by James Frey
They turn a corner and the alley opens onto the ghat, a concrete walkway with stairs leading down to the Gomti River. It’s low tide so the river is in retreat, exposing sand and silt mixed with refuse, the water’s dark surface a few more meters away. The far bank is also man-made but looks more industrial. A few people are scattered here and there on its rocky slope.
The walkway here is narrow and crowded, however. Everyone is turned to the southwest, to where the river ends and the Indian Ocean begins. Many either talk into cell phones or hold them up to take pictures or shoot video.
Maccabee shoves his way to the top of the steps. He stops next to a man nearly his height wearing a perfectly tailored western business suit. Maccabee’s briefly envious of the clothing. He misses the way a good suit feels, the way a perfect shirt hugs his shoulders and arms, the touch of fine cotton and wool against his skin.
He misses the order and neatness of the world before Endgame.
Splotches of sweat stain the neck of the man’s yellow dress shirt.
Maccabee asks, “What’s happened?”
The man looks him up and down. His nose wrinkles at the sight of Maccabee’s bald head and his busted nose and the black rings under his eyes, but mostly at the small Indian child fastened to his back, her head peeking over the top of Maccabee’s shoulder. “There was a large blast not far off the coast,” he answers. “Some think it was a small meteoric companion to Abaddon, but rather one falling on this side of the globe,” he says with a poetic lilt. He points. “Do you see that?”
A dense swarm of dive-bombing seabirds confettis the air less than a kilometer away.
“Yeah.”
“It was there. The birds are picking off chum, it seems.”
Maccabee peers at the birds.
Little Alice says, “That’s where it is. The underwater temple. Two two dot two three four. Six eight dot nine six two.”
The businessman squints at Little Alice. “What did she say?” He leans close to her. “How old are you, pakora? Two? Three?”
She shakes her head furiously. “Not pakora. Only Mama calls me that.”
Maccabee angles her away from the man, but he persists. “Where is your mama? Is this your child, my boy?”
Little Alice says, “Two two dot two three four. Six eight dot nine six two.”
“Thank you, sir,” Maccabee says, shuffling away. The man reaches for Maccabee and asks again how old Little Alice is, but the crowd closes around the man and he doesn’t follow.
A little farther on Maccabee stops next to a slight man sitting on a burly friend’s shoulders. The man on top presses a worn brass telescope to his eye. Maccabee holds up his hand. “Mind if I have a look?”
The man barks at Maccabee in a language he doesn’t understand.
“Friend, I need to have a look,” Maccabee says forcefully in English. “I’ll give it back.”
The little man protests again but hands it over and then cups his hands over his eyes to ward off the sun. The larger man stares at Maccabee’s profile.
Maccabee holds the glass to his eye with both hands.
Little Alice says, “Two two dot two three four. Six eight dot nine six two.”
“Quiet, sweetie,” Maccabee says. “I’m trying to see if another Player beat us here,” he says quietly.
He doesn’t see how it would be possible, but maybe An Liu, or a different Player altogether, knows that this is where Sun Key is. Maybe someone has narrowly beat him to it.
He scans the sky and finds the birds. White gulls and dark cormorants and masked boobies teeming as one. He moves the telescope to the water’s surface, which is roiled by the wind but otherwise unexceptional. The crowd hoots and ahs.
Little Alice bats the telescope. “Look, Uncle.”
He pulls the telescope away and sees a large, dark object rising vertically above the birds. Maccabee recognizes it immediately as a medium-sized four-rotor drone. It shoots up 30 or 40 meters and stops, tilting into the stiff wind in order to stay in place. He peers through the telescope and catches sight of the thing before it zips away, moving toward the shore.
The little man shakes his hand for the telescope. The larger man nudges Maccabee’s shoulder. Little Alice says, “Two two dot two three four. Six eight dot nine six two.” Everyone but Maccabee watches the drone. He looks to the ocean again.
And then the ground shakes violently.
