Forced Perspectives

by Tim Powers

  “Yay,” said Castine, by Loria’s right knee; she went on, indistinctly, “though I walk through the valley of the . . . shadow of death . . . ”

  “That’s from the Bible,” put in Biloxi, still leaning over the back of the rear seat.

  “Shut up,” Loria told him. “Yes,” she said to Vickery, “that was me. You were working for that Mexican woman that first time, what was her name?” When Vickery didn’t answer, she said, “Galvan, that was it. What were you doing before that?”

  Vickery managed to sit up. He shook his head and said, “We haven’t had lunch yet.” He looked down at Castine, who had raised her arms and was blinking at the duct tape around her wrists. “Have we, Ingrid?”

  “Wha-at?” Castine said. She looked up. “Sebastian? Jeez, tell ’em to turn up the heat.” She licked her lips and exhaled through her nose. “Did I get sick? I don’t feel good.”

  “Blood,” said Harlowe from the front seat. He opened the console, then tossed a plastic bag back to Loria. “Quick, before they’re awake enough to resist.”

  Loria unzipped the bag and shook out onto the floor two handkerchief-sized white altar cloths and a steak knife. Quickly she poked the knife-point into Vickery’s forearm above the duct tape; he jumped and reflexively raised his bound arms.

  Loria leaned down and cut Castine’s arm the same way, and Castine grunted. “Careful with that thing!” she muttered groggily.

  “Oh, did Biloxi cut you?” crooned Loria then, tossing the knife past Biloxi into the back of the vehicle. “Here, let me put something on that.”

  “I didn’t—” began Biloxi, but he closed his mouth when Loria gave him a brief glare.

  She pressed one of the altar cloths onto Vickery’s cut arm and the other onto Castine’s. The cloths quickly blotted with bright red blood.

  “You got ’em?” called Harlowe, and when Loria said she did, he added, “Don’t mix them up. If one of our IMPs should get away in the next few hours, per impossibile, we want to be sure we’re using the right tracker.”

  “And we got plenty enough to triangulate it this time,” said Loria, peeling off one of the wet cloths in each hand. To herself she muttered, “Vickery left, Castine right.” She leaned back to see Harlowe. “We going to the church?”

  Harlowe shook his head without taking his eyes from the highway. “We’ve got everything with us. Cabrillo Marina is only half an hour down PCH. We can take the Black Sheep out to where the chronocline is flat—get our IMPs securely initiated as soon as possible. But leave the bloody cloths here, in the vehicle, just in case.”

  Loria nodded, then turned to the back seat and carefully wedged herself between Vickery’s bloody right arm and Castine’s knees. To Tony and Biloxi she said, “Move all the weapons to the front seat,” she said, “then lift Vickery over the seat and into the back. Even with their wrists bound, I don’t want to risk them touching each other.”

  Harlowe and I don’t need another dose of the old house vision right now, she thought, especially with him driving.

  Santiago was perched on a tree branch projecting out over a white-painted picnic table, peering through the leaves at the dirt track below the slope. The old brujo had watched two men chase Vickery and Castine, and had then retreated into the greenery, probably to walk back up the winding path to the top of the highway-facing hill. Santiago had seen Vickery and Castine run toward the gate by PCH, and had seen the gray SUV turn in and block them; the boy had heard a couple of what sounded like .22 shots, and then four rapid shots from a bigger caliber gun—and the two men who had been chasing them helped a couple of people from the SUV load the limp bodies of Castine and Vickery aboard, and the vehicle had driven off.

  Santiago pulled one of the two cheap flip-phones from the less burdened pocket of his sweatshirt and tapped in a number. When a man’s voice answered and repeated the number back, Santiago said, “Castine and Vickery were just here, and some people caught them and took them away in a van or something. It looked like maybe they got shot.”

  “Kabar aswad!” exclaimed Lateef Fakhouri’s voice from the phone. “May God grant that they were shot dead—though I fear they were not.” Santiago could hear the man breathing into the phone. “You must in any case stay where you are. I’ll be there in a few hours, when I have acquired the necessary apparatus. Do you understand?”

  For several seconds Santiago didn’t answer; then, “I understand,” he said.

