The Bone Clocks, Page 45

  “I’m our hacker-in-chief, nobody can hear us. It wasn’t just Enzo. Or Oscar Gomez, today. It’s all of them. Since the day Pfenninger told me of the Blind Cathar, and what he built, and what it does, I’ve been party to … Look, if you need me to use the word ‘evil,’ I’ll use it. I anesthetized myself against it, of course. I ate the lies. I digested the whole ‘What’s four a year out of eight billion?’ schtick … But I’m sick of it. Of the sourcing, of the grooming, of the murder, of the animacide. Sick of the evil. Horology’s right. You always were.”

  “And when your boyish good looks ebb away, D’Arnoq?”

  “Then I’d be alive again, and not … what I am now.”

  Something creaks on the decking outside.

  Am I being set up? I peer out: a raccoon.

  “Did you share your new views with Mr. Pfenninger?”

  “If you’re going to sit there and take the piss, Marinus, I’ll hang up on you. Apostasy is a capital crime in the Shaded Way Codex. A fact you ought to use, by the way—my only chance of survival is to help you annihilate your enemy before they kill me.”

  Damn Elijah D’Arnoq, but I have to ask: “How, exactly, do you suggest we annihilate our enemy?”

  “By psycho-demolishing the Chapel of the Dusk.”

  “We tried that. You’ll be aware of how it ended.” Though I’m less sure I am, after tonight’s box from Norway.

  “Defeat for Horology, but on your First Trespass, you didn’t know what you were dealing with. Did you?”

  “Will you cure us of that ignorance?”

  D’Arnoq’s pause goes on a long, long time. “Yes, I will.”

  I’d give Elijah D’Arnoq’s defection a five percent chance of being genuine, but Esther Little glimpsed it, and if I’m not mistaken, she wants me to treat D’Arnoq as an ally, or at least let him think I believe him. “I’m all ears.”

  “No. We need to meet face-to-face, Marinus.”

  Down to one percent. He’ll propose a meeting in a man-trap, and its jaws will snap shut. “Where do you suggest?”

  The raccoon turns its Zorro-masked face my way.

  “Don’t go all Deep Streamy on me, but I’m speaking from your car, on the drive. My balls are freezing. Get a fire going, will you?”

  April 3

  THE AIR IS SHARPER at the Poughkeepsie station than it was at Grand Central Station, but the sun is out and melting the last of the winter-long snow on the platform. With a cohort of students discussing skiing trips to Europe, internships at the Guggenheim, and viral zoonoses, I walk over the footbridge and through the turnstiles, the churchlike 1920s waiting room, and out to the curbside, where a woman a few years older than I is waiting in a black bodywarmer by a hybrid Chevrolet and holding a board for DR I. FENBY. Her foamy hair is dyed auburn but the gray is showing through, and her turquoise-framed glasses only heighten her sickly pallor. An unkind describer might refer to her face as like a party nobody’s turned up to. “Good morning,” I tell her. “I’m Dr. Fenby.”

  The driver tenses: “You’re Dr. Fenby? You?”

  Why the surprise? Because I’m black? In a campus town in the 2020s? “Ye-es … There’s no problem, I trust?”

  “No. No. No. Climb in. That’s all the luggage you got?”

  “I’m only a day-tripper.” Still puzzled, I get into the Chevrolet. She climbs in behind the wheel and puts on her seatbelt. “So it’s up to Blithewood campus today, Dr. Fenby?” Her voice is stippled with bronchial issues.

  “That’s right.” Did I misgrade her reaction just now? “Drop me off by the president’s house, if you know it.”

  “Not a problem. I must’ve driven Mr. Stein up and down a hundred times. Is it the president you’re visiting today?”

  “No. I’m meeting … someone else.”

  “Right.” Her driver ID tag reads WENDY HANGER. “Off we go, then. Chevrolet: ignition.” The car turns itself on, the indicator blinks, and we pull away. Wendy Hanger looks jumpy on her ID photo, too. Maybe life’s never allowed her to lower her guard. Maybe she’s just clocked up a fourteen-hour shift. Maybe she just drank too much coffee.

