This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.Copyright ©1986 by John Dalmas
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.A Baen Books OriginalBaen Publishing EnterprisesP.O. Box 1403Riverdale, NY 10471www.baen.comISBN: 0-671-65583-3First printing, August 1986Cover art by David MattinglyDistributed by Simon & Schuster1230 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10020Printed in the United States of America
Striding strongly, Frank Diacono emerged from the timberline spruce forest into alpine tundra. Usually he felt exhilarated when he hiked the high country; now he felt vaguely uneasy—vaguely enough that he wasn't consciously aware of it.
He'd hiked a long way since noon, first up the dirt road that led over Schultz Pass, turning off it to climb the steep winding jeep trail to Doyle Saddle, thence along the foot trail that circled inside the rim of the broad crater where the snow had finally melted beneath the summer sun. To his right, the crater wall fell away steeply. The old crater bottom below was heaped with bouldery glacial moraine, partly clad with stands of hardy aspens—an epitomal frost pocket. Most weeks in summer found night frosts in its depths, though it was less than a hundred miles from that great blast furnace, the Sonoran Desert.
Diacono, who'd grown up in Philadelphia, was as addicted to the Arizona back country as the demands on an assistant college football coach allowed. He'd even audited courses in geology, forestry, and ecology to better know and understand what he saw.
Ahead of him stood his goal, Humphrey Peak, highest of the peaks that ringed the crater. Its tundra was dusky rose in the sun's final rays, and Diacono quickened his pace. There was a notch between Humphrey and Agassiz Peaks, and for a little distance beyond it, the trail would be treacherous in twilight.
Another hiker was coming toward him on the other side of the notch, the only hiker he'd seen all day. The trail was narrow where they would meet, the slopes dangerously steep above and below, so when Diacono reached the notch, he waited there for the other man to get clear of the narrows. The other man was younger, and a bit in the old hippy mode, Diacono thought: slim but trail-rugged, his blond hair in a ponytail, a red bandana tied round his head.
The younger man stopped when they met, and sized up Frank Diacono's 240 pounds of bone and muscle. "Are you going on up Humphrey's tonight?" he asked.
"That's right."
"You going to sack down up there?"
Diacono nodded curtly, annoyed by what he considered intrusive questions.
The younger man got out of his way. "I guess you'll want to be moving along then," he said.
Diacono nodded and moved past. He'd gone only two or three steps when the other spoke after him. "Have you heard of the Indian spirit that lives up there?"
Stopping, Diacono looked back. Traditional Navajos and Hopis believed that a spirit, a god, dwelt there. The Forest Service protected the peak as an unofficial religious preserve for the tribes, restricting recreational development in the near vicinity. Not a superstitious man, Diacono nonetheless favored the action out of respect for tribal beliefs, and preferred the area without further disturbance anyway.
"I've heard of it," he admitted. "Why?"
The other man didn't answer at once, as if considering his words. Diacono waited, a trifle impatient.
"He ... doesn't like people camping on top of him at night. Not white men like you and me, anyway."
Diacono nodded, his annoyance somehow gone now. "I like this old mountain," he said mildly. "I won't be leaving any trash up there or disturbing anything, any more than I would in church."
For several seconds they looked at each other, not more than six feet apart. The younger man was lean-faced, his tan reddish. Diacono was massive, blue-jawed, his black hair almost crew cut, his tan not red at all.
"Right," the younger man said, nodding. "Have a good one."
"Same to you."
Diacono turned and went on. The light was beginning to fade noticeably, and when the trail reached the crest of the rim, a brisk breeze hit him, thin and cold. By the time he topped out on the peak, night was settling in. The first and brightest dozen stars were visible.
On the top was a small walled space, intermediate between a rectangle and an ellipse, and about six by ten feet. The walls, of roughly fitted rocks, were some three feet high, with a narrow opening in the south end. A good place to sleep sheltered from the wind, Diacono thought. He assumed that hikers had built the wall and removed the surface stones for comfortable sleeping. It didn't occur to him that Indians might have made it for another reason.
Taking off his pack, he knelt within the walled space. The wind had increased, to twenty-five knots or better now. He ate a handful of gorp, chewed a piece of beef jerky until he'd mastered and swallowed it, then swigged water from his canteen. After unrolling his thin ground pad, he spread his down sleeping bag on it. Then he put his canteen and boots by the head of his sleeping bag, rolled up his jeans for a pillow, and put wallet, watch, and pickup keys in a boot. Finally, he zipped himself into the bag with only his face exposed.
