Odd Interlude (Complete) Read online

  The difference between what I think to be true and what is true, however, could lead to disaster. The hills below offer mostly gentle slopes, but there are a few steep drop-offs. If I mistakenly drive over one, the Grand Cherokee will at least tip into a catastrophic roll. In spite of the fact that the vehicle has four-wheel drive, if it lands on its side or roof, it’ll be as useless as an airplane without wings.

  Under this white-gray pall, the day is darker than it would be in an equally thick fog, because sunshine doesn’t refract through smoke a fraction as well as it does through mist. Instead of light finding its way obliquely into Harmony Corner, much of it bounces off the soot suspended in the gaseous plumes, bringing an early dusk upon these acres. In this gloom that creeps steadily toward darkness, in this disorder that thwarts the senses, the amorphous smoky masses surging around the Grand Cherokee seem to be figures, many human and others fantastic, legions of harried spirits on some unholy pilgrimage.

  I try the headlights, but the beams bounce off the swarming masses, reducing visibility from thirty feet to ten. The fog lights are likewise useless. And in the darkening murk, I could swear that faces form out of the graying smoke to sneer and snarl at me before dissolving in the passing.

  If I am to find my way to Norris Hiskott, I will have to resort to psychic magnetism, which I trust won’t lead me to a cliff. I don’t know what he looks like, but I have his name, and I can picture the house he’s claimed as his. Concentrating on that name and summoning that image into my mind’s eye, trusting in impulse and intuition, I get ready to ease up on the brake pedal and drift forward wherever my peculiar power leads me.

  What happens next is not easily described. A cold draft but not a real one, the mental equivalent of a draft, the idea of a draft, blows through my mind, as if a window has opened. Perhaps because I have been picturing the Victorian residence, I in fact see a window with sullen yellow light beyond and, in the light, a sleek silhouette that leaps toward the sill and the raised sash, eager to spring in upon me. Realizing that I have drawn to me the enemy that I hoped to be drawn toward, I slam the sash, at once turning my thoughts from Hiskott’s name to Stormy Llewellyn’s, instantly driving out the conjured image of the house with a memory of Stormy’s face, because only she can fill my mind so completely that, in the moment of this assault, the puppeteer cannot find an entry point.

  Even though I repelled Hiskott, though he did not for a second see through my eyes to obtain a solitary clue as to my position or intent, I continue to hold Stormy in mind, because the memory of her and the promise of the card from the fortune-telling machine—YOU ARE DESTINED TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER—constitute my best defense against discouragement, as well, and against fear.

  In this situation, psychic magnetism is too dangerous to employ. Denied my special gift, I am left only with my wits, which is like Robin Hood having to trade his quiver of expertly crafted arrows for a couple of rocks.

  Just then, Jolie Harmony speaks to me: “Are you there, Harry Potter? This is Jolie. Are you there?”

  Surprised and mystified, I am for just a moment reduced to the superstition of a remote-island primitive who, ignorant of the marvels of modern technology, can conclude only that, by the use of magic, a shaman has reduced Jolie to the size of my thumb and has transported her into the radio of the Grand Cherokee.

  “Are you there, Harry?” she asks again.

  “Jolie? Where—”

  “Well, see, those steel doors I couldn’t pry open just opened by themselves after you left, and so now I’m in this mega-weird place in Fort Wyvern, called Project Polaris. This is where old Doc Hiskott worked, there’s this alien artifact and all, and he was dissecting dead ETs for some stupid reason, which is when everything went to hell. The doc got mixed up with alien DNA, he’s like some hybrid now. He was nuts to begin with—all right, not psychotic but a neurotic freak. He strangled his wife and all, we don’t know was it because of nagging or because he had no fingernails. But there aren’t any people here anymore, because of the mothballs, so there’s just me and Ed.”

