The Way of Sorrows

by Jon Steele

  “Who?”

  “Madame Taylor and Officer Jannsen. Jannsen recently requested to be decommissioned so they could get married. They were going to be a family, they were going to raise Madame Taylor’s child. We know they were together in Grover’s Mill when the shit hit the fan. That’s when comms went haywire. The one coded message we needed to hear, Angelus, telling us mother and child were secure in the vault, was never received.”

  “You don’t sound all that hopeful on anyone’s life status.”

  “Would you be?”

  Harper thought about it. “If I had a choice in the matter, probably not.”

  “I hear you, brother.”

  Harper took a long sip of whiskey. “I’ve got an image of Miss Taylor on my timeline, two now, actually,” he said. “But what about the child?”

  “What about him?”

  “I don’t know what he looks like. Do you have a photograph?”

  “There’s never been a photo taken.”

  “HQ had to be monitoring the site’s CCTV cameras. There must be a screen grab of him.”

  Krinkle shook his head. “Gobet ordered the child’s face be put in silhouette at the point of transmission. No one outside the time warp knows what the child looks like.”

  Harper sipped again. “But you saw him with your dream catcher, Karoliina. In Portland, wasn’t it? You could describe him.”

  “I could, but I won’t.”

  “Because?”

  Krinkle leaned toward Harper. “Because it doesn’t matter. Because if the bad guys got him, there’ll be nothing left but remains. Because it’ll be easy determining if they got him or not, as he was the only child in the place. Katherine Taylor was one of hundreds of adults, so identifying her could be more difficult.”

  “Right. What do I do if I find their remains?”

  “If they’re hers, leave them. If they’re his, bag them and bring them.”

  “And if I don’t find any?” Harper said.

  The roadie sat back, took a swallow of whiskey. “Then maybe mother and child are still alive. Maybe the bad guys are saving the two of them, or one of them, for purposes unknown.”

  Harper sipped. “And maybe that gives us a shot at turning things around,” he said.

  “It is the longest of shots, brother, but it’s the only one up for grabs. Which is why Gobet is sending you in. And despite his riff about your undefined metaphysical condition making you expendable, it would be best if you got out before the site collapses. We need to know who’s dead, who’s alive.”

  Harper searched the pockets of his mackintosh for his smokes. He found them and set one between his lips. Krinkle had a match at the ready.

  “Cheers,” Harper said.

  He leaned over, touching the tip of his fag to the fire. Inhale, hold, exhale. Clearer.

  “You know the truth about the prophecy, don’t you?”

  The roadie stared back. “I’m not sure I follow the manner of your thinking.”

  “It hit me crashing through the light at the end of the tunnel. In a few years the locals will witness the very moment of creation. Voyager 1 is entering interstellar space with a mass extinction SOS our kind smuggled onboard. Then there’s Astruc’s son, Goose, who may or may not have been working with our kind, even though he tried to kill me, and after he thought he killed me, he started updating the SOS with Earth’s exact position in the entire bloody universe. Then there’s Madame Taylor and her son mixed up in a prophecy about a child conceived of light and born to guide the creation through the next stage of evolution. Lines of causality they are.”

  “Still not reading you, brother.”

  “Then focus on the SOS line. ‘In the name of life on Earth,’ Professor Peabody said. That was the beginning of the SOS. From our kind to whatever life-form there is waiting to receive it. I mean, how much of a long shot is that one? Even so, that causality line is running ahead of all the others, and it’s racing to intersect a human imagination called salvation.”

  Krinkle gave it a few beats.

  “Salvation is a heavy word, brother.”

  “It should be,” Harper said. “It’s carrying ten thousand years’ worth of myths, legends, and religion on its back. Want to follow the rest of my thinking?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It isn’t just the salvation of paradise and the locals we’re dealing with, it’s about the salvation of our kind, too. Raises the question: Who are we really trying to save, the locals or ourselves?”

  Krinkle shrugged. “And what makes you think I’m the guy with the answer?”