The wind, he quickly decided, was going to be a nuisance. It continued to get stronger; even there behind the wall it actually rippled the nylon casing of his sleeping bag with little popping sounds.
But the sky was utterly clear, visible stars increasing by the minute. At more than 12,600 feet elevation, the star display would soon be out of this world; in Philly, he'd never imagined such a sky.
While the casing of his sleeping bag popped in the wind, he fixed his eyes on one of the stars, the brightest in his field of vision, and began to feel ill at ease. The star moved, a common enough illusion when you lie on your back and fix your attention on one. He tried to hold it still with his eyes, but it moved erratically, jerking here and there over distances of ten degrees or more, pausing to glint, brightly stationary, for two or three seconds.
So large an apparent movement was new to him. Deliberately he withheld his attention from it, watching new stars gradually fill the empty darkness as the sky changed toward deep black. But any star he watched for more than a few seconds played the same trick.
As he watched, he became aware of anxiety, and gradually recognized dread. Blaming this on some mental effect of watching the stars, he closed his eyes. But that was no protection: Behind his lids were also erratic stars, and the dread intensified. Among these new stars were two lights, dull red, that gradually became more than stars.
They were eyes.
He opened his own to the night outside him. "Shit!" he muttered. Above him the stars jittered, and his sleeping bag rippled and snapped. Grimly he turned onto his side, bending legs and hips, and reclosed his eyes, determined to sleep.
And felt a growing cold, a cold deeper than discomfort, though he'd slept warm in this bag at much lower temperatures. Then the realization hit him, utterly illogical but with total certainty: If he spent the night there, he'd be dead before morning. It was that simple.
With an oath he sat up, fumbling for the zipper tab, and in seconds was stuffing his gear back into his packsack. Hurriedly he pulled on pants and put his canteen back on his belt. He didn't even take time to lace his boots, just wrapped and knotted the laces around his ankles, then fled, half running along the jumbly crest of a side ridge slanting down northward from the peak like a buttress to the crater.
The night seemed preternaturally dark, and he stumbled among low boulders until he realized he was at the head of the avalanche track above Abineau Canyon. Without hesitating he started down it, scarcely able to see the rocks at his feet.
Here the surface was slide rock, talus, most of the pieces flat plates and slabs that rocked and tilted at his weight or slid away beneath his feet as he scrambled downward among their dislodged clatter. But as he put distance between himself and the top, he calmed, slowing in response to the more immediate danger underfoot that could easily send him bouncing and sliding down the mountain.
It seemed lighter now, though the moon would not be up for hours, and he picked a zigzag course downward, finding and following the less steep ways. At last he reached the bottom of Abineau Canyon, and followed it until he came to a jeep trail. There, at the edge of spruce forest, he unrolled his sleeping bag again.
It occurred to him that the wind was not blowing here. The sky was bannered and glittering with stars which were steady and impersonal. And for the first time since he'd left the notch and the other hiker, he recalled what the younger man had said about the god in the peak.
He closed his eyes and only darkness was there—darkness and whatever pictures he chose to put there. His last waking thoughts were a question and an answer: What had happened on the peak—would it have happened if the hiker hadn't said what he had? The answer, Diacono decided, was yes.
The West Hollywood night was softly lit by city glow off the overcast. The marine air was mild, vaguely moist, and heavy with night jasmine. Trees hemmed in and shadowed the narrow street—tall thin Washingtonia palms on one side, leafy trees shoulder to shoulder on the other. Along one curb, cars sheltered almost bumper to bumper beneath overhanging branches.
The buildings were two- and three-story apartment houses, their windows uniformly dark. A mockingbird called briefly, as if anticipating day.
At one end of the block a car stopped, and a young man, James "Lefty" Nagel, got out. The car was a Maverick, not new, its color uncertain in the night. A hammer in one hand, Lefty Nagel started walking in the street, a friend following slowly with the car.
They had worked this street two nights before. It would be funny to do it again so soon.
As he passed the left front windows of the first two cars, Lefty swung the hammer, smashing the glass, which rained down around his feet like crushed ice. The next car had only emptiness instead of glass in the driver's window. It was one he'd broken before, and the turkey owner hadn't gotten it replaced yet, so Lefty struck the windshield as punishment.
