by Mark Anthony
When she reached the Blackfriars tube station, she didn’t descend the steps. It was a good three miles back to her flat on the south side of Hyde Park, but what reason did she have to hurry? She kept walking, her boots scuffing out a steady rhythm on the sidewalk. Near Charing Cross, a cozy-looking coffee shop caught her eye, and she stopped in for some late breakfast. To her chagrin, the shop turned out to be a chain restaurant. It only annoyed her further that the coffee was rich and perfectly bitter, and the pancakes set before her were flavored with just a touch of real vanilla and melted in her mouth.
That was the danger of big corporate chains. Not that they were often so horrible—but rather that sometimes they were disturbingly good.
That’s how Duratek will win in the end. Even those of us who know better will be seduced. We’ll drink their perfect coffee, drive their luxurious cars, and wear their fashionable clothes, and in our satisfaction we’ll forget to think about the people—the whole worlds—that were exploited to bring those things to us.
She cleaned her plate, emptied her cup, and left a large tip for the khaki-clad waiter. On her way out she passed a newspaper box, and the headline caught her eye. The U.S. stock market was continuing to crash, dragging the world economy with it. However, a subheading noted, one stock was defying the trend and continuing to surge upward: Duratek. Deirdre turned and walked on.
Something more than an hour later, she stepped through the door of her flat and saw the light blinking on the answering machine. Even as she punched the PLAY button, she knew it would be Hadrian Farr’s accentless voice that would emanate from the machine.
“I’m sorry I missed you, Deirdre. I suppose you’re at the Charterhouse, being a good little Seeker just as they want. Do me a favor, however, and don’t be too good. Somebody has to keep giving the Philosophers conniptions, and I think you’re up to the job. You have to be your own Philosopher, Deirdre. You’re the only one you can trust now.”
Deirdre pressed her hand to her heart and leaned her head against the wall. She tried to imagine where he was. New York? Madrid? Istanbul?
“I’m not anywhere you might think I’d be,” Farr’s voice continued as if to answer her question. “So don’t try to find me. My journey has begun more quickly than I could ever have guessed. I’m not sure when I might be able to contact you again, or if I’ll have time, but I’ll do my best. I owe you that much and—”
A click sounded in the background.
“Well, I believe that’s my signal to go. Even if I could tell you more, I’m afraid there isn’t time. According to my watch, in seven more seconds the Seekers will know exactly where I am. Good-bye, Deirdre.”
The synthesized voice of the answering machine spoke, informing her there were no more messages. Deirdre hesitated, then picked up the phone, listening to the steady sound of the dial tone. Then she caught it: a clicking noise, just like the one she had heard while Farr was talking.
“Who’s there?” she said.
Another click. She slammed down the phone and moved away. So her line was tapped. Nakamura had lied—they were still watching her.
No, Deirdre. It’s not you they’re watching. It’s Hadrian. They knew he was likely to call here. You can’t blame them, can you? You would have done the same.
Her outrage cooled. Wherever he was, Farr had his quest, and so did she. Deirdre sat at the table and turned on the computer. She pulled her ID card from her pocket, wiped it off, and inserted it. The screen flickered, then glowing green words appeared.
Welcome to Echelon 7.
What do you want to do?
>
Deirdre’s fingers hovered above the keyboard. What did she want to do? Search for something—but what? There was no point in doing another search on the words Child Samanda had spoken. The only file that query returned had been deleted the moment she found it.
She still wondered what that file had contained. It had to be important—so important the watcher would do anything, even risk drawing notice, to keep the file’s contents from being discovered. However, right now there was something else that weighed on her mind.
She gazed at the ring on her right hand—the ring Glinda had given her at Surrender Dorothy, just before the fire. Deirdre had never been able to decipher the writing engraved inside the band. She thought for a moment, then began to type.
Identify all cases that include samples of nonhuman DNA. Cross-reference with cases that contain instances of written inscriptions of unknown language affinity. Display linked files.
[Enter]
The computer emitted a chime as a dozen session windows sprang into being. Deirdre leaned closer as a single word pulsed at the top of the screen. Seeking . . .
It was only when she realized the glow of the computer was the brightest thing in the room that the passage of time finally impinged upon her. She leaned back from the table and stretched, causing her spine to emit a distinct crunch. Outside the flat’s windows, dusk had fallen. Dead leaves swirled by the glass, causing the lights of the city to flicker like stars. Her stomach growled; the pancakes had been a long time ago.
She stood and switched on the lamp by the sofa, bathing the room in amber light, then glanced again at the computer screen. She still wasn’t certain exactly what it was she had found, only that all of her instincts as an investigator told her it was important.
In one of the open session windows, a chromosome map scrolled by. The map was from a mitochondrial DNA sequence, its banded series of genes delineated in blues, oranges, and purples. In another window was the scanned photo of a marble keystone, removed from an arched doorway. An inscription was engraved on the keystone; however, the stone was chipped and battered, its surface stained with soot and some other dark substance, so that the inscription was almost completely illegible.
