A Vision of Fire (22 page)

Her meal finished and cleared, Caitlin turned off her light, lifted her window shade, and leaned her head against the seat. Her eyes rested on the clouds, the deepening dusk.

Shared souls, shared trauma
,
she thought
. If this is happening to other young people around the world
,
that might explain why Kashmir is rippling through those of us who don't even know where it is. But is Kashmir causing this?

That didn't seem likely. Yet a connection was possible. Kashmir: a locus of frustration and pain touching all the ends of the earth. The transpersonal plane: a locus of ancient pain touching all the ends of the earth.

It no longer seemed possible to her to accept one and deny the other.

CHAPTER 30

W
hen the call came in from Mikel, Flora Davies was sound asleep on the chair in her office. Weary in mind, body, and soul, she had surrendered herself to the black leather.

Still jet-lagged despite a long rest, Mikel had wandered back to the club at four in the morning to take another look at the new artifact. He found Arni's body in a pool of unsightly fluid and immediately called upstairs for Flora. They had at least three hours to erase the problem before any other Group members or staff came in for the day, and before anyone was likely to report Arni to Missing Persons. Friends and family knew that he was inclined to work late, especially when there was a problem to be solved.

The Group had never dealt with a dead body at the club. Not human bodies at least. Unusual creatures had occasionally found their way into the lab for study, all deceased and partial specimens hauled from the south polar waters—part of a giant squid, a ten-thousand-year-old coelacanth perfectly preserved in frozen mud, the body of a baby megalodon locked in ancient ice. They were rare, but Flora stayed in contact with a man equipped to deal with their remains. She located the contact on her phone and within minutes Casey Skett was literally running over from his walk-up in the East Village.

After hanging up, Flora went back downstairs and paced near Arni's head while Mikel looked for clues about his death. She was cursing the Group through the disposable medical mask she had put on, angry that they did not have the equipment or personnel suitable to perform a fast autopsy.

“And look at that—Arni wasn't even wearing his lab coat,” she railed. “God only knows what contaminants his body is adding to the environment.”

“You mean apart from liquefied brain tissue?” Mikel asked. He was also masked and kneeling beside the corpse.

She stopped pacing. “Is that what you think that is?”

“Judging by the color and small lumps of solid mass, I'd say so.”

“Lovely,” Flora said. “Nothing else unusual?”

“Not that I can see. Only the brain is where it shouldn't be.”

She snatched latex gloves from a box on a shelf and began pawing over Arni's table—an insufferable mess—until she found a glass stirring rod. Then, squatting beside the corpse's head, she inserted the end of the rod into his left nostril.

“It looks like he was about to be mummified,” Mikel muttered. “Brain out, organs next.”

“His other organs still appear to be inside,” she observed.

“Maybe I scared off whoever was doing this.”

“This liquid has a film forming on top,” she said, referring to the pool that spread like a halo from Arni's head. “He's been this way for a while.”

“But you didn't hear anything?”

“Soundproofing,” she said, while paying acute attention to the shape of Arni's nasal cavity. Flora twisted and turned the glass rod until all but the half inch she was holding had disappeared up his nose into his skull.

“My god,” she said, marveling, “there's no sinus wall, no sphenoid bone. Mikel, there is
nothing
up there.”

“Are you saying everything in his skull came out of his nose?” he said in a tone of total disbelief.

“Would you like to feel it?” She motioned with the end of the glass rod.

“No,” he said, wincing slightly. “What would do that to some of his cranial bones but not the whole skull?”

“Perhaps we haven't seen it all,” Flora replied, setting the rod on the table. She touched Arni's head with the toe of her boot, half-expecting it to cave under the pressure. It did not. “Damn it,” she said. “I hate a mystery without enough time to solve it.”

As if on cue