Forty-nine
John expected to be faced with the need to kill. He
accepted the possibility that he himself would be killed. There were too
many armed men closing on him.
"I will help end this for you," Marlene said,
"given your permission."
John was willing to accept the help with one
reservation. "Leave Kahl to me.”
"So be it.”
The first few bullets struck close. The crackling of
gunfire sounded from all sides, but the focus of the battle shifted to
whatever illusions Marlene instilled to lure their attention away from
him.
Incredibly, Kahl's men were shooting at one another.
As soon as those in command of the assault realized the problem, a
cease fire was called. Cries of confusion sounded, and calls for retreat
interspersed with the screams of the wounded.
John retrieved the black sphere, still weighing next
to nothing despite its contents. He tucked it beneath one arm and headed
up the slope to the estate. Again and again he glanced at his right hand. It differed in one respect from his left hand. It was spotlessly clean
and manicured. Overhead, the armed chopper continued to circle, searching
for him and seeing nothing.
John reached the double security fence surrounding
the estate in time to watch Kahl's makeshift gunship climb into view. It
swooped suddenly and came in low over the treeline, rushing toward the
house at less that twenty feet.
John had a sudden premonition of disaster.
"Marlene, that's not necessary."
Or, perhaps it was. The chopper flew blindly into
the side of the house. Whirling blades slashed a raw wound through
several second floor windows and the siding. The body of the chopper
crumbled like metal foil, pushing in a crater-like depression in the side
of the mansion without penetrating. John brought his hand up to shield
his eyes against an explosion. Instead, the small machine tumbled down
the face of the building and tore itself to pieces. Fragments of the
shattered rotor spun out over the grounds like a metallic roman candle.
Only after all had fallen deathly silent did a fire start with a quiet
whump to send oily smoke billowing into the afternoon sky.
Men ran from the sides of the mansion firing sidearms
and assault rifles into the face of a nonexistent army. When they
discovered themselves unopposed, John saw that many continued on to desert
the grounds. Some funneled through the front gate on foot. Others piled into
several undamaged cars and fled with screaming tires.
"Only one remains to be defeated face to face,"
Marlene said softly among the storm of his own thoughts.
John ran for the house, freed of pain and keyed for
the old thrill of combat. "One last time," he murmured to the empty air
about him.
He went in through a side entrance. Unarmed, he
leaped and pivoted and sprang from corner to corner, scanning empty rooms
as he passed and dipping his head from behind door frames for a visual
snapshot of open areas beyond. Whoever was left inside the house would be
armed and would not hesitate to shoot.
"Freeze, Hartman."
The word was muttered just above the threshold of
hearing. It was loud enough to stop him in his tracks. He turned slowly
to face a large man with a broad grin and a large caliber handgun to
match.
"Paul Callavier at your service. You must be the
invincible John Hartman."
A shadow moved behind Callavier. "Me first," a
cheerful and eminently feminine voice announced. "Brains before beauty."
Callavier put his hands out slowly, letting the
handgun dangle from his trigger finger.
"Turn around," the woman said.
Callavier turned to face the diminutive women.
"Payback, John Hartman," Sheila Davies called out to
him. Her big brown eyes flashed fiery mischief. "I owe you one."
But she had moved too close to Callavier. Callavier
swing the handgun with a viciousness that would have crushed her skull.
The blow did not connect. Not only did she
anticipate the move, she had invited it. With a shriek of rage, Sheila
ducked and spun around in a whirl. The side of her foot knocked the
handgun from Callavier's hand. She danced a single step and connected
with the side of his head with the other.
Callavier staggered back, but the blow had been
engineered to insult and enrage the man, not to disable him. Callavier
roared and demonstrated a spin of his own and a swiftly arced foot capable
of dislocating the vertebrae of the much smaller woman.
Again, Sheila did not remain in place to be
victimized. She squatted to avoid the outstretched leg and lashed out
with a fist that connected hard with Callavier's testicles. Callavier
folded at the waist and offered his out-thrust jaw to the woman. Sheila
struck at the exposed target with surprising power, sending several
shattered teeth and a gout of blood shooting skyward from Callavier's
gaping mouth.
Callavier dropped to his knees and muttered something
between bloodied lips.
"A derogatory comment, I suspect," she said, stepping
out of harm's way. "In French no less."
Her gaze fell upon John's right hand by chance. Her
smile went cold. "But you're not John Hartman."
He held his hand out and flexed it. “Yes, I am. The
hand got better, is all.”
With a shake of her head, she set the mystery aside
for the moment. "We've got about two minutes to vacate the grounds.
Kahl's going to have visitors and we want to watch from the sidelines."
Sheila led the way out the front entrance. Armed
commandos in black battle dress uniforms gestured the two of them through
the automated gate with the muzzles of automated weapons, then vanished
into the underbrush without detaining him.
Sheila joined her group and
slipped into the trees. John parted company with the group and backtracked through the trees. He
sat alongside the black sphere in the warming morning air, exhausted
emotionally and physically.
"I want David back now," he said to the quiet of the
surrounding forest.
"Of course," the forest answered back in
Marlene’s familiar voice.
Rather than flowing out horizontally, the black
sphere showed a new trick. It rose vertically into a perfect rectangle of
reflectivity. John rose to his feet and stepped back.
Time passed.
"Don’t do this to me, Marlene."
"David is reluctant to leave. Prepare yourself
for the changes, John.”
David stepped from the mirror. He
stopped and looked back with a
pained expression.
Something was terribly wrong.
“David?”
David turned to him. It was not the David he had known. This version of
David Hartman stood taller by six inches and outweighed the David he had
known by twenty pounds.
Marlene appeared, wearing one of her cotton summer
dresses. "David as he should have been," she announced proudly. "He has
no clear memory of his illness. The psychological as well as the physical
damage has been erased. Otherwise, everything is the same."
Dobbie came rushing by in a flurry of excitement and
panting. David called out in glee with a deeper voice than John
remembered and chased after the dog.
"Meet us at the house!" Marlene called after the boy,
“and take the sphere with you!”
David circled back to scoop the sphere from the
ground. She stood beaming in pride at the boy tearing up the hill among
the trees in the waning afternoon sun, the black sphere tucked beneath one
arm, the Doberman bounding ahead of him.
John scanned the surrounding underbrush for evidence
of lingering danger. In the distance, the rattle of another helicopter
approached.
"Orville Kahl has his hands full," Marlene said.
"They are covered in blood, and he is busy trying to wash the stain away."
John couldn't bring himself to rejoice their
incomplete victory. She still hadn’t won the mirror’s avowed goal of
returning the dead to physical existence. One vast chasm remained to be
bridged, Marlene's presence in a reality to which she no longer belonged.
