There’s a long pause then, and it’s the Signalman who finally breaks the silence.
“It’s not finished, is it?”
“No,” she says. “It isn’t. It’s only just begun.” But she kindly doesn’t tell him about the streets she’ll walk in a ruined L.A. only twenty-eight years farther along, or the battalions of winged fungoid monstrosities skimming low above shattered skyscrapers, or the black ships.
“You know about New Horizons, too?”
“I do.”
“Good,” he says. “Then I don’t have to tell you.”
“If it’s any consolation, you did the best you could. And you may have bought us all a little more time.”
Another pause, and then he says, “That tarot card, the one we found nailed to the front door of the ranch house—”
“The World.”
“Yeah, the World. You’re the dancer, aren’t you?”
He listens and waits while she lights a cigarette.
“No more than anyone else,” she says. “No more than you. No more than that poor Stringfellow girl or Standish or the woman who served us coffee that night in Arizona.”
“Did you keep the card?”
“No. It’s in the archives at Barbican. For safekeeping.”
He goes to the refrigerator for a few ice cubes, cracks the seal on a fresh bottle of J&B, and refills his glass. “Would you like to know a secret,” he asks.
“Sure. What’s one more, after all.”
“That night, they wanted me to kill you. They wanted me to kill you and take the briefcase. I talked them out of it. I still don’t really know why, but I talked them out of it.”
“Yes,” she says, “I know. No hard feelings. No ill will.”
He asks her another couple of questions, though they’re really nothing of consequence, and then she hangs up first. He’ll catch hell from Albany for making the call, but what the fuck. He only wishes it had left him feeling even the smallest bit less afraid, the smallest bit less alone.
But that’s not the way it is, he reminds himself. You knew that when you signed up. That’s not ever the way it is.
The Signalman sits at the big bay window of his apartment in the Santa Monica Hills, and he sips his whisky and smokes and watches the sky. Only a few bright stars are visible through the white-orange haze of light pollution. At least that’s something. It’s surely more than he deserves.
About the Author
Photograph by Kyle Cassidy
CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN is the author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels; many comic books; and more than two hundred published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. She is also the author of scientific papers in the field of paleontology. She has won numerous awards, including two World Fantasy Awards, two Bram Stoker Awards, and a James Tiptree, Jr. Award.
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Also by Caitlín R. Kiernan
NOVELS
The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
The Red Tree
Daughter of Hounds
Murder of Angels
Low Red Moon
Threshold
Silk
COLLECTIONS
Dear Sweet Filthy World
Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea
The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories
Two Worlds and In Between
Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart
The Ammonite Violin & Others
A Is for Alien
Alabaster
To Charles Fort, With Love
Tales of Pain and Wonder
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
1. Oddfellows Local 171 (July 9, 2015)
2. Words Written Backwards (June 29, 2015)
3. Zero-Sum Gethsemane (July 10, 2015)
4. A Piece of the Sky (August 17, 1968)
5. Last of the Hobo Kings (Shining Road) (July 10, 2015)
6. The Beginning After the End (July 2, 2015)
7. All Along the Watchtower/Midnight City (1927, 1979, 2015, 2043, & etc.)
8. Not Yet Explored (July 4, 2015)
9. The Puppet Motel (July 11, 2015)
10. The Rapture as Low Burlesque (July 3, 2015)
11. Lowdown Subterranean End-Times Blues (Revisited)
About the Author
Also by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
AGENTS OF DREAMLAND
Copyright © 2017 by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Cover photograph © Getty Images
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Jonathan Strahan
All rights reserved.
A Tor.com Book
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ISBN 978-0-7653-9431-6 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9432-3 (trade paperback)
First Edition: February 2017
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Agents of Dreamland Page 8
