City At The End Of Time (43 page)

“Not to be known—” Bidewell began, and without skipping a beat, the entire group—except for Jack—echoed:

“
Not to be known, surely, not to be known!
”

Bidewell bore up with patient good humor. “The paperback was intriguing—yet merely a symptom. However, what the lovely Witches of Eastlake had happened upon, with their first discovery, was the thirteenth volume of a remarkable and elusive encyclopedia.”

“Here we go,” Agazutta said.

“One set had apparently been printed in Shanghai in the 1920s, to the specifications of an Argentinian named Borges. There are no records of Señor Borges except his nameplate in the index volume, and his signature on page 412 of volume one. And so our ladies had made one of the most magnificent finds of this century—a volume of the lost
Encyclopedia Pseudogeographica
. Only one other volume is known, incunabular, recovered in Toledo in 1432 and currently held in the British Library under lock and key—with excellent reason, I might add.”

“It’s a good thing we couldn’t read it,” Farrah said, stretching like a cat. Which reminded Ginny—she had not seen Minimus or any of the other cats for some hours. They likely had found hiding places until events and new guests settled. “We might have gone mad.”

“Madder than we are,” Agazutta added.

“But who would know?” Ellen muttered.

Bidewell’s laugh was light and rich, like a perfectly baked cookie. Despite himself, despite everything Jack had experienced, he was beginning to like the old man.

“Suffice it to say,” said Ellen, “we all found Mr. Bidewell handsome, fascinating—”

“And wealthy!” said Agazutta.

Bidewell peered around the room with satisfaction bordering on smugness, as if, at long last, he had assembled a long-desired family.

“The rest is history,” Ellen said.

“Pied history,” Farrah said with a small, half-concealed yawn.

“Which means?” Ginny asked.

“History comes in two colors. Everyone else lives one color,” Agazutta explained. “After meeting Mr. Bidewell, we now live the other.”

“What does any of this have to do with me? Or with her?” Jack asked, nodding at Ginny.

“I should rekindle our fire. It’s getting cold,” Bidewell said, pushing away from the desk. “Jack, there are logs and old newspapers in the hopper. We shall pour another glass and toast lost memory.
Temps
perdu,
quite literally. For that is the talent we shall speak of soon—order, chance, times lost, and the recovery of objects that never were, yet ever shall be.”

Jack picked pages of newspaper from the curved hopper.

The pages were blank.

CHAPTER 53

Wallingford

Grayness and dusty sweeps of shadow, a glazed, darkling sky, clouds jerking by in spasms like dying animals flopping and kicking across the heavens—

The rough abandoned house at the center of so many of Daniel’s lives, desolate beyond description—

Freezing isolation made worse by the fact that he was not alone—that he had Whitlow to contend with. Whitlow had entered the old house, passing Daniel on the porch, and now faced him with a wry, twitching smile across the short distance between two old chairs on the water-stained and warped floor—where he and Daniel had seated themselves, nowhere else to go, just as clocks everywhere had stopped humming, whirring, ticking.

“Let’s discuss your future, young fate-shifter.” Whitlow’s words blurred across the short distance between them, followed by a dozen variations as all the remaining, cut-up strands of fate tried to sum.

“Let’s discuss what is to come, now that you have a strong new body…before your memories fade again, always a problem for your kind…”

Whitlow had repeated these words so often, Daniel had lost count. There could be no finer punishment for all his sins than this—and yet, he could not just throw aside the stone and end it all. He knew the stones in the boxes offered a circle of protection—and did not want to experience what it would feel like if he, like Whitlow, fell just on the edge of or outside that circle.
I’ve survived worse—the worst, I think. But my memories are vaguer than the murk outside. If I
could only think clearly!

If I could make a move—any move—

He still had hope.

