I flag a taxi, and right away the driver is pointing to his fare meter and wagging his head. I glance at the display whose LED readout is flashing uselessly. We settle on a fare, and off we go.
Of course, the sticky part of my plan isn’t here in Shenzhen or even along the thousand-odd kilometers of China’s various highways and highwaymen but the city variously called Zhongdu, Dadu, Daidu, Cambuluc, Beiping, Yanjing, Peking, and Beijing. Either Phoebe’s connections there turn out to be in a really generous mood, or we’ve got a problem.
Nothing new there.
“Here! Here!” I tell the cabbie, who drops me at the discreet end of the narrow alley in question. He slaps at his useless meter as I collect my change and slowly unfold my body from the rear of the taxi. Both street and alley, still wet from the morning rain, have a bright just-polished sheen.
Come with me. Hurry.
What? I look around. Various people are striding past, some near, some far, some with their heads beneath rain hoods. Did one of those people just speak to me? The words were so brief and hushed, they almost could have been my own thought. Except that they came wrapped in a woman’s voice. An Englishwoman’s voice. A very particular Englishwoman’s voice.
My eyes fix on the rapidly vanishing body of a woman wrapped in a tan hooded raincoat, hurrying away. I begin to follow her. It isn’t easy. Whoever she is, this woman is really covering some ground, and I may have a fractured rib after all. After a difficult block, the woman throws a quick glance over her shoulder. It’s too brief to reveal her identity, but I think I catch a glimpse of white skin. She rounds a corner, and I do as well, just in time to see the woman enter a wrought-iron gate. Turning toward me for an instant, Ana Manguella throws me a very deliberate stare before vanishing. I follow through the gate and up a flight of iron stairs to a small fire escape cluttered with the branches of a nodding eucalyptus.
Finally arriving at the spot where she stands, I open my mouth to speak, but Ana whispers, “Shhh.” As I catch my breath, she peers down at the street corner we’ve just rounded. Impatient, I check my wristwatch. Now I give it a shake. It doesn’t seem to be working.
“Might I ask,” says Ana, removing her hood and shaking out her hair, “what you call yourself doing?”
“And might I ask,” I reply, “how you knew I’d be getting out of that taxi at that street corner at that moment?”
“I told you I work in security.”
“No,” I say, “you told me you’re in charge of security. I think I’m starting to figure out what that means.”
“Julian, the whole world knows about your eight o’clock appointment with Shatrina Carter. There are practically TV crews standing by. And here you just step out of a taxi.”
“Well,” I begin defensively, “I chose a good, safe spot to step out of that taxi.”
“Which is why it was so hard for me to find you? I won’t save you again. You need to understand that.”
“That’s too bad,” I tell Ana, “because I’m on my way to Beijing and I think I’m going to need quite a bit of saving.”
“Why Beijing?” she asks brusquely.
“They’ve got my sister.”
“They’ve got a lot of people, Julian. What exactly does your soul group intend to do in Beijing?”
“What soul group?” I demand. “The only soul group I know anything about is the Temptations, and they broke up a long time ago.”
The blue and the green narrow suspiciously. “I think you told me a very different story before.”
“About the Temptations?”
“About your work,” says Ana.
“Forget that nonsense. All that world-saving business came to exactly nothing. All we care about now is getting out of this as alive as possible.”
“Then why do things keep getting stranger and stranger?” asks Ana. “And why does my intuition keep pointing directly at you?”
“I, too, have something that keeps pointing directly at you. Still in all.”
“What are you doing to the numbers?” asks Ana.
“What numbers?”
“What time is it?” she says.
“I don’t know. My watch isn’t working.”
Ana raises one sleeve of her raincoat. There are at least a dozen watches strapped to her forearm. Suddenly I expect her to offer me a very fine deal on a Rolex Cellini. Looking a bit closer, I note there are thirteen watches on Ana’s arm, all but one malfunctioning much the same way as mine. Troubling. I think back on my morning. The malfunctioning taxi meter. The balky ATM machines. My own cheap-ass wristwatch. I strain to remember when and where I last saw a correctly displayed number. It seems I got into a taxi at seven twenty-nine.
