‘Katherine gave it to you.’
‘She did what she must.’
‘Then it’s as I said. She gave you all the keys I found.’
‘They’re safe. Until they’re needed. This one, I need to keep with me.’
Robert stared at its mesmerizing light as Adam held it in his fist. Katherine. How could she betray him so thoroughly?
‘I have come to understand that there were two devices, you see. One that was already in place, hidden somewhere in Manhattan a few days before the Blackout. It was a twin. Female to the other’s male, if you will. There was an array of keys along Manhattan to link the two devices, to transmit the energy from the one I destroyed to the other. Those keys are what you and others have been hunting.’
‘This twin device, you say. It survived the Blackout and is armed? Still hidden in Manhattan? That’s the one we need to disarm now?’
Adam nodded, sweating. His hands were shaking. ‘It’ll take the keys and this core to disarm it. Of course, once it’s loaded with the keys, and the core, it can also be detonated. Add a couple of extra ingredients and it’ll be more powerful than the original.’
‘What extra ingredients?’
‘You’ll find out when you need to know.’ Adam winced with pain.
‘You can hold on, Adam. I know you can. Don’t do this.’
‘I can slow it down. But it’s all up to you now.’
‘Why just me? Horace is far stronger than I am. There must be others.’
‘Even Horace isn’t a Unicorn. Robert, there are no Unicorns left in the world. You’re the only one. Fighting the Iwnw is like producing a counter-note, a pure tone powerful enough to absorb or disrupt their harmonic. Except it’s not music, it’s prayer, it’s meditation, it’s concentration of spiritual force, of goodness, of selflessness. You’re the only one who can do it. Horace can only help you part of the way.’
Robert closed his eyes, willing the snatches and bursts of partial vision he had been experiencing, the fragmented power and understanding, to start to weave together into a harmonious whole. Otherwise, he knew with certainty, he would not be strong enough. He willed it with every fibre of his being, then abdicated his own will and placed himself entirely at the disposal of the Path. Robert tried to grab Adam by the hand and somehow transmit strength to him, saying, ‘Fight, old friend.’
Adam recoiled with a sound like a snarl, his face darkening. ‘Let me explain something. Here’s a webcam site. Take a look.’
Adam took a device like a cell phone from his jacket pocket with his free hand and hit a button, then another. Robert’s Quad received a text message containing a URL. Robert clicked on it and saw, in grainy black and white, a jerky image of a woman sitting bound in a chair, an oddly shaped box on her lap, holding herself absolutely still.
‘That is Katherine,’ Adam said. ‘She’s in a room in this approximate vicinity. In the box, which as you might expect at this stage has five sides, is a glass vial containing an odourless, tasteless, colourless substance that explodes upon contact with air. How angry are you with Kat right now?’
Robert peered at the small screen on the Quad, trying to gauge if it really was Katherine.
‘It is her, I assure you. Are you angry enoughwith her to want her to die?’
Robert flew at Adam, grabbing him around the throat with his left hand and slamming him hard against the green granite of the water tunnel entrance. He punched him on the side of the head with the Quad.
‘Let Kat go! Let her go or I’ll kill you right here!’
Adam reacted like a snake, curling out of Robert’s grip and grabbing his left hand before spinning round and twisting it up between Robert’s shoulder blades. Pain ignited in Robert’s upper arm. It felt as though it would snap at any moment. He tried to walk forward and lean over to relieve the pain, but Adam pushed him face first against the stone.
‘I found Katherine being a naughty girl earlier today,’ he hissed into Robert’s ear. ‘I came back earlier than she expected to the apartment we’re using, and I found her with two parts of the fifth key. One from Asser Levy Park, one from the garden here by the obelisk, which she’d just recovered. It looked to me like she was hiding them instead of handing them over to me. She swore she wasn’t, but I honestly wasn’t sure.’
He again slammed Robert against the stone.
‘Now, I love Katherine – you’ve always known this, I still do – but I can’t have her not trusting me. Not now. Not with all the high expectations of my Iwnw friends upon me. So I asked her for the parts of the key, and she gave me them. Then I decided to remind her of how serious a matter this all is. A little test to see how far you’ve come on the Path, and what we have to contend with in these coming final days. In the box is a ticking clock. When it reaches a certain time, it will complete an electric circuit, driving a small plunger to break the vial. As in our broader scavenger hunt, Robert, you’re running out of time.’
Adam released him with a shove and stood back. Keeping his gaze on Robert, he walked round to the west side of the obelisk. Robert followed, eyeing him, rubbing his arm, estimating when and how he might be able to attack again and overpower him.
Adam had all the keys. Robert had to get the core away from him. But that would take away Adam’s last defence against the Iwnw. It would tip him over the edge, send him all the way to hell, as it took away his ability to detonate the Ma’rifat’.
Robert had no choice but to take it from him.
As for Katherine, he cleared his mind of anger towards her. Observed it and acknowledged it was there but did not let it reachhim.
‘Robert, your attention please. Are you familiar with the device known as the mercury-tilt switch?’
