“Who can explain this?” Dr. Cummins asked as she texted Bundy, letting him know they were fine and headed back.
“My grandmother,” he said.
“Dr. Jasso, for a man who was so loquacious for the last few hours you are annoyingly elusive.”
“Sorry,” he said distractedly. “I’m processing. It’s… it’s in a line she used to quote from Second John.”
“Which was?” she asked.
Mikel replied with quiet awe, “This can be explained by ‘the lady chosen by God…’”
CHAPTER 27
The phone call was not unexpected.
It came three days after Caitlin had returned from Connecticut. Her parents had gone home, the Langloises had boarded a plane to Haiti, Ben and Anita had gone back to work, Jacob had gone back to school, and Caitlin had accepted a leave of absence that was “recommended” to her by her supervisor at Roosevelt Hospital. Police and the FBI from Norwalk had come by to interview her the day after she returned, but she told them she could not shed any light on what caused the explosion—or implosion, as they were calling it, since the mansion seemed to have been pulled in, just like the Group mansion on Fifth Avenue.
“I assure you, I am not the common denominator,” she half lied. “Ben Moss and I went up there to collect our house guests from Haiti.”
“And at Washington Square Park?” Field Agent Arthur Richardson had asked. “You were seen coming from that mansion too.”
“I was in the neighborhood, checking on a patient there,” Caitlin said. “Adrienne Dowman. Has the bureau found her or Flora Davies yet?”
“We have not, nor the people who lived in the house in Norwalk,” Agent Richardson replied crossly.
Caitlin couldn’t tell them anything more. They wouldn’t have believed her. Going forward, she realized she had to be careful what she said, and to whom. This was no longer something she could share with Barbara. Certainly Ben, possibly Anita. Jacob, of course. He was his old self again; content to be back in his body with his hearing aids, but signing with a facility that surpassed what he had been able to do before. He remembered everything that had happened in Galderkhaan, and though the language had been forgotten the superlative use of his hands had not.
And there was one other person she could confide in, draw on, learn from. The man she had walked a few blocks to meet outside the American Museum of Natural History.
“There’s nothing here of that ancient world to interest you,” she said when he approached her at the large front steps beside the statue of Teddy Roosevelt.
“How did you know it was me?” he asked.
Caitlin smiled as they shook hands under the warming sun. “You walk like you’re still treading on ice.” She looked at his arm. “Plus you have a busted wing in a sling that I could swear was made of thyodularasi skin.”
“It’s a hortatur mask I found in Galderkhaan,” he said. “Remarkable relic. It allowed me to breathe underground… and it’s helping me heal. I want to be there if it does anything else.”
Caitlin smiled. “There is no one alive who would understand that better than me.”
“I know that,” he laughed. “Do you want to go inside?”
Caitlin shook her head. “If you don’t mind, I want to stand right here. I want to watch the cars and road, the people, the arteries of a living city. I haven’t really been able to do that for a while.” She looked at him. “That is, if you don’t mind the cold.”
“This, cold?” he laughed. “No, I don’t mind.”
Caitlin grinned when she remembered where he had just been. “I’m sorry about Flora Davies,” she told him. “I didn’t exactly get along with her—”
“No one did.”
“But I would have liked the opportunity to get to know her better,” Caitlin went on.
“Maybe you will,” Mikel said. “She left countless notes, recordings. If you’re interested.”
“One day, I’m sure,” Caitlin replied. “I need time.”
The archaeologist understood that as well.
“Are you going to stay in the city?” Caitlin asked.
“I am,” he said. “Some of the international figures behind the Group are coming. I want to continue the work we were doing. But obviously with a very different endgame. Not something for Priests or Technologists.”
“For everyone,” she said.
“That’s what ‘they’ wanted,” Mikel said.
Caitlin knew whom he meant. The same beings that Madame Langlois had meant each time she used the word.
“When you phoned, you said you saw me with the Candescents,” Caitlin said. “I couldn’t see anything but light.”
“I didn’t actually see you,” he told her. “What I saw was a force that I knew was someone who had earned the right to be there. You are the only one who had come as far as I did. I entered the dome of light and I was drawn to you, suspended ahead, shimmering and very much a balance to me.”
“How a balance?”
“I think either of us, alone, might have been consumed by the light. Together, we were strong enough to remain anchored.”
“Together,” she said. “The Candescents survived by joining. The Galderkhaani transcended by joining. So that’s the takeaway. Hold hands, teach the world to sing.”
“The biggest, oldest ideas are often that simple,” Mikel said.
“But us,” she said thoughtfully, “there at the same time. Are you suggesting we were meant to be there together?”
“I believe that from the very start, everything was designed to bring us there.”
“From the start of what?” Caitlin asked. “Was all this set in motion two weeks ago by stones waking up under the ice? That seems a little arbitrary, don’t you think?”
“I do,” Mikel replied. He glanced at the mask around his arm. “Which is why I believe the sequence of events is older, far older than that.”
Caitlin shook her head. “I’m not sure I’m ready to believe that. I have an okay ego, but not big enough to imagine that all of history was orchestrated so that we could have a chat with the Candescents.”
“‘Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?’” Mikel said. “Exodus 3:11. My grandmother was a devotee.”
“I am not a prophet.”
“Yet,” Mikel said. “You already know the message and you have your patients and your platforms. Give it time. That’s what I intend to do.” He looked at the sky. “They are out there now, no longer in stones. We may all be changed. We already are.”
Caitlin thought of Jacob, who bristled with newfound confidence. She could not dismiss the idea, but she remained cautious. She tapped her shoe on the steps. “The Candescents are down there as well.” She pointed with two fingers to the south, toward the harbor. “And out there too.”
Mikel nodded. “True. I have to learn to think in many directions. Different dimensions.”
“What I mean is, the change may be slow in coming,” Caitlin replied. “Assuming we were ‘chosen,’ they picked a psychiatrist, someone who works with young minds. They selected an archaeologist who understands archetypes in civilization, is familiar with the many ideas of monotheism, pantheism, atheism.” The sun warmed her and she tugged open her scarf. “What I’m saying is—baby steps. We shouldn’t range too far, try too much.”
“No, you’re right,” he said. He touched the hortatur mask. “I could probably spend an entire lifetime just studying this.” He laughed. “I probably will.”
Caitlin smiled. “And the vision will fade,” she said with a touch of longing. “It will seem dreamlike as time passes. Life will not push out the mission but it will intrude on its urgency.”