The Bone Clocks (68 page)

“Yes. He’s sourced prey eleven times since … Switzerland.”

Holly swivels her eternity ring. “And Jacko was one of you?”

“Xi Lo founded Horology,” says Ōshima. “Xi Lo led me to the Deep Stream. To psychosoterica. He was irreplaceable.”

Holly thinks of a small boy with whom she shared only eight Christmases. “How many of there are you?”

“Seven, definitely. Eight, possibly. Nine, hopefully.”

Holly frowns. “Quite a small-scale war, then, isn’t it?”

I think of Oscar Gomez’s wife. “Was there anything ‘small-scale’ about Jacko’s disappearance for the Sykes family? Eight is very few, but we were only ten when we inoculated you. We build networks. We have allies and friends.”

“And how many Carnivores are there?”

“We don’t know,” says Unalaq. “Hundreds, worldwide.”

“But whenever we find one,” Ōshima inserts a meaningful pause, “there soon becomes one less.”

“The Anchorites endure, however,” I say. “The Anchorites are our enemy through time. Can we prevent all the Carnivores in the world from committing animacide? No. But whom we save, we save, and every one is a victory.”

Pigeons croon and huddle on Unalaq’s window boxes.

“Let’s say I believe you,” says Holly. “Why me? Why do these Anchorites want to—Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying this—want to kill me? And what am I to you?” She looks around the table. “Why do I matter in your War?”

Ōshima and Unalaq look at me. “Because you said ‘Yes,’ forty years ago, to a woman named Esther Little, who was fishing off a rickety wooden pier jutting out over the Thames.”

Holly stares at me. “How can you possibly
know
that?”

“Esther told me about the encounter. That day, in 1984.”

“
You
were in Gravesend? That Saturday Jacko went?”

“My body was. My soul was in Jacko’s skull, as Jacko lay in his bed in the Captain Marlow. Esther Little’s soul was there too, as was the soul of Holokai, another colleague. With Xi Lo’s soul, that made four Greeks hiding in the belly of the Trojan Horse. Miss Constantin appeared in the room, through the Aperture, and ushered Jacko up the Way of Stones into the Chapel of the Dusk.”

“The place the Blind Cathar built?” Holly’s voice is dry.

“The place the Blind Cathar built.” Good, she’d taken it in. “Jacko was Constantin’s bait. We’d poked her eye by inoculating you, and we gambled on her not being able to resist poking ours in return by grooming and abducting the saved sister’s brother. That part worked, and for the first time Horologists gained access to the oldest, hungriest, and best-guarded psychodecanter in existence. Before we could figure out a means of destroying the place, however, the Blind Cathar awoke. He summoned all the Anchorites and, well, it’s hard to describe a psychosoteric battle at close quarters …”

“Think of those tennis-ball firing machines, but loaded with hand grenades,” offers Ōshima, “trapped in a shipping container, on a ship caught in a force-ten gale.”

“It was the worst day in Horology’s history,” I say.

“We killed five Anchorites,” says Ōshima, “but they killed Xi Lo and Holokai. Killed-killed.”

“Didn’t they just get … resurrected?” asked Holly.

“If we die in the Dusk,” I explain, “we die. Terms and conditions. Somehow the Dusk prevents resurrection. I survived because Esther Little fought her way to and fled down the Way of Stones with my soul enwrapped in hers. Alone, I would have perished, but even in Esther’s safekeeping I suffered grievous damage, as did Esther. She opened the Aperture very near where you were, Holly, in the garden of a certain bungalow near the Isle of Sheppey.”

“I’m guessing the location was no accident?” asks Holly.

“It was not. While Esther’s soul and mine were reraveling, however, the Third Anchorite, one Joseph Rhîmes, arrived on the scene. He had followed our tracks. He slew Heidi Cross and Ian Fairweather for the hell of it, and was about to kill you, too, when I reraveled myself enough to animate Fairweather. Rhîmes kineticked a weapon into my head, and I died. Forty-nine days later I was resurrected in this body, in a broken-down ambulance in one of Detroit’s more feral zip codes. For a long time I assumed Rhîmes had killed you in the bungalow, and that Esther’s soul had been too badly damaged to reravel. But when I next made contact with 119A, Arkady—in his last self, not the self you met earlier—told me that you hadn’t died. Instead, Joseph Rhîmes’s body had been found at the crime scene.”

“Only a psychosoteric could have killed Joseph Rhîmes,” says Ōshima. “Rhîmes followed the Shaded Way for seventeen decades.”

Holly understands. “So you think it was Esther Little?”

Unalaq says, “It’s the least implausible explanation.”

“But Esther Little was a … sweet old bat who gave me tea.”

