The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell

  Xi Lo did the same to Constantin, I subremark, though he only managed to bowl her about halfway down the table.

  “D’Arnoq’s more of a lightweight,” says Ōshima. “It’s an obvious play: long, smooth, table; annoying person. Who could resist?”

  “I … guess this means he’s not one of us,” says Holly.

  “You,” Elijah D’Arnoq picks himself up and is shouting from the far end of the Chapel, “you,” he points, “will smoulder and shrivel in the heat!” Nine men and a woman melt from the air around him.

  “GUESTS, GUESTS, GUESTS!” Baptiste Pfenninger claps his hands and smiles. The First Anchorite is a tall man, utterly at ease in his well-toned, well-dressed body. He sports a fastidiously trimmed, silver-tinged beard. “How the old place loves guests, and so many!” I’d forgotten his bass, actorly voice. “One per quarter is the usual quota, so today’s a very special occasion. Our second very special occasion.” All the men are wearing dinner jackets of various cuts and fashions. Pfenninger’s looks Edwardian. “Marinus, Marinus, welcome. Our only repeat visitor in the Chapel of the Dusk’s history, though, of course, last time you’d left your body back on earth. Ōshima, you’re looking old, burned, tired, and in need of a resurrection. It won’t occur. Thank you for killing Brzycki, by the by; he was showing signs of vegetarianism. Who else? ‘Unalaq’—do I pronounce it correctly? It sounds awfully like a brand of superglue, however one says it. Arkady, Arkady, you’ve got taller since I last sawed your feet off. Remember the rats? Dictators really were dictators in the days of Salazar’s Lisbon. Seventy-two hours you took to die. I’ll see if I can’t beat it with Inez, eh?” Pfenninger clicks his tongue. “A pity L’Ohkna and Roho can’t be here, but Mr. D’Arnoq,” the First Anchorite turns to his double agent, “netted the fattest fish. Good boy. Oh! Last and least, Holly Sykes, mystic lady author turned Irish egg farmer. We’ve never met. I’m Baptiste Pfenninger, interlocutor of this miraculous”—he gestures at the walls and dome—“engine, and, oh, titles, titles, they drag behind one like Marley’s chains, Jacob’s not Bob’s. Two of our number are even more thrilled than I to see you here at last, Holly …”

  Dressed in a black velvet gown and gratuitous webs of diamonds, Immaculée Constantin steps forwards. “My singular young lady is all grown-up … menopausal, cancerous, and fallen in with quite the wrong sort. So. Do I match my voice?”

  Holly looks at this faceless girlhood figure, speechless.

  Constantin’s smile fades, though it was never sincere. “Jacko could carry a dialogue. Only he wasn’t really Jacko by then, was he? Tell me, Holly, did you believe Marinus when she claimed your brother just happened to die of natural causes while Xi Lo was hovering nearby, mmm?”

  Seconds pass. Holly’s voice is dry. “What are you saying?”

  “Oh, my.” Constantin’s smile fades into pity. “You did believe them? Forget everything I said, I beg you. Gossip is the devil’s radio, and I shan’t be a broadcaster, but … try to put two and two together before you die. I’ll take care of Aoife, too. Just so, you know, she won’t miss you. In fact, why not go the whole hog and kill Sharon and Brendan and collect the full Sykes family set? As it were.”

  Esther’s had about three minutes. The Sadaqat denouement should take five, if Pfenninger’s feeling voluble. I calculate our chances for when the psychoduel begins. The newest three Anchorites shouldn’t cause us too much trouble, but the Chapel is devoid of projectiles to kinetic and eleven against four is still eleven against four. We’ll need to buy Esther about seven minutes. Can we hold them off that long?

  “You will regret threatening my family,” Holly’s saying. “I swear. I swear to God.”

  “Oh, you swear, do you? To God, no less?” Immaculée Constantin looks concerned. “But God’s dead. Why don’t we check if I’ll regret my promises with our friends the Radio People, shall we?” She cups her diamonded ear and pretends to listen. “No, Holly, no. You’re misinformed. I’ll regret nothing; you, however, are going to writhe with remorse that you deserted your secret friend Miss Constantin when you were sweet, seven, and psychic. Think about it. Only one Sykes would have died, instead of five Sykeses plus a Brubeck. You’ll positively scream with regret! Well, Mr. Anyder? Was this brittle-boned widow a screamer in her pliable, pheromonal days?”

  Hugo Lamb steps into view. Cleft-chinned, his body preserved at twenty-five years of age, and scornful-eyed. “She was the silent type. Hello, Holly. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”

  Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. “What did they do to you?”

