Signalz

by F. Paul Wilson

  They were talking about making a move against you…

  A chill rippled along Hari’s back. At least she was long past that investigation, but still…she’d had no idea…

  “Sorry you had to hear that,” he added, “but you insisted.”

  “I did, didn’t I.” She shook it off. “Whatever. Let’s get back to these emails.”

  “Right. For two months now these Septimus Foundation folks have been obsessing about ‘signals’ and ‘frequencies’ and ‘wavelengths’ and stuff like that.”

  Hari swirled her cooling coffee and watched the screen. Emails flashed by too fast to read.

  “Slow down.”

  “Most of these are complete bores but they’re available if you want to go back later. I rewound to the first of the year and started from there. Nobody mentions signals or frequencies until February—right after the Internet crash. That’s when you start seeing mentions like these.”

  The stream stopped on an email with a yellow-highlighted excerpt.

  “The signal frequencies are changing again!”

  Followed by another.

  “Synchronization is coming!”

  and

  “Soon-soon-soon!”

  “Look at all those exclamation points,” Hari said. “They sound excited. Could ‘synchronization’ and ‘frequencies’ be code words?”

  Donny shook his head. “I’m not getting that feeling. But whatever they’re talking about, it petered out a week later when the Internet started coming back to life.”

  “I thought you said they were obsessed.”

  “Stay with me here. The mentions come back in a rush at the end of March. All of a sudden that’s all they’re talking about. And they keep on talking about it. It seems they were getting some sort of report on the signal frequencies every month, but then last month it switched to weekly, and just last week it went daily, and that made them totally giddy.”

  “The high frequencies are slowing more and more!”

  “Is it wrong to say they’re slowing faster? ;-)”

  “Not too long before they synchronize with the Prime Frequency!”

  “I almost wish they’d take more time! We’re behind schedule!”

  “We’ll be ready when synchronization comes, don’t you worry!”

  “What signals?” Hari said.

  Donny shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. All I can figure is their weekly reports on some kind of mysterious signals say they’re changing their frequencies, getting closer and closer to matching their wavelengths to some ‘prime frequency.’ And when they synchronize—bam!—it happens.”

  “But we don’t know what ‘it’ is.”

  “Not yet. These emails are like listening to a sibling conversation. I used to have friends who were brothers. They’d have conversations using reference points that they knew and assumed I knew. But if I came half a minute late to the conversation, I’d have no idea they were talking about.”

  “Where are these frequency reports coming from?”

  “That’s what’s been driving me crazy. They don’t make any sense. Just locations and numbers in megahertz and the like.”

  “But the emails have to have a return address.”

  “Yeah: Burbank@theallard.com.”

  “The Allard? That big old apartment building?”

  “I’m guessing. And the numbers in those emails show all the wavelengths getting closer and closer to their so-called Prime Frequency.”

  Hari leaned back and stared at the screen. “Do you get the feeling that whatever comes with synchronization will be good for them and bad for us?”

  “I do,” he said, nodding. “Very much so.”

  She sighed. “I still don’t see how I can help. Especially if, as you say, they’re being very sloppy with their bookkeeping. I can ferret out false entries and double entries, but there’s not a lot to be gleaned from no entries.”

  Donny stepped over to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. He seemed to be checking to see if the door was closed. He returned to the bench and cleared his throat.

  “Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “There’s something else I’d like you to look into besides where the cash is going.”

  Now we’re getting to it, Hari thought. Here’s what he’s been hiding.

  She kept her expression neutral. “Shoot.”

  “The foundation was funding a hush-hush operation for months before the Net crash. And then, right before the crash, they shut it down.”

  “You’re thinking they found what they were looking for—what they needed to cause the crash?”

  “Maybe. But it’s a little more personal than that. Okay, a lot more. I think my brother was involved in their operation.”

  “He’s a hacker too?”

  “Taught me everything I know. The day after the foundation shut down their project, Russ was found floating in the Hudson. The coroner ruled it an accidental drowning. But I know he was murdered. And I know the Septimus Foundation was behind it.”

  ERNST

  “Was I exaggerating?” the agent said. “Was I?”

  “Not in the least,” Ernst Drexler said, tapping the manuscript before him on his desk.

  The agent—Ernst was having the damnedest time recalling his name—Kushner, was it? Yes, Richard Kushner, successful literary agent. He was dressed in an expensive three-piece suit and wore an even more expensive-looking toupee that almost passed for real, but you could always tell.

  “It’s as unsettling as it is mindboggling,” said Saar Slootjes, the Lodge’s loremaster for the past ten years. Red haired and red bearded, he pursued a van Gogh look. His previous assignment had been at the Amsterdam lodge. His Dutch accent remained thick.

  Ernst had summoned Kushner to his office with instructions to bring his client along. The client however was going to be delayed. Just as well. It gave them a chance to discuss the matter without him.

  As a senior actuator, one of the long arms of the Order’s Council of Seven, Ernst Drexler II had his own office here in the Septimus downtown Lodge.

