He grimaced.
Her voice suddenly rolled down the canyon, booming, silencing the mob. She spoke of Him, the One, and how He saw through each of us. Of a vision—
She crumpled. Something banged the microphone. A man shouted hoarsely. Nigel squinted and could make out a knot of robed, milling figures clustered where Alexandria had stood the moment before. Shrill voices called out orders.
She was going at last. Woodenly he stood, brushed away dust from his pants, staring fixedly ahead. Going. Going.
In his room in Mexico City he let the 3D play while he showered and packed. A short balding man, pink skin, fleshy cheeks, said that Alexandria had suffered a relapse but had not yet joined the Essential One, as she herself had predicted she soon would.
His telephone rang.
“Walmsley? That you?” Evers’s voice was high and ragged. Nigel grunted a reply.
“Listen, we just heard the news. Sorry, and all that, but it looks like she’s dying. We know you’ve been following her. Security’s tracked you. Have you been able to find out what she’s told the New Sons? I mean, about J-27?”
“Nothing. As far as I can tell.”
“Ah. Good. I’ve gotten word from higher up to be pretty damned sure nothing gets out. Particularly not to those… well, it looks okay, then. We’ll—”
“Evers.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t cut the second channel. She isn’t dead yet. If you do, I’ll tell the Three-Ds about… J-27.”
“You’re …” Evers’s voice cut off as though a hand had cupped over the speaker. In a moment Evers said, “Okay.”
“Keep it on indefinitely. Even if you hear she’s dead.” “Okay, Walmsley, but—”
“Goodbye.”
For a long time he stood at the hotel window and watched pedicabs lace through the lanes of the Paseo de la Reforma, mostly the late crowd streaming out of Chapultepec Park. The hivelike comings and goings of man.
So he had made one last gesture, threatened Evers. Perhaps kept her alive a few more hours or days. For what? He knew he would never see her again. Only the New Sons would relish those last moments of her.
So… back to JPL? Begin over? The Snark still waited.
Eventually, yes. He needed to know. Always the clean and sure, the definite; that’s what he sought. To know. Something that Shirley, and perhaps even Alexandria, had never quite understood.
Or…
He fluxed the window and a seam parted in the middle. At least two hundred meters down. Into a pool of racing yellow headlights. Compressing lines, snuffing him out like a candle burned too low.
He looked down for long moments.
Then turned. Picked up his bags and took the shuttle down to the lobby. He checked out, smiling stiffly, tipped a porter, left his bags and went out onto the sidewalk. Soft air greeted him. He shoved his hands into his pockets and decided to take a walk around the block, to clear his head.
From his pocket he took a wedge of plastic. It contained microminiature electronics, a power source and transducer. He clipped it into a holder beneath his collar and made sure it did not show. It rubbed as he walked.
He wanted to be in the open when he tried this. A building might shield the signal at these distances, or blur it. He could take no chances. When Alexandria died, the Snark could still use the channel…
He reached behind his ear and pressed. The telltale hummed into life. The bit of plastic and electronics he’d had made at such expense rubbed his neck. He pressed a thumb against it and heard a faint ceramic click.
He walked. Stepped. Felt a massive, bulging surge— Stepped—
Love and envy.
Stepped—
SEVENTEEN
A day later: he steps—
—steps
—onto the sheets of folded rock. Stone decks of an earthen ship, adrift in this high desert. A craft of baking rock. The ages have layered and compressed this wrinkled deck; life skitters over it. Chittering. Leaping.
He mounts the flaking rock. A scorpion scuttles aside. Boots bite into crunching gravel.
—plants licking, foamlike, at the coarse crust—
The looming presence
peers out
sucks in
understands
