The Eidolon (27 page)

“Who?”

“Cora. She’s my... well, I’m not sure what she is right now, but she’s at the apartment. She arrived today.”

The way he looks at me makes something plunge in my gut.

“You left her alone?”

I punch in Cora’s number into my phone. It rings out. No answer.

We make for the doors. “I’ll drive,” he says.

“No, the bike’s faster – I’ll go on ahead. Four-four-six Roux de la Croix.”

I
BOUNCE OVER
potholes, too fast for a farm track in the dark, and I’m approaching the highway when it hits me. The flash of an image. I see Cora struggling, gagged, arms tied behind her. A man in a suit is pushing her into the back of a black van. As quickly as it came, it vanishes and I swerve the bike, drawing it to a stop in the dust. I blink at the fields and the highway ahead. It only lasted a microsecond, but it felt like I was there, watching it happening. I feel shaken and sick. Gathering myself, I set off again into the night.

T
HE BIKE GROWLS
to a stop in the street. I take the stairs, scrambling up them, calling her again from the mobile. No reply.
Please, let her be there.

I fumble with the keys, dropping them once, swearing as I pick them up and force them into the lock. But I know before I step inside; it’s too quiet.

“Cora?”

Nothing.

She’s gone.

I
BURST OUT
into the street, into the drizzle and the darkness. A crowd of students stumble into the road, pissed. I scan the street for her. There. Ahead of the crowd, a tangle of long hair, the right height, moving in the right way. I take off after her, ignoring the barrage of drunken French abuse. She stops at the crossing. The lights change and she glances right before stepping out. I reach forward and grasp her wrist. “Cora.” She turns, frowning; a woman I don’t know.

“Pardon, Madame. Pardon.” I back away as she glares at me and turns back to the road.

I’m aware of something to my right – something purring, dark. Turning, I see a black BMW inching along the kerb just behind me. A window glides down, noiselessly. Victor Amos is sitting in the back seat.

“I don’t know about you,” he begins, “but I am a man who operates on intuition. And I sense a weakening in your resolve.” The moon’s shining onto his face, but no light reflects in his pale eyes. “Tell me, Robert, is your resolve weakening?”

“Where is she?”

“She’s quite safe, as is your father.”

“My dad?”

“I feel you need a little more incentive to focus on the task at hand. They will both be returned to you, unharmed, once you deliver.”

“I need him to get inside the Ops Room.”

“Lambert will provide the distraction you need to plant the worm. We made a deal, Robert. Don’t disappoint me.”

The window glides up silently and the car pulls away. I stand there shivering in the moonlight.

Something draws my eyes across the road. A silhouette standing under a streetlamp. It takes me a minute to work it out. Slim, pale, unsmiling, Sarah turns and walks into the next street.

When I get there, she’s at the other end, and I see her disappear into an alleyway on the left. Ahead, Sarah turns again and I follow her into an unlit lane. I stop as I realise where she’s led me. She’s standing by the door of La Caverne.

“There’s nothing in there!” I shout.

She stares back, unsmiling, unblinking.

“Why are you messing with my head?”

I walk towards her and can almost reach out and touch her. She looks as real as she ever did, except that there’s something haunted in her expression. As I approach the entrance, she fades, disappearing into the rain. My hand rests on the door, and I look up. The weather vane spins in a gust of wind, pointing north. I’ve already proved there’s nothing in there. This is just wasting my time. I turn and walk away.

A creaking sound behind stops me. I turn to see Rosinda standing in the doorway. “Robert,” she says. “They’re waiting for you.”

“U
PSTAIRS,
”
SHE SAYS
as I come inside. “I’ll bring you something hot to drink.” She opens the door to the next level. There are no boxes of beer at the foot of the stairs.

Hope flickers inside me as I climb. I reach the top and see the fire blazing.

“Hello, Robert.” Sattva is sitting at the end of an oblong table, leaning back in his chair with his legs loosely crossed, and next to him, Casimir. Balaquai picks a book from a shelf and glances back at me.

“Is this really happening?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why couldn’t we see you before?”

Sattva replies. “Because Cora’s not strong enough yet to see us.”

