“In 1939,” says Unalaq, “we shifted to 119A — where you visited this morning — because of the German threat.”
“So Horology is a social club for you … Atemporals?”
“It is,” says Unalaq, “but Horology has a curative function, too.”
“We assassinate,” states Ōshima, “carnivorous Atemporals — like the Anchorites — who consume the psychovoltaic souls of innocent people in order to fuel their own immortality. I thought Marinus told you this earlier.”
“We do give them a chance to mend their ways,” says Unalaq.
“But they never do,” says Ōshima, “so we have to mend their ways for them, permanently.”
“They are serial killers,” I tell Holly. “They murder kids like Jacko, and teenagers like you were. Again and again and again. They don’t stop. Carnivores are addicts and their drug is artificial longevity.”
Holly asks, “And Hugo Lamb is one of these serial killers?”
“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.”
BY 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.