“Yes,” snorts Ōshima, “and I’m a sweet old boy who rides around all day on my senior citizen’s bus pass.”

“Why don’t I remember any of this?” says Holly. “And where did Esther Little go
after
killing this Rhîmes man?”

“The first question’s simpler,” says Unalaq. “Any psychosoteric can redact memories. It takes skill to do it with precision, but Esther had that skill. She could have done it on her way in.”

Unconsciously, Holly grips the table. “On her way in—to where?”

“Into your parallax of memories,” I say. “To the asylum you offered her. Esther’s soul was battered in the Chapel of the Dusk, flamed as she fought our way out down the Way of Stones, and drained to the last psychovolt by killing Joseph Rhîmes.”

“Her soul would have needed years to reravel,” says Unalaq. “Years when Esther was as vulnerable to attack as someone in a coma.”

“I … sort of get it.” Holly’s chair creaks. “Esther Little ‘in-gressed’ me, got me away from the crime scene, wiped my memories of what happened … Okay. But where did she go
after
she … recovered?”

Ōshima, Unalaq, and I all look at Holly’s head.

Holly frowns, then understands. “You’re bloody joking.”

B
Y SEVEN O
’
CLOCK
, twilight is draping the attic in blues, grays, and blacks. The little lamp on the piano glows daffodil yellow. Four storys below us, I see the manager of the bookshop bidding a staff member good night. He then walks off arm in arm with a petite lady. The couple make an old-fashioned sight under the mist-haloed solars of West Tenth Street. I draw the curtains on the drizzlestreaked bulletproof glass. Ōshima, Unalaq, and I spent the afternoon debriefing Holly further on Horology and our War with the Anchorites, and eating Inez’s pancakes. Going outside would have been a needless risk after this morning’s near disaster, and we’ll avoid 119A until our rendezvous with D’Arnoq on Friday. Arkady and the Deep Stream cloak will keep the place safe. On the evening news the “Police Impostor Fifth Avenue Shootout” was a lead story, with reporters speculating that the dead men were bank robbers
who’d had a fatal argument prior to their heist. The national networks haven’t run with the story, due to yesterday’s gun massacre at Beck Creek, Texas, the reignited Senkaku/Diaoyu standoff between China and Japan, and Justin Bieber’s fifth divorce. The Anchorites will know Brzycki was killed by psychosoteric intervention, but how it affects any plans they have for our Second Mission, I cannot guess. I’ve heard nothing from our defector, Elijah D’Arnoq. I hear Unalaq and Holly’s feet on the creaky stairs, and they appear in the doorway.

“You have a psychiatrist’s couch,” says Holly.

“Dr. Marinus will see you now,” I say. “Again. Ready?”

Holly unslippers her feet, and lies back. “I’ve got over half a century of memories stored away, right?”

I roll up the sleeves of my blouse. “A finite infinity, yes.”

“How do you know where to look for Esther Little?”

“I was sent a clue via a cabdriver in Poughkeepsie,” I say.

Unalaq puts a cushion under Holly’s head. “Relax.”

“Marinus?” Holly flinches. “Will you see
everything
I ever did?”

“That’s how scansion works. But I’m a psychiatrist from the seventh century, remember. There’s not much left that I haven’t seen.”

Holly’s unsure what to do with her hands. “Do I stay conscious?”

“I can hiatus you while I scansion you, if you wish.”

“Uh … No need. Yes. I dunno. You decide.”

“Very well. Tell me about your house, near Bantry.”

“O-
kay
. Dooneen Cottage was originally my great-aunt Eilísh’s cottage. It’s on the Sheep’s Head Peninsula, this rocky finger sticking out into the Atlantic. There’s a drop to a cove at the end of the garden, and a path going down to the pier and …”

