“Seriously? On this very table?”
“It’s been reupholstered twice since, but yes.”
Holly runs her thumb along the cushion. “What did Xi Lo look like?”
“Shortish, early fifties in 1969, bearded, Jewish, as it happened. He set up comparative anthropology at NYU. There are photos in the archives, if you’d like to see him.”
She considers the offer. “Another time, when we’re not off on a suicide mission. Xi Lo was male back then, too?”
“Yes. Sojourners often have a gender they’re most at home in. Esther prefers being female. We Returnees alternate gender from one resurrection to the next, whether we like it or not.”
“That doesn’t screw your head up?”
“It’s odd for the first few lives, but you get used it.”
Holly hits the cue ball off the side and bottom cushions, and into the loosened pack. “You say things like that as if it’s so … normal.”
“Normal is whatever you have come to take for granted. To your ancestor in 1024, your life in 2024 would seem equally improbable, mystifying, full of marvels.”
“Yeah, but … it’s not quite the same. For that ancestor and me, when we die, we die. For you … What’s it like, Marinus?”
“Atemporality?” I rub blue chalk dust onto the fleshy pad at the base of my thumb. “We’re old, even when young. We’re usually leaving, or being left behind. We’re wary of ties. Until 1821, when Xi Lo and Holokai found me, my loneliness was indescribable yet had to be endured. Even now, what I’d call the ‘ennui of eternity,’ if you will, can be debilitating. But being a doctor, and an horologist, gives my metalife a purpose.”
Holly readjusts her moss-green head-wrap, half removing it, to reveal a scalp of trimmed tufty down. She hasn’t done this in my presence before, and I’m touched. “Last question: Why do Atemporals exist? I mean, did Returnees and Sojourners evolve this way, like the great apes or whales? Or were you … ‘made’? Was it something that happened to you, in your first life?”
“Not even Xi Lo has an answer to that. Not even Esther knows.” I hit the orange 5 ball into the bottom left. “I’m spots, you’re stripes.”
AT TEN-FIFTY, HOLLY pots the black to beat me by a single ball. “I’ll give you a rematch later,” she says, picking up her daypack. We walk upstairs to the gallery, where the others are assembled. Фshima lowers the blinds. Holly goes into the kitchen for a glass of tap water —Only tap water, I subcall after her. Don’t touch the bottled water. It could have been tampered with, I subwarn her—and she returns a minute later, strapping on a small daypack, as if we’re going for a short hike in the woods. I lack the heart to ask her what she’s packed—a flask of tea, a cardigan, a bar of Kendal mint cake for energy? This just isn’t that sort of expedition. We look at the paintings. What’s left to say? We discussed strategy to the saturation point in Unalaq’s library; sharing our fears at this point is unhelpful, and we don’t want to fill the last moments with small talk. Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Timecalls me over. Xi Lo told me he regretted never switching it for the copy in London, but he couldn’t face all the Acts of Suasion, skulduggery, and subterfuge needed to right the wrong. Fifty years later I stand there with the same regret. For Atemporals, our tomorrows feel like a limitless resource. Now I’ve none left.
“The Aperture,” Unalaq says. “I feel it.”
Six of us look around for the unzipping line …
“There,” says Arkady, “by the Georgia O’Keeffe.”
A vertical black slit draws itself in front of the horizontal yellows and pinks of the New Mexico dawn. A hand appears, the line widens to a slash, and Elijah D’Arnoq emerges. Softly, Holly mangles a swear word and says, “Where did hecome from?”and Arkady mutters, “Where we’re going.”
Elijah D’Arnoq needs a shave and his wiry hair looks unkempt. Yes, the strain of being a traitor ought to show. “You’re punctual.”
“Horologists have no excuse for being late,” replies Arkady.
D’Arnoq recognizes Holly. “Ms. Sykes. I’m glad you were rescued the other day. Constantin regards you as unfinished business.”
Holly can’t yet speak to the man who steps out of thin air.
