The sound man was running the sound effects and music cues, making sure they all lined up with the script, which they did. The ground-shaking rumble of a volcano, the explosive thud of a pod landing in the volcano’s crater, the whoooosh!of a hang glider circling to earth, all playing against a thrilling musical sound track, were great people attractors. Curious tourists and passersby paused at the ribbon barriers around the parking lot to see what was going on, and from there could read the splashy signage telling them there would be a spectacle on this very spot at two that afternoon.
On the roof of the Orpheus, the three-man hang glider crew gave Mandy’s glider one more preflight while monitoring the wind sock on the roof and the wind sock on the ground. So far so good, but even mild breezes boiled and swirled around and between the high structures on the Strip, and if the winds got too intense, Mandy would have to fall back on her rappelling routine.
One block away, Preston and his crew unfolded a sixty-foot platform that spanned the top of one truck and trailer, and on top of this they carefully laid out a foot-thick, sixty-foot-long cluster of fine fibers bound with Velcro loops. They had a wind sock as well, installed on the other truck’s radio antenna. Right now it barely stirred, but that could change as the day warmed up.
By 8:00 A.M. Dane had made the rounds checking on everything and now stood with Emile on the stage, “preflighting” the pod prior to hoisting it aloft and second-guessing his own design. I could have … maybe I should have … this is a little awkward, I could have put it over here …
But the design, as it was, was sound and the escape hatch was functional. Given that, the greatest danger today, if any, would be human error.
Which put it all on Mandy, and if there’d been an easier way he would have taken it.
At 9:00, Mandy arrived with Seamus, and while Seamus oversaw everything and took videos, she squeezed into the pod for one last go-through with Dane and Emile.
While she squirmed inside the pod, testing the petal doors, shedding the shackles and cuffs and tripping the escape hatch, she remained detached and clinical, never suggesting through tone or action that there were any galactic-size issues overshadowing this whole day, never showing that there had ever been or would ever be a love between herself and Dane, the clearest and farthest opposite of the truth. Dane followed the same script, to the point that she hungered for assurance, for one moment when they could say something … anything.
Maybe when it was over. For now, with the clock ticking, there was only the Grand Illusion—the timing, the devices, the costume change, the winds, getting it right.
And, of course, there was Seamus.
At 10:05, Seamus called Mandy, Dane, and Emile together and suggested they run one more test flight of the hang glider. Mandy was agreeable, but given that it was the surprise ending for the stunt and that people were beginning to linger around the perimeter of the parking lot, they decided to forgo it. Everything else was ready. The pod was safe and sound with the stage crew keeping an eye on it, ready to hoist into position at the top of the show.
At 11:23, Parmenter and Loren Moss were seated at the command console, monitoring the readings as they had been doing for days on end, and of course, until the Grand Illusion actually took place, there wouldn’t be much to monitor. At the moment, Mandy’s readings were predictable: quivering, fluctuating, exerting small flashes and distortions on the space-time fabric as if she were troubled and nervous. Parmenter and Moss found it easy to stray to other topics of conversation. Two staff members, by now indifferent to this whole monotonous process, sat at the table eating some fresh doughnuts and talking about sports.
At 12:00 noon, as the signs and the newspaper and television ads all promised, the ribbons around the parking lot came down and folks were allowed to drift in, find a spot in the bleachers, get comfortable, and wait. They arrived in small trickles at first, but there was no doubt the trickle would turn to a flood as two in the afternoon approached.
Along with the people came the news trucks. Vahidi had seen to that. Mandy’s Grand Illusion would be broadcast live on two stations and on the evening news on all of them, which was the greatest free publicity the Orpheus Hotel could ask for, and all the more reason to give them a real show.
At 12:30, Moss and Parmenter availed themselves of microwaved sandwiches from the kitchen and nibbled at them as they watched the monitors showing nothing interesting. One of the staff had brought in a television so they could watch the live broadcast, but right now the station was carrying a network show, six political pundits sitting around a table interrupting each other. When Parmenter turned down the sound, no one complained.
“What are we expecting, anyway?” Moss finally asked.
Parmenter had to think to come up with something. “I suppose we could be seeing the Machine approach its limits. From what I understand, this is going to be one heck of a stunt.”
“Ohhh, that’s for sure.”
Moss’s tone was a bit elevated when he said that. It made Parmenter wonder what he meant.
Moss piped up, “Bigger than what we’re planning in the desert?”
What?Parmenter put up a hand of caution. “Not here.”
Moss looked at the two staff members finding something to do at another station. “They can’t hear us.”
“We don’t discuss it here.”
“Well … maybe in cloaked terms …”
“Not in any terms!”
“But it does look promising.”
Parmenter answered, if only to end the topic, “Yes. I would say the theory’s working.”
“But”—Moss looked all around the lab—“does it ever bother you? Do you ever consider the cost in terms of the progress we’ve made? We would lose all of this.”
“We’ve already lost it. We can’t contain or control what this is, what it means, what it can do.”
“What it can do. You can imagine how that looks through my eyes.”
Parmenter nodded. “I realize—”
“Do you? I’m dying, and this”—he looked around the room at the amazing Machine—“this could have saved me … and come on, being realistic, of course I have to wonder if there isn’t something we don’t know yet, some tiny, hidden secret yet to be discovered that could change the rules.”
Well,Parmenter thought, it’s happened.“Loren, you do remember all the steps we went through where we talked just as you’re talking now, and how those steps brought us to this pitiful point. Ifwe hadn’t stolen Mandy’s body and reverted it without anyone’s permission or knowledge; ifwe’d not tried a cover-up of Watergate proportions instead of admitting our error; ifwe hadn’t, from the start, chosen the Machine over every human life we entangled with it; ifwe hadn’t reached the point where we were actually plotting to retrace and kill an innocent young woman …”
“But you’re fine with letting your own friend and colleague die.”
Parmenter’s heart sank. “It’s more than your life and Mandy’s. It’s the nature of the Machine coupled with the nature of mankind. We’ve already demonstrated the results in this very lab, in our own choices and actions.”
“I see it differently.”
“I can understand that. I was expecting it, to be honest.”
“Is that why you didn’t trust me with Mandy’s reversion data?”
Well, now we’re getting down to it.“Loren, I would hardly trust myself, and it was an extreme act of trust for Mandy to do so. She trusted me with her life.”
Just then the hallway door opened and several men came into the room. Parmenter recognized Martin DuFresne, Carlson, and three other physicians in DuFresne’s camp— speak of the devil!There were three other men he’d seen maybe once before. They were the government interests who stayed deep in the background, unnamed, unseen, making things happen, definitely not to be trusted. Last through the door were two men he’d not seen before: one was dark, Mediterranean, perhaps Middle Eastern, the other blond, with a ruddy, pockmarked face.