The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell

The words sink in. “When?”

  “Right now,” answers D’Arnoq.

  “Where?” I ask.

  “Probably at her hotel. Hurry.”

  ŌSHIMA’S WAITING ACROSS the road as I emerge, his collar up and his rain-spotted porkpie hat angled low. He points with a jerk of his head in the Park Avenue direction, subsaying, I guess we failed the interview.

  I recognize Holly from behind by her long black coat and head-wrap. My fault. I told her that Jacko was older than Jesus. I step aside for a skateboarder. More urgently, D’Arnoq was just in touch, I subreply, to say that a cell has been sent to pick her up for scansioning. I put up my rainbow umbrella as a shield and we set off, Ōshima matching my pace and position on the south side of the street, me on the north.

  Remind me, subsays Ōshima, why we don’t just suasion her into a nice deep sleep and then go in subhollering for Esther?

  One, it’s against the Codex. Two, she is chakra-latent, so she may react badly to scansion and redact her own memories, unraveling anyone who is in residence. Three … Well, that’s enough for now. But we’ll need her goodwill, and should only suasion her as a last resort.

  The green man flashes as Holly reaches Park Avenue, so Ōshima and I rush, dodge traffic, and get honked at to avoid being stranded on the island in the middle. We lengthen our strides and get to within twenty paces of Holly. Ōshima asks, Do we have a strategy here, Marinus, or are we just following her like a pair of stalkers?

  Between here and her hotel, let’s just secure her some head space to let her consider what she’s just learned. New leaves and old trees drip, gutters slosh, drains gargle. With luck, the park will work its magic on her. If not, we may have to use ours. A doorman peers up at the rain from under an awning. We reach Madison, where Holly waits in the drizzle while I stand in the doorway of a boutique, watching that dog walker, those Hasidic Jews, the Arab-looking businessman over there. A couple of cabs slow down, hoping to lure a fare, but Holly is gazing into the small green rectangle of Central Park at the far end of the block. Her mind must be in turmoil. To write a memoir in which psychic events irrupt occasionally is one thing, but for psychic events to dreamseed you, serve you Irish tea, and spin you a whole cosmology, that’s another. Maybe Ōshima’s right; maybe I should suasion her back to 119A. A metalife of 1,400 years is no guarantee that you always know the right thing to do.

  DON’T WALK turns to WALK and I miss my chance. Crossing Madison, I taste paranoia, and glance at people in the waiting vehicles, half expecting to see Pfenninger or Constantin staring back with hunters’ eyes. The last block to the park is busier with foot traffic so I’m even jumpier. Is that iShaded jogger with the baby stroller really a jogger? Didn’t that curtain twitch as Holly passed by? Why would a young surveyor with his tripod watch a gaunt woman in her fifties so closely? He eyes me up as well, so maybe he’s just not fussy. Ōshima keeps pace on the pavement opposite, blending into the morning bustle far better than me. We pass Saint James’s Church, whose red-brick steeple once towered above this rural neighborhood of Manhattan. Yu Leon Marinus attended a wedding here in 1968. The bride and groom will be in their eighties now, if they’re still alive.

  On Fifth Avenue traffic is lumbering and foul-tempered. Holly stands behind a cluster of Chinese tourists. They’re agreeing in loud Cantonese how New York is smaller, tattier, and crappier than they’d expected. Across the road, Ōshima is leaning casually against the corner of the Frick Collection, his face hooded. A bus passes with a digital ad for the newly released movie of Crispin Hershey’s Echo Must Die, but Holly is staring blankly at the park. I calm down. My instinct says we’re safe from the enemy until we reach her hotel on Broadway. If she hasn’t turned around by then, I’ll have to ignore my scruples and perform an Act of Suasion on Holly for her own safety. The Anchorites won’t try anything rash. The fallout from public assassinations is too messy. Reality on Fifth Avenue this drizzly morning is exactly as it appears.

  A CHUNKY NYPD 4×4 pulls up onto the pavement, and a young black female officer swings out onto the sidewalk, holding her ID. “Ma’am? Are you Holly Sykes?”

  Holly is yanked back to the here and now: “Yes, I—yes, is—”

  “And you are the mother of Aoife Brubeck?”

  I look for Ōshima, who’s already crossing the street. A large male officer has joined his colleague. “Holly Sykes?”

  “Yes.” Holly’s hand goes to her mouth. “Is Aoife okay?”

