Truth about Lies

Chapter 1

Overhead the speaker crackled.

Uma, paying little heed, assumed it was a captain or first mate announcing their departure, but instead of the speech, oddly, there was silence.

Uma looked up.

A gasp of distress from somewhere forward of their seats left her agitated, ill at ease.Someone had become sick, she thought, a heart attack, or worse, the gasp of a child whose parent was suddenly incapacitated.Instinctively she rose, trying to move forward and help but quickly discovered more than one passenger was complaining, gasping, choking or exhaling from some sudden illness, some unanticipated, unknown despair.

Uma saw, aware of acute danger, her ancient sub-cortical brain suddenly active and exerting control, there was commotion all around, uncommon sounds and sense, the startled noises that come before comprehension might quantify what was, in fact, happening.In a moment she saw passengers everywhere rising, gesticulating, and pointing to the window or at something on the tarmac.

There was, as suddenly, a crush of people to the same side of the aircraft where the first person, she had thought, had grown ill.

In their faces she saw unabashed wonder, consternation, a tinge of horror and, leaning down to look, to see through the porthole what had occasioned their upset, wondered if even the unthinkable had happened and a plane had crashed or run into another on the runway.Seeing nothing on the tarmac, only when she raised her eyes and her view did she begin to understand.

In the distance, black smoke and a fiery red plume emanating from what she thought was a skyscraper, perhaps even one of the towers in the belly of her own home, Manhattan, punctuated the otherwise bright and cloudless view of an early autumn sky.

Ladies and gentlemen,spoke the captain,this is your captain, David Brennan.I am sorry but there has clearly been a terrible accident at the World Trade Center which many of you can probably now see.The information we have from the tower, from our air traffic control tower is limited now, and the most I know, the most I can really tell you is that we have been asked to move off the taxiway, stay in line, and wait for further instructions.

All three hundred plus people from bow to stern fell hushed.Those who had remained seated, locked in their routine, knowing the rigors and expectations of repeated travel, their seat belts still fastened and readying themselves for sleep or settling in for the hour-long journey, seemed suddenly to come awake.On cue, as the captain’s voice fell away, sucked up into the vacuum of quiet within the shiny silver space capsule, nearly half those on the left side of the cabin stood and pressed their way, suddenly, to the right.

And Mr.Merceau, Mr.Dempsey,Rose continued,had me make reservations for you and him for tomorrow morning for Washington.He says to tell you the big dogs want the big boys to join them, at the FCC and with one of your favorite clients.Here are your tickets.

In the jet way, they had merged.All of the personages from the traveling public, those warehoused in the Admiral’s Club, spacious comfortably upholstered chairs and the less fortunate, in gray industrial-carpeted public spaces filled with rows of gray naugahide seats, came together.They waited to step across the gap into the aircraft, obtain the steward’s receipt of their boarding passes and with the customary but quick nod off in the direction to which they should move to find their assigned seats.

So you know what this is all about, Henry?While Jack Dempsey spoke he carefully monitored the alchemy of the vodka and tonic he poured from the decanter left by a server in a freshly laundered and flawlessly white linen apron.

Well I thought so, Jack,Henry allowed,but it’s clear from your tone and our years of travel that there is some enlightenment you are about to offer.

You know Henry,Jack continued speaking in a tone quite particular and idiosyncratic, Henry thought, a tone that seemed in a curious way to suggest that no matter what or how one replied, Jack would continue, even if no one were there and he was speaking to himself.That is exactly why I tell the senior partners there are no juniors in the firm who aren’t worth their salt.Very astute.Dempsey continued to study the small silver containers holding the distillates of liquids.You know Henry, there are some who think the public airwaves, the airspace, as they say, is a public trust.

A public trust?

Dempsey looked out the large wood trimmed windows surrounding the Admiral’s club, providing a broad and wide view of the heart of this commercial enterprise, the center of the busiest airport in the world.