  “Because while Astruc may have been the priest, you’re the preacher man. That mixing board is your altar, the microphone is your pulpit, and this magic bus is your flying church. You’re spreading good vibrations to a world in need. And despite all the rules and regs on we-are-not-them and they-are-not-us, you’re telling the locals they’re not alone.”

  Krinkle took a long sip from his glass. “Are you suggesting that I’m promoting an unauthorized symbiotic relationship between our kind and the locals?”

  “I’m suggesting you know we’re finished without them.”

  It was the roadie’s turn to light up. He took his time. Harper watched him, listened to the ommm of the magic bus. A few puffs later the roadie sat up.

  “Okay, don’t ask me how I know, but it breaks down like this: The only ones on this side of the light who knew about the prophecy were Astruc and Goose. Neither of them are spilling intel yet. Astruc might, soon as they pry open his brain, but Goose may never regain consciousness. Too bad—most of the intel on the prophecy is from him.”

  “How so?”

  “Peabody, the EPFL wizard, he told you about the spiral notebook at the hideout?”

  “The one they found with the kid’s Stone Age computer? With the specs on connecting to Blue Brain?”

  “And more. Including where you could be found in the tunnels under Paris.”

  “So he was working with our kind.”

  “Goose was half human and half our kind. Call him conflicted. Which half told him your ass was worth saving, I don’t know. I imagine he let Gobet know where you were as a sign of good faith so he would trust him.”

  Harper inhaled a deep hit of radiance. He released it slowly. The roadie’s good faith line made sense. “Trust the kid enough to hook up his homemade computer to Blue Brain and sync it with Voyager 1.”

  “Check. The kid is friggin’ brilliant. We’re not sure how he found out about the SOS. Couldn’t have been Astruc, because he didn’t know. Only ones who knew were Gobet, Professor Peabody, and me. But how the kid found out isn’t even the interesting part. He had these incredibly vivid imaginations as a result of it. He imagined the same lines of causality you were talking about two minutes ago, except he imagined them fourteen years ago when he was twelve friggin’ years old. He wrote them out in a thesis. Thirteen hundred pages of handwritten script in the classic Latin of the Roman Republic, no less. And get this: He wrote it with quill and ink. De motu orbium et vita in terris, he called it.”

  Harper smiled. “On the Motion of the Spheres and Life on Earth. Quite the title.”

  “And quite the read. It’s an analysis of human history and how their history was shaped less by free will than the manipulations of the bad guys. The wildest part is he imagined their endgame when we didn’t know what it friggin’ was. The bad guys weren’t just out to hijack free will in paradise, they needed to hijack the prophecy to hold on to it. Also, the thesis states the bad guys knew exactly when and where it would drop in space and time. That’s why the world is the mess it is.”

  “Because?”

  Krinkle took a slow sip of whiskey, then started up again.

  “Dig it. The prophecy was supposed to drop in a world that is paradise, not the cesspit that currently passes for human civilization.”

  “A little harsh, isn’t it? I mean there was the Axial Age, Renaissance, Beethoven. Not to mention the scientific metho
d.”

  “True, but according to the thesis those achievements and all the others like it, including E = mc2, mark diminishing returns more than progress. All through human history, especially after the scientific method dropped, the bad guys found ways of twisting the locals around and dragging them a hundred miles back for every small step they took away from superstition. I mean, look at the state of the world spinning beneath us right now, brother. The locals don’t need the bad guys to lead them astray with fear and greed anymore. For all their friggin’ enlightenment, the locals have become addicted to killing. Killing each other, killing the planet. They were supposed to have not only figured out that it’s all one living organism, but living accordingly by now, that whatever they do unto the planet they do unto themselves. They still slaughter sentient creatures for meat, for friggin’ sake. As far as Goose saw it, paradise was hitting the tipping point over which there was no chance of survival. The only hope was in the hands of the dreamers with brains enough to reach out to the universe, trying to get back to the beginning, to let everyone on the planet witness the Big friggin’ Bang with their own eyes and understand the truth about life on Earth. Goose was doing everything he could to help mankind get that far.”