The crowd crouches all at once, but not Maccabee. He merely winces and turns his head. Little Alice barely flinches at all.
“Two two dot two three four! Six eight dot nine six two!”
An explosion much larger than the previous one has just detonated under the water. A thick column of water grows skyward, instantly rising 50, 75, 100 meters. Many of the birds are swallowed by it, the rest are scattered and cast away. A halo of water rises next, ringing the bottom of the column, and almost immediately afterward black spikes of debris arc through the foam. It reminds Maccabee of a grand fireworks display, but far more impressive, as this is not a show of light but an explosion moving weight and mass, displacing anything near it. Within a few seconds the crowd is pelted by debris, some chunks as big as a fist slamming here and there. Maccabee deftly unfastens Little Alice’s carrier and swings her into his arms, shielding her with his body. The crowd panics. Feet and legs and hands push on Maccabee, but he is like a rock. The bombardment doesn’t last long, and when it’s over he asks, “Are you all right?”
“Two two dot two three four. Six eight dot nine six two,” Little Alice says.
“Yeah, you’re all right.”
The crowd thins out quickly. A few people lie on the ground, moaning and bloodied. Little Alice points. Maccabee sees it. The drone is headed back out to the water. It flew in to take cover, and now it’s returning to the site of the explosion. He shifts Little Alice into his left arm and lifts the telescope. “It’s taking readings,” he says frantically. “Little Alice—do you think Sun Key is . . . gone?”
Before she can answer, the telescope’s owner appears and tugs at Maccabee’s shirt. The man holds out his hand.
Maccabee shakes his head. “Not now, friend. I’m keeping it.”
The large companion steps next to the small man, a toothless grin on his face. Maccabee knows that look. The man likes a good fight.
So does Maccabee, but these two aren’t worth the trouble. He stashes the telescope in a pocket and whips out the SIG, leveling it on the little man’s face. “I said I’m keeping it. Move along. Now!”
The men backpedal. “Acha, acha, acha,” they say. They head back to the streets of Dwarka and disappear.
Maccabee reholsters the gun and returns to the telescope. The drone makes the blast site. For a minute or two it zips there and there and there, rising and lowering and rising. It finishes its work and begins the short trip back to the city, again headed directly toward the river. “Someone’s running that thing. Someone close by.” He scans the tops of the buildings and the length of the ghat but doesn’t spot anyone suspicious. “Tell me it isn’t gone, Little Alice.”
“The place where it was is gone,” the girl says slowly.
“What?” he demands. “You mean . . . ?”
“We have to leave here, Uncle.”
“But how will I win if—”
“Move, Uncle!” the girl yelps, and Maccabee gets an overwhelming sensation of something bearing down on him. He dives to the steps of the ghat, being careful not to land on Little Alice, and a chunk of concrete explodes less than a meter above them. He rolls onto his back, the edges of the stairs digging into his spine, as the report sounds in his ears. In his periphery he sees the drone coming in low, and on the far bank he sees two things and knows instantly what they are. The long line of an RC antenna and the glint of a sniper’s scope.
He makes them for 120 meters. A very long shot for a pistol. He’s flat on his back, Little Alice lying across his chest. He sights over Little Alice’s head and down his arm with the SIG. He throws his
left arm over Little Alice, who at this moment is his human shield, a situation he can’t abide. He pulls the trigger on the shooter, three times quick, making micro adjustments for recoil and the wind coming from the ocean. The glint of the sniper scope blinks out and a dark figure pops up and falls sideways. Hit. The one with the RC controller moves quickly for cover and Maccabee fires twice more, striking the hip and the flesh above it. The person falls and disappears behind the opposite embankment.
He zips the gun left and right, searching for others, but finds none. “You okay, sweetie?”
Little Alice dips her chin. Her hands are cupped over her ears. She’s shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But you’re okay?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Who the hell was that?” Maccabee was listening to the news as they tore across India, and he heard all about the other monuments. He says, “First Stonehenge, then Chogha Zanbil, now Dwarka. Who’s destroying these places? Not the kepler. Not another Player. Right?”
