The Cauldron (6 page)

“Jerry.”

Carl felt his head shaking side to side. “Sorry.” The urge to run tugged at his knees, at his ankles. “My mistake.” And then he gave in. Spinning on his heel, Carl pushed his way through the door, and, almost running, hurried out to the street and flung himself into his car, closing his eyes while the terror ebbed. Terror? Over a small social error?

The face of the man seemed to hang in the air before him. And the face was familiar. It did look like someone he had known, but …

With unsteady fingers, he started the engine. “
What
is going on?” he asked himself aloud, putting the car into gear and pulling out onto Main. Only then did he begin to relax and not be afraid that at any second the man would appear next to him and grab his shoulder. Only then did he start to wonder, logically, what was going on. He retraced his route past the courthouse and turned toward the Adler. How could Charlie Marshall be in his sixties? How could Marshall’s father be dead twenty-some years? Carl
remembered
the father, a man in his forties at the most, joking with his customers. That was Carl’s senior year in high school. 1966. Thirteen years ago this past June.

No matter what logic he tried to use, nothing made sense. Unless someone was deliberately trying to fool him, to play some impossible elaborate practical joke, there was no way to explain a sixty-some-year-old Charlie Marshall, whose father had been dead for—what?—twenty years or so. It was as if someone had taken a chunk of his past, twisted it almost—but not quite—out of all recognition, and shoved it back at him.

He’d found a piece of his past, the first real piece older than the job with Harry, and it had dissolved into something else, something surrealistic and unrecognizable.

Like Shelly’s face in the nightmares …

Then, as he closed the motel room door behind him and slumped down into the flimsily-made cushioned chair facing the room’s TV set, he remembered why he had come to Morgantown in the first place. He remembered the lecture in Harry’s office about his substandard work, and about reviewing employee records … Harry’s comment about him not existing …

Within minutes he’d fallen asleep.

O O O

Looking north along the Nickel Plate tracks, the flames were visible, turning the early morning sky an eerie, bitter orange. The blaze had started near the blacksmith shop and quickly spread, so much for it to eat … hay, canvas, wood. A bear—the Divine Bear—reared back on its haunches and roared in anger at the conflagration.

Carl ran through the smoke, which was as thick and choking as the fog that wrapped around his nightmares. He caught images in the smoke: animals and people running frantically, clothes and fur catching fire. His heart pounded in time with his feet as his hands tried to peel back the plumes. What was he looking for?

Sarah?

Ellen?

Shelly?

Tina?

An elephant trumpeted in panic. Lions and tigers roared. The Divine Bear raged at the flames. Monkeys screamed and dogs barked, and all the while the smoke grew thicker like the fog. And despite the heat that rose through the bottoms of his feet, he felt chilled.

Sirens intruded, sounding mournful and soft amid the cacophony that played out around him. Soot clogged his throat and his eyes burned. He fought for breath and sat bolt upright.

Carl awakened to hear someone pounding the wall near his head, yelling at him to keep it down.

“I’ll call the manager!” a muffled voice barked. “Shut up!”

Carl stared at the dim ceiling, seeing it glow and fade, glow and fade as headlights passing on the highway filtered through the closed curtains.

Had he been snoring? That loud?

All he knew was that he was cold, cold, cold, and could remember only the terror and the fog and the faces that were not Shelly’s.

***

Chapter 10

Melusine

This time, finally, the body she inhabited seemed unaware of her presence. Whether that was due solely to her own increased delicacy of touch or was partly because of the distractions of the chaotic surroundings, Melusine was not certain. But whatever the reason, the links were becoming easier to achieve, each more complete than the last so that the world became more vivid. She could concentrate now on smaller and smaller land areas in her quest for accessible hosts, of which she had already merged with several. Or perhaps she would continue to use this one.

From the moment the navigator had told her they were at the edge of the planet’s startlingly intense
otherspace
halo, she had known how to adjust. Her talents had begun to behave almost normally—despite the watershadow that dominated this world for her as its
otherspace
halo did for the navigator. The fit between her mind and that of each new host would continue to grow closer, and soon, as her mind gained access to their deepest thoughts as well as the full measure of their senses, the dissonance that surrounded her would become an intelligible language, the “music” something that made sense, although not in any straightforward, logical way.

Then, at last, she could—would have to—fully undertake the search for the legendary—and more than a little terrifying—Delphoros.