Uma Hawkins turned instinctively to the right, clearly the public space of tourist class, gesturing for Anye Se to stay close to her as they found their seats.She paused momentarily, wondering at the dull, nearly concussive thud, a sound alive deep in her inner ear, but then remembered they were close to the harbor and reasoned the sound was simply one of the enormous tugs or freighters sounding, a horn or asking a bridge to open and make way for its imminent passing.

Awkwardly she and Anye Se walked sideways down the aisle, searching for their seats.

Stowing her briefcase in the overhead, she saw, beneath the cuff of her white blouse, the summer’s tan of her wrist broken by the curious pale and now pained recollection of the missing bracelet which had for so many years graced that spot.

‘Don’t anguish for loss,’ she thought reminding herself not to worry about the bracelet.‘Someone,’ she hoped, a child repeating her catechism, ‘will surely find it,’ and she realized, snapping shut the overhead, ‘she had never really reckoned with absolute, irreconcilable loss.’

She struggled to put that and all the images of people clamoring for attention out of her thoughts.The frown crossing her face, creasing her forehead, did not detract from her simple loveliness.She obliged her thoughts to narrow, as the space before her and Anye Se seemed to shrink.

The congressional hearings they would attend, she knew, would be important.Now was time to think about the task at hand.She left off thinking of the FCC, corporate interests, the public trust, all of the issues so important in the conscious world of responsibility, liability, honor, and due process.

They located their seats, joining an elderly man already comfortable and peering out the window.She and Anye Se settled in, as did the other passengers, waiting, as the scheduled time for take-off approached.

The plane, disconnected from the terminal and turned, seemed, in its lurching but recognizable journey, stopped.The time for take off passed, yet the plane, stilled in its resting place, bore none of the usual signs of an imminent departure.

After a delay sufficiently long to persuade Uma to reach above her, re-open her brief and resume study of the annotated pages, she then placed her leather valise, empty now, into the overhead compartment.Bent over her work, penciling in notes, correcting small errors, a last chance before arriving at the Federal Communications Commission; she glanced at Anye Se and, satisfied she was not put off by her neglect, carried on.

She recollected where they had left off yesterday and why indeed they had been obliged to go to Washington at all.

Your Honor,Uma Hawkins said gracefully,that is exactly the point.

The assemblage before and all around Uma looked more like a sit-in at a peace protest rally in the sixties, a quiet if somewhat chaotic and disorganized gathering of a hundred different stripes of the local populace, all wanting not only to make a statement for themselves, but even moreso to be present, to see the event and perhaps articulate some support for their midnight host, Steven Dunifer.

A child does not have to be paying attention, Your Honor, and just as we acquire language he or she will absorb the visual and auditory information the media promulgates.In the midst of the scuffling and sub rosa noises of a large crowd, well behaved but clearly not all accustomed to the near funereal quiet of an appellate hearing room, many eyes turned to the judge.

So how, counselor,the judge queried,does that impact these hearings?

Uma Hawkins was quick to rejoin.Your Honor, that is exactly the point.Because, Your Honor, if a child will absorb anything it is given, as water will taste much like anything that pollutes it, it is our responsibility, truly it is every-one’s responsibility, especially the broadcasters, those who deliver information, to be held to the highest standard.They have ‘in situ’ standing as parents, ‘in loco parentis,’ your honor, a position reserved forever, through common law and case law for the courts, and by the courts alone, but most certainly the broadcasters and technology production companies who make cell phones or wireless devices.

But counselor,the justice was quick to reply,I fail to see how this is a responsibility of the broadcasters and especially of the technology providers.The natural conclusion to that line of argument would be that even adults in some circumstances are not responsible, do not pay attention, are simply not mindful of what they hear or what the broadcasters say.

Uma was stunned at the apparent and utter simplicity of the truth.

