The Footprints of God

What Rachel didn't know was that I had only been allowed to see her after wi

First the NSA flew in a shrink from Fort Meade, a pharmacological psychiatrist whose main patient base was technicians trying to cope with chronic stress or depression. He wanted to fill me up with happy pills and find out how to become an internationally published physician like me. Next they brought in a woman, an expert in dealing with the neuroses that develop when people are forced to work for long periods in secrecy. Her knowledge of dream symbolism was limited to "a little historical reading" during her residency. Like her colleague, she wanted to start me on a regimen of anti-depressants and antipsychotics. What I needed was a psychoanalyst experienced in dream analysis, and the NSA didn't have one.

I called some friends at the UVA Medical School and discovered that Rachel Weiss, the country's preeminent Jungian analyst, was based at the Duke University Medical School, less than fifteen miles from the Trinity building. Skow tried to stop me from seeing her, but in the end I told him he'd have to arrest me to do it, and before he tried that, he'd better call the president, who had appointed me to the project.

"Something's happened," Rachel said. "What is it? Have the hallucinations changed again?"

Hallucinations, I thought bitterly. Never dreams.

"Have they intensified? Become more personal? Are you afraid?"

"Andrew Fielding is dead," I said in a flat voice.

Rachel blinked. "Who's Andrew Fielding?"

"He was a physicist."

Her eyes widened. "Andrew Fielding the physicist is dead?"

It was a measure of Fielding's reputation that a medical doctor who knew little about quantum physics would know his name. But it didn't surprise me. There are six-year-olds who'd heard of "the White Rabbit." The man who had largely unraveled the enigma of the dark matter in the universe stood second only to his friend Stephen Hawking in the astrophysical firmament.

"He died of a stroke," I said. "Or so they say."

"So who says?"

"People at work."

"You work with Andrew Fielding?"

"I did. For the past two years."

Rachel shook her head in amazement. "You don't think he died of a stroke?"

"No."

"Did you examine him?"

"A cursory exam. He collapsed in his office. Another doctor got to him before he died. That doctor said Fielding exhibited left-side paralysis and had a blown left pupil, but…"

"What?"

"I don't believe him. Fielding died too quickly for a stroke. Within four or five minutes."

Rachel pursed her lips. "That happens sometimes. Especially with a severe hemorrhage."

"Yes, but it's comparatively rare, and you don't usu¬ally see a blown pupil." That was true enough, but it wasn't what I was thinking. I was thinking that Rachel was a psychiatrist, and as good as she was, she hadn't spent sixteen years practicing internal medicine, as I had. You got a feeling about certain cases, certain peo¬ple. A sixth sense. Fielding had not been my patient, but he'd told me a lot about his health in two years, and a massive hemorrhage didn't feel right to me. "Look, I don't know where his body is, and I don't think there's going to be an autopsy, so-"

"Why no autopsy?" Rachel broke in.

"Because I think he was murdered."

"I thought you said he died in his office."

"He did."

"You think he was murdered at work? Workplace violence?"

She still didn't get it. "I mean premeditated murder. Carefully thought out, expertly executed murder." "But…why would someone murder Andrew Fielding? He was an old man, wasn't he?"

"He was sixty-three." Recalling Fielding's body on the office floor, mouth agape, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, I felt a sudden compulsion to tell Rachel everything. But one glance at the window killed the urge. A parabolic microphone could be trained on the glass.

"I can't say anything beyond that. I'm sorry. You should go, Rachel."

She took two steps toward me, her face set with purpose. "I'm not going anywhere yet. Look, if anyone died while not under a doctor's supervision in this state, there has to be an autopsy. And especially in cases of possible foul play. It's required by law."

I laughed at her naiveté. "There won't be an autopsy. Not a public one, anyway."

"David-"

"I really can't say more. I shouldn't have said that much. I just wanted you to know… that it's real."

"Why can't you say more?" She held up a small, graceful hand. "No, let me answer that. Because to tell me more would put me in danger. Right?"

"Yes."

She rolled her eyes. "David, from the begi

"And you know I appreciate that. But if I'm right about Fielding, anything I tell you now could put your life at risk. Can't you understand that?"

"No. I've never understood. What sort of work could possibly be so dangerous?"

I shook my head.

"This is like a bad joke." She laughed strangely. "'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.' It's classic paranoid thinking."

"Do you really believe I'm making all this up?"

Rachel answered with caution. "I believe that you believe everything you've told me."

"So, I'm still delusional."

"You've got to admit, you've been having disturbing hallucinations for some time now. Some of the recent ones are classic religious delusions."

"But most not," I reminded her. "And I'm an atheist. Is that classic?"

"No, I concede that. But you've also refused to get a workup for your narcolepsy. Or epilepsy. Or even to get your blood sugar checked, for that matter."

I've been worked up by the foremost neurologist in the world. "That's being investigated at work."

"By Andrew Fielding? He wasn't an M.D., was he?"

I decided to go one step further. "I'm being treated by Ravi Nara."

Her mouth fell open. "Ravi Nara? As in the Nobel Prize for medicine?"

"That's him," I said with distaste.

"You work with Ravi Nara?"

"Yes. He's a prick. It was Nara who said Fielding died of a stroke."

Rachel appeared at a loss. "David, I just don't know what to say. Are you really working with these famous people?"

"Is that so hard to believe? I'm reasonably famous myself."

"Yes, but… not in the same way. What reason would those men have to work together? They're in totally different fields."

"Until two years ago they were."

"What does that mean?"

"Go back to your office, Rachel."

"I canceled my last patient so I could come here."

"Bill me for your lost time."

She reddened. "There's no need to insult me. Please tell me what's going on. I'm tired of hearing nothing but your hallucinations."

"Dreams."

"Whatever. They're not enough to work with."

"Not for your purpose. But you and I have different goals. We always have. You're trying to solve the riddle of David Te

"But the answers are bound up in who you are! Dreams aren't independent of the rest of your brain! You-"

The ringing telephone cut her off. I got up and went into the kitchen to answer it, a strange thrumming in my chest. The caller could be the president of the United States.

"Dr. Te

"Dr. David?" cried a hysterical female voice with an Asian accent. It was Lu Li, Fielding's Chinese wife. Or widow…

"This is David, Lu Li. I'm sorry I haven't called you." I searched for fitting words but found only a cliché. "I can't begin to express the pain I feel at Andrew's loss-"