A Darker Place (30 page)

“Well, no. ‘Lord’ is the way we speak to noblemen, to knights and kings and very important people, and when we talk to God, we use the same word, because it’s one of the most important words we have. God is much bigger than any king; it’s just that language doesn’t go far enough to describe how we feel about things as big as God. You could say that God is bigger than language.”

“Is Steven God?”

“No! For heaven’s sake. Did somebody say he was?”

“I don’t think so. But Amelia said that Steven sees everything and knows everything.”

“Steven is a human being, so he can’t be God. You could say—” Ana paused to choose her words. “You could say that Steven tries to act for God, that he knows something of what God wants and helps others know it, too. Steven may be a man of God, but he can’t be God. No person can be God.”

“Wasn’t Jesus God?”

Ana had to smile. “That, my dear, is a question that better minds than yours or mine have dedicated their lives to thinking about. Now: Sleep.”

Five minutes later, in a tiny voice: “Ana?”

“What, Dulcie?”

“If you’re not here when I wake up in the morning, you’ll be back as soon as you’ve finished your walk?”

“That’s what I told you. I promise I’ll be back.”

“Like Jason. He goes running in the morning sometimes.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve seen him.”

“Ana?”

“What?”

“I love you, Ana.”

Dulcie was asleep before Ana could formulate an honest response to that last statement. She sat with her papers, listening to the child’s even breathing, the occasional hitches and pauses in the rhythm, an indistinct mutter and chewing noise when Dulcie entered a dream.

I love you, Mommy
. All the various meanings that simple phrase had once held. It could mean, Thank you, Mommy, for the great birthday party, or it could be a spontaneous and inarticulate recognition of the joy of human companionship. It had even, once or twice, been a preemptive strike, an attempt at disarming Ana’s probable anger when she found out that something had been broken, spilled, or otherwise spoiled. “I love you, Mommy.”

Oh, God; what was she doing here?

Ana had no difficulty waking early the next morning; she had not actually been asleep. Shortly after she had turned out the light and gotten into bed, Dulcie woke crying. Ana took her into bed with her, warmed her back into sleep, and then, when the child was limp and deep, she had moved herself over to the bed on the floor. It was amazing how hard six blankets on the boards could be, and how vivid pain became in the dark. Her hand pounded, her lip hurt, Dulcie snored and muttered, and dawn gradually crept near.

It was still dark when she went outside, but the stars were beginning to fade. The Change members with early-morning jobs were on their way to barn or kitchen, or to the cars that would take them to employment in Sedona or Flagstaff. Ana exchanged a couple of greetings but she did not stop to talk, just made her way along the road out of the compound.

She passed the boxy guest quarters, where four or five visitors now slept, and walked by the rocks where she had first met Steven and watched the sun come up over the compound. She stayed on the road, which was growing more visible by the minute, and went through the gate until she reached the heap of spilled rock a half-mile from the Change entrance, the heap that included one boulder that had sheared off in the fall to reveal a white face. In cross-section the white would appear as a vein, but now it was a bright flag visible even from the small planes that from time to time overflew the area.

Ana went over to sit atop the rocks. She gathered her knees to her chin and waited while the land took form around her. A car drove out of the compound, its headlights on, and Ana raised a hand. The lights dipped in response, and when it was past, when she was as certain as she could be that no one was watching, she reached underneath the white-marked stone for the papers she had told Agent Steinberg in Phoenix she needed.

Her fingers encountered only stone, sand, and one small slip of paper. She pulled it out, opened it, and saw written on it:
I will be in Sedona today
.

It was Glen’s writing, though looking at it carefully she decided it was a faxed reproduction rather than the real thing. So, he was flying in to talk with her.

What could be so urgent that he would get on a plane, then drive up from Phoenix or Flagstaff to see her in person? And even more disconcerting, once she thought about it, were the implications of how he knew
she would be in Sedona. It was one thing to have a friendly ear in the local school district offices who could pass on the news of an impending field trip to the museum; it was quite another to have a legally sanctioned wiretap on the community’s phones, which was the only way she could think of that he would know of her dentist appointment. Glen was not the sort to arrange for rogue surveillance, not if he had any other options. Had something happened to boost the Bureau’s level of anxiety about the Change movement? And if so, why wasn’t she aware of it here?

