After the finally calm Serendipity had been carried to the waiting car, and everyone else had left, Bud and I checked all the switches, made sure all the oil lamps were out, and were just about to close the door of the restaurant to make our way back to our dig, when my tummy growled.
Bud chuckled. “Hungry?”
“I could eat one of my shoes, if you gave me a glass of water to wash it down,” I replied.
We paused. I had to say it. “Look, we’re walking away from a kitchen full of food – most of it not contaminated by blood – and planning to go back to our room, where there isn’t even a cracker, and all I’ve eaten today is some hummus and bread. I know I probably shouldn’t suggest it but…”
“…we should find something to eat here before we go back up there, even if it’s something portable.”
“Yes. Thanks. I’m not sure I could settle to eat in the dining room, but we’d have the place to ourselves.” I used my cute smile.
“Tell you what, let’s see what we can find, and then decide where we’ll eat it, okay?”
We hit the kitchen and – being mindful of dark time rules, so only lighting oil lamps – it suddenly dawned on me that Serendipity was facing an uphill battle, and not just because she’d injured herself.
As I stared into the oversized refrigerator I said, “The light inside this thing is the brightest one in the kitchen. How on earth is Serendipity going to produce food in here by lamp light? It’s going to be next to impossible.”
Bud gazed around the entire kitchen. “She’s got a lot of lamps up on the walls, and they’ve all got mirror things pointing down. Maybe she’s planned for it, and she’ll be fine? I don’t know…but possibly the dimness in here contributed to her cutting herself? Tonight was her first night prepping food under real pressure.”
“Hey – I’ve found some cooked ground meat in here.” I sniffed. “I think it’s lamb, and some marinated peppers, too. Have you found anything?”
Bud stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking lost. “Nothing that looks edible. Are these sweetcorn husks? You know, the stuff that you rip off before you cook them? They’re not edible, are they?”
“Tamale wrappers,” I said.
“Ah, yeah, there’s a pot over there that I turned off earlier, full of them. You know I don’t like them, but at least I recognize them.”
I opened the pot Bud pointed at, and it was, indeed, filled with a spiral of tamales resting on a big lump of foil, but I had no idea if they’d been thoroughly cooked or not. “We could give these a go, I suppose.”
Bud shook his head. “Nope, I’ll pass, thanks. Why don’t we just take some of the recognizable stuff, make up a couple of plates, and put the rest back into the fridge.”
Five minutes later we were sitting outside, at a table on the expansive deck, the stars above us, with a plate each, a couple of bottles of beer, plus a large jug of iced water. We hardly spoke as we dug into our makeshift meal, which turned out to be surprisingly tasty, and satisfying; Serendipity had mixed the ground lamb with a fresh salsa verde, the peppers were both sweet and tangy, and the beer was cold, and really hit the spot.
Eventually we both unhunched a little, and it even began to feel as though we really were on a relaxing break at a swish desert oasis…but not for long.
“We need to come up with a strategy, Bud,” I said.
My husband’s voice was heavy with resignation when he replied, “I know.”
“Do we really believe that KSue was accidentally attacked by a snake? And do we really believe Serendipity accidentally cut herself with that kitchen knife?”
Bud scratched his head. “I think KSue trod on a snake that found its way into her dig without human intervention. And I cannot imagine any scenario other than a carelessly self-inflicted wound in the case of Serendipity, given she was in a kitchen full of helpers; it was a slice, not a stab, and somebody would have said something if she’d been attacked. She said she did it herself, and I believe her. After all – why on earth would she lie about something like that?”
“I agree.”
“Oh, good. What next?”
“You can lighten up on the sarcastic tone.”
“I can?”
“Hmm…”
“I can’t quite wrap my head around what Serendipity said when she was rambling…so maybe that’s what we really heard: the ramblings of a woman under sedation. I cannot imagine what Norman’s been up to that he should stop, or else he’ll end up in prison.” Bud mused.
“Again – don’t forget she said ‘again’.”
“True. Now If I could only get access to the internet in the communications hub where you were today, I could get someone to check up on Norman McGlynn. His wife, too. And everyone else here, for that matter. Can you remind me of KSue’s family name?”
“Henritze.”
“Ah, right. Is that German?”
“Sounds it. Maybe her husband was from there originally?”
“Cait, you’re very subdued. For you. What’s going on in that busy brain of yours?”
I sat back and said, “This place is all wrong – and I don’t just mean the absurdity of setting up a restaurant like this, here. But – and since it’s just the two of us, let’s be honest and open about this – we were always both likely to feel the entire Faceting thing was a weird set-up in the first place…so let’s just try to set aside our skepticism about what the folks here obviously believe…you know, all the ‘other plane’ stuff, and so forth.”
“Agreed.”
“So, setting aside all that ‘window dressing’, if you will, what do we really have here? A total of five people who appear to have committed suicide on Zara’s say-so. A fatal accident. Two non-fatal accidents.”
“Let’s not forget KSue having been told she was due to die, too. If she’d felt ready to ‘pass on’, she could have been the sixth suicide.”
I smiled. “No, I hadn’t forgotten that, thanks. We should also check if Serendipity received such a warning – because…well, who knows.”
“You don’t think she cut herself, meaning to end her own life, do you?”
