Ashes To Ashes Read online

  "What?"

  "I think she's trying to communicate."

  "How does this manifest?"

  "What?"

  "In what way does she attempt communication?"

  "Nothing ... physical. I just get this ... awful feeling that she's trying to tell me something."

  "Something important."

  "Yes. It seems very important. But then she ... wisps away."

  "Wisps?"

  "Like smoke dispersing."

  I said, "Uh huh. Who is she, Karen?"

  The reply was whispered. "I don't know."

  "No idea at all?"

  "None." This reinforced with a decisive shake of the head. "But I think she ... wanted me to ... to find you."

  "Why do you think that?"

  "I just do. Don't ask me to explain something I don't understand myself." A bit of fire again. "She wanted me to."

  I mulled it for a moment, then: "What exactly do you want from me? No bullshit. What do you want?"

  "Maybe I want two things."

  "By the numbers, then. One?"

  She took a deep breath. "One, help me get rid of her. No, that's number two."

  I supplied the necessary prompt without blinking an eye. "And one?"

  "Teach me cosmic sex," unblinkingly came right back.

  "Because?"

  "Because I just might kill myself if you don't."

  "It's that bad?"

  "Believe me, it's that bad." The fire was back, full blaze. "Look, to hell with pride. I have tried everything there is to try. I am not a frigid woman, believe me, I'm not. I am very responsive, highly responsive. To a point."

  I did not have to feign sympathy. One of the awareness kicks I had tried involved a process of sexual arousal right to the cresting point and then backing off, over and over. I tried it for about a month. I developed a stammer, could think of absolutely nothing but sex, and had a hard-on all the time.

  So I did not have to feign sympathy, no. "One point below bliss, eh?"

  "Always one point below."

  "Nonorgasmic."

  Getting edgy again, almost hostile: "That's the dirty word."

  "Since when?"

  "Since forever."

  "What does your ethereal companion have to do with it?"

  "Oh shit!" She was on her feet, moving toward the door. "I knew you'd get to that! Forget it, huh? Just forget it!"

  "Sit down!" I commanded loudly.

  From the door: "Go to hell!" Out, then back in again, furious: "This must have been a great treat to your ego! Well, forget it! Temporary insanity! Do you think I have to pay a man to fuck me?"

  She was gone before I could have replied to that, if I'd had a mind to, which I didn't. I'd handled it very badly. I knew that. And I was already formulating a plan to telephone her as soon as she'd had a chance to cool down.

  But I did not have to do that.

  She was back again within seconds, standing in my doorway all pale and shaking. "Help me," she moaned. "Something is wrong with Bruno."

  But I could not help her all that much. A lot was wrong with Bruno. All was wrong with Bruno.

  He was seated behind the wheel of a shiny new Mercedes, not a mark on the body, but also no pulse and no heartbeat. There was no response whatever to twenty minutes of CPR. The paramedics took over and tried for another ten minutes or so, then they simply covered him and transported him to wherever lifeless bodies are taken.

  "Did you see her?" Karen asked me in a stricken voice as the ambulance rounded the corner onto Coast Highway.

  Yeah, I saw her. She'd moved into the ambulance behind Bruno and was staring at us through the rear window as it pulled away from the house. And I am certain that she was smiling.

  Chapter Two: Ashes

  Let me assure you very quickly that I am not into spiritism, black magic, nor the occult arts. It offends my sense of universal order to even admit the possibility that some sort of dark forces could be consciously manipulating this reality of ours. Ghosts, banshees, and demonic spirits simply do not represent my concept of an orderly universe.

  So I have an automatic resistance any time I am confronted with phenomena of this nature. I have been confronted, yes, time and again. But I have always sought a nonphenomenal explanation to account for them. Sometimes I have succeeded in that, sometimes not. But I do not let the failures deter me.

  I am very much aware, you see, that we inhabit a phenomenal universe—phenomenal, that is, from the ordinary viewpoint allowed by the usual human sense perception. Atomic theory itself is an occult, highly mysterious, and largely incomprehensible concept even to those who are schooled in it. To say to me that the table in front of me is a solid object capable of supporting my weight with ease, but then to go on to explain that, of course, it is more of an empty space than anything else—other than that, an electromagnetic field more than anything else—that it is the relativity of my state of being in relation to the table's state of being that allows me to perceive the table (and myself) as a solid object, well, say, what could be more phenomenal than that?

  Is the table a solid object or is it not? The answer is yes and no. Remove all the space that separates the quarks and widgets and other esoteric elementary particles that go to make an atom, then remove the spaces that separate the atoms—shred the molecules, in other words, and throw out all the space—and what is left is enough matter to maybe fit the hollow of your palm, except you could not hold it there because it still weighs the same as it did when you saw it as a table—besides which you'd better look damn quick because matter explodes at infinite density. I'd call that phenomenal.

  If I tell a physicist that I have 20/20 vision and he says to me, great, that's wonderful, 20/20 lets you see point something percent of the total electromagnetic spectrum now bombarding this room, that makes my 20/20 seem like a paltry effort at apprehending reality.

