faster than before, and swinging around each other much faster as well,
and in much more complex, parabolic counterorbits.
Captivated and delighted, the onlookers laughed, applauded. Dom looked
at Ginger. Her radiant face shone with an expression of pure, spiritual
uplift that made her more beautiful than ever. She lowered her gaze
from the salt and pepper shakers to Dom, grinning with wild excitement,
and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Ernie Block and Jack Twist watched the
aerobatics with open-mouthed wonder that made them look not like
hard-bitten ex-soldiers but like two small boys seeing fireworks for the
first time in their lives. Laughing, Faye stood with her hands raised
toward the shakers, as if she were trying to feel the miraculous field
of power in which they were suspended. Ned Sarver was laughing, too,
but Sandy was crying, a sight that startled Dom until he realized she
was also smiling and that the tears on her cheeks were tears of joy.
"Oh," Sandy said, turning to Dom as if she had sensed that he was
looking at her, "isn't it wonderful? Whatever it means, isn't it just
wonderful? The freedom... the freedom of it . . . the breaking away
of all the bonds..... the rising up and above and away . . ."
Dom knew precisely what she was feeling and trying to say, because he
felt it too. For the moment, he forgot that possession of these
abilities would forever alienate him from people who were without the
talent, and he was filled with a rapturous sense of transcendence, with
an appreciation for what it might mean to take a giant leap up the
ladder of evolution, breaking away from the chains of human limitations.
In the Tranquility Grille tonight, there was a sense of history being
made, a sense that nothing in the world would ever be the same again.
"Do something else," Ginger said.
"Yes!" Sandy said. "Show us more. Show us more."
In other parts of the room, other salt shakers flew up from the tables
on which they had been standing: six, eight, ten in all. They hung
motionless for a moment, then began to spin like the first shaker.
Instantly, an equal number of pepper shakers took flight and began
spinning as well.
Dom still did not know how he was doing these things; he made no effort
to perform each new trick; the thought merely became fact, as if wishes
could come true. He suspected that Brendan was equally baffled.
The jukebox had been silent. Now it began to play a Dolly Parton tune,
though no one had punched the programming buttons.
Did I do that, Dom wondered, or was it Brendan?
Ginger said, "My God, I'm so excited I'm going to plotz!"
Laughing, Dom said, "Plotz? What's that one mean?"
"Bust, explode," Ginger said. "I'm so excited I'm going to bust!"
Every salt and pepper shaker spun, and the halves of every pair orbited
each other, and now all eleven sets began moving around the room in a
train, faster, faster, making a soft whoosh as they cut the air, casting
off sparks of reflected light.
Abruptly, a dozen chairs rose off the floor, not in the controlled and
playful manner in which the salt and pepper shakers had risen from the
tables, but with such violence and momentum that they shot instantly to
the ceiling, smashing against that barrier with a deafening clatter. One
of the wagonwheel lighting fixtures was struck by two chairs; its
lightbulbs burst, and the room was only three-quarters as brightly
illuminated as it had been. That wagon wheel broke loose of its anchor
brackets and wires, crashing to the floor a few feet behind Dom. The
chairs remained against the ceiling, vibrating as if they were a flock
of enormous bats hovering on dark wings. Most of the salt and pepper
shakers were still whirling maniacally around the room above everyone's
head, though a few had been brought down by the upflung chairs. Now, a
few more stopped spinning, swung erratically out of their orbits, out of
the train as well, wobbled, and shot to the floor. One of them struck
Ernie's shoulder, and he cried out in pain. Dom and Brendan had lost
established control in the first place, they did not know how to regain
it.
In a blink, the celebratory mood changed to panic. The onlookers
scrambled for shelter under the tables, acutely aware that the levitated
chairs-rattling ominously against the ceiling were potentially far more
dangerous missiles than the salt and pepper shakers. The noise awakened
Marcie. She sat up in the booth where she had been sleeping, crying now
and calling for her mother. Jorja pulled the girl off the booth and
scrambled under one of the tables with her, hugging her close, and
everyone was out of the line of fire except Brendan and Dom.
Dom felt as if this psychic power was a live grenade that had been wired
irremovably to his hand.
Overhead, three or four more shakers lost momentum and came down like
bullets. The dozen levitated chairs began to bounce against the ceiling
more aggressively, shedding small pieces of themselves.
Dom didn't know if he should dive for cover or attempt to regain
control. He looked at Brendan, who was equally paralyzed.
