Driving aimlessly, Jarrow found himself at an intersection of U.S. 52 and took the entry ramp. Originally, so he'd read, the highway system had been designed for hundred-mile-per-hour traffic. No wonder the world had started running out of everything. Since most of the cars these days were low-speed electric or gasohol metropolitan-area getabouts, regular traffic was restricted to the two inside lanes. Only official vehicles or holders of specially approved five-hundred-dollar-a-year licenses used the outside. Violators would be logged by buried sensors that read registration numbers.
Farther on, heading south back toward Minneapolis, he found himself driving along the same stretch of highway where he and Larry had been stopped at the checkpoint. It brought back memories of that day clearly. On impulse, instead of exiting into the city, Jarrow continued heading southward, the way they had gone then. After Larry, the only other thread available to him to pick up from that day was the one that had ended at Valdheim's place itself. And Valdheim's was just a few more miles ahead.
He wasn't sure what he was going to do when he got to Valdheim's. After his reception at the school yesterday and at Larry's today, the prospect was unnerving. But Valdheim was a medical man. He would be used to listening to strange stories. And then, after all, Jarrow told himself for consolation, there was nothing that said he had to do anything immediately. If inspiration failed him, he could sit in the car as long as he wanted and just think about it.
But when he left I-94 at Groveland and followed the familiar route to the green house with the laurel bushes, another problem awaited him: The green house was now yellow, and the plaque announcing the practice of dr. m. r. valdheim, m.d., ph.d., m.a.p.a, m.i.p.n. consultant -neurophysiologist had gone. Instead, a sign standing on the patch of grass outside the front door proclaimed: church of the transcendental oneness.
Jarrow parked and contemplated the sign blankly for about five minutes. No obvious continuation from here suggested itself. Finally, reasoning that he might as well squeeze what he could out of the situation now he was here, he got out and walked up the path. The legend was -repeated on the door in less glaring form with the added assurance: "Everyone Welcome." Otherwise, the door leered at him in smug inscrutability. He pressed the bell push set into the wall alongside, and waited.
A wraith opened the door. She couldn't have been more than eighteen, and was dressed in a flimsy white, chiffonous garment somewhere between a dress and a robe, reaching to her ankles. Straight, fair hair fell down her back almost to her waist. All that was missing were the wings. Her face, if not quite cadaverous, could have drawn color from most turkey cuts.
"Welcome to our Earthly harbor," she intoned expressionlessly. "Have you come in search of the Oneness?"
Jarrow groped for a response. Finally he said, "No. I was expecting to find something else. . . . How long have you been here?"
"When is 'being' 'been,' and where is 'here'?" she -answered. "I am all and have always been, and everywhere that is, is here. All is one with the Cosmic Father and Void Mother. This is merely a short resting place on our -voyage."
"Er, who's in charge?" Jarrow asked.
"You don't wish to regain knowledge of the Eternal Essence?"
"I just want to ask some questions about the building."
Although the face didn't change, the light in the eyes switched to a lower wattage. "I'll fetch Sister Ophelia."
She ushered Jarrow into a darkened anteroom and disappeared through a rear archway embellished with an ornate surround and screened by hanging beads. Her delicate wraith's tread receded, then came what sounded like the thud of part of a body striking something solid, and a muted but distinct hiss of "Shit!" floated from the sanctum.
Jarrow stood and looked around while he waited. There were heavy drapes on the walls, a couple of chairs piled with cushions, and a cane divider with recesses holding carved figures. An odor of incense wafted through from beyond the arch. Strategically placed by the door was a glass display case containing assorted books, pamphlets, crystals, charms, inscribed prayers, and other material aids to attaining nirvana, all with price tags.
Sister Ophelia swept in through the hanging beads in a flurry of taffeta and tinkling jewelry, accompanied by an aura of heady perfume. She was short, endomorphic, and hugely chested. Her hair hung on either side of her head in Wagnerian braids, the effect being offset somewhat by a pair of thick glasses with butterfly frames. "Can I be of assistance?" she warbled.
"I'm not sure. I wasn't expecting this. There used to be a medical practice here, a Dr. Valdheim's. Do you know what happened to him?"
"I don't know anything about that. It must have been before we took over."
"How long ago was that?"
"Let's see, now, around the middle of summer. The first of July, I think it was, when we moved in. . . . Yes, that's right, because they had the fireworks a few days later."
