City At The End Of Time (30 page)

“You looked me up in the phone book, right?”

“I went by the university,” Daniel said. “Maybe all physicists stay the same, in all possible worlds. Maybe physicists tie up the important threads.” He held out his long arms, pulled back dirty sleeves, and grinned, showing rotten teeth.

Johnson looked him over, trying to hide his disgust, and decided he was not a threat, just peculiar. “I don’t
do
a lot of physics,” he said. “Tell me what you need. A little money?”

“It’s not about money. It’s about knowledge. I know things you’ll want to know.”

Johnson snapped his fingers. “You’re the guy off the freeway. The beggar.” His expression reverted to contempt. “Don’t tell me you’re shaking us down in our houses.”

“I need someone to listen. Someone who might know what I’m talking about. You can help me figure out whether it’s going to happen—or more likely, when.”

Johnson’s cheeks were pinking. Impatient, irritated, more than a little concerned. Feeling protective of someone else in the house, someone important to him.

“Most people don’t know what the indicators are,” Daniel said. “But things in this strand are definitely going wrong.”

Johnson screwed up his face. “If you don’t want money, we’re done. I don’t have a lot of time.”

“None of us do, Fred.”

Johnson lowered his voice and glanced left, toward the kitchen. “Get off my porch.”

Daniel tried to read this reaction—the words were strong, but Johnson was not a violent man. Daniel knew he couldn’t afford to be punched in the face or hauled in by the cops. He wasn’t at all well. At the very least, he needed a hospital, a good doctor—and at the most—

He needed Fred.

A woman walked up behind Johnson, curious—younger, late twenties, with reddish-blond hair cut short, high cheeks, a long chin, fresh-looking, pretty. “Who’s come calling, honey?” she asked, and put both hands on Fred’s shoulder, sizing up Daniel.

Daniel blinked aside tears and tried desperately to focus. “Mary,” he said. “My God, you
married
him. That’s different. That’s great.”

Her eyes changed instantly. “How do you know us?” she asked, voice hard. “Close the door, Fred.”

“Mary, it’s
me
, Daniel.” His knees buckled and he leaned on the doorjamb.

“Jesus,” she said. “He’s going to be sick.”

Sliding slowly, trying to hang on, Daniel said, “Just get me some water, let me rest. I know it’s crazy, I might be out of my head, but I know both of you.”

“I sure as hell don’t know you,” Mary said, but she went to fetch some water while Johnson helped prop Daniel up.

“Why’d you pick our porch, buddy?” Fred asked. “You don’t look good, and you sure as hell don’t smell good. We should just call an ambulance—or the cops.”

“No,” Daniel said, emphatic. “I’ve been walking all day. I’ll go away—after we talk, please.” He reached into his big jacket pocket and brought out the Bandle. He fanned the pages. “Look at this. Cryptids. Lazarids. So many. It won’t be long.”

Mary returned with a glass of water. Daniel drank quickly. She had curled her right hand into a fist and he couldn’t see a ring. “I won’t make a mess. Mary, I’m so happy to see you…are you two married?

Living together?”

“None of your business,” Mary said. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m your brother. I’m Daniel.”

Mary’s face turned red and her brows wrinkled. Her eyes went flat. She was no longer pretty. “Get out of here,” she demanded. “Goddamn it, get off our porch.”

“You better move along, buddy,” Fred said. “What the lady says.”

“Something must have happened,” Daniel said, looking between them, his vision fogging. “What was it?

What happened to
me
?”

“If you mean my
brother
, he died when he was nineteen years old,” Mary said. “And good riddance, the bastard. I’m calling the police.”

