"You're wrong. I don't have the faintest inclination to get involved. Besides which, I told you. I don't slam the ride anymore. Remote viewing is something I no longer do."
"If that's what the man say." The tone of Isidore's voice made Gabriel glance over at him. Isidore was pursing his lips together in a very irritating fashion.
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
Isidore abandoned the street slang. "Oh come on, Gabriel. Be honest. Do you really want to make me believe that your hacking skills aren't sometimes just a wee bit amplified by this second sight thing of yours? In fact, it now explains a lot I've always wondered about."
"You're way off track." Gabriel jerked the steering wheel savagely to the side, and the Jag cleared a demented motorcyclist with an Evel Knievel complex by a few inches. "And let's switch topics, shall we."
But Isidore continued unperturbed. "I surfed the Internet the other night after our talk. Did you know that a group of remote viewers in the United States foresaw 9/11 four years before it happened? They even posted their scribbles of an airplane crashing into one of a pair of skyscrapers on the Net and wrote an open letter to the FBI warning them that something like that was going to happen. No one paid any attention. This is hot shit, man."
Gabriel didn't answer. As a matter of fact, he did know about this incident, and he was aware that many remote viewing companies in the U.S. were now vying with one another to try and pinpoint al-Qaeda operatives. There was even talk that the CIA was consulting with some of these companies on a regular basis. But he had doubts about the effectiveness of many of this new breed of commercial RVs. Too often they were making the kind of far-fetched claims he had been taught to dismiss at Eyestorm. True, Eyestorm had also been a company for hire, but it had stuck religiously to the protocols developed by the American military during the seventies and eighties. And those protocols were exceptionally strict.
Isidore was talking again. "One thing I don't understand, though. This Robert Whittington. Let's say the dude really is dead, how can you zoom in on him or track him or whatever the term is? I mean… he's dead, right?"
"His thoughts at the time of his death may still resonate in the psi-space."
"Resonate in the psi-space. Wicked. I don't know what that means. But it sure sounds cool."
"I'm pleased you're thrilled."
"So how does it work? Will you be able to see through the guy's eyes? You know, right at that moment when someone cut his throat or clubbed him to death or whatever?"
"Bloody hell, Isidore. I never took you for a ghoul."
"OK, sorry. But you know what I mean? Will you be able to read his very last thoughts before he died?"
"If I happen to access those thoughts, yes."
"So you'll be able to see who the perpetrator is."
"Oh, for goodness' sake. The kid may not even be dead. He's probably hanging out in Goa smoking hashish and learning how to be a swami."
"That's not what you said the other night. You said if Frankie wasn't able to sense him anymore then the poor kid had probably copped it. Isn't that what you said?"
Gabriel didn't answer. He brought the Jag to an abrupt standstill. "There's the tube. I'm dropping you off here. Get working on that antenna for Pittypats and we'll talk again tomorrow, OK?"
"OK," Isidore said, unabashed by Gabriel's frown or the curtness of his tone. Opening the door on his side, he hopped out and gave a cheery wave. In his rearview mirror Gabriel watched his lanky figure move away from the car and disappear down the stairs to the Underground. With a sigh, he let out the clutch. Isidore was probably the only person he truly considered a friend. Not that it precluded him from sometimes feeling as though he wanted to strangle him.
It took Gabriel another fifteen minutes to get home. After parking the Jag in the underground garage, he took the elevator up to the penthouse. Usually, he would take the stairs but today he simply could not summon the energy. Actually, everything these past few days seemed to exact an inordinate amount of effort. As if to confirm his fears, he sneezed wetly and at the back of his throat he felt a suspicious itch. Oh, hell. This was just what he needed. A cold.
He opened the front door and threw the keys into the hand-carved Ghanaian fruit bowl he had purchased at a Sotheby's auction only a month before. An impulse buy, that. And he had probably overpaid for it. Moodily he picked up the stack of unopened letters waiting for him on the table. He hadn't looked at his mail for over a week.
He came upon it as he was checking through the envelopes-the photograph of Robert Whittington. He couldn't remember placing it with the mail, but here it was, pushed in between a bill from his dental hygienist and a reminder that his subscription money for Gourmet magazine was due.
Slowly he sat down in the armchair facing the window, the photograph still in his hand. The kid really did have the most defenseless face, as though he was open to whatever came his way. And the expression in his eyes: no hint of self-importance or pretension. He remembered the cool self-assurance of the father, the slightly ironic detachment with which Whittington senior seemed to survey the world. Oh yes, he could well imagine that friction existed between these two.
He yawned and let his hand fall to his lap, the snapshot held loosely between his fingers. He was suddenly sleepy. The sun pouring through the window was warm. He wondered what color Robert Whittington's eyes were; in the photograph it was difficult to tell. Either a dark gray or maybe blue…
The linen curtains flanking the window lifted and billowed. A breeze had sprung up. He was aware of it only vaguely. He was not awake, but not yet asleep.
His mind shifted. The gate to his inner eye opened.
On one level his conscious mind knew he had stepped into a ride, that only his mind was traveling and not his body, but as always when he slammed into a ride with this much precision, he was rapidly losing contact with the man who at this moment was sitting in an armchair, his legs stretched out to catch the sun. One instant he was still aware of being in the chair, head tipped back slightly, limbs completely relaxed, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. The next moment he found himself standing in a small room facing a closed door.
As he placed his hand against the massive frame of the door, he noticed that the hand was narrow and the fingers long and pointed. It was a male hand but it was not his own. He was looking through someone else's eyes.
He had stepped into someone else's mind.
At that moment the last tenuous connection between his own mind and the host mind severed and he crossed over-completely submerging himself in the host mind's thoughts.
The door in front of him was made of heavy timber. The wood was dark with age.
Mounted on the door was a coat of arms. A circle on top of a cross. The design was strangely modern: it almost looked like the sign for female sexuality. Cross and circle were embraced within the petals of an open rose.
The sign was familiar to him. He remembered it well. He had studied this symbol in detail. The Monas. He could feel the excitement rising within him.
No doorknob was visible, but as he leaned against the door, it swung open on silent hinges. He stepped over the raised threshold into a narrow room. The ceiling seemed dizzyingly high. The walls were covered with shelves stacked to the rafters with books. The smell inside that confined space was of old mildewed paper and leather bindings rotting at the spine.
And somehow he knew the exact dimensions of this room. Thirty-eight of his footsteps by sixteen. Strange, how he knew that.
A slight sound made him tilt his head. High above him, perched delicately on top of one of the immensely tall bookcases, was a crow. The bird was big and its feathers shimmered with green-black phosphorescence. For a moment they stared at each other. The crow shifted on its perch, lifting one wing. Behind it, on the wall, its shadow self moved like a restless ghost.