The Chronoliths

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “Parents’ group?”

  “Parents whose kids ran off, usually kids with Kuinist ideas. Haj parents, if you know what I mean.”

  “The last thing I’m looking for is a support group.”

  “You could compare notes, see what other people are doing.”

  I doubted it. But she zipped me the address and I copied it into my directory.

  “Meanwhile,” she said, “I’ll apologize to Whit for you.”

  “Has he apologized for letting Kait get mixed up in this?”

  “That’s none of your business, Scott.”

  Twelve

  A month or so after the Jerusalem arrival I had taken myself to a doctor and had a long talk about genetics and madness.

  It had occurred to me that Sue’s logic of correlation might have a personal side to it. She was saying, in effect, that our expectations shape the future, and that those of us exposed to extreme tau turbulence might influence it more than most.

  And if what was happening to the world was madness, could I have factored in some of it from my own deepest psychic vaults? Had I inherited from my mother a faulty genetic sequence, and was it my own latent insanity that had filled a hotel suite on Mt. Scopus with bullets and glass?

  The physician I talked to drew a blood sample and agreed to look at my genes for any markers that might suggest late-onset schizophrenia. But it wasn’t as simple as that, he said. Schizophrenia isn’t a purely heritable disorder, although susceptibility has a genetic aspect. That’s why they don’t gene-patch for it. There are complex environmental triggers. The most he could tell me was whether I might have inherited a tendency toward adult-onset schizophrenia — an almost meaningless factoid and utterly without predictive value.

  I thought of it again when I used the motel terminal to call up a map of the world marked with Chronolith sites. If this was madness, here were its tangible symptoms. Asia was a red zone, dissolving into feverish anarchy, though fragile national governments continued to exist in Japan, where the ruling coalition had survived a plebiscite (barely), and in Beijing, though not in the Chinese countryside or far from the coast. The Indian subcontinent was pockmarked with arrivals and so was the Middle East, not only Jerusalem and Damascus but Baghdad, Tehran, Istanbul. Europe was free of the physical manifestation of Kuinism, which had so far stalled at the Bosporus, but not its political counterpart; there had been massive street riots in both Paris and Brussels staged by rival “Kuinist” factions. Northern Africa had endured five disastrous arrivals. A small Chronolith had cored the equatorial city of Kinshasa just last month. The planet was sick, sick unto death.

  I dumped the map window and called one of the numbers Janice had given me, a police lieutenant by the name of Ramone Dudley. His interface told me he was unavailable but that my call had been logged for return.

  While I waited I entered the other number Janice had pressed on me, the “support group,” which turned out to be the home terminal of a middle-aged woman named Regina Lee Sadler. She wore a bathrobe when she answered, and her hair was dripping. I apologized for calling her out of the shower.

  “Makes no mind,” she said, her voice a Southern contralto as dark as her complexion. “Unless you’re calling from that goddamned collection agency, pardon my French.”

  I explained about Kaitlin.

  “Yes,” she said, “in fact I know about that. We have a couple other parents from that incident just joined us — mostly moms, of course. The dads tend to resist the kind of help we offer, God knows why. You seem not be a member of that stiff-necked clan, however.”

  “I wasn’t here when Kait disappeared.” I told her about Janice and Whit.

  “So you’re an absentee father,” she said.

  “Not by choice. Mrs. Sadler, can I ask you a frank question?”

  “I would prefer that to the other kind. And most people call me Regina Lee.”

  “Do I have anything to gain by meeting these folks? Will it help me get my daughter home?”

  “No. No, I can’t promise you that. Our group exists for our own purposes. We save ourselves. A lot of parents in this situation, they are very vulnerable to despair. It helps some people to be able to share then-feelings with others in similar straits. And I suspect you are tuning me out right now, saying to yourself, ‘Well, I don’t need that touchy-feely crap.’ And maybe you don’t. But some of us do, and we are not ashamed of it.”

  “I see.”