On reflection, I’m not crazy about that particular three-digit number. Add the three digits together, I note, and you get eighteen, which reduces to nine. Before the taxi, I’d boarded a bus at—what was it?—seven-twenty. Nine again. What’s more, the bus was a 126.
“I’m waiting for your answer,” says Ana.
“Do you have an abacus?” I ask.
She gives me a weary look.
“How about a Rubik’s cube? A Ouija board? Have you ever listened to the Double White album really stoned?”
“Julian.”
“Just a moment.”
Again studying the watches on Ana’s forearm, I note that each displays a time that reduces to nine. All except one, an analog. I look more closely at the two hands of the analog watch. The date box displays a three and a six.
That’s just creepy.
“May I borrow this for a moment?” I ask, unbuckling the analog watch from Ana’s arm. Xu says nines started cropping up on his random number generator on March third. I’d say whatever process began on that day is putting on speed.
“I’m still waiting,” says Ana.
“I’m not doing anything to the numbers,” I tell her, examining the analog watch closely.
“Wasn’t it you,” Ana says accusingly, “who said you enjoy playing stupid math games? Wasn’t it you whose soul group disapproves strongly of this planet’s structure of duality?”
“That’s a misquote.”
“And now you don’t have a single clue as to why all the numbers are changing?”
“Exactly,” I say, replacing the watch on her forearm. “I like the way you put it.”
Actually it wasn’t the analog I returned to Ana but my own useless one. The analog is now on my own wrist.
Ana exhales forcefully. “Julian, I have something to say to you, but first I owe you an apology.”
“You’re goddamn right you do.”
“I was guilty of mixing work with pleasure,” she says. “I think I made a bit of a mess, actually, and I’m sorry. And I really do wish your sister well. Now.”
Ana spreads her feet slightly. “Julian Mancer, because of possible violations of Articles Four and Five—damn, another nine—of the Intergalactic Code, you are being sidebarred for questioning.”
Ana’s right forefinger touches the center of my belly. At the same moment, I see an enormous flash of ruby-tinged light and everything goes to black.
Sidebar Begins
The flatulent drone of a semi-truck reducing speed. A dim overhead moon screened by a bank of altocumulus clouds. Gradually I am aware that night has fallen. Suspended above me is a brightly lit sign reading, “Probability Motel—SAT TV.” Beyond the sign, a scant scattering of stars.
Looking down, I realize I am floating just above the concrete balcony of said motel. I am an escaped birthday balloon bobbing along an open corridor punctuated by open doorways emitting a yellowish light. The first door I pass reveals a room all but empty, at its center a hospital bed whereupon a gaunt old woman lies curled like a toenail clipping. She looks a tad green. In the adjacent room, a Chinese boy in heavy glasses practices scales on a trombone. The light emitting from the third room is a harsh red. As I float past its open door, I see a narrow cot and dresser beneath a bare light bulb. A teapot lies broken
on the floor.
So, the Probability Hotel. I’m currently wondering at the probability of finding both Schrödinger and his cat floating face-down in the pool. Which is to say none of this strikes me as particularly probable. I drift past an ornately decorated room with a fireplace mantel before which stands a small bespectacled man in a white three-piece suit, holding a martini. With a smug glance in my direction, he inquires, “Did you think you could get rid of me so eeeeasily?”
This place will rent a room to anyone.
I notice that I’m not the only one bobbing along the balcony. Floating toward me and making momentary dazed eye contact is the American Teacher’s Rat. This place will rent to anyone.
Now comes a corner. I turn it as through borne along by a brisk wind, passing an ice machine and a vending machine offering packets of laundry detergent and disposable small-caliber handguns. Neither machine sings in any language. Gazing ahead along the long corridor, I see only doors extending to infinity. Rooms without number.