CHAPTER 27

Mr. Whitlow had changed considerably across the long century. To the young and desperate Max Glaucous, he had once been friendly enough and kind in his stern way. In those faded brown days, Mr. Whitlow (Glaucous never learned his first name) had been a tidy but conservative dresser, slight in stature but with a good, strong voice; physically strong as well, for all his apparent middle years. And of course that club foot, which still didn’t seem to slow him down. Now Mr. Whitlow’s face appeared pinched and pale in the hallway’s yellow light, and his eyes loomed large and black as a moonless night. He wore a tight gray suit with a narrow collar, white cuffs, links studded with large garnets, narrow black shoes. He had cut his glossy black hair straight across, and the white flesh of his neck skinnied above an awkward and hastily knotted bow tie. He carried a fedora now rather than a bowler, and stood at the front door with an air of nervous submission, lips wormed into an angular smile that pushed up his high cheeks but somehow did not pinch his eyes, giving him the look of a ghost-train maniac.

“Do you remember me, Max?” he asked.

“Mr. Whitlow,” Glaucous said. “Please come in.”

His visitor did not enter, even as Glaucous stood back. Instead, his wide eyes slowly surveyed the room beyond.

It was Shank who had referred him to Mr. Whitlow, and Whitlow who introduced him to the Moth—the elusive blind man in the old empty manor in Borehamwood, outside London. The blind man had approved him for service to the Livid Mistress.

“I am here at the behest of Mr. Shank,” Whitlow said. “He informs me you have recently arrived, and already you have flipped the heart of one of our operatives.”

“Ah,” Glaucous said, feeling his body go gelid. The Mistress’s implied disapproval could do that to the strongest of men. “I have never been punished for weeding our fertile ground.”

“Circumstance changes,” Whitlow said. “You have reduced our company in a crucial time.”

“I work my territory alone, Mr. Whitlow,” Glaucous restated with low dignity. Slowly, he was coming to realize the dreamlike impropriety of this meeting, and what that might signal—that his intuition had been correct. A noose was being cinched. Otherwise, why reveal so much? For now he knew that Mr. Shank still lived, still worked, and still found favor with the Chalk Princess—despite his apparent absorption in the most dreadful Gape that Glaucous had ever experienced, that dark day of August 9, 1924, in Rheims.

“There are discreet ways to make inquiries,” Whitlow said.

Glaucous knew he was being toyed with. “I have worked unsupervised for nine decades. I speak with my employer only when there is a delivery. My last delivery was several years ago, and there was no mention of change.”

Penelope watched through the crack of her bedroom door.

Sensing Glaucous’s quiet anger, Whitlow still refused to enter. Hunters always visit with caution, approach with deliberation. His smile had not changed, however. Glaucous wondered if the elder collector had become a marionette—a dandled sacrifice to hostility—not that he had ever witnessed such a thing, or even heard of it. But nothing could be ruled out where their Livid Mistress was concerned.

“How has it been for you, my boy?” Whitlow said, his throat bobbing.

“Fair to middling,” Glaucous said. “And you, sir?”

“Brambles, thorns, and nettles,” Whitlow said. “So many have been recalled, and yet…here we are. Have you visited the home country?”

“Not for years. Built up, I hear.”

“Unbearably. We have lived too long, Max.”

“You’re welcome to come in, if you wish, sir. My partner is under control.”

“Kindly spoken, Max. I will make my report, issue my invitation, and then we will be done for today.”

Whitlow grinned. His teeth were mottled ivory perfection. “It is good to know you are well. Refreshes so many memories.”

“Indeed, sir.”

Whitlow drew himself up and his smile crackled and straightened. “We have all been brought here—
all

.”

Glaucous quickly calculated how many that might be—based on years of speculation and observation. Dozens, certainly, perhaps hundreds.

“I am told little beyond that,” Whitlow said, “but I trust we are now clear how important your territory has become—fortunately for you. We have reports, and so do they.”

“They?” Glaucous asked. Penelope cleared her throat from the other room—listening behind the door. Whitlow solemnly shook his head. “We have both kissed our Lady’s hem, and our Lady’s hem sweeps close. How much do you already know, young Mr. Glaucous—sly nimrod that you are?”

Glaucous’s small eyes grew wider, though no match for Whitlow’s. “Is it over?” he asked, his throat dry.