Above her the augmentor stirred, its cloud of cilia expanding like the fur of a restless cat, and Melusine felt a timid response in the fringes of her own defenseless consciousness.

She had found a city wrapped around this particular host she’d stumbled into—massive buildings of glass and metal and stone towered on all sides. An endless stream of other beings buffeted the female body she now inhabited, while a separate stream of beings in brightly-colored machines poured past her on the left. The sounds overwhelmed her—the screeches and blats that came from the moving machines, music that came from everywhere and nowhere blending in a haze of disharmony, so loud that the beings passing by her had to chatter in shouts so they could hear each other.

“Concert,” was the word foremost in this host’s mind. She’d been going to something called a concert at something called Milwaukee Summerfest when Melusine intercepted her. This woman’s body was so easy to fold into as its senses were dulled by something she’d recently smoked. A bitter taste lingered on the back of her tongue. Thoughts of popular tunes danced in this host’s head, and Melusine picked her way through it. Something called “The Grateful Dead” last summer. This year her host intended to watch Charles Aznavor and Jane Olivor, though they weren’t her favorite fare; she intended to rock to the secondary acts. But Melusine didn’t understand the concepts and had other plans, and she pushed the woman’s useless thoughts away.

The smells on the sidewalk were intense—the belch of acrid little clouds coming from the machines; the scent of sweat on some of the beings, a pong that clung to the dirtiest of them; sickly-sweet fragrances on a few that came close and then moved on. There was the odor of food, too, seeping out of windows overhead and coming from street corners where beings handed out steaming morsels she had no words for, but which made her host form’s mouth water.

Overwhelming, all of it, but at the same time wildly amazing and interesting and unsettling.

She struggled to take it all in, and in the end focused on ignoring as much as she could, relegating it to the back of her complex mind. Under control, her breathing became regular.

The Bright One had been here, on this very spot—though how long ago she couldn’t say. The navigator had confirmed it, pinpointing energy surges and patterns and separating human signatures from those that were not. And so this was a starting place, and from here Melusine would narrow the search, and use this host or others to sort through layers of this world in an effort to confirm if the Bright One still lived. And, if so, where he could be found. The navigator was certain that Delphoros or someone with similar abilities was within their grasp.

“Delphoros,” Melusine tried the word out on her borrowed bitter-tasting tongue. She hoped it was Delphoros and not another. She wanted it to be someone from Elthoran, and not a human, who would have a decidedly shorter lifespan.

Delphoros was a legend among her people, born in
otherspace
to a shipkeeper who’d mated with a navigator before his final alterations and immersion in the tank. A fifth-generation traveler, navigation studies were effortless to him; Delphoros’s instructors believed that his birth in
otherspace
, that part of space that was neither real nor solid, had somehow infused him with abilities beyond those of his peers. Melusine had read the records: no other Elthoran had been born in
otherspace—
despite many attempts to engineer such. As Delphoros grew, he did not hesitate to join the service, and he agreed to become a navigator, despite the alterations that would eventually rob him of the use of his legs and prevent him from breathing air, forever trapping him in the nutrient fluid of a navigation tank.

Could he still be alive and be outside his tank on this planet the residents called Earth? He must! Else the navigator’s readings of energy fields were faulty. Did Delphoros’s legs function? Was he lost so early in his life as a navigator that he had not yet been fully changed? Had his muscles not completely atrophied? Did he walk among these beings as one of them? Or was he pushed about like an invalid? Alive or dead, where was he now? He’d been on this very spot. But where was he now?

Melusine knew that Delphoros had undertaken only a dozen or so flights from Elthor through
otherspace
when his ship had been lost and a distress beacon sent out from this very world. The message took a great while to reach their home world, as it did not have the benefit of shaving time through
otherspace
. But when it did finally arrive—a few hundred years after the crash by their reckoning, her rescue ship was dispatched. Delphoros was too precious not to retrieve. He was too powerful to relegate to their history. He was crucial to Elthor’s continued use and exploration of
otherspace
. And with no prospective navigators left, he was necessary.

Melusine felt blessed that she’d been assigned to this mission. Her host’s chest swelled with pride at the thought of its importance.

“Delphoros,” she pronounced the word stronger with her host’s lyrical, feminine voice. “I will find Delphoros.” And Melusine expected to be richly rewarded if—when—she succeeded.

