by Jon Steele
“Sorry about the front door. It was locked.”
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself with the door, Mr. Harper. Easily repairable,” the inspector said, brushing limestone dust from the sleeves of his cashmere coat. He stepped onto the square and walked to the lantern. He picked it up and held it high to cast as much light as possible on Harper and the sleeping girl. “But perhaps you would care to explain what on earth you are doing with Mademoiselle Mínervudóttir?”
“Sorry?”
“Le guet de Lausanne.”
“I got the name, Inspector, it’s the question I’m struggling with.”
“You appear to be holding her in your arms.”
The cop’s thinking came through loud and clear. Harper’s kind were forbidden to touch the locals without clearance from management. It’s what started this bloody war to end all wars. The first of Harper’s kind, two hundred of them, were sent to paradise to watch over the creation. After a few thousand years of watching, the Two Hundred decided the local females of the species were the business and that ruling this cosmic outpost could be profitable. The Two Hundred took the forms of men, propagated their own race, and infected the creation with greed and fear. Book of Enoch: chapter six, verse two, Harper thought. Read all about it. Wasn’t supposed to be this way.
“Appearances can be deceiving, Inspector.”
“Do tell.”
“I’m not touching her, she’s touching me.”
The inspector raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“She passed out at the end of the operation and fell into me.”
“Passed out?”
“That’s right. Shouldn’t be a surprise to you, seeing as she’d been—”
“Mission-activated,” Krinkle interrupted.
Inspector Gobet looked at him. So did Harper.
“That is, Boz—uh, Inspector, we got here looking for Monsieur Gabriel, found the girl instead. Took us a while to understand she’d been mission-activated and that she’s extremely sensitive, more than most of the children. Maybe it was stress, maybe nervousness, but I can verify she passed out and fell into Brother Harper. No unauthorized physical contact. Simple as that.”
The inspector gave it three seconds, then turned to Harper. “Estne verum?”
Harper flashed back on his timeline, saw the girl’s glassy eyes, juiced into a trance, thinking she was delivering messages from the dead lad, raising the lantern and releasing the first fire of creation on her own. He glanced at Krinkle, caught unspoken words: It’s true enough for now, brother. Harper looked at Gobet.
“Verum est.”
The inspector could wrench the details from the prefrontal cortex of Harper’s brain in half a second. It would be painful, and Harper was sure it was coming. Instead, Gobet turned to Karoliina and offered her the lantern.
“Mademoiselle, would you and the members of your orchestra escort le guet to her quarters in the belfry now? You will find a box of chamomile tea for her in the loge. Brew a cup for her and keep her company through the evening. See to it that she remains calm after the stress of today.” The inspector nodded toward Krinkle. “Your equivocating ringleader is correct. Mademoiselle Mínervudóttir is sensitive. She requires a certain level of care.”
“Yes, sir,” Karoliina said.
She pulled a Smith & Wesson from her sheepskin coat and handed it to the tallest of the rockers. “Secure the belfry, but stay out of her eyeline. I’ll check in after the three o’clock bells when I put her to sleep. Signals?”
“The call is ‘side one, track three.’”
“Answer?”
“‘Black Metallic,’” the rocker said.
Karoliina smiled. “Nice tune. Nähdään.” Later.
“Nähdään.”
The rockers checked their weapons and slipped away. Karoliina stepped up to the crossing square and took the lantern from Gobet.
“Do take care with that, mademoiselle. We have never used the first fire to call the hour.”
“But it’s a dark and stormy night.”
“Quite.”
Karoliina walked to Harper, lantern in hand. She stopped in front of him, looked at le guet.
“How is she?”
“Exhausted,” Harper said.
“I can see that. Anything else I need to know?”
“Like what?”
Karoliina smiled. “Something she may have forgotten under the stress of being mission-activated, of course. Something I can replant in her dreams when I put her to sleep. Something kind.”
Harper thought about it, wondering when the last time “something kind” was part of his job description. He flashed his timeline, saw Karoliina on the magic bus to Lausanne. She called children like the girl and the lad, like all the children from Mon Repos, “half-kinds.” A better word for children born on the right side of the light, she said. And she said it was time for the likes of Krinkle and Harper to get with the twenty-first century and stop calling them “half-breeds.” Harper looked down at le guet, noticed how graceful the young girl’s hands were, how long the fingers, how they held on to him.
“She asked if I’d come to the belfry to listen to her play the cello for one of the bells. Marie-Madeleine, the big one.”
“And you said?”
Harper looked at Karoliina. “I said I would. One night.”
“Wow.”
“Wow what?”
“Wow you.” Karoliina rested the lantern on the floor and knelt before le guet. She lifted the japa mala beads, rubbed them together in her hands, and filled the air with the scent of tulasi wood. “Vakna, litla.”
Le guet opened her eyes to the voice calling in her mother tongue.
“Hver ert þú?”
“My name is Karoliina. I’m from Finland.”