A
S
I
INGRESS
, I hiatus her. It’s kinder, somehow. Holly’s present-perfect memory, I notice, is dominated by today’s bizarre events, but older memories soon billow around my passing soul like windblown sheets on a washing line. Here’s Holly catching a taxi from the Empire Hotel early this morning. Meeting me at the Santorini
Café, and at Blithewood. Landing in Boston last week. I go further back, back to Holly’s pluperfect memory. Holly painting in her studio, spreading seaweed on her potato patch, watching TV with Aoife and Aoife’s boyfriend. Cats. Storm petrels. Jump leads. Mixing mincemeat at Christmas. Kath Sykes’s funeral in Broadstairs. Deeper, faster, like rewind on an old-style DVD, showing one frame every eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four … Too fast. Slow down. Too slow, this is like searching for an earring dropped somewhere in Wyoming, I must take care. Here’s a vivid memory of Dr. Tom Ballantyne: “I sent off three samples to three different labs. Remissions are fickle, yes, but for now, you’re clear. I won’t pretend to understand it—but congratulations.” Deeper, further. Memories of Holly meeting Crispin Hershey in Reykjavik, in Shanghai, on Rottnest Island. They loved each other, I see, but both only half guessed it. Holly’s first U.S. book tour for
The Radio People
. Holly’s office at the homeless center. Her Welsh friend and colleague Gwyn. Aoife’s face when Holly tells her that Ed died in a missile strike. Olive Sun’s voice on the phone, an hour earlier. Happier days. Watching Aoife perform in
The Wizard of Oz
while holding Ed’s hand in the darkness. Psychology lectures with the Open University. Look, a glimpse of Hugo Lamb … 
Stop
. Their night in a room in a Swiss ski town, which is none of my business, but what muffled, baffled joy shines in the young man’s eyes. He loved her, too. But the Anchorites came knocking. Fateful or fated? Scripted, Counterscripted? No time. Hurry. Deeper. A vineyard in France. A slategray sea—is the asylum here? There’s no sign of the freighter. Too far or not far enough? Look closely. The wind must be squally and the engines churning. Stop. No time, no noise. Passengers become photographs of themselves. Gulls, balancing gravity and the battering wind. A squaddie’s tossed away his cigarette, it hangs there, threads of smoke, vapor trailing … This is Holly’s first Channel crossing, back before the tunnel was built. Back further, a year or two or three … An iced “17” on a birthday cake … Further. An abortionist’s clinic in the shadow of Wembley Stadium, a young
man on a Norton motorbike outside. Slowly now … A slope of gray months, after Jacko’s disappearance. Picking strawberries …

And look—look! Blank, redacted scenes. Two hours’ worth. Neatly done. That must be the bungalow murders. Before the blanks I find scenes of a petrol station, and a bridge. Rochester? There are ships below, but we’re still the day
after
the Star of Riga, not the day
of
it. Church bells. Back through the night, spent in a church, with a teenage Ed Brubeck. The Script loves foreshadow. Back to the day before the First Mission. Holly on the back of Ed’s bike, fish and chips by the sea, more cycling, Ed’s T-shirt glued to his back with sweat. We pass a couple of anglers, but both look male and neither sports Esther’s famous hat. Esther fished alone. “Angling’s like prayer,” she said. “Even together, you’re alone.” Slow right down. Holly looks at her watch at 4:20, at 3:49, and again at 3:17 before Ed came along. Her backpack’s rubbing her skin, though backpacks were called “rucksacks” in 1984. Holly’s thirsty, angry, and upset. She glances at her watch at 2:58. I’ve gone back too far. “Three on the Day,” begins my marker. I reverse and inch forward,
slowly
, to the Thames on my left, and … Oh.

I’ve found you.

F
AR OUT IN
the Thames sits a cargo ship, halfway between Kent and Essex, and the name of this quarter-mile-long signpost is the
Star of Riga
. Esther Little saw the ship “now,” at three
P.M.
exactly, on June 30, 1984. I had seen the ship earlier in Tilbury Docks, as I waited in a rented flat in Yu Leon Marinus’s body before transversing over the Thames to the Captain Marlow to ingress Jacko’s head. Esther submentioned the freighter as we all waited for Constantin. Holokai submentioned he’d lived in Riga for a few months as Claudette Davydov.

There Esther sits, at the end of the jetty, as Holly saw her on that hot, thirsty day. I transverse down the embankment and along the planks. Like an Oriental ghost I lack feet, but my progress is
soundtracked by Holly’s memories of her own footsteps. Look. Esther’s cropped gray hair, grubby safari shirt, and floppy leather hat.

I subspeak:
Esther? It’s Marinus
.

But Esther doesn’t react in any way.

I transverse around her, to study her face.

My old friend flickers like a dying hologram.

Am I wrong? Is this just Holly’s memory of Esther?

Then her chakra-eye glows dimly. Holly couldn’t have seen it. I subaddress her:
Moombaki of the Noongar People
.

Nothing. Esther fades like a shadow as the sun goes in.

Her chakra-eye flickers open, shuts, open, shuts. I try to ingress, but instead of strong, coherent memories, like in Holly’s parallax, I find only a nebula of moments. Dewdrops, clinging to a spider’s web on a golden wattle flower; a dead infant, flies drinking from his eyes; eucalyptus trees crackling into flame and parrots shrieking through smoke; a riverbed alive with naked-backed men panning for gold; the warbling throat of a butcher bird; a line of Noongar men in chains, lugging blocks of stone; and then I’m out the other side of Esther’s head. Her mind’s gone. It’s smashed. Just those shards remain.