by Jeff Long
“Yes, Lord.” The disciple trembles. His life is at constant risk here, though at some times more plainly than others. But that is always so with true knowledge. He waits.
“This is the heart of it.” The angel’s eyes close. “In the beginning there was a flash of light. It is just as the creation myths all record, just as I told your prophets and visionaries. Call that flash of light my birth. Except I was not born, for I have always been and will always be.”
“Praise be with you, Master.”
“You cannot imagine that light. Its brilliance and colors defied the mind.” The angel’s eyes open. “In that first instant, the universe penetrated me. It etched my very bones. I understood everything.”
“You became God, Lord?”
Anger flickers across the angel’s face. His fist closes. The fossil turns to powder. Then his face smooths again. He lets the powder drift away.
“Before me there was no God, for God was nothing,” the angel says. “Nothing came before me.”
“Forgive me, Teacher.”
“I understood everything,” the angel continues. “And then I forgot everything. Therefore every moment that unfolds, I recognize it clearly. Even as I take a drink of water, I remember that I was going to take that drink of water and what it would taste like and how it would slake my thirst. Likewise, in the instant you arrived, I knew you would arrive. Do you see? Time is my master. Memory is my damnation.”
11
SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER 8
Ali was in her office when someone knocked. Gregorio poked his head in. “A lady has come to see you. From Texas.” He spoke the word “Texas” as if it were a mythical place.
Ali sighed. “Can’t you take care of her?”
“This one you must meet,” Gregorio said, and closed the door.
Ali cast loose from the keyboard. She rubbed her temples. Out her window the bay was draped with rags of fog.
The door opened again and Gregorio appeared with a tall blond woman. His heels came together softly. He gave her a slight bow. His Old World chivalry struck some people as alien, but this woman accepted his courtliness naturally, with a small flourish of her own. Texas, thought Ali. A belle.
“Dr. Von Schade?” She went straight to Ali with one hand extended. “Thank you so much for seeing me. I’m Rebecca Coltrane. Just Rebecca, please.”
She verged on six feet tall—no heels, Ali looked—and was strikingly, almost unnaturally beautiful. But there was not a hint of vanity to her. She wore jeans and a white blouse that had not seen an iron in days. Her long, golden hair was yanked back into a no-nonsense ponytail. There was not so much as a swipe of lipstick to dress her face. This was a woman on a mission. She did not beat around the bush. “I need your help,” she said.
Ali tried to remember this face. Had they met? Or was she simply famous, a face half glimpsed on a tabloid cover in the grocery-store line?
“My child was one of those taken last week.” Rebecca’s lip did not quiver. There was no tremor in her voice. No drama. Just the facts. Ali’s was not the first office she had visited.
Now it came to Ali. Here was the face that had come to represent all the “lost” mothers. That Rebecca. Ali suddenly understood Gregorio’s gallantry with her.
“Have a seat,” said Ali.
Rebecca remained standing. “This won’t take long, I promise.”
“Sit,” said Ali. “You and I are going to have some tea.”
“But you’re busy. Everyone is so busy.”
This woman was walking wounded. Plainly she had been turned down—a lot—before coming here.
“Tea,” said Ali, decisively, “tea and cookies.”
“I will get these things,” Gregorio declared, and disappeared. Would wonders never cease, thought Ali. Their Basque dragon slayer had a domestic side?
Rebecca touched the back of the chair and took a breath. She sat. This was a desperate woman, thought Ali. Otherwise she would never have come here, into enemy territory. For a week now, ever since the children had been taken, the columnists and talk show hosts had been painting Ali’s institute as a den of hadal sympathizers, race traitors, and cryptoterrorists. The building’s brick walls had been hit with graffiti. Staff members had found their tires slashed. Ali was beginning to wonder if the police were on the vandals’ side, because they apparently weren’t on hers, always a few minutes too late responding to her calls, never quite able to post a car outside.
“So this is what you look like on the inside,” Rebecca said.
