Now he was dead.
Harrison dropped another file on the stack and pushed it at her. She gave them a quick scan. Eloise Purvis, Special Agent in charge of the World Crime League Task Force, had been shot three times and was now laid up in the hospital.
“That one came in just today,” said Harrison. “You know Eloise, don’t you?”
“I know all these people,” said Connie, putting her hand on the files, reports of extraordinary people she’d run with in the past.
Doctor Dynasty, Master of Mystic Arts, rendered blind and gibbering mad after repelling an alien monster god from another dimension.
Mariana Challenger, Explorer of the Unknown, vanished in the jungles of South America while searching for a lost city.
Caligula Fox, World’s Greatest Detective, found dead in his kitchen, a scimitar buried in his back.
Nine other adventurers in various fields, all of them dead, injured, or missing.
“It’s a dangerous world out there,” said Harrison.
“Stop tiptoeing around what you want to say and just tell me.”
“That is what I’m saying to you, Verity. Bad things happen, and the difference between triumph and tragedy is often razor-thin. One wrong move, one moment of bad luck, and things fall apart.
“These people all do things that need to be done, things only they can do. The rest of us live our lives worrying about unimportant shit only because of folks like this standing like a bulwark against the tide of weird crap and horrible disaster ready to bury this world. But it’s a delicate balance, and you’ve pushed it over by what you’ve done.”
“I’m not really in the mood for more metaphysical bullshit,” said Connie.
“No bullshit.” He reconsidered. “Maybe a little bullshit. How many close calls have you had? How many last-minute escapes? How many times have you saved the day with a split second to spare?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
“Did you ever consider what would’ve happened in those situations if you hadn’t been there? When Doc Dynasty banished the parasite lords from beyond time, you were the one who shoved the final keystone in place that sealed the gate, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “Doc did most the work, though.”
“And when the World Crime League sent a hit squad to take out Eloise Purvis, you were the one to push her out of the way of a hail of bullets, weren’t you?”
“Eloise is sharp. She would’ve spotted them.”
“And when Ishiro Hirata was piloting the Mecha-Armadillo that saved San Diego from being stepped on by that giant squid-gorilla thing—”
“Squorillo, Terror of the Deep,” she said.
“Yes, that. Moments before the Mecha-Armadillo self-destructed, taking Squorillo with it, who was the one who pulled Hirata into the escape pod just in time?”
“Me, but—”
“No buts, Verity. Don’t you get it? There’s a balance here, and you’ve thrown it out of whack.”
“I wouldn’t have been on all these adventures. I do a lot in two weeks, but not this much. I wouldn’t have been there to save all of them.”
“It’s not about being there,” he said. “It’s about the possibility of being there. It’s about there being someone out there who can push things one way or the other. That used to be you. Now that you’re not doing it, the universe has noticed.”
“I’m not that important,” she said. “Anyway, by your quasi-religion, which I still don’t understand, isn’t this all part of the plan and I’m just a replaceable part?”
“Some of us have come to think differently. We think the Engine doesn’t keep the universe running. It keeps it from growing. It keeps it from becoming more.”
“More what?”
“We don’t know.”
“No offense, Harrison, but that just sounds like more pseudo-spiritual gobbledygook.”
“It is, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Engine theory says the universe is a near-infinite collection of moving parts, and all those parts fit together to do their job. But if that’s true, it means that everything is preordained, that there’s no such thing as free will. Except maybe you.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but my whole life has been one long series of preordained events. I couldn’t cross the street without having to save the world. I’m the poster girl for predestination.”
“We don’t control most things that happen to us. We only react. Your reactions are better than most.”
“So, make someone else like me. It can’t be that hard. Just a magic spell, right?”
“You’re different. You’re . . .” He struggled to come up with the word.
“Chosen?” she asked. “Chosen to break a predestined universe. That sounds like a paradox to me.”
“I know it sounds stupid,” he said. “I wouldn’t say chosen. I’d just say the right person at the right time. That’s who you are, and it’s not because some enchantment forced it onto you.”
“I never asked to be.”
Harrison shook his head. “Nobody asks for anything. We’re all figuring this stuff as we go along. Call it destiny. Call it luck. Call it whatever the hell you want to. You can’t take yourself out of the game without expecting consequences.”
“This is the beginning,” he said. “It’ll start with the weird stuff, but it won’t stop there. It’s a cruel world. People get hurt. A million little tragedies happen every day. And that was with you out there, a cosmic linchpin keeping it from falling apart. It’ll only get worse. Today, a father collapses from a heart attack. A dog is hit by a car. A war nobody notices breaks out. Tomorrow, the moon breaks free of its orbit, crashes into the Earth.”
“It’s so obvious,” said Connie. “Why didn’t you explain it like that before?”
“It’s all connected, but you don’t have to believe me. Belief is unnecessary. We’re all part of the Engine whether we want to be or not. But the Engine is indifferent. It doesn’t give a shit. But you did. You did a lot of good out there, helped a lot of people. You can’t tell me you didn’t have fun along the way, too.”