  Slootjes turned to Kushner. “You did well by alerting us to your client’s books. I find them very upsetting.”

  “Well, I couldn’t miss the obvious parallels to the Order in his new novel. He’s tried to disguise it as the ‘Octogon’—I don’t know if the misspelling was intentional or not—by using an eight-pointed sigil instead of the seven points of ours. A clumsy attempt. But as soon as I saw it I knew I had to take action.”

  Although he’d been a member since his teens when his father introduced him to the Berlin Lodge as an acolyte, Ernst remained wonderstruck at how deeply the Order had penetrated the workaday world. Members everywhere, even among literary agents. When Kushner had become alarmed by his client’s latest book, he’d alerted the loremaster and emailed him a copy.

  “Yes,” Slootjes said. “That novel…it’s…well, it’s deeply disturbing.”

  The loremaster seemed genuinely upset. Ernst could see why. Kushner’s client, Winslow by name, had penned an apocalyptic novel that closed with the end of human civilization, with the survivors serving as prey for the otherworldly beings that had reshaped reality to their own liking. The whole scenario was overseen by a former human transformed into a being better suited to this horrific new world. All the other humans in the ancient brotherhood—the “Octogon,” as he called it—who had helped him realize this state of affairs, were abandoned to become prey as well.

  The novel had parallels to the Change the Septimus Order was engineering, and Winslow depicted them as dupes who engineered their own demise.

  Yes…” Slootjes said, nodding slowly. “P. Frank Winslow…who is he and how does he know what he knows—or what he thinks he knows?

  Kushner shifted in his seat. “When he arrives, we can ask him. But while we’re waiting I can tell you that he’s a hack writer who—”

  Ernst bit back a laugh. “I’m surprised to hear an agent admit his client is a hack.” />
  “Well, that’s strictly entre nous. But the truth is, I don’t consider ‘hack’ a pejorative term, and I’m not saying he’s a bad writer. He’s decent enough. What I mean is that he has no aspirations to art. He simply has this seemingly bottomless well of story ideas he draws on to keep cranking out one novel after another. He finished four in various genres last year, which I sold under his own name and two pseudonyms. He’s never had a bestseller and probably never will. He’s what we call a midlist writer. He earns enough to live in a one-bedroom walk-up in Alphabet City. His biggest success—if you can call a series of paperback originals a success—is his continuing character named Jake Fixx, which he’s milking for all it’s worth.”

  “Did you ask him where he got all his information for his book?”

  “Of course. He said from the same place he gets the ideas for all his books: from dreams.”

  Ernst tapped the manuscript again. “He dreamed this?”

  “That’s what he said.” Kushner gave an elaborate shrug. “What can I tell you beyond that?”

  “Well, if that’s true,” Slootjes said, his tone vehement, “then his dreams are being generated by the Enemy! Consider the takeaway from his story: That our Order—the ‘Octogon’ in his story—has been lied to for millennia, that they’ve been fooled into believing they will be put in charge when the Change comes. But they wind up as just another set of victims because the Changed world is viciously hostile to all human life. The Enemy’s minions have been selling that line forever. We cannot allow this book to be published!”

  “Let’s not get too worked up here,” Ernst said. “It’s not as if this was written by some bestselling author like…like…” He snapped his fingers, blanking on the name.

  “Stephen King?” Kushner offered.

  “Yes, fine, Stephen King. It sounds like this Winslow has no readership worth mentioning.”

  “But his novel,” Slootjes said, “it presents a sequence of events not unlike what we’re expecting: a radical Change in the world, but with an outcome just the opposite of what we’ve been promised.”

  Clearly Slootjes was not worried about Winslow’s readership. He was concerned about his own hide.

  The novel’s scenario had awakened one of Ernst’s unspoken and long-suppressed fears: That the One and the Otherness he served had been lying to the Order all along, using its members to further its cause here in this corner of reality with no intention of delivering on the rewards so long promised.

  A little late for second thoughts now, especially with the Change so close at hand.

  At least according to the signals.

  Their frequencies were moving toward synchronization. Not for the first time, however. They’d started progressing that way in the past only to grind to a halt.

  Just then an acolyte stuck his head into the room. “There’s a Mister Winslow here who says he has an appointment?”

  “Show him in,” Ernst said.

  Slootjes’s head bobbed as he muttered, “Now we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Ernst sensed Slootjes’s anger, but realized he was deeply afraid, and angry because of that fear.

  P. Frank Winslow entered a moment later and was hardly a prepossessing figure: a slightly built man pushing forty with unruly blond hair and hazel eyes.

  He came to a sudden stop when he saw the three of them.

  “What’s this? Feels like an ambush.”

  Kushner jumped up and led him to the third chair before Ernst’s desk.

  “No way, Frankie. Just want to hash out some potential legal problems with your novel.”

  “Legal?” he said, sitting.

  “Yes,” Slootjes said. “The ‘Octogon’ in your book bears a close resemblance to us—the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order.”

  Winslow shrugged. “Never heard of you guys.” He seemed to have a chip on his shoulder.

