The Chronoliths (27 page)

In any case, he debited more money in a couple of hours than I had earned over the course of the last year. He left a contact number with the distributor and told him someone would be in touch to arrange delivery, waved his good right hand at the receptionist, and sauntered back out into the heat. In the van I said, “You’re doing what, exactly—digging a hole and lighting it up?”

“We’re a little more ambitious than that, Scotty. We’re going to bring down one of those Kuin stones.”

“With a handful of earthmovers?”

“That’s just filling in the shortfall. We’ve got very nearly a battalion of military engineers and gear ready to roll when Sue says the word.”

“You seriously mean to demolish a Chronolith?”

“Sue says we can. She thinks.”

“Which one were you planning to take down?”

“The one in Wyoming.”

“There is no Chronolith in Wyoming.”

“Not yet there isn’t.”

Hitch explained all this as he understood it. Sue filled in the details later.

It had been a busy few years for Sulamith Chopra.

“You dropped out of it,” Hitch said, “made a little life for yourself with Ashlee, and more power to you, Scotty, but the rest of us didn’t exactly stand still just because you stopped breeding our code.”

I did not then and do not now understand the physics of the Chronoliths, except in the pop-science sense. I know the technology involves the manipulation of Calabi-Yau spaces, which are the smallest constituent parts of both matter and energy, and that it uses a technique called slow fermionic decohesion to do this at practical energy levels. As to what
really
happens down there in the tangled origami of spacetime, I remain as ignorant as a newborn infant. They say nine-dimensional geometry is a language unto itself. I don’t happen to speak it.

But Sue did, and I think the depth of her understanding was unappreciated. The federal government had both cultivated her as an ally and pursued her as a liability, but they had also consistently underestimated her. She was so completely at ease with Calabi-Yau geometry that I came to believe a part of her lived in that world—she had inhabited these abstractions the way an astronaut might inhabit a strange and distant planet. There is no such thing as a paradox, Sue once said to me. A paradox, she said, is just the illusion created when you look at an
n
-dimensional problem through a three-dimensional window. “All the parts connect, Scotty, even if we can’t see the loops and knots. Past and future, good and evil, here and there. It’s all one thing.”

In more particular terms, Sue’s collaborators had already succeeded in producing tau-turbulent events on a small scale. Grains of sand to Kuin’s Chronoliths, of course, but in principle the same. Now Sue believed she could disrupt the arrival of a Chronolith by performing this same manipulation in the physical space where the Chronolith was about to manifest.

She had been urging this action for most of a year, but the global systems that monitored and predicted arrivals were either highly classified or in disarray, or both, and it had taken time for the military bureaucracy to examine her proposals and approve them. Wyoming was the first real opportunity, Hitch said—and maybe the last. And even Wyoming wasn’t without its dangers; it had become a mecca for Copperhead militias of various (often incompatible) political stripes. The good news was a generous three-week arrival-warning window, plus full military support. The effort was not being publicized, for fear of attracting yet more Kuinists; it would be stealthy, but it would not be halfhearted.

That was all well and good, I told Hitch, but it didn’t explain why I was sitting in his truck listening to what sounded increasingly like a sales pitch.

Hitch became solemn. “Scotty,” he said, “this isn’t anything like a pitch. At least not from me. I like you as a person but I’m not convinced you’d be an asset to this particular expedition. I respect all that you achieved here, and God knows it’s hard enough keeping a family together in this day and age, but what we need are technicians and engineers and guys who can handle heavy equipment, not somebody who sells secondhand crap at a flea market.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No offense. I mean, am I wrong?”

“No, you’re not wrong.”

“It’s Sue who wants you with us, for reasons she just sort of hints at.”

“You mentioned an arrow.”

“Well, it’s more like a game of connect-the-dots. Can I tell you a story?”

“If you keep your eyes on the road.” Half the streets in Minneapolis had reverted to their unmonitored status, nothing to prevent a collision but a vehicle’s own built-ins. Hitch had come close enough to a peddler’s cart to set the proximity alarms shrilling.

“I hate traffic,” he said.

He had been in El Paso six months ago, doing his thing on Sue’s behalf, tracking down death threats she had been receiving at her home terminal, an address no one but a few close associates should have had.