Overhead, the three remaining wagon-wheel lights swayed wildly on their
chains, causing goblin shadows to leap across the room.
The battering chairs gouged out small chunks of the ceiling.
A salt shaker dropped in front of Dom, impacting like a tiny meteorite
against the table. The glass was too thick to shatter, but the small
jar cracked into three or four pieces, flinging up what salt it still
contained, and Dom flinched from the white spray.
Remembering the spinning carrousel of paper moons in Lomack's house six
days ago, Dom raised both hands toward the rattling chairs and whirling
shakers. Clenching his hands into fists, shutting the red-ring stigmata
out of sight, he said, "Stop it. Stop it now. Stop it!"
Overhead, the chairs ceased vibrating. The salt and pepper shakers
halted in midwhirl and hung motionless in the air.
For a second or two, the diner was preternaturally silent.
Then the twelve chairs and the last of the shakers dropped straight
down, bouncing off tables and other chairs that had never taken flight.
When everything at last came to rest in tangled rubble, Dom and Brendan
were as unscathed as those who had taken refuge under the tables. Dom
blinked at the priest, and around them all was graveyard-still. This
moment of silence was longer than the first. It seemed as if time had
stopped, until Marcie's thin whimpering and her mother's murmured
assurances started the engines of reality purring again, drawing the
others from their places of shelter.
Ernie was still massaging his shoulder, where he had been hit by a salt
shaker, but he was not seriously hurt. No one else was injured, though
everyone was shaken.
Dom saw the way they were looking at him and Brendan. Warity. Just as
he had figured they would look at him if he proved to have the power.
Just the way he had dreaded bein
g looked at. Damn.
Ginger seemed to be the only one who was- not put off by his new status.
She enthusiastically embraced Dom and said, "What matters is that you've
got it. You've got it, and eventuaily you can learn to use it, and
that's wonderful."
"I'm not so sure," Dom said, looking at the broken chairs, fallen
lighting fixtures. Jack Twist was brushing salt and drywall dust off
his clothes. Jorja was still comforting her frightened child. Faye and
Sandy were picking splinters and other bits of debris out of their hair,
and Ned was pondering the danger of the live wires dangling from the
ceiling where the chandelier had torn loose. Dom said, "Ginger, even
when I was using the power, I didn't know how I was doing it. And when
it ran wild . . . I didn't know how to stop it."
"But you did stop it," she said. She kept one arm around his waist as
if she knew-God bless her-that he needed the reassurance of human
contact. "You did stop it, Dom."
"Maybe next time I won't be able." He realized he was shivering. "Look
at this mess. My God, Ginger, someone could've been badly hurt."
"No one was."
"Someone could have been killed. Next time-"
"It'll be better," she said.
Brendan Cronin came around the long table. "He'll change his mind,
Ginger. Give him time. I know I'm going to try again. Alone, next
time. In a couple of days, when I've had time to think it through, I'll
go out somewhere in. an open field, away from people, where no one can
be hurt except me, and I'll give it another try. I think it's going to
be difficult to control the . . . energy. It's going to take a lot
of time, a lot of work, maybe years. But I'll explore, practice. And
so will Dom. He'll realize as much when he's had a couple of minutes to
think about it."
Dom shook his head. "I don't want this. I don't want to be so
different from other people."
"But now you are," Brendan said. "We both are."
"That's damn fatalistic."
Brendan smiled. "Though I'm having a crisis of faith, I'm still a
priest, so I believe in predestination, fate. That's an article of
faith. But we priests are a clever bunch, so we can be fatalistic and
believe in free will at the same time! Both are articles of faith." For
the priest, the psychological effects of these events were far different
from the fear raised in Dom. As he talked, he repeatedly rose onto his
toes as if he were nearly buoyant enough to float away.
At a loss to understand the priest's good humor, Dom changed the
subject. "Well, Ginger, if we've proved half of your crazy theory, at
least we've disproved the other half."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
"In the midst of all that . . . uproar," Dom said, gesturing toward
the battered ceiling, "when I saw the rings appear on my hands again, I
decided the psychic power wasn't a sideeffect of any strange viral
infection. I know the source of it is something else, something even
stranger, though I don't know what it may be."
"Oh? Well, which is the case?" she asked. "Have you merely decided, or
do you really know?"
"I know," Dom said. "Deep inside, I know."