  “Not to say there isn’t a certain amount of networking. A lot of our people have hired private investigators, freelance skip-tracers, deprogrammers, and so on, and they do compare notes and share information, but I will tell you frankly that I have very little faith in such activity and the results I’ve seen bear that out.”

  I told her those were the people I’d like to talk to, if only to learn from their failures.

  “Well, if you come to our gathering tonight—” She gave me the address of a church hall. “If you show up, you’ll certainly be able to have a conversation of that nature. But may I ask something of you in return? Don’t come as a skeptic. Bring an open mind. About yourself, I mean. You seem all calm and collected, but I know from personal experience what you’re going through, how easy it is to grasp at straws when a loved one is in danger. And make no mistake, your Kaitlin is in danger.”

  “I do know that, Mrs. Sadler.”

  “There’s knowing it and there’s knowing it.” She looked over her shoulder, perhaps at a clock. “I ought to be getting fixed up, but may I say I hope to see you this evening?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I pray you find a positive outcome, Mr. Warden, whatever you do.”

  I thanked her again.

  The meeting took place in the assembly hall of a Presbyterian church in what had been a working-class neighborhood before it slipped into outright poverty some few years ago. Regina Lee Sadler, strutting across the stage in a flowered dress and with an old-fashioned handless mike bobbing in front of her head, looked both more robust and about twenty pounds heavier than she had looked in the video window. I wondered if Regina Lee was vain enough to have installed a slimming ap in her interface.

  I didn’t introduce myself, just lurked in the back of the hall. It wasn’t exactly a Twelve-Step meeting, but it wasn’t far off. Five new members introduced themselves and their problems. Four had lost children to Kuinist or haj cells within the last month. One had been missing her daughter for more than a year and wanted a place where she could share her grief… not that she had given up hope, she insisted, not at all, but she was just very, very tired and thought she might be able to sleep through the night for a change, if only she had someone to talk to.

  There was muted, sympathetic applause.

  Then Regina Lee stood up again and read from a printed sheet of news and updates — children recovered, rumors of new Kuinist movements in the West and South, a truckload of underage pilgrims intercepted at the Mexican border. I took notes.

  At that point the meeting became more personal as attendees divided up into “workshops” to discuss “coping strategies,” and I slipped quietly out the door.

  I would have gone directly back to the motel if not for the woman sitting on the church steps smoking a cigarette.

  She was about my age, her expression careworn but thoughtful and focused. Her hair was short and lustrous in the street light. Her eyes were shadowed as she glanced up at me. “Sorry,” she said automatically, stubbing out the cigarette.

  I told her it was all right. Under a recent statute tobacco preparations were illegal for trade without an addict’s certificate and a prescription, but I considered myself broadminded — I had grown up in the days of legal tobacco. “Had enough?” she asked, waving a hand at the church door.

  “For now,” I said.

  She nodded. “Regina Lee is good for a lot of people, and God knows she’s unstoppable. But I don’t need what she’s handing out. I don’t think so, anyhow.”

  We introduced ourse
lves. She was Ashlee Mills, and her son was Adam. Adam was eighteen years old, deeply involved in the local Kuinist network; he had been missing for six days now. Just like Kaitlin. So we compared notes. Adam had been involved with Whit Delahunt’s junior auxiliary, as well as a handful of other radical organizations. So they probably would have known each other.

  “That’s a coincidence,” Ashlee said.

  I told her no, there was no such thing.

  We were still talking when Regina Lee’s meeting began to break up, crowding us off the church steps. I offered to buy her coffee somewhere nearby — she lived in the neighborhood.

  Ashlee gave me a thoughtful look, frank and a little intimidating. She struck me as a woman who harbored no illusions about men. Then she said, “Okay. There’s an all-night coffee shop next to the drugstore, just around the corner.” We walked there.