Le guet rubbed her eyes and yawned. “As the bird flies, Finland is one thousand three hundred and sixty-eight miles from Iceland.”
“Yes, it is. But how do you know this?”
“I like to look at maps in school.”
“I like looking at maps, too. They tell where you are in the world.”
“That’s what my teachers at Mon Repos say. They are all dead now. They were killed with the children.”
Karoliina touched the girl’s knee. “Yes, but you’re not alone. I’m going to be your teacher now, litla. We can look at maps and read stories and go for walks in the day.”
Le guet smiled and tilted her head. “How did you know my nickname is litla? No one calls me that in Lausanne. Only my mother did. In Selfoss, before she died.”
Karoliina stood, held out her hand to the girl. “Why don’t you take your lantern and show me the way to the belfry? I’ll make you a cup of tea and we’ll talk.”
The girl looked at Harper.
“All’s well, mademoiselle. You go with her.”
Le guet let go of Harper’s coat and took Karoliina’s hand. She stood, picked up her lantern, and allowed herself to be led away. Then she stopped and turned back to Harper.
“It was very nice to meet you, monsieur.”
Harper heard the lad’s voice again. He scanned the girl’s eyes. They carried no remnants of what had happened in the cathedral just minutes ago. He thought maybe it was better there wasn’t a chance to ask her about the nature of reincarnated souls—one soul in particular.
“And you, mademoiselle.”
Darkness had seeped into the nave, and Harper watched the two women walk away in a pool of lantern light, disappearing behind stone pillars, then reappearing between the arches of the north aisle. He heard their voices:
. . . i like your beads. they smell nice . . .
. . . i can teach you to use them if you like . . .
. . . to do what . . .
. . . nice things . . .
. . . okay. we go this way now . . .
The women stopped at a narrow wooden door in the south wall. There was a chiming sound as le guet pulled a ring of keys from her cloak and unlocked it. The women
crossed through with the lantern and the door closed behind them—boom. A notion in Harper’s brain: With all the comings and goings and banging of doors, Lausanne Cathedral was like the grand concourse of a train station for angels and shadows and wandering souls. Someone said that once. The lad from the cathedral job maybe, before he was killed. Sounded like something he’d say.
ii
Harper looked at Inspector Gobet.
“Was she right about Mon Repos? They’re all dead?”
The inspector nodded. “Three hundred children, one hundred partisans caring for them. Monsieur Gabriel is on-site searching for remains. As you can imagine, it is a ghastly business.”
“And the other orphanages?” Krinkle said.
“Same scenes. We are facing the hard fact that many innocent souls will be lost before the comforters find them.”
Harper looked at the both of them. “What other orphanages?”
The inspector climbed to the altar and took hold of the sanctuary lamp. A cumbersome thing it was. Solid brass, a meter and a half tall, a votive candle burning in a vase of bloodred glass atop it. The inspector lifted it with the greatest of ease. He stood it under the lantern tower and it brightened the crossing square a little.
“There were four more orphanages for the children of our kind, Mr. Harper. Three more in Europe, one in Hong Kong, all of them twice the size of Mon Repos.”
“Twice the size?”
The inspector did not respond.
Harper leaned forward, rested his arms on his knees, and cupped his bandaged hands together.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but after the cathedral job you said it was a one-off. You also said, if I’m not bloody mistaken, that you shut it down years ago.”
“I don’t care for your tone of voice, Mr. Harper.”
“Turns out we’ve used the locals to create our own master race on a grand scale, same as the enemy, and you’re worried about my bloody tone?”
“I remind you the children of our kind were not bred to wreak havoc in the world so that we might rule over it. It was an experiment of desperation following the decimation of our kind. And I did shut it down, the moment it became obvious our children all shared the same genetic trait.”
Emerald green, almond-shaped.
“They have our eyes.”
“Yes, Mr. Harper, they have our eyes. Combined with their unforeseen talents and sensitivities, the children made for easy prey. I established the orphanages to protect them. Or so I had hoped.”
Harper looked at Krinkle. “How long have you known all this?”
“Long enough,” the roadie said.
“And given the score, you didn’t think it worth a mention?”
“Given the score, there wasn’t time to mention it. Besides, I wasn’t cleared to pass along the info to anyone, including you.”
Harper sat back in his bench. The nave echoed with the sound of creaking wood. “That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“You found time to pass along the info on the kid in Portland. The one your dream catcher knew about before our own kind did.”
Krinkle seemed confused.
“Let me help you with your timeline,” Harper said. “I haul Astruc onto your bus, you and I talk about the prophecy. Get the picture yet?”
Krinkle’s expression read that he did not. Harper continued.
“First I heard of the prophecy was in Montségur, from a man who made angels out of scrap iron. Turns out he’s the only living descendant of the Cathars. The prophecy was a family secret handed down from the eighth century. But you already knew about it. A child conceived of light, born to guide the locals through the next stage of evolution, you said. Your dream catcher spotted him in downtown Portland, knew the child was the one she’d seen in her dreams. You reported the intel to HQ. A boy, eighteen months old maybe.”