In this wise he went halfway down the block, feeling invigorated, full-chested, godlike. A Toyota sat by a bank of shrubs. In his euphoria, he noticed nothing as he approached it except the clean new glass in its grimy side.
He raised and swung, and as the heavy steel head impacted, someone plunged out of the bushes and ran in front of the car. Lefty's eyes caught the movement and turned to it, even as his hammer drove through. It was the face and the terrible intention distorting it that held his startled eyes, as if the sword was peripheral in importance. He felt something strike his side, then his heavyset black attacker turned and ran, disappearing behind the bordering shrubs. With a squeal of tires, the Maverick accelerated past, gunning down the street and out of sight around the next corner.
For a long moment then, things were quiet; the next sound was someone vomiting a little way off.
Jesus, Lefty thought, that was wild! He looked down to see if he was bleeding. There was abundant blood; his body lay sprawled beneath him in a pool of it, nearly severed below the ribs.
Even then, looking down at his body from a viewpoint some six feet above it, Lefty Nagel took a long moment to realize what had happened. When he did, he howled—howled with horror.
But no one heard, or no one knew they heard. Only a cat on a nearby balcony rail looked in his direction. The mockingbird tried again to call the dawn.
The ghost of Lefty Nagel hung there numbly for quite a while, hardly seeing, hardly hearing. His buddy did not come back; actually, he had driven through a store window a few blocks away.
About ten minutes later a patrol car turned into the street from Sunset Boulevard two blocks north, its flasher turning slowly, siren silent. It slowed abruptly when its lights picked up the body, then stopped a few yards away. For a moment the driver spoke into the radio, then both patrolmen got out. The entry door to the nearest apartment building opened, and the black man came over, his souvenir World War Two sword upstairs now in his bathtub. His body sagged; so did his face.
The ghost of Lefty Nagel stared at him, feeling no anger; feeling mainly grief.
"My name is Ernest Thorns," the black man said to the officers. "I'm the one that phoned you. I killed him."
"Mr. Thorns," said the corporal, "you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be held against you in a court of law."
Thorns was staring at the body in the street, showing no remorse, only a profound tiredness. "I'm the one that killed him," he repeated.
The remorse was Lefty's. If he could have cried, he would have. "I'm sorry," he said to Ernest Thorns, as an officer handcuffed the black man. "Jesus but I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it. I don't know why."
But Thorns ignored him, as if Lefty wasn't there. So did the police. Lefty didn't know what else to say; he realized now that they could neither see nor hear him. Only the cat on the balcony rail was looking at him, and Lefty hadn't noticed the cat.
They stayed until the ambulance arrived—all four of them: Ernest Thorns, the two patrolmen, and the ghost of Lefty Nagel. Then Lefty rode with his body to the morgue, not yet willing to leave it.
The paramedics didn't notice him either.
* * *
Leo Hochman left the Los Feliz Post Office—why the Los Feliz Branch, no one would ever know—and got into his delivery van. Leo had a house-cleaning business, and often the van held an industrial-grade vacuum cleaner, an assortment of pails, mops, and squeegees, buckets of solvents, and sometimes a steam cleaner for carpets. Today it held a pile of waxed cardboard boxes with a plastic tarp thrown over them.
He drove west on Franklin Avenue to the Hollywood Freeway on-ramp, careful not to encroach on the traffic signals, then went north on the freeway over Cahuenga Pass. After a few minutes he exited in the San Fernando Valley and drove to a large shopping center.
It was Saturday, early enough that there was still plenty of parking close to the L-shaped building, and he parked in the angle. A man and woman with three children were passing, and Leo Hochman waited a few moments, intending to let them get farther away. Instead, they went into the drugstore to his left; he could see them get in line at the ice cream counter.
He shrugged. Then he took the detonator out of the glove compartment and blew himself up with what later was estimated to be four hundred pounds of dynamite. The death toll was thirty-seven, including Hochman. Of the van, the biggest remaining piece was the engine block; only traces were found of its driver.
It was Monday before it was known who he'd been. Monday morning, the LA. Times received a letter by registered mail, registered on Saturday at 9:48 A.M., nineteen minutes before the explosion. So did Channel Eight News, KFWB Radio, and the Herald-Examiner. In the letter, Hochman had said exactly what he was going to do, and where, and approximately when. It was, he said, in protest of the British presence in Northern Ireland—the "brutal Brittish oppreshion" [sic] as he'd put it.