  The boy closed the phone and slid it into his pocket and leaned against the tree trunk. Through the branches he could now see the old brujo above the treetops, making his slow way back up the zig-zag path toward the top of the hill.

  When Santiago had ridden his bicycle to the Long Beach parking lot where he’d agreed to meet Fakhouri, and told him what had happened below the cliffs in the collapsed section of San Pedro, Fakhouri had dismissed the boy’s account of the old bearded man. “Just an insane alcoholic, one of many here,” he had said. He had concentrated on Santiago’s drawing of the symbol carved in the flat stone.

  And after studying Santiago’s sketch for a full minute, he had paced to the parking lot’s chain-link fence and back, frowning.

  “The inverted broken ankh must mean not life, not identity,” Fakhouri had mused, “and the sawtooth lines mean the sea—a very sharp sea!—and the sea is Nu, the right arm of Nu, even on this around-the-world coast. He had snapped his fingers then. “Hah! You know what it is? It's a blind man’s simplification of the Nu hieroglyph! It was meant to awaken the Ba hieroglyph and propel it directly into negation in the sea!” Fakhouri had not even seen Santiago’s shrug, and had gone on, “I wish Wystan had succeeded, in that! But of course the hieroglyph remained buried there until 1965, when motorcyclists unearthed it.”

  Santiago had tried to say something, but Fakhouri had waved him to silence. “This is more than what Boutros knew. More than I knew! But we should have known!” He waved the boy’s drawing. “Do you see? The Nu hieroglyph does not draw the Ba hieroglyph to itself, but to the actual body of Nu—the sea!”

  Standing beside the car, Fakhouri had quickly given Santiago new instructions. Previously the man had planned to set up some kind of cardboard sign down in the field here tonight and shine a lantern on it, and only wanted Santiago to watch for possible interference by Harlowe’s crew. That was simple enough, though it seemed pointless.

  But now the plan was that Fakhouri would bring two lanterns, and an extra firebox, and Santiago would have a duplicate of the cardboard sign. And at midnight Santiago was to be standing at the top of the seaward hill, holding up one of the signs in the light of the second lantern.

  Fakhouri himself would at the same time be standing knee-deep in the surf, out beyond PCH and the beach, holding the other lantern and cardboard sign. Fakhouri’s only explanation was, You will draw the Ba attention and relay it to me, in the sea. Nu is the eternal grave of identity, and this time there will be no half-awakened egregore left, afterward, to ever be quickened again. The coloring books will be inert, and what belongs to Egypt will not be used by others.

  Fakhouri had pulled car-keys from his pocket. “Get in the car. We have much to do.”

  Fakhouri had driven to a Staples office supply store and told Santiago to wait in the car; Fakhouri had taken a sheet of stiff cardboard from the trunk and hurried into the store, and when he emerged again ten minutes later he had been carrying two sheets, both now wrapped in brown paper. He had then driven Santiago down to PCH, and pulled over near the road-blocking gate where Vickery and Castine were captured a few minutes ago.

  He had opened the trunk and given Santiago the two paper-wrapped cardboard sheets, and told him to take them to the top of the inland hill and wait for him there. Fakhouri had driven away then, “to get some fire.”

  That had been nearly two hours ago.

  Santiago had obediently carried the sheets up the path to the field between the hills—but with the old brujo standing at the top of the seaward hill, he had not wanted t
o be conspicuous standing at the top of the inland one. Instead, he had climbed up the side of this tree that faced away from the seaward hill, and the paper-wrapped sheets of cardboard were now wedged across three branches above his head.

  He glanced up to make sure they were secure, then peered out through the branches and waving leaves. The old brujo had reached the top of the hill again.

  Santiago shifted his position on the tree branch and touched the medallion on its string under his sweatshirt. Laquedem had always worn it, and the boy had tugged the string from around Laquedem’s bloody broken head before running away. Some inches of the string were still stiff with the old man’s blood.

  I hope, he thought to the ghost of old Laquedem, that I am not wasting your purpose, doing what this Egyptian says.

  The boy jumped, for a phone had begun vibrating in his pocket. It was the other phone, the one he’d been using for ordinary business during the past month.

