More Walls Broken, Page 2

  Blaine reached into his briefcase again, and lifted out a steel thermos bottle. He unscrewed the cap and held onto it while he lifted the bottle to sniff its contents. Then he swirled it and said, “I believe your Hershey Kisses have dissolved in the rum.”

  “That’s okay,” said Cobb, “it’s still chocolate and ethanol—what draws ghosts, he said.” With a reluctance that surprised him, he added, “Be ready to slap the cap back on…when he goes in.” If he manifests at all, he thought; if ghosts really do go for that odd diet, and he dives in like a genie into a bottle; if he doesn’t just dissolve on the wind.

  “He won’t be able to evade us this time,” whispered Ainsworth. “Where do you hide when death wouldn’t conceal you?”

  Cobb paused, a new and disquieting question forming in his mind, but Blaine gestured with the thermos bottle cap. “Go on, go on!”

  “…Right.” Cobb dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his heel.

  He took a deep breath, then stepped up beside the chain-link gate and lifted the strange slide rule. He briefly thumbed the slide and the cursor, then tilted the object to peer through the lenses and nudge the cursor another half an inch, and a moment later tilted it again to squint at the musical note.

  E. The mi in do re mi.

  “Aahhh…”

  He hadn’t realized how self-conscious he would be. A moment after he opened his mouth and began singing the note, the absurdity of the whole situation nearly made him toss the crazy slide rule away and break out laughing; but awareness of the two anxious old men standing nearby sobered him. And the slide rule seemed to vibrate faintly in his hand, as if the tiny lenses really were rotating.

  He took seven paces forward, then dutifully paused to work the slide and the cursor again. Over the course of the next full minute he sang notes four times, and walked in an angular course all the way around the gate on the grass; and then he paused and lowered the slide rule.

  He exhaled, then said, “All the lenses are black.”

  The three men stared down at the chain-link gate on the grass. Blaine was shakily holding the thermos bottle out in front of himself in his right hand, while in his left he held the cap poised to slap down over the open top of it, and Cobb could hear Ainsworth’s quick, wheezing respiration. Peripherally he noticed that the clockwise course the slide rule had led him on formed a five-sided polygon.

  Cobb’s face was hot, and he wished very much that he had not come along on this expedition, “service to the university” or no.

  The wind had started up again sometime during Cobb’s ritual pacing, and so it was hard to tell if the branches of the distant trees were really moving, or rippling with distortion in the air, and Cobb clenched his teeth in a sudden colder gust—a rapid snapping started up nearby, like sparks jumping across a gap, and stopped after a few seconds—the zig-zag lengths of chain-link wire began rattling—

  And then all three men jumped back, for a woman in jeans and a white blouse had fallen a short distance onto the chain-link gate and collapsed, rolling over onto the grass face down. Her sneakers had dented the center of the chain-link rectangle, silencing it.

  For several seconds no one spoke. The woman lay motionless. Then Ainsworth slapped Cobb across the face. “That’s not him!” the old man choked.

  Cobb had dropped the slide rule. “I know it’s—” he began, but Ainsworth had spun away to face Blaine.

  “How am I ever to get a renewing transfer?” Ainsworth demanded shrilly. “And you’re near the end of your line too.” He turned again toward Cobb, who was now crouching over the woman.

  The old man waved his fists in the air, and went on, “Is it a dead woman? Is this a joke of his?”

  “Shut up a minute,” said Cobb shortly.

  He had rolled the woman onto her back, and the buttons on her blouse visibly lifted and sank, lifted and sank—she was breathing, though her eyes were closed and she had rolled over slackly. He brushed long dark hair away from her narrow face and touched her throat over the carotid artery, and he felt a strong unhurried pulse. She looked to be about thirty years old.

  “She’s unconscious,” he said.

  “That’s—” began Blaine; “I know her! That’s his daughter!”

  Ainsworth had sat down in the grass, breathing noisily. “Are you sure? How could—”

  “Of course I’m sure! I followed her and photographed her two months ago, when we were trying to get him to work with us.”

