The Beautiful Land Read online

  escape artist

  Tak reaches into the case and twists the first knob one click to the right. This causes the green light to brighten and a small humming sound to emanate from somewhere deep inside the device. He twists the second knob three times, the third knob once, and the fourth knob twice. With each click, the humming grows louder and more furious. Each turn produces a slightly different tone, and when Tak finishes, the end result is a chord of almost terrible beauty.

  The musical chord rings out with new fury as the device powers up. Just before it reaches fever pitch, Tak wipes his fingers on his pants, places them on either side of the round glass panel, and waits. He’s more nervous than he’s been in a long time, but also excited. If it works, it’s gonna be one hell of a surprise to everyone involved. And if it doesn’t…Well, at least he’ll finally know what it’s like to fall to his death.

  The light turns blinding. His fingers begin to stretch across the surface of the panel, becoming impossibly long and thin before finally vanishing altogether. Tak’s head begins to fog over with a familiar sensation, random thoughts and memories jumbling together into an incoherent blur. He has just enough time to regret not eating his usual prejump meal before the light becomes his entire world. There is a brief flash, a mighty roar from the depths of the briefcase, then nothing.

  Seconds later, the bathroom door crashes open, and a large man stumbles through and does a face-plant against the cold steel urinal. One hand, reaching out for support, crashes through the thin metal on the bottom of the toilet and emerges covered in a viscous blue film. The people behind him all take an involuntary step back, then a step forward, as if they can’t quite convince themselves of what just happened. Because what they are seeing is, quite frankly, impossible.

  Takahiro O’Leary is gone.

  the beautiful land

  alan averill

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2013 by Alan Averill.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61098-5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Averill, Alan.

  The Beautiful Land / Alan Averill. — Ace trade paperback edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN: 978-0-425-26527-7

  1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Science fiction. I. Title.

  PS3601.V46B43 2013

  813’.6—dc23

  2013000225

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace trade paperback edition / June 2013

  Cover photos: feather © Vasilius/Shutterstock; oil drops © Buzz S / Shutterstock;

  texture background © Hemera/Thinkstock; bird © VladimirCeresnak/Shutterstock.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

  of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for

  author or third-party websites or their content.

  for sue

  Table of Contents

  Low-Rent Suicide

  Chapter One

  Clean Is Better

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Amends

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Bird

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Home

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Flicker and Die

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Man with a Plan

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Beautiful Land

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The End of All Things

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Control/Alt/Delete

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Things I Want to Tell You

  Chapter Forty

  Acknowledgments

  low-rent suicide

  chapter one

  Tak can’t answer the phone because the noose is too tight.

  Given that he’s currently standing on a rickety wooden chair with a length of rope knotted firmly around his neck, the phone should be the least of his concerns. And in truth, he’s more worried about the Miles Davis song warbling from a battered tape deck on the floor. Tak had been pondering his suicide for a couple of weeks now, and he eventually concluded that dangling from a rope while Kind of Blue played in the background was about the best ending a man could hope for. But the moment he slipped the noose around his neck and tightened the knot, the phone had sprung to life with an incessant clang. And now, after four excruciating minutes, it’s all he can hear.

  You should have stuck with the original plan, dude, he thinks. Fancy hotels don’t have phones like this.

  Said original plan had been to save up money until he could afford a snazzy room somewhere in midtown Manhattan. Then he was going to order a bottle of Scotch, drink it from a fine crystal snifter, and fade to black while Miles played on a million-dollar stereo system with surround sound and a subwoofer. This plan had the added bonus of a Wall Street one-percenter walking into the room and finding a scrawny Japanese guy dangling from the chandelier—a vision that struck Tak as hilarious even though he wouldn’t be around to enjoy it. But eleven months of unemployment and serious drinking had all but eliminated that possibility. He’d only been able to afford his current room after selling his shoes for seventeen dollars, which left a pair of jeans, a fifth of cheap whiskey, and a T-shirt with a picture of Donkey Kong smoking a joint as his only worldly possessions.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  “No,” mutters Tak. “No, no, no. You’re not answering that. You’re up here now, and you’re going to step off the chair and finish this before your buzz wears off. Ready? Okay! Do it! Do it, do it, do it!”

