Flight

by Neil Hetzner

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Webs

  With the inexplicability of a wavering top regaining its equilibrium, Joshua Fflowers’ pancreas, which had pushed him to the verge of death, suddenly pulls him back from that last border. Where his pancreas leads, his liver and other functions soon follow. Dr. Blaine explains to Illiya and Adaman that there is no scientific reason for this propitious change. Sometimes things of the spirit, be they human or something more spectral, transcend the flesh. For now, Fflowers flesh is weak, but it is stable.

  The momentum of Fflowers approaching death, like an oil supertanker, had pulled much into its wake. Now, as it changes course, so must much else. The media experts—medical, political and business—who got it wrong are quickly replaced with new experts who explain how and why the old ones misread the algorithms and paradigms, portents and tea leaves. Those at Cygnetics, who had been told to take the elevator down, punch Pause and wait. Those who had been assured of ascent skulk into the shadows.

  Fflowers is so little out of the woods that metaphorical leaves, twigs and thorns still cling to him when, to distance himself from all that has gone wrong and to distract himself from all that still must go right, the old man smells the glove, gets the scent and begins tracking down the girl whose image and acts had floated in and out of his drugged dreams and nightmares, conscious, subconscious and conscience.

  At the first hurdle he can’t get himself over, the impatient patient calls on the friend of his youth. Surprisingly, Fflowers catches Smarkzy in Manhattan at the New York Public Datatarium. And, in an even bigger surprise, Smarkzy is going there for the exact same reason that had triggered the old man’s call. Who is Prissi Langue? And where is she? Smarkzy has received a cryptic message from an unknown source that his favorite student is in dire trouble. He has spoken to his friend Pequod Jones who has confirmed that Prissi, despite her initial enthusiasm to do research on Fflowers past, has not been to the NYPD in several days. Nor has he seen her friend. When Smarkzy questions Pequod about the friend, he soon divines from the description that it must be Nancy Sloan. A call here, a call there and Smarkzy learns what Nancy knows about the attacks, Beryl Langue’s murder, which has not been in the newz, Jack and Joshua Fflowers possible involvement, and Prissi’s visit to a ghost from the distant past, Dicky Baudgew. What Smarkzy learns he relays to Joshua Fflowers, albeit in an edited form. That old man, still master of the spinnerets despite his weaknesses, begins to spin his web.