She’d committed his records to memory, concentrating on his few weaknesses. Delphoros’s instructors had remarked about his too-high regard for all life. One noted that while he supported Elthor’s
otherspace
explorations, he felt sorry for the ships they traveled in, believing them living beings that had been enslaved rather than lesser creatures to be dominated and exploited for their ability to haul freight and people through space and
otherspace
. So his good heart was his strongest weakness. Would that help her find him?

No doubt he’d tried to save the living ship when it crashed. Perhaps he was with its body still—as neither could it have long survived the injuries of a crash nor lived through the centuries like Elthorans could. Had he buried it somewhere to hide it from the people of this world? Was it buried beneath this very sidewalk?

Melusine bored deeper into her host’s murky mind so she could better control its body. She swung her arms in wide circles and clenched and unclenched the fingers. The bits of metal and crystals around the fingers bothered her, and so she shed them onto the pavement.

“I will find Delphoros with your help,” she told the woman.

***

Chapter 11

Carl Johnson

Monday morning looked better, the sky blue and cloudless. Carl was out of the motel a little after seven-thirty, shaved and showered, wearing a fresh short-sleeved Oxford cloth shirt and slacks to look presentable for Omega.

I’ll go there right after breakfast, he thought. Talk to Personnel, straighten them out. Get addresses for guys I worked with if that’s the only way. Be on my way back home by afternoon.

At the downtown McDonald’s he dawdled over an Egg McMuffin and coffee, partly because he was absolutely certain neither the restaurant nor the menu had been part of his hometown a dozen years before … and yet the place had an “age” to it. Leaving, he had a qualm: would the plant really be where the phone book, only two days ago, had said?

It was indeed, he discovered twenty minutes later.

And then again, it wasn’t.

This Omega was a dingy, grimy factory on a dead-end street next to a railroad yard. His Omega had been a sleek one-story building in a spic-and-span industrial park just inside the city limits. The two Omegas resembled one another less than did the two Tip-Top Cafes.

Hauling himself from the car, Carl pushed through a door in a glass-enclosed entry that looked as if it might lead him to someone who could deal with the public.

The woman at the guard desk was friendly and clearly wanted to be helpful, but there wasn’t much she could do after Carl had explained himself.

“We were bought up by Harrison Tucker Industries about six years ago,” she said. “They took all the personnel records up to their corporate headquarters in Minneapolis. Said they were going to put everything in their central computer. I could call them, I guess.”

Carl looked at the computer on the desk. A half-finished letter showed on the screen. She saw him looking and moved to hide it. “I’m sort of a secretary, too,” she said. “That’s company business.”

“Would you mind calling Minneapolis?”

“Well … no. I guess not. What was your Omega employee number?”

Employee number?
“Would that be my Social Security number?”

“Oh, no, we don’t use that. We’ve got our own system of numbers. Have had for years.”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember,” Carl admitted.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson.” The woman shrugged in apology. “Without the Omega number, I really can’t do anything for you. That’s how our records are accessed. It’s not even really worth calling. At least on my end of things.”

“I see.” He sighed. “Say, when did Omega move here?”

“Move? Omega’s always been here. Right in this spot. At least for the twenty years I’ve worked for them.”

She blinked at him. “Oh! I bet you worked out in the industrial park! That’s where our headquarters were before HTI bought us out.”

“That’s right.” Carl felt a sudden grin dimple his cheeks. At least he could drive by and make sure
something
he remembered was right. “Is the building still out there?”

“No, Mr. Johnson, I’m sorry.” Her smile turned rueful. “Half the park was ripped down for an office tower just last year. The Omega building was one of the first ones that went.”

So much for Omega,
he thought as he climbed back into the Mazda.
What the hell do I do now?

The faces of the two Charlie Marshalls darted through his mind. And then an image of the high school. There was an idea. He could go back to the high school, start tracing himself from the other direction. At least be able to show somebody that his life existed outside his own head—show himself, too, for that matter.

Might as well give it a shot, he thought. I’m here, aren’t I? What’s a few more miles on my car?

O O O

Finding an open parking meter, Carl pulled up to the tree-shaded curb a couple of blocks from the school, one corner of which was visible through a distant break in the trees. The school, at least, was still there. He remembered how proud he had been the first day he’d driven his “new” car, a thirteen-year-old Ford, and parked it just about here. No more hopping on the yellow bus for him.

