The Chronoliths

by Robert Charles Wilson

  Ashlee gazed at this dust-bleached Mecca with obvious despair. “Even if they’re here,” she said, “how do we find them?”

  “You let me do some leg work,” Hitch said, “that’s how. But first we have to get a little closer.”

  We drove across rocky soil to a stretch of cracked tarmac. The stench of the haj came through the windows with the subtlety of a clenched fist, and Ashlee lit a cigarette, mostly to cover the smell.

  Hitch parked us behind a fire-blackened adobe shack roughly half a mile out of town. The van was hidden from the main road by a stand of dry jacarandas and stacks of excrement-encrusted chicken coops.

  Hitch had bought weapons after we crossed the border and he insisted on showing Ashlee and me how to use them. Not that we resisted. I had never discharged a weapon in my life — I had grown up in a gun-shy decade and had learned a civilized loathing of handguns — but Hitch left me a pistol with a full clip and made sure I knew how to disengage the safety mechanism and hold the weapon so that I wouldn’t break my wrist if I fired it.

  The idea was that Ashlee and I would stay with the van, guarding our food, water, and transportation, while Hitch went into Portillo to locate Adam’s haj group and broker a meeting. Ashlee wanted to head directly into town — and I understood the need — but Hitch was adamant. The van was our major asset and needed protection; we would be useless to Kaitlin or Adam without the vehicle.

  Hitch took a weapon of his own and walked toward town. I watched him vanish into the dusk. Then I locked the van’s doors and joined Ashlee in the front seat, where she had fixed us a meal of trail bars and apples and tepid instant coffee from a thermos. We ate silently while the light drained from the sky. Stars came out, bright and sharp even through the smoke haze and the dusty windshield.

  Ashlee put her head against me. Neither of us had bathed since we entered the country, and that fact was conspicuously obvious, but it didn’t matter. The warmth mattered, the contact mattered. I said, “We’ll need to sleep in shifts.”

  “You think it’s that dangerous here?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I don’t believe I can sleep.”

  But she was fighting a yawn as she said it.

  “Crawl into the back,” I said. “Cover up with the blanket and close your eyes for a while.”

  She nodded and stretched out on one of the rear benches. I sat at the wheel with the pistol next to me, feeling lonely and futile and foolish, as the day’s heat leached away.

  It was possible even at this distance to hear the night sounds of Portillo. It was one sound, really, a white rush of noise compounded of human voices, reproduced music, crackling fires, laughter, screams. It occurred to me that this was the millenarian madness we had escaped at the turn of the century, hundreds of hajists cashing in on the moral carte blanche of a guaranteed end-of-the-world. Redeemer or destroyer, Kuin owned tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, all the tomorrows, at least in the minds of the hajists. And at least on this occasion they wouldn’t be disappointed: The Chronolith would arrive as predicted; Kuin would put his mark on North American soil. Probably a great number of these same hajists would be killed by the cold shock or the concussion, but if they knew that, and in all likelihood they did, they didn’t care. It was a lottery, after all. Great prizes, grave risks. Kuin would reward the faithful… or at least the survivors among them.

  I couldn’t help wondering how much of this madness Kait had bought into. Kaitlin was imaginative, and she had been a solitary child. Imaginative and naive: not a good combination, not in this world.

  Did Kait genuinely believe in Kuin? In some version of Kuin she had conjured out of her own longing and insecurity? Or was this all just an adventure, a melodramatic lunge out of the cloistered household of Whitman Delahunt?

  The fact was, she might not be glad to see me. But I would take her out of this nightmarish place if I had to do it by main force. I couldn’t make Kaitlin love me, but I could save her life. And that, for now, would be enough.

  The night dragged. The roar of Portillo ebbed and rose in an elusive stochastic rhythm, like waves on a beach. There was a cricket in the wild sage east of the van adding his own distinct voice to the cacophony. I drank more of Ashlee’s coffee and left the van briefly to relieve myself, stepping around a rusted axle and drivetrain that lurked in the high weeds like an animal trap. Ashlee stirred and muttered in her sleep when I closed the door again.