“She can see Sarah.”

“Cora can see Sarah because they’re tightly entangled. You can see Sarah because you’re one of us.”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“Your recent brush with death has expanded your awareness, that’s all. Now it’s time you caught up with it.”

I’m back down the rabbit hole, but I don’t have time to process it. “Where is Sarah?”

“She’s somewhere we can’t reach, Robert. Is that why you’re here?”

“No. Amos has Cora and my dad. If I don’t deliver, he’ll kill them both.”

“He’ll do worse than that,” says Balaquai, without looking up from his book.

“What?”

“At the moment, I believe they’re quite safe,” Sattva says. “If he harms them now, he loses his bargaining position.”

“We have people looking for them, Robert,” says Casimir. “As we speak. We’ll hear from them soon.”

“Well, I want to help...”

“You’d just get in the way,” says Balaquai.

Sattva smiles. “What Balaquai means is that you would do them a greater service by being here, for the moment, and learning something about what’s going on.”

I hear her footsteps on the stairs and Rosinda arrives with a large mug of coffee and a towel which she wraps round my shoulders. The grey pebble that hangs round her neck swings forwards as she leans over. “Take a seat, love,” she says.

The coffee’s sweet and hot. “So is this where you... end up when you die? A pub in Geneva?”

“We’re wherever we need to be,” Sattva says. “We can come and go between worlds as we choose. They occupy the same space, you see; all that separates them is their physics. Light from one world can’t leak into another. But other things can – other signals get through. Gravity, for instance. Or consciousness.”

“Consciousness?”

“The core of every living thing. In its more advanced forms, it is the ability to question and choose. What do you think drives science?”

“Consciousness is a by-product of the brain.”

“Do you really believe that?” He knocks on the table. “The world isn’t solid matter, Robert – you of all people know that. Solidity is an illusion – most of it is empty space. But what’s vibrating in that space, in the Field, is consciousness itself.”

“The Field?”

“The Quantum Field. Are you familiar with it?”

“The theory that particles are just excited states of an underlying physical field.”

“Precisely. We’re more attuned to picking up the resulting vibrational signals. It’s how I heard your fear on the mountain in Tibet.”

“Why did you help me then?”

“I remember a time when a young boy found me hiding under a bush in a forest. Yet he said nothing to my hunter, and in so doing, he saved my life. That act of compassion entangled us, through many lifetimes.

“In the same way Aiyana knew about the car jumping the lights. And it’s why Balaquai appeared when the mugger threatened to shoot you for your wallet. They responded to your vibrational signal before you were even aware of what was going on. That’s what we do. And once you come to terms with this, that’s what you’ll do too.”

I get up and walk towards the French doors at the back of the room. They open out onto a large balcony with waist-high iron railings. A murky, dense cloud, a dirty mix of blue and purple and grey, reaches from the sky to the rooftops. Rain patters on the window panes.

“What about Amos?” I say, turning back to the room.

“He’s a different story.” Sattva stands up and walks over to join me. “To understand what Victor Amos is, you need to see how he came to exist in the first place.” A moth is wriggling in the remnants of a spider’s web, caught in the corner of the window frame. Sattva places his finger underneath it and lifts it gently clear of the web, holding it up to eye level. It opens and closes its wings. “What we’ve come to understand, from our place in things, is the relationship between matter and energy. What do your equations tell you about it?”

“That they’re interchangeable.”

He turns his finger, peering at the moth, then opens the glass door. “Exactly. They are different expressions of the same thing.” He puffs out a breath and the moth takes flight, flittering away on the cool night air. “Everything at its most basic level is a form of energy. It’s no different for thoughts. Thoughts are an expression of energy, and as such they can translate into matter.”

“Oh, come on. Thoughts are just electrical impulses. They don’t create anything.”

“Is that what you think?” He steps through the open door onto the balcony. Leaning on the railing, he surveys the rooftops. I follow him outside, looking south, to where the river glints in the moonlight. “Point out something, anything, in your world that did not begin as a thought,” he says.

I look out over the city, to the buildings, the cars, the power lines.

“Yeah, but it took physical action to turn those ideas into something real. A car doesn’t just appear when you think of it.”