“This is us, in all our splendor,” said Ali. “We call it the Studio. Before us, the building was a dance studio. As you can see, we’re more of a warehouse than anything else. We just grab at whatever comes bubbling up from the deeps and stick it on a shelf. Someday there will be time and money for the proper research and archiving. And a museum. And an out-reach center. Traveling displays. Lecture series. Well, we have our dreams.”
“I expected more secrecy,” said Rebecca. “Something darker. More Goth.”
“You’re not the only one,” Ali said. “People think we’re in here worshipping the devil or something. It’s a perception we keep trying to break.” She let Rebecca’s eye roam around the office without interruption. There were hadal artifacts all over the place, some bizarre, some ingenious, and some—the ones made from bone or skin—gruesome.
What caught Rebecca’s attention was the photograph on her desk. “So that’s her,” she said. “I saw you on TV when they asked if you were a mother. What a beauty.”
“My Maggie,” said Ali. It was the last picture taken of her.
“A pretty name. And I can see you in her eyes.” She talked as if Maggie were still alive. Ali appreciated that. “But that’s definitely her father’s chin.”
Ali was startled. “Her father?” Where had this woman ever seen Ike?
“That’s him on the top shelf, isn’t it?”
Ali looked high, and there, forgotten, was a picture of Ike. Half in shadow, like the man himself, his face was all angles and deep gravity. The hadal tattoos pronounced his cheekbones. They declared their hold on him. “Talk about relics,” she said. “That’s ten years old. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I don’t know. I ask settlers and explorers who come up. There are rumors. None pans out. I’m not sure it matters anymore.”
“That’s a long time to not know,” Rebecca said.
“I survived,” said Ali. “I lost the one, but gained the other.” And then lost her, too. The doctors blamed Maggie’s death on a flu bug that hadn’t killed anyone else’s child. Something had made her weaker and more susceptible. Ali blamed the abyss. That was where Ike had unwittingly gotten her pregnant. Conceived in darkness, her poor daughter had never seemed completely healthy up here in the light.
“He left you and your daughter,” Rebecca said. “He went back down. That’s what I was told.”
“He left before she was born,” said Ali. It still stabbed her. Ten years on.
“May I ask,” said Rebecca. “Stop me, I’m just curious. He must have been a good man if you chose him. But how could anyone just walk away from a child?”
Ali sighed. “Ike stayed up here as long as he could stand it. But he had questions and needed answers. He said there was something down there.”
“The hadals?”
“No. We were sure they were all dead. Something else. Something deeper. He couldn’t put words to it, but he had some sense of it from his captive days. I thought it must be something subconscious, the captor-captive bond, something like that. Unfinished business. But he insisted it was something real. Something waiting to be found.”
“Like a place? Or a thing?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t know. But it was important, he said. It could change everything. And then he left. Off into the moonlight, down into a hole,” Ali said.
“Did you ever think about going after him?” Rebecca asked.
“I had a baby to take care of.”
“I meant with the baby,” Rebecca said.
Ali looked at her. This woman understood. Sappy as it sounded, love meant the ultimate leap. “All the time, for a while,” Ali said. “But then less and less. So long as I had my daughter…” She stopped herself. It felt pointless to continue.
“I’m the same way with Jake,” said Rebecca. “That was my husband’s name.” Was, Ali noted, not is. She had put him away. So quickly. “We had our life. It was good. Now Sam’s everything. My daughter, Sam.”
“Do you have a picture of her?” Ali asked. This was frivolous. She had things to do. But she and Rebecca were two mothers.
Rebecca offered a snapshot. “She is precious,” said Ali. Is, not was. Let this poor woman keep her hope alive. Reality would catch up soon enough. “How old is she here?”
“Eight. Yes. Her birthday…” Rebecca steadied her voice. “They tell me she was the youngest of them.”
“What else are they telling you?” Ali asked it without any false pity. There was no sense in waltzing around the widow’s losses. “How many children are missing now?”