With all due respect, Your Honor, fundamentally and in a cultural and technological vacuum you are absolutely correct.But our world has shrunken and the broadcasters do not live in different geographic regions where mail takes three weeks to deliver and cultural twangs and colloquialisms are dispositive of someone’s ethnic heritage anymore.We exchange information in seconds.With the click of a mouse a child in Nome, Alaska or an Athabascan Indian in Colorado will learn about the violence in the streets of Chicago or the bombing of the USS Cole within five seconds of the rest of the world.In this age everything matters, Your Honor, and, though not the proximate cause of the facts of the news, the very power of the modality now makes the broadcasters broadcasting an element of the news.It’s a force of the facts of change for good or bad.And if every time you use your cell phone the ring-tone is the MacDonalds theme song, or the service is free because every time you open the phone the first text message says,Don’t forget your latte,orCampbell’s, um-um good,how can anyone be strong or independent enough to resist the insidious nature of such a bombardment.We all have to agree,Uma Hawkins said,whichever side of the bar we sit on, knowledge is power.

Anye Se and Uma found themselves covered and pressed into each other and the elderly man beside them by passengers in the aisle who leaned over them trying to see better.Uma looked through the half blocked porthole and through the somewhat blurry plastic to the tower in the distance engulfed in flames and smoke.

Do you mind,a stern and somewhat unpleasant voice intoned behind her.She turned to see the nature of a speaker whose lack of courtesy was so publicly manifest.

Would you make some space for others to see,repeated an odious man, sweating, his face veined his breath deep and unclean.

Reflexively, Uma and Anye Se both pulled back, pressing their heads into the backs of the seat, holding their breaths as the man in the poorly tailored suit, eel-like and slick with his own excretions, bent over and peered through the porthole.

The man in the window seat, himself still absorbed in the sight, turned and responded churlishly when the strange and unpleasant voice whined a complaint aimed directly at him, suggesting his head was too big to see around.Uma struggled to stifle a guffaw, knowing the situation was not one given over to one’s sense of humor.

Maybe we can have some time to finish the last brief,Uma whispered, more a thought to herself, an admonition of how to spend this time, a reflex mindful of the clock which ticked, inexorably, enunciating the finite moments, withal, between here and her appearance in front of the commissioners at the hearing today, that might otherwise be wasted.She looked at Anye Se and realized her young paralegal, her friend as well as her employee, was increasingly fascinated, frightened and determined to see out the window along with all the others pressing and jostling.Uma wondered how to calm the already frayed nerves of this delicate and serious woman for whom she had both a matriarchal responsibility and affection as one naturally develops with people who keep enough of the essence of their childhood intact; who are endearing irrespective of the occasion.Uma put away any thought of working quietly, trying herself, now, to see the cause of the commotion.

It’s kind of frightening,said Anye Se, turning her eyes nearly next to Uma’s, their heads both pulled back and pressed into their headrests, other passengers taking turns, leaning into their space, trying to look out the porthole, their bodies filling the bulk of the small place where their tray table, books and papers may have been.

It is scary,Anye Se repeated, allowing she had never seen such a fire but seemed to have some reference to the horror of people caught in fires, natural disasters well beyond the control of humankind.

In my country there are times of drought when fire or lightning strikes and there is nothing anyone can do.

Uma took Anye Se’s hand in hers.She had been, Uma knew, through more in her short life than most could imagine.She didn’t want Anye Se to be frightened of anything more, but she was, remembering her past.Uma breathed deeply and tried to think of something comforting to say, but the glimpse of the smoking building she had seen through the porthole made every platitude dry and words have no worth.

Excuse me ma’am but do you have any idea what happened?a voice cracking with age interrupted Uma’s thoughts.She turned to respond.

An elderly woman readied for a formal gathering, as Uma guessed, who may have simply dressed as was the custom when flying was itself an uncommon event and was, for the very public and glamorous nature of it, an event not unlike a local charity gala.She stood close by in her finery, concerned and frightened, uncertain what to do.