  Ainsworth swiveled his head from side to side, and whispered, “Has he shown up too?”

  All three of the men glanced around quickly. After a few moments, “No sign,” said Blaine. He looked down at the thermos bottle in his hand, then hastily screwed the cap back onto it and dropped it into the briefcase.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Ainsworth, beginning to struggle to his feet. “This was a failure.”

  Cobb straightened up, breathing hard and trying to think past the comprehension that they actually had accomplished some kind of transmigration here. “We—should call 911.” He nodded; that much was clear. “She may be injured, we don’t know what happened to her.” He reached toward the phone in the hip pocket of his jeans.

  Ainsworth was standing, though still bent sharply at the waist. “Leave her here! And the gate too!”

  Cobb had his phone in his hand, but Blaine reached across and gripped his wrist. “She looks fine,” he said. “Maybe we could—”

  “Tuck twenty dollars in her pocket,” said Ainsworth, straightening up in stages and starting toward the van, “and she can call a cab when she wakes up.”

  Blaine rocked his head judiciously.

  Cobb stared at the two of them. After a few seconds he said, “Well for one thing, there were security cameras at the Newport Boulevard gate. They certainly got the license number of the van. And you,” he said, turning to Blaine, “signed out for it. Whatever state she’s in, they’d connect her with our visit here.”

  Cobb could see a gleam of sweat on Blaine’s forehead. “You felt her pulse?” the old professor asked.

  “Yes, it’s normal. But—”

  “We’ll take her home. I know where she lives. We can’t risk the kind of attention—”

  “She should go to a hospital! God knows what—”

  “Peter and I will take her home,” Blaine said firmly. “I’m sure she’s only fainted. Very natural, probably. You can stay here and call 911 if you like, after we’ve taken her away. And whatever you say about this evening’s activity, of course, Peter and I will categorically deny.” He smiled and touched Cobb’s arm. “Who will they believe? Think, son.”

  Cobb took a moment to imagine what he would say to police. There was an unconscious woman here, but two professors from Cal State knew who she was, and they’re driving her home now; no, I don’t know her name, or where she lives, and they’ll deny the whole thing anyway. Or, We conjured her out of thin air, while we were trying to raise her father’s ghost.

  “Okay,” he said, exhaling, “okay—we take her home. You’ll need my help lifting her into the van anyway.” He pocketed his phone, then held up one hand. “But if her pulse or breathing go funny, or she has a seizure or something, we call 911 and detour straight to a hospital.”

  “Of course,” Blaine assured him, slapping him on the back now. “Smart lad.”

  Ainsworth stamped his foot, nearly losing his balance. “But what if she should wake up on the way?” He blinked down at the unconscious woman. “We could drive her right now to somewhere that hasn’t got cameras. Leave her there while she’s still unconscious.” He looked up. “We could even give her a conk right now—just to make sure?”

  Blaine glanced at Cobb, then quickly looked away. He shook his head. “This has meant a lot to both of us, Peter,” he said quietly, “and it’s understandable to get excited and anxious. But—no. Collect yourself.” He gave Ainsworth an intense look, then shrugged. “If she wakes up, we’ll tell her we found her unconscious at…in her fat
her’s office, at the university. Let her worry about how she got there.”

  Ainsworth was still frowning, but he gave a jerky, reluctant nod, and then waved impatiently at Cobb and the woman at their feet.

  Cobb looked away from the two men, unhappily aware that he could not work with either of them again…and that they would probably insist on the same, after this evening’s fiasco. Two years on the tenure track derailed, wasted.

  “Dr. Blaine,” he said wearily, “you and I can lift her back onto the chain-link, and then we can drag it like a travois back to the van.” He glanced toward the boulevard, and added, “Uh oh.”

  The close-set headlights of the security guard’s electric cart were weaving up the central lane in their direction.

  “I guess we say we found her here,” said Cobb, relieved. “True, really.” He took a couple of steps across the grass and bent down to retrieve the slide rule and tuck it into his back pocket by his phone.

