The Cold Calling Part 4

In the very next moment, his last conscious moment, two tail lights like dirty red pimples wobbled and blurred before a great and welcome silence came over him like a big, soft blanket.

At 2.37 a.m., Detective Inspector Bobby Maiden died in hospital.

II.

Guardi's Deli was just around the block from the New York Courier.

'I mean, Jesus,' Grayle said, making for the window table. 'You look at this realistically, I'm the one should be missing. Like, Ersula was always the intense, academic sister, and I'm the crazy b.i.t.c.h with the crystals and the Tarot cards and the Eye of Horus earrings.'

Before Lyndon could even sit down, she was dumping her bag on the table.

'Then she goes off to England.' Pulling out the leaflet. 'Then this.'

The

University of

the Earth

As we prepare to enter the Third Millennium, many of us feel the need for a deeper understanding of the land around us: how our distant ancestors related to their environment, and what that tells us about how we should respond to it.

The countryside of Britain remains a great enigma. We are surrounded by the mysterious monuments of antiquity: megalithic remains, prehistoric burial mounds and chambers ... the holy places of the past.

In recent years, the study of such remains has appeared to become the preserve of a 'New Age' fringe, whose theories about ley lines and 'earth-energies' have been scorned by the archaeological establishment.

The University of the Earth is the first serious attempt to bridge this gulf, by undertaking a formal but open-minded investigation of the mysteries in our landscape. The project is being steered by the eminent archaeologist and anthropologist Prof. Roger Falconer, presenter of the Channel Four programme Diggers.

To help fund the University of the Earth project, and allow for the involvement of interested amateurs, a select series of summer schools has been scheduled, to be based at Prof. Falconer's farm on the Welsh border, and involving lectures, practical work and expeditions to a number of key sites, including Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill and the Rollright Stones.

Prof. Falconer says, 'My twenty-five years of study have shown me that there are many lessons to be learned from our most remote ancestors. While I have little truck with nonsense about the Earth once being ruled by aliens or radiant beings from the lost continent of Atlantis, I do believe that the people of the Bronze Age in particular possessed certain skills, allied to a heightened perception of the natural world, of which most of us are no longer aware.

'It is one of the aims of the University of the Earth to study methods of working with the Earth and discover how effective they are in a scientific framework.

'Dowsing, for instance, not only for water but for archaeological remains, has been shown to be surprisingly successful, and we shall be putting its pract.i.tioners to the test under survey conditions, as well as giving our guests an opportunity to see if they themselves possess the ability.

'While I am personally convinced that some dowsers have an extraordinary ability, other schemes and theories I find considerably less convincing. However, the spirit of the University of the Earth is one of exploration and my younger colleagues, Magda Ring and Adrian Fraser-Hale, will be conducting experiments on what we might call the outer fringes ... notably, the Dream Survey, in which volunteers will sleep at ancient sites and record their dreams in an attempt to discover whether human consciousness is influenced by the alleged electromagnetic properties of stone monuments.

'Although its aims are serious, those of us involved in the University of the Earth have had a great deal of fun. The inevitable arguments between the archaeological purists and the 'earth-mysteries' enthusiasts have been essentially good-natured and suggest that we share a common goal: to uncover the deepest secrets of the distant past and use them to develop a more harmonious relationship between the human race and its native planet.'

Early application for the University of the Earth summer schools is advisable, as places on the courses are strictly limited. Cost per head for one week is a basic ...

Lyndon McAffrey, sitting stately as a Supreme Court judge, put down the leaflet and ordered up some doughnuts.

'Well,' he said. 'You gotta admire the guy's technique. Like, how we gonna persuade gullible rich folk to hand over megabucks for a week spent shovelling s.h.i.t out of a trench? Hey, let's tell 'em they're helping a famous TV star unlock the secrets of the universe.'

Grayle thought this was a tad unfair. She'd called her father at Harvard, and he'd called up a friend at Oxford University about Professor Falconer and ascertained that, outside of television, the man was a respected academic with his name on about seventeen books.

'Just he has the popular touch. Nice-looking, charming, dates actresses ... like that.'

'Uh-oh,' said Lyndon.

'This makes him a shyster, necessarily?'

'Well, no. It just don't win him instant sympathy from fat old guys such as myself. So your sister is what?'

'Not one of your gullible rich folk. Ersula was on the staff for the summer. One of the expert research team. They had several archaeology graduates helping organize the field trips and stuff like that. Of course, they weren't paying her anything either, apart from expenses and accommodation, but she-'

'-was allowed to be part of the Great Experiment, too,' Lyndon said with a wry, fatcat smile. 'Educated people can be soooooo naive.'

'Nnn-nn.' Grayle shook her head. 'This woman is a believer in neither G.o.d nor s.p.a.ceships. A sober, bookish person. Her father's daughter, you know?'