  Ashlee was conspicuously not wealthy. Her skirt and blouse looked like Goodwill purchases, cared-for but a long way from new. But she wore them with a dignity that was innate, not practiced. At the restaurant she counted out dollar coins to pay for her coffee; I told her not to bother and pushed my card across the counter. She gave me another long look, then nodded. We found a quiet corner table away from the jabbering video panels.

  She said, “You’ll want to know about my son.”

  I nodded. “But this isn’t one of Regina Lee’s workshops. What I really want to know is how I can help my daughter.”

  “I can’t promise you anything to that effect, Mr. Warden.”

  “That’s what everybody tells me.”

  “Everybody is right, I’m sorry to say. At least in my experience.”

  Ashlee had been born and educated in Southern California, had come to Minneapolis to work as a medical receptionist for her uncle, a podiatrist who had since died of an aneurysm. At the reception desk she had met Tucker Kellog, a tool and dye programmer, and married him at the age of twenty. Tucker left home when their son Adam was five years old. He had been unavailable since. Ashlee filed for divorce and could have sued for child support but chose not to. She was better off without Tucker in her life, she said, even peripherally. She had reverted to her maiden name ten years ago.

  She loved her son Adam, but he had been a trial. “Parent to parent, Mr. Warden, there were times when I was in despair. Even when he was little, it was hard keeping Adam in school. Nobody likes school, I guess, but whatever it is that made the rest of us show up every day, sense of duty or fear of the consequences, whatever it is, Adam didn’t feel it. He couldn’t be bullied into it and he couldn’t be shamed into it.”

  He had been in and out of psychiatric programs, apprenticeship programs, special learning facilities, and occasionally Juvenile Hall. Not that Adam wasn’t bright. “He reads constantly. Not just storybooks, either. And, frankly, it takes a certain amount of smarts to survive the way he has — on the street half the time. Adam is actually very clever.”

  When Ashlee talked about her son her expression was a mixture of pride, guilt, and apprehension, sometimes all three at once. Her large eyes darted from side to side as if she expected to be overheard. She played with her napkin, folding it and refolding it, finally tearing it into long strips that lay on the tabletop like aborted acts of origami.

  “He ran away once when he was twelve, but that had nothing to do with this Copperhead thing. I swear I don’t know what Adam imagines this Kuin is all about, apart from the business of destroying cities and making people’s lives miserable. But it fascinates him. The way he watches the news nets is almost frightening.” She dipped her head. “I’m reluctant to say it, but I think what Adam likes is basically just this crushing of things. I think he puts himself in Kuin’s place. He wants to lift his foot and obliterate everything he hates. The talk about a new kind of world government is just set-dressing, in my opinion.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about Kaitlin or her group?”

  Ashlee smiled sadly. “That’s a question and a half. Did your Kaitlin ever talk to you about this stuff?”

  “We talked. But no, she never mentioned anything political.”

  “That still puts you a step up from me. Adam has never confided in me about anything. Anything at all. Everything I know about my own son, I learned from observation. Excuse me, I think I need another coffee.”

  What she needed, I imagined, was another smoke. She paused at the counter, asked the clerk for a double-double, then ducked into the restroom for a while. She came out looking calmer. I think the counterman smelled tobacco when she picked up her coffee. He gave her a hard look, then rolled his eyes.

  She sat down again, sighing. “No, Adam never talked about his meetings. Adam is seventeen, but like I said, he’s not naive. He conducts his business pretty carefully. But, you know, I would overhear things once in a while. I knew he’d hooked up with one of the suburban Copperhead clubs, but for a while it seemed like that was almost a good thing. He was with people who had some, you know, background. Prospects. I guess in the back of my head was the idea that he would make friends and maybe that would lead to something, some opportunities, after all this time-travel shit blows over, excuse me. I thought he might meet a girl, or maybe somebody’s dad would offer him a job.”

  I thought of Janice’s plaintive, What was I supposed to do? Lock her in the house?

  Janice had clearly not imagined her daughter in the company of an Adam Mills.