"That's absolutely crazy!" said anchorman James Fong Wu, after Channel Eight News was off the air. "Leo August Hochman? That's not Irish!"
Anchorwoman Sandy Steele looked pointedly at him. "Jim," she said, "that's absolutely crazy even if his name was Paddy O'Toole."
Frank Diacono closed the file cabinet and picked up his office phone in mid-ring. "Diacono," he said.
"Frank, this is Bill. Just wanted to remind you about this evening."
"Don't worry, Bill, I won't forget—not with Sharon fixing lasagna."
"Uh, I'm not sure about the lasagna, Frank. She was thinking maybe she'd have gefilte fish instead."
"Gefilte fish? What's gefilte fish?"
"Damned if I know."
Diacono waited a beat. "Bill, you know it's not okay to put me on like that," he said, "a poor dumb dago jock like me." He went into his Mafia mobster impression. "I got friends that would be offended, you know? One short phone call to Vegas..."
"Gee, Frank, I forgot. I didn't mean to offend you. My profuse apologies."
"Profuse ain't enough, Bill. They got to be abject, too. Eh? And never forget the Mafia."
"You've got it, Mr. Diacono, sir. And lasagna it will be. I'll get on the hotline to Sharon right away."
"Seven o'clock?"
"Right. Oh, and Frank: Did you have a chance to read that story I wanted you to read?"
"Last night, before I went to bed."
"Good. Don't forget to bring the magazine with you. It's a collector's item."
"I put it on my dashboard this morning."
When they'd hung up, Diacono looked at his watch and decided to take a break. He went to the coffee room and poured his pint mug full, dropping a quarter into the money can, then took the coffee back to his office. He didn't, at the moment, feel like sitting around talking to whoever might turn up.
The magazine that Bill Van Wyk had loaned him was Galaxy Science Fiction for March 1952. Diacono had enjoyed SF novels since he'd been a kid, and frequently picked up one of the magazines as well. But Bill Van Wyk had shelves and shelves of science fiction paperbacks and magazines going back for decades. Fortunately, Bill could read a novel in under two hours; otherwise, he'd never get anything else done. Occasionally he'd push a book on Frank; he knew what Diacono would enjoy.
But the story he'd wanted Frank to read in the old Galaxy was not the kind Diacono liked, and Van Wyk must have known it. It was good—excellent, actually—but Diacono had more than once voiced a distaste for downers. And "The Year of the Jackpot" was definitely a downer—characters you cared about, a powerful concept, very well written, but a terrible ending.
The basic story premise was that lots of things in the world go in cycles, like weather and insects and diseases and violence, just for starters. The human craziness cycle had been important in the story. And when you got a lot of cycles peaking together, according to the story, they somehow reinforced each other so that they peaked higher than usual. In "The Year of the Jackpot," a whole lot of cycles all peaked at once, including the sunspot cycle, and then the sun went nova.
That was bad enough, but what was worst about the story—what bothered Diacono most—was the hero's premise that some cycles, at least, had no antecedent cause, but were a cause unto themselves. People explained such cycles, gave what they thought of as reasons, but the explanations seemed to be baloney, because if you attacked the supposed causes, the effects happened anyway.
Diacono was a jock, but he also had an IQ of 138, a lot of human sensitivity, and he was rational, so that last premise bothered him. It bothered him even after he reminded himself that it was just a story, the product of one man's imagination. And it still bothered him twelve hours after he'd finished reading it.
Because it bothered him so much, he might have resented Bill's getting him to read it, except that he knew Van Wyk: they were close friends. Bill wouldn't have asked him to read it just to annoy him. There was something behind the request that he'd probably find out about tonight.
The story's hero, Potiphar Breen, resembled Bill Van Wyk in one respect: Both were mathematicians specializing in statistical analysis. Bill Van Wyk had the kind of "home" computer that few college professors could afford. He'd come into an inheritance that allowed him to send his kids to Cal Tech and Oberlin. Playing with his computer had become an even bigger hobby for Van Wyk now than reading science fiction.
There was probably a connection, Frank decided, between Bill's interest in statistical analysis and his asking him to read the old Heinlein story.