  But Tak does
n’t do it. Instead, he stands on his tiptoes, listens to the chair squeak against the top of the old wooden dresser on which it’s perched, and thinks about the person on the other end of the phone. And the more he thinks, the more he wonders if it might be a certain young woman with curly black hair. It’s a totally impossible idea, but now that it’s crawled into his brain, he finds it hard to shake.

  What if it’s true? I mean, what if she had a dream or a vision or something, and she knows you’re here?

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Okay, now you’re being a pussy. Just jump off the chair and be done with it already.

  Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring…

  Fine. Goddammit, just…fine. I’ll answer the thing.

  But this is going to be difficult. The noose is tied with a complicated knot, and his precarious chair-and-dresser combination won’t take kindly to sudden movements. Tak ponders his situation for what seems an eternity as the furniture groans, and the phone continues to scream. Finally, he grabs the rope with both hands and lifts himself up and off the chair. After a few moments of dangling in space like a mobile, he manages to wrap one leg around a rusty overhead pipe and take the strain off his quaking arms. Once the leg is secure, Tak releases one hand from the rope and feels for the knife on his belt. At the same time, he quickly formulates a new plan: pick up the phone, see who it is, then unplug the damn thing and use a bedsheet to finish what he started. Quick, easy, done. Assuming, of course, that he can sever the rope without slipping free and snapping his own neck in the process.

  He stops fumbling for the knife long enough to grab the rope again, then throws his other leg around the pipe for added support. After a brief rest and a few deep breaths, he drops his hand, snags the tool on the first try, then brings it to his mouth and opens it with his teeth. Soon Tak is sawing away at the rope, muttering profanities under his breath as he works.

  The knife is sharp, and within seconds the rope falls limply to his side and dangles like a macabre necklace. He tosses the knife over to the bed and moves to grab the pipe, but his quaking legs and slippery hands have other plans. At the exact moment when he attempts to transfer his weight from one set of limbs to the other, both finally lose what little strength they have left and send him crashing to the chair below.

  The chair shatters into splinters upon impact, causing Tak to slam into the dresser on which it was perched. But where the chair was old and poorly made, the dresser is constructed of good, strong oak; he actually ricochets about a foot into the air when he strikes it. Before he can even come to grips with what the hell is happening, he smashes back down into the corner of the dresser, flies through space for another terrifying second, and finally comes to a halt against the brown shag carpet below.

  Brilliant spots of light flash across his vision. His brain senses a chance to slip into unconsciousness and perhaps repair some of the damage, but the carpet, befouled beyond imagining from years of negligent cleaning, is acting as the world’s strongest smelling salt. Tak recognizes several unpleasant elements—blood, semen, more blood, bleach, mold, taco meat, even more blood—before he finally has enough and pulls himself to a sitting position.

  The phone is still ringing. Tak runs his hands across his scrawny frame and through his spiky black hair, realizes that nothing is terribly out of order, and slowly pulls himself to his feet. After sneezing out whatever filth he inhaled from the carpet, he limps over to the ancient phone and picks up the handset.

  “Sam?” he says.

  “Mr. O’Leary?” replies the voice. It’s female, with a slight accent. British, maybe.

  Tak stares at the phone. “Is this the front desk?”

  “Is this Mr. Takahiro O’Leary?”

  “Christ on a crutch. Are you selling something?”

  “I need two minutes, Mr. O’Leary. If you are unmoved by what I have to say, you can then go back to killing yourself or whatever you like.”

  Tak pulls the phone away from his head and stares at it for a good long time. Curling his mouth into a confused grimace, he somehow tears his eyes away from the handset and spares a glance around the room. The windows are shut and covered. The door is locked. “Wait a second,” he says. “Wait, how the hell—”

  “It’s a very long story, Mr. O’Leary, and I am now down to about a minute and a half. May I continue?”

  “Uh…Yeah, sure. Okay.”

  “We have a proposition for you.”

  “Who’s we? Who are you?”

  “I speak on behalf of a small consortium of international businessmen and scientists. It’s not a group you’ve ever heard of, I assure you.”

  Tak drops the phone on the bed, wipes the sweat from his eyes, and picks it back up. “Sounds boring.”