  We pass parking lots, a tire-and-exhaust fitters, a Walmart, a school, and a plastic moldings unit. My driver is the silent type, which suits me fine. My thoughts go back to last night’s meeting held in the gallery at 119A. Unalaq, the local, arrived before me; Ōshima flew up from Argentina; Arkady, able to travel more freely now that he is eighteen, came over from Berlin, Roho from Athens, and L’Ohkna from Bermuda. It’s been years since we were all gathered in the same place. Sadaqat submitted to an Act of Hiatus and we began. My five colleagues listened as I set out the facts of Elijah D’Arnoq’s visit two nights ago to my Kleinburg house, his wish to defect, and the proposed Second Mission. Naturally, they were all skeptical.

  “So soon?” asked Roho, peering over a canopy of interlaced fingers as slim, dark, and bony as the rest of him. Smooth-shaven, Egyptian-bodied Roho looks designed to slip through narrow spaces nobody else would even think of. He’s young for an Horologist, on only his fifth resurrection, but under Ōshima’s tutelage is becoming a formidable duelist. “The First Mission was five years in the planning, and it ended in disaster. To plan a Second Mission in a matter of days would be …” Roho wrinkles his nose and shakes his head.

  “D’Arnoq makes it sound all too easy,” remarked Unalaq. Her first life as an Inuit in northern Alaska dyed her soul indelibly with the far north, but her current midthirties body is pure Boston Irish redhead, though with skin swarming with so many freckles that her ethnicity is far from obvious. “Far too easy.”

  “We appear to agree,” said Ōshima. Ōshima is one of the oldest Horologists in both his soul, dating back to thirteenth-century Japan, and body, dating back to 1940s Kenya. He dresses to accentuate what Roho calls his “unemployed jazz drummer” look, in an old trenchcoat and shabby beret. In a pyschoduel, however, Ōshima is more dangerous than any of us. “D’Arnoq’s proposal has the word ‘trap’ written all over it. In flashing neon.”

  “But D’Arnoq did let Marinus scansion him,” remarked Arkady. In stark contrast to his last, East Asian self, Arkady’s soul now occupies a big-boned, gangly, blond, acne-prone, Hungarian male body whose teenage voice is not quite settled. “And the self-disgust, the grief about the Brazilian kid,” Arkady double-checks with me, “you did locate them, in his present-perfect memory? And you’re sure they were genuine?”

  “Yes,” I conceded, “although they could be implanted memories. The Anchorites would know that we wouldn’t take a defector at face value without a frame-by-frame scansion. It’s perfectly possible that D’Arnoq volunteered to be turned against the Shaded Way by Pfenninger himself, so that D’Arnoq is a true believer in his own false defection …”

  “All the way to another firing squad in the Chapel,” agreed Ōshima, “where Pfenninger would redact D’Arnoq’s artificial remorse and psychoslay the Horologists it lured there. I have to admit, it’s clever. It sounds like a Constantin ploy.”

  “My vote would be no.” L’Ohkna is residing in a pale, balding, and puffy Ulsterman’s body in its midthirties. L’Ohkna is the youngest Horologist, having been found by Xi Lo in a New Mexico commune in the 1960s during his first resurrection. While L’Ohkna’s psychovoltage is still limited, he has become the principal architect of the Deep Internet, or “Nethernet,” and his dozens of aliases are being fruitlessly hunted by every major security agency on earth. “One misstep and Horology dies. Simple as.”

  “But isn’t the enemy taking a big risk, too?” asked Unalaq. “Turning one of their own strongest psychosoterics against the Anchorites and the Blind Cathar?”

  “Yes,” agreed Ōshima, “but they know what they’re doing. They need to offer us a shiny prize and a juicy bait. But tell us, Marinus: What are your thoughts about this unexpected overture?”

  “I think it’s an ambush, but we should accept it anyway, then, between now and the Second Mission, engineer a means of ambusing the
ambush. We’ll never win the War by force. Every year, we save a few, but look at Oscar Gomez, snatched from a secure unit headed by one of my own students. Social media flag up active chakras before we can inoculate them. Horology’s drifting towards irrelevance. There aren’t enough of us. Our networks are fraying.”

  Arkady broke the gloomy silence: “If you think this, so must the enemy. Why would Pfenninger risk giving us access to the Blind Cathar when he can stalemate us to death?”

  “Because of his cardinal vice: vanity. Pfenninger wants to annihilate Horology in one glorious act of slaughter, so he’s offering us, his desperate enemy, this trap. But it’ll also give us a narrow window of time inside the Chapel. It won’t come again.”

  “And what do we do with that narrow window of time,” countered L’Ohkna, “apart from being butchered, body and soul?”

  “That,” I confessed, “I cannot answer. But I heard from someone who may be able to. I didn’t dare refer to this outside 119A, but now we’re all here, lend an old friend your ears …” I produced an ancient Walkman and inserted a BASF cassette.