Uma shook her head, feeling suddenly worse.In an instant she realized what was really happening.It horrified her all the more because, like most people in her position in life in New York, she had a relationship with the skyscraper, she had been near it, she had eaten in the restaurant as a young woman, and she had done business there.She had friends in its depths that had gone there today to work.She began to imagine an elderly woman, a mother who may have at this moment a son or daughter up on one of the floors from which the smoke billowed.She imagined even worse, the terror of one who had just been there and was now all the more terrified for the prospect for having just left.

I don’t really know,she said solicitously to the elegant woman, masking her own terror for her friends.I don’t, but I’m sure it’s something the authorities can fix.I imagine it will all be taken care of soon.

Uma knew she was just trying to quiet the fears of the elderly woman, but she had been taught that an honorable and estimable young woman said words to placate as a mark of gentle respect and solace.She felt empty after having said the half-truth, reflecting, wondering, if indeed one could even begin to fix such a problem.

The elderly woman shook her head, dismay so powerfully etched on her face, her jiggling anxious shaking, her head turning back and forth, unable to diminish or dispel the worry in her eye.

Can they fix it?Anye Se whispered, her head still pressed against the back of the seat rests.Can the authorities fix what is happening?

Uma looked past her to the smoking tower shaking her head slowly and wondering herself what the truth of the matter was.

Could man build a tower so large he could get in, but couldn’t get out?Anye Se’s voice was hoarse with clenched emotion.

Uma remembered throwing hay into the mow of the old barn, her grandfather saying,Just take your time, step by step, make your own steps, and you can get up there, Cricket.Amazingly, each time she made steps she could climb the length, but by the last bale they had built a pile so large, an edifice of hay in the open of the enormous building, there was no way to get down except by throwing out her feet and letting the force of gravity slide her back down.She had learned then that men could build impossible mountains.

I don’t know, Anye, but I think so.

She paused again and studied the distant horizon, a beautiful autumn blue, a presage of the clear cold days of winter, without moisture or discoloration to the perfect blue of a cloudless sky.

I don’t know,she began to say again but turned to see some commotion at the front of the passageway.There was a red-costumed steward trying to make his way through the aisle choked with onlookers from the other side of the aircraft.

Ladies and gentlemen,the young steward began.

Uma could not easily distinguish all of the words but the language his body spoke, the determination to have his way and to restore the custom which had been usual, the response of docile and willing passengers to allow their wills to be bent to the figment of his perceived authority, intrigued her.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry,she now heard.Some of the other passengers too had looked in his direction and, though still crowded to the left side of the aircraft, they stopped their chatter and with one ear gave him a moment’s attention.I know the captain has said the seat belt sign would be turned off while we wait, but FAA rules do require passengers to stay seated while we are on the taxiway.

This may have been fact, Uma thought, but there is fear in him, he is saying something more than just words and reference to fact.

Several of the passengers turned slowly and resumed their seats while others, indifferent to the words and the direction in the face of such wonder, seemed to regard the young steward, made some internal assessment of his character, his determination to remove them from the aisles, perhaps questioning the authenticity or ingenuousness of his person and declined, leaning back and resuming their regard of the events, an enormous skyscraper smoking, clearly on fire and emitting a black and quite frightening plume.Uma realized this plume was as large as a volcano’s or some other naturally occurring act of this largely incomprehensible earth.Her stomach clenched at the thought that something man could do could rival the harsh destruction of nature.

An elderly woman in the group, perhaps more likely to adhere to the social gossamer of rule and law suddenly turned, whispering an apology of sorts, and then hurriedly returned to her seat.

With the area now immediately above and beside them free, Uma could see and track the movement of the flight attendant and, not unexpectedly, saw him working his way along the aisle trying to cajole, implore, demand and otherwise impose his will or that of some higher order to get done what clearly his flight manual said was a protocol for passengers and aircraft set waiting, no matter the reason.She leaned her head back and tried to think of other things.Anye Se’s hand held hers, hard and afraid.