  Some of the Anchorites laugh. Hugo looks back at his long-ago lover. “They”—he looks about the Chapel—“cured me. They cured me of a terrible wasting disease called mortality. There’s a lot of it about. The young hold out for a time, but eventually even the hardiest patient gets reduced to a desiccated embryo, a Strudlebug … a veined, scrawny, dribbling … bone clock, whose face betrays how very, very little time they have left.”

  “ ‘Betrays’?” Pfenninger steps up. “A segue, Marinus. Did you know we have a supergrass among your Inner Circle?”

  I resist the temptation to say, “Yes, we’ve known for a year now.”

  “Not Mr. D’Arnoq,” Pfenninger continues. “He only duped you for seven days. Someone who’s been making a monstrous bloody tit of you for a whole year.”

  I’ve been dreading this scene. “Don’t, Pfenninger.”

  “Yes, it hurts, but veritas vos liberabit—and remember, amusing me is your only means of squeezing out a few extra minutes …”

  True. I think of incorporeal Esther, invoking a real psychoferno inside Ōshima’s head. Every second matters. “Amaze and dismay me.”

  Pfenninger clicks his fingers at the Umber Arch, and in strolls Sadaqat. His demeanor has changed from humble warden to captain of firing squad. “Hello again, dear friends. Here was my choice: twenty more years of housework, laundry, weeding, growing old, catheters, prostate trouble, or eternal life, free training in the Shaded Way, and the deeds to 119A. Mm. Let me think. For about twenty seconds. Well, well, well, the Way of the Butler just wasn’t for me.”

  Holly is shocked: “They trusted you! They were your friends!”

  “If you’d known Horology for longer than five days, Ms. Sykes,” Sadaqat walks up to the far end of the long table and leans on it as if he owns it, “you would eventually wake up to the fact that Horology is a club for immortals, who prevent others from attaining their own privileges. They are aristocrats. They are very like a white country—so sorry to bring race into this, but the analogy is spot on—a rich, white, imperial, exploitative bastion, which torpedoes the refugee boats coming from the Land of the Huddled Brown Masses. What I have done is to choose survival. Any living being would do the same.”

  “Congratulations on the new job, Sadaqat.” Arkady’s sincerity is flawless. “ ‘Soul-harvester.’ Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

  Sadaqat sneers: “Fancy your servile little Pakistani butler spotting your subtle Arkadian irony.”

  Ōshima asks, “What’s your hipster new name going to be, Sadaqat? Major Integrity? Mr. Snitchfink? Judas McJanus?”

  “Here’s what my name is not—Mr. Don’t-Worry-About-Sadaqat-He’s-Happy-to-Have-the-Privilege-of-Blowing-Himself-Up-on-the-Stairs-to-Save-Our-Pious-Atemporal-Asses.”

  “Sadaqat’s played his part,” I tell Pfenninger. “Let him go.”

  Pfenninger flicks his bow tie. “Don’t pretend to know my mind, Marinus. You’d not knowingly nurture a spy.”

  “Fine, I had no idea. He followed your orders. Spied on us. Threw away his ten kilos of Blu Tack. Let him go.”

  Sadaqat snarls in a way he hasn’t done since I first treated him at Dawkins Hospital in Berkshire, England: “It wasn’t Blu Tack! It was N9D. Hyperexplosives, which you as good as strapped to my chest!”

  “Actually, Marinus, he’s half right,” Arkady tells me. “The Blu Tack people make it, but te
chnically its brand-name is White Tack.”

  Sadaqat stands on the bench. “Liar! You dragged me along as your human land mine!”

  “Three times I tried to persuade you not to join the Second Mission, Sadaqat,” I remind him.

  “You could’ve suasioned me, if you cared so much. And Mr. Pfenninger isn’t going to ‘let me go’! I’m the Twelfth Anchorite.”

  “Forgive me for raising the specter of race,” Arkady says, “but look at Anchorites One through Eleven. Any ethnic commonalities jump out at you?”

  Sadaqat is immune to doubt. “I’ve been recruited to improve the—the—the balance of the Anchorites.”

  Arkady’s snorting laugh turns into a cough. “Sorry, a bit of saliva went down the wrong way. And why did the All Whites choose you?”

  “My psychovoltage is off the scale, is why!”

  “You poor sap.” Ōshima yawns. “I’ve eaten trays of dim sum with more psychosoteric potential than you.”