The breeze pulls me a bit farther before sucking me into a room crowded with cheap unmatching furniture, family photos, and domestic clutter. A television plays loudly. Asleep in a recliner is an elderly man in a plaid wool shirt. Nearby sits a young dark-haired woman busily shelling nuts. On the floor is a sack filled with unshelled pecans. Before her on a coffee table are two large bowls, one filled with bits of broken shells, the other with pecan meats.
“Hi, Julian,” the woman says distractedly, clearing a spot near her on the sofa. “I’m Marisol, and this is my father, Edward. You can sit here if that’s okay. I hope you don’t mind if I keep doing these pecans while we talk. My husband’s on his way back from roundup, and it was his birthday last week, so I’m making a cake. How was your trip here? I hope not too bad.”
I look down. My body is now parked beside Marisol on a brown vinyl sofa. Near my feet is a green plastic bassinette complete with baby, its dark eyes fixed on mine. I gather from the reddish brown of the three faces and the clear, shaped notes of Marisol’s voice that this is an American Indian family. Northern Plains tribe, I’d say.
“So, listen, Julian,” says Marisol over the din of the TV, “we just needed to talk to you for a minute. There’s some really disturbing stuff going on, and we’re trying to figure out—”
“You’re Ana’s soul group?” I interrupt, gazing at the old man sleeping in the chair, his mouth open.
Marisol says, “She told you about our group? Good. Well, the thing is, we’re trying to figure out what’s happening with the planet right now—would you mind handing that juice to Stephanie? See the bottle on the floor there?”
I bend to lift a plastic bottle of apple juice. Wiping away a couple of hairs from the nipple, I offer it to the baby’s open mouth. The two eyes watch me intently, but the mouth doesn’t close. Accordingly, I set the bottle on Stephanie’s lap. Marisol meanwhile is shelling and talking distractedly. She mentions the usual list of unsettling earth changes.
“. . . and the glaciers are melting, like, really fast now. That’s caught everybody by surprise. Those glaciers hold a lot of information, you know? They’re like memory banks of what was happening when they froze, and now that’s starting to be lost. And the old trees, too. Those trees hold a lot of information. We feel like this planet is very vulnerable right now, and we just picked up on something that could be pretty serious. It seems to be coming from—just a minute.”
In response to a whistling teapot, Marisol hurries away. I glance vexedly at the loud TV. Steve Reeves is in a red toga. No epaulets.
“Can I make you some coffee, Julian?” Marisol calls from the kitchen. “It’s just instant, but…”
“No, thanks.”
Stephanie is still staring at me. The old man is beginning to snore.
“So, anyway,” says Marisol, returning with a smiley-face mug, “we just wondered if you knew anything about it.”
I turn toward her. “Me? It?”
Marisol bends to offer the bottle of apple juice to Stephanie.
“Listen, I’d really like to help,” I say, “but I’m experiencing some real family-of-origin issues right now. If anything comes up, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Come on, Steph,” coos Marisol. “Hold onto it, sweetie.” Returning to her pecans, Marisol says, “What about your friends?”
“I don’t have any friends. I have a sister. My sister has friends. Look, seriously, if there’s anything you can do to help my sister—”
“She’s okay for now,” says Marisol, “but we’re all in trouble if we don’t figure out what’s going on with the numbers. I assume you know what I’m talking about.”
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” I reply, “and I don’t know who’s doing it or even what exactly it is they’re doing.”
“Well, it doesn’t look very good. Somebody is, like, changing the code that this whole planet is written on. Imagine somebody deciding to alter the time-space grid beneath a densely populated planet. I mean, who would do something like that?”
“Uh . . ,” I begin. I’m stopped by an image on the TV screen. Steve Reeves has just pulled a lion skin over his head. This is a movie about Heracles.
“What can you tell us about Atlantis?” asks Marisol.
I turn to give her a frown. “Atlantis didn’t exist. It’s been proven.”
“There’s a room for everything, Julian,” says Marisol.
“How did I know you were going to say that? Actually I have it on very good authority that I was causing trouble in a completely different galaxy at that time.”