Chapter 2

Henry Merceau, pressed by the crush of passengers boarding the aircraft, watched the tall, elegant woman turn to the right and paused momentarily.He wondered where had he seen that woman before.When she turned briefly to say something to her companion, a fresh-faced young Asian, scarcely a woman, more likely a teen, he caught a glimpse of her uncommonly beautiful face.‘Yes,’ he thought, he had for certain seen her somewhere.He was quickly directed forward, towards the section of the plane where the first class cabin was housed.Just after taking their seats, he and his partner in law, Jack Dempsey, were greeted by a comely stewardess.Ever so slightly cocking her head and bearing a lovely smile, she indicated which way they were obliged to turn, deftly pointing the sky-flying elite forward to the place where the elect soared.

Seeing the cockpit door was ajar, Henry glanced backward.He had seen her in the jet way when the economy class passengers merged with first class.He wondered if she was the same woman he had seen the day before in court.Immediately, he remembered her; he had seen her in court, and oddly, even then she’d seemed familiar.Even then he thought he recognized her from some place they’d been before.Perhaps she was a bar review class? This was equally improbable, considering she was flying coach.His wandering thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a surging vibration from deep within the aircraft, and he settled deeply into his seat.

Henry Merceau had always imagined himself more the australopithecine stone-age man than the metropolitan twenty-first century attorney in whose garb he wrapped his persona.Despite the manifest actions of his real life, he knew that he was truly a hunter, or a tribesman, for whenever he was close on the hunt and on a trail warm or the scent of blood nearby, he could then feel the unmistakable thrill and slow burning tingle of excitement from deep within his core, always travelling steadfastly up his spine and coursing throughout his loins before leaving his body exiting sharply, more memorable than the last.

From the nippled affair at the end of the airport’s concourse, an umbilical connection to each of the suckling crafts from the mother ship, detached directly and as quickly, he felt the uncertain jerk and disequilibrium, heard the sound and movement of rolling gradually to a stop.One side of the craft now set within sight of the ocean, the other faced directly the skyline of the city.

It’s kind of interesting,he mused and his thoughts flitted momentarily to the beautiful silver bracelet he had found on the floor of the gym.He had found it as he stretched; it lay softly glittering, lost and separated unwittingly from its owner.Maybe it’s not unlike this craft and its mother, we are also suddenly alone.He shook himself out of his reverie.He needed to focus.

He waited for his partner, Jack, to settle in before he slipped into his own comfortable leather seat.Henry turned to see through the crowd, through the captain and crew, all nattily attired attendants, through the narrowed passageway separating first class from the rest, and through the line of passengers settling their carry-ons in the compartments above, standing, waiting to take their seats.A hunter and genteel predator, Henry Merceau turned reflexively to search for the woman he had seen upon boarding.He had internally proved his case with sufficient evidence and would now swear he had seen her somewhere before.

Unwittingly, his fingers sought the slight but discreet weight of the bracelet he’d carried in his watch pocket, seeking its uncommon heft recognizable by the fingers of his searching, spidery, arthropodic hand.He smiled at his own foolishness, remembering he’d left it safely nestled in the small drawer made just for such a delicacy in the front of his desk.

Settled comfortably and simultaneously retracting his hand from its unsuccessful search of his pocket, he felt gratitude for having taken the time and possessing the discipline to have been to the health club already this morning and completed his daily workout in the gym.Jack often criticized Henry’s demeanor, calling himundisciplined and rumpled.Henry knew better and took a quiet and profound satisfaction from the daily regimen into which he had fallen, and, with not much more than a little effort, maintained regularly now, for years.He stretched, feeling his own strength.

The speaker in the fuselage crackled.Henry looked at Jack who somehow managed to settle his briefcase under this seat while he gazed, leaning forward toward the Captain’s cabin with a recognizable but unaccountable fixation.

Henry also turned, following Jack’s line of sight, and saw immediately the object of his focus, the magazine cover beautiful stewardess who simultaneously was pulling closed the door to the cockpit and turning to pick up the handset telephone recessed into the aircraft’s frame by the forward exit.