“Look, Uncle.” She points at the drone, hovering practically overhead, 30 or so meters away. Maccabee pops up and aims. “Cover your ears again.”
She does. He fires twice. The casings bounce off the concrete. Two rotors are hit, and the thing loses altitude. Half a minute later it hits the walkway along the ghat, now absent of any other people. He works Little Alice into the back carrier and goes to the drone. It whines like a winged housefly bouncing on a stone floor. He stomps out the other rotors. He flips it over and sees the camera and the sensors and the portable drive hooked into the frame. He unplugs the drive, pries it free, and slips it into a pocket. “Maybe this will have some answers.” He looks back to the ocean. The water churns from the explosion. It was massive. Waves wash into the river’s mouth like a fast moving tide. “It’s gone,” he whispers. “Isn’t it?”
How will I win?
“Yes. The temple is gone, Uncle . . . But Sun Key . . . Sun Key.” She is quiet for a moment. Her eyes flutter as if she’s been struck with some new information. She points to the northwest and says, “Three four dot three six two two six. One zero eight dot six four zero two six two.”
“I don’t understand, Alice.” Maccabee frowns.
“Three four dot three six two two six. One zero eight dot six four zero two six two.”
“Are you saying it—it moved?”
“Yes, Uncle. Three four dot three six two two six. One zero eight dot six four zero two six two.”
“That’s in . . .” He runs through the basic coordinate system seared into his brain. “That’s in China, Alice. Near Xi’an.”
“Three four dot three six two two six. One zero eight dot six four zero two six two.”
Maccabee nods. “Xi’an. We’re going back to where it all started.”
AN LIU, NORI KO
Nathula Border Crossing Station, India-China Border, Sikkim, India
Nori Ko bribed their way up to Nathula, one of three overland trading posts on the Sino-Indian border. At over 4,300 meters it is extremely remote, with the mountain state of Sikkim on the Indian side and, after the trip down the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau on the Chinese side. The land around is desolate and rocky and steep and tufted by rough alpine grass. It is a little past noon, and the gray sky hangs low. The air is damp and cool and very out of place for midsummer.
Legally only Indian citizens are allowed this close to the crossing, requiring a permit and registration with the Indian Army. But legal concerns have “gone the way of Abaddon,” as Nori Ko put it aptly after bribing the last soldier with a measly 10 American dollars and a cheap ballpoint pen. The soldier assured them there were no more men at the gates.
No more Indian men, anyway.
They’ve stopped a few jagged switchbacks below the pass. The mountains’ teeth disappear into the clouds. Weatherworn prayer flags whip in the wind on plastic poles.
Nori Ko lights a Golden Bat cigarette. Her window is rolled down and she props her elbow on the edge of the door. “This place is too far-flung for people to care about now,” she says, staring at the tidy red-roofed administrative buildings surrounding the pass.
An strokes Chiyoko’s hair. “I would love to see a place where people do care,” he says. “I would love to see New York City. It must be terrifying. It must be beautiful.”
She blows a stream of smoke. The wind catches it and takes it out of the car, away from his nose and his senses. An is happy for this. He does not like the smell or taste or the sight of cigarettes. His father smoked them. His uncles.
The men who hurt him.
Who broke him.
The men who put their cigarettes out on his skin.
The men who singed him and burned him and scarred him with joy and glee.
She is not one of these men so he lets her smoke.
She says, “Trust me, An. You don’t want to be in New York City right now. It must be hell on earth.”
“But I want to see hell, Mu. Like a God would see it. Like a Maker.”
“Like a devil.”
“Yes. Like a devil. I want to smell it. Hear it. Touch it.”
Pause.
A gust of sweet air slices into the car.
“Let’s go,” Nori Ko says, changing the subject. She points the cigarette’s ember up the road. An puts the car in gear and after a few meters she adds, “I know what I see in you, An Liu—opportunity. But sometimes I’m not sure what Chiyoko saw.”