Diacono shook the matter off and opened the folder on the Cedar City High School football team, in Utah. There were a couple of seniors there who looked like they could make it in the Big Sky Conference.
It was a beautiful January night in Flagstaff, Arizona. As Diacono got out of his pickup in front of Van Wyk's, he could see the towering triangle of Agassiz Peak glowing white in the moonlight, maybe five straight-line miles north and a mile higher than where he stood. A brisk winter wind made him shiver, and he thought of Humphrey Peak, screened from sight by the intervening Agassiz. If a person tried to spend tonight on top of Humphrey, he thought, he could the without the help of any unfriendly Indian god. It was cold enough here in town, a mile lower at 7,000 feet.
Bill Van Wyk answered the door chime. "Hey, Franco, come on in!" he said. He closed the door behind Diacono and helped him off with his jacket. "What'll you have to warm up on? The usual?" Bill asked as he hung the jacket in the entryway closet.
"Sounds good to me." Part of Diacono's attention was still on the mountain as they walked into the living room, where a couple was sitting.
"Do you guys know one another?" Van Wyk asked.
The man got off the sofa. "I don't believe so," he said. "I'm Dr. Justin R. Pingree, and this is my wife, Ursula."
Diacono wrapped his hand around Pingree's. Then Ursula extended hers, limp and moist. The thought occurred to him that an "Ursula" should be big, bold, and blonde, but this one was none of the three. Small and darkish, she came across as withdrawn. The wine glass beside her was empty. She wouldn't say much, he thought, but Pingree would probably talk freely and arrogantly. Flagstaff, Arizona was a relaxed, informal town, characterized as much by its huge sawmill and log yards as by its university. Faculty seldom introduced themselves as "doctor" there, certainly not in a casual domestic situation.
"I'm Frank Diacono," Frank answered. He plucked Simple Simon the Silly Savage from the room's largest chair and sat down, transferring the big Siamese cat to his lap. Simon wasn't having laps just then, and jumped down to disappear into the hallway.
"And what do you do, Mr.—what's your name again?" said Pingree.
"Diacono. Frank Diacono. I'm the defensive coordinator for the football team."
"I'd guessed something of the sort," Pingree said, "from your appearance. I'm associate professor of sociology. I'm afraid I'm not significantly informed on football." He sounded distinctly sniffy when he said it.
"Interesting," Frank said, and left it there.
Pingree looked guardedly at him through thick glasses. "Interesting? In what respect?"
"You're not interested in football, and I'm not interested in sociology."
Ordinarily, Frank Diacono was a mild man not given to antagonisms. He hadn't been even during his years as a linebacker in the National Football League. Violent, yes, but rarely antagonistic. He decided he might make an exception in Pingree's case.
"I didn't say I wasn't interested in football," Pingree enunciated. "I said I was not significantly informed on football."
"Sorry," Frank replied. "I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. I assumed that someone who was interested would be at least somewhat informed." He changed the subject. "Just what do you do in sociology?"
Van Wyk had come back into the room with a heavy glass containing Frank's drink. He'd overheard the conversation with Pingree and was eyeing Frank quizzically.
Smirk, you bastard, thought Diacono. Inviting me over with a turkey like this. From somewhere the thought occurred to him, however unreasonable, that Pingree's presence too might have something to do with "The Year of the Jackpot."
Van Wyk gave Frank his drink and sat down, ignoring Ursula Pingree's empty glass, and took over the conversation as if to avoid a Pingree lecture.
"I'm glad you wanted the usual, Frank," he said. "Justin thinks poorly of people who drink strange mixtures, but with you and I both drinking them, he'll have someone besides me to analyze. His Ph.D. is in sociology but his bachelor's and master's were in psych." He turned to Pingree and gestured at Frank's drink. "Aberdeen screwdriver," he said.
Pingree looked a bit uncertainly at Van Wyk. "And what is an Aberdeen screwdriver?"
"Scotch and orange juice." Van Wyk held up his own glass. "This is a Harlan County screwdriver. Kentucky whiskey and orange juice. I also serve Havana screwdrivers, if you'd like to try one—orange juice with rum."
Pingree was looking at his host with a carefully neutral expression, and Diacono realized the man had little if any sense of humor. Behind those thick lenses he was trying to figure out what significance might be hidden in Van Wyk's joking.
"Sharon says to tell you we'll eat in five minutes," Van Wyk went on.
Diacono glanced at...
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