The Breath of Suspension (35 page)

There was nothing else he could do. He rolled his eyes up, recalled his conditioning, and an instant later was lying on the windswept surface of the landing stage at the Aerie of Time Center amid the snow-covered peaks of the Canadian Rockies. After the darkness of the Baltic night, the mountain sun was blinding. He got to his hands and knees and vomited up a gallon of saltwater.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, then fell down and lost consciousness.

The last guard post was an old pissoir with the tricolor-and-sun emblem of the Second Commune painted on it. The dim light of a brazier flickered within, though when the guards emerged to check Hugh Solomon’s documents they didn’t look any warmer than he was after his climb up the icy heights of Montmartre. The puff of their breaths rose to mingle with the snow that sifted out of the hollow sky and the night that drifted over Paris.

“A meeting with a congregation of rooks and sparrows?” said one of the guards, his beard and moustache glistening with frost. He grinned, revealing missing teeth. “Don’t look for God. He has left that place, that is, if He ever was there.” It took a peculiar sort of obstinacy to be an atheist in an age when God was so obviously dead.

“Don’t be a fool,” Solomon said sharply.

The man’s face froze, and he stepped back, slowly and carefully. Solomon carried a laissez-passer from the Comité Central itself, or rather, a forgery indistinguishable from it, and was obviously not someone to be trifled with. The guard muttered an apology, which Solomon ignored.

The corporal of the guard, a grim, wrinkled man who looked as if he might have once been fat, checked the documents meticulously, despite the fact that Solomon had already passed two other checkpoints on the way up Montmartre. The man held on to duty, though that duty had served three different governments in the last five years, and currently consisted of guarding the approaches to an abandoned cathedral. “Pass,” he said, almost reluctantly, and handed Solomon back the forged documents. So Solomon proceeded up the last slope of the hill to the ruins of the cathedral, dangling a foil-wrapped box by the string that tied it up, daintily, with one finger, as if on his way to a birthday party. The three guards watched him and wondered where the hell he was going.

The elongated bone-white elegance of the cathedral of Sacré-Coeur bulked against the sky, like some vast fossil crustacean left behind by ancient seas. Eighteen years before it had been shattered by the ground shock of the five-megaton fusion explosion near Meaux that had also turned the indolent curves of the Marne into a vast poisonous lake. One of the side domes had been destroyed. The main dome had a crack running through it.

Solomon stopped at the top of the tilted marble steps, unwilling to push into the darkness that lay on the other side of the crazily hanging bronze doors. Below him only the occasional flare of a bonfire marked what had once been called the City of Light. The bright pinpoints did nothing against the cold on the top of the hill. He felt himself surrounded by centuries of swirling oily mist, the smoke of carbonized flesh. This was the time of the Great Forgetting, when nuclear wars had destroyed human civilization and time travelers were forbidden entry, for the roots of Time Center itself lay here. The world spun dizzily, and Solomon clutched at the doors to keep from falling. He choked and fought to breathe. He thought Katsuro’s help had eliminated the autonomic nerve blocks, but there may have been an even deeper level of conditioning.

“Come in, Hugh,” a throbbing liquid voice of uncertain sex said from within. “You’ll catch your death.” The voice chuckled. Solomon stepped over the shattered marble into the nave. Darkness pushed against his face like a shroud. It was warmer inside the church, and he could breathe again. “This way. Come to mama.” With a hissing scratch a candle flickered at the other end of the cathedral. A plump, smooth hand, the fingers covered with glittering rings, held the match up. An invisible pair of lips blew it out.

Solomon moved slowly toward the candle, sliding his feet across the uneven rubble-strewn floor. The dim shapes of statues, piled-up pews, and crosses danced briefly in the light, vanished, then danced again. The air smelled wet and dusty. Bile stung the back of his throat.