  “Never heard of us?” Ernst said, fighting a surge of anger. Insolent pup! The Order had been born in the First Age…

  “That’s understandable,” Slootjes said soothingly. “We do our good works in private and don’t seek the limelight. It’s just that the resemblance between our factual brotherhood and your fictional one is uncanny. Which brings us to these dreams Mister Kushner says form the basis for your writing. Did everything apocalyptic in this novel come from the same dream?”

  Winslow shook his head. “Nah. A whole series of dreams.”

  “And does this organization, the ‘Octogon,’ play a part in all your dreams?”

  “Off and on. A lot bigger part lately. That’s not its name in my dreams—names don’t stick with me after I’m awake so I have to make up my own. But, yeah, it’s the same group of suckers.”

  Slootjes blinked and stiffened. “Why do you say ‘suckers’?”

  Winslow laughed. “Well, they’ve been fed this line that they’re gonna be the head honchos after the world transformation goes down, and they’ve swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. But when the time rolls round, they’re as much cannon fodder as everyone else.”

  “And…” Slootjes swallowed and seemed to have a hard time of it. “And the one who led them to these tragic circumstances?”

  Another laugh. “That guy’s a real operator. He’s called ‘Uno’ and he gets transformed into a being who can thrive in the bad new world he’s created while all his followers are left to fend for themselves. And they don’t fend very well, let me tell you.”

  Slootjes looked sick. Ernst wasn’t feeling too good himself. Uno and the One…the names could hardly be closer.

  “What’s this all about?” Winslow said, looking at his agent.

  Kushner cleared his throat. “Well, Frankie, when I read the book, I recognized the Septimus Order as the model for the Octogon, and I sensed there might be legal trouble ahead, so I arranged this meeting to try to head it off at the pass.”

  Winslow jumped from his seat. “You’re part of this!”

  “No-no, Frankie. I’m on your side. But you’ve got to face the hard fact that no publisher’s going to touch this if they get an inkling that a suit is waiting in the wings.”

  “Fuck you!” He pointed to Ernst and Slootjes in turn. “And fuck you and fuck you! You think you’re gonna stop it from being published? Well, guess what? It’ll be on sale tomorrow.”

  And then he stormed out.

  “Well, thank you very much,” Kushner said after the door had slammed. “There goes one of my steady earners.”

  Slootjes said nothing. He looked shell-shocked.

  “What did he mean by that?” Ernst said. “On sale tomorrow? An empty threat, yes?”

  Kushner shook his head. “Afraid not. He can self-publish it online on sites like Amazon or B-and-N or Kobo. Just a few clicks of a mouse and it can be available all over the world.”

  “All over the world?” Ernst pounded his desk. “Go catch him and bring him back.”

  When Kushner was gone, Slootjes looked at Ernst with haunted eyes. “What if they’re true?”

  “What?”

  “His dreams…what if his dreams tell the future?”

  The idea landed like a blow to the center of Ernst’s chest. Winslow had nailed so many details about the Order itself. If his dreams about a coming apocalypse were on a par with that…

  Had they all been played?

  No. That sort of thinking was counterproductive. He pushed those thoughts aside.

  “If his books get out to the public…” Slootjes said.

  “What difference does it make? You and I are the only ones who know the story behind them. To everyone else they’re pure fiction.”

  “But as loremaster I’m seen as an authority on the history of the Order. If our members read this book and ask me to explain the parallels, what will I tell them?”

  “How can you have any doubt? You tell them it’s pulp fiction and that everything is fine and going just as we’ve planned.”

  “But is it?”

  This was not good. A l
oremaster with growing doubt about the Order’s lore. Instead of providing reassurance to wavering brothers, he might instead spread panic among them. A catastrophe in the making…

  The best way to avoid that was to prevent the book from being published. Which meant Winslow had to be stopped.

  And Ernst knew just the man to do it.

  HARI

  1

  …the coroner ruled it an accidental drowning…but I know he was murdered… and I know the Septimus Foundation was behind it…

  Hari ran Donny’s words around in her head a few times to make sure she had this right.

  “This charitable foundation—”

  “Supposedly charitable.”

  “Whatever. You’re saying it murdered your brother?”

  Donny’s nod carried no hint of doubt. “Right.”

  “And you’ve determined this based on…?”

  “Okay. I told you I accessed the foundation’s spreadsheets back to the first of the year. I also rescued a big-ass load of deleted emails. Putting the two together, it’s pretty clear that they were funding Russ’s project.”

  Hari held up her hands. “Stop-stop-stop. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Donny leaned back and ran his hands through his long sandy hair. “Of course you don’t. Okay. Russ started hacking as a teen, phreaking and the like.” Before Hari could ask, he said, “Breaking into a phone company’s computers just to see if he could. Innocent stuff.”

  “Why bother?”

  “Just for lolz. He’d—”

  “Just for what?”

  “Lolz.” He gave her an I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-explain-this look. “You know…for laughs.”

  Okay. A derivative of LOL.

  “Got it. Go on.”