Almost. The writing on the stone was too incomplete to have been transcribed into the Seekers’ language files. That was why no match had come up months ago, when Deirdre first performed a search on the writing on Glinda’s ring. However, once she magnified and enhanced the image, the similarities were apparent to her eye despite the fragmentary nature of the inscription. The writing on Glinda’s ring and the keystone were exactly the same—the same symbols written in the same order.
That wasn’t the only similarity. Just like the inscription on the keystone, the DNA sequence was fragmentary. It was taken from a sample that had been collected nearly two centuries ago, at the same London location from which the keystone was removed. The sample had been analyzed only recently, as part of an ongoing effort to sequence all biological matter—hair, blood, bone—contained in the Seeker vaults before time took its toll and any hope of doing so was lost.
Despite the poor quality of the sample, computer analysis determined there was significant similarity between the partial DNA sequence and the sequence Deirdre had performed on the sample of Glinda’s blood she had collected. The case to which the keystone and the partial DNA sequence were related had been closed in 1816. Now, once again, Deirdre had found a connection between a long-forgotten case and a modern investigation. Without doubt, the 1816 case was linked to Glinda. But how?
“Maybe it’s simpler than you think.” She sat at the computer and quickly typed a query.
Identify the location where the biological sample and keystone from the case 1816-11a were collected. Superimpose result on a map of present-day London.
[Enter]
The computer chimed, and a new window opened, covering the others. It showed a map of London. A red star blinked in the center of the map. Deirdre leaned closer, reading the word on the map just below the star: Brixton.
Surrender Dorothy. It had to be; it made too much sense. In 1816, the Seekers had collected samples with otherworldly connections from a building in Brixton—the same building that, nearly two centuries later, housed the nightclub.
So the Seekers were aware of Surrender Dorothy. At least at one time they were.
Or was it the other way around
? Maybe it wasn’t chance that Deirdre had met Glinda that day in the Sign of the Green Fairy.
They knew about the Seekers—Glinda, Arion the doorman, all of them—and they were desperate for help. Duratek was using them, hoping their blood might open a gate to Eldh. Who else could they turn to?
Only it had been too late. Deirdre hadn’t been able to help them. That night, Surrender Dorothy had burned, taking its strange denizens with it.
Deirdre twirled the silver ring on her finger. “Who were you, Glinda? You and the others. You weren’t quite fairies. But you weren’t quite human, either. So where did you come from? And why were you in London?”
She opened a new session window on the computer. There had to be more answers in the Seekers’ files. And with Echelon 7, she was going to find them. She started a new query, one to call up all otherworldly cases located in London in the last four hundred years, but before she could finish typing the screen went blank.
Deirdre frowned. Was the battery dead? She started to check it, then froze. Words scrolled across the screen.
> You’ll never find it that way.
She stared at the computer. She hadn’t done that; her hands weren’t even on the keyboard. The words pulsed slowly, like a slow laugh. Deirdre moistened her lips, then touched her fingers to the keys.
Find what? [Enter]
> What you’re seeking.
The reply had come quickly, as if the person on the other end had been waiting for it. If it was even a person at all. Deirdre thought a moment, then typed.
Who are you? [Enter]
> A friend.
> Make that a secret friend.
Again the reply came quickly, but somehow these words were not comforting.
If you’re a friend, where can I find you? [Enter]
> Look out your window, Miss Falling Hawk.
Dread spilled into Deirdre’s chest. Her body seemed to move of its own volition as she rose from the chair and moved to the window. Outside, full night had fallen. A few cars passed down the quiet side street; a cat ran along the sidewalk. Then she saw it across the way: a dark figure standing just on the edge of a pool of light beneath a streetlamp. The figure moved. Had it nodded? There was something in its hands.
“Why are you watching me?” she whispered. “What do you want?”
A chime sounded behind her. She turned and glanced at the computer screen.
> I want the same thing you do.
> To understand.
So the other was listening as well as watching. Later she would tear the flat apart and find the bug. Now she kept her back to the window. “I don’t believe you,” she said, the words sharp and angry this time.
More words scrolled across the computer screen.
> He’s coming.
> You should be careful of what other eyes see.
A knock sounded at the door. Deirdre had to bite her tongue to keep from letting out a cry. At the same moment, the computer screen flickered; the words vanished, and the results of Deirdre’s previous searches reappeared—the keystone and the DNA analysis. She glanced again out the window. The pool of light beneath the streetlamp was empty.
Another knock sounded at the door, this one more impatient than the last.
“Coming!” Deirdre called out. She slammed the computer shut, then headed for the door. Her hands were shaking, and she fumbled with the dead bolt before jerking the door open.
A man she had never seen before stood in the hallway. At first she wondered if he was the one she had glimpsed beneath the streetlamp. But she had seen the other just seconds before the knock came at her door; he couldn’t have gotten all the way up to her third-floor flat so quickly. Besides, the dark silhouette she had seen had been tall and slender, almost willowy.