I sighed. “I hate to say it, but stranger things have happened – well, let’s be honest, stranger things have happened to us, let alone elsewhere in the world. So, if that’s what we’re facing – how do we investigate Zara? How do we gather proof to – and I think this is key – show the other Facetors first, then the authorities, because if the Facetors here aren’t on our side, I think the chances of us managing to get Zara in front of the authorities are slim to nil.”
Bud stood and stretched. “We need to find out exactly what it is she says and does to make people kill themselves, believing they are doing ‘the right thing’. Until we know that, we can’t do anything else.”
“Any ideas how we do that?”
“You said you were able to hear podcasts of Zara doing her channelling thing when you were in the communications hub. Did you try to find her telling people they would die?”
“I couldn’t. Not enough time, and no way to search for specifics – I just loaded up a couple of recent podcasts and let them play while I used the keyboards doing other things. Okay, let’s think about this; I don’t think Zara ‘proves’ she’s speaking for Demetrius just at the time when she tells people they’ll die – I think she’s already built up their belief in her construct before that. For example, what she said about us, in front of that crowd at the funeral, will have bolstered the beliefs of everyone who heard it about Demetrius’s omniscience, even if we can debunk the way she unearthed those facts. Which means Zara’s had months and months to convince them all that she’s speaking her dead father’s words. Unless I listen to, or watch, hours of her channelling, I won’t know exactly how she does it…unless…”
Bud sat again. “Unless…what?”
“Hang on, let me think.” I stood and looked down at the table, visualizing the desk in the communications studio. In my mind’s eye I looked at the folder names on the desktop screen. “Yes – there was a folder called ‘Zara transcripts’. I could read transcripts of her sessions a heck of a lot faster than I could listen to them. Rats! Why didn’t I think to read them there and then?”
“You did a lot in a short time, don’t blame yourself. Do you think Jenn would let you back into the hub again? An emergency at the university, maybe? Student with a problem?”
“I’ll do it first thing. And when I say ‘first thing’, I mean it. I’d really like to be up and about before dawn – to get out to see the ceremony when they all burn their notes from the night before. It’s weird, isn’t it, to think of them all sitting in their digs, right now, scribbling down all their thoughts and encounters from the day. I wonder what some of them have made of this evening’s two emergencies.”
“Oh, to be a fly on the wall, eh?”
“Yes, that would be interesting.” I felt annoyance mixing with the beer in my tummy. “Oh, Bud, I’m a psychologist, I should be able to understand why what’s going on here is happening. I suppose it could all be about money…but would Zara really talk her mother into killing herself for just money?”
Bud shook his head slowly as he replied, “Maybe Zara hated her mother for some reason we know nothing about…and it is a great deal of money, Cait. We’ve both seen people kill for a heck of a lot less.”
I nodded. “Sad, but true. And maybe it’s not just about the money, but about the money and the power.” I gave the matter some thought. “I wonder how growing up with two parents dedicated to their own way of thinking, developing that into the Faceting movement, and having a brother who sounds as though he was a bit of an unstable dreamer, affected Zara – especially if she was grappling with the potential social isolation that dogs the lives of academic prodigies.”
“You mean she could have grown up warped in some way?”
“Oh come on, Bud – nuts, warped, crazy – they aren’t terms I condone or use. I’m not a psychiatrist, so not trained to diagnose or treat any mental illnesses, but, as a psychologist, I examine the behavioral patterns of subjects to try to determine why they do what they do. I turned my back on analyzing criminals in favor of analyzing victims because I felt that was the best way I could speak for those who could no longer speak for themselves…and the idea that victims here are taking their own lives because of the planned and intentional actions of another person horrifies, and disgusts, me. And it seems even worse, somehow, because Zara appears to be using people’s own beliefs and hopes against them, in the most dreadful way possible. I have to understand the power she has over them. It has to be more than an unusually developed maturity and intense persona.” I stood up, “I must read those transcripts.”
Bud also stood, and grasped my shoulders, gently. “I agree, but first thing tomorrow, like you said, obviously not tonight, right?”
“Why not? Jenn said she’d be at the hub into the small hours working on that thing she was hosting online in New Zealand and Australia, and then I bet she has to do some techy stuff with it afterwards. Let’s go now.”
Bud let go of my shoulders, and I could tell he was having an internal debate with himself. “Only if I can come, too.”
“Good idea – maybe you can connect somehow with someone via the hub who can gather information for you about the people here. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
He nodded slowly. “It really is good to be able to disconnect for a while, but there’s nothing like the internet to allow the gathering of information – and that’s what we need right now. So, what’s it to be? You can’t have heard of an emergency at the university…what did Jenn think you needed to do earlier today? Could you be following up on whatever that was?”
“Don’t worry, Husband, I’ll manage to come up with something plausible, and I’ll make it as real as possible, so she doesn’t work out that I’m lying through my teeth. What we really need is some way to get her out of the place so I can download what I need.”
“Download? Onto what? You can’t do that sort of thing with your phone.”
“I have some handy-dandy thumb drives in my laptop bag, so all we have to do is collect them as we go past our dig – I can use those. At last, my ‘fetish’ pays off!”
Bud smiled. “How about – before we go rushing off to do anything at all – we grab some fruit from the bowl inside the restaurant, because we might be glad of that at some point.”
“Food for midnight feasts needs to be more exciting than fruit, Bud, so you grab some of that, and I’ll pop some of the desserts that were in the fridge into a container, and bring them.”