‘Used in car bombs and heating systems.’
‘Right. Good. A small glass bulb, hermetically sealed no less, containing a drop of mercury and two wires that are not touching. When it’s at a certain angle, the mercury flows to one end of the bulb and there is no circuit. Change the angle, and the mercury flows to the other end of the bulb, joins the wires and completes the circuit. Then, if it’s attached to anything explosive, boom.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘There is one of those in the box too. A very delicate one. Only Katherine’s ability to keep it balanced on her knees is keeping it from going off.’
He looked again at the image on his Quad screen. Her stillness. Barely daring to breath. Her entire body was locked in mortal fear. He could see her head bowed in concentration, trying to control every tremor, block out every cramp as her muscles rebelled against the frozen posture she was holding them in.
‘You’re really going to kill her.’
‘Not if you can work out how to save her, Robert. I have every faith. I’m not allowed to know everything that’s going on in the scavenger hunt, as you know, but I thought of this one myself. I’d been saving it up for a time when it would be necessary to ask someone: how important is balance? What is its nature? What happens when we achieve it? How do we lose it?’
‘Where is she, Adam?’
‘Learn to see, my friend. I have walked the Path before you, remember. It cannot be taught. It cannot be put into words. It can only be experienced.’
Robert racked his brains.
‘Would you like a clue, old man?’
‘Yes, you sick fuck.’
‘Then there has to be a forfeit. Tell me where Terri has gone.’
‘I don’t know where she is.’
‘She appears quite taken with you. Unhappy with Katherine showing up. They really don’t like each other any more, it seems.’
‘Any more? I said I don’t know where she is.’
‘Too bad. This is all about choice, Robert. The clock has three minutes to run.’
London, September 1990
Towards the end, a member of the audience shouted out at Newton: ‘But you are a fraud, sir. You claim to seek God’s truthand yet you dabbled in the dark arts!’
Newton paused
, turned, addressed the speaker. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You dabbled in alchemy, I say. In black magic!’ Newton fixed the heckler with an icy stare. ‘The pursuit, sir, of the Philosopher’s Stone is no black magic.’ He paused, and then addressed the audience as a whole. ‘Yes, it would have ruined me, had it been known. For we all live among the ignorant. To protect my identity, when dealing with brothers in the pursuit, I used a pseudonym. It was an anagram of my name. ISAACVS NEVVTONVS became IEOVA SANCTVS VNVS. One Holy God. But understand this. They who search after the Philosopher’s Stone are by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life. Humility is required.
‘The secret of alchemy, it is said, is all contained in the one phrase vitriol, which stands for visita interiora terrae, rectificando invenies occultum lapidem: “Visit the interior of the earth; in rectifying, discover the hidden stone.” And the correct understanding of the interior of the earth is the interior of our own souls, where we must rectify our self-seeking ways. Now, I have heard it said that I might be querulous. I can also be a vain man. But in following the secret fire of the world, the single, central flame that is light and life – in alchemy, in scripture, in gravity, in calculus, in the nature of light – I was pious. I strove for that state of spiritual grace without which the alchemical processes are simply… chemistry. I would pray from my heart.
‘I pursued alchemy for most of my adult life, as part of the search for the One Truth, the Path we have all lost. It was the search for the vivifying spirit, the active principle that produces order, structure and life in creation. We called it by many names. We called it the vegetative spirit, the secret fire at the heart of the world, like the sacred fire at the heart of Solomon’s Temple. We called it the quintessence, the fermentational virtue, the body of light, Mercury’s caducean rod, magnesia. To my mind too it was Christ. The mediator. The one who adapts God’s light to our world. The unifier of heaven and earth, as I unified the heavens and the ground beneath our feet through my theory of gravity… I pursued the Philosopher’s Stone, yes.’
He paused.
‘And there is something more.’
He stepped forward, and with a flourish pulled a dark cloth from the low table next to the sapling. A small glass drum, glowing with light, turned slowly atop the table.
‘I found it.’
A gasp went through the entire audience. Katherine gripped Robert’s arm.
‘Knowledge may be used for good or ill,’ Newton said. ‘Possessing the Stone, it is possible to transform matter – make gold, cure illnesses – and transform human beings. It is also possible to unleashatomic and spiritual forces for ill. Turn man against man, brother against brother. Unleash forces that could destroy the very earth. The Stone may be used to build a device that can do these things.’
He pointed to the glowing glass drum. ‘I have made this crude rendition of what such a devil’s engine might look like. A rotating array of lenses, made of the substance of the Stone, focusing energy on the Stone at its core, internal lenses arranged in specific geometrical patterns. Three components are required to make such a device: the Stone, and knowledge of how to use it; mastery of the geometry of shifting focus and lenses; and the intensifying power of the substance known as red gold. Only the last was denied to me, for this substance is so rare; some say it can no longer be found. Eachstage and eachcomponent must be imbued from the start with the highest level of spiritual dedication and refinement on the part of the maker, or all is for naught. Permit me to tell you of how I made – and lost – this discovery.’