There was a commotion at the door behind him.

There was always a commotion at the door, Henry thought again, with more than a little contempt for the people who clamored at the door for first place in line in the early morning dark at the gym.After a ten minute walk on the newest of the treadmills, they considered themselves properly acquitted of their animal and ancient past and with the scents of the finest fragrances of foreign lands, left fully attired in the gear and gauze of their own notions of themselves, or of what they thought the world expected.

Ladies and gentlemen,said the captain,This is your captain, David Brennan.I am sorry but there has clearly been a terrible accident at the World Trade Center which many of you can probably now see.The information we have from the tower, from our air traffic control tower is limited, very limited now, and the most I know, the most I can really tell you is that we have been asked to move off the taxiway, wait in line and wait for further instructions.

Jack tried to see out the left side portholes.The large and inelegantly coiffed hairdo of another first-class passenger, conspicuous in her expensive jewelry, carefully applied make-up and haut-couture filled the small oval and prevented any further sight.No doubt this woman thought she had mastered the arts of refinement by draping herself in such expensive clothing.It was contemptible to wallow in such things.It wasn’t true quality in his thinking.

Inexplicably, his thoughts fled to the small pocket in the top of his fine cherry desk, to the small space with a rounded center made perhaps for change or something the thumb and forefinger would want to exhume with ease.He reckoned how it was made, by the craftsman, a fellow who likely cared more for his work, took more pride in the design and structure of the smallest of the components of the little space in the desk drawer next to the longer one clearly made to house pens and pencils, than Henry took in his law practice.He thought of the delicate hydra, and the remarkable craftsmanship it took to create something so fine.He was thankful there were those who took pride in their work.

Henry remembered, with a twinge of regret, that he once took great pride in his practice, his lawyering, his being the adjudicator and advocate of human rights and wrongs, but somehow, this moment, this day, these days, he had lost some of that.Perhaps others thought about him the same way he considered the over-groomed woman; that there was no substance to him.Perhaps he was contemptible.

His thoughts were interrupted by the overly calm intoning of the stewardess.It is nothing to worry about,the white-frocked blue-smocked stewardess assured the questioning eyes of her guests.I’m sure our men in blue will take care of it,she added, a curious and recognizable smugness in her voice and tone, the sort of inflected innuendo seeming to indicate her relative position in the world, of how things worked and who was responsible for getting things done, was indeed enough so that her disregard ought indeed be sufficient for her guests to maintain their comfort and still relax.So while we are waiting,she continued,may I get you a drink, some champagne, a martini, or perhaps you would like some food.We have some freshly baked croissants,

Henry, sitting by the window, comfortable in the large and accommodating leather seat was content to watch, from his apparently safe space, events, the majesty and wonder of a skyscraper burning, unfold.The sight began to burn its way deeper into his thoughts, filling up his consciousness.

Jack,he said, his voice muffled some for facing the window, peering through the porthole, his mind’s eye filled with the imagery of the last time he had been there,how do they get those people out?

Jack was involved in pouring the small bottle of vermouth with just the proper admixture into the bitter clear gin he had received before takeoff.He listened but was more entertained by the sight of the backside of the stewardess moving down the aisle toward the galley, leaning over all of the first class passengers in ways suggestive, despite her free flowing garments, of the lithesome body enclosed beneath.

Fire trucks,Jack answered, absently, trying to turn the small screw top of the fancy miniature bottle and maintain his gaze all the while on his imaginary prey.

You think?Henry replied, focused on the ever large, growing plume of smoke, and wondering how tall they went, how big were the old ladder trucks he had seen a thousand times running about the city, and how or where they stored enough ladders to get what must have been a thousand feet up.

Jack filled his glass, twirled the straw to complete the mixing and watched the stewardess disappear into the galley.

Let’s have a look,he said now to Henry, otherwise settled into exploring his drink since no other more attractive sight or undertaking was there to warrant his attention.