Krinkle pulled at his beard. “I told you that?”
“You did. Of course you were drinking one of management’s teas at the time. Babbling like a speed freak, you called it.”
Krinkle looked at Gobet. Oops.
The inspector shrugged. “It happens, especially with that particular blend. But seeing as you believe yourself to be in the know, Mr. Harper, why don’t you let your imagination run with it?”
Harper watched lines of causality intersect in his eyes.
“You didn’t mention an orphanage in the States, so I’d say the child was held in a secure location, protected by a time warp and one of your Swiss Guard tactical units, most probably. The fact Krinkle’s dream catcher saw the kid in Portland, out in the open, says two things: the secure location is somewhere within driving distance of Portland, somewhere that doesn’t exist on a map. It also suggests the mother is with the child and oblivious to the fact she’s living in limbo, a few minutes behind real time. Your tacticals on-site take them out now and again to give them a feeling of normalcy. As a complete wild guess, I’d say you’re the only member of management who knows the location, or that the kid even exists. At least you thought you were. Doesn’t matter given the big question, does it?”
“That being?”
“Thousands of innocent children, hundreds of partisans were slaughtered at five different sites around the world to get at one little boy you had stashed in the States. At least that’s the score I’m reading at the moment. Tell me, was it worth it?”
The inspector bristled. “Do not dare to cheapen the loss of their souls with sarcasm, Mr. Harper.”
“I’m not. I’m asking the question in their name, before their souls and names are forgotten forever. That’s what happens, isn’t it?”
The inspector didn’t answer.
Harper scanned the massive interior of the cathedral: the vault, the upper balconies, the nave bound on two sides by seven great arches. A bloody big, dark place it is when the sun goes down, he thought. He looked at Gobet.
“You put the first fire in the belfry tonight, Inspector. You did that for a reason. You’re hoping it will guide the children’s souls to the cathedral. I realize it’s hard to tell without Monsieur Gabriel at his post, but who knows? Maybe a few souls are already here, hiding in the shadows and waiting for comfort, or an explanation.”
The inspector studied the flame of the sanctuary lamp. He held his hands above it, moved them slowly to cast shadows into the lantern tower above.
“The enemy embedded a virus in the SX grid,” he said. “Once activated, it was unstoppable. We lost operational control of the grid just as the attacks began in a wave from Hong Kong to Lausanne. Same attack profile in each instance. The time warp above a site was disrupted for sixty seconds, giving the enemy time to get inside, reset the access codes, and lock us out. When Mon Repos was hit, the protected zone around the cathedral became highly unstable. Every line of causality I could see indicated the cathedral would be next. At this point our mechanics regained partial control of the grid and I ordered them to reinforce the cathedral’s defenses. In doing so, I played into the enemy’s hands.”
The inspector stopped talking and lowered his hands to his sides.
Harper filled in the silence. “The moment you reinforced the cathedral, the enemy went for the real target. Ground zero was in the States. The slaughter of the innocents around the world was a feint.”
The inspector nodded. “I warned the tactical unit on-site, only to learn they were already coming under the heaviest attack so far. Communications became difficult before ceasing altogether.”
Krinkle got up from his bench and joined Gobet at the sanctuary lamp. The roadie looked up into the lantern tower, read the shadows still hanging against the milk-colored windows of the lantern tower.
“Want me to take over awhile?” he said.
“Thank you,” the inspector said.
Krinkle began to move his hands over the lamp in the same pattern as the cop. Harper, still on his bench at the edge of the crossing square, leaned down and looked up into the lantern tower. He couldn’t g
et the angle to see what the roadie was up to; he sat back. The bench creaked and echoed through the nave again.
“What’s the latest recon from ground zero?” Harper said.
The inspector shook his head. “Unlike the orphanages, we have not been able to reenter the American site to assess the situation.”
“Why not?”
“As you already imagined, Mr. Harper, the location doesn’t exist on a map, it exists in a temporal limbo, not a few minutes, but a few hours behind real time. When the enemy retreated, they reversed polarity in the time warp mechanisms to create a gravitational singularity over the site. We’re stabilizing the situation as best we can, but the pressure of real time is bearing down.”
Singularity . . . There’s that word again, Harper thought. A place in space-time where mass is ground down to a point of infinite density and zero volume. Anything, everything, is suspended in a moment of time with no way of escape. Then he flashed why the word had planted itself in his consciousness. He had already received a “no way out, singularity ahead” notice from Inspector Gobet one starry night in the vineyards above Lac Léman, just after the Paris job. Seems his own eternal being was trapped in the physical form of Captain Jay Michael Harper, the inspector explained over tea. And sooner rather than later the weight of the dead man’s form would crash down. Wham—lights-out. An “undefined metaphysical condition,” the cop called it in the vineyards of Grandvaux. “Royally buggered” was the diagnosis Harper found more appropriate just now. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“The location will collapse in on itself. It’ll be no better than a dead zone.”