"And Valdheim wasn't here when you looked at the place?"
"No. Never heard of him. It was empty when we saw it. Not even a carpet or drapes!"
Valdheim must have had a sudden change of plans, then, Jarrow reflected. He must have been gone less than two months after the last visit that Jarrow remembered—and less than a month after the date of Jarrow's death. And yet Valdheim had made no mention of such a possibility. It seemed strange.
"So you can't help me get in touch with him," Jarrow observed, as if it wasn't obvious.
"Never heard of him," Sister Ophelia said again. "You could try the real estate office that handled it: Bridger-Reece, in town."
"Yes, thanks. I'll try that."
Sister Ophelia stepped forward quickly to interpose herself as Jarrow turned toward the door. "How about some information that'll tell you more about us, before you leave? It could turn you into a different person."
Just what he needed, Jarrow thought. "No, really. I'm not into that kind of thing. Sorry."
She took one of several thick envelopes that were -lying on top of the display case. "Then take this. It's our special introductory package at no charge. And there's twenty-five percent off the novice course, if you enroll for the full twelve weeks."
"Sure. I'll think about it."
"We might see you again, then?"
"Maybe."
"Don't forget the name: Bridger-Reece."
"Right."
"Peace, Love, Joy, and may you arrive at the Oneness."
"Yes, er, thanks," Jarrow stammered, backing through the door. "You too. Good-bye now."
He called the real estate company as soon as he got back to his room in the Lennox, but they were unable to be of much help. They had not leased the property to Valdheim directly, but through an agent acting on his behalf, whom they knew only as J & F Associates, with the address of an office on Fourth Street, and a number. Jarrow tried the number, but as a rising suspicion had already forewarned him, he got nowhere. J & F Associates had packed up and gone last June, leaving no forwarding address or means of communication. From Jarrow's check with the city and state commercial directory, they had vanished without a trace.
His puzzlement growing, he tried the county and state health departments for a lead on the whereabouts of Dr. Valdheim, but nobody had a record of any such name. Finally, Jarrow was referred to the federal registry in Washington, where, after being bounced around from exten-sion to extension until he felt like a Ping-Pong ball in a typhoon, he emerged none the wiser. Nobody had any information on a national program to field-test the QUIP neuro-analyzer; in fact, nobody had heard of QUIP. So, either Valdheim had been a fake, working for God knew who, for God knew what purpose; or, though it shook Jarrow's faith in the system to have to admit it to himself, Valdheim had been a fake set up by some department of officialdom for God knew what purpose, and officialdom wasn't telling. Either way, Jarrow was thankful that he'd refrained from rushing off to one of the organs of official-dom on the first impulse, to blurt out his story.
But what was he to do now, with the last of his leads having led nowhere? He stared blankly at the picture of the buffalo. They stared blankly back. Go west with Paul, the former scientist in the bar, and work in the woods? But without bothering to examine the thought, he knew there could be no question of it. It would mean leading a semifugitive existence, without papers or any properly estab-lished status, constantly having to guard against being too visible, never sure of who might be an informer of the local registration authorities. Paul might be cut out for that kind of thing, but Jarrow wasn't.
He sat by the bed and spread out his notes and papers, and the contents of Gordon's wallet: the total of information that he had available to him so far. It didn't amount to much. His eye roamed over the items again, looking for something new, some angle that he might have missed, and came to rest on the notepad from the Hyatt in Atlanta. He drew it across and read the message on the top sheet again: Headman to ship out via J'ville, sometime Nov. 19. Check ref "Cop 3." It still meant no more to him than it had when he first saw it. He didn't know anyone called Headman, or whom he'd have described as one. J'ville could have been Jacksonville, he supposed—not all that far from Atlanta. And what did Cop 3 refer to? Something connected with the police, maybe? If so, it reinforced his conviction that he was right to lie low until he knew more about what Maurice Gordon had been mixed up in.
He turned the page to uncover the one below, with the scrawled phone numbers that he had also found yesterday morning. They were the only unknown left.
He tried calling the first. It turned out to be a pizza restaurant in Atlanta. So, not surprisingly, Maurice Gordon had to eat too. Jarrow skipped the next couple, also Atlanta numbers, and studied the last, which he recognized from its area code as a Chicago number. That made him more curious. He reached over to the keypad and entered the number. The legend call ringing appeared on the screen, and after about ten seconds was replaced by a head-and-shoulders view of a woman. Jarrow sat forward sharply in surprise as he experienced the immediate feeling of having seen her before somewhere.