She crumpled the paper and finished her morning walk, tossing the small, tight wad among some thorny cactuses along the way. When she got back to her room and opened the door, Dulcie immediately sat upright on the bed, so wide-eyed and alert that Ana knew she had been fast asleep until the instant her hand hit the doorknob.

“Come along, Dulcinea, you slugabed,” she said cheerfully. “There’s a bowl of cereal with your name on it in the dining hall.”

There was no sign of Jason at breakfast. When she was preparing to leave for her appointments with the dentist and with Glen, the teenager had still failed to emerge from hiding and Dulcie was looking even more miserable. Ana sat down on the bed so she could look the child directly in the face. Feeling like a traitor, or a wicked stepmother, she took Dulcie’s hand in hers.

“Sweetie, I think you’d be happier if you stayed here and waited for Jason. You can help Amelia in the kitchen—she’d love to have you—and you’d be right here if Jason gets finished with his work. If you come with me, you’ll have a long, cold ride in and out of town, and a long, boring wait in the dentist’s office. He’ll probably
make you sit in the waiting room, too, while I’m in with him.”

Dulcie wavered, torn between the possibility of Jason’s restoration and the sure security represented by Ana. In the end, the deciding factor was something else entirely.

She asked Ana, “Will we go in Rosy Nante?” When Ana admitted they would, that was all Dulcie needed to hear. Ana drove to Sedona with Dulcie in the seat beside her.

As Ana had predicted, the dentist suggested firmly that Dulcie occupy herself with the children’s books in the waiting room while he and Ana went back to mull over the choice between repairing the bridge and starting from scratch. In the end they did both, making temporary repairs on the shattered plastic and taking impressions of it and her mouth.

“No apples,” he ordered. “Don’t bite anything. And don’t get in the way of any more fighting boys.”

Ana thanked him distractedly, her attention caught by the voice she could hear coming from the waiting room. Sure enough, as she approached the nurse’s station she could tell that it was Glen in monologue. No—he was reading something aloud, a story about a pony.

She made an appointment for Monday, four days away, which seemed quick work on the part of the lab that would be making the bridge. She said something appreciative to the receptionist:

“Yes,” said the woman. “You’re lucky—the new delivery man for the lab happened to be through today, and he said he’d wait for your impressions. That saves you two or three days. In fact, that’s him out there, reading a story to the little girl.”

It was indeed Glen, dressed in the uniform of a medical
delivery-man, bent over that ubiquitous magazine of pediatricians and children’s dentists,
Highlights for Children
, its pastel monochrome cover at once dull and soothing. Dulcie was sitting a polite distance from this friendly stranger, back straight but her neck craned to see the illustrations. Glen turned the page, read to the end of the story, and closed the magazine. He handed it to Dulcie.

“Thank you, young lady, I enjoyed that. I don’t think I’ve read one of those magazines since I was your age. May even have been the same one. Is this your friend Ana?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer he stood up and introduced himself in a voice that twanged of the South. “Glen York. And you’re Ana—?”

“Wakefield,” she supplied.

“Ana Wakefield. Your young friend here is a most talented listener. Doesn’t talk much, but boy, can she listen.”

“Glen is going to take your teeth to be fixed,” said Dulcie.

“That I am, if the nurse here is ready. That them? Anything to sign? Right, that’ll do me, then. You don’t mind if the young lady hangs on to the magazine, do you? And I don’t suppose you could recommend a good coffee shop around here? I don’t think I actually had lunch today. In fact, maybe this young lady and her friend Ana would like a cup of coffee or something. How do you take your coffee, Dulcie? Strong and black, am I right?”

Ana was amused to see that, considering he was a man without children, he had struck a note likely to loosen up the most reticent child. Dulcie very nearly smiled at his quip.

“She’d probably rather have an ice cream,” Ana suggested. “Do you like ice cream, Dulcie?”

The girl nodded hugely. Ice cream was not high on the list of supplies in the Change walk-in freezers. As
they walked to the café, Glen slipped Ana’s diary back into her bag.

