“A long, long time?” Drexler’s lips curved. “Quite. Opus Omega has been under way for millennia. And it’s almost completed. Only a few sites—indicated here by black dots—remain where a pillar must be buried.”
“What happens then?”
“The veil will lift and the Otherness will flood through.”
“But what if someone starts going around taking pillars out of the ground? Doesn’t that undo something and set this Opus Omega back?”
“One would think so, but once the pillar is buried, the damage is done. If you went around the globe and dug up every single one, it would not change things.”
“Damage? Damage to what?”
“Far too complicated to go into now. Suffice it to say that Opus Omega has slowed to a crawl.”
Hank remembered their earlier conversation. “You mentioned the Dormentalists were in charge. If they’re crapping out on you, and there’s only a few more spots left to bury a pillar, why don’t you let me get my Kickers behind this and—”
“I doubt your Kickers are disciplined enough, but it is not simply a matter of will or manpower.” He waved at the latticework of lights and lines. “If you could superimpose this on a globe of the Earth, you would see that many of the remaining intersections are inaccessible.”
Hank tried to imagine how this mess would look on a map but had no idea what went where.
“Inaccessible how?”
“Some of them are located on ocean bottoms, thousands of feet down. The planners, the original designers of Opus Omega, knew this. Perhaps they had the technology then to reach those depths—”
“ ‘Then’? When are we talking about?”
“It’s not important. Suffice it to say they either had the ability or assumed when the time came that the technology would be available to reach those points. Alas, it is not.”
“Of course it is. I’ve seen it on TV—”
“Yes, there are submersibles that can dive to sixty-five hundred meters—”
“What’s that in miles?”
“About four. But it’s quite another matter to transport a pillar to that depth, dig a hole in the ocean floor, and bury it—all without scrutiny. Quite impossible. Perhaps in the future, but not now.”
“So, you have to wait. You say it’s been going on for millennia.”
“The One grows impatient, and he is not . . . pleasant when he is impatient.”
I’ll bet, Hank thought.
“I assume you have a contingency plan.”
“We do. It’s called the Fhinntmanchca.”
“The Fint—?”
“The Fhinntmanchca.”
“What the hell is that?”
“You are looking at it.”
THURSDAY
1
They sat on the edge of an unused luggage carousel on the bottom floor of Newark Airport’s terminal C, away from the new arrivals awaiting their bags. Weezy was wearing brand-new jeans and a yellow, short-sleeve top. Looked like she’d done some clothes shopping since Eddie had picked her up.
Jack had trained down from Penn Station; Weezy had driven Eddie’s car and parked in the hourly lot.
“Here’s what Goren’s daughter looks like,” she said, handing Jack a photo. “Her name’s Alice—Alice Laverty—and it’s a recent shot.”
Jack saw a slim, plain-looking brunette in her thirties walking through what appeared to be a shopping mall.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Kevin took it. He loved the whole espionage thing, playing field agent, following people.”
And being followed, Jack thought.
Weezy was silent, staring at the floor.
“How are you dealing . . . ?”
“With his death? I cried last night, and I cried this morning. But I’m slowly finding space for it, a place to tuck it away. The Compendium helps.”
“You started?”
“As soon as I got to Eddie’s. Jack, it’s . . . it’s like a dream come true. No question the book’s the real thing, an artifact from a forgotten age.”
“The random, shifting page order is something else, huh?”
“When you told me about that, I couldn’t imagine how that could be true, but you weren’t kidding. Kind of confusing.”
“Kind of? They should have called it the Confusium.”
“I can’t wait to get back to it. But in the meantime . . .” She handed him another photo. “Here’s a not-so-recent shot of the man himself from the police report. It was taken about the turn of the millennium, so you can count on him looking older now.”
Jack saw a grinning man with dark hair and graying temples wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the outline of a typical gray alien and the words They’ve Always Been Here!
“Ernest Goren in happier days.”
Weezy nodded. “Before he saw whatever he saw.”
“And torched his home and killed his wife. You don’t know that he saw anything.”
“Something made him crazy.”
“Maybe it was just his time.”
“For what?”
“To break with reality. I mean, he believes in UFOs from the center of the Earth. How big a leap is it from there to Bonkersville where he believes his wife is an alien spy and he kills her?”
“Just because someone has ideas that don’t conform to the mainstream’s concept of reality doesn’t mean they’re psychotic. Look at me.” She shook her head. “No, strike that. I’m not a good example.”
“You’re okay.”
“I’m bipolar. Actually, I’m beyond bipolar. I’m tripolar.”
“But you’ve been right all along.”
“You mean my crazy ideas turned out to be not so crazy after all? How about that?”
“But you were into subtleties. You never believed in the Antichrist or space aliens manipulating events.”
“But something has been manipulating us. I’ve always believed that—I just thought it was the work of secret societies like the Septimus Order. Now, thanks to you, I know it’s so-so-so much bigger. And what about the Antichrist? Wouldn’t R fall into that role? And then there are the believers in the New World Order conspiracy—are they so wrong? Isn’t that what R and the Order are looking to create by opening the gates to the Otherness?”