  “Ms. Sykes,” says the female officer in rapid-fire speech, “our precinct had a call earlier from the British consular office asking for us to put out an all-unit alert for you—we missed you by minutes at your hotel earlier. I’m afraid your daughter was involved in an auto collision in Athens last night. She’s undergone surgery, she’s stable for now, but you’re being asked to fly home on the next plane. Ms. Sykes? You hearing me?”

  “Athens?” Holly supports herself on the hood of the patrol car. “But Aoife’s on an island … What … How badly—”

  “Ma’am, we really don’t have any details, but we’ll drive you to the Empire Hotel so you can pack. Then we’ll take you to the airport.”

  I step forward to do I don’t know what, but Ōshima pulls me back: I’m sensing intense psychovoltage in the car; if it’s a high Anchorite and we engage in full combat on Fifth Avenue, every hippocampus within a fifty-meter radius’ll get shredded, including Holly’s. Feds, Homeland Security, who knows who’ll be scouring footage of us, looking suspicious as all hell, tracking Holly from 119A?

  Ōshima’s right, but: We can’t just let them take her.

  Meanwhile Holly’s being half coaxed, half herded into the squad car. She’s trying to ask more questions, but she’s had a mind-bending morning and is scared into passivity. Perhaps she’s being suasioned, too. In an agony of indecision, I watch the door slam shut and the vehicle pull off into the traffic, surging over the intersection just before the lights turn red. The windows are blacked out so I can’t see who or what numbers we’re dealing with. The sign says WALK and the pedestrians begin to cross. Sixty seconds was all it took to drop and smash our Second Mission.

  ŌSHIMA LEADS ME over the crossing. “I’ll do the transversing.”

  “No, Ōshima, it was my error of judgment so—”

  “Strap on your horsehair shirt later. I’m the better transverser, and I’m just nastier. You know I am.” There’s no time to argue. We step over the low wall of the park by the Hunt Monument, where we sit on a damp bench. He grips one arm of the bench with one hand, and my hand with the other. Cord yourself into my stream, Ōshima subsuggests. I’ll need your advice, like as not.

  “Whatever that’s worth. But I’ll be with you.”

  He squeezes my hand, shuts his eyes, and his body slumps a little as his soul egresses through his chakra-eye. Even to psychosoterics, the soul is on the edge of what’s visible, like a clear glass marble in a jar of water, and Ōshima’s soul is lost in a second as it transverses upwards between the dripping twigs and the weather-stained old monument. I pull Ōshima’s hat down to hide his face and shield both of us under my umbrella. A vacated body looks like a medical emergency, and at various points across my metalife I’ve ingressed myself only to find smelling salts up my nose, an artery being bled, or a stranger with halitosis administering inept CPR. Moreover, as I sync up our hand-chakras, Ōshima and I resemble a pair of lovers. Even by New York’s laissez-faire standards, we would be worth a gawp.

  I connect with Ōshima’s cord …

  … and images from Ōshima’s soul stream directly into my mind. He’s gliding through a Cubist kaleidoscope of brake lights, roof racks, the tops of cars, branches, and budding leaves. Down we swoop, passing through the rear door of a van, between pig carcasses swinging on hooks, through the driver’s tarry lung, then out through the windscreen, arcing over a United Parcels van, and still higher, scaring a collared pigeon off its streetlight perch. Ōshima hangs for a moment, searching for the squad car: Are you with me, Ma
rinus?

  I’m here, I subreply.

  Can you see the squad car?

  No. A garbage truck edges forward and I see the yellow of the school bus: Try near that school bus.

  Ōshima flies down, through the back window of the bus, along the aisle, between forty children arguing, talking, clustered round a 3D slate, staring into space, and out past the driver and …

  … the klaxon and lights of the police car, shunting along slowly. Ōshima enters through the rear windscreen and hovers for a moment, circling, to stream me a view of what we’re dealing with. To Holly’s left sits the female cop—or alleged cop. The driver is the burly male who helped hustle Holly into the car. Sitting on Holly’s right is a man wearing a suit and a Samsung wraparound that half hides his face, but we know him. Drummond Brzycki, substates Ōshima.

  An odd choice. Brzycki’s the newest and weakest Anchorite.

  Maybe they’re not expecting trouble, guesses Ōshima.

  Maybe he’s a canary in a coal mine, I subreply.