  There was a little traffic on the road, mainly hajists joyriding, hooting from the windows of their cars. Nobody spotted us; nobody stopped. I was beginning to doze in place when Ashlee tapped me on the shoulder. The dash clock said 2:30.

  “My turn,” she said.

  I didn’t argue. I showed her where I’d left the pistol and I stretched out on the back bench. The blanket was warm with her body heat. I slept as soon as I closed my eyes.

  “Scott?”

  She shook me gently but urgently.

  “Scott!”

  I sat up to find Ashlee leaning over the driver’s seat, rocking my shoulder with her hand. She whispered, “There are people outside. Listen!”

  She turned forward and slumped down, keeping her head out of sight. The darkness was not absolute. A half moon had risen. There was, for a long moment, utter silence. Then, not very far away, a woman’s terrified moan, followed by stifled laughter.

  I said, “Ashlee—”

  “They came by a minute ago. A car on the road. They pulled up and stopped and there was a little, uh, yelling. And then — I couldn’t really see this until I turned the side mirror, and even then the tree was in the way, but it looked like somebody fell out of the car and ran into the field. I think a woman. And two guys ran out after her.”

  I thought about this. “What time is it?”

  “Just four.”

  “Give me the pistol, Ash.”

  She seemed reluctant to hand it over. “What should we do?”

  “What we’ll do is, I’ll take the pistol and get out of the van. When I signal, you turn on the high beams and start the engine. I’ll try to stay in sight.”

  “What if something happens to you?”

  “Then you pull out of here fast as you can. If something happens to me, that means they’ve got the gun. Don’t hang around, Ash, all right?”

  “So where would I go?”

  It was a reasonable question. Into Portillo? Back toward the relief camps, the roadblock? I wasn’t sure what to tell her.

  But then the woman outside screamed again, and I couldn’t help thinking that it might be Kaitlin out there. It didn’t sound like Kaitlin’s voice. But I hadn’t heard Kait scream since she was a toddler.

  I told Ashlee I’d be careful but if anything happened the important thing was for her to get away — maybe hide the van closer to town and keep an eye out for Hitch come morning.

  I left the vehicle and eased the door shut behind me. When I was a few feet away I signaled for her to hit the lights.

  The van’s high beams sprang out of the starry night like military searchlights, and in the stillness the engine roared like some throaty wild animal. The woman and her two assailants froze in the glare, not more than ten yards distant.

  All three were young, possibly Adam’s age. The men were engaged in an act of forcible intercourse. The woman was on her back in the weeds, one man pinning her shoulders while the other parted her legs. She had turned her face away from the light, while the men had raised their heads like prairie dogs sensing a predator.

  They seemed not to be armed, which made me feel a little giddy with the weight of the pistol in my hand.

  I raised the weapon toward their dumbfounded faces. I would have ordered them to get away from her — that was the plan — but I was nervous, and my finger twitched on the trigger and the pistol went off unexpectedly.

  I nearly dropped it. I don’t know where the bullet went… it didn’t hit anyone. But it scared them very effectively. I was still half-blind from the muzzle flash but
I tracked the would-be rapists as they ran for their car. I wondered if I should fire again, but I was afraid that might happen whether I wanted it to or not. (Hitch told me later the gun had been modified for low trigger resistance and had probably been used for criminal purposes before we got hold of it.)

  The two men leaped into their automobile with a startling economy of motion. If there had been weapons in the car I might have been in trouble — that occurred to me, belatedly — but if they had them they didn’t use them. The car came alive and roared off toward town, spraying gravel against the stacked chicken coops.

  Which left only the girl.

  I turned back to her, remembering to keep the muzzle of the gun toward the ground this time. My right wrist still ached with the shock of the unexpected recoil.

