Lieserl Maric's time line bent impossibly in this cloud: Instead of moving forward in the direction of time, it bent sharply sideways, perpendicular, and simultaneously occupied miles and acres of space, and then ended in the static tornado around Mount Shasta. She had jumped out of the four-dimensional fabric, but to move through space instead of through time.
Somehow it seemed that she had ridden a golden helix from Pasadena to Mount Shasta; and Rascasse realized that in cross section the helix would be a swastika shape.
Rascasse's focus on the 1987 maelstrom had tilted him back toward that time, and he could feel his attention losing scope, narrowing down. The bus was a looping track through the area that was late summer, like a particle of dust enacting Brownian motion in a glass of water, and he could see the little loop in its track that was its stop halfway up the mountain at Panorama Point.
He let himself fall back into specific spatial locality and the conveyor belt of sequential time.
He was on his knees, and his arms were clinging to the railing post. He had been in this position for so short a time that his knees didn't yet ache from pressing against the hard, sandy surface.
He got to his feet, and was standing, staring out at the lights of San Bernardino when Golze came trudging up from behind.
"Did you see my tattoo?" Golze asked.
"I saw our man in the green Rambler," said Rascasse shortly. "He doesn't appear to have been born — he simply showed up here and now within the last few days."
Golze whistled, all flippancy gone. "Now that could be the old lady's device at work. I thought he was Frank Marrity's father."
"No, he's not. I can't imagine who he is. But speaking of Marrity's father, he also doesn't show a mother or a birth — it looks as if he simply appeared in 1928, in the Swiss Alps — but he died in New Jersey in 1955. I remember it. We killed him."
"So Derek Marrity's dead? Been dead for thirty-two years?"
"Right."
"And he had no mother or birth? I thought he was Lisa Marrity's son. Lieserl Maric's. Einstein's grandson."
"No, Lieserl… adopted him."
"So why did you kill him, in '55? You keep killing all these interesting people, rather than talking to them. You sure you don't want to call off Charlotte?"
"Yes, I'm sure. We did talk to him. We concluded that he would be more use to us dead than alive — though in fact he has not been much use so far."
"How did we think he would be of use to us dead?"
"As a guide, an oracle, because of his origin. And he might yet serve as that." Rascasse turned and started back toward the bus. He paused in front of the folded-open door. "I think we should dump the body of our… toll, right here."
"Sure," said Golze, grinning, "we leave a trail of corpses. Like Hansel and Gretel, so we can find our way back."
Thirteen
Frank Marrity awoke in the hospital-room chair when the aluminum-framed window had just begun to pale with dawn. Daphne was asleep under the thin-looking blankets, the IV tube still taped to her elbow, and he was impatient to get her out of here.
He reached into his shirt pocket for the NSA man's business card, and pulled out two cards. One was the NSA man's, blank except for the 800 telephone number, and the other was Libra Nosamalo Morrison's. Veterinary Medicine.
I should have given her card to Jackson, he thought, along with the taxi company's card. Or maybe I should give Jackson's card to her. Who are any of these people? Libra Nosamalo — deliver us from evil.
He stood up and stretched, then crossed to Daphne's table and wrote on the top sheet of her pad, Went for a smoke—back in five. He laid the pad on her blanket.
He walked past the nurse's station to the elevators, and as he was crossing the carpeted ground-floor lobby, nodding to the bored-looking woman behind the desk, he already had a pack of Dunhills and a Bic lighter in his hands — and he was surprised to see Libra Nosamalo Morrison herself, outside the window glass, standing beside a blocky concrete bench and smoking again. She was looking away from him, out toward the still dark parking lot.
He shuffled to a stop.
She was at St. Bernardine's yesterday afternoon, he thought. What is she doing at this hospital now, this children's hospital? Well— Dunhills, Milton, Housman, Laphroaig scotch — obviously she's here to talk to me. At about five in the morning.
Don't talk to her, Jackson had said.
Marrity took two steps backward, then turned to go back to the elevators.
But behind him he heard her voice call, "Frank?" and he stopped, and then turned around.
She had stepped inside, and as soon as he looked squarely at her she turned her head toward him and waved, smiling. She was still wearing her sunglasses — in fact she was still wearing the black jeans and the burgundy blouse. Her right hand was in her purse, possibly groping for a pack of cigarettes. Was she going to ask him to go outside and smoke with her?
A man was pushing through the door behind her, but Marrity's attention was on the woman, who now pulled a big steel revolver out of her purse.
As Marrity watched, the gun was raised to point at his face.
"Frank!" screamed the man behind her, lunging forward and apparently punching her in the back; her arm swung wide in the instant that Marrity's ears were shocked by the hard pop of a gunshot. Glass broke and clattered behind him.
The man behind her was his father, and the old man was staring hard at the blue carpet. "Don't look at her, Frank!" the old man yelled, nearly as loud as before. "She's blind if you don't look at her!" Derek Marrity spun to face the woman behind the reception desk. "Get down!" he shouted at her.
Marrity crouched and looked toward the hallway that led back to the elevators.
"Frank!" called the woman in sunglasses. "Look at me!"
It reminded Marrity of what the cartoon figure had said to Daphne a few hours ago—Say I can come in, Daphne! — and he looked instead at one of the dozen blue couches and dove behind it.
She fired two shots anyway, and one of them made the couch jump.
"Somebody look at me!" she yelled.
"You're facing the elevators!" shouted Derek Marrity, apparently at the Libra Nosamalo woman. "We're behind you!"
"Liar," she said, and two more shots shook the lobby air.
If she steps around this couch, she'll have a clear shot at me, Marrity thought. He braced himself to sprint for the hallway, but in that instant he heard the doors clack open, and then his father called, "She left. She couldn't see. Go to the elevator hallway without looking back."
Marrity got to his feet and made himself look only toward the elevator doors as he hurried out of the lobby. His father was beside him, hardly panting. He seemed much less sickly now than he had yesterday.
"And out the back," the old man said. He even had a suntan now.
Marrity hit the 2, button. "No, I've got to get Daphne."
"Frank, she's dead, there's nothing you can do for her. You've got to get out of here."
… she's dead…
Marrity's heart froze, and the next thing he was consciously aware of was jumping up the stairs two at a time. Behind and below him he heard his father bang aside the stairway door, which hadn't had time to close.