But just because he could see a piece of the school didn’t mean it hadn’t changed, like the rest of the town had. He walked the two blocks slowly and finally dared to look up.

Exactly what he had remembered: a red brick building out of the nineteen-twenties, the high school filled almost half the block. The window frames had been painted a sickly pink instead of cream, but the school had lost none of its character. On this side, a square bay with three rows of windows ran from ground to roof.

That was the math room,
Carl recalled, looking up and to his left as he tested the door.
And that was history, right?

Bracing himself, he pushed through the broad metal door—hadn’t the top half been glass?—and froze.

Not again!

A major remodeling had been done here, he decided after a moment’s reflection: even the stairwells had been relocated, probably because of the fire code or something. He headed for the principal’s office, but that had been moved, too. Confused, Carl stood before the door of what was now a classroom and gazed back down the hall. Now he noticed a small sign sticking out from the wall next to a solid wooden door. “Office,” it said in block letters. Sighing explosively, he retraced his steps to the door.

A slender brunette barely out of her teens looked up from a computer screen as Carl pushed through the door and went up to the waist-high counter that cut the room in half.

“May I help you?” she asked. Another woman running a copier looked around, her eyes widening as she saw Carl.

He ran his hand self-consciously over his wiry yellow curls. “I hope so. I graduated from Morgantown High some years ago and I need something to confirm that I did.”

The girl blinked.

“Moving company lost a box,” Carl explained. “My diploma must’ve been in it.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.” The brunette came to the counter. “Do you have some kind of ID? Otherwise I can’t help you.”

Lord, now what? Was he supposed to remember a student number, too? His puzzlement must have shown, because the girl smiled.

“School records are confidential. Driver’s license, Social Security card. Anything like that.”

“Oh, sure.” Carl hauled out his wallet, found his driver’s license. “This do?” He extended the card and returned the smile.

“Carl Warren Johnson? Okay. What year did you graduate? Not that I can print you out a diploma here, but we can get you something.”

“Sixty-six. Nineteen sixty-six.”

The young woman crossed the room to a file cabinet and took a large notebook from the top drawer. “You’re in the computer, of course. Everyone’s in the computer. But for me it’s faster to take a look at the microfiche. I’m more familiar with all these files.” She nodded toward a bulky machine on a nearby desk. “Was that January or June?”

“June.”

Each page of the notebook was actually a series of pockets, each holding a four-by-six piece of film. The girl pulled one of the films out and inserted it into the viewer.

Carl waited.

The girl frowned. “You’re positive? June of sixty-six?”

“That’s right.” The urge to run suddenly rose in his belly, along with the cold notion of the dreams.
Please,
he thought.
Please. By all that’s holy, be there!

The girl shrugged as she squinted at the viewer. “Sorry, but you’re not listed.”

“But—” He took a breath against the panic. “Impossible. I’ve got to be there.”

Her head shook slowly as she turned from the screen to face him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson. I just don’t see you.”

“Can I look?”

“No. Because of the other students, you know? They’re on here, too. Confidentiality. You want Mr. Peterson to take a look? He’s our principal.”

“I—no. That’s all right. I must just have been left out. What about the computer, didn’t you say the records were in that?”

“Give me a few moments.”

“Please.” Carl felt the urge to run grow stronger. The same impossible urge he had felt the evening before in the Tip-Top surged over him once again, even more strongly. He clamped his teeth tight, tensing every muscle in his body, trying to drive the feeling away. He would not give in to these things. He simply would not let his past be stolen without a fight.

Stolen …

For an instant Shelly’s face flickered in his mind, and a chill swept over him at the thought of her vanishing along with his past.

What is the matter with me?
He thought he should be angry, not afraid. The whole mess had to be one big computer error from start to finish, compounded and multiplied.

“Please check the computer,” he said. The tension, the strain of keeping his emotions in check, added a false formality to the words, and the girl’s smile faded into silent formality, too. She shuffled some papers and stacked a collection of note cards.

“Follow me, Mr. Johnson.”

As they walked through the echoing hallways, he gradually regained control of himself and, except for a lingering tension and a slight stiffness to his gait, he was almost back to normal by the time she ushered him into the computer room. The room was obviously newly refurbished from the smell and shine of everything.