  The girl had stood up in the blaze of the headlights and was already buttoning a pair of torn Levis. She looked at me with an expression I could not quite fathom — mostly fear, I think; partly shame. She was young. Her face was smudged and tear-stained. She was so thin she looked almost anorexic, and there was a long clotting scratch across her left breast.

  I cleared my throat and said, “They’re gone — you’re safe now.”

  Maybe she didn’t speak English. More likely, she didn’t believe me. She turned and ran into the high weeds parallel to the road, exactly like a frightened animal.

  I took a few steps but didn’t follow her. The night was too dark, and I didn’t want to leave Ashlee alone.

  I hoped the girl would be safe, unlikely as that seemed.

  Sleep, after that, was out of the question. I joined Ashlee up front and we sat together, vigilant and pumped with adrenaline. Ash put a cigarette between her lips and ignited the tip with a tiny propane lighter. We didn’t talk about the assault we had both witnessed, but a short time later, when the eastern sky began to show a faint blue, Ashlee said this:

  “You have to not ask her. Kaitlin, I mean.”

  “Ask her what?”

  But it was a stupid question.

  “Probably you don’t need this advice. It’s not like I’m a model parent or anything. But when you get Kaitlin back, don’t interrogate her. Maybe she’ll talk to you or maybe she won’t, but let her make that decision for herself.”

  I said, “If she needs help—”

  “If she needs help, she’ll ask for it.”

  I left that alone. I didn’t want to speculate about what might or might not have happened to Kait. Ashlee had said what she meant to say and she turned back to the window, leaving me to wonder what had prompted her advice, what she herself might once have endured and refused to confess.

  We dozed while the sun began to make the world warm. Hitch tapped on the window glass a little later, startling us out of sleep. Ashlee reached for the pistol but I caught her wrist.

  I rolled the window down.

  “Impressive guarding,” Hitch said. “I could have killed both of you.”

  “Did you find them?”

  “Kaitlin’s there. Adam, too. You want to feed me? We have a good deal of work ahead of us.”

  Sixteen

  We entered the village of Portillo slowly, crawling the van through foot traffic, down a single lane between parked or abandoned hajist vehicles. By morning light the main road was as crowded as a carnival midway and resembled one, though the crowds were subdued in the aftermath of the night. Pilgrims walked dazedly and aimlessly or slept on bedrolls under the town’s tattered awnings, safer in the daylight than in the dark. Water-sellers trawled the crowd with plastic gallon jugs slung over their shoulders. Kuinist flags and symbols had been draped from the upper windows of buildings. Local sanitary facilities had been overwhelmed and the smell of the trench latrines was pervasive and awful. Most of these people had arrived within the last three days, but there were already cases of dysentery, Hitch said, showing up at the relief tents.

  Adam and company were camped west of the main drag. During the night Hitch had spoken briefly to Adam and not at all to Kait, though he had confirmed her presence. Adam had agreed to speak to Ashlee but had been reluctant to grant permission for Kait to see me. Adam was clearly in charge and speaking on behalf of the others, this information made Ashlee hang her head and mutter to herself.

  Also present, at least on the outskirts of Portillo, were members of the press, riding bullet-resistant uplinked recording trucks with polarized windows. I had mixed feelings about that. In Sue’s interpretation of the Chronoliths and their metacausality, the press acted as an important amplifier in the feedback loop. It was precisely the globally broadcast image of these objects that served to burn the impression of Kuin’s invincibility into the collective imagination.

  But what was the alternative? Repression, denial? That was the genius of Kuin’s monuments: They were grotesquely obvious, impossible to ignore.

  “We get there,” Hitch said, “you let me do a little talking, then we’ll see what happens.”

  “Not much of a plan,” I said.

  “As much of a plan as we’ve got.”