  “No,” said Blaine quickly, clutching his briefcase to his chest, “you think of some other story, or Peter and I—we’ll say we found the two of you here—we’ll say you didn’t come in the van with us, the guard didn’t see you back there—we interrupted you attacking her—”

  Ainsworth looked back, silhouetted now against the approaching headlights. “That’s right,” he croaked. “Rapist.”

  Cobb coughed out one syllable of an incredulous laugh. “That’s—are you kidding?—you can’t—”

  “Trust me,” said Blaine, “we will. Registered sex offender forever.” The old man was panting. “Unless you think of a way to keep her identity out of it. Think!”

  Cobb crouched, and slid his arms under the woman’s knees and ribs; and panic gave him the strength to straighten his legs and stand up, carrying the limp body. Her head hung slack, showing him only her throat and uptilted chin.

  He had taken three labored, clumping steps across the grass toward the open back of the van when the electric cart rolled into view on the other side of it.

  Cobb couldn’t see the driver past the headlights, but kept walking stolidly toward the van, and when his shins collided with the bumper, he carefully leaned forward and laid the woman on her side in the bed of the van.

  “What happened?” came the voice of the security guard behind him. “Who’s she?”

  Cobb turned around; the security guard had got out of his cart and was hurrying toward the van.

  “My wife is part of our team,” replied Cobb in as calm a voice as he could muster. “She inhaled some of the tantric carbonate—it’s not dangerous, but we’re taking her down the hill to Chapman Global Medical…just to be sure.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” said the guard, reaching for the radio on his belt, but Cobb forced a smile and shook his head.

  “We’ve called ahead, they’re waiting for us at the hospital. We’ll have her there in the time it’d take an ambulance to get here. And we’ve got emergency inhalers in the van.”

  “O-kay,” said the guard, visibly relaxing. “She’s—all right, is she?”

  “No danger,” rasped Ainsworth.

  “It happens,” Cobb said. “She’ll probably be awake and alert again before we even get there.” He turned back to the van and pushed the woman’s legs forward out of the way, then climbed up to crouch beside her. “We’d better get moving,” he told his two companions.

  “Still,” said the security guard, reaching again for his radio, “ I’d better—” Then he glanced to the side and said, “What’s that?”

  Cobb saw that the man was pointing at the chain-link gate lying on the moonlit grass.

  “We were going to ask you that,” Cobb said. “It seems to be part of a fence.”

  “Azoles must have dragged it in,” ventured Blaine, blinking rapidly.

  “Well I’m not moving it.” The guard was scowling. “I’m not paid to clean the place up.”

  Blaine stepped forward and closed the van’s back door; Cobb heard him say, “Quite right. And now we really must…”

  A few moments later Blaine and Ainsworth had got back into the van and closed their doors, and Blaine started the engine.

  “Turn on the heater,” said Ainsworth.

  Blaine shifted the van into gear and let the vehicle roll forward. “Does this lane loop back to the main one?”

  “Yes,” said Ainsworth. “The heater?”

  Blaine reached over to push the heater lever all the way to the right.

  “Tantric carbonate!” said Ainsworth derisively.

  “It was good enough to satisfy the guard,” said Blaine. “You and I couldn’t think of anything at all.”

  “You were,” said Cobb, trying to keep his voice level, “going to accuse me of attempted rape.”

  “No no, my boy!” exclaimed Blaine, peering ahead through the windshield. “Never—really! I do apologize for pretending to threaten you. Good heavens, if we’d actually accused you of that, her identity would have been discovered, and that’s what we needed to prevent.”

  “It’s like pulling a gun on someone,” Cobb persisted. “It doesn’t matter if it’s loaded or not—you still pulled a gun on him. On me.”

  “Get over it,” advised Ainsworth. “You’re committed now anyway—you lied about her to the guard.”

  “I really do apologize,” said Blaine. “Your, yes, commitment has been essential tonight, even though things…didn’t go as we’d hoped.”

  “Went all wrong, to be precise,” said Ainsworth. “Slide rule!”