Something was missing. . . . He took in her clear, finely lined features, firm but attractively feminine mouth, with a hint of a natural pout, light eyes, wavy red hair. . . . The red hair. The hair should have had a hat. No, a cap. The last time he'd seen her, she was wearing an Army general's cap. . . . And then he recognized her as the redheaded girl in the dream that he had awoken to that morning! But that was crazy. He didn't know anyone in Chicago, or a redhead that looked like that, anywhere.
And the even crazier part was that, from the way her expression changed, she evidently knew him.
"Well, hi," she said as Jarrow stared speechlessly. Her voice was dry and slightly husky. "I wondered when you'd call. I've been getting worried."
Somebody actually recognized him? After all that had been happening, it came as such a shock that for several seconds Jarrow could only gape. The woman's eyes flickered over him in a silent interrogation. Her face showed concern, but not surprise—he got the feeling that his confusion and strange behavior were not unexpected.
"You . . . you knew I'd call?" he managed finally, watching her face, searching for a hint of a memory. But apart from the fleeting parody from the dream, there was nothing.
"You just vanished into thin air," the woman said.
Jarrow swallowed and found himself shaking, hardly daring to believe it could be true. There was one other person in the world who didn't think he was going mad—either that, or the two of them alone were part of a pecu-liar reality that the rest of the world wasn't sharing.
"You recognize me?" he whispered. "You know who I am?"
Again the narrowing of the brows, signaling that she was worried, but still with the hint that she had been prepared for something like this. She nodded. "Of course I know who you are."
"So tell me." Inwardly Jarrow was on tenterhooks. Would it be the schoolteacher, Richard Jarrow, that no one else could see? Or the mysterious Maurice Gordon, who carried guns and hospitalized muggers?
"You're Tony Demiro," the woman said.
Jarrow slumped back in his chair and stared at her numbly.
"You don't remember?" she said.
He brought a hand up to massage his brow, then shook his "Who's Tony Demiro?"
"Warrant Officer Demiro? Of the Army?" She intoned the phrases like questions, as if trying to coax his memory.
Jarrow had thought that when she talked about his vanishing, she had meant last April or May. Now he wasn't so sure. "When did you last see me?" he asked.
"The night before last, in Atlanta. We were staying at the Hyatt. I went to freshen up in the pool before breakfast. When I got back to the room, you'd left. . . ." She paused, reading his expression of total bemusement. "You don't know who I am, do you?"
"I'm sorry. No, I don't."
"Rita. Rita Chilsen?"
Jarrow shook his head.
"You called me from Atlanta on Monday morning. You—"
"Wait a minute. Today's Wednesday, right?"
"Right. You said you had to see me. I managed to get a flight and joined you at the Hyatt on Monday evening."
Jarrow drew a long breath. He still had no recollection of anything that had happened before the previous day, Tuesday.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Some strange things have been happening to me."
"I know. You were pretty confused when I got there. But you knew who you were, then—and who I was. But you'd woken up that morning not knowing how you got to -Atlanta at all. And the only clothes and ID you had were somebody else's."
On Monday? Jarrow was mystified. "Did they belong to somebody called Gordon, by any chance?" he asked.
"Yes." Rita nodded. So that much was hanging together, at least.
"How about the name Richard Jarrow?" Jarrow asked.
Rita shook her head. "Never heard of him."
It still wasn't making sense. But she obviously knew him. And if, as she claimed, he had known on Monday who she was, it would explain how her phone number came to be written on the pad. "And you're certain that I"—he gestured to indicate himself—"this person you're talking to now, am an Army officer called . . . What did you say his name was?"
"Tony Demiro." Rita gave a series of short, rapid nods. "Oh, yes, no question about it." Her voice caught. She bit her lip and brushed quickly across her mouth.
"What is it?" Jarrow asked. "What's the matter?"
"You don't remember, do you?"
"What?"
"We talked about it . . . most of that evening in Atlanta."
He shook his head. "Sorry. It's like I said: I've had some pretty strange experiences lately. It's affected a lot of things. What's the problem?"
Rita swallowed audibly, and he could see her brace herself. "Tony Demiro was killed five months ago," she said.