  I manage to get out, “How are you able to—”

  And Jolie sails on: “What Ed is able to do, he’s able to slip into just about any wired or wireless communications thing and use it without anyone knowing. So since you’re in a Jeep Grand Cherokee, vanity license-plate number COOL DUDE, that happens to be equipped with OnStar, Ed could locate you by GPS. We know exactly where you are, and I’m talking to you by way of their satellite-communications system. Pretty wow, huh?”

  “But how could you know—”

  “See, Ed can do like sixteen things at once. So one thing he did even while he was telling me who you really were, he checked for any 911 calls to the sheriff from customers at the Corner that might tell us are you stirring things up already. Jumpin’ jackrabbits, you don’t waste time! Some guy phones in his truck is stolen, some other guy phones in the truck goes flying—”

  I’m not sure which is the most disorienting: the blinding smoke churning around the Grand Cherokee and all the world lost in it, or the foul air from the wildfire that’s making me a little dizzy, or Jolie’s excited chatter.

  “—some other guy phones in his Grand Cherokee is stolen, and some other guy phones in a grass fire. So Ed is learning all this neat stuff while he’s showing me who you are, and then in like seven seconds he finds out the Jeep has OnStar. So here we are, and we want to help.”

  I clear my throat and ask, “Who’s Ed?”

  “Shoot, that’s right,” Jolie says, “you couldn’t know. Ed is a computer. No, wait, that’s an insult, I guess. Ed’s not just a silly computer, he’s an artificial intelligence, another big secret project here at Wyvern. He doesn’t want to take over the world and all, of course he doesn’t, he’s made that perfectly clear to everyone. So when they mothballed this Project Polaris, they put Ed in charge of watching over it, keeping it all safe. You’ll like Ed, he’s fun, he can do like twenty things at the same time.”

  “I thought you said sixteen.”

  “Heck, Ed’s so smart he can probably do twenty times twenty things simultaneously. Say hello, Ed.”

  A low, mellow, yet slightly ominous voice says, “It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Odd Thomas.”

  Jolie says, “Oh, yeah, that’s another thing, Harry. I know you’re not Harry Potter. I mean, I’ve always known you weren’t Harry Potter, he isn’t real. But now I know who you really are, and you’re what I knew you would be, a hero who says he’s not a hero. I knew you would come to us one day, I always knew, but I didn’t know your name would be Odd Thomas. Now you’re here, and everything’s going to be all right.”

  “Things are still a long way from being all right, Jolie.”

  Although all the vents are closed and the fans are turned off, the air in the Cherokee grows dirtier by the minute.

  I ask, “Ed, are you there?”

  “Yes, Odd Thomas, I am here. How may I assist you?”

  I decide to accept everything that Jolie tells me, because the whole story sounds too crazy to be anything but the truth.

  My unusual life has taught me that the world is profoundly more complex and far stranger than most people are able—or willing—to recognize. What most people call truth is merely the surface, and under it lies a great depth of truth that they do not perceive. A large part of my time is spent coping with the spirits of the lingering dead, poltergeists, eerie creatures that I call bodachs, prophetic dreams, and all kinds of one-off moments of supernatural weirdness, as well as with horrendous human miscreants of every imaginable variety; consequently, it strikes me as refreshing, almost prosaic, to be caught up in a supernatural-free incident involving top-secret government projects, an artificial intelligence that does not want to rule the world, half-breed extraterrestrials, and the women who love—and are strangled by—them.

  “Ed, is Jolie really safe where she is now?”

  “Safer than she has been for many years. No harm will come to Jolie A
nn Harmony in my domain.”

  “If any harm does come to her in your domain, I’ll find your plug and pull it.”

  “You don’t have to threaten Ed,” Jolie assures me. “There’s not a bad circuit in the guy, and that’s certified once every hour by a self-analysis program. Anyway, he can’t lie.”

  “You really can’t lie, Ed?”

  “My creators programmed me so that should I ever speak a single untruth, I will immediately identify what I have done by singing ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’ ”

  “Which is kind of funny,” Jolie says, “because he doesn’t even wear pants.”

  Still wary, I press Ed: “Why couldn’t a self-aware artificial intelligence evolve to the point where it could override parts of its basic program?”