“Then how can you know what I’m saying?” asks Marisol.
I stare at her. “Why would I not know what you’re saying? We’re speaking Standard American English.”
“I’m speaking Atlantean,” she replies. “So are you.”
I continue to stare. Short-term memory still holds the aural images of the words just spoken, and I take a moment to examine them. Surprised, I find that they were no variety of English at all, nor any other language I readily recall. In fact, I’m not certain that we’ve spoken to each other at all.
“That’s… interesting,” I say.
Or seem to say. My lips did not move. Marisol and I are speaking telepathically.
“Now you want to tell me what happened on Atlantis?” she says wordlessly.
Stephanie tosses her bottle onto the floor.
“I don’t know what’s happening in this room,” I reply.
“It’s just a room,” says Marisol. “Everything you see here is virtual, Julian. This conversation is taking place on many levels, and it’s being looked into on many levels, and you do need to answer the question.”
“I’ve no idea,” I reply, “what may or may not have occurred on Atlantis. I’m presently focused on what’s occurring in a highly probable Beijing.”
Marisol says, “Your friend won’t be keeping her appointment with you. I guess you know that.”
“Tree? Where is she?”
“Safe, for now. I know you’re worried, Julian, but our policy is non-interference. We only step in when a problem is like really global.”
“It’s feeling pretty global to me right now.”
Marisol sets down the nutcracker. “Let me make sure I understand you. You have absolutely no memory of anything on Atlantis, and you’re doing absolutely nothing with the numbers?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“You’re not doing any music work?” she asks.
“Music work?”
“You don’t seem to have a lot of self-awareness, Julian. You’ve done a lot of music work in a lot of places. That’s one reason we’re talking to you now. There’s a huge tie-in between music and numbers.”
“No, Marisol. I’m not doing any music work right now.”
The young woman is very still for a moment, as though peering beneath my skin. “Okay,” she says at last.
Turning to the old man in the recliner, M
arisol calls, “Daddy. Daddy! Julian Mancer’s here. Did you want to talk to him?”
The man awakes, snorts a couple of times, and struggles to push himself to his feet. I watch him walk, bent, past the sofa. He signals for me to follow. I accompany Edward into a small kitchen whose walls smell of grease. I watch the old man take something from the refrigerator. Opening a plastic bottle of red soda, he takes a long drink, replaces the cap and closes the door.
Turning to me, Edward says, “They got me on blood medicine.” His foggy eyes try to sharpen. “I can’t never wake up. You from Memphis?”
I nod.
He smiles and noisily fingers the white stubble at his chin. “I knowed a cowboy from Memphis. Rode bulls. Name was Robert. John Robert. He got killed by a bad bull in Arkansas.” The old man’s smile fades. “You say you gotta get to Beijing. What do you think you can get done up there?”
I study the dark eyes. Sleeping or no, this man seems to have caught every word of my conversation with Marisol.
“Probably nothing,” I reply telepathically, “but I have to try.”
Edward leans heavily against the refrigerator door. “Tell me something. Or don’t tell me. Whatever you want. But I’d really rather you told me.” Both blurry eyes peer into mine. “Just what in the hell are you, and what are you doing on this here planet?”
I look him square in the eyes. “I don’t know. What are you, Edward?”
We gaze at each other for a long moment. Finally the old man chuckles. “Well, we try to keep an eye on things best we can.”
“Now I have a question for you,” I say. “Completion. What is it?”
“We were kinda hoping you could tell us.”
I lean back against the wall. “I don’t know, man. It’s just the fucking end-game everywhere I look. There’s no avoiding it, and there’s no delaying it, and it’s waiting for me in Beijing. I’ve got to go there.”
For a moment, the old man seems to listen to a voice beyond my hearing. Finally he says, “I guess everybody needs to find their own kind of completion. That fellow John Robert found his in Arkansas. Looks like you’ll find yours in Beijing.”
The Year of the Hydra Page 44
