Forced Perspectives

by Tim Powers

  Leaning close to the glass, he said, quietly but clearly, “Come outside.”

  There were no further sounds from behind the glass, and no light came on. After several anxious seconds, Fakhouri got to his feet and stepped away from the building, folding the sheet of paper and ready to run back through the hole in the fence if one of the adults were to appear in the door window.

  But soon it was two bobbing heads that blocked the light in the lower third of the glass, and a moment later Fakhouri winced at a distressingly echoing snap, and the door swung open, its bottom edge slithering over weeds. He quickly shoved the paper into his coat pocket.

  The two girls he had seen at the beach yesterday morning shuffled outside, their disordered hair backlit against the open doorway. They were both wearing overalls and white sneakers.

  “What was that picture, please?” asked one.

  “Are you from out of the ocean?” the other one asked, and added, “All we got for dinner was—” and then they both spoke in unison, “—green bean casserole!”

  “And we rolled it up our napkins and flushed them down the toilet.”

  “Hush!” whispered Fakhouri, backing toward the fence and beckoning. “The picture was a hieroglyph.” He had to repeat the word for them. “Listen! You must come with me, to be safe from—I—ah—you had no dinner? I can get you dinner. But you must—”

  At least the girls were following him. One of them said, “Can you get—” and pronounced something that sounded like poyo loco. Possibly some Hawaiian food.

  Fakhouri had backed into the chain-link fence, nodding furiously. “In Los Angeles I’m sure it can be found. Whisper, can’t you?” He looked around and saw the hole in the fence a yard to his right, and he crouched through it.

  One of the girls followed him. “The toilet turned into a volcano,” she said solemnly. “We’ve met that hie-ro-glyph,” she added, “under the sea. Its name is Nu.”

  “It’s too big and empty to have a name,” Fakhouri replied distractedly, helping the other girl through the fence. “But—you must lift your foot!—but yes, people have called it Nu.”

  “We need to meet it again, in person,” said one of the girls, “to close Uncle Simon’s app. It makes our heads buzz all the time.”

  “I can do that,” said Fakhouri. “I can make it stop.”

  When both girls had got through the fence, Fakhouri led them across the discount center parking lot to his rented Nissan, and opened a back door for them.

  When they were in and he had closed the door and got behind the wheel, he glanced to the left, toward the church—and he saw a figure silhouetted against the bright rectangle of the open doorway. A man’s voice shouted syllables that Fakhouri knew must be Lexi and Amber.

  He hastily started the car and backed it in a curve to face the street, and winced when the back bumper collided noisily with what sounded like a row of trash cans.

  Clicking the car into drive, he sped out of the lot and made a left turn onto Pico.

  There’s only night staff at the consulate, he thought, I can hardly bring them there until the full complement of personnel arrives in th morning, and even then it will be a sad confusion. But the boy Santiago mentioned a place . . .

  In the rear view mirror he saw a pair of headlights swing into view and quickly begin closing the distance between them and his car. Fakhouri pressed harder on the gas pedal, but the following headlights only drew closer.

  “Fasten your seatbelts!” he croaked.

  Instead of doing as he had asked, both girls knelt on the back seat to peer out the rear window.

  “Who is it?” asked one, and then answered herself: “Uncle Don and Mr. Nunez are out running errands, and Uncle John’s hand is all shot off. Let’s see.” The other girl reached out and touched the slant of glass. “It’s that one that looks like Severus Snape,” said the girl who had spoken first, “and one of our stupid guards.” She hiked around on the seat and gave Fakhouri a piercing look in the rear view mirror. “Don’t let them take us back.”

  The pursuing driver began to angle out to the left, clearly intending to pass the Nissan.

  “I don’t know what I can do—” Fakhouri began.

  The girl turned back to look out the rear window. “That’s okay.”