“Terminus is a possibility.”

“Are the sum-runners here?”

“I am told, and feel, that a quorum will soon occupy our time. I beg of you, young
shikari
: do not remove more colleagues. Your thread is mine, and mine is wound inextricably with the Moth’s, our great conveyer. We are united in one fate.”

Whitlow bowed and backed away, never letting Glaucous out of his sight. “Must hurry on. Many hockshops to visit.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Close and lock the door, Max,” Whitlow said. “Let me hear the dead bolt shot home.”

“Of course,” Glaucous said. “Apologies.” He closed the door, latched it, and listened for the familiar, off-center
punk-thump
of Whitlow’s step as he hastened to the stairs. Even then Max’s fingers twitched to do the old man a mischief.

CHAPTER 28

Wallingford

After four hours of talk in the living room—preceded by a bowl of chicken broth, a glass of milk, and a glass of red wine, all of which Daniel gratefully accepted—Mary pulled her husband aside in the hallway to the kitchen and whispered harshly into his reddening ear, “What in
hell
are you doing? The man’s sick—he’s been stalking us, he thinks he’s my brother, for God’s sake—my
dead
brother.”

Fred was clearly chagrined, but could not contain his enthusiasm. “All true—but you should listen to what he’s been saying. I’m writing it down. He may be the most brilliant man I’ve ever met.”

“What’s so brilliant?”

“Fourier transforms—phi of k and r—maximum deviations from zero-energy states of overlapping discretely variable systems…”

“Crazy talk.”

“Is it?” Fred pulled back, indignant. “He’s feeling better, Mary—your soup is pulling him through. He’s had a hard time since he came here.”

“
Came
here? To our house?”

“Crossed over. He’s relaxed, he’s just getting started explaining to me—this could be something big.”

“He’s talking about
alternate worlds
, Fred.”

Fred made a wry face. “Nothing new to physics. And that may
be
crazy, but it’s the math—he’s either read unique stuff or done the work himself, ideas and solutions I’ve never heard of. Some of it’s even more brilliant than Sütõ’s solution for minimum total energy. Consider an infinite lattice of branching and debranching lines, each capable of producing another lattice—you’d think that would be totally intractable, but the secret is, the branches
don’t last
—they sum to the least energy and greatest probability, the greatest efficiency…He said something so utterly brilliant it was
stupid.
He said, ‘Dark matter is stuff waiting to happen.’”

Mary observed her husband over tightly folded arms, her lips growing thinner with each passing word.

“He wrote down some equations. Sure, it’s alternate worlds—but it’s also the most efficient states of protein motion and interaction, stacking solutions for sand and salt crystals, perhaps even distributions and probabilities for sparticle production in high-energy accelerators. Mary, if you don’t like it—just please
butt out.
Go read or bake bread or something. The man’s a gold mine.”

His wife’s eyes went round. “Have you even asked him why he knows so much about us?”

Fred’s nostrils flared. “You won’t like the answer.”

“Try me.”

“He knows what happened before Daniel died—some of the stuff you’ve told me. I didn’t prompt him—he volunteered.”

“That wouldn’t be impossible to learn.”

“Have
you
told anyone about how you sprayed silver paint all over your terrier when it bit you?”

Mary glared, and tears came to her eyes.

“Right,” Fred said. “He knows about your older brother. He knows what your father was like.”

Mary’s face took on a yearning pain. Worse than not believing was not wanting to believe. “Does he know how Daniel died?”

“That wouldn’t be logical.”

“
You
must have told somebody,” she said, working up to anger.

“I never told anyone. Take it to the bank, Mary—he
knows
about you and your family, but not much matches up after he died—after Daniel died, I mean. This Daniel—he didn’t die. And in his world, we never got married. Even if it is a delusion, it’s brilliant. I won’t say I’m convinced—but I do need to listen. Please, Mary.” He gently squeezed her rope-taut forearm. “Maybe he’ll just tie himself in logical knots and we can boot him out, or call the cops and hand him over.”