  Can you see, the same guy asks me, the X rays, cosmic rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio and television broadcasts that are dancing all about us? No—but if you'll let me switch on the television, maybe I can .... Not good enough, he says; that is still just a fraction of the total spectrum. It's all here, right now, passing over, under, around, and even right through us—can't you see it? Well, no, not really but ... There!—did you see that free electron that was just knocked out of its orbit around a helium nucleus by that neutrino from Upsa Vagabondi (umpty-million light-years away)—and did you see the helium atom then decay into hydrogen?

  Of course not. I see the wall, the table, your face— that's 20/20 to me and to all of us who share this particular parcel of reality. The point is, there is always much more there than most of us ordinarily perceive. So don't get bent out of shape with me when I say to you that I saw something that appears to exist in a different parcel. My physicist sees that sort of thing all the time—using, of course, special tools that enable him to get a better glimpse of total reality than you and I.

  Okay. Apparently I, too, have some sort of special tool buried somewhere in my skull. I do not know how it got there and I really do not know how to operate the darned thing. It comes on all by itself, gives me a glimpse that I could not get otherwise, then shuts down. I have nothing to do with it, no control whatever, and I have not the faintest idea what it is, how it works, or why it works. I have spent the better part of life wondering about it and ...

  But enough of that for now. I am just trying to give you an understanding of what phenomenon means to me, personally. It means, simply, anything not ordinarily perceived via the human sensory apparatus.

  I saw an apparition, an "appearance," some energy form that did not have atomic structures packed into it as densely as mine are packed into me. If you prefer to call it a ghost, go ahead. For myself, I am much more comfortable trying to relate that particular type of phenomenon to some sort of psychic energy. That keeps my feet planted on solid(!) earth while I try to understand what is happening in my little parcel of reality.

  At the moment in
question I had enough solid-earth problems on hand without looking for more in rarer atmospheres. Karen Highland absolutely fell apart when Bruno died. She apparently had no family, no close friends, absolutely no one to turn to—and the same for Bruno. I could not just send the lady toddling along Pacific Coast Highway, all starey-eyed and terrified and totally alone in the world. She seemed convinced that "something evil" had done in Bruno and I had the impression that she was a bit worried for herself too.

  I gave her a sedative and put her to bed at my place. Then I went looking for Bruno.

  I found him in a refrigerated room at County. I did not even know the guy's family name, but they had all that from personal papers found in his wallet. The name, by the way, was Valensa. The "person to notify in case of an emergency" was Karen Highland, ditto for "name of employer." The home address and telephone number were the same as I had in my book for Karen.

  Well, she had said that Bruno was "like an uncle."

  The tag on the remains simply read "DOA"—without further comment.

  I called an acquaintance at the coroner's office and told her what little I knew about Bruno Valensa and the circumstances of his death. I also said that I was acting on behalf of Karen Highland and requesting an autopsy at the earliest possible time. The coroner's assistant promised to pierce the bureaucratic veil and get something happening immediately; I, in turn, promised to call her soon for dinner.

  She also suggested that I touch base with the cops. I did not feel like doing that at the moment. I had already been away for a couple of hours, and I was a bit uneasy about my new housemate. It was now about five o'clock and the traffic situation was frantic. I stopped at a little market for a few groceries, got home about six.

  Uneasy, yeah, with good reason. Her car was still there. The clothing she had worn was there, folded neatly at the foot of the bed. Water was running in the shower, but the bathroom door stood wide open and no one was there—damp spot on the carpet—one large bath towel missing.

  My place is not that large; took me all of thirty seconds to shake it down and to realize that I was the only one at home. I found her about a mile down the beach, wrapped in the towel, sarong fashion, walking aimlessly through ankle-deep surf. Her eyes were sort of blank. I was not positive that she knew where she was or that she even recognized me. But she took my hand like a trusting child and allowed me to lead her back to my place. We had no conversation. I put her to bed again and called my doctor. We are drinking buddies. He came out, took her temperature, and did the vital signs bit, asked her a few routine questions to which she responded in a monotone—name, rank, serial number, that sort of stuff.

  Outside, he told me that she seemed healthy and rather archly inquired if we'd been "doing any stuff." He meant drugs, and he knew better. I told him about the sedative. Said I should just keep an eye on her, let her sleep it off.

  By now it is nine o'clock or so. I go back inside to check her out, hoping she's asleep. She is not. She has the bedcovers kicked back and she is naked. I stand in the doorway and the dialogue is at that distance. She speaks first.

  "Are you going to do it?"

  "Am I going to do what, Karen?"

  "You know. Give me an orgasm."

  "If I could, sure. I'd do that. But that is not something someone else can give you, babe. You have to go get it for yourself. Maybe I could help you with that. Let's talk about it tomorrow."

  Which shows you what a nice guy I really am. I was looking at heaven. But the moment was all wrong, the rationale was wrong—and I was not all that sure that it was the real Karen Highland in my bed. The eyes were still sort of blank, as though no one was home there.

  "Tomorrow? Promise?"

  "Promise, yeah, we'll talk about it."

  "Is Bruno really dead?"

