Conspiracies

Jack tried to look barely interested. "You mean Professor Roma? Who told you I was looking?"

"Evelyn. Lew. I've been looking for him too. Any, luck?"

"Nope."

"Maybe we can look together."

Is he really looking for Roma, or trying to keep an eye on me? Who's he working for?

Then he remembered that Canfield had been the first to mention this Otherness stuff. Maybe Jack could pump him about it, and maybe he'd slip—maybe he'd drop something about Melanie in the process.

"Maybe," Jack said. "We had a long discussion about the Otherness yesterday, and I wanted to get back to it."

"The Otherness, ay?" Canfield's bulging eyes narrowed as he looked up at Jack. "And how you're tied into it?"

Jack fought to hide his shock. What have I got—some sort of sign around my neck?

"We, uh, never got that far into it."

Canfield looked around. "Well, if you want to discuss it, this isn't the place. My room or yours?"

Jack considered that for a second. If he went off with Canfield, he might miss Roma. But finding Roma was looking pretty iffy; Canfield was a sure thing. He didn't want Canfield to see the mystery crates and their contents, however.

"Yours," he said, and didn't offer an explanation.

As Jack followed him to the elevator, he glanced up and saw Jim Zaleski and Miles Kenway huddled in a comer, heads close in deep conversation. They stopped talking as they spotted Jack.

Kenway called out, "I'm expecting a photo to be faxed to me any time now."

Jack gave a thumbs-up and kept walking.

So Kenway had taken his advice about getting visual confirmation on the Roma here and the Roma in Kentucky. That could be very interesting.

"What photo?" Canfield asked.

"Just a mutual acquaintance," Jack said.

Jack and Canfield rode up in silence, with Canfield busily gnawing at a fingernail, and Jack trying to avoid looking at his flannel-wrapped legs and the disconnecting way they moved beneath the blanket. He couldn't help thinking about what Melanie had said to Lew about what was wrong with those legs ...

You don't want to know.

Canfield's room was laid out exactly like Jack's. In fact, it could have been Jack's ... except it had no weird green crates lying about.

"Let's see now," Canfield said, grinning through his Hagar beard and motioning Jack to one of the chairs. "Where were we?"

He sat there snacking on fingernail and cuticle crudites as he regarded Jack with too-bright eyes. He seemed more wired up than usual. Salt-rimmed crescents darkened the armpits of his shirt.

"Yesterday you and I were in the 'Children of the Otherness' zone—inhabited by you and Melanie Ehler," Jack said. He settled into the chair, dropping to eye level with Canfield. "Later Roma said something about my supposedly being 'marked by the Otherness.'"

"Not supposedly—the mark is there and you know it."

You can see it too? Jack thought, stiffening. He shrugged with as much nonchalance as his tight muscles would allow.

"Do I?"

"Of course you do. Open your shirt and I'll prove it."

"Sorry. Not on a first date."

Canfield didn't laugh. "What's wrong? Does it disturb you that your scars might link you to me and my birth defects?"

Jack repressed a shudder as Canfield's legs stirred under the blanket.

"Whatever scars I have came along long after my birth. You told me yourself that your defects happened before you were born. I don't see any connection."

"Ah," Canfield said, raising a well-chewed index finger. "But what made your scars? A creature, right?"

Jack stared at him. He knows too? Finally he said, "Where do you get your information?"

"About the Otherness creatures?"

Why doesn't he call them by name? Jack wondered.

"Yeah. How do you know about them?"

"Melanie and I sensed their presence last year. Just as I sensed those scars on your chest, we became aware of the Otherness creatures approaching from the east."

That's right, Jack thought. The rakoshi had come from the east ... from India ... by freighter.

"I get the impression you never saw one."

"I never had the honor. We searched, but we never could locate them."

"Lucky for you."

"I don't see it that way. I could consider them almost ... brothers. After all, they too were children of the Otherness, like Melanie and me, although they contained far more of the Otherness than either of us."

"The Otherness ... I'm getting real tired of that word."

"Well, it's a perfect name, really. The Otherness represents everything that's not 'us'—meaning the human race and the reality we inhabit. Melanie thinks it's vampiric in a way, sucking the life—the spiritual life—out of everything it encounters. Monstrously dark times will ensue if and when it takes over."

"And how would it manage that?"

"Sneak in when the other side's not looking. It can't charge in because the current landlord's got it locked out, but it's always there, hovering just beyond the threshold, keeping an eye on us, making tiny intrusions, creating strange, fearful manifestations, using its influence to sow discord, fear, and madness wherever and whenever it can."

"Like through the folks downstairs?"

Canfield nodded. "Some people are more aware, others less, but each of us knows—I don't care whether it's in our preconscious, post-conscious, subconscious, in the most primitive corners of our hindbrains, in the very cells of our bodies, we all sense this battle raging. And that subliminal perception has been reflected in human religions since earliest recorded history: Horus and Set, the Titans and the Olympians, God and Satan. The war is out there, and it's been going on since the beginning of time. We're aware of it. We can sense the Otherness on the far side of the door, we can smell its hunger."

"Okay. Fine. Let's just say that's true. How's this ... this evil Great Whatever screwing with things now?"

"It can influence certain susceptible individuals—'touched by the Otherness,' as Melanie used to say."

"Touched is right," Jack said.

Canfield smiled. "Interesting, isn't it, that 'touched' has two meanings."

Jack hadn't thought of that, and thinking about it now was no comfort.

"Keep going."

"The willing susceptibles give in to the influence and go to work for it—they're the ones behind all the discord and cover-ups."

"Controlled by the Otherness."

"Not so much controlled, as simpatico. They're not taking orders, per se, but they feel a certain solidarity with its ethic."

"Ethic? What ethic?"

"All right, perhaps ethic isn't the best term. How about 'esthetic'? Does that sit better? Whatever the term or the reason, they're quite willing to inject as much chaos and discord as possible into everyday life. The unwilling fight back, but not without paying a price."

"SESOUP folk, in other words."

"Yes. They're what we call 'sensitives.' For better or worse, their nervous systems are more attuned to the Otherness. Their minds have to make sense of the external will impinging on them and so they think they're hearing voices, or come up with these wild-sounding theories."

"Like gray aliens, reptoids, Majestic-12, the New World Order—"

"You're thinking smalclass="underline" from Christianity and its Book of Revelations to the Hebrew Kaballah, to the Bhagavad Gita, they all come from the same place."

"So in other words, there's no shadow government trying to control our minds."

Canfield shook his head. "You're missing my point. I believe there is a shadow government with our worst interests at heart, but it's not controlled by aliens or the UN or Satan, it's run by people under the influence—note I said 'influence,' not 'direction'—of the Otherness. Aliens, devils and the NWO are simply some of the masks worn by that single, nameless chaotic entity ... the many faces of a single truth."