“The Shift naturally dissipates over time. This concept of containing it within the Blister, this bill of goods that she sold to the world—it’s a shell game. The Blister has nothing to do with containing it. The virus naturally disappeared everywhere else. She’s still keeping it going artificially in Necropolis, regularly re-seeding the virus. The Blister is for an entirely different reason.”
Elvis Costello came onto the juke box. “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?” I felt like crying.
“You knew Nicole was deliberately continuing the Shift and you did nothing!”
“I am only one man, Mr. Donner. And Nicole had become very powerful indeed. Plus, there was a trade-off.” He gestured to our surroundings. “How do you think this place goes undetected? How did I get the technology to create my little oasis, reverse the sterility in the ground? Nicole. I remained comfortable and alive, as long as I didn’t get involved.”
He saw the disgust on my face and chuckled, unfazed.
“And the Lifetaker?” I asked.
“I found him out there wandering, half-insane. I took him in, undid his programming.”
“And started killing the scientists to thwart her without being discovered.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t kill her.”
“That would make me a monster as well, to kill my own daughter.”
“So what’s changed? Why intercede, bring us here?”
“I now know Nicole’s plans for the city. She’s given me no choice. I have to stop her.”
The Lifetaker was back with a bandage and a tube of burn ointment. It dropped them onto the table and roiled away.
I zeroed in on Struldbrug’s buggy baby browns. “What does she have planned, Izzy?”
“It’s madness. Beyond madness.”
“Be a little more specific,” I growled.
He sighed, and then he told me.
51
DONNER
“We have to go back to Necropolis,” I said.
Maggie and Max both started yelling. It even startled the Lifetaker, who briefly lost cohesion and resembled a splattered tomato in mid-air. I gave them time to squawk, then held up my hands.
The sun was clouded behind the Blister. Standing on Bam’s parapets, the pale conjoined geodesics suddenly looked like their name: a bubbling, festering wound on the skin of the earth, swelled with disease.
I put the device on the edge of the battlement and turned it on.
TRANS00INTERCEPTGEOSAT231121754PRIORITY05-32CLASS5EYESONLY
WEBSQUIRT INTERCEPT AS FOLLOWS:
(NAMES AND OTHER IDENTIFYING INFORMATION HAVE BEEN DELETED PER NSA REG 1037459324)
1: McDermott.
2: Madame Struldbrug.
1: Are the preparations in order?
2: Two hundred thousand wasps have been loaded with aerosolized Retrozine-C. They will be released during the Joining Ceremony.
1: What about the President’s biofilter suit?
2: It will fail at precisely the right moment.
1: How long will it take?
2: Probably fifteen minutes or so for complete saturation of the atmosphere within the Blister. Then, five minutes or so for everyone to succumb.
1: The world will see the whole thing happen?
2: The human camera crews will die, but the AI drones will continue recording. The whole world will watch millions of people, norms and reborns alike, youthe into nothingness in front of their eyes.
1: What about your men?
2: They only know what I’ve told them.
1: And the Vice President in Washington? He’s still on board?
2: As soon as he’s sworn in as President, he will launch an investigation that will prove without doubt that the Cadre are responsible for the terrorism. You and I escaped because we were pursuing Cadre terrorists in the Blasted Heath at the time of the attack, so we miraculously survived. Your brother Adam will not be so lucky. The new President, as is his right, will appoint you Vice President in honor of your heroic service. The two of you will preside over the resettlement of New York, now that the Shift has been eradicated.
1: And if the President is a good boy, I may let him live forever.
(RECORDING IS INTERRUPTED AT THIS POINT.)
END END END END TRANS00INTERCEPTGEOSAT231DATE END END END END
When it was done, for a long time there was only the rasp of wind in the throats of the bagdir.
Finally, Max bellowed, “That’s fucking crazy! That’s the craziest thing I ever heard!”
Maggie looked weak. “How could she think that would work?”