  Pulling it out and opening it, he said, “Santiago.”

  A voice that might have been of either sex said, “You’re the boy who watches and runs errands, right?” When Santiago just listened, the voice went on, “The freeway gypsies say you know how to find Sebastian Vickery if anybody does, and one of ’em gave me this number. My name’s Anita Galvan, and I’ll pay you to tell me how to find him.”

  Santiago cocked his head and brushed the black hair out of his eyes. “The taco truck Galvan?” He had never heard her first name before. When she confirmed it, he said, “I think you want to sell Vickery to a man. And I think the man’s got him now already.”

  “What? Shit.” For a moment the woman didn’t speak; then she said, “Do you know where they are?”

  “I don’t,” said Santiago.

  “Do you know somebody that does?” When Santiago didn’t answer, Galvan went on in a rush, “I’m on Vickery’s side now, damn it, I want to stop Harlowe! My nephew Carlos and the niños, their heads buzz now when they’re together, and the freeway gypsies say it’s because of coloring books Carlos got for them—made by ChakraSys, which I find is this man Harlowe. The gypsies say my family will plain lose their minds tonight, to a big vampire mind! I need to find Vickery!”

  I’m on Vickery’s side now, she had said. Which had been Laquedem’s side too. It seemed likely that she was telling the truth, what with worrying about her family and all.

  “I’ll call you back,” said Santiago, and he closed the phone.

  Coloring books again! Maybe Fakhouri wasn’t crazy.

  Santiago reached into the neck of his sweatshirt and pulled out Laquedem’s medallion, dangling on its string. It was a silver disk with a raised six-pointed star on it formed by two triangles, one upside-down on the other. He turned it over—on the other side was a candelabra holding seven candles in a row.

  He squeezed the medallion in his fist, then dropped it back inside his sweatshirt. He thought for several seconds, then opened his phone again and touched Galvan’s number.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

  IMPs Don’t Need Kneecaps

  Palm trees lined the long parking lot, and when Vickery squinted through his watering eyes he could see blue sea and the decks and masts of boats beyond a railing ahead. Sun glare seemed to be reflecting off everything—the sea, the white boats, the very pavement under his shuffling feet. Harlowe and the woman walked ahead of Castine and himself, with a muscular young man in a white T-shirt and the skinny one called Biloxi bringing up the rear. Harlowe had told Vickery and Castine that all four of their captors carried stun-guns, and that any attempt to run or call attention would only result in an apparent medical emergency and great unpleasantness later. And he had given them each a big red five-kilogram fire extinguisher to carry in front of themselves, which made the positions of their wrists look awkward but not unnatural. “Either of you drop it,” Harlowe had said, “the other one gets a zap.”

  Vickery had seen one of the stun-guns, and it was a Vipertek, able to deliver upward of fifty millions volts, with a lanyard connected to a kill-switch pin which would disable the weapon if it were pulled out of the man’s hand.

  Vickery was still nauseated from the morphine, which was probably also the cause of his excessive sweating and shivering in the cold sea breeze. He was fairly sure he could let go of the fire extinguisher and break the duct-tape binding and spin fast enough to disable the man behind him, but Castine would probably get a multimillion volt shock from the other man’s stun-gun before Vickery could prevent it.

  And there was Harlowe’s remark, We’ve got everything with us. That might include Vickery’s precious copy of The Secret Garden, and Harlowe was wearing a bulky nylon knapsack.

  It would be better to postpone action until the effects of the drug had diminished, in both himself and Castine. Clearly Harlowe did not, after all, mean to kill them, and Vickery could free himself from the bindings at any time—Harlowe apparently didn’t know that duct-tape around the wrists could easily be broken with a sharp downward jerk of the arms.

  Vickery watched the pair walking along a few feet in front of him. Harlowe had a confident stride even with the knapsack riding on his back, and somehow, with boats visible beyond him, his burgundy-colored hair and red cowboy boots had a vaguely swashbuckling, piratical air. The woman was in jeans and a bulky blue nylon jacket, with a knitted green cap over her loose chestnut hair, and her step was springy with evident anticipation.