Maintaining his gaze but more obliquely, leaning back some to allow room for his fellow passengers to have some of the sight of the porthole, Henry remained transfixed.He wondered at the increasingly complicated calculus of exit, how one could get out from a building so large and so manifestly indomitable.

There has to be a way,he whispered, leaning back even more now as Jack increasingly leaned toward the edge of the craft and pressed his head to fill the small oblong of the porthole.Finally events of the moment seemed to penetrate the detachment Jack wrapped himself in.

Good god man,Jack gasped,do you have any idea how unpleasant that must be?

Jack sat back and peered along the aisle, trying now to sight his quarry, to find some more corporeal form of interest than a building smoking ten miles away and causing the most inconvenient delay.

Seriously,Henry resumed,how are they going to get all of those people out,he asked aloud.

You know old boy, I frankly don’t know, but do you remember old Sumner Cleaves?

Henry thought for a moment, as he watched a small plume of smoke rise again in the brilliantly blue morning sky and, as suddenly, the appropriate image popped into his head.

That’s right, I do.His firm, Minsk Levin, is down there,Merceau concluded, leaning forward trying with the press of his body against Dempsey’s blocking shoulder to move him away, signify his time had ended and they would resume a more normal seating arrangement.

But how do they get them out? What if they can’t put out the fire, how do they get them out?Henry pressed, his question as thoughtful now as his study of the tower.

Jack concluded twirling his drink and slowly but apparently meaningfully tipped the bottom of the small glass up above the level of his mouth and motionlessly, much as a horse drinks water, imbibed the clear liquid within.

Let me out, Jack,Henry said.I’m going to see if I can get a better view in back.

Make sure you bring your boarding pass,Jack said, studying the small olive tangled with the perfectly formed cubes of ice.

Standing straight in the aisle and peering at the curtain closing them off from coach and further segregating first class, he looked askance at Jack.

Steerage.You get there and you’ll be locked out.Take your boarding pass.

Henry thought Jack was either kidding or disrespectfully making light of the stewards rule, but he studied his friend’s face, eyes narrowed, and focused on the bottom of his glass and wondered, as he had often, who was the real Jack Dempsey, or perhaps, he was indeed a collage of a man, the collection of faces he brought or occasioned, made at all the events to which, in sum, he had intended to recreate his persona.

Maybe that’s the way of the world,Henry thought, approaching the flannel curtain, struck by the thought that, indeed, perhaps people brought nothing to the world and their personality was the sum of all the places they had been, all the faces and their responses, of people they had seen or with whom they had been close or connected.

He pulled back the curtain, realizing this would not be a good line for questioning or logic to propose to the regulators at FCC during the upcoming trial.

Indeed, he realized if this were true, then the whole of their case was fallacious and most of the trials and tribulations of mankind could squarely be placed at the doorstep of the media, the representatives of the representations which, for better or worse, actually made and were the seed of the next generation’s notion of what the world would be, who they were to be, how they were to act.

Merceau, taken by the complexity of such an organizing principle of behavior, was struck when he stepped through the rabbit hole, from the plush quiet of first class to the long, peopled and nearly chaotic aisle of coach.He saw the backside of the frocked steward gesticulating, pointing and trying, as a sheep dog might, to get the hundred or so people standing back into their seats and settled.

Wow,he whispered, realizing completely and exactly the complexity of events taking place.

As the aisle was full, he moved up the few open rows he could navigate and stopped by the choked and quite small passageway, sat on the arm of a seat, on the wrong side and just behind the steward, affording him a better view.

I’m sorry sir but you must sit in your seat,the steward said, turning to now include Henry in his admonition, numbering him one of the recalcitrants who needed to obey instruction or face the wrath of the FAA or worse, a visit by the co-pilot.

I don’t even live here,Henry Merceau said, nodding at once to the flannel curtain of first class, and indicating by inference he was from another place and therefore the rules didn’t apply to him.