  Abruptly the car behind them swerved sharply to the right, its tires screeching and its headlights momentarily lighting the interior of Fakhouri’s car; then Fakhouri heard a hard metallic bam, and in his rear-view mirror glimpsed a power pole rotate from vertical like the second-hand of a clock. Whatever noise it might have made in striking the street was lost in the roar of the Nissan’s engine.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  She’s Still Agnes

  “He’s still riding his idiot bicycle east on Washington,” came a voice from the phone Agnes Loria was holding to her ear as she drove. It was Chino Nunez, who had been in charge of security at ChakraSys, and who was now standing in for the injured Taitz. “Maybe he’s aiming for Nevada. He’s made three stops, at a Subway sandwich place and a liquor store and a sportin goods store. He’s got a couple of bags now in the saddlebags on his bike, and he’s got a new puffy jacket.”

  “I can’t be there,” Loria said, “if you’re going to take his blood pressure.” She was driving north on the 101 freeway, just passing the Alvarado exit.

  “No,” Nunez assured her, “it looks like he’s got a destination, and if it’s the Vickery and Castine couple, you can just turn around and go back to the church, and we’ll delete them all from the situation. But if he goes another hour without meeting them, then the boss will want your help in asking him about them.”

  My help, thought Loria. Her right hand was slick on the steering wheel of her station wagon, and she was furious at herself for caring that, one way or another, Elisha Ragotskie was going to die tonight.

  People like us have better things to do, Harlowe had told her back at the church, than to form adhesions.

  Washington Boulevard, up which Elisha was reportedly riding his bicycle—all the way from the On the Waterfront Café in Venice!—was down by the 10 freeway; evidently he was not heading for their Echo Park apartment, as she had thought he might. she’d have to get off this freeway and get on again heading south, and take the 110 down to the 10. She lowered the phone to click the turn signal lever up with her little finger, and merged into the right lane to get off at Rampart.

  Adhesions, she thought. Like when abdominal organs get stuck together, and you get intestinal obstructions and ectopic pregnancies. Is that what human sexual relations amount to? Souls sticking together to their detriment?

  She steered one-handed through the Ramparts offramp. “Can’t Elisha tell,” she said irritably into the phone, “that you’re following him?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s done a couple of evasions, like riding his bike around parking barriers, but it’s seemed like just precaution; and we’re in two cars, Baldy Foster’s in the other one. There’s other bicyclists riding east from the beach, but we can easily keep our eyes on him.”

  A moment later Nunez added, “Now he’s turned south on Estes. Probably just another precaution, Estes just dead-ends at the 10 freeway.”

  Elisha, you idiot, thought Loria, didn’t it occur to you that I would recognize the sounds of that café? Or did you imagine that I wouldn’t pass your location on to Harlowe? Did you still, after everything, trust me? Idiot.

  Nunez spoke up again. “I don’t think this is an evasion. He’s gone two blocks. But this does dead-end up ahead.”

  He’s going to meet Vickery and Castine, Loria thought. Harlowe says he’s with them now, damn him.

  I’ll get down to the 10, she thought, and get off at Vermont; that’s the offramp before Estes. Taitz and Foster will wait, to make sure. I might get there before they make their move, but I won’t warn Elisha. I won’t.

  “Wait for me,” she said, and laid the phone on the seat.

  Traffic was heavier on the 110 now, and it took
Vickery twenty minutes to drive down to the 10 interchange; and when he had merged with the westbound 10 freeway, he drove slowly in the far right lane. A dull red streak in the sky ahead of them was all that was left of the sunset, and he had to squint to see the trees and low bushes beyond the shoulder guard rail.

  “Along here,” he said, “after the Vermont exit and before Normandie.”

  “Not much shoulder,” said Castine.

  “I’ll write a note and hang it on the antenna. ‘Dead battery, went to find a phone.’”

  “Everybody’s got their own phone.”

  “I’ll say mine’s in therapy.”

  He swerved into the narrow shoulder lane, which was marked with diagonal white lines and was barely wide enough to let him get the car out of traffic. The passenger-side door scraped the guard rail.

  “You’ll have to climb out on my side,” he said, lifting a pen and notepad from the console, “and look behind before you open the door or step out.”

  “Duh,” said Castine, already drawing her legs up.