  “I’m curious, Marinus,” says Immaculée Constantin. “Your pet schizophrenic just sold you down the river. Will nothing make you despise a person?”

  “Homicide and animacide work just fine. But I blame you for bending Sadaqat’s fear of dying into treachery. I’m sorry, Sadaqat. It’s the War. I had to let them believe you were their ace in the hole. Thank you for the garden, at least. This won’t change that.”

  “I am the Twelfth Anchorite. Tell them, Miss Constantin, what you told me. About my potential as a follower of the Shaded Way.”

  “You have the potential to whinge people to death, Sadaqat.” When Constantin’s tone turns maternal I know time’s running out. “No. Psychosoterically speaking, you fire blanks. Worse, you’re a traitor. A talentless, chakraless, brown traitor.”

  Sadaqat looks round at the tall white Anchorites disbelievingly. I can barely look at his changed expression, but I owe him this. Then, mercifully, he turns his back to us to take a few shaky steps towards the Umber Arch. Two of the rearguard block his way. Sadaqat flees for the exit but Pfenninger psycholassos him, reeling him in with mighty pulls, then kinetics him twenty feet high. I can’t intervene. The Second Mission depends on us preserving every volt for the coming duel. Constantin hand-symbols an Act of Violence, and Sadaqat’s head is twisted through 360 degrees. “There,” purrs Constantin. “We’re not such sadists, are we? Nice and quick. Chickens suffer more when you wring their necks, don’t they, Holly?”

  Sadaqat’s broken body drops onto the ground, and a lesser Anchorite kinetics it through the east window, like a trash bag of household waste. His soul, at least, will find its way to the Last Sea, unlike those of other “guests,” who are brought here to be psychodecanted.

  They’re about to attack, Unalaq subwarns me.

  Feeling like a conductor raising his baton for the Orchestra of All Hell Breaks Loose, I say, “Now.”

  UNALAQ INVOKES A shield from wall to wall, closing off the northern quarter of the Chapel. Even at thirty paces, its force shoves Pfenninger, Constantin, Hugo Lamb, and D’Arnoq back a few feet. The shield is rooted in Unalaq’s raised palms, and shimmers, a blue lens of Deep Stream force. Pfenninger and Constantin look on from the outer edge of the shield with condescension. Why? Elijah D’Arnoq makes a megaphone of his hands and shouts at us. His words take a few seconds to penetrate Unalaq’s shield, and arrive fragmented but discernible: “It’s behind you!”

  I look behind us. Sickeningly, the charred icon of the Blind Cathar is restoring itself. The monk’s skin is emerging, and the gold halo is starting to shine. Worse, the black dot of the chakra-eye’s returning. Once it’s fully dilated, the Cathar will be able to decant us one by one.

  Pfenninger taunts us: “See who you’ve locked yourself in with!”

  “This one’s mine,” Ōshima calls out. “Marinus, Arkady, keep the shield up. Goodbye Esther.” Esther’s soul egresses from Ōshima, transversing to one side, pulsing with her evocation of the Last Act. Then the grizzled warrior turns, grips the edges of the icon, and holds his head one foot away from the Blind Cathar’s. He shuts his physical eyes and pours Deep Stream voltage from his own glowing chakra straight at the black pupil on the icon’s forehead. Ōshima cannot win against this incorporeal generator of the Shaded Way, but he might win us a precious extra minute.

  Pfenninger sees the stowaway soul, however, and barks an order. The Anchorites advance towards our shield, two rows of five on either side of the table, hands symboling furiously. Constantin’s voice reaches me: “Smash that shield and kill the stowaway first!” Arkady, Unalaq, Holly, and I are knocked back by a barrage of jagged emberfire, laser-whiplash, and sonic bullets. I feel Unalaq’s nervous system scream with every impact. Arkady and I fire back, our Deep Stream projectiles passing from our palm-chakras through Unalaq’s shield. Those that hit their targets will hiatus, sedate, or redact an Anchorite out of the battle, but Shaded Way psychoincendiaries will fry our flesh. The Anchorites have flamethrowers, while we have tranq darts and a riot shield, a riot shield beginning to crack. Through the oscillating blaze I see that Arkady and I have scored a couple of lucky strikes. Cammerer, the Eighth Anchorite, crumples and Osterby, the Sixth, is hiatused off-balance and topples over like a side of pork, but now Du Nord enacts a Shaded Way shield to prevent further losses.