Five weeks ago, their mother, folding Ersula's last letter from England, had said lightly, 'Well ... she's getting into some stimulating areas. She's having fun. In her own way. I guess.'

It was true that Ersula's official letter to Mom had been mostly about what fun she was having and how hospitable and kind the Brits were, not stiff and stuffy like you were led to expect. Her letter to their father, although more academically oriented, would likewise include nothing pertaining to nights spent under prehistoric stone monuments.

That Ersula's letter to Grayle was more revealing came as no big surprise. Since Mom went off with the younger lover and Dad locked himself in his Harvard tower, they'd become warily closer for the first time in years. The letter began, You may be interested in some of this, but for Christ's sake, DSF!

DSF: Don't Show the Folks.

Ersula's last letter. Before the silence.

'Run this past me one more time,' Lyndon said. 'Your younger but normally more balanced sister has been sleeping in a Stone Age burial chamber. She lose her credit cards, or what?'

'If you aren't going to take this seriously-'

'Jesus,' said Lyndon, whose job at the New York Courier was all about knowing which stories to take seriously. The waitress arrived with the doughnuts and they helped themselves. The waitress stepped back, studying Grayle. She was a new waitress.

'No, see, the problem with Ersula ...' Grayle inspected her doughnut then shrugged and took a bite. 'Balanced? Yeah, OK, in some ways. But also pa.s.sionate. More than that, obsessive. She gets into something, it's like ... whooosh.'

'Unlike you,' Lyndon McAffrey said heavily.

'Unlike me. Like, Ersula would not eat this doughnut. She doesn't do comfort-eating. Ersula is very controlled. Has concentration. Focus. All of that.'

'Dear G.o.d,' said Lyndon. 'We hired the wrong sister.'

'Also, as a committed academic, Ersula vaguely despises the inevitable superficiality of journalism.'

Lyndon McAffrey nodded moodily. Twenty-five years ago, he'd become the paper's first black deputy city editor. Since then there'd been three black city editors and Lyndon ... well, he was still number two. He knew all about being vaguely despised.

'Hey!' The waitress suddenly screamed. 'You are! I saw you on TV. You're Grayle Underhill? Holy Grayle? For Crissakes, this is incredible, this is fate. I was gonna write to you. I need your help.'

The waitress pulled out a chair, flopped into it.

'See, my boyfriend, who most times is this real sweet guy, every few weeks he comes on kind of mean, and I noticed this is true, I swear on my mother's grave he has to shave twice ... three times a day?'

Lyndon looked down at his plate, closed lips strained by an uh-huh kind of smile.

'Time of the full moon, huh?' Grayle said without enthusiasm.

'See, I tell this to people,' the waitress said, 'and they're like ... oh, sure. Then I'm reading that thing you wrote about how men, they all have this werewolf element to a degree, and I'm going, Right, s.h.i.t, yes, this is the woman I have to talk with. And now here you are. You tell me this isn't, like, karma or something ...?'

Grayle said, 'Listen, uh ...'

'Marcia.'

'Marcia. Right. OK. The piece I wrote, Marcia, that was like an interview with the author of this book, The Lycanthropic Virus, which examines the effect of the full moon on society and blah, blah, blah. So if you have a problem in this area, the person you need to, uh, approach is the author, D. Harvey Baumer. Maybe if you wrote him through the publisher?'

'That would take forever,' Marcia said dubiously. 'See, the way you wrote the article, it was like you really had a handle on the whole thing.'

'Yeah, that's ... that's part of the job, Marcia. Look, all I can suggest is maybe if I was to do an article on your situation.' Grayle pulled a pen from her bag. 'So your second name is ...?'

'Uh-uh ...' Marcia was up on her feet and back behind the counter in a couple of seconds. 'I don't think so. I think I misunderstood. I mean, you sound like some kind of journalist ...'

Lyndon started to chuckle, dusting sugar crystals from his big hands.

'This is not funny,' Grayle told him when Marcia, mercifully, had gone to wait on another table. 'I get this all the time. You write a New Age column, people think you must be a person of, like, higher dimensions.'

'You write a crime column, they think you're a sleazeball with Mob connections,' Lyndon said unsympathetically. 'What's your problem?'

'This is different. This is about spirituality. How do I know I'm not messing up someone's immortal soul? How do I know how much of what I'm publicizing is true or at least well intentioned and life-enhancing? Crime, you know who the bad guys are, New Age, you can never be quite sure.'

Grayle licked raspberry jam from her fingers. Nearly thirty years separated her and Lyndon, a sweet tooth glued them together. Journalism could be a hostile world, especially when most of your colleagues thought everything you wrote about was a piece of c.r.a.p.

'Ersula thinks I just peck around things, like a chicken.'

