Alison pulled me down on top of her and we began to make love, sliding up and down each other’s bodies, sometimes lifted into the air by the breath of the fan, sometimes as heavy as the three clay women who watched over us. When we sat up again, Alison took the apple and the knife, her own enactment knife I saw, a small brass blade with a handle the shape of a tortoise. I realized I didn’t know where she’d got it, what meaning the tortoise held for her, if it represented some secret society of lawyers, or an encounter with a slow-moving helper on some private adventure in the woods somewhere or maybe a sanctified zoo or refuge. And I realized too that it didn’t matter, she would tell me, I would learn all these things.
Alison cut the apple across the middle, revealing the five-pointed star in each half. As we sat twined around each other like strands of DNA, eating our stars, the moaning on the tape changed to laughter and the fan began to sing, while Alison and I and the three clay ladies all hummed happily along.
5
Alison and I met with Alexander Timmerman four days later. It had taken us that long to get through the layers of bureaucrats, hangers-on and probably government spies and obstructionists just to talk to him and persuade him that we had something to tell him. During the whole process I had to remind myself about twenty times that the government would find out whatever it wanted to about our negotiations, so we might as well not try to hide them.
Timmerman met us in a large living room style office, with grey chairs and a couch facing twentieth-floor corner windows overlooking lower Manhattan. Appearing slightly smaller up close than on a platform, Timmerman gestured at the room with his hand, as if to make it disappear in some political stage trick. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said. “The PR people tell me I have to live up to my status.” He offered us spring water from a plain glass pitcher, pouring it into glasses with the logo for Consumer Liberation.
“I have to confess something,” he said. “I’ve been feeling secretly giddy ever since Martin—my secretary—told me that Alison Birkett wanted to see me. I still remember the way you forced the government’s hand on the Pentagon possession. It was one of the things that eventually inspired me to give up corporate law and seek guidance on what service the Living World wanted me to perform.” He didn’t mention Alison’s later accusation of Malignant temp agencies under contract to the White House. In gratitude, I stopped myself from asking if he’d framed any pictures of her from Time magazine.
When Alison had thanked him and shown her interest in his work by citing a couple of his lesser-known triumphs, he turned to me, said how pleased he was to meet me and asked if I was part of Ms Birkett’s firm. I disappointed him, and Alison added that “Ms Pierson and I work on special projects together.”
Alison laid it out for him, only leaving out her personal connection to Jack Chikowsky, the way we’d found out about Margaret Light-at-the-End-of-the-Tunnel 23’s connection to Arthur Channing and our knowledge of her previous incarnation. We’d discussed that last point for some time, wondering if we might need it to shock Timmerman into recognizing that he was being set up. Finally, we decided that it raised too many issues of our own involvement.
Timmerman listened carefully, sometimes with his head down, sometimes looking sharply at Alison or me. Pretty soon it became clear that he did not want to hear what we were telling him. When Alison told him about Jack, and about the other incidents, he nodded and said how tragic that was and how he’d asked the Twins (he didn’t call them that) to channel their blessings into more gentle manifestations. When we suggested that these events suggested some sort of conspiracy, he smiled and asked, “A conspiracy to do what? Make people feel happy? I’m very sorry if occasionally some people have had trouble handling their own joy, but I find it hard to accept that an ecstatic blessing can be a plot. If anything, the problems simply show how much people need the experience, so that it would not come as such a shock to their starved systems.” I asked him if it didn’t strike him as odd that none of this got into the press. He said, “That sounds more like people caring about our cause than people wanting to hurt us.”
We had to do some dodging of our own, for Timmerman seemed more concerned about what we knew about the banking issue than any of the subjects we wanted to raise. For a while, he and Alison danced around each other, struggling over whose agenda would dominate the discussion—his to find out what we knew of Channing’s banking connections, Alison’s to focus on the Being summoned by Carolyn Park-Wu. After a few minutes, Alison convinced him that we had not concerned ourselves with the details of his investigations, only the fact that he clearly was on to something, and that it was Arthur Channing who had sent Tunnel Light to him.
“Of course we knew that our Friend came to us from Senator Channing,” he told us. “And we are not naive, believe me, not after all our campaigns. If Senator Channing is hoping to influence us away from our investigations by bringing Margaret to us, then he is certainly naive and can expect a few shocks. But I suspect you know that, or have guessed.”
“May I ask a question?” I said. I could still put on innocence when I needed it, and was still young enough to make it work. “What exactly does Margaret Light-at-the-End-of-the-Tunnel 23 do for you?”
“She gives us support,” he said. “She strengthens us to do what we need to do. I realize that may sound a little vague to you, but if you’ve ever experienced the presence of a Bright Being in your life, you will understand that strength is not a vague or empty concept at all. Not at all.”
I said, “How can you know that she is not doing something to you that you can’t detect? Something that will weaken your work rather than support it?”
“Because she’s Benign, Ms Pierson. Don’t you think we had her checked? And not by the SDA, either. She cannot help but look after our best interests.”
It was right around then that Maggie Tunnel Light came in and joined us.
With her heavily made up eyes, her pale skin and black hair, she looked much the same as she had in Miracle Park, except that she wore no lipstick and this time she was all in white, a shapeless tunic over straight-legged white pants. Only her sandals were coloured, the same shade of soft green as the office carpet, giving her a look of some albino flower rising from the grass. “I am Alexander’s Friend,” she said, and sat down beside him on the couch.
I couldn’t help myself. Hardly knowing I was saying it I half whispered, “Ferocious One, I beg you to release me. I know that—”
I didn’t get any further. I’m not sure if I stopped because I was shaking too hard to speak, or because of Maggie’s reaction. She sat back, wincing as if I’d slapped her, and said to Timmerman, her voice breaking slightly, “Alexander, what is she doing?”
Timmerman said, “Ms Pierson! This is a Benevolent Being, an emissary,” but neither Alison nor I paid him any attention. We looked at each other, each of us thinking the same thing. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t realize she’s ever been anything else.
Now that I’d stopped, the Being had regained her composure. She touched Timmerman’s shoulder, saying, “It’s all right. I will help them.”
Later, Alison and I talked about those next moments. The terrible thing was we knew what was happening, what she was doing, and there was no way we could stop it. A sweetness was opening inside us, a feeling that all the restrictions that clamped us so tightly were falling away, that we could really breathe for the first time in our lives, everything could open up to its full size, all the broken pieces were flowing together. We were in love, wasn’t that enough, why did we need to worry about anything else? When it passed, after about fifteen seconds, I discovered myself sweating, staring at the floor with my hands clenched.