  Cobb had already concluded that his career at the university was finished, and now he wondered how he could possibly even get through the rest of the night without having to call the police.

  “Why would that be so…catastrophic?” he asked dully. “If her identity was found out?”

  “Oh,” said Blaine, “we’re in tentative correspondence with a number of allied institutions; and when we begin to apply his, that is, our, research to practical ends, money will be required, quite a good deal of it, probably, and—”

  “A proper lab,” put in Ainsworth, “computers, power, housing for subjects…”

  “For animal testing!” Blaine interjected hastily. “And we’ve applied for grants—National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation—”

  “Women and Minorities in STEM Fields,” rasped Ainsworth, “The Human BioMolecular Atlas Program…”

  “—and any irregularities in our behavior, even eccentricities—”

  “Like trying to raise ghosts,” put in Ainsworth. “Even uselessly!”

  “—would certainly prove detrimental.”

  Blaine started to say something more, hesitated, and then said, thoughtfully, “We did accomplish something, here, you know.”

  He didn’t speak again until the guard had steered his electric cart back to the dark information center and quickly opened the gate for them, and the van had moved forward down the driveway and the turn signals were indicating a left turn onto Newport Boulevard.

  “I think it worked,” Blaine said finally as he swung the van out onto the lanes and accelerated. “I think that’s him. Transmigration of souls, right? That was what he was working on, what he wouldn’t tell us about—that’s why we came here to get him. I think we did! I think he transmigrated into the body of his daughter.”

  Ainsworth grunted in surprise. “You think so?”

  “This,” said Blaine, freeing a hand from the steering wheel to gesture behind him, “is who answered the summons. I believe the slide rule functioned correctly after all.”

  “Then he really does know how to do it,” breathed Ainsworth. “He did it himself. Suicide, sure, why not—who needs the relinquished body?”

  Blaine sighed. “Can’t take him back to the lab in the thermos bottle now.”

  “No, but…” Cobb saw the dark blot that was Ainsworth’s head shift, clearly turning to look into the back of the van, and in the momentary sweep of a streetlight the expression on his lean old face was avid—hungry
. “Easier to question him when he’s in a body,” he murmured. “It’s got nerves.”

  Blaine glanced at Cobb in the rear-view mirror. “This is all hypothetical, of course,” he said. “Considering all conceivable possibilities.”

  Ainsworth turned away, looking forward again. “Right,” he said hollowly. “Not proposing anything.”

  Cobb looked down at the unconscious woman’s face, dimly visible when the van passed under a street light, and he wondered if it could really be Armand Vitrielli’s soul behind it. Something impossible had happened tonight.

  And as the van rocked down the boulevard toward the lights of downtown Orange, he considered some of the things these demented old men had said tonight: I followed her and photographed her two months ago, when we were trying to get him to work with us—He won’t be able to evade us this time—where do you hide when death wouldn’t conceal you?—

  The interior of the van was warming up, but Cobb shivered and felt sick. Had Blaine and Ainsworth used Vitrielli’s daughter as some sort of leverage, to coerce the old man into telling them things he would not otherwise reveal to them? Transmigration of souls…Ainsworth had said, How am I ever to get a renewing transfer?

  Had Vitrielli chosen to kill himself, rather than either give them what they wanted, on the one hand, or see some intolerable attentions paid to his estranged daughter, on the other?

  Or had his concern been solely for the health of her youthful living body, rather than for the daughter who inhabited it?

  No; the old man who had been Cobb’s friend would not have evicted his daughter’s soul from her body, to renew his own life.

  If such things were in fact actually possible! But…something conventionally impossible had happened tonight.

  Cobb looked at the two heads that bobbed against the intermittently lit windshield. Had these two old university professors really driven Vitrielli to suicide—and were they actually now intending to torture the body they imagined Vitrielli’s soul occupied?

  Quietly he reached around and slid his phone out of his back pocket; and the slide rule came free too, and clattered on the corrugated metal of the van’s floor.

  “Give us your phone,” said Ainsworth distinctly. “Now.”