  WENDY HANGER’S FINGERS drum on the wheel while four lanes of traffic cross the intersection. She has no ring on her finger. The light turns green, but she doesn’t notice until the truck behind us blasts its horn. She pulls off, stalls, mutters, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Chevrolet, ignition!” We drive off, past a big Home Depot, and soon we’ve left Poughkeepsie behind. I ask, “How long to Blithewood?”

  “Thirty, forty minutes.” Wendy Hanger puts a nicotine gum stick into her mouth and her sternocleidomastoideus ripples with every chew. The road winds between and under trees. Their buds are on the cusp of opening. A sign says RED HOOK 7 MILES. We overtake a pair of cyclists, and Wendy Hanger musters the courage: “Dr. Fenby, could I … uh, ask you a question?”

  “Ask away.”

  “This might sound like I’m outta my freaking tree.”

  “You’re in luck, Ms. Hanger. I’m a psychiatrist.”

  “Does the name ‘Marinus’ ring any bells?”

  I hadn’t seen that coming. We don’t hide our true names, but neither do we advertise them. “Why do you ask?”

  Wendy Hanger’s breathing is ragged. “Dunno how I knew it, but I knew it. Look, I—I—I’m sorry, I gotta pull over.” Around the next bend there’s a timely rest area with a bench and a view of woodland sloping down to the Hudson River. Wendy Hanger turns around. She’s sweating and wide-eyed. Her dolphin air freshener swings in diminishing arcs. “Do you know a Marinus—or are you Marinus?”

  The cyclists we passed not long ago speed by.

  “I go by that name in certain circles,” I say.

  Her face trembles. It’s scarred with childhood acne. “Ho-ly crap.” She shakes her head. “You could hardly’ve been born yet. Jeez, I really need a smoke.”

  “Don’t take your stress out on your bronchial tubes, Ms. Hanger. Stick to the gum. Now. I’m overdue an explanation.”

  “This isn’t”—she frowns—“this isn’t some kinda setup?”

  “I wish it was, because then I’d know what was happening.”

  Suspicion, angst, and disbelief slug it out in Wendy Hanger’s face, but no clear winner emerges. “Okay, Doctor. Here’s the story. When I was younger, in Milwaukee, I went off the rails. Family issues, a divorce … substance abuse. My stepsister booted me out, and by the end, moms were, like, steering their kids across the road to avoid me. I was …” She flinches. Old memories still keep their sting.

  “An addict,” I state calmly, “which means you’re now a survivor.”

  Wendy Hanger chews her gum a few times. “I guess I am. New Year’s Eve 1983, though, the holiday lights all pretty—Jeez, I was no survivor then. I hit rock bottom, broke into my stepsister’s house, found her sleeping pills, swallowed the entire freakin’ bottle with a pint of Jim Beam. That movie The Towering Inferno was on, as I … sank away. You ever see it?” Before I can answer, a sports car storms by and Wendy Hanger shudders. “I woke up in the hospital with tubes in my stomach and throat. My stepsister’s neighbor had seen the TV on, come over, and found me. Called an ambulance in the nick of time. People think sleeping pills are painless, but that’s not true. I’d no idea a stomach could hurt that much. I slept, woke, slept some more. Then I woke in the geriatric ward, which totally freaked me out ’cause I thought I’d aged,” Wendy Hanger does a bitter laugh, “and been in a coma for forty years, and was now, like, ancient. But there was this woman there, sitting by my bed. I didn’t know if she was staff or a patient or a volunteer, but she held my hand and asked, ‘Why are you here, Miss Hanger?’ I hear her now. ‘Why are you here, Wendy?’ She spoke kinda funny, like with an accent, but … I don’t know where from. She wasn’t black, but wasn’t quite white. She was … kind, like a … a gruff angel, who wouldn’t blame you or judge you for what you’d done or for what life’d done to you. And I—I heard myself telling her things I …” Wendy Hanger gazes at the backs of her hands, “… I never told anyone. Suddenly it was midnight. This woman smiled at me and said, ‘You’re over the worst. Happy New Year.’ And … I just freakin’ burst into tears. I don’t know why.”

  “Did she tell you her name?”

  Wendy’s eyes are a challenge.

  “Was her name Esther Little, Wendy?”

  Wendy Hanger breathes in deep: “She said you’d know that. She said you’d know. But you can’t have been more than a girl in 1984. What’s going on? How … Jeez.”