  Harper flashed through his briefing in the basement of EPFL.

  “Professor Peabody called it ‘the point of knowing.’”

  “Peabody was quoting Astruc’s son. And I’m telling you, I would, too. You read the kid’s thesis and you understand why Astruc believed his son was the child of the prophecy. That and the fact Astruc had pretty much fried his own brain on homemade potions and couldn’t handle the fact he had fathered a half-kind son.”

  “And Goose? Did he think he was the child of the prophecy?”

  “Like I said, the kid was conflicted, so who knows what he thought? Besides, Astruc was pumping him with homemade potions, too, just to keep the kid alive. And double besides, what Goose thought of himself doesn’t concern you and me or your mission, it’s what he wrote about the prophecy’s child in his thesis.”

  “Conclusion or prediction?”

  “More like reading the handwriting on the wall. The locals reaching the point of knowing and the arrival of the child of the prophecy aren’t just happening at the same time, they’re codependent. The bad guys knew that one from the beginning. They’ve been waiting for the child to be born through ten thousand years of myths, legends, and religion. And now, as all those lines of causality would have it, they found him.”

  “Madame Taylor’s child.”

  Krinkle nodded. “Killing the child is how the bad guys hijack the prophecy,” he said.

  Harper thought about it and sipped the last swig from his mug. “Prophecy null and void. No salvation for the locals or us.”

  Krinkle nodded again. “Only question is whether the child is dead already. That’s why you need to get in and out of the time warp to tell us if we’re as friggin’ doomed as the locals.”

  “And if we are, what then?”

  “Fuck if I know.” He held out the bottle in pour position. “You want some more?”

  “Sure. Nice to drink something that isn’t juiced,” Harper said.

  “Who says it isn’t?”

  Harper sniffed his mug. “What was in it?”

  “No idea, but where do you think that rush of babble came from? Which, according to the microchip in the hippocampus region of my brain, is now over. I’m being directed to brief you on the infil.”

  “You have one, too?” Harper said.

  “Have a what?”

  “A microchip in your head that switches things on and off.”

  Krinkle smiled. “You keep mistaking me for management. Told you before, I’m a grunt, the same as you. I just know a lot of things you don’t.”

  The roadie refilled both mugs. Harper almost sipped.

  “One thing before your microchip engages,” Harper said.

  “Make it fast.”

  “Madame Taylor’s child, does he have a name?”

  “His name is . . .” The roadie stopped talking and stared without blinking for two solid minutes.

  “Am I supposed to guess?” Harper said.

  The roadie snapped out of it and took a sip of whiskey.

  “No, brother, you’re supposed to give me time to hack through the friggin’ microchip that engaged as I was about to tell you. Wait . . . got it. His name is Max.”

  TEN

  i

  It took Harper time to get his bearings. He was standing in the middle of a two-lane road that ran through an evergreen forest. He looked up at the watch on his wrist. The second hand had stopped. The watch was stuck somewhere back in real time.

  He looked up, saw dull gray clouds churn above the trees. A fine mist fell and grazed his face. It had an oily texture and it reeked. He wiped the wet from his eyes, looked at the gloved palms of his hands. He saw streaks of filth.

  “Whatever it is, it isn’t rain.”

  He walked ahead and saw a sign posted at the side of the road:

  GROVER’S MILL

  EST.: 1932

  POPULATION: 970

  A hundred yards beyond the sign was the town, or what used to be a town. Buildings on either side of Main Street had been wrecked. Doors ripped off, windows smashed, façades pockmarked with blast damage. The street was strewn with rubble and debris. He took a step forward, stopped.

  “Hang on.”

  He patted the pockets of his mackintosh, found the egg timer. He twisted its beak to the fifteen-minute mark and the thing began to tick. Not that it mattered. While rejoining the spinning earth and driving his bus toward the infil location, Krinkle had received flash traffic from Bern HQ: Site increasingly unstable. Singularity imminent. Hold and standby. Orders to follow. Instead, Krinkle crashed through the time warp’s perimeter and opened the door of the bus.