  I’ll ingress the woman, subsays Ōshima, and see if I can find out her orders. He enters the female officer’s chakra-eye and I now have access to her sensory input. “All we know, honey,” she’s telling Holly, “is what I already told ya. If I knew more I’d tell ya. I’m achin’ for ya, honey, I am. I’m a mom too. Two little ones.”

  “But is Aoife’s spine okay? How—how serious is the—”

  “Don’t distress yourself, Ms. Sykes.” Drummond Brzycki flips up his wraparounds. Brzycki has Mediterranean-goalkeeper good looks, lush black hair, and a nasal voice, like a wasp trapped in a wineglass. “The consul’s out of his meeting at ten. We’ll device him direct, so whatever facts he has, you’ll get from the horse’s mouth. Okay?”

  The squad car stops at a red light, and pedestrians stream across. “Maybe I can find the hospital’s number,” Holly says, getting her device from her handbag. “Athens isn’t such a big—”

  “If you speak Greek,” says Brzycki, “go ahead, and good luck. Otherwise I’d keep your device free for incoming news. Don’t jump to the bleakest conclusions. We’ll use the emergency lane to get you on the eleven forty-five flight to Athens. You’ll be with Aoife soon.”

  Holly puts her device back into her bag. “The police at home would never go to such trouble.” A cycle courier zips by and the traffic lurches forward. “How on earth did you find me, Officer?”

  “Detective Marr,” says Brzycki. “Needles in haystacks really do get found. The precinct put out a Code Fifteen and although ‘slimbuilt female Caucasian in her fifties in a knee-length black raincoat’ hardly cuts the field down on a rainy day in Manhattan, your guardian angels were working overtime. Actually—it’s maybe not appropriate to say this at this time—but Sergeant Lewis up front there, he’s a big fan of yours. He was giving me a lift back from Ninety-eighth down to Columbus Circle, and Lewis said, ‘My God, it’s her!’ Isn’t that right, Tony?”

  “Sure is. I saw you speak at Symphony Space, Ms. Sykes, when The Radio People was out,” says the driver. “After my wife died, your book was a light in the darkness. It saved me.”

  “Oh, I’m …” Holly is in such a state that this rheumatic story passes muster, “… glad it helped.” The meat truck draws up alongside. “And I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks for saying so, Ms. Sykes. Truly.”

  After a few seconds, Holly menus her device. “I’ll device Sharon, my sister. She’s in England, but perhaps she can find out more about Aoife from there.”

  The stream flickers and dims. The cord’s thinning, I subwarn Ōshima. What have you found out about our host?

  Her name’s Nancy, hates mice, she’s killed eight times, comes the delayed answer. A child soldier in South Sudan. This is her first job for Brzycki … Marinus, what’s “curarequinoline”?

  Bad news. A toxin. One milligram can trigger a pulmonary collapse in ten seconds. Coroners never test for it. Why?

  Nancy here and Brzycki have curarequinoline in their tranq guns. We can conclude it isn’t for self-defense.

  “I’ll call my office again,” says Brzycki, helpfully. “See if they can’t get the name of your daughter’s hospital in Athens. Then at least you’ll have a direct line.”

  “I can’t thank you enough.” Holly’s pale and sick-looking.

  Brzycki flips down his wraparounds. “Anchor Two? Unit twenty-eight, you copying, Anchor Two?”

  Unexpectedly, the earpiece in Nancy’s helmet comes to life, and through it I hear Immaculée Constantin. “Clear as a bell. All things considered, let’s play safe. Eliminate your guest.”

  Shock boils up but I rally myself: Ōshima, get her out! But my only reply is a blast of blizzard down the overstretched cord. Ōshima can’t hear me, or he can’t respond, or both.

  Clarity returns. “Copy that, Anchor Two,” Brzycki is saying, “but our present location is Fifth and East Sixty-eighth, where the traffic’s still at a dead halt. Might I advise that we postpone the last order as per—”

  “Give the Sykes woman a tranq in each arm,” orders Constantin in her soft voice. “No postponement. Do it.”

  I subshout hard, Ōshima, get her out get her out!

  But no answer comes either from his soul or his inert body, propped up by mine on the bench, a block from the police car. All I can do is watch via the cord as an innocent woman, whom I lassoed into our War, is killed. I can’t transverse this distance, and even if I could I’d arrive too late.

  “Understood, Anchor Two, will proceed as advised.” Brzycki nods at Lewis in the mirror, and at Nancy.

  Holly asks, “Any luck with the hospital number, Detective Marr?”