She had a point. A good one. That brain of hers . . .
“Different interpretations of the same thing.”
“Right. What if the End Times crowd and the UFO folks and the NWO believers, instead of being crazy or deranged or deluded, are blessed or cursed with some sort of sixth sense, some unique form of intuition that allows them to sense the manipulations?”
He remembered a conversation with a strange guy named Canfield at the SESOUP conference.
Jack said, “I have it on good authority that they’re called ‘sensitives.’ Their nervous systems are more attuned to the Otherness than most. They sense the Otherness out there but they don’t know what to make of it. Some go schiz because of the ‘voices’ they’re hearing, and others see conspiracies everywhere or come up with elaborate theories.”
Weezy nodded. “So they’re like the blind men with the elephant. They get to touch only a small area of the beast, and each comes away with a different idea of what it is. In a way, they’re all wrong, but not completely.”
“Right. The New World Order, the gray aliens, the Bible, the Kabbalah, they’re all attempts to explain what people sense going on.”
“All different blind men reporting their interpretation of the elephant.”
Jack shook his head. “Yeah, but what about us? Look at what we believe. It’s far more out there than any of the others. What if we’re crazy?”
“Then it’s a shared delusion—and a doozy. Because it explains everything.”
“The Grand Unification Theory.”
“That’s for physics, but I guess the term fits.” She smiled. “Grand Unification . . . I like that.”
“I can’t take credit. Melanie Ehler, the
former head of SESOUP, came up with it. But she never got a chance to prove it.”
He wished he’d never heard of SESOUP. His involvement with the group led him into a situation that drew the attention of the Ally. It paid scant attention to this corner of reality—after all, Earth was already part of its collection—but it decided to begin turning him into a “spear.”
He checked his watch. “I should get going. Half an hour till boarding and I still have to get through security.”
Yeesh.
2
“Hey, that’s cold,” Dawn said.
The Asian technician, who’d introduced herself as Ayo, gave an apologetic smile as she smeared the gel across Dawn’s slightly swollen belly. “Sorry. We try to keep it warm but it’s hard with the air-conditioning set like it is.”
“At least your hands are warm.”
Someone had drawn blood and then the obstetrician, Dr. Landsman, had done the pelvic exam—the lubricant gel he’d used had been just as cold as this stuff, but it had been down there so it felt even colder. He’d said everything seemed fine, but the ultrasound would tell the real story.
Dawn lay on her back and hoped everything would be all right. She totally didn’t know what she’d been thinking before when she’d wanted an abortion. This was her baby, her flesh and blood. She could feel it moving inside her. No way she could kill it. She just hoped it was all right—no birth defects or anything like that.
Ayo pointed to a monitor on a wheeled cart.
“After I start the scan, you’ll be able to see the baby right there on the screen. You’ll see its head, and its bones, and even its heart beating. And when we switch to three-D, you’ll see its face.”
“Will you be able to tell if it’s a girl or a boy?”
Ayo shrugged. “Possibly, but no guarantee. All depends on the baby’s position.” She winked. “Some are more modest than others.”
The door opened and Dr. Landsman came in with Mr. Osala. Dawn resisted an impulse to cover her belly. What was he doing here? Not like he was the father or anything—and not like she’d let the real father anywhere near her baby anyway.
“Is she all set?” the doctor said.
“Yes. I was just about to begin.”
“I’ll take it from here.”
Ayo looked as if she’d been slapped. “But—”
“I said I’d take it, Ayo. Wait outside.”
With a totally dumbfounded look, the technician nodded and left the room. Dawn didn’t know what was going on here, but it sure seemed like someone was breaking with routine.
Dr. Landsman smiled down at her. “Now, Dawn, we’re going to take a look at your baby. It won’t hurt a bit. We use sound waves—”
“I know. Ayo explained it all. But I thought she was going to do it.”
“Normally, she would, but you’re a special patient and—”
Worry gnawed at her. “Why did you send her out of the room? Is something wrong?”
“Not at all, not at all. Just relax and this will be over in a few minutes.”
He kept his eyes on the monitor as he began rubbing this gizmo that looked like an electric shaver over her belly. She watched the monitor too but couldn’t make head or tail of the black-and-white image until Dr. Landsman pointed to a tiny black oval that seemed to be winking madly.
“See? There’s the heart, pumping away.”
Dawn stared at it, totally enthralled. Her baby’s heart. How wonderful.
“It’s okay, isn’t it—the heart, I mean?”
“It’s fine,” he said with a smile. “Everything is—oh. Oh, my.”
Dawn lifted her head. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” But he had this strange, avid light in his eyes.
He put down the gizmo and turned the monitor away from her, so that only he and Mr. Osala could see it.
The doctor said, “When Drexler told me what I’d be looking for, I couldn’t—well, I didn’t know what to believe. But he was right.”
Dawn felt a surge of panic. “Believe what? What are you talking about?”
They ignored her as Mr. Osala leaned forward.
“Where? Show me.”