  “Here’s where you get off, brother.”

  “They told us to hold and standby for orders.”

  “Too late. We were committed on the infil and there was no stopping without saying good-bye to half the Pacific Northwest. I think all bets are off inside this place, but stick with the timer anyway. Clear the town, get to the house as fast as you can. I’ll circle around and crash through at the exfil point. Be there, or else.”

  Watching the bus back up through the perimeter and disappear into real time, Harper figured the odds on getting out of this bloody time warp before “or else” kicked in; a billion to one seemed a reasonable bet, especially considering the definition of the term. Or else: When a time warp is no longer able to resist the pressure of real time and collapses in on itself in less than a second, thereby reducing contained mass to an infinitesimal point of matter no bigger than a grain of sand. Just now, watching the plastic chicken count down the minutes to crunch time, Harper thought his billion-to-one bet was a sure thing.

  “Tempus rerum imperator,” he said.

  Harper dropped the timer into the pocket of his coat and walked toward Grover’s Mill. There was a breeze blowing down the street. It smelled as foul as the filth falling from the sky. At the edge of the town Harper got a whiff of death. Coming onto Main Street he saw mangled corpses amid rubble and debris. Tens, hundreds of bodies. Partisans, the lot of them; pretending to be townsfolk, the roadie said on the bus. The corpses bore all the signs of slaughter at the hands of goons juiced to the gills on dead black. Throats slashed, disemboweled midsections, patches of skin carefully sliced from backs and legs.

  Harper stood quietly and listened.

  No murmurs, no cries, no souls begging to be comforted at the time of their death. The goons would have torn the partisans’ souls from their bodies and cast them adrift. Like frightened things the souls would hover close to their dying forms, and then the devourers would sweep in to feast.

  Harper walked slowly through the slaughter, scanned what was left of the faces. He counted two hundred seventy-three partisans, all of them adults, none resembling the image of Katherine Taylor
on his timeline. Halfway down the street the wreckage was thicker. Chairs, seat cushions, tables; smashed plates and flatware, rotting food; a car door, a fender, shards of metal and nails. Farther up the street, cars and pickup trucks sat with melted tires or on their sides, windows blown out, side panels and roofs scarred by fire and flak from two separate directions. Twenty feet farther a blackened crater marked ground zero for a car bomb. He looked down to the rubble at his feet. He kicked over a table top, saw an arm that had been blown from its body. Scanning the street he saw more body parts and patches of dried blood. Again, all body parts belonged to adults; nothing suggested a child had been killed in the blast.

  Riiiinng.

  He grabbed at his coat and dug out the timer. He reset it, dropped it back in his coat pocket.

  “One chance to get out alive down, three to go.”

  He looked at the building closest to the debris field. A one-floor, burned-out shell. Had to be Molly’s Diner, he thought. According to Krinkle’s brief the diner was one of four places Harper was to check for signs of Katherine Taylor and her son. Two in town, two at the house. The town and the house were separated by nine and a half miles, Krinkle said on the bus.

  “I’ll never make it from one place to the next with the time I’ve got,” Harper told the roadie.

  “There’s a jump point.”

  “A what?”

  “A quick way from one place to the next. It’s a top-secret prototype built by Gobet’s time mechanics. It was being tested on-site when the attack hit. Data received in Bern said it worked but only one-way, which is why you’re going from town to the house. It’s called Angel’s Gate.”

  “You’re joking.”

  Standing amid the slaughter just now, staring at the nothing that was left of Molly’s Diner and the body parts scattered like rubbish, Harper considered what a bad joke it was. The kind that left a foul taste in the mouth, foul as the whatever it was falling from the sky. He scanned the street one more time, added it up. There had been two bombs here. Primary blast was from inside the diner, killing everyone inside and some in the street. Partisans locked within the perimeter rushed to the scene to render assistance. Then comes the secondary blast from a car bomb, killing many more. Survivors turned to run away. They were the unlucky ones; they ran straight into the killing knives of the goons.