  Guessing, Vickery said, “Agnes”—and she looked back over her shoulder.

  Vickery smiled and said, “Ragotskie wanted us to get you out of this.”

  “Well, I got him out of it,” she said tightly, turning back to face the direction in which they were walking.

  “We did promise,” put in Castine.

  Without looking back, but sounding angry, Agnes said, “We’re going to put you two into it.”

  “You’d thank us later,” added Harlowe without looking around, “if you could.”

  The group reached the railing and turned right, down an open walkway. To their left was a forest of masts and rigging and horizontal booms wrapped in blue tarpaulins, above hulls that glittered with reflections from the water. At the end of the walkway the tight group stepped with elaborate caution through a gate, then made their way along a gently bobbing concrete floating dock that was wide enough for them to walk two abreast. On this Wednesday afternoon there were only a few people visible on the decks of the boats they walked past, and Harlowe’s group drew nothing more than a couple of glances and polite nods. Vickery knew that he’d be flattened by millions of volts of electricity before he would be able to say more than one syllable of Call the police.

  They halted beside a gleaming white boat with a high, railed foredeck and a fly-bridge above the cabin; the sheerline swept from the flared bow to a low freeboard cockpit. Vickery estimated that it was forty or fifty feet in length.

  Harlowe and Agnes mounted the boarding steps, hopped down to the cockpit deck, and turned around to watch Vickery and Castine come aboard with Biloxi and the other man right behind them.

  The door to the lounge was open, and Vickery and Castine were hustled inside.

  An incongruous card table had been set up between a padded bench on one side and a long couch on the other. A doorway in the forward bulkhead led to stairs, presumably down to a galley and staterooms. Harlowe shrugged out of his knapsack and laid it carefully on the deck against the forward bulkhead, then waved his two captives to the bench while he and Agnes sat down on the starboard couch. Biloxi and the other man waited by the door.

  “Tony,” said Harlowe, “cast off the lines and get us out to the area we were at yesterday morning.”

  The young man in the white T-shirt pocketed his stun-gun and stepped back out onto the cockpit deck, and Vickery, sitting on the bench now and looking out the aft window, saw him untying a rope from a cleat on the dock. The other man, in what Vickery now saw was a red Che Guevara T-shirt, closed the door and held his own stun-gun ostentatiously ready.


  Vickery glanced at Castine, who gave him a strained look. He knew she must find the awkward position of her wrists and the weight of the big red cylinder as uncomfortable as he did.

  He looked at Harlowe and asked, “Can we put down the fire extinguishers?”

  “Oh!” said Harlowe. “Sure, it doesn’t matter now.”

  Vickery and Castine both bent forward and unclasped their cramping hands from the red cylinders, then sat back, flexing their fingers. Vickery heard Tony’s sneakers thumping along the deck outside.

  Agnes remarked, “We should get those stowed. They’ll roll all over the place.”

  Harlowe nodded toward the young man in the red T-shirt. “Biloxi can do it afterward.”

  For several long minutes none of them spoke. Agnes opened a cabinet door in the forward bulkhead and pulled out a leather folder; she slid a sheaf of papers out of it and appeared to devote all her attention to them. Harlowe and Biloxi both stared fixedly at Vickery and Castine, Harlowe with a faint frown deepening the wrinkles around his eyes and Biloxi licking his lips nervously and switching the stun-gun from one hand to the other every few seconds.

  At last the boat’s engines started up, and when they were shifted into gear Vickery had to scuff his foot on the carpet to keep from toppling to his right as the bow lifted and the boat got under way. Castine braced herself against his left shoulder. The fire extinguishers fell over with heavy clanks.

  “I think you have something of mine,” Vickery remarked. When Harlowe raised his eyebrows, Vickery went on, “A copy of The Secret Garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett.”

  “Oh. Yes. It’s serving the greater good these days.”

  Vickery knew Tony was busy steering the boat out of the marina, and both Harlowe and Biloxi took occasional glances out the windows; and he judged that when the boat leaned to port to clear the breakwater and follow the channel out of the harbor, he could leap up and break the duct-tape in one motion, and then in follow-through neutralize Biloxi while avoiding the stun-gun’s electrodes.