear, and the shoulders
and head nearly aligned with the pelvis. It had the look of an evasive maneuver
for a knife fight. The most remarkable, however, began with a crouch, followed
by an extraordinary upward surge of energy, at the peak of which the
fidais
’ feet left the ground and
remained in midair for a full count of five. The collective clap Raszer had
heard from the rock face was what brought them down to earth again.

    
If this was Islam, it was a very exotic
sort. But then, the faithful were far from typical. They might be fearsome as a
group, but not one looked individually threaten-ing, which, Raszer supposed,
was precisely the idea. Any of them, without raising the slightest alarm, might
pass through the gates of the Magic Kingdom with a bomb strapped to their
belly.
Physical beauty, native
intelligence, and a certain malleability
.

    
The curtains at the rear of the dais were
drawn apart, and the portal was flanked by two more forms in black. Into the
breach stepped a magnificent figure in robes of lustrous green silk, his face
masked by a full veil. A roar went up.

    
The figure to whom the
fidai
were pledging allegiance could only be that of the Old Man of
the Mountains himself.

    
Summoning up the last measure of strength
in his right arm, Raszer pulled himself higher into the gap in the wall—and
lost his foothold in the process. As he sought to regain his position, he
looked down briefly. Returning his eye to the notch, he received a shock to the
brain stem. Standing opposite him on the parapet, his own eye to the chink in
the wall, was one of the black-robed lieutenants.

    
Raszer’s fingers lost their grip, his toe
slipped from its crack, and he fell backward, the slack rope only barely
breaking his fall.

    
Near the base, scrambling to avoid the
precipice, he slammed headfirst into the stone. With his legs dangling
helplessly over the edge of the cliff, the lights in his mind dimmed,
sputtered, and then went out. Raszer went limp in the harness. He was
semiconscious when they reeled him in.

    
He
knew that somewhere, it must be spring, and that he had a large lump on his
head. It didn’t hurt, although it should have. Nothing hurt, but he knew he
wasn’t paralyzed because he was able to feel the soft ground beneath him. There
was birdsong above and a bright light in his eyes. Raszer closed them and tried
to remember himself.

    
When he did, what he spoke was a single
word. “Katy?”

    
Now there was a scent, up close to his
nostrils, bittersweet and familiar. He opened his eyes and saw only a kind of
splotched, wet redness. His vision was occluded, his depth perception way out
of whack. The red object seemed to be located in the center of his skull.
Finally, he fixed the scent. Pomegranate. He was being revived with the perfume
of a freshly cut pomegranate. The hand holding it was attached to an arm, and
beyond the arm was a face, blurry but feminine.

    
“Katy?” he said again.

    
He tried alternating between right eye and
left, and was finally able to fix her nose with his right. Then he closed both
lids. Time passed. He might have drifted.

    
When he opened his eyes again, the hand and
the face had left his frame of vision. Raszer laughed softly, and then wondered
where the laugh had come from. Then he realized he was high. Very high. How had
they gotten him high? And when? He felt a trickle of panic, but it ebbed
quickly in the blossom-scented warmth.

    
There was some rustling, and the sense of a
new presence. He glimpsed a face, and, as with the first scent of the
pomegranate, it was foreign and familiar at the same time. There was a hand on
his thigh. Warm breath. Suddenly, a series of neural circuits closed and he
registered the nose, the mouth, and the hair, as if digitally reassembling a
face from a damaged photo. He pushed himself up and took her head in his hands.

    
“You’re Katy,” he said.

    
She shook her head. “Am not,” she said, and
began to caress him.

    
“Are too,” he said. “You answered to it.”

    
“My name is Aïcha.”

    
“It suits you,” he said. “Did you choose
it?”

    
She shook her head no.

    
“That’s too bad. A person should choose her
own new name.”

    
A scarlet macaw preened its feathers on the
branch of a plum tree not six feet from where she sat. Beyond that, a small,
clear stream trickled over crystals of green quartz. On its near bank were
varieties of orchid he had never seen before, and on the far side, a skinny
young man lay curled into a bare-breasted girl.

    
The garden appeared to have no boundaries.
It was a superb optical illusion, an overturned bowl with a cyclorama of pale
blue sky stretched from horizon to horizon and a sun—or what looked like a
sun—pulsing heat through cirrus clouds near the zenith. No physical structure,
no matter how grand, could ever have enclosed such a space. As Raszer’s pupils
contracted and returned some depth of field to his vision, he realized there
were hundreds of pairs of eyes on him, staring like jungle creatures from the
extravagant undergrowth. It was Polynesia as imagined by Henri Rousseau.

    
“This can’t really be heaven,” he said, “or
they wouldn’t have let me in.”

    
He thought he saw a smile. It revealed
itself stealthily, like the royal blue underplumage on the macaw’s wing. Like
new skin beneath a bruise.

    
“Do you want something?” she asked, as she
had probably been taught to.

    
“Like what, Aïcha?”

    
“You know,” she said, and moved her hand a
few inches up his thigh.

    
“Oh, that,” he answered, shaking his head.
“No. But I am thirsty.”