“How did Hitler think he could conquer a continent and exterminate an entire race? The reason tyrants keep getting away with it is because the rest of us think it’s too crazy for anyone to actually try.”
“Surely someone will object—”
“With the wasps doing most of the work, she’ll have to tell a remarkably small group of people. And she’s got no shortage of fanatics. She’s been preparing them for years.”
“It’s beyond belief. She’s tricked the whole world into building the Blister. And they don’t know it’s not to keep the Shift out, it’s to keep the aerolized Retrozine in.”
Maggie said, “Why hasn’t Struldbrug warned his own son that he’s about to be killed?”
“Nicole has Adam bugged. Struldbrug can’t warn his son without tipping her off. The same logic goes for letting Washington know. Her spies and electronics are everywhere. If she knows she’s been compromised, Nicole will just unleash the wasps early.”
“Yeah, but—”
I cut her off. “Look, it doesn’t matter! It’s the hand we’ve been dealt! There’s no time for why-didn’t-he’s and if-only’s. This guy Struldbrug, I don’t like him and I don’t trust him, but I believe him. The rest doesn’t mean squat until Nicole is stopped.”
“Yeah, but why does it have to be you?” cried Maggie.
“Because it is what he was born to do,” said Struldbrug, cresting the steps behind us.
He wore a jewel-encrusted turban. The ceremonial madîl was wound into an ellipsoid, like a fat Indian plum. The biggest solitaire diamond I’d ever seen was centered on his forehead. Beneath his flowing robes was a short-sleeved tunic with triangular notches at the sleeve. The robes were white linen brocaded with golden thread. A girdle sash held a curved scabbard and his hand rested lightly on its pommel. His draw-string pants billowed in the breeze, framing his strong legs.
Behold Achaemenes, founder of empires.
“What the hell does that mean?” asked Max.
“It means it is his destiny. Donner is the only one who can stop her. He is the only one who ever could.”
The sapphires in his headdress caught the morning sun. They almost matched the smolder beneath his brow.
“It is the reason I brought him back from the dead in the first place.”
52
DONNER
Struldbrug and I walked alone through the Great Hall. The place was too big. I felt like a bug waiting to be stepped on. We stopped at the first of the medieval tapestries.
“Do you like them?” he asked.
“I like the detail,” I replied. “Why’d you steal them?”
He chuckled. “I merely reclaimed them. They were woven for me in Brussels, in 1495. As a wedding present.” His face darkened. “A beautiful bride. She died of plague in 1510.” He looked at my hair, my eyes. “Is it really so bad, Mr. Donner? Having a second chance at life?”
I lit one of the cigarettes he’d given me. Watched the smoke fan out in the light. “Maybe in a different place, a different time. I don’t know.” I blew twin plumes from my nose. “Did Crandall know about this final solution?”
“No. She has not trusted anyone except McDermott.”
I squeezed the cigarette ember dead. Put the butt in my pocket. “I don’t know. The way people can convince themselves that mass murder is righteous… Maybe this univers
e would be better off without us.”
Struldbrug steepled his fingers. They were wrapped in rings of precious stones. “You don’t really believe that.”
I whirled on him. “Don’t get too sure about what I believe! You wanna tell yourself you’re doing this to save those people, fine. But like everything you’ve done, it’s to protect your own ass.” I spit on his precious gold floor. His fingers curled into fists. “So you’ve made me your boy. I get to take your risks for you. Alright, I accept that, because—as my murdered partner used to say—the stakes call the play. But riddle time is over.”
“What would you like to know?” he said tightly.
“What’d you mean about bringing me back?”
“You thought Nicole was kidnapping those people to stabilize her youthing drug, but in fact she was trying to perfect the ‘unstable’ version—Retrozine-C—an accelerated youthing drug that would kill in minutes. She wasn’t trying to stop its effects. She was trying to speed them up.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Crandall perfected the original revival version of the drug—Retrozine A—many months ago. The Lifetaker stole the formula. I’m a chemist, remember? I synthesized a batch and sent the Lifetaker with it to Maple Grove Cemetery. October 31, to be exact. Halloween.”
