“There are no suspects, you idiot!” Jack yelled.
Noyle stepped back without a change of expression. “And I repeat. You are officially advised to enroll yourself in the county alcohol program.”
“Posthaste, right?”
“That’s correct, Captain. Posthaste. A police department is no place for a drunk.”
Jack stood grinding his teeth. Noyle was wearing suspenders, the new craze. Jack was very tempted to give them a good hard snap.
Noyle left.
“You better watch yourself, Jack,” Randy counseled. “Noyle is one guy you don’t want to fuck with.”
“He can bugger himself,” Jack suggested, and sat back down.
“And you better take care of that rehab stuff too. He’ll ax you, Jack. He’s done it to a lot of guys.”
Jack mumbled something not very complimentary under his breath. He couldn’t argue, though. Randy was right.
“Beck left something else too.” Randy picked up a chromatography analysis report. “Whatever you and Faye gave her to go on checked out.”
“The tox screen?”
“Yeah. It turned out to be exactly what you said it was.” Randy squinted at the writing in the comments box. “‘Cantharadine suphate, endorphic stimulant, derived via series-distillation of Taxodium lyrata tubers. Indigenous to central Europe. Produces aggregant aphrodisiac affect through hyperstimulation of libidinal receptors. An oil-soluble colloid, will suspend microscopically in alcohol. Colorless, odorless, tasteless. No field in NADDIS. No record of criminal use in U.S.’”
“Great,” Jack griped. “Indigenous to central Europe. You’ll have to run a CDS trace through goddamn Interpol to find out where this shit’s used. That’ll take months.”
“But what the hell is it?”
“Something like Spanish fly, I think, gets you horny. The aorists used it in the Middle Ages for orgies and rituals. Beck found traces of it in the bloodstreams of the first two 64s. It mixes with alcohol, she says. The postmortems said Barrington, Black, and Lynn were all in heightened sexual states then they died. That’s how our guys picked them up so easy. They were probably putting this shit in their drinks.”
“All this weird stuff”—Randy gestured at his desk—“and I don’t know what to do with any of it.”
“You know one thing, though,” Jack cautioned, “and mark my words. You can bet there’s gonna be one more murder before this is over.”
“Here it is,” the librarian said. “Be very careful; it may be the only copy in existence, and it’s in bad condition. Turn the pages with the stylus, and I’m afraid you’ll have to wear these gloves. The amino acids on your fingers will damage the paper if you touch it.”
Faye donned the nylon gloves. “What about photocopies?”
“It’s illegal to photocopy any Class D precaution printed material. You can photograph the pages if you have a camera. If not—”
“I’ll use the copy machine I was born with,” Faye finished, indicating her right hand. “Thank you for finding this. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
The librarian left Faye to her cove. The book had been brought out in a lidded aluminum box, and rested in an acetate cover. It wasn’t thick; it looked more like a brochure than a book. The binding had been removed to reduce page wear. Its faded title in black ink on red seemed to look back at her.
THE SYNOD OF THE AORISTS
No publication date, no copyright. The only printing information read: Morakis Enterprises. Translated from Greek by Monseigneur Timothy McGinnis. No author was listed either, and no contributors or bibliographic data.
The page after the title had a dedication:
To know God, one must first know the Nemesis.
This book is for all who seek God.
Faye Rowland opened the book and began to read.
Chapter 32
Ginny cranked out the last page from the Smith Corona XL that Khoronos had provided. Her story was done. It was only about 1,500 words, but she’d redrafted it obsessively. Even with her novels, it was not uncommon to rewrite eight or ten times. Art did not come easy for some; most of writing was rewriting. And to hell with all this word processor stuff. Ginny couldn’t imagine writing with anything but a loud, clanky typewriter. It was the activity that spurred her, margin bells ringing, keys clacking, the carriage whipping back and forth as her muse poured out of her fingertips. All her friends at her writers’ group told her she was crazy not to own a computer. “Oh, but Ginny, you’ll save so much time!” “I’m not interested in saving time, I’m interested in creating art,” she’d come back. “Oh, but Ginny, it all goes on disk! You just push the print button when you’re done! Laser jets! 256 RAM! 20-gig hard-drive! How can you live without one!”
“I will not sell my muse to technology,” Ginny would then say, and if they kept it up she would politely point out that her books sold millions of copies while theirs sold thousands. To put it another way, Ginny was sick to fucking death of hearing about fucking computers.
Her story was called “The Passionist.” Eight hours of writing left her feeling like eight hours of road work; she’d proof it later. She drifted downstairs, blinking fatigue out of her eyes. Just past nine now, it was getting dark. No one was downstairs. She’d peeked in on Veronica only to find her dead asleep. As for Amy Vandersteen, Ginny hadn’t seen her since yesterday.
She went out on the back porch and smoked. A cigarette after finishing a story was better than a cigarette after sex. The rush lulled her almost like pot and she looked dreamily up to the sky. The stars looked like beautiful luminous spillage; the moon hung low. Since coming here, since meeting Khoronos, she found beauty everywhere she looked. She saw wonders. Her vision had never shown her such things before.
She went back into the kitchen and microwaved a bowl of Korean noodles, which she found bland. She hunted through the spice rack for something to spark them up. Curry. Chili powder. Chopped red peppers. Below the rack, though, stood an unmarked jar. Ginny opened it and sniffed. The stuff looked like confectioners’ sugar, but when she tasted some on the end of her finger, there was no taste at all.
“Try some,” advised Gilles, who sauntered into the kitchen.
Ginny looked at him. God, he’s gorgeous. All he wore were khaki shorts and a red sweatband on his brow. “It doesn’t taste like anything,” she said.
“It’s like oysters. It makes you feel sexy. Try some.”
Ginny giggled and did so. It still tasted bland, but it amused her the way Gilles was watching her, head tilted and arms crossed under the well-developed pectorals. “Where’s everybody?” she asked.
“Erim and Marzen are meditating. They are very spiritual people. Spirit transcends flesh. Did Erim ever tell you that?”
“A million times,” Ginny said. “Synergy. Transposition.”
“Yes. Do you know what all that means?”
“I don’t know.”
“You will.”
Even his weirdness was attractive. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the fresh Band-Aid on his chest.
“My offering. I don’t expect you to understand that.”
His offering? Oh, he was weird, all right, but she didn’t care. The magnificent body and sculpted face were what she cared about. When she turned to rinse out the noodle bowl, his hands were on her back, kneading her stiffened neck muscles, teasing them loose. “God, that feels good,” she murmured.
“What does God have to do with it?”