The national hysteria was subsiding. The number of killed stood at less than one hundred now, down from the thousands initially reported. Most of the dead were parents, one or both, who had battled to the death against the intruders.
“Forty-two,” said Rebecca. “One or two might be runaways or victims of crime. But most of that number were stolen that night.”
“Any sightings? Any evidence? Any leads?”
“Nothing,” said Rebecca. “It seems impossible. How can there be nothing?”
Get some food into this woman, thought Ali. Fill at least one emptiness in her.
Right on cue, Gregorio returned with a cardboard lid for a tray. Like a Parisian waiter, he had a towel draped over one forearm. He was quite solemn in setting them up. His big hands dwarfed the teacups. On a Jurassic Park plastic plate he had stacked together a mountain of petite cookies. A cookie fell and he bent and meticulously placed it back on the summit. It tumbled off. He returned it to the top. It escaped him again. Watching his performance, Ali saw Rebecca do something she had probably not done in the week since the abduction. She smiled.
“I’ll take that cookie,” Ali finally said.
Gregorio handed it to her gratefully. He poured the tea. “Is there anything else?” he said.
“You are kind, sir,” Rebecca said. That clinched it. His chivalry had found its match. He would have jumped off the Transamerica Building for her. Maybe, thought Ali, she could do a little matchmaking in a year or so, whenever the widow was ready to move on. But Gregorio would probably never go for it, and a year was a long time. It would be a miracle if he didn’t propose to Ali inside a month.
Gregorio withdrew. The door closed. Ali braced herself. Now the chitchat would end. Rebecca would get around to her grief. Ali would sympathize. Tears, some Kleenex, a pat on the back: it was plain how this would go.
Nothing required that she babysit the scarred and sometimes mutant strangers who came up from the depths and in off the streets to her office. They were always in some kind of pain, marred by their months or years in the earth’s hollows. It wasn’t her job to comfort them. But she felt an odd kinship. They were all dancers on the edge of the same abyss.
“You’re thinking of going under,” Ali said. That was one of the popular expressions. Or going South. Or deep-stroking. Bottom-feeding. Mainlining.
Rebecca held her head up. “Not blindly. But as soon as it is reasonable. As soon as someone with the proper experience and knowledge agrees to help me.”
Someone like Ali. “Who else have you approached?” Who else had flat turned her down? Rebecca pulled out a small notebook.
“I started with my congressman, and his office referred me to a contact at the State Department. They sent me to the Department of the Interior, which suggested I wait, so I went to the Pentagon and banged on doors and had meetings and briefings and then they set me up with a grief counselor, and I left. A woman from the White House recommended patience. Both my senators sympathized and promised hearings and funneled me to their staffs. I’ve got a list of legislative aides, lobbyists, NGOs, and journalists long enough to get me elected president.”
“What did they tell you?”
“Weep, worry, and wait,” said Rebecca. “That’s what it boils down to.”
“And now you are here.”
Rebecca folded her hands. “Yes.”
“Don’t go down there,” said Ali.
Rebecca did not flinch. “Guide me,” she said.
“I read that three fathers of the missing children went down,” said Ali. “And that all three of them came back empty-handed. The place is bigger than you realize. Certainly too big for one person to tackle.”
“They didn’t know where to go.”
“And you do?”
“You do,” said Rebecca. “To their city. Your city.”
“It’s not my city.”
“But you know it.”
“I survived it. Barely.”
Rebecca paused. Ali could guess what came next. The same thing everyone wanted to know, the thing that unfortunately anchored her legend. “People say you met the devil there,” Rebecca said.
“I met a man masquerading as the devil,” Ali answered her. “His name was Thomas. He had white hair and a kind manner. He was a priest, that was his disguise. I didn’t learn until it was too late that he was also a deceiver and a murderer.”
“How do you know he wasn’t something more?”