  “Did Esther Little give you a message to give to me?”

  “Yes. Yes, Doctor. She asked me, a homeless, suicidal addict whom she’d known for all of, like, two or three hours, to pass on a message to a colleague named Marinus. I—I—I—I asked, ‘Is “Marinus” like a Christian name, a surname, an alias?’ But Esther Little said, ‘Marinus is Marinus,’ and told me to tell you … to tell you …”

  “I’m listening, Wendy. Go on.”

  “ ‘Three on the Day of the Star of Riga.’ ”

  The world’s hushed. “Three on the Day of the Star of Riga?”

  “Not a word more, not a word less.” She studies me.

  The Star of Riga. I know I’ve known that phrase, and I reach for the memory, but my fingers pass through it. No. I’ll have to be patient.

  “ ‘Riga’ meant nothing,” Wendy Hanger chews what must now be a flavorless lump of gum, “back in my hospital bed in Milwaukee, so I asked her the spelling: R-I-G-A. Then I asked where I’d find this Marinus, so I could deliver the message. Esther said no, the time wasn’t right yet. So I asked when the time would be right. And she said,” Wendy Hanger swallows, her carotid artery pulsing fast, “ ‘The day you become a grandmother.’ ”

  Pure Esther Little. “Many congratulations,” I tell Wendy Hanger. “Granddaughter or grandson?”

  She looks more perturbed by this, not less. “A girl. My daughter-in-law gave birth in Santa Fe, early this morning. She wasn’t due for another two weeks, but just after midnight, Rainbow Hanger was born. Her people are hippies. But, look, you gotta … I mean, I thought Esther maybe had on-and-off dementia, or … Jeez. What sane person’d beg such a wacko favor off of anyone, least of all an addict who’d just swallowed a hundred sleeping pills? I asked her. Esther said the addict in me had died, but that the real me, she’d survived. I’d be fine from now on, she said. She said the ‘Riga’ message and its due date were written in permanent marker, and on the right day, years from now, Marinus’d find me, but your name’d be different and—” Wendy Hanger’s sniffling and her eyes are streaming. “Why’m I crying?”

  I hand her a packet of tissues.

  “Is she still alive? She’d be, like … ancient.”

  “The woman you met has passed on.”

  The newborn grandmother nods, unsurprised. “Pity. I’d’ve liked to thank her. I owe her so much.”

  “How so?”

  Wendy Hanger looks surprised, but decides to tell me. “By and by, I fell asleep, and didn’t wake until
morning. Esther had gone. A nurse brought me breakfast, and said they’d be moving me to a private room later. I said there must a mistake, I didn’t have insurance, but the nurse said, ‘Your grandmother’s settling your account, honey,’ and I said, ‘What grandmother?’ The nurse smiled like I was concussed and said, ‘Mrs. Little, isn’t it?’ Then, later, in my private room, a nurse brought a … like a black zip-up folder. In it was a Bank of America card with my name on it, a door key, and some documents. These,” Wendy Hanger heaves an emotional sigh, “turned out to be the deeds to a house in Poughkeepsie. In my name. Two weeks later I was discharged from the hospital in Milwaukee. I went to my stepsister’s, apologized for trying to kill myself on her sofa, and said I was heading east, to try to, y’know, make a fresh start, where no one knew me. I think my stepsister was relieved. Two Greyhound bus rides later, I walked into my house in Poughkeepsie … A house that a real live fairy godmother had apparently given me. Next thing I knew, forty years or more flew by. I still live there, and to this day my husband believes it was a gift from an eccentric aunt. I never told no one the truth. But every single time I turned my key in the lock, I thought of her, I thought, ‘Three on the Day of the Star of Riga,’ and pretty much every hour since I learned my daughter-in-law was pregnant, I’d wonder if I’d run into a Marinus … This morning, holy crap, was I a mess! The day I become a grandmother. My husband told me to stay at home, so I did. But Carlotta, who runs the cab company for us these days, deviced to say that Jodie’d twisted her ankle and Zeinab’s baby was running a fever, so please, please, please, would I go to the station and pick up Dr. I. Fenby? And, y’know, there’s no reason why you’d be Marinus, but when I saw you I …” she shakes her head, “… knew. That’s why I was kinda spooked. Sorry.”

  Dappled sunshine shivers. “Forget it. Thank you.”

  “The Riga message. Does it make sense?”

  I should be careful. “Partially. Potentially.”