He must have seen my eyes ignite as I understood, because he took a step back. “Oh, Mr. Donner, you’re not going to attack me again, are you?”
“It wasn’t the Shift? You used the Retrozine to bring me back the first time?”
“Revivals don’t occur outside the Blister anymore.”
My skin felt so tight I thought my face would burst open. “Why? Why me? What is it—what is it you think I am?” The pain in my own voice was shocking. “I’m not special. I’m just a— Before I died, I was flushing my life down the toilet. Since I’ve been back, I haven’t done much better.”
“Yes,” he said with bland gentleness. “My daughter had you murdered. One small wrong I could right. But the real reason is that I need you. You are particularly suited to help me.”
“Why?”
Struldbrug turned back to the tapestries. “The unicorn’s horn is a symbol of rejuvenation. In this first panel, the hunt begins. In the second, they come upon the unicorn dipping its horn into a poison stream, purifying it. In the third panel, they attack, and in the fourth, the unicorn defends itself. They fail, of course. The unicorn is elemental, untamable. He can’t be defeated through conventional means.”
I nodded, mind thundering, trying to follow him. We walked to the fifth panel. The unicorn was now sitting at the feet of a beautiful young woman.
“But he can be captured through deceit.”
There was thrumming in my temples.
“He comes eagerly to the lap of a maid and surrenders his fierceness to her.”
The maid had one arm raised. She seemed to be looking lovingly at the unicorn and yet also signaling the hunters to take him. She looked torn.
The look was familiar.
“She then gives him over to be slain. In the next panel, the unicorn’s flesh is torn by spears.”
All the warmth in my body was bleeding into the gold tiles of the floor. I started to shiver. What was happening to me?
“In the last panel, the unicorn is reborn in captivity.”
My mouth opened. Reborn in captivity—
Something burst in my mind, a flash of insight, a door opening—
—bright slivers of memory—
“The tapestry is an allusion to marriage as an entrapment for the bridegroom.”
The bodega.
—like the shards from a broken mirror—
Alvarez behind the counter, looking startled when I walk in.
“Men seek to benefit from the unicorn’s death. When it cannot be killed, they attempt to contain it. What the maiden does not understand is that, although it can be temporarily lulled, its true nature will eventually reassert itself.”
—a mirror, not shattering, but being once shattered, coming together again—
I see him recognize me—how can that be?
“For the unicorn is a warrior creature.”
—whole but not whole—
My heart was beating itself apart. The dread was shaking me to pieces.
“You are the unicorn, Mr. Donner.”
Alvarez tries to pull the piece from under the counter, but he’s too slow. I’ve seen the panic in his eyes, I know something’s wrong. My hand punches the gun away from him, and his eyes dart behind us—
—Behind us?—
—I turn, already too late, and see, a millisecond before the muzzle flash whites out my vision and the stink of cordite fills my nostrils. Thundering in my ears I hear the words from my nightmare, those acid words—
—I see—
—I see—
I sank to my knees then. I screamed at the sky, battered at the floor.
Struldbrug walked to the windows. When the worst of it had subsided, he returned. I looked at him through a haze of red.
“You remember, finally? You understand now?” he said.
I replied from the dark side of the moon, where there would never be light or warmth.
“Yes.”
53
MAGGIE
That night they rode in a helicopter. Maggie could feel Donner’s warmth through the flight suit, but his eyes were fixed on worlds beyond her scope.
After a shock, a man’s hair can go white overnight. With reborns, it was no less extreme. Donner had dropped five years since he’d gone into that room with Struldbrug. The web of worry lines around his eyes and mouth—lines that had been her hachures and waymarks in a world whose topography was inconstant—were gone. Erased as simply as a sculptor smoothing over wet clay. He didn’t look better now, just like an incomplete version of himself. Not refurbished. Unfinished.