In contrast, the man before her was not particularly tall and anything but willowy. The elegant lines of his Italian suit were mostly defeated by the muscles that bulged beneath, straining the fabric. His white-blond hair was cropped close to his head; nor was its color natural, given his short, dark beard. His eyes were shockingly blue above craggy, pitted cheeks.
Deirdre was too startled to say anything but, “Can I help you?”
The man smiled, his blue eyes crinkling. The effect was quite riveting.
“I’m Anders,” he said in a voice at once gravelly and offensively cheerful. She couldn’t quite place the accent. New Zealand? Australia? “I’m sure Nakamura told you about me. I blew into town earlier than I expected. You weren’t at the office, so I thought I’d stop by.”
Deirdre tried to comprehend these words but failed utterly. “Excuse me, but who the hell are you?”
Still smiling, he held out a large hand.
“Come now, Deirdre. That’s no way to greet your new partner.”
16.
If Travis had thought returning to Denver would be like coming home again, then he was wrong. All of those thoughts and feelings that might occur to one when considering the word home—things like warmth and comfort and safety—were only shadows here. They were thin and vaporous things, haunting every street corner, fogging every bright shop window: reminders of what was lost and could never be regained. No, this was not his home, and he was anything but safe.
Travis shoved raw hands into the pockets of his battered parka as he trudged down Sixteenth Street. He kept watch out of the corners of his eyes, glancing left and right, staying vigilant as he always must. The sky was as gray as the cement beneath his duct-taped sneakers, and hard bits of ice fell from above like shards of glass. He hunched his shoulders toward his ears. The kindly Chinook winds of January had blown east across the plains weeks ago, and the fast-melting snows of spring were still a month away. It was February, it was cold, and he had nowhere to stay for the coming night.
He peered into brightly lit stores as he passed by. The people in them smiled as they purchased designer shoes or sipped steaming coffee drinks. When they were ready, they would dash out to cars already warmed by waiting valets and speed away home. No one lingered out on the street; no one, that was, except those who had nowhere else to go. Travis’s feet scuffed to a halt, and he stared into a men’s clothing store, thinking how he might go in and get warm for a moment.
But only a moment. Then a clerk, or possibly two, would hurry up to him and speak in low voices that he had to leave, that if he didn’t, they would call the police. Travis knew from experience they would do just that. Then he would be back outside, and the brief flirtation with warmth would only make the cold more bitter. It was better not to go in at all.
As he turned away, he caught a reflection of himself in the store window. His beard and hair were shaggy and unkempt: copper flecked with more gray than he ever would have guessed. His face was haggard beyond his thirty-four years, and dirt smudged his coat and ill-fitting jeans. But it was the eyes that would truly startle the clerks: gray, set deep into his face, and as haunted as the streets of this city. They were the eyes of a man with nowhere left to go.
He hadn’t planned on being homeless in Denver in February. Then again, he supposed no one did. However, the gold coins he had brought from Eldh had fetched far less than he had hoped they would at the pawnshop on East Colfax where he had finally been able to sell them.
At first, all of the pawnbrokers he approached had seemed suspicious of the coins. He and Grace had sold Eldhish coins for money once before in Denver. Had agents from Duratek visited the area pawnshops, telling their proprietors to be on the lookout for a man or woman selling strange coins?
Travis didn’t know. All the same, he went into a hardware store and, in a back aisle, used a file to smooth away the writing on the coins. After that he managed to sell them, but for less than a third of what he had been counting on. Still, it had been enough money to last several weeks if he was careful. He didn’t need much—just enough to find out where in the country Duratek had hidden the gate and to get himself there.
However, focused as he was on Duratek Corporation, he had forgo
tten to worry about more mundane dangers. He would never know who they were or how they found out about the money. Maybe they had seen him selling the coins at the pawnshop earlier that day, or maybe the shop owner himself had told them. It didn’t matter. That night he rented a room in a cheap motel. He left to get some food, and when he returned he found the door of his room ajar, the lock broken. Inside, the bed and dresser had been torn apart. The money, which he had placed beneath the Gideon Bible in the nightstand, was gone. All he had were the few dollars in his pocket left over from buying dinner.
After Travis told the motel’s manager of the break-in, she had called the police. By the time the black-and-white cruiser pulled into the parking lot, Travis was already walking away down Colfax, head down. He didn’t dare let himself believe the police had stopped looking for him and Grace. Without money and with nowhere to go, he had spent the night wandering the cold streets of Denver.
Tonight was going to be no different.
Travis put his back to the store window and started down the street. He supposed he could walk the ten blocks to the homeless shelter, though there was little point. By this late in the day all of the beds would be claimed. He had planned to head over to the shelter earlier, but he had gotten caught up in the books he had been reading at the Denver Public Library, and he had lost track of time.
The library was a neoclassical fortress of cast stone guarding the south edge of downtown, and it was one establishment people like him weren’t automatically thrown out of—at least not if they followed the rules. On the coldest days, when he couldn’t stand to be outside, he would clean himself up as best he could in the public rest room, and if he sat at a table and quietly read books, he could stay there as long as he wanted.