And so he gripped the boxes. At least there would be no hunger, no real pain. He could sit without moving, going through each train of thought in smeared iterations, the changes so slight no outside observer could ever know the difference—

For now, Whitlow had been stymied—perhaps even defeated—by Terminus. The marionette across from Daniel labored as if strung from the hands of a broken clock. “Let’s discuss…what our Livid Mistress will have in store…for such a fine young betrayer of worlds…”

Daniel leaned back and held the boxes at arm’s length behind him, removing their circle a few feet from Whitlow. The seated marionette slowed and fell silent, until Daniel’s arm tingled and he folded it back. The others—Whitlow’s partners, lost out in the vibrating murk—would never arrive to help their boss. As for the Moth—whatever that was or had been, no sign from that quarter, either. With a suck of breath and a cough, Daniel realized that any certainty, even doom, would be better than this staggered eternity.

Still, his feelers—blunted, singed, traumatized—were sensitive enough that he knew this was not all there was. A refuge existed somewhere. Had Whitlow not found him, he might have made his way to that refuge just in time to elude all this.

Caught—something less than frozen—facing a nemesis something less than toothless…

Fully capable of boring Daniel to screaming insanity with his threats and schemes, like thin acid dripping on acres of exposed skin.

“…before the memories of your past exploits fade and get eaten away by a fresh and resentful new mind. The Chalk Princess has such hopes…”

Something changed.

Daniel felt a thrill in his spine, an unmistakable difference in the room’s atmosphere. Though how he could recognize or even detect this in his present state was not clear. But here it was. A loosening. Something powerful jerking at the damaged strands, shaking them out, squeezing a few last hours of usable chronology that something might be done.

Would
be done.

A knock on the door stabbed sharp and painful through Daniel’s ears. He forced himself to stand—amazed that he
could
stand.

Whitlow’s eyes followed and his white face twitched, like a corpse jolted by an electric charge—but that was all he could do.

Daniel crossed the damp boards and opened the door. A crash and roar buffeted him—ice calving from glaciers, mountains slamming against mountains, giant knives ripping up the sky.
Worlds—histories colliding.

Just outside the door a bulky shadow cringed, then separated itself from the confusion and squeezed inside by main force of will.

“A little help,” said a squat, powerful man, hands outstretched, thick fingers grasping. His gray suit dripped water. “The Queen in White has abandoned us. Pardon me if I say it—I seem to have what you need. And pardon me again if I ask—what in hell
are
you?”

CHAPTER 54

The Green Warehouse

The book group ladies retired to a far corner with a few cots and blankets and pillows that Bidewell pulled from an old brass-bound wooden chest. Their lanterns cast long, dancing shadows on the warehouse’s walls and ceiling.

Before he retired to his own quarters, Bidewell pulled down a volume from an otherwise bare shelf. The volume bore on the base of its spine the number—or the year—1298. In view of Jack and Ginny, he winked, put the book under his arm, and bade them good night.

Then he slid shut the steel door.

The warehouse became still.

Ginny gave Jack an uneasy glance and retreated into her space.

The ladies and Ginny had helped Jack clear another space a few yards away and provided him with another cot and blankets. Everyone in their little squares, insulated, protected. Waiting. He sat on the edge of his cot and let his shoulders slump with exhaustion. Ginny’s cot creaked on the opposite side of the stack of boxes and crates. They seemed far enough from the others—if they spoke softly, no one else would hear. “Is it time for stories?” she whispered.

“Sure,” he said. “You first.”

She walked around the crates, pulling along a chair, and sat, knees together, booted feet askew.

“I’m eighteen,” she said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“People say I’m lucky, but bad things keep happening.”

“Maybe they’d be worse if you weren’t lucky.”

“I answered the ad, just like you. I called the phone number.”

“Jesus,” Jack said.

“Some of it’s hard to remember,” she began. “I came from Minneapolis. I was living in a house full of musicians, musical types—they all played instruments, deejayed raves. We chipped in and did odd jobs. They said I brought them luck because we kept getting better gigs, play dates, black sick jams.”

“That’s good?” Jack asked.

She nodded. “I loved it. We were free and we ate total shack and I felt…” She glanced at Jack.