Morris Torrance was theoretically in charge of Sue’s security, but it was always Hitch who did the legwork. He was well-connected in Kuinist circles and he possessed enough street credibility to impress any number of thugs. He was good in a fight and no doubt handy with weapons of all kinds, though I didn’t ask.

Morris had traced the threats to one of the big Kuinist cells operating out of Texas, and Hitch went to El Paso to ingratiate himself with the local street armies. “But I made the obvious mistake,” he told me. “I asked too many questions too soon. You can get away with that if the mood is right. But those Texans are fucking paranoid. Somewhere down the road, somebody decided I was a bad risk.”

In the end, five Kuinist shock troops had dragged him into the back lot of an auto-repair shop and questioned him with the aid of a saw-toothed machete.

Hitch held up his left hand and showed me the stumps of his first and second fingers. Both had been severed below the knuckle. Both had been carefully sutured, but the cut had obviously been rough. I thought about that. I thought about the pain.

“Don’t flinch,” he said. “It could have been worse. I managed to get away.”

“You acquired that limp at the same time?”

“A small-caliber bullet in the muscle tissue. As I was leaving the scene. They had this ancient pistol, some twentieth-century junk piece with the stock half rusted off. But the thing is, Scotty, I recognized the one who shot me.”

“You recognized him?”

“And I think he knew me, too, or at least knew I seemed familiar. If he hadn’t been a little shook up he might have been a better shot. It was Adam Mills.”

I scooted away from him almost instinctively, pushed myself up against the passenger door, feeling cold despite the summer heat.

“Can’t be,” I said.

“Fuck me if it wasn’t. He didn’t die in Portillo—he must have got out with the refugees.”

“And you ran into him in El Paso? Just like that?”

“It’s not a coincidence, Sue says. It’s tau turbulence. It’s a meaningful synchronicity. And we connect to Adam right through
you
, Scotty. Adam Mills is the arrow, and he’s pointed straight at you.”

“I don’t accept that.”

“You don’t have to, far as I’m concerned. I didn’t want to accept that bullet in my leg, either. If it matters, I had to kill a couple of people to get this information to Sue. What she makes of it, what you make of it, that’s not my business.”

“You killed a couple of people?”

“What exactly do you think I do, Scotty? Travel around the country using moral suasion? I’ve killed people, yeah.” He shook his head. “This is exactly what makes me nervous. You look at me and you see this big colorful friend you used to hang out with in Chumphon. But I had killed a man before I ever met you, Scotty. Sue knows that. I was dealing drugs back there, you know, not retailing swimwear. You get in situations sometimes. Then and since. I don’t have your kind of conscience. I know you think you’re some kind of moral leper because you fucked up with Janice and Kait, but deep down, Scotty, you’re a family man. That’s all.”

“So what does Sue want with me?”

“I wish I knew.”

The Marriott didn’t attract many guests in these diminished days. Sue was alone in the pool and sauna room, though Morris Torrance stood watch outside the entrance.

She looked up at me from the roiling waters of the whirlpool bath. She wore a fire-engine-red single-piece bathing suit and a yellow elastic hair cap, neither item flattering to her, but Sue had always been indifferent to fashion. Even in the whirlpool she wore her huge archaic eyeglasses, framed in what looked like scuffed black Bakelite. She said, “You should try this, Scotty; it’s very relaxing.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Hitch has been talking to you, I gather?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Well, give me a minute.”

She lifted her pear-shaped body out of the Jacuzzi and peeled off the headgear, her hair springing out like a caged animal. “I like the deck chairs by the window,” she said, “if you’re not too warm in those clothes.”

“I’m all right,” I said, though the air was tropical and reeked of chlorine. The discomfort seemed somehow appropriate.

She stretched out a bath towel and seated herself regally. “Hitch told you about Adam Mills?”

“Yes, he did. I haven’t told Ashlee yet.”

“Don’t, Scotty.”

“Don’t tell Ashlee? Why, are you planning to tell her yourself?”

“Certainly not, and I hope you won’t, either.”

“She thinks he may be dead. She has a right to know if that’s not true.”

“Adam is alive, no doubt about it. But you have to ask yourself: What purpose would it serve to tell Ashlee? Is it really better for Ash to know that Adam is alive and that he’s a murderer?”

“A murderer?
Is
he?”