  “I changed my mind when I walked in on one of his phone calls. He was talking about those people — I guess including your Kait, I’m sorry to say. And he was just vicious, contemptuous. He said the group was full of—” She lowered her head, ashamed. “Full of ‘whitebread virgins.’”

  She must have seen my reaction. Ashlee put her chin up, and her manner hardened. “I love my son, Mr. Warden. I don’t have any illusions about the kind of person Adam is — or will be, unless he turns himself around. Adam has serious, serious problems. But he’s my son, and I love him.”

  “I respect that,” I said.

  “I hope so.”

  “They’re both missing. That’s what we have to worry about now.”

  She frowned then, maybe reluctant to be included in the pronoun. Ashlee was accustomed to dealing with her own troubles in her own way; that was why she had bailed out of Regina Lee’s meeting.

  But then, so had I.

  She said, “I would be very frankly pissed if you were trying to pick me up, Mr. Warden.”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Because I want to ask you for your phone number so we can keep in touch about Adam and Kaitlin. I don’t have any hard information, but my guess is that their whole little group is attempting some kind of half-assed pilgrimage, Christ only knows where. So they’re probably together. So we should keep in touch. I just don’t want to be misunderstood.”

  I gave her my portable address. She gave me her home terminal.

  She finished her coffee and said, “This is pretty much all bad news for you.”

  “Not all,” I said.

  She stood up. “Well, it was good meeting you.” She turned and walked through the door into the street. I watched her through the window as she strode a half block between islands of lamplight, to a doorway adjoining a Chinese restaurant, where she fumbled with a key. An apartment over a restaurant. I pictured a threadbare sofa, maybe a cat. A rose in a wine bottle or a framed poster on the wall. The echoing absence of her son.

  Ramone Dudley, the police lieutenant in charge of local missing persons, agreed to see me in his office the following afternoon. The meeting was brief.

  Dudley was an obviously overworked desk cop who had delivered the same bad news too many times. “These kids,” he said (clearly a homogenous mass, in Dudley’s mind: these kids), “they have no future, and they know it. The thing is, it’s true. The economy sucks, that’s no secret. And what else do we have to offer them? Everything they hear about the future is all Kuin, Kuin, Kuin. Fucking Kuin. According to the fun-die
s, Kuin is the Antichrist; all you can do is say your prayers and wait for the Rapture. Washington is drafting kids for some war we may never fight. And the Copperheads are saying maybe Kuin won’t hurt us so bad if we bend over politely. That’s not a real bouquet of options, when you think about it. Plus all that shit they hear in the music or learn in those encrypted chatrooms.”

  Plainly, Lieutenant Dudley blamed most of this on my generation. He must have met some inadequate parents in the course of his work. By the way he looked at me, he was pretty sure I was one of them.

  I said, “About Kaitlin—”

  He took a file from his desktop and read me the contents. There were no surprises. A total of eight youths, all involved in the junior arm of Whitman’s social club, had failed to return home from a meeting. Friends and parents of the missing children had been extensively interviewed — “With the exception of yourself, Mr. Warden, and I was expecting you to turn up.”

  “Whit Delahunt told you about me,” I guessed.

  “He mentioned you briefly when we interviewed him, but no, not exactly. The call I got was from a retired fed named Morris Torrance.”

  Fast work. But then, Morris had always been diligent. “What did he tell you?”

  “He asked me to give you as much cooperation as possible. This is it, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have a whole lot more to tell you, unless you have some specific questions. Oh, and he asked me one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He asked me to tell you to get in touch with him. He said he was sorry to hear about Kaitlin and he said he might be able to help you out.”

  Thirteen

  Maybe I should have taken advantage of Regina Lee’s communal therapy and admitted my fear for Kaitlin — fear, and the premonition of grief that drifted into consciousness whenever I closed my eyes. But that wasn’t my style. I had learned at an early age to fake calm in the face of disaster. To keep my anxiety to myself, like a dirty secret.