  We parked the van as close as possible to the cluster of tents where Adam and his friends had camped alongside dozens of others. The tents were almost ridiculously gaudy in this dry place, blue and red and yellow nylon mushrooming out of the packed earth of a masonry yard parking lot. Ashlee began to crane her head anxiously, looking for Adam. Of Kaitlin there was no sign.

  “Stay here,” Hitch said. “I’ll negotiate us in.”

  “Negotiate?” Ash asked, faintly indignant.

  Hitch gave her a cautionary look and closed the door behind him.

  He walked a few paces to an octagonal shelter of photosensitive silver mylar and called out something inaudible. Within moments the flap opened and Adam Mills stepped out. I knew it was Adam by the sound of Ashlee’s indrawn breath.

  He was dressed in dust-caked khakis but seemed essentially healthy. He was skinny but tall, almost as tall as Hitch, a black backpack looped over his shoulders. He didn’t even glance at the van, just waited for Hitch to speak his piece. I couldn’t see his face in any great detail at this distance, but he was evidently relaxed, not frightened.

  Ashlee reached for the door but I pulled her hand away. “Give it a minute.”

  Hitch talked. Adam talked. Finally Hitch pulled a roll of bills out of his back pocket and counted them into Adam’s palm.

  Ashlee said, “What’s that, a bribe? He’s bribing Adam?”

  I said it looked that way.

  “For what? For you to see Kait? Me to see him?”

  “I don’t know, Ash.”

  “God, that’s so—” She lacked a word for her contempt.

  “It’s strange times,” I said. “Strange things happen.”

  She slumped back in her seat, humiliated, and was silent until Hitch beckoned us out. I set the van’s security protocols, unlikely as that was to afford us any real protection. Outside, the air was dry and the stench was overwhelming. A few yards away a young man in once-white trousers was shoveling loose earth into a ditch latrine.

  Ashlee approached Adam tentatively. I don’t know, but I suspect, that she was reluctant to face him now that the longed-for moment had finally arrived… reluctant to face the futility of the meeting, the fact of his resistance. She put her hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. Adam gazed back impassively. He was young, but he wasn’t a child. He gave no ground, only waited for Ashlee to speak, which I suppose was what he had been paid to do.

  The two of them walked a few paces away down a trail between the tents. Hitch said to me, “It’s a fucking lost cause. She just doesn’t know it.”

  “What about Kait?”

  He gestured at a small sun-yellow tent.

  I found myself thinking of the Cairo arrival of three years ago. Sue Chopra had obtained video recordings of the event from a dozen different angles, in all its phases — the calm before the manifestation, the cold shock and the thermal winds, a column of ice and dust boiling into a dry blue sky
, and finally the Chronolith itself, glaringly bright, embedded in the sprawl of suburban Cairo like a sword driven into a rock.

  (And who will pull this sword from the stone? The pure of heart, perhaps. Absent parents and failed husbands need not apply.)

  I suppose it was the incongruity I had found so striking about Cairo: the tremulous waves of desert heat; the ice. The layers of mismatched history, office towers erected over the rubble of a thousand-year autarchy, and this newest of monuments, Kuin ponderous and remote as a pharaoh on his frigid throne.

  I don’t know why the image came to me so vividly. Perhaps because this dry Sonoran village was about to receive its own throne of ice, and maybe there was already the faintest chill in the air, a shiver of premonition, the bitter smell of the future.

  “Kaitlin?” I said.

  A vagrant wind lifted the flap of the tent. I squatted and put my head inside.

  Kait was alone, uncurling from a nest of dirty blankets. She blinked in the yellow nimbus of sun through nylon. Her face was thin. Her eyes were banded with fatigue.

  She looked older than I remembered her, and I told myself that was because of what she must have endured on this haj, the hunger and the anxiety, but the fact was that she had slipped away from me, grown out of my mental image of her well before she left Minneapolis.

  She looked at me a long time, her expression evolving through incredulity, suspicion, gratitude, relief, guilt. She said, “Daddy?”