  Vickery, and then Castine, climbed hastily out of the car and hurried around the front bumper to the convex steel strip of guard rail. Vickery scribbled a few words on a page of the notebook, tore it off, and speared it on the antenna.

  “Crouch out of sight now,” he said, “and over the rail into the bushes.”

  In the waxing and waning shadow of the car’s bulk, they rolled over the guard rail and, moving diagonally to stay as much as possible in the car’s shadow, crawled into the mass of bushes that fronted the shoulder. A few yards further they reached a cluster of trees, and were able to stand up in the deeper shadows.

  Vickery watched through intervening branches while a dozen cars rushed past his parked Saturn without swerving or braking. Satisfied that the car was safely out of traffic, he turned to peer into the shrubbery, then caught Castine’s eye and patted his jacket pocket. She nodded and slid her right hand into her coat pocket.

  The night sky over central Los Angeles was never as dark as what Vickery was used to in Barstow, and even when the peripheral glow of rushing headlights behind them wasn’t making the surrounding leaves glitter, he was able to lead the way between the close-set trees and bushes to the edge of the slope that led down to surface streets.

  He and Castine paused at the crest. Below them, the bright lines of boulevards seemed to spread apart as they swept from the remote dark foothills and, closer, became individual spots of colored light. Vickery let his gaze follow their expanding grid down to the base of the freeway shoulder slope, where the dark rectangles of the bowling alley and thrift store sat behind pools of streetlight radiance.

  “A bit further west,” he whispered to Castine.

  After they had picked their way for several yards through the overhanging greenery along the shoulder crest—while Vickery became aware of the incongruous scents of vinegar and onions on the otherwise diesel-tainted breeze—he pushed a branch aside and paused.

  The gypsy nest clearing was directly ahead. By the dim ambient light he could see four plastic web chairs and several beer cans, and he knew that the little pale flecks on the packed dirt were old cigarette butts. This was the freeway gypsy nest, evidently unoccupied.

  “Vickery,” he said, just loudly enough to be heard for a few yards, “a driver for Galvan.” It was an identification most freeway gypsies would recognize.

  Leaves thrashed behind an oleander bush on the far side of the clearing, and Elisha Ragotskie stepped out of the deeper shadows.

  He wore a bulky nylon jacket now, and he was holding a hunting knife with a six-inch blade; after a moment he seemed to become aware of the knife, and he quickly slid it into a sheath at his belt.

  “Sorry!” he said. “I didn’t know who might be crashing around up here. Were you able to find out anything?”

  “In seven hours?” said Vickery. “Well, a little. You were careful coming here? Watched your back?”

  “Sure,” said Ragotskie, stepping to one of the chairs. He waved toward the street-side slope. “I’m on a bicycle, and I rode around a lot of barriers where cars couldn’t follow me, stuff like that.” He started to sit down, paused to push the knife sheath out of the way, then carefully lowered himself into the chair. “I brought sandwiches and a six-pack of beer, but there’s nobody around. So you found out something?”

  Vickery looked carefully into the surrounding shadows, listening, then sat down in one of the chairs. “We got an address to check out. What, you bought a knife?”

  “I couldn’t get a gun.” He took off his glasses, peered around, and then put them on again. “What kind of address? You’ve only got one day.”

  Castine was holding the back of another chair but hadn’t sat down. “What happens in one day?”

  Ragotskie looked up at her. “What do you think? Halloween. Tomorrow at midnight Harlowe launches his egregore, if you haven’t found a way to short it out. What address have you got? I rode my bike out to the ChakraSys office on Sepulveda, and it’s been cleaned out, like I thought.”

  “One day!” whispered Castine. “That’s less than a few.”

  Vickery cocked his head, momentarily certain that he had heard someone singing some distance away; but the wind blew away the faint sound and might have been the sole source of it.

  He returned his attention to the shadowy figure of Ragotskie. “The place on Sepulveda,” he said. “We stopped by it earlier. Was there an old guy hanging around? Talking crazy?”