“Yes. We established that fact beyond any doubt. Adam Mills is a devoted hard-core Kuinist and a multiple murderer, a hatchetman for one of the most vicious P-K gangs in the country. Do you think Ashlee needs to know that? Do you want to tell her her son is leading the kind of life that will likely get him killed or imprisoned in the very near future? And if that happens, do you want to watch her grieve all over again?”

I hesitated. I had been putting myself in Ashlee’s position: If I had been wondering for seven years whether Kait had survived Portillo, any information would have been welcome.

But Adam was not Kaitlin.

“Look at what she’s gained since Portillo. A job, a family, a real life—
equilibrium
, Scotty, in a world where that’s a rare commodity. Obviously you know her better than I do. But think about it before you take all that away from her again.”

I decided to shelve the question. It wasn’t what had brought me here, not primarily. “I’d be taking all that away from her just as surely if I went out west with you—which is what Hitch claims you want.”

“Yes, but only for a little while. Scotty, will you please sit down? I hate talking
up
. It makes me nervous.”

I pulled a second deck chair in front of hers. Beyond the steam-hazed window, the city baked in afternoon sunlight. Sunlight glittered off windows, rooftop arrays, mica-studded sidewalks.

“Now listen to me,” she said. “This is important, and I want you to keep an open mind, hard as that may be under the circumstances. I know there are a lot of things we’ve kept from you, but please understand, we had to be careful. We had to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind about Kuin—no, don’t act insulted, stranger things have happened—or that you weren’t caught up in Copperhead circles like Janice’s husband, whatsisname, Whitman. Morris keeps insisting we can’t trust
anyone
, though I told him you’d be all right. Because I know you, Scotty. You’ve been in the tau turbulence almost from the beginning. Both of us have.”

“We have a sacred kinship. Bullshit, Sue.”

“It’s
not
bullshit. It’s not just conjectural, either. Admittedly, I’m interpreting, but the math suggests—”

“I really don’t care what the math suggests.”

“Then just listen to me, and I’ll tell you what I think is the truth.”

She looked away, her eyes distantly focused. I didn’t like the expression on her face. It was earnest and aloof, almost inhuman.

“Scotty,” she said, “I don’t believe in destiny. It’s an archaic concept. People’s lives are an incredibly complex phenomenon, far less predictable than the lives of stars. But I also know that tau turbulence splashes causality up and down the timeline. Is it really a coincidence that you and Hitch both ended up working for me, or that Adam Mills shared the turbulence with us in Portillo? In either case you can construct a logical sequence of events that’s almost but not quite satisfying as an explanation. I connected with Hitch Paley through the events at Chumphon, not quite at random; you met Ashlee because both of you had children caught up in the same haj, fine. But, Scotty, step back and take a longer look. It knits together way too neatly. The antecedent causes are insufficient. There has to be a
postcedent
cause.”

Hitch tangling with Adam, for that matter. More than coincidence. But also uninterpretable. “That’s an item of faith,” I said softly.

“Then look at
me
, Scotty! Look at the power I hold in these two hands!” She turned her pale palms up. “The power to bring down a fucking Chronolith! That makes me
important
. It makes me a player in the resolution of these events. Scotty, I
am
a postcedent cause!”

“There is such a thing,” I said, “as megalomania.”

“Except I didn’t make this up, any of this! It’s not a fantasy that I happen to understand Chronolith physics as well as anyone on the planet—and I’m not being vain, either. It’s not a fantasy that you and Hitch were at Chumphon and Portillo or that you and I were at Jerusalem. Those are
facts
, Scotty, and they demand an interpretation that goes beyond happenstance and blind chance.”

“Why do you want me in Wyoming?”

She blinked. “But I don’t. I don’t
want
you there. You’re probably safer here. But I can’t ignore the facts, either. I believe—and yes, this
is
intuition, probably unscientific, but I don’t care—I believe you have a role to play in the endgame of the Chronoliths. For good or ill, I don’t really know, though I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me or to further the interests of Kuin. I think it would be better if you came with us because you carry something special with you. The fact of Adam Mills is like a billboard. Chumphon, Jerusalem, Portillo, Wyoming.
You
. You may not like it, Scotty, but you
matter
.” She shrugged. “That’s what I believe, and I believe it very fervently. But if I can’t convince you to come, you won’t come, and maybe that’s what our destiny is, maybe that’s how we’re tied together, by your refusal.”