“Mr. Chambers,” she said as way of introduction.

The man was young, probably in his twenties, with a full but neatly trimmed beard. His sleeves were rolled up beyond his elbows, and his tie hung loosely at half-mast. He shook hands vigorously, but not crushingly.

It was only when the girl left to return to her office that Carl realized Mr. Chambers was blind. The eyes did not have the blank stare that Carl associated with blindness, but until Carl spoke again, they looked just a fraction to Carl’s left, not directly at his face. And then he saw, on a blanket in the far corner, a large golden retriever, and next to the animal a seeing-eye harness.

Apparently noticing Carl’s hesitation and guessing at the cause, Chambers grinned, his teeth showing whitely through the blackness of the beard. “You noticed Goldie?” At the sound of her name, the dog looked up alertly, her eyes on Chambers. When no orders were given, she lowered her head again.

“Don’t worry about it,” he went on. “I’ve been like this since birth, and in this work, it even gives me a few advantages over other programmers.” Unerringly, he reached down and picked up a stack of computer cards from a basket on his desk. “Take this one, for example,” he said, obviously enjoying the demonstration as he took the top card and ran his fingers quickly over the surface. “Samuel J. Wilts, graduated last spring. Parents, Theodore L. and Pricilla T. Wilts, 822 North Courtland, Occupation of father, pressman at Coreo Printing. Mother—but you know what I mean.”

Carl glanced at the card. There was nothing printed on it, just the holes for the computer. “You read the holes, the same way the computer does?”

“Not quite the same, but yes, I do read the holes.” He laughed. “The only problem is, sometimes I forget to have the information actually printed onto the card, which perturbs some of the people with ungifted fingers. But you were asking about your records?”

“I graduated in June of sixty-six, but the girl couldn’t find any record of it in the microfiche file.”

Chambers nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first mistake that outfit’s made. We have to send the records to a company in Chicago, unfortunately, to have the microfiche made. We’re just damned lucky we haven’t lost a whole class in the mail yet. All it would take for a couple of sheets to stick together and … bang … they lose four years of somebody’s life. Less likely to lose someone in the computer. I double-check everything. So if you graduated from MHS, you’re in here.” He tapped the input console proudly.

“I hope so,” Carl mumbled.

“June of sixty-six?” Chambers sat before the keyboard of the input console and, after orienting his fingers quickly, he typed a series of instructions. The machine responded with chattering noises that continued for seconds after his fingers had stopped moving. Then it began clattering again, and the paper that stuck up out of the console behind the keyboard ratcheted up. There was a single short line of type, and the machine was again silent.

A faint frown crossed Chambers’ face. “Doesn’t sound good,” he said. “Take a look. What does it say?”

Carl leaned over Chambers’ shoulder and read the dark, blocky all-capital letters. NO RECORD OF CARL WILLIAM JOHNSON IN CLASS OF JUNE 1966. “It says I don’t exist.”

“Don’t get uptight,” Chambers countered. “You’re sure it was June of sixty-six?”

“Positive.”

“It’s almost impossible for the computer to be goofed up, but … even I make a mistake every year or two. The wrong information inputted, something left out.” His fingers darted over the keyboard again, setting off another sequence of chattering. “We’ll just ask for any Carl William Johnson, regardless of the year. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll try just plain Carl Johnson and maybe William Johnson. You’re sure that you used your full name on the records? Not C. William or some such variation? Computers are accurate, but they’re terribly narrow-minded.”

Another rapid clatter, and the paper ratcheted up again.

Another simple line. “Still no luck?” Chambers asked.

“Carl leaned over his shoulder. “The same. No record.”

Chambers was silent, thoughtfully motionless for a moment. “Which means that there is no record of a Carl William Johnson ever having graduated from Morgantown High School.” He shrugged. “But let’s not give up just yet. We’ll try a few more variations and see what we can con it out of.”

Twenty minutes later Carl walked back down the echoing hallway. Not in the computer. What the hell was going on? Omega lost him when they moved the headquarters, but the school didn’t have that excuse.

And it wasn’t just him who had been lost, but a dozen others, everyone who had ever been his friend.

George Barber. Good pal, though they’d lost touch when Carl left Morgantown. Not in the school records, despite the friendly data clerk ready to relax a rule or two because she saw his desperation.

And Paul Jacobs.

And Kenny Felts.

All gone.