  "Yes."

  "What can I do?"

  "About Bruno? Not a thing, kid. Unless there's someone I should notify."

  "No. Bruno is the last—there's no one. He had a brother. Like him."

  "Like him?"

  "You know. Mute. He died too. Year ago, 'bout. Same way."

  "Same way?"

  "Yes. Here one moment, gone the next."

  "We'll talk about that tomorrow."

  "Kiss me good night?"

  "God, no."

  Something moved within those blank eyes and she giggled. "See you tomorrow, then."

  I was closing the door when she very sleepily informed me, "She came for him too."

  "What?"

  "Tony, Bruno's brother. She came for him last year."

  I went straight to the bar and made a drink, took it outside to watch a great orange moon rise into the sky—seeking, I guess, confirmation of an ordered reality.

  So there I stood, whiskey and soda in hand, feet planted trustingly upon a whirling cinder that moved in endless circles around a nuclear fire in the sky, watching another cinder or ash or whatever whirling around my cinder, seeking reason and logic in an incomprehensible universe.

  What fools we mortals be.

  Chapter Three: Falling, Falling

  I spent the larger part of that night tiptoeing about in repeated checks on my guest while also playing code games with my personal computer.

  Even with the strong sedative, her sleep was restless and punctuated with muffled little outcries, but I elected to let her sleep it out without interference from me; sometimes that is best.

  Besides which, I was having a devil of a time with my computer linkage to the world brain. Amazing what you can do with these little gadgets—the so-called "personal computer"—if you know the tricks—and, of course, I had learned most of those under navy tutelage. It's a modest investment in "linkage." Smart shopping can set you up proudly for just a few thousand dollars, allowing you to tap in to the monster system costing millions.

  A word or two is needed here about "monster systems," in case you have not noticed any. Modern human society is highly complex, much more so than one would imagine from casual observations of the common, workaday world; so complex, in fact, that it is only marginally manageable and—from an inside view—appears to be in daily danger of total collapse.

  The whole thing is held together by a tenuous network of "management systems" and "data parameters" that embrace the full spectrum of government and private sector interests, most of which operate at cross-purposes and with a notable lack of cooperative effort. That the thing works at all is a testament not to the ingenuity of man but to the stubbornness of some impelling force of evolution that somehow keeps things stumbling along despite all efforts to frustrate it.

  If that sounds cynical, then call me a cynic, but I am not really cynical about mankind per se, only about the mechanisms that are trying to stick us all together in manageable clumps. The mechanism has to be there, mind you, else all is chaos—witness modern Lebanon as an example of what happens when the machine collapses—but chaos is an inherent and basic constituent of every management system ever devised, more and more so as complexities increase.

  I include any and every form of political government in the definition of "management systems." Include also, if you will, every religious and educational and commercial endeavor of mankind. Keep that in mind, please, then consider that the computer age has ushered in the most beautifully complex mechanisms yet conceived by an exploding race consciousness—while concomitantly producing the most menacing potential for utter chaos.

  Artificial intelligence.

  Sound like something from a science fiction movie? Sure, but it is also military-industrial jargon that you might encounter any Sunday in the L.A. Times classifieds under "Scientific Help Wanted." Artificial intelligence is the newest of the growth and glamour technological pursuits of our space-age society—mostly in military applications at the present state of development, but it has already crept into various private enterprises. The very term implies that more is under contemplation than mere data-mashing, which is mainly what a computer does; it suggests some sort of silicone b
rain that can reason both deductively and inductively, make decisions and execute them—the real-life equivalent of the old (ten years ago, I guess, is old by present standards) science fiction themes concerning the domination of mankind by monster computers.

  But I digress. I was trying to make the point that our highly complex society of today is being managed, in most parts that really count, by computer technology and "artificial intelligence." A lot of the chaos that erupts in our personal lives, and in our personal interactions with a computer-managed society, is caused when an individual or an action does not match some mathematical model that is attempting to orchestrate the social conventions in a given sphere of activity.

  I am trying not to sound professorial, but I think round so I guess I have to talk that way. Really what I am trying to suggest is that the monster computer is already among us, governing us to a large extent that we are being governed, controlling us to a large extent that we are being controlled.

  I tend to resent that.

  All of which, above, is a roundabout way of saying that I feel no pangs of conscience in using that same mechanism as a service to help me hold chaos at bay while I attempt some useful task.

  So, yeah, I play the code games. Not in a frivolous sense, and I do have a rather stern ethic that keeps me from mucking around where I have no business. Most of the data pools that I have accessed from my little TRS-80 contain public records, anyway. Only occasionally have I invaded confidential files, and then only when the need seemed to justify the trespass.

  The lady had come to me for help. If I am a physician and you come to me complaining of a bellyache and I suspect that your appendix is trying to explode, am I ethically justified in giving you a Rolaids and sending you on your way simply because you will not acknowledge the appendicitis? No—I cannot work that way.

  Karen Highland had a problem that was much more ominous than the complaint that brought her to me. I did not exactly know the parameters of that problem, but I felt that I owed it to her as well as to myself to find out all I could about her.