'She thinks that, huh?' Lyndon's eyes widened. 'Imagine.'

'Yeah, yeah. Screw you too. Maybe she's right. Back when I was in college and she was still in school we were both heavily into New Age. Like, we'd talk about cosmic consciousness and read the Tarot and stuff in my room and have a lot of innocent fun. I should've realized that Ersula, even then, she only had serious fun. She would throw herself into something and then emerge the other side, dismissing it all as bulls.h.i.t. When she was fourteen or fifteen and I was at college I found she'd been, you know ... initiated? As a witch?'

'Eye of newt?' Lyndon was unfazed. 'Toe of frog?'

'As I recall, they were known as the Hermetic Sisterhood of Central Park West. I didn't look too closely at her altar. I think it was just candles and pentagrams, but she made sure and piled it all in the trash before the folks got home from vacation. It was OK; by then she'd concluded this was all phoney s.h.i.t anyway. You wanted to get into the real, authentic stuff, you checked out True Ethnic Sources. It was a short hop from there to anthropology and related studies ... and to despising her sister, her sister's crystals, her sister's amulets ... OK, go ahead, read the letter ...'

St Mary's Herefordshire England August 20 Dear Grayle, First off, if you want the nice stuff about the accommodation and the scenery and all the wonderful people I'm meeting, you should read Mom's letter. I'm not doing that c.r.a.p twice.

OK. You may be interested in some of this, but for Christ's sake, DSF!

As I may have indicated, I was frankly skeptical about the University of the Earth summer school. There is a lunatic fringe which has infiltrated archeology here in Britain (people who believe ancient sites were strung out in mystical straight lines, to follow the courses of some mysterious earth-power which they cannot define except to say it can give you a buzz) and I was less than enthusiastic at the thought of working with an organization which seeks to build bridges with these airheads.

However, in the absence of a better way of researching prehistoric remains in the British Isles and getting paid for it ... here I am, in this tiny, comparatively isolated village on the border of England and Wales.

So ... OK.

The dreaming experiment.

The airheads have been suggesting for some time that human consciousness can be altered or infiltrated by the 'energies' at ancient burial mounds, stone circles, whatever, and that this occurs most effectively during sleep.

Our distant ancestors were people whose day-to-day survival depended upon an intimacy with their environment, an understanding which we today would consider inexplicably precognitive of what the Earth was going to do and when. Dreams were considered to be an important way in which useful information was conveyed to them. In the Old Testament, wasn't it Jacob who slept on a pillow of stone and had prophetic dreams? While in ancient China, the emperor would spend the whole night on stone before making some important decision. You get the idea.

The University of the Earth Dream Survey aims to establish whether specific images or motifs occur in the dreams of people sleeping at particular 'sacred' sites. Individuals elect to spend the night in a sleeping bag inside a circle or a burial chamber with a helper or therapeute who, while they sleep, stays awake with a tape recorder, watching for the Rapid Eye Movement which will indicate they are dreaming. At which stage the dreamer is awoken and gives a full resume of the dream into the recorder.

Off-the-wall? Yeah, I thought so when I was appointed therapeute to a middle-aged woman who talked about meeting fairies with which she frolicked naked under a waterfall! Then Roger suggested I should sleep at a site myself... and my mind was somewhat blown by an extraordinary vivid and lucid dream one in which I was fully aware of dreaming and able to function on a mental level I would never have imagined possible.

I was, you might say, hooked.

Lyndon shook sugar from Ersula's letter. 'Looks like she's headed back your way.'

'Which is not good, for the reasons I already stated.'

'Whooosh?'

'As an academic, Ersula believes nowadays in the power of the mind over the power of the spirit. Well, OK, she has a good mind and I'm stupid, and when you're stupid all you got to fall back on most of the time is, like, the dream that some kind of spiritual earthquake will come along and get us out of all this s.h.i.t.'

'This may be getting too heavy and West Coast for a poor Brooklyn boy,' Lyndon said.

Grayle stared at the river of blood seeping out of the half-eaten doughnut. For Ersula, nothing was an inexplicable phenomenon any more. So nothing was spiritually threatening.

She looked up, saw her own frustrated face in the mirror across the counter, lumps of blond hair all over the place, the Eye of Horus earrings swinging. Crazy Grayle Underhill, New Age Sub-culture Columnist, widely syndicated.

'Huh?'

'I said, if there's some way I can help you,' Lyndon McAffrey said patiently, 'maybe you could just lay it out for me in moron-speak.'

'Finish the letter,' Grayle said. 'I'm delaying you. Your wife will think you're having an affair.'

'Haw,' said Lyndon. He picked up the second sheet of blue airmail paper and read it with obvious concentration before re-reading the first sheet.

'Hmm.' He grunted thoughtfully. 'I begin to see your point.'