“Sure, but that’s not me anymore.”
“Then I expect to see more reports like these.”
Connie slapped the table. The librarian flashed them a stern look.
“This is bullshit,” whispered Connie. “You’re blackmailing me? The universe got along just fine without me until I was seven. It can get along now. Now you’re telling me my job is to either fix the universe or break it.”
“One doesn’t exclude the other.” Harrison took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped them on the table. “Christ, I could use a smoke.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I don’t do a lot of things,” he replied. “But I do them more than I used to.”
He tucked a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.
“Enough with the manipulation, Harrison. I’m tired of people pulling my strings.” She stood. “Don’t contact me again.”
“Sit down, Connie.” He slumped in his chair. His exhaustion was palpable. “Please.”
“I’ll stand.” She folded her arms and glared at him. His weariness was so overwhelming, she had to glare at the wall behind him instead.
“The Engine isn’t a metaphor. It exists, a giant machine at the center of creation that runs the universe. After all you’ve experienced, is it really that ridiculous?”
“You’ve seen it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s been centuries since anyone has. There’s a door to it somewhere. Many doors scattered throughout the universe, opening and closing in a pattern nobody quite understands. The last recorded sighting on Earth was Ada Lovelace, who spent three minutes exploring its mysteries before being ejected from it. She wrote a program to predict where it would appear next. Every computer that tries to run it ends up bursting into flames, but there’s still some data. Other pieces of information from mystics and seers and scientis
ts. All of them point to another moment of alignment. Possibly soon.
“I’m not an idiot, Verity. I didn’t buy it at first either. I joined up with this secret society mostly to help my career. I thought it was the Freemasons with a thing for machines. I didn’t take it seriously. Then I noticed predictions being made. I started seeing the patterns. I was allowed to glimpse files kept behind locked doors, equations, codes. By themselves, easy to dismiss. All together, an awful truth. Nobody was right all the time, but often enough. It’s crazy, I know, but it’s true. Your life says so. Those files say so.
“What they did to you was wrong,” he said. “Everybody should have a choice. They took that away from you, and I can’t blame you for being pissed about it. I’m not saying there was a different way. I don’t know. I wasn’t involved with this from the beginning. I don’t know how deep it goes or who runs what. I just do my job, and my job has been to watch you for the last ten years, compile reports, and send those reports off to somebody. Hell if I know who. But do you know what I saw in you, kid?”
“Kid? You’re only a couple of years older than me.”
He ignored her reply. “I saw someone who cared about the people around her. You once fought a lion to save a dog.”
“I had to. His collar had microfilm in it.”
“You could’ve waited for the lion to spit out the collar. Why don’t you admit it? You’re not perfect, Verity. Not by a mile, but who is? But you care about people. If you didn’t, this world would be a very different place. You might have been destined for adventure, but you weren’t destined to be heroic. You could’ve just as easily turned into a self-centered ass, given everything you’ve done and everything you’ve been through. You can put on an act like you don’t care, but you do. You always have.”
Connie laughed. “Funny. My best friend in the whole world said I was selfish.”
“One doesn’t exclude the other,” he said. “You’re human, despite everything. You have your flaws, but I’ve read those reports about you at your best and worst, and I can say that even knowing the dreadful secrets I know, I’ve always slept better at night knowing you were out there.”
He lit his cigarette, took a deep drag, then exhaled a cloud of smoke while waving at the librarian.
“You’re many things, Connie. But replaceable? Some of us don’t think so.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. “I’m only one man. Not even an important one. But I do know one thing, Connie. It sucks having the world depend on you, but it sucks more never having it notice you at all.”
A team of librarians, three of them, approached.
Harrison stood, waved them away. “I’m leaving.” He closed the attaché case, tucked it under one arm. “Take care of yourself, kid. If anyone’s earned a vacation, I guess it’s you. The Engine will take care of things, one way or another.”
He walked away, hands in his pockets, head low, his posture stooped. Connie had no reason to trust him. This was more manipulation, and she wasn’t playing along. There might have been some truth to what he’d said, but that was how it worked. Just enough truth to keep her on the hook.
“He’s right,” said Thelma.
“Ah, damn.” Grumbling, Connie ran after him, catching him on the stairs outside.
“What difference does it make?” she asked. “I’m not special anymore.”
“You’re still you,” he said. “There are scraps of adventure clinging to your soul. You’ll never be rid of all of them. The only difference now is that you have more of a choice. What you do with that choice is up to you.”
“And why should I trust any of this?”
“You shouldn’t,” he replied. “It could all be a lie. We could both be unwitting pawns in a game bigger than either of us. I don’t trust me. Why should you? I’m only an idiot living in this world. You’re the one who saves it. It’s what you do.”
She scowled. “What a load of crap.”
Connie walked away, grumbling to herself.
25
Connie had always known she’d had a purpose. Most people lived their lives, unsure of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and hoped to make some sense of it after the fact. Not her.