Dr. Landsman pointed to the screen. “See that? That’s one. And this here is the other.”
“Other what?” Dawn cried.
Mr. Osala nodded. “I see. Very interesting.”
“ ‘Interesting’? It’s stunning! It’s—”
“It is not to leave this room. You will not speak of this and you will delete all images now.”
“But—”
“Now. I thank you for your efforts and your expertise. We will pay you periodic visits with the same protocol.”
“What do you see?” Dawn screamed.
Dr. Landsman looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was in the room.
“Oh. It’s . . . it’s a boy.”
A boy . . . her worries seemed to evaporate.
She was going to have a boy.
3
At the TSA checkpoint Jack waited in line until he reached an Arabic looking man with a bad toupee who matched the name on the boarding pass with that on the license, initialed the pass, and waved Jack through. He waited on line again and reached the scanning area where he doffed his work boots and belt, placed them in a bin, then deposited that and his carry-on bag on the conveyor belt. He breezed through the metal detector, retrieved his boots and belt, and that was it.
Simps. What had he been so worried about?
He looked back at the cadre of TSA workers, the armed guards, all the humming technology, and no one had a clue about the seven-inch composite dagger strapped to his left triceps.
He needed to get out more often.
He found Alice Laverty, looking better in person than in the photo, already seated at the gate when he arrived.
Good. She might have changed her plans, making this whole trip an exercise in futility.
Had she been involved in her mother’s death? If not, what could her father have said to keep her from hating him?
He wandered back to the bookstore and browsed the shelves. He found copies of P. Frank Winslow’s Rakshasa! and Berzerk! in all their exclamatory glory. He’d skimmed through those months ago and the way they paralleled episodes in his life still gave him the chills. He had no desire to revisit them, but he might want to revisit the author and find out what he’d been dreaming lately.
He found a Travis McGee novel he didn’t remember reading—all those colors in the titles ran together after a while—and bought that.
The boarding announcement came and, after standing on line again, he found himself sitting two rows ahead of Alice Laverty. The doors closed, the plane taxied out and took off a mere ten minutes late.
Now this was the way to tail someone—no way he could lose her between here and L.A.
The hours dragged by. After almost six of them—during which he drank three cups of coffee, ate a tiny sandwich of cold mystery meat on a cold roll, and napped during an unwatchable romantic comedy—the head attendant announced that the plane was making its final approach into LAX.
Perfect timing, he thought as he finished the last page and closed the cover on the McGee novel. Good story, but though McGee’s MO resembled Jack’s somewhat, he seemed to run into a better class of people during the course of his jobs. And all of them so well spoken, at times verging on eloquent. In fact, they all talked like McGee.
He followed Alice off the plane and stayed a ways behind her as she hurried along the concourse. He lost sight of her for a few seconds but found her again on the far side of the security area in a tearful reunion embrace with an older man.
Ernest Goren had aged considerably since his photo—completely gray now, with a heavily lined face. Jack might not have recognized him without his daughter.
They looked close. Real close. Co-conspirators or . . . what?
As he passed, Jack noticed that even in the clinch Goren was watching the passersby with a wary, d
arting gaze. Still an alert fugitive. Why? After all these years, did he think the cops would be in active pursuit?
Or maybe cops weren’t what he was afraid of.
Jack continued on to the baggage area. Alice’d been carrying only a shoulder bag, so he assumed she’d checked her luggage. He was right. She and her father showed up moments later.
Jack ignored them and joined the thickest cluster of waiting passengers, feigning avid interest as the chute began to vomit bags of all shapes and sizes onto the rattling carousel.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched Alice point to a large green bag. Goren lifted it free and wheeled it behind them as they headed for the exit.
Now the dicey part: following them home. Jack knew this was the weak link in his plan, where he’d lose them unless his timing was perfect. No problem if they took a cab. Easy to follow them then, but from what he understood about L.A., birthplace of the car culture, you needed a car to survive.
If he’d known someone out here he could trust, he might have arranged to be picked up, and he’d follow that way. But he knew no one. Abe had arranged a weapon for him, but couldn’t do more than that on such short notice.
So no big surprise when Goren led his daughter into the parking area. Jack followed until he saw them get into a rattletrap Ford of uncertain vintage and mismatched front fenders. A second man sat behind the wheel. Goren put his daughter in the rear, then got in the front passenger seat. Jack memorized the license plate out of habit—couldn’t imagine another car like that in the entire airport.
He hurried back and found a line for the taxis. Took ten teeth-grinding minutes to reach one. Too late to follow.
Damn. Tailing would have saved him a ton of legwork.
He turned away and crossed over to where the rental car vans were picking up and disgorging customers. He hopped on the first to come along.
4
“Oh, shit!”
Hank had come down to the subcellar to check on Darryl. He hadn’t turned on the lights, just followed the cold blue glow. The dots and lines he’d seen yesterday were gone. Or maybe not gone, simply invisible without the assistance of absinthe. If getting tanked on that stuff was what it took to see them, he’d skip a second look. He’d felt terrible this morning.
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