“All the way to another firing squad in the Chapel,” agreed Фshima, “where Pfenninger would redact D’Arnoq’s artificial remorse and psychoslay the Horologists it lured there. I have to admit, it’s clever. It sounds like a Constantin ploy.”
“My vote would be no.” L’Ohkna is residing in a pale, balding, and puffy Ulsterman’s body in its midthirties. L’Ohkna is the youngest Horologist, having been found by Xi Lo in a New Mexico commune in the 1960s during his first resurrection. While L’Ohkna’s psychovoltage is still limited, he has become the principal architect of the Deep Internet, or “Nethernet,” and his dozens of aliases are being fruitlessly hunted by every major security agency on earth. “One misstep and Horology dies. Simple as.”
“But isn’t the enemy taking a big risk, too?” asked Unalaq. “Turning one of their own strongest psychosoterics against the Anchorites and the Blind Cathar?”
“Yes,” agreed Фshima, “but they know what they’re doing. They need to offer us a shiny prize and a juicy bait. But tell us, Marinus: What are your thoughts about this unexpected overture?”
“I think it’s an ambush, but we should accept it anyway, then, between now and the Second Mission, engineer a means of ambusing the ambush. We’ll never win the War by force. Every year, we save a few, but look at Oscar Gomez, snatched from a secure unit headed by one of my own students. Social media flag up active chakras before we can inoculate them. Horology’s drifting towards irrelevance. There aren’t enough of us. Our networks are fraying.”
Arkady broke the gloomy silence: “If you think this, so must the enemy. Why would Pfenninger risk giving us access to the Blind Cathar when he can stalemate us to death?”
“Because of his cardinal vice: vanity. Pfenninger wants to annihilate Horology in one glorious act of slaughter, so he’s offering us, his desperate enemy, this trap. But it’ll also give us a narrow window of time inside the Chapel. It won’t come again.”
“And what do we do with that narrow window of time,” countered L’Ohkna, “apart from being butchered, body and soul?”
“That,” I confessed, “I cannot answer. But I heard from someone who may be able to. I didn’t dare refer to this outside 119A, but now we’re all here, lend an old friend your ears …” I produced an ancient Walkman and inserted a BASF cassette.
WENDY HANGER’S FINGERS drum on the wheel while four lanes of traffic cross the intersection. She has no ring on her finger. The light turns green, but she doesn’t notice until the truck behind us blasts its horn. She pulls off, stalls, mutters, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Chevrolet, ignition!” We drive off, past a big Home Depot, and soon we’ve left Poughkeepsie behind. I ask, “How long to Blithewood?”
“Thirty, forty minutes.” Wendy Hanger puts a nicotine gum stick into her mouth and her sternocleidomastoideus ripples with every chew. The road winds between and under trees. Their buds are on the cusp of opening. A sign says RED HOOK 7 MILES. We overtake a pair of cyclists, and Wendy Hanger musters the courage: “Dr. Fenby, could I … uh, ask you a question?”
“Ask away.”
“This might sound like I’m outta my freaking tree.”
“You’re in luck, Ms. Hanger. I’m a psychiatrist.”
“Does the name ‘Marinus’ ring any bells?”
I hadn’t seen that coming. We don’t hide our true names, but neither do we advertise them. “Why do you ask?”
Wendy Hanger’s breathing is ragged. “Dunno how I knew it, but I knew it. Look, I—I—I’m sorry, I gotta pull over.” Around the next bend there’s a timely rest area with a bench and a view of woodland sloping down to the Hudson River. Wendy Hanger turns around. She’s sweating and wide-eyed. Her dolphin air freshener swings in diminishing arcs. “Do you know a Marinus—or areyou Marinus?”
The cyclists we passed not long ago speed by.
“I go by that name in certain circles,” I say.
Her face trembles. It’s scarred with childhood acne. “Ho- lycrap.” She shakes her head. “ Youcould hardly’ve been bornyet. Jeez, I reallyneed a smoke.”