  We’re still outnumbered nine to three, penned in with a malign demigod whom Ōshima surely cannot occupy for much longer. Holly crouches by the wall. I don’t have time to guess what she’s thinking. Unalaq shudders as the enemy’s red shield slams into hers with the force of a freight train and the shriek of an angle-grinder. The Deep Stream blue turns a leprous purple at the point of contact, and Unalaq is shoved back a pace, and another, another, another, reducing our little triangle of territory to a few square meters. I don’t have time to check that Holly has shuffled back with us to stay on Horology’s side of the shield, because two more Anchorites now raise their palm-chakras and, through a rattle of psychobullets, I hear Constantin’s cry: “Crush them like ants!”

  Arkady now pours his voltage into Unalaq’s shield, which bolsters it temporarily, but the Anchorites’ cascade of fire doubles, trebles, quadruples in intensity. The psychoduel becomes too magnesium-bright to look at, so it is through my chakra-eye that I see the long table rise ten feet into the air, hang there for a second like a bird of prey, then hurtle straight at Arkady and Unalaq. On reflex, I handsign the fastest countermand of my life, and stop it a fist’s width from Arkady’s clenched face, the two ends of the table on either side of the jammed-together shields. Now begins not a tug-of-war but a push-of-war, in which Pfenninger tries to bludgeon Unalaq or Arkady and so knock out the shield, while I try to stop him. We wrestle for control of the table for a long, slippery moment, but fresh Anchorites join Pfenninger, and suddenly I’m overpowered and the table smashes into the head of Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby. Luckily, the table has fallen on our side of the shield so it can no longer be used as a weapon, but my body’s skull is half staved in so I egress before my brain shuts down. Cause of death: flying table. That’s a first and, after I die-die in the Dusk, a last.

  Through an ever-redder shade of purple I see Pfenninger, Constantin, and other outlines just a few paces away directing their fire at Unalaq until a puncture rips our shield wide open. Baptiste Pfenninger smiles like a proud father, raises his palm at Unalaq, and a pinprick of brilliant light scorches a line in the air between his hand and Unalaq’s heart. The psychodumdum semi-inverts my colleague’s body, my dead colleague’s ex-body, until it deflates in a withered mess of bones and viscera. Pfenninger and Constantin’s eyes shine with delight. Arkady is trying desperately to repair our pale blue barrier and all the while Ōshima is locked into a losing one-to-one duel with the Blind Cathar’s shining icon.

  Seeing my dead body against the wall, the Anchorites reason that no psychosoteric can now attack them, and their red shield flickers out. They’ll pay for this mistake. Incorporeally, I pour psychovoltage into a neurobolas and kinetic it at our assail
ants. It smacks into Imhoff and Westhuizen, the Fifth and Seventh Anchorites, respectively, and down they go. Three against seven. I ingress into Arkady to help him repair the shield, which turns a stronger blue and pushes back the remaining Anchorites. When Arkady glances back at Ōshima, however, I see his fight is lost. His body is evaporating as we look. Go to Holly, suborders Arkady. I obey without even thinking to bid him goodbye, an omission I regret even as I transverse to Holly, ingress, evoke an Act of Total Suasion, and … Now what?

  Infuriated by the loss of Imhoff and Westhuizen, the seven remaining Anchorites cannon Arkady with everything they have, and the blue shield dies. Arkady’s spent. He straightens up and gives Baptiste Pfenninger the finger. The Blind Cathar evaporates him from behind with a short, sharp psychobolt. The battle’s over. They’ll kill Holly or try to decant her, perhaps. I can neither see nor communicate with Esther, but in seconds the Blind Cathar will psycholocate her soul, annihilate it, and Horology will have lost its hundred-year War with the Anchorites who—

  THE LIGHT FILLS the Chapel, passing through hands pressed over eyes, through the eyelids behind those eyes, through corneas and vitreous humors, through bodies, through souls … The white is so white it’s black. Esther did it. Esther won. I wait for the bonesnapping crack as the Chapel splits down the middle. I wait for the screams of the Anchorites as their immortality machine disintegrates about them.

  Seconds unspool … Many seconds.

  The black beyond white fades back to white.

  The white slips off its layers, back to milky flint-gray.

  Vision returns. I open Holly’s eyelids and look up from where her body lies, up at the Chapel roof. It hasn’t fallen in.

  I think, Esther’s Last Act wasn’t powerful enough.

  I think, The Blind Cathar took countermeasures.

  It hardly matters why Esther failed. The Second Mission was the last chance. Horology is now just L’Ohkna, a hacker, and Roho, a bodyguard. Horology lost and the Anchorites won.