Donner had endured what would have sent a yeoman to the loony bin or the bottom of the East River. And yet here he was, en route to Queens aboard Struldbrug’s radar-invisible helicopter.
It wasn’t fair!
There should be some elite government force flying in from Washington right now, men of Teflon and secret weapons. Not some feckless rush into the heart of darkness by an exhausted reeb and his smarty sidekick.
It defied reason, this trip. But Donner had thrown in with Struldbrug. And whatever he’d been told in that room, he’d come out of it blasted into youthfulness, baked young by horror. Just how much and in what ways, only time would tell.
If they had time.
Time, the betrayer.
Except for Struldbrug. Even smarties had lifespans. But not Struldbrug. She loathed him. He represented everything detestable in the human blueprint—vainglorious, selfish, myopically unable to take responsibility for his actions. He’d had years to stop Nicole. Yet here they were in a last-minute gambit that the retros would called “a mug’s game.”
Donner’s forehead was pressed to the glass of the window, watching the landscape evaporate past at 180 miles per hour.
Wouldn’t he ever be allowed to have a life? Wouldn’t they ever be allowed to explore the rare thing that had risen between them?
The craft bucked against a thermal, bringing Maggie out of her ruminations.
They’d unloaded weapons and surveillance equipment to make room for themselves. It was cramped. Maggie could adjusted her physical parameters to compensate, but like a schoolgirl hiding a blemish from her boyfriend, she didn’t want to remind Donner how alien she was. The Lifetaker had no such compunction. Disgusted at being this close to humans, he’d retreated to his orb. Thanks for small blessings.
Max was next to Struldbrug, in the copilot seat. He wore a matching helmet with VR display. Under different circumstances, she would have laughed. She doubted he’d ever been up in a helicopter in his life. But now he was quietly nodding as Struldbrug briefed him over their comm line, pointing out the displays, the night vision systems and infrared-jamming countermeasures
.
He was looking pretty overwhelmed, so she decided to interrupt the avionics lesson.
“Would it be too much to ask why we’re going to Queens?”
Struldbrug swiveled. The tinted glass of the VR display magnified his already-large eyes and Maggie had the sudden flash of a praying mantis. He hit a switch, globalizing his intercom.
“For her plan to work, Nicole needs to be outside the Blister, but still close by. So I monitored all Surazal’s former property holdings in the Heath.”
“Property?” said Max. “There’s still property?”
“Only the outermost western and northern parts were razed. Anyone who might escape the Blister and flee east into Queens and Long Island has nowhere to go—they’re surrounded by water. The shorelines are mined and patrolled. Even harder to cross than the western desert.”
Maggie remembered the blasting. The obliterating of cities and roads and schools and factories. Scarsdale, Mt. Vernon, Jersey City, Staten Island… Endless bombing runs, the night banished by fireballs, the new rhythm of life become the muted thump of impacts. The generals couldn’t quite mask their glee. They were allowed to use everything except nukes. It didn’t matter that it was their own country. They were kids told they could smash all of mom’s fine china and still have dessert, and that’s exactly what they did.
“There was activity in only one place,” said Struldbrug. “This mansion in Kew Gardens.”
He flashed a holo map from a pen-like emitter.
Maggie startled. “That’s right across the street from Maple Grove Cemetery.”
“So?” asked Max.
“So Donner was buried there.”
“Across the street from Nicole’s property?” said Max. “That couldn’t be a coincidence.”
Struldbrug turned back to his displays, saying nothing.
Great. More cloak-and-dagger. “What’s at this mansion?”
“Nicole has constructed a computer center there, transferred her command structure. The only possible reason is that she will conduct the attack from that location.”
“The wasps will be controlled from there?” asked Max.
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