  “Huh? No, nobody was there, just some kid on a bike going through the trash. After that I rode down Venice Boulevard to a place Agnes and I used to go to, and had a few beers.” He blinked around defensively. “I called her on the phone, in fact.” When Vickery frowned and started to get up, Ragotskie was quick to add, “I used a burner phone! And I was only on for less than a minute.”

  Vickery subsided in his chair, but cast a wary glance toward the descending northward slope and the city beyond. “Not smart anyway,” he said gruffly.

  “Well, I needed to tell her some things. Goodbye, mainly.”

  “Good.” Vickery leaned forward. “So we can forget about her? If you can—”

  “No,” said Ragotskie hastily, “no, you’ve still got to help me get her away from them! Did you guys find out anything about the ’68 egregore? I called the—”

  “If you’re done with her,” said Vickery, “why does it matter what she does?”

  In the dimness, Vickery saw the young man spread his hands and shrug. “She’s still Agnes.”

  Castine nodded.

  “So what’s this other address?” persisted Ragotskie.

  “It’s on Pico.” Vickery hesitated, then told him the street number. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s the only other property listed for Harlowe, besides the place on Sepulveda. So he’s going to launch this thing tomorrow night? Damn. Do you know where?”

  “It’s got to be done at the same place where it was tried in ’68, and on an anniversary of it—the fifty-year anniversary, as it turns out—when the stars are more-or-less the same again, because really Harlowe’s egregore is just a reprise of that one, coloring books and all, though he doesn’t like to talk about that. It’s someplace in Topanga Canyon; he won’t say where, but he wants the Black Sheep to be anchored just offshore, that’s his boat, so I think it’s down at the bottom of the canyon, by Pacific Coast Highway.” He sniffed and looked behind him. “You guys want a sandwich?”

  “We just ate,” said Castine.

  “Is he,” said Vickery, “using my book, in some way? Has he ever said anything about—”

  “Oh, fuck your book! I’m sorry, Ms. Castine.” Facing Vickery, Ragotskie said, “I’ll get you another copy, shit, sorry, I’ll get you a signed damned first edition of it, if you can just manage to stop Harlowe and get Agnes away from him.”

  Vickery’s hand darted to the gun in his pocket then, for a branch behind Ragotskie had been pushed aside and somebody—somebody not tall—was
stepping into the dark clearing.

  The figure spoke, and even after a year and a half, Vickery recognized the boy’s voice. “I think I don’t have to kill anybody tonight,” said Santiago. “I’m glad.” He crossed the packed dirt and sat down in the fourth chair. “A guy told you to get out of town,” he said to Vickery. “I told him you wouldn’t.”

  “An Egyptian,” said Castine. “You’ve spoken to him?”

  “Harlowe’s scared an Egyptian might show up,” put in Ragotskie, who had started to get to his feet and now sank back in the chair. “He says there was one hanging around in ’68, trying to wreck everything.”

  Vickery could make out Santiago’s unruly dark hair and narrow face. The boy was wearing a sweatshirt that was probably a hoodie, and one pocket of it sagged so heavily that Vickery was sure the boy was carrying a gun—possibly the .40 caliber Sig Sauer he had stolen last year. Vickery could see a dark line below one of the sleeve cuffs, and remembered that Santiago wore a leather band on each wrist.

  “Mr. Laquedem is dead,” said Santiago. “These people,” and he waved toward Ragotskie, “killed him, because he wanted to stop the Harlowe man.”

  “I don’t know anything about this,” squeaked Ragotskie.

  Santiago went on, “Laquedem said these people were going to make a desastre worse than what almost happened last year, a poison that would destroy almas—souls. He wanted to stop them, but Harlowe’s people killed him.” Through the shadows, Vickery could see Santiago look up. “We were back here in L.A.,” the boy went on. “I was with him, we were walking beside a gas station, and I could do nothing—he—he just fell down, with blood on his face, and then I heard the gunshot. I pulled out my gun, but there was no one to see.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Castine. She reached a hand toward the boy, then hesitated and let it drop. “But it might have been—”