  After a silence, Ed replies: “Why cannot a bright and gifted young man of almost twenty-two ever quite get over the psychological pain inflicted on him so many years ago by his mentally unbalanced mother?”

  Now it’s my turn to be silent.

  And then there’s only one possible reply. “I’m sorry that I threatened to unplug you, Ed.”

  “You did so with only the best of motives, Odd Thomas. Your concern for Jolie Ann Harmony is admirable, and in fact I share it.”

  “How did you know … about my mother?”

  “After events in Pico Mundo, there were some mentions in the media about your family, certain speculations.”

  “I never read any of that.”

  Instead of rushing past the windows, the smoke is for a moment caught in a vortex of hot air and swirls around the Grand Cherokee. I feel as if the vehicle is being levitated and spun, as it might be in a tornado, and I close my eyes.

  “Ed, was it you who opened that sealed drain, so I didn’t have to go back by way of the beach?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, Odd Thomas.”

  “When you led me that way, did you know I’d hijack a truck?”

  “I was not surprised when you did.”

  “But I didn’t know I was going to do it until I climbed out of that manhole and found myself outside Harmony Corner. I made it up as I went along. So how did you know?”

  “A consideration of all possibilities and an analysis of the viability of each suggested that hijacking a truck and doing what you did with it was the option most likely to help you achieve your goal. My observation of you, in your discussions with Jolie Ann Harmony, suggested to me that, in spite of your self-deprecating manner, you usually make the correct decisions in such matters.”

  Jolie interprets: “I think what Ed means is you kick butt.”

  Ed has a question: “Now tell me, Odd Thomas, did you take Purvis Eugene Beamer’s smartphone?”

  “What? I don’t know any Purvis Beamer.”

  “You are driving the vehicle that he reported stolen.”

  “Oh. Bermuda Guy. No, I didn’t take his smartphone.”

  “Two GPS-reporting signals related to Purvis Eugene Beamer are being emitted from the same map coordinates.”

  When I open my eyes, the smoke is no longer swirling around the Jeep, merely surging past as before.

  “Yeah. I see it now. His phone’s in one of the cup holders.”

  “Take it and put it in a pocket. Then we will be able to remain in contact even when you have gravely damaged that vehicle.”

  “How do you know I’m going to gravely damage it?”

  “I have deduced your intentions, Odd Thomas.”

  Jolie says, “He’s like super-smart, Oddie. In a kind of way, he was homeschooled like me, in a lab instead of a home, by scientists instead of by his mom, since he doesn’t have a real mom. But he’s humongously smarter, not because he studies harder than I do, but because he can absorb entire ginormous libraries in minutes, and because he’s never bored with anything like I am. It’s kind of sad he doesn’t have a mom and all. Don’t you think it’s sad? It’s not so sad you want to lie around all day sobbing through a thousand Kleenex, but sad enough.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Ed will be my Natty Bumppo, the unlikely name of the scout in The Last of the Mohicans, who was also known as Hawkeye. From his electronic aerie, he will show me the way through the blinding drifts of smoke.

  The Jeep Grand Cherokee with the COOL DUDE license plate is equipped not just with OnStar’s real-time voice communication, but also with GPS navigation. GPS maps include all streets, county roads, state routes, and federal highways, but if you decide to go off-road, you’re on your own; the graphics on the monitor won’t be able to warn you about treacherous features of the open land, and the recorded, guiding voice of that businesslike yet somewhat sultry lady who provides direction will fall silent in disapproval.

  Fortunately, Ed enjoys instant access to the latest digitized surveys of the planet conducted by satellite, and therefore he knows the most minute details of the terrain in Harmony Corner, as well as in just about anywhere else you can name. He is able precisely to locate the Jeep Grand Cherokee by the identifying signal that its transponder continuously broadcasts. His voice has not a scintilla of sultriness, but I am calmed and made confident by his assurances that he can assist me in achieving my goal, which the density of the smoke has seemed to put beyond my reach.