They sat at a booth with a booster cushion to raise Dulcie’s chin above the table. Glen ordered a ham sandwich and black coffee, Ana a bowl of vegetable soup, and Dulcie had a grilled cheese sandwich followed by a hot fudge sundae complete with cherry. As they waited for the food, Dulcie read the borrowed magazine under the edge of the table. Glen opened his mouth, and then shut it firmly at Ana’s vigorous shake of the head and her pointed glance at the seemingly oblivious child. He was seething with impatience, both to tell and to hear, but he could see that it would not do to speak openly in front of a wide-eared and obviously bright child. It might have to wait until Ana came to town again to retrieve her new bridge.

She began telling him, an amiable stranger, interesting things about the Change community, including that Dulcie was with her today because the child’s big brother was away for a couple of days. He could tell from the faces of both of his table companions that there was more to it than that, but he did not give vent to his questions. Ana looked relieved. Dulcie went back to her pictures.

Glen studied Ana over his coffee cup. She looked as banged-about as he had expected, having had Rayne Steinberg’s report of all that had happened at the Heard Museum. Her hand was ugly and obviously giving her pain, but he had seen her in worse shape. She would recover.

Only at the very end of the meal did he manage to have an unobserved minute with Ana, when Dulcie was in using the toilet.

“Are you bugging the phones?” Ana asked him as soon as Dulcie was safely on the other side of the door.

“We just started. The branch in Japan is acting strangely and there’s an uproar brewing in England over
their kids, with Social Services sticking their noses in and Change resenting it. I thought the combination justified a greater degree of concern, and I found a judge here who agreed with me, that the presence of children made it urgent enough to justify a tap.” One bleak consolation after the Waco affair, Glen reflected, was the way the name made judges want to reach for their pens. “What’s this about alchemy?”

“It’s too complicated to go into now. Did you get me the books?”

“I planted them in the used-book store, just down the street. Pick them up when you leave. Look, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. A little sore, that’s all.”

“I meant… you’re sure?” Truth to tell, Glen thought, she did look fine beneath the bruises, healthy and strong and considerably more alive than she usually did when she was immersed in one of these operations. Change obviously agreed with her. Which was, somehow, worrying. Still, there was no time to dig into it now, because the door to the ladies’ room was opening. “And there’s the young lady now. Dulcie, it was a real treat to meet you, and I hope I come across you again someday. Good-bye, and good-bye, friend Ana.”

He waved and strode out whistling, Agent Glen McCarthy in his full Uncle Abner mode, the talkative, ever-genial Southerner. Ana suppressed a smile and looked down at Dulcie. “I’ve got another idea that might be an even bigger treat for you than ice cream,” she said.

It turned out Dulcie liked bookstores just as much as she liked ice cream, and while Ana searched out the books on alchemy that Glen had arranged there for her, Dulcie studied the riches of the children’s corner, where she chose the three books Ana had said she could have, and then a fourth one, asking tentatively, “For Jason?”

Ana laughed and said she could have four, and she
put them with her own three choices (Glen had left six or seven, but these were closest to what she wanted) and paid for them with her virginal credit card. It was accepted without hesitation. As she was picking up the bag, a thought occurred to her.

“Do you by any chance have a copy of
The Hunting of the Snark
by Lewis Carroll?”

“Let me see,” said the cheery young woman. She went to the shelves and returned with a copy of
Alice
. “This is all we have at the moment.”

“Can you order me one?”

“Picture book or text?” she asked, already calling up the title on her computer.

“Picture would be nice, if there is one.” Ana glanced at Dulcie, who was immersed in a book and not paying any attention to the conversation. “And hardback, if there’s a choice.”

“I can have it day after tomorrow.”

“Great,” said Ana, and told her she’d be in on Monday.

Back in Rocinante’s passenger seat, Dulcie buried her nose in her picture books, spelling out words for Ana to translate, until the light failed and she had to put them away. She fell asleep, and did not even stir when Ana stopped the bus to retrieve a thick blanket from the back to wrap around her. Ana drove on with the window open, battering herself with fresh air to keep the weariness at bay. The child was still asleep when they bumped into the compound parking lot, but she woke and gathered up her books to carry them to Ana’s room.