But there was a big difference in knowing she was destined for adventure and believing she was a cosmic avatar. She’d saved countless lives, fought for the greater good, but those had always seemed like byproducts of her adventures, not the primary point.
It was the difference between being an important person and being IMPORTANT. All caps. Bold letters. She had a high opinion of herself and her abilities, but she’d never considered herself special in the universal sense. Most of her adventures didn’t involve saving the world. Most were just curious little distractions where the stakes weren’t more valuable than a life or two. Not the stuff of profound metaphysical significance.
Unless you happened to be the life saved.
Lost in her thoughts, she navigated the streets on autopilot. She was barely paying attention, but her instinct for trouble couldn’t be shut off so easily. When a distracted man attempted to cross against the light, she yanked him back by his arm. A speeding bus that would’ve plowed into him only knocked the phone out of his hand. He stood there, processing what had just happened.
“Goddamn, I just bought that phone.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“What? Oh, right, right. Yes, thanks.” His focus remained on the broken phone, now crushed beneath several tires. Connie walked away.
If the universe was trying to send her a message, she chose to ignore it.
Half a block later, she came across a woman who had spilled a bag of groceries across the sidewalk. None of the other pedestrians were interested in helping her. Connie strolled past the woman a few steps before sighing, turning back, and helping to gather up some fruit, a loaf of bread, and a pack of gum.
“Thank you,” said the woman.
“Don’t mention it.”
The woman continued in her direction, and Connie went her own way. A moment later, a safe impacted the sidewalk where they’d both been standing, where the woman would have still been standing if Connie hadn’t sped up the process.
It was ridiculous. Nobody poked their head out of a window above to claim ownership of it. It’d just fallen out of the clear blue sky.
“Nice try,” she mumbled to the universe.
She tucked her hands in her pockets and kept her head down. She wouldn’t get involved. No matter what. No matter how contrived the circumstances.
Someone shouted for help.
She ignored it. She stared straight ahead and didn’t look back. Or she should have. If there was a grand design at work, she wasn’t interested in being the troubleshooter of the universe. But if this was part of the design, then it sucked if someone had to die because of that same design.
Connie turned around. A husband choked on something, and his wife struggled to help him. A waiter came up behind the man and gave him the Heimlich maneuver. The choking man spit out the bit of sandwich clogging his windpipe and, coughing, thanked the waiter.
Maybe the universe had taken the hint. She didn’t buy the Engine theory. The universe wasn’t spinning cogs filling their function. It was random events and chaos, and she might have been the one to smooth out some of the wrinkles, but it would get along fine without her.
If she placed importance on every little thing that happened around her, it would be too easy to see patterns that weren’t there. The fates of millions weren’t decided by the flapping of a butterfly’s wings. It was all manufactured by her imagination, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. She had done and seen things few people had. She’d seen how narrow the line between triumph and tragedy could be.
She deliberately avoided thinking about how often she saved the world, the universe, a handful of lives here and there. It was more responsibility than she wanted, and that was before being told she embodied some manner of cosmic avatar.
She smelled smoke.
A building across the street spewed thick gray clouds from several of its windows. A woman shrieked about her baby trapped on the tenth floor.
“Oh, damn it,” Connie grumbled as she ran across the street.
Four minutes later, Connie, covered in ash and sweat, stepped out of the conflagration with two cats in her arms and a dog draped over her shoulders. The woman ran over and took one of the cats.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” She clutched the fat brown feline to her chest. “My baby, I don’t know what I’d have done if something had happened to you.”
Connie set down the second cat and dog as firemen rushed past her. The paramedics insisted on having a look at her, and she wasn’t in the mood to argue. She sat on the bumper while a woman checked her over.
“I’m fine,” said Connie.
“You might have inhaled some smoke, ma’am. We have to be sure.”
“I held my breath.”
“You must’ve been in that building for five or six minutes.”
“I’ve done ten,” replied Connie.
“Right, ma’am.” The paramedic shone a light in Connie’s eyes. “If you don’t mind me saying, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do. You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“She’s done stupider,” said Thelma, and the paramedic, distracted by his examination, didn’t notice it was the pen doing the talking.
“Looks like you got lucky,” he said before moving on to a more urgent patient. “Next time, don’t be a hero.”
Connie joined the crowd and watched the building burn. It was only one small apartment building, a few dozen lives. Nothing more. She’d seen greater tragedies. Cosmic wars where thousands of intelligent beings disappeared in faraway, twinkling flashes. Worlds exploding. Universes collapsing.
The cat lady threw her arms around Connie. “Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!” She sobbed joyfully and squeezed tighter. The unhappy cat growled and dug its claws into Connie’s shoulder. “If you hadn’t been here . . .”
Connie gently pushed the lady away. The cat clung to Connie, and she had to pull it off. She held it away from her. She’d never been a cat person. Or a dog person. Really, a pet person. She’d never had the time. She’d had a dog when she’d been nine. Boscoe had been hit by a car while she was away breaking up a smuggling ring.
The Last Adventure of Constance Verity Page 17