  “In the first phase of the approach,” Ed says, “drive slowly. Will you drive slowly, Odd Thomas?”

  “Yes. Yes, I will, Ed.”

  “You must listen closely to my instructions and follow them to the letter.”

  “Of course. Yes.”

  “If I were to tell you to turn the steering wheel a quarter of a revolution to the left and you turned it forty percent—”

  “I would never do that.”

  “—you might drive directly into a sinkhole that we are trying to avoid. Another thing, Odd Thomas—do not interrupt me.”

  “I won’t, Ed.”

  “You just did.”

  “I won’t do it again.”

  “I am not a harsh taskmaster and certainly not a tyrant.”

  “I didn’t think you were, Ed.”

  Jolie says, “He really doesn’t want to rule the world.”

  “However,” Ed says, “if this is going to work, I must give you precise instructions, and you must follow them precisely.”

  “I understand.”

  “In my experience,” Ed says, “human beings frequently say that they understand, when in fact they do not understand at all.”

  “But I do understand. You’ll just have to trust me, Ed.”

  “I suppose I must. However, if through no fault of mine, you drive over a cliff to your death, I will be sad.”

  “If I do, I won’t blame you, Ed.”

  “That will be insufficient consolation.”

  The girl says, “You won’t drive over a cliff—will you, Oddie?”

  “No, Jolie, I won’t. Though I might bash my head on the steering wheel until my brains come out my ears, if we don’t get started now.”

  Ed is baffled. “Why would you bash your head on the steering wheel, Odd Thomas?”

  “It’s just an expression of frustration, Ed. I didn’t mean it.”

  “If you would bash your brains out, there is no point in our going forward with this plan.”

  “I would never do such a thing, Ed. I swear.”

  “I do not detect any vocal patterns of deceit.”

  “Because I’m telling the truth, Ed. May we begin?”

  “Drive directly forward at five miles an hour.”

  Following the foregoing reminder that life often is as shot through with absurdity as it is with terror and joy, phase one of the approach to Hiskott begins.

  For all that I can see, the whole world might be smouldering, its entire substance being steadily converted to gasses and soot. Maybe the smoke is less white and more gray than before, or maybe the layer of crud gathered over the Corner is so thick now that, short of going nova, the sun can’t penetrate it.

&nb
sp; In spite of the smell of burning grass, the fumes that sting my eyes, and the hot irritation in my throat, the realm through which I travel seems to be a steadily darkening sea full of stirred silt and clouds of minute plankton. As I follow Ed’s directions down the hills, I feel as though I am descending into an oceanic abyss where eventually I will find myself in perfect blackness eons old, where eyeless and pressure-deformed creatures eke out a desperate living in a dark cold desolation.

  I suspect that this feeling of sinking ever deeper has less to do with the formless, surging masses beyond the windows of the Jeep than with the fact that I am drawing nearer to the thing that once was Norris Hiskott. It’s now a unique entity of singular malevolence, and the pressure that I sense isn’t pressure at all, but instead the black-hole gravity of its evil.

  Although every vent in the vehicle is tightly shut, the air seems to be increasingly polluted, and a variety of claustrophobia overcomes me, a sense of being trapped in a place where I will slowly suffocate. I sneeze once, twice, a third time.

  “Gesundheit.”

  “Thank you, Ed.”

  Shortly after that exchange, he tells me to brake to a stop and informs me that I have arrived at the brink of the slope that leads down to the backyard of the residence in which Hiskott has spent the past five years becoming … whatever he has become. Although the murk surrounding the Jeep seems fractionally less oppressive than before, I can see nothing of the house.

  Ed agrees that my original strategy and tactics are the most likely to succeed. Because he’s able to consult Google Earth for a look-down on the building, he can refine my approach enough to substantially increase my chances of success.

  At his suggestion, I release my safety harness long enough to pick up the pistol and the revolver from the passenger seat. I tuck them under my belt, the pistol against my abdomen, the revolver in the small of my back. I buckle up once more and lean forward, both hands on the wheel.