I am sorry sir,the young, freshly scrubbed, red costumed, too clean and excessively elocuted steward said, giving a long and thoughtful, overly empathic eye contact with Henry,but I must ask you to return to your seat.

Henry was surprised, both for the brazenness of the young man and his curious attention now to himself rather than the other one hundred and fifty souls who weren’t seated, all struggling to peer through the portholes clearly not adjacent to their own side of the fuselage.

I am just trying to see what is going on,Henry said, rising, to show some accommodation, but did not turn submissively to return to the forward section yet.

The steward twisted to speak to some others immediately in front of him, then returned his attention to Henry, nearly glowering, expecting an appropriate response, subjugation, and, at the instant their eyes met, both felt the plane shake, a distant but recognizable concussion or quake punctuating the tremble.

There was a collective gasp, a deep chilling and uncomfortable sigh nearly, in its audible form, the animal in its cocoon awakening.

Oh no,he heard one voice from the far rear of the passageway, from a seat behind the wing likely with a better view than all others.

The steward, focused still on the pejoratives of the flight manual and his own pleasure or affirmation in the execution of his job, nearly leaped, quite agilely, Henry noted, across the four or five rows from where he had been stuck, a basketball player taking a moment’s hesitation to make a play through the defense, and stepping sideways around Henry, up onto the edge of the seat of one aisle, vaulting forward and passing through the flannel curtain into the galley.

The whole of the chattering clattering passageway of the big jet, filled with three hundred souls, some standing, some seated, was suddenly stilled.

But for the one voice, there was no noise and, of their own accord with a force far larger than the unpleasantness of the bullying steward, quickly and with little commotion, most of those standing suddenly were back in their seats.

‘Wow,’ Henry thought, awed by the majesty of human behavior, the guidance, silent and ubiquitous, of a flock, of the instinct, nearly transparent, that bid a whole group of people to go to war, to move from jungle to high plateau, or to sit obediently when danger or strife was in the wind.

The captain has requested that all passengers take their seats and fasten their seat belts.This is an order from the flight deck,the voice overhead shrilled, and Henry, standing now in the front of the coach cabin, an open and almost unimpeded view of the whole of the succubus, smiled, knowing how little people respected disingenuous behavior and that it was too bad the little steward wouldn’t know when he returned that it was not his words or power that occasioned such behavior and the correct exegetical response, rather the passengers own intuitive and cumulative sense of imminent danger.

He surveyed the length of the aisle trying to see through the portholes if there was something remarkable about the building burning.Perhaps there was a fuel storage tank on the roof and it had exploded, he thought, but there was nothing from his poor perspective he could sight.He scanned the crowded aisles and his hunter’s eyes saw the prey, her head tilted back in tense controlled breathing.If he ever saw her again, he would not forget.Even frightened, she was lovely.

Chapter 3

I don’t know what has happened,Anye Se whispered, concluding a sentence, but before her words ebbed into silence, she saw the flicker in the eyes of her mentor, she saw her look away and peer down the aisle at the man who was regarding her.

No, I don’t either, but there is more smoke, oh my God,she said, peering again out the porthole, peering into the open belly of the stalactites of New York, while Uma, following the sub-cortical mechanisms of her silent but always active brain, looked down the now emptied aisle and saw a man peering at her.She felt the wonder of deja vu.Yes.She had seen this man before, though she could not place his face.

An image recollected by the trigger of an olfactory reminiscence, the so-familiar smell, an emotion or recognizable but inchoate feeling stirred, Uma could not, despite the chaos all around, keep the thoughts of her early morning from filtering in and filling her conscious thought.

She remembered just after dawn stepping upon the deck of a treadmill, a curious machine made by man, a way to simulate the forests and plains of the uninhabited world as it must once have been.She noted the clock on the wall, studied her watch and the dials and controls of the machine and stretched.She remembered, with an odd clarity now, the minutiae of the morning’s run.She recalled the weather, the wind, and the duration, to the second, of her perambulation and smiled, thinking for the thousandth time what a peculiar