An whips his head to his passenger, about to spit, Don’t say her name! It’s my name now!
But instead shiverBLINKshivershiverblinkshiverBLINKBLINKblinkSHIVER
SHIVERSHIVERblinkBLINKSHIVERblink—
Nori Ko snags the wheel with one hand and slaps him hard across the cheek with the other. “Snap out of it, An!” she says, the cigarette dancing between her lips.
He does. He pushes the brake. The car stops again. His cheek stings. It feels good. He takes the necklace in both hands and brings it to his face and buries his nose in it. There is so little of her smell remaining that it might as well be odorless, but it does the trick. His body quiets. His heart pounds.
“She didn’t see me like that,” An says. “She never saw that. I was whole around her. I was . . . better.”
Nori Ko takes a deep drag and flicks the hot filter out the window. She almost says, So she pitied you, but thinks better of it.
Instead she says, “Chiyoko eschewed relationships—mutes tend to do that—but she always liked a project.”
An tightens his grip on the wheel. It’s all he can do not to lash out at this woman. He could kill her, but he needs her.
For now.
Thankfully Chiyoko says, I love your vulnerability, An. I love your broken heart. I love your buried tenderness, like you showed me on our one night together. I love that you’re a Player, like me, but one completely unlike me. I love you because I shouldn’t. Because it is impossible.
He loves the sound of her voice. Why couldn’t she have shared it with him when she was BLINK alive?
“That’s not how it was,” An says after a few moments. He will not share these feelings with Nori Ko. They are too personal, too revealing. He says, “I was not a project. She loves—loved—me, Nori Ko. That’s all you need to know.”
Nori Ko releases the steering wheel. “Well, love is mysterious.” Pause. “Sorry. I’m just on edge. You might want the world to end but, believe it or not, I prefer if it didn’t.” She lights another cigarette. “Nothing I can do about Abaddon now. Nothing except make sure that kepler bastard dies one way or another.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s both shut up for a while and get to China.”
“Yes.”
He resumes driving. As they wind up the mountainside Chiyoko says over and over, China. You’re going home. China. You’re going home. China. You’re going home. Her voice is soft and flowing and sweet. Like the water in the painting that used to hang in her room in Naha.
You’re going home.
The road squeezes between a set of buildings and these give way to walls that rise on either side, hemming them in. The trade route is literally a passageway cut from the mountain pass. A tall white gate hangs between the walls like a curtain. Above the gate is a red sign with white lettering in Chinese and English. Both read NATHULA BUSINESS CHANNEL FOR CHINA-INDIA BORDER TRADE.
And now there is a man. A solitary Chinese soldier on the far side of the gate, parading back and forth. He has the dark green uniform and the wide-topped green military cap with the red band and the stiff black visor and the red star on front. His breath is visible in the cool air.
A bolt-action service rifle leans on his shoulder. His feet go high, he spins, he paces, his feet go high, he spins, he paces. Repeat.
The Defender is plain for him to see, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.
He just keeps pacing.
“I’ll handle this,” An says. He opens the door, pulling the Mu katana from under the driver’s seat.
“You won’t need that. He’s a boy,” Nori Ko says.
An pauses before closing the door. “Some would say the same of me.”
She gives him a look that says, You have a point, but doesn’t speak.
An’s feet and legs move in hurried, stabbing steps. His shoulders hunch around his chest. His eyes stare at the ground. He holds the sword in his left hand. He pulls the hood of his thick sweatshirt over his bald head, now speckled with black stubble.
He stops at the gate. The soldier really is a boy. All of 15 or 16. The uniform barely fits him. It’s cuffed at the ankles and the wrists, and the hat is too big.
He continues to pace.
“Open the gate, soldier,” An orders.
The boy passes less than a meter in front of him. The gate—easily climbed, and so porous that it would serve as more of a channel than a barrier to a sword or any other slender weapon—remains closed. The soldier remains silent.