He’d stretched himself to the limit to get here. Acquiring extra illicit doses of Tempedrine from manufactories in sixteenth-century Germany and twentieth-century California, he had pumped himself into almost a state of toxic psychosis to get over the barriers of interdict Time Center had put up around the Great Forgetting, bent Time Center’s mental conditioning with the aid of a Zen Buddhist monk in thirteenth-century Japan, and hired a seventeenth-century Dutch engraver to forge his documents. There were some things that even a Full Historian was forbidden to mess with. He only hoped that it would be worth it.

When the seated figure became clear in front of him, he stopped, just outside the circle of light cast by the candle, and took a breath. His skull felt as large and unwieldy as the cathedral itself. “If you are who you claim,” he said carefully, thinking about every word, “you already know the question I have come to ask. If you are not, there is no reason to even ask it.” Logic was a broken reed that would pierce his hand, but he had nothing else on which to lean.

The voice laughed. “I claim nothing, Hugh. Maybe the answer lies inside your own head, and you’ve gone through a lot of trouble for nothing. But come on, come on. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of. Not here. Not now.” A giggle. “Is that what you came for, Hugh? It’s a common enough question, and easily answered. Do you want to know the hour and place of your death?”

Solomon froze for a moment, breathing shallowly. If she was who the stories said she was, she really could tell him exactly that. Like a man gazing over a precipice, thinking idly of what it would be like to jump, he felt drawn in spite of himself. He would know everything, and his fate would be clear.

“No!” The word ripped from his throat. He leaned forward over her, into the light from the candle, his hands like claws. “You try to tell me and—”

“And what, Hugh? Don’t be so silly. If I know when you are to die, I certainly know when I will. Not tonight, Hugh, I’m not going to die tonight. And neither are you, if I’m not giving anything away. So why don’t we talk?”

Moira Moffette was a grossly fat woman, sprawled in what had once been the bishop’s throne. The candlelight shone on the rich, filthy brocade of her dress and the rings sunk deep into the flesh of her fingers. A tiny pair of feet in embroidered slippers emerged from beneath her dress to hang in the air. Her face was round and smooth. Long lustrous lashes hid her blind eyes. She smiled at him, her teeth horrible and misshapen. “Do I match the description, Hugh? I hope you weren’t expecting beauty. History is a festering wound, and those maggots that feed on it are never beautiful. Does that bother you, fellow maggot? Never mind, then. What did you bring me?” she asked, like an eager child.

He unwrapped the package. The foil paper crackled and sparkled. “A Sachertorte,” he said. “From Demel’s Konditorei, Vienna, 1889
CE
.” He’d stopped for a coffee, there in the mahogany and crystal interior, then walked out into the sunny spring warmth amid the ladies with their parasols and the gentlemen with their top hats, their faces as clear and open as the sky. He opened the box, and the musty air filled with the rich chocolate aroma of Vienna.

“Ooooh!” Moffette squealed. “Hugh, you doll! Give it here, darling, give it here. Oh! Oh! With apricot preserves between the layers! Wonderful.” She grabbed the cake with both hands, smearing frosting all over herself, took a bite and chewed, cheeks puffed out, eyes screwed up with pleasure. Lank dirty hair hung around her face. Like certain holy men and mystics throughout history, she had the capability of synthesizing a Tempedrine-like chemical in her pineal gland. In order to do that, she needed a chemical precursor—Theobroma, the Food of the Cods: chocolate. Under its influence, the twists and turns of Time were visible to her. Who she was, and how she had come to be here in the twenty-first-century ruins of Sacré-Coeur, were facts unknown to anyone, though Solomon had tried to track down every lead and rumor. She might have been a Druid, a witch, a priestess of Magna Mater, a Neanderthal fertility goddess, a chocolate-binging housewife with a deviant physiology, or simply an illusion of senses deranged by overdoses of Tempedrine.

“So, tell me, Hugh. What’s your question?”

He paused for a moment, still unsure. “I want to find Andrew Tarkin.”

She gasped and choked. Her blind eyes stared. “Oh, oh. But he’s all over the place. He crosses over and over himself. How could you not have found him? After all, Hugh, you are in so many times and places yourself.” Then she began to laugh, spilling half-chewed bits of cake onto her front. “Vengeance!” she said. “It’s a matter of private vengeance. You’ve always been so droll, Hugh.”