“That is true. But it began as a thought, and now there it is. Can you see how powerful this is? Thought is the sea of potentiality; the precursor of creation. All it takes is enough attention to bring it into being.”

His fingers fold around the curved handle of the umbrella that’s just appeared in it. He passes it to me while he buttons up his jacket. It’s real, solid, and it does what umbrellas do. “How did you do that?” I breathe.

“Many lifetimes of practice. Are you feeling alright?”

I nod, numbly.

“Once you get past the idea that things are solid and unchanging, then all of this becomes a lot easier. Does it disturb you that when you boil water in the kettle, steam comes out?”

I glance up at the inside of the umbrella. “That’s a good trick. But what has this got to do with Amos?”

The sound of the rain on the umbrella sharpens from a soft patter to hard taps. “It has everything to do with Amos.”

Balaquai leans through the doors behind us. “He’s back.”

I follow Sattva inside and stop when I see him. A minute later, I have him pinned against the wall. Some drool escapes from the left side of his mouth as his face contorts into a scowl.

Chapter Fifteen

“Y
OU’RE WORKING FOR
him, aren’t you? Working for Amos?”

“Robert,” says Casimir. “He’s one of us.”

“For God’s sake, man, let go.” His voice is gruff, like gravel caught in an old lawnmower.

“He’s been tailing me for days.”

My grip loosens and he yanks my arm away, glowering. “I have. And it’s a good thing for you that I did.”

“Robert, this is Arcos Crowley. He confirmed to us your intention to sabotage the experiments. He has a particular gift for hearing discord in people.”

“What?”

“You stuck out like a sore thumb,” says Arcos. “It’s beyond me how none of your colleagues picked up on it.”

I don’t like the way he looks at me, like I’ve crawled out from under a stone.

“Did you find them?” asks Balaquai.

Crowley shakes his head. He turns to face the fire and pushes the hot coals about with the scuffed tip of his boot. The flames wrap themselves around it, but his boot doesn’t burn. “I don’t know what he’s done with them,” he mumbles. “I can’t get anything from them.”

“Nothing?” says Balaquai.

Crowley shakes his head. “The others are still looking.”

I’ve had enough of this bullshit. I turn and make my way towards the stairs. “I’ll take my chances with the police. This is just wasting time I don’t have.”

“Wait, Robert!” Casimir calls.

“Police?” Crowley practically spits the word. “What good do you think that will do anyone? There’s no police force on earth that can help you now, Robert Strong.”

Yeah, well, crazy man, I’m willing to let them give it a go.

Crowley continues to bark away behind me. “Sattva, I thought you were going to explain things to him. Was he not listening? Does he have any idea who he’s dealing with?”

“We were just coming to that when you arrived.”

I hear the thud of boots on wood behind me.

“Robert,” Casimir says in a low voice. “You need to hear this.”

“No, I don’t, Casimir. Believe me.”

“Please. We need your help. At least listen to this before you make your decision.”

I turn back to him, irritated at first, but then I see something in his eyes that reminds me that I trusted him once, when he was alive. I stare at the floor for a moment, then turn and follow him.

Crowley drags his looks of disdain from me back to the fire where he warms his hands. I take the seat that Casimir pulls out from under a table. Sattva’s eyes are on mine. “Try to stay with me, Robert.” He’s patient, like a good father is with an angry child. “Man has the ability to influence his reality with his thoughts. That is a truth you’re just going to have to accept for now. Just as the culmination of positive thoughts has brought about the progress we see all around us, the culmination of negative emotions has a consequence too. Eons of those thoughts – fear, greed, cruelty, betrayal – they didn’t go away. They coalesced, festered in the Field, creating an entity which, over time, grew conscious of itself. And the man it has become has a taste for life now. He was not born and he will not die. That man is Victor Amos. At least, that’s what he’s calling himself these days. There’s no name for what he really is.

“He feeds on human fear – it’s what fuels him. Over the eons, he has found new ways of cultivating men to grow inside them the thing he needs most. He moves with the times, playing on cultural whims. In the dark recesses of the past, it was myth and magic, then, for a long time, religion. And now it is science.”