  “Our secretary’s on it.” Brzycki unholsters his tranq gun and flicks off the safety catch, while left-handed Nancy, through whose viewpoint I must watch, does the same.

  “Why,” Holly’s voice changes, “do you need your guns?”

  On reflex, I try to suasion Nancy to stop, but one cannot suasion down a cord and I just watch in horror as Nancy fires the tranq—at Brzycki’s throat, where a tiny red dot appears, on his Adam’s apple. The Anchorite touches it, astonished, then looks at the red dab on his fingers, looks at Nancy, utters, “What the …”

  Brzycki slumps, dead. Lewis is shouting, as if under water, “Nancy, you outta your fuckin’ MIND?” or that’s what Nancy thinks she hears, as she finds herself taking Brzycki’s gun and firing it point-blank into Lewis’s cheek. Lewis huffs out a falsetto vowel of disbelief. Nancy, whom Ōshima is suasioning ruthlessly, then finds herself clambering over Holly and onto the passenger seat as Lewis gibbers his last breath. She now cuffs herself to the steering wheel and unlocks the rear doors. As a parting gift, Ōshima redacts a broad swath of Nancy’s present perfect and induces unconsciousness before egressing her and ingressing the traumatized Holly. Ōshima psychosedates his new host immediately, and I watch Holly in the first person as she puts on her sunglasses, checks her head-wrap, climbs out of the squad car, and calmly walks back up Park Avenue toward the Frick. With a rip of corded feedback Ōshima’s voice returns: Marinus, can you hear me?

  I dare feel relief. Breathtaking, Ōshima.

  War, subreplies the old warrior, and now, logistics. We have a retired author in distinctive headgear leaving a patrol car containing two dead fake cops and one living fake cop. Ideas?

  Get Holly back here and rejoin your body, I subadvise Ōshima. While you’re doing that, I’ll call L’Ohkna and ask for a catastrophic wipeout of all street cameras on the Upper East Side.

  Ōshima-in-Holly strides along. Can that dope fiend do that?

  If a way exists, he’ll find it. If no way exists, he’ll make one.

  Then what? 119A evidently isn’t the fortress it once was.

  Agreed. We’ll go to earth at Unalaq’s. I’ll ask her to come and rescue us. I’m uncording now, see you soon. I open my eyes. My umbrella is still half hiding Ōshima’s body and me, but a gray squirrel is sniffing my boot with curiosity.
I swivel my foot. The squirrel is gone.

  “HOME,” ANNOUNCES UNALAQ. She stops the car level with her front door, next to the Three Lives Bookstore on the corner of Waverly Place and West Tenth Street. Unalaq leaves the hazard lights on and helps me as I guide Holly across the pavement while Ōshima stands guard like a monk-assassin. Holly’s still doped from the psychosedation, and we’ve drawn the attention of a tall thin man with a beard and wire-framed glasses. “Hey, Unalaq, is everything okay?”

  “All good, Toby,” says Unalaq. “My friend just flew in from Dublin, but she’s terrified of flying, so she took a sleeping pill to knock her out. It worked a bit too well.”

  “Sure did. She’s still cruising at twenty thousand feet.”

  “Next time she’ll stick with the glass of white, I think.”

  “Call down to the shop later. Your books on Sanskrit are in.”

  “Will do, Toby, thanks.” Unalaq’s found her keys but Inez has already opened the door. Her face is taut with worry, as if her partner, Unalaq, is the breakable mortal and not her. Inez nods at Ōshima and me and peers at Holly’s face with concern.

  “She’ll be fine after a few hours’ sleep,” I say.

  Inez’s expression says, I hope you’re right, and she goes to park the car in a nearby underground lot. Unalaq ushers us up the steps, inside, down the hallway, and into the tiny elevator. There’s not enough space for Ōshima, who lopes up the stairs. I press up.

  A dollar for your thoughts, subsays Unalaq.

  One’s thoughts cost only a penny when I was Yu Leon.

  Inflation, shrugs Unalaq, and her hair goes boing. Could Esther really be alive somewhere inside this head?

  I look at Holly’s lined, taut, ergonomic face. She groans like a harried dreamer who can’t wake. I hope so, Unalaq. If Esther interpreted the Script correctly, then maybe. But I don’t know if I believe in the Script. Or the Counterscript. I don’t know why Constantin wants Holly dead. Or if Elijah D’Arnoq’s for real. Or if our handling of the Sadaqat issue is wrongheaded. “Truly, I don’t know anything,” I tell my five-hundred-year-old friend.