"Oh, yes, me too," Brendan said happily, as Ernie and Faye and the
others gathered around. "You were correct, Ginger, when you suggested
the power was in Dom and me. And it's been in us since that July night,
like you said. However, you're not right about the method by which we
acquired the gift. Like Dom said . . . in the middle of all the
chaos, I sensed that biological contamination wasn't the right
explanation. I haven't the foggiest notion what the answer is, but we
can rule out that part of your theory."
Now Dom understood why Brendan was in such good spirits in spite of the
frightening exhibition in which they'd just participated. Though he
professed to see no religious aspect to recent events, in his heart of
hearts, the priest had retained hope that the miraculous cures and
apparitional lights were of divine origin. He had been depressed by the
dismayingly secular thought that the gift could have been bestowed on
him not by his Lord but simply as the chance side-effect of an exotic
infection, by the unwitting office of a mindless virusand a man-made
virus, as well. He was relieved to be able to dismiss that possibility.
His high spirits and good humor, even amidst the destruction of the
diner, arose from the fact that a divine Presence was once again, for
Brendan, at least a viable-if still unlikely-explanation.
Dom wished he, too, could find courage and strength in the notion that
their troubles were part of a divine scheme. But at the moment, he
believed only in danger and death, twin juggernauts that he sensed
bearing down on him. The personality changes that had occurred in him
during his move from Portland to Mountainview were laughably minor in
comparison to the changes that had begun working in him tonight, with
the discovery of this unwanted power. He almost felt as if the power
was alive in him, a parasite that in time would eat away everything that
had been Dominick Corvaisis and, having assumed his identity, would
stalk the world in his body, masquerading as human.
Crazy.
Nevertheless, he was worried and scared.
He looked at each of the others who were gathered around him. Some met
his eyes for a moment, then quickly looked away, just as one might
hesitate to meet the gaze of a dangerous-or intimidating-man.
Others-most notably Jack Twist, Ernie, and Jorja-met his eyes
forthrightly, but were incapable of concealing the uneasiness and even
apprehension with which they now regarded him. Only Ginger and Brendan
seemed to have suffered no change in their attitude toward him.
"Well," Jack said, breaking the spell, "we should call it a night, I
guess. We've got a lot to do tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Ginger said, "we'll have cleared up even more of these
mysteries. We're making progress every day."
"Tomorrow," Brendan said softly, happily, "will be a day of great
revelation. I feel it somehow."
Tomorrow, Dom thought, we might all be dead. Or wish we were.
Colonel Leland Falkirk still had a splitting headache. With his new
talent for introspection-acquired gradually since his involvement in the
emotionally and intellectually shattering events of two summers ago-he
was able to see that, on one level, he was actually glad that the
aspirin had been ineffective. He thrived on the headache in the same
way he thrived on other kinds of pain, drawing a perverse strength and
energy from the relentless throbbing in his brow and temples.
Lieutenant Horner had gone. Leland was alone once more in his
temporary, windowless office beneath the testing grounds of Shenkfield,
but he was no longer waiting for the call from Chicago. It had come
soon after Horner departed, and the news had been all bad.
The siege at Calvin Sharkle's house in Evanston, which had begun earlier
today, was still under way, and that volatile situation would probably
not be brou
ght to an end within the next twelve hours. If possible, the
colonel did not want to commit his men to another closure of I-80 and
another quarantine of the Tranquility Motel until he could be certain
the operation would not be compromised by revelations that Sharkle might
make either to Illinois authorities or to the news media. Delay made
Leland nervous, especially now that the witnesses at the motel were
focused on Thunder Hill and were planning their moves beyond the reach
of rifle microphones and infinity transmitters. He figured he could
afford to wait, at most, one more day. However, if the dangerous
standoff in Illinois was still under way by sunset tomorrow, he would
give the order to move on the Tranquility in spite of the risks.
The other news from Chicago was that operatives had discreetly
investigated Emmeline Halbourg and Winton Tolk and had found reasons to
believe their amazing recoveries could not be adequately explained by
current medical knowledge. And a reconstruction of Father Stefan
Wycazik's activities on Christmas Day-including visits to Halbourg and
Tolk, and a stop at the Metropolitan Police Laboratory to consult a
ballistics expert-confirmed that the priest had been convinced that his
curate, Brendan Cronin, had been responsible for those miraculous cures.
Leland had first become aware of Cronin's healing powers just yesterday,
Sunday, when he had monitored a telephone call between Dominick
Corvaisis at the Tranquility and Father Wycazik in Chicago. That
conversation would have been a real shocker if the events of Saturday