“You’ve lost me,” he said. “But keep going. I’ll catch up.”

“One day…I knew my friends were forgetting about me. I thought it was the drugs.” Her voice and face hardened. “We would hang out in old houses, talk about music, movies and TV, stuff that passed the time. Every week or so they acted just like I was new. They didn’t remember anything about me. Sometimes it hurt so much I would go off by myself, but I didn’t like being alone. I asked, what would happen if
I
stopped remembering who I was? I did a lot of drawing.”

Jack winced, her voice had become so flinty.

“They were snuffing up X—Ecstasy. I tried it a few times—they all thought if you didn’t do X, you were a hard case, unable to form true friendships. It made me so happy and loving. I would give anybody everything I had, all the loving little twinkles in my little brain just lining up like pinball hits. Anybody could walk in and I’d feel that love-juice flooding me, I was so
grateful
…I couldn’t hand out my goodies fast enough. And it didn’t matter. They still forgot me.”

“Wow,” Jack said.

Ginny watched his expression warily. “Yeah. All the time I was with them, I didn’t jump the lines—I didn’t fate-shift. I thought that was over. I thought I had a home. But I was still having the dreams. I’d draw—that was fine, everybody liked weird art. Everything creepy, everything about death, is fine, dying is the ultimate giving. Eternal giggles. And then, everyone would forget. They’d think I was new. They’d tell me their stories all over again.”

Jack sat quiet, letting her get it out.

“I would have died,” she murmured. “But then this…person came to me, the one who did most of the really strange drawings—when I was gone, blanking out. She’s part of my dreams, too—I think. One day she left a note. It was in little block letters—like it was written by a child: ‘Put your skin back on. Get out. We have work to do.’ And I knew just what she meant. This wasn’t love or even friendship, what we were doing in that house, it was turning oneself into a snail between a boot and a sidewalk. I had no defenses left, just raw nerves. So I quit the house and I quit the X and all my friends, and after a few days I was sitting under a bridge, out of the snow, when I read an ad from a newspaper I was using to stay warm.” She drew quotes. “‘Do you dream of a city at the end of time?’ And a phone number.”

Jack winced again.

“I still had some charge on my cell, so I called the number, mostly just to have something to do. Another bad decision, right?”

Jack lifted one corner of his lips.

“That’s what I do. I run away from good decisions, toward bad decisions. This was the worst, I think. A man came to the bridge and picked me up. He looked young, Asian—in his thirties, tall and skinny but fit, with deep black eyes. He drove an old gray Mercedes. There was someone in the backseat—a woman. She wore a veil and never said a word. She smelled like smoke. We left the city behind. Off the highway, the man and I got out and had lunch at a diner, but the woman never left the backseat. She wasn’t dead—I could hear her breathing.

“After we ate, back on the highway, she started a fire. The guy had a fire extinguisher under his seat. He pulled over and opened her door and yelled and sprayed foam all over. She whimpered but never said a word.”

Jack’s fingers knotted in his lap.

“I thought he looked young, but his tiny black eyes were old. Mostly, he was friendly. The front seat was so comfortable—heated, soft but firm. He did tricks with his silver dollar—one-handed, the other hand on the wheel, pretty clever. The coin did everything he wanted it to—like it was alive and he was its master.

“He remembered my story—what I told him as we drove. We might go on forever, tricks and stories and the long, straight road. I was so out of it, so accepting—still just a little fool, I guess.

“We finally came to a big house out in the woods near St. Paul. There were piles of lumber and stuff all around, but I didn’t see any workmen. The guy told me they had found an old vault under the house with thick walls where things could get really quiet. They put me down in the vault and I slept for a couple of days. It
was
quiet. I got better, stopped gritting my teeth and biting the insides of my cheeks. I felt so lucky, and thought maybe I was learning how to feel gratitude, real love. He would visit every day, bring me food and clothes, and I knew from the beginning he wasn’t interested in sex—he respected me. I thought this was a good place. He was good to me. My dreams stopped.”