Robert’s heart lurched. It was true. The forbidden book.
The one that Kat said had caused the fire. Adam was going to read from the secret Newton paper.
New York, August 30, 2004
‘I need more time. Reset it.’
‘I can’t.’
‘What do you want Terri for?’
He snorted. ‘I love her. She’s remarkable.’
‘And Katherine?’
‘Robert. Dear Robert. I love her too. I’m sorry.’ Suddenly Adam broke down in tears of pain. ‘This is too much. Get away. Get away. It’s coming. Oh, God…’
A shadow crossed Adam’s face. While his eyes begged for forgiveness, his hands shot up and closed around Robert’s throat. Robert drove his arms up in a wedge to break Adam’s grip and punched him hard in the face.
‘Tell me where Katherine is.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Tell me.’
He punched Adam again, in the solar plexus. He was heavier than Adam, stronger. ‘Where is she?’
‘I can’t.’
‘I am not your enemy. Fight your enemy.’
‘You are my enemy.’
‘No, I’m not, Adam.’
‘Go to hell.’
Robert threw Adam against the railings around the obelisk and punched him again, flipping him over into the vegetation. Leaping after him, he grabbed Adam’s arm and twisted it behind his back, slowly forcing his fist open. He ripped the Malice Box from Adam’s hand.
‘No!’
Adam forced his arm free and drove his elbow back, hard, into Robert’s throat. Then he jumped to his feet, vaulted the railings and ran. By the time Robert had extracted himself, Adam had vanished.
He tried to shout Adam’s name. His throat wouldn’t work. He couldn’t talk.
He’d said three minutes.
Christ. Katherine.
Robert looked again at the Quad screen. Tried to make eye contact with Kat, even though he knew it was a one-way transmission. She was still sitting stock-still. Hadn’t moved. How long had they fought for? Not even thirty seconds. He stared at the box on Katherine’s knees. Felt out to it with his mind. Closed his eyes and focused on a single thought: Balance. What is balance? What is the meaning of balance? What do we do after we find balance? How do we lose balance?
He willed time to slow inside the box. Time and vibration to halt. In his mind’s eye he willed the mercury’s temperature to drop, its atoms to slow. He held it in his thoughts, slowly freezing it, praying the glass would not shatter before the mercury froze solid. He saw Katherine react, lifting her head slightly, disbelief and puzzlement stitched on her face.
He thought of the crowd at Union Square, wheeling about him as he stood in perfect balance at their core, acting as their pole, their centre, his feet off the ground, holding them and being held.
He thought of what happened when he tried to put his feet down, when he tried to fix a single spot for them to gyrate around. When he forced and fought the crowd, and fell. He abandoned his own will and let his intention melt into the fabric of the world itself.
Then he saw the mercury freeze. He saw the clock stop. Katherine saw it too. She looked up and gazed, wide-eyed, into the camera. His thoughts manifested in the world. His intention became reality.
He saw Katherine relax in the chair and nod. He saw her smile. She looked down, twisting her shoulders and body as she freed her hands. Then she grabbed a pen and notebook from her bag, scribbled something urgently and held it up to the camera: an address on 25th Street, perhaps a block west. Basement, she had written.
He ran to 25th, finding the building in less than two minutes. It was a ten-storey brick residential building, fronted by ornate iron railings. It had a basement apartment.
He kicked the door with all his might. The locks cracked and flew apart. The door creaked open. He saw the chair she’d been sitting on. The box. The camera. No sign of Katherine or the bomb.
He opened the box, hoping against hope to find part of a metallic-glass pentagon inside. But there was nothing in it but a scrap of paper in Katherine’s hastily scribbled handwriting. Thank you, my darling Robert. That bomb was not a toy. It was live. You saved my life. But, despite what he did, I am going after Adam. I can still help him. I love you. Go to Waypoint 067. Go now.
Robert kicked the chair, then grabbed it in anger and frustration and smashed it against the wall. If Kat went back to Adam n
ow, he was sure she would die.
London, September 1990
The glass drum changed colour as it slowly spun, shifting through deep blues and yellows and rich reds, then white again.
The audience sat spellbound.
‘I found it. And then I lost it.’
Adam discarded the cloth and stepped closer to the drum, letting it light his face from below. He looked spectral, grotesque.
‘One winter’s day in January 1678, alone in my laboratory, after muchprayer and many sleepless nights, I was blessed with success. I cracked open a mould, and in it I found the secret of secrets. The Philosopher’s Stone. I knew it immediately. It was a disc. It shone like this drum. Its innards swirled and turned.’
There were voices of protest in the audience. Hisses. Calls for silence. Applause.
‘How did I achieve it? For years I had worked with metals at my forge. For years too I had worked with glass, grinding my own lenses to the precision I required.
‘It is a stone and not a stone, the Ancient masters said. Fluid yet solid. Dark yet light. And one day I saw: glass is a liquid. You will have seen windowpanes in old houses, perhaps a hundred years old or more. The panes are thicker at the bottom than at the top. The glass has flowed slowly down.
The Malice Box Page 28