  “Yes, much of it is,” says the voice. “For you, however, it represents an extraordinary opportunity to rediscover your greatest passion.”

  Tak starts to form an image of the woman on the other end of the line. Red hair. You’ve got long red hair that cascades down your back in curly waves. Dark librarian glasses, the kind that slip down the bridge of your nose when you’re engrossed in something. You like jazz and reading and learning about new things. And you’re really into geeky Japanese-American guys who’ve hit rock bottom.

  A tap tap tap sound begins to staccato out from the other end of the line; Tak is pretty sure the voice’s owner is clicking a ballpoint pen. He finds this incredibly sexy for reasons he can’t begin to explain.

  “Mr. O’Leary?” asks the voice.

  “I’m here,” he says, even though that’s only about half-true.

  “Mr. O’Leary, our contacts claim that by the age of fourteen you were proficient in cave exploration, deep-sea diving, and wilderness survival. You celebrated your high-school graduation by spending a month alone in the rain forests of New Guinea. You then hosted a Japanese television show where you would travel to the harshest environments on Earth with only a knife and a television camera. Is this correct?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “You are, then, in a word, unique. And our foundation needs someone with your unique skills and training. Someone who has spent their life exploring the unknown. Someone who has no fear, who can deal with the unexpected, and who can be trusted to keep all that they see in the strictest of confidence. In short, we need you.”

  Tak’s eyes begin to roll. “Okay, I see. Got it. Your rich friends want to see Everest, right? Maybe spend the night in the Amazon? Take some pictures, show ’em at the board meeting, make the other suits jealous? Listen, I don’t do guide work anymore. Go find someone else.”

  “Mr. O’Leary,” she says as the pen clicks faster, “there are no guides for where we want to go.”

  “There’s a guide for everywhere.”

  “We don’t need a guide, Mr. O’Leary. We need an explorer. Our group has discovered something amazing, an entirely new world never before seen. It is unmapped, uncharted, and very, very dangerous. We need someone to lead a team so we understand what we have on our hands. And we want you to be that man.”

  Tak laughs, sending the still-attached noose swinging back and forth. “Bullshit. There are no unexplored worlds anymore. I can go on the Internet and see pictures, satellite images, whatever I want. Hell, we mapped the fucking seafloor years ago.”

  “You haven’t seen this.”

  “I’ve seen everything. Why do you think I’m checking out? There’s nothing left.”

  “You haven’t seen this,” insists the voice. “I promise you.”

  “What are you talking? Ocean?”

  “No.”

  “Space?”

  “No.”

  “Because I’m not getting into some tin can just so you can fire me into orbit for a few days.”

  “It’s not space, Mr. O’Leary.”

  “…So what is it?”

  “Can I take it from your response that you are interested?”

  Tak shifts on his feet and look
s around his suicide studio. The sun has gone behind a cloud, leaving everything clothed in a dusty grey film. The shattered chair lies in splinters on the floor, while the dresser leans slightly more to the side than it did when he rented the room less than thirty minutes ago. At that moment, he understands how the furniture feels. Once, he too had been vibrant and new and alive, but he’d slowly spent the previous years stripping the joy from his life; now he was just rolling around like the last drops of beer in the bottle.

  “Yeah, okay,” he says at last. “I’m interested.”

  “There is a car outside that will take you to the airport. We have a first-class ticket waiting for you.”

  “Um, yeah. About that? The cops have my passport. I kinda got arrested a couple of days ago, and I didn’t bother—”

  “Your paperwork is in the car, along with fifty thousand US dollars. This money is yours to do with as you see fit. Good-bye.”

  “Wait! Wait!” Tak waves his free hand in front of his face and practically screams into the phone. “Hold on!”

  “Yes?” she responds dully.

  “What’s your name?”

  “…Judith.”

  “Are you going to be there? I mean, are you going to be wherever I’m going?”

  “I will meet you when you land, yes.”

  “You wanna have dinner?”

  “With you?”

  “Well…yeah. With me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The phone goes dead. Tak slowly places it back in the cradle, then reaches up and slips the noose over his head like a necktie at the end of a long day. Tossing the rope into the corner of the room, he pops Miles out of the player, slips him into his pocket, and walks out the door.