“You’ve never met me before,” he grated.

“But you
have
always been droll, haven’t you, even if I’ve never met you? You don’t think as clearly as you might, Hugh. But why have you come all this way to bother me with a silly personal matter?”

“It’s not personal. The son of a bitch tried to kill me.”

“Nothing more personal than that, is there, Hugh?”

“He’s trying to deform Time itself, and that could kill all of us. Don’t you understand?”

“Never having been born is not the same thing as dying, Hugh.”

“Stop playing games,” Solomon said. “You ate the cake, now answer the question.”

“Little Miss Moffette sat on her Tophet,” she chanted, like a small child. “Hear her words and pray.” She giggled. “Like it? I thought it up myself. I wish I could figure out how to finish it. All right, Hugh. You want to find Andy Tarkin. Or at least you
think
you want to find Andy Tarkin. Whatever you say.” Her eyes suddenly rolled up into her head, and she began to shake. Her breath came sharply through her throat, and she made a sound like the barking of a small dog. After a few minutes, her breathing slowed. “Chicago, Hugh. The Levee. You’ve heard of it? June twelfth, 1902. A little bar, one of a hundred little bars, called the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden. Just after one in the morning, a table near the back. He’ll be drinking what they call bourbon, but isn’t.” She leaned back and closed her eyes, obviously tired.

“But,” Solomon said, “but. The Levee. That’s where—”

She opened them again, angry. “I know where it is, Hugh. Think of it as old-home week. I know that’s where
she
is, our darling Louisa. I know that’s where young man Hugh Solomon is also. You were probably a cute boy, Hugh. The Full Historian as a young man. Andy Tarkin is there, Hugh.
Not
the young one, young Hugh’s friend. Not even the slightly older one who tried to drown you in the Baltic. It’s the one you need to find. A long way to go to find an old friend, Hugh. That’s what you asked me for, and that’s what you got.”

Solomon shook in a sudden chill. It was
cold
in that damn cathedral. How did she stand it, sitting there, eating nothing but chocolate? But, Jesus, Chicago. Not again.

“Now go away, Hugh. I’ve had enough of you. If you’re smart, you’ll just go back home to Time Center and forget all about this. People try to kill you all the time. You’ve got to learn not to take it so personally. Good night!” She blew out the candle and let Solomon find his way back to the front door in darkness.

Though it was after midnight, the streets were crowded. The Levee lay sprawled out around Solomon like a nickel whore who’d made enough to drink herself into a stupor. Probably the widest open vice district in the United States of America, it crammed no fewer than two hundred whorehouses into a few square blocks on the South Side of Chicago, along with taverns, dancing halls, gambling dens, dog-fighting pits, and hock shops. It was a favorite touring stop for visiting evangelists.

Solomon moved quickly through the fitfully gaslit streets, not looking around himself, for fear of seeing himself when young. His furtive air was usual for the Levee, and no one paid him any attention. Drunken laughter came from an open window in a three-story tenement. He slid past a black man with a bowler hat too large for his head who wanted to sell him some “goofer dust.” Solomon resisted the sudden urge to stop and negotiate with him. It was sometimes too easy to adapt to the time in which one found oneself. Tempedrine brought the human mind into an identity with a time that was not its own. Solomon pushed his way through the swinging double doors of the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden.

Inside, it was dark, smoky, and raucous. Solomon walked, among wide laughing mouths gleaming with gold teeth and women’s faces painted heavily into clowns’ masks of false joy, toward the figure slumped over the table in the back.

He hit Tarkin sharply below the left ear with his elbow to stun the brain centers responsible for time travel and injected him in the buttock with a needle he had strapped to his right knee. It was quick, and no one else in the bar noticed a thing.

Tarkin turned, his eyes already glazing. He managed an expression of hatred, though he could barely control the muscles of his face. “You again. You’ll never learn, will you.”