“Don’t take your stress out on your bronchial tubes, Ms. Hanger. Stick to the gum. Now. I’m overdue an explanation.”
“This isn’t”—she frowns—“this isn’t some kinda setup?”
“I wish it was, because then I’d know what was happening.”
Suspicion, angst, and disbelief slug it out in Wendy Hanger’s face, but no clear winner emerges. “Okay, Doctor. Here’s the story. When I was younger, in Milwaukee, I went off the rails. Family issues, a divorce … substance abuse. My stepsister booted me out, and by the end, moms were, like, steering their kids across the road to avoid me. I was …” She flinches. Old memories still keep their sting.
“An addict,” I state calmly, “which means you’re now a survivor.”
Wendy Hanger chews her gum a few times. “I guess I am. New Year’s Eve 1983, though, the holiday lights all pretty—Jeez, I was no survivor then. I hit rock bottom, broke into my stepsister’s house, found her sleeping pills, swallowed the entire freakin’ bottle with a pint of Jim Beam. That movie The Towering Infernowas on, as I … sank away. You ever see it?” Before I can answer, a sports car storms by and Wendy Hanger shudders. “I woke up in the hospital with tubes in my stomach and throat. My stepsister’s neighbor had seen the TV on, come over, and found me. Called an ambulance in the nick of time. People think sleeping pills are painless, but that’s not true. I’d no idea a stomach could hurtthat much. I slept, woke, slept some more. Then I woke in the geriatric ward, which totallyfreaked me out ’cause I thought I’d aged,” Wendy Hanger does a bitter laugh, “and been in a coma for forty years, and was now, like, ancient. But there was this woman there, sitting by my bed. I didn’t know if she was staff or a patient or a volunteer, but she held my hand and asked, ‘Why are you here, Miss Hanger?’ I hear her now. ‘Why are you here, Wendy?’ She spoke kinda funny, like with an accent, but … I don’t know where from. She wasn’t black, but wasn’t quite white. She was … kind, like a … a gruff angel, who wouldn’t blame you or judge you for what you’d done or for what life’d done to you. And I—I heard myself telling her things I …” Wendy Hanger gazes at the backs of her hands, “… I never told anyone. Suddenly it was midnight. This woman smiled at me and said, ‘You’re over the worst. Happy New Year.’ And … I just freakin’ burst into tears. I don’t know why.”
“Did she tell you her name?”
Wendy’s eyes are a challenge.
“Was her name Esther Little, Wendy?”
Wendy Hanger breathes in deep: “She said you’d know that. She said you’d know. But you can’t have been more than a girl in 1984. What’s going on? How … Jeez.”
“Did Esther Little give you a message to give to me?”
“Yes. Yes, Doctor. She asked me, a homeless, suicidal addict whom she’d known for all of, like, two or three hours, to pass on a message to a colleague named Marinus. I—I—I—I asked, ‘Is “Marinus” like a Christian name, a surname, an alias?’ But Esther Little said, ‘Marinus is Marinus,’ and told me to tell you … to tell you …”
“I’m listening, Wendy. Go on.”
“ ‘Three on the Day of the Star of Riga.’ ”
The world’s hushed. “Three on the Day of the Star of Riga?”
“Not a word more, not a word less.” She studies me.
The Star of Riga. I know I’ve known that phrase, and I reach for the memory, but my fingers pass through it. No. I’ll have to be patient.
“ ‘Riga’ meant nothing,” Wendy Hanger chews what must now be a flavorless lump of gum, “back in my hospital bed in Milwaukee, so I asked her the spelling: R-I-G-A. Then I asked where I’d find this Marinus, so I could deliver the message. Esther said no, the time wasn’t right yet. So I asked when the time would be right. And she said,” Wendy Hanger swallows, her carotid artery pulsing fast, “ ‘The day you become a grandmother.’ ”