    
She rose and padded over to the stream. A
cacophony of birdsong burst from a nearby kumquat tree. A few of the more
curious girls had ventured closer to observe the stranger. He felt like a
sailor beached after a shipwreck. It was unsettling—the natives could eat him
if they chose—but, at the same time, not entirely unpleasant.

    
Katy returned with water in a scooped-out
pomegranate shell. It was sweet and cool, with the faintest alkaline
undertaste. He took one swallow, rinsed the rest, and spat it out. He became
aware of the lulling, almost musical sound of trickling water everywhere. It
was as if the quartz over which the water flowed was tuned to consonant
frequencies and resonated by the current. “I can see how this place—and
whatever they put in the water—could weaken your memory.” He drew himself up to
a sitting position and took her hand.

    
“Listen, Katy,” he said. “They’re not going
to let me stay here long. There are some things I need you to know. I’ve seen
your mother . . . ”

    
A muscle twitched beneath her left eye.

    
“She’s keeping a safe place for you. She
hasn’t forgotten you. Do you remember her, Katy?”

    
She shook her head and rocked back. From
the far side of the little stream, two girls with plaited hair drew near enough
to listen and sat down cross-legged on the mossy ground. Very soon, a third
emerged from beneath the kumquat tree, while a boy of Dante’s age and build
looked on protectively.
 
She appeared to
have an entourage.

    
 
“I’m
a queen, you know,” she said, matter-of-factly.

    
Raszer smiled. Now that his vision had
cleared, he saw how she both was and wasn’t like Ruthie. The structural beauty
of the face made them close kin, but where Ruthie was the wench, Katy was every
bit the lady in the high window. Her skin was the color of cream; her eyes were
large but heavy-lidded and languid.

    
“Who made you a queen, Katy?” he asked.

    
“Why do you keep calling me Katy?” she
asked. “Katy’s dead.”

    
“No. I’m looking at her. But if you’d
rather I called you Aïcha, that’s fine.”

    
“I couldn’t rather because I am,” she said.
“Or, rather, would be if you’d quit trying to stumble me.”

    
“Ah . . . there you go: ‘stumble’ you.
That’s from the Witnesses. That’s when an outsider comes and tries to trick you
out of your faith. You’re remembering.”

    
“No. I’m forgetting,” she recited. “Forget
to remember, remember to forget.”

    
“Is that what they’ve taught you here? What
else have they taught you?”

    
She gave no answer but looked around, as if
for approval to continue the dialogue. Raszer kept his eyes on her, but was
peripherally aware that he had attracted a small audience. He’d have to move
quickly. “Ruthie’s here,” he said.

    
Katy narrowed her eyes. “Where?”

    
He motioned beyond the false sky. “Where I
came from. Outside.”

    
“What are you then . . . God?”

    
“Not by a long way. But a priest gets to
borrow God’s eyes once in a while.”

    
She drew back. “You’re a priest?”

    
“Don’t be ashamed. Priests are men, too.”

    
“Not here.”

    
“What do you mean?”

    
Circumstances permitting, she might have
chosen to answer the question, or she might not have. As it was, Raszer saw her
eyes widen as the words left his throat, and an instant later he was seized
from behind and dragged to his feet by two men in pale green robes. A third
stood by, holding a Kalashnikov. In a muffled tenor, he ordered, “Bring him” in
Arabic.

    
Raszer looked back over his shoulder as he
was taken away, hoping to make a parting connection with Katy. If he was now to
be granted an opportunity to make his plea for her, he wanted to feel that in
some small way she might be complicit. She had risen to her feet. Behind her,
the other girls who’d been listening in had come forward, and a group of the
males flanked them jealously.

    
A few things became marginally clear as
Raszer was removed from the Garden: Despite her altered state, she knew who
Katy Endicott was, even if only in the third person. The entire conversation had
likely been witnessed from somewhere beyond the perimeter. She was alive, and
real enough, but she was also a game piece and had been used to bait him. This
he had to remember: Play the game.

    
They passed through a small grove of
persimmon trees, then into a darker stretch of junglelike foliage, and finally
into total blackness. When the light returned, they had left paradise behind
and were in the bowels of the castle.

    
He couldn’t get a fix on the time of day.
The corridor was narrow, and the walls of ancient rock sweated with damp. He
assumed they were in a subterranean level of the fortress, within the mountain
itself. There was an acrid smell of urine and other effluents: the odors of
fear. Raszer’s mood went black. He wasn’t being led to the throne room to share
mint tea with the monarch. He was to be interrogated.

    
It
was a small room. If your aim is to squeeze someone, you don’t want to give
them a sense of space. The odor was stronger here, inseparable from the mineral
scent of the stone. To his relief, there were no visible instruments of
torture. There were two crude wooden chairs, and a rear door of rusted iron.
They led him to one of the chairs and stood back. Presently, the iron door
swung open heavily and a fourth man entered and sat down opposite him. He was
not what Raszer had expected, and then again, he was.

    
He was five feet, six inches of compact
flesh in a Green River Security officer’s uniform, had graying blond locks, and
was pushing sixty. He wore a Maltese cross around his neck and had “Jesus Loves
Me” tattooed on his right forearm. Heavy folds of skin dropped over his eyes.
He was the mercenary commander from the crossroads.

    
“American?” he asked in a Midwestern
accent.