“Ms. Sykes will join our demolition party,” I tell D’Arnoq. “Unalaq will channel her psychosoteric voltage into the cloaking operation.”
Elijah D’Arnoq looks dubious, and I wonder if this might jeopardize the Second Mission. “I can’t guarantee her safety.”
“I thought you’d covered all angles?” says Arkady.
“War has no guarantees. You all know that.”
“And Mr. Dastaani here,” I indicate Sadaqat, “will also be joining us. I presume you are familiar with our warden at 119A?”
“Everybody spies,” says D’Arnoq. “What’s Mr. Dastaani’s role?”
“To park his ass,” says Фshima, “halfway up the Way of Stones and unleash a force-ten psychoferno if anyone wanders up after us. Temporal, Atemporal—anyone in the conduit will be ash.”
D’Arnoq frowns. “Is a psychoferno a Deep Stream invocation?”
“No,” says Фshima. “It’s my word for what happens if the bomb made of N9D—the famous Israeli-made nano-explosive—currently in Mr. Dastaani’s backpack goes off inside the Way of Stones.”
“It’s insurance against an attack from the rear,” I say, “while we’re taking apart the Chapel.”
“A smart precaution,” says Elijah D’Arnoq, looking impressed. “Though I pray to God you don’t have to use it.”
“How do you feel?” Фshima asks D’Arnoq. “Defection’s a big step.”
The 128-year-old Carnivore regards the eight-centuries-old Фshima with defiance. “I’ve been party to decades of indiscriminate evil, Mr. Фshima. But today I’ll also be party to stopping it.”
“But without your Black Wine,” Фshima reminds him, “you’ll age, you’ll fade away, you’ll die in a care home.”
“Not if Pfenninger or Constantin stop us before we’ve smashed the Chapel of the Dusk, I won’t. And so. With no further ado?”
ONE BY ONE, we slip through the dark Aperture onto the round floor of rock ten paces across. The unflickering, paper-white Candle of the Dial stands as tall as a child. I’d forgotten the dual claustrophobia and agoraphobia, the smell of locked spaces, and the thin air. Residual color and light from the gallery filters in through the Aperture, held open like a drape by D’Arnoq now for Holly, now for Sadaqat, with his explosive backpack. Sadaqat’s face is a study of nervous awe, while Фshima, the last to enter, is a study of sulky nonchalance. “This isn’t the Chapel, is it?” Holly mutters. “And why’s my voice so quiet?”
“This is the Dial of the Way of Stones,” I reply. “The first of the many steps that climb up to the Chapel. The edges of the Dial absorb light and sound, so raise your voice a little to compensate.”
“There’s no color,” observes Holly. “Or is it me?”
“The Candle’s monochrome,” I answer. “It’s been burning for eight centuries.” Behind us, Elijah D’Arnoq is sealing the Aperture. I catch a brief glimpse of Bronzino’s Venus, lightly holding her golden apple, before our way back is gone. No dungeon was ever so secure. Only Esther or a follower of the Shaded Way can unseal the Aperture and get us home. I suffer a jabbing flashback to my last time on the Dial, incorporeally, my and Esther’s souls unraveling, Joseph Rhоmes hard on her heels and gaining. Esther, nestled and hidden in Фshima’s head, is no doubt remembering too.
“There are letters cut into the stone,” Holly remarks.
“The Cathar alphabet,” I tell her. “No one can read it now, not even heresiologists. The alphabet is descended from Oc, a language older even than Basque.”
“Pfenninger told me,” says D’Arnoq, “the letters are a prayer to God, requesting His help to rebuild Jacob’s Ladder. That’s what the Blind Cathar believed he was building, apparently. Don’t touch the walls. Whatever it’s made of, it and atomic matter”—he produces a coin from his pocket—“do not get on.” He tosses the coin out of the Dial’s perimeter. It vanishes in a blink of phosphorescence. “Don’t lose your footing on the Way of Stones.”