“Because I saw him killed, and the last I checked, the devil doesn’t die.”
Rebecca lifted her chin. “He’s down there all right,” she said. “Maybe not him, but others. They have my child. Take me into the city. Please.”
“No,” said Ali.
“That’s where the children are going. Right now, as we speak, they’re heading to the city.”
“I don’t think so.”
“My sources do.”
“Let them search then. Don’t go down there. When they find your daughter, she will need you whole and healthy.” And when they didn’t find her, as was far more likely, at least Rebecca would be left.
“I know it has an effect on people,” Rebecca said. “Believe me, it’s been an education this past week. I’ve seen the physical scars, the deformities, the haunted looks, the light sickness, the cancers, the wrecked body clocks, the dreamers and addicts. It’s horrifying. But I am going to get my daughter.”
“It would be dangerous even if it were empty,” Ali said. “But it’s not empty. We know that now. They’re down there. Maybe only a few hundred, maybe a lot more. If they found you, or you found them, you’d never make it out.”
“My daughter is waiting for me,” Rebecca said.
“They aren’t in the city,” Ali said.
“Then where are they?”
“I’m not sure. But I can tell you that General Lancing’s information is flawed.”
Rebecca’s mouth flapped open. Plainly Ali had guessed her source, or one of them.
“I’ve met him, Rebecca. He has a prisoner, or did.”
“A hadal?”
“Yes. I was there to help with the interrogation. The general interpreted what the prisoner told us one way. He’s frustrated. He’s under pressure. He wants results. All I can say is, he’s wrong. The city is a false lead.”
“If they had taken your child…”
That was beside the point. Of course she would be moving heaven and earth. Of course she would fling herself into the unknown. It did not change the dangers. “Let the general do whatever he is going to do,” said Ali.
“Nothing, that’s what they’re doing. He made it clear. They’re more afraid of the Chinese than the hadals.”
“There is much to be afraid of these days. A war below risks a war above.”
“Meanwhile my daughter is down there.”
“D
id the general tell you about the special-operations teams?”
Rebecca leaned forward. This was news.
“They are hunting for the children as we speak,” Ali said.
“He didn’t tell me that.”
“And risk more bad blood with the Chinese? If they find the children, then the president will be a hero. If they don’t, no one will be the wiser. Especially the Chinese.”
“They’re searching the city?”
“They’re waiting on the routes that lead to the city, that’s my understanding.”
Rebecca looked dazed. “Is this true?”
Surrounded by deceptions and evasions and feints, she didn’t know who to trust. They won’t find the children, Ali did not say. She was certain of that. But Rebecca needed a reason to hope and not destroy herself in the abyss. “Yes.”
There was a knock at the door. Ali thought it was Gregorio coming to tidy up. “More cookies?” she called out, trying to shift the mood.
“Cookies?” said a muffled voice.
“Just come in,” said Ali.
The door opened. Rebecca turned. Ali looked up. It wasn’t Gregorio. A monster stepped inside, a horned and gaunt creature. Rebecca froze in her chair.
Glacier glasses covered his eyes. Black peach fuzz was growing between the horns and knobs and bandages on his head. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, and the skin on his bared arms was pebbly with small cysts.
Instantly Ali guessed Rebecca’s thoughts. Creatures not unlike this had carried off her child. “Rebecca,” Ali quickly said, “meet John Li. He just returned from a two-year stint on a NASA expedition. Subterranean entomology is his specialty. Bugs. He’s single-handedly identified over seven hundred new creepy crawlers, a world record, yes?”
Li reddened. He was a modest man, unused to praise or talk of world records. “Beetles,” he said.
His nostrils flared. He was smelling Ali’s guest.
“This is Rebecca Coltrane,” Ali told him. “We were having tea.”
“I intruded,” he said.
Rebecca was staring at him.
“Have a cookie,” said Ali. “Have ten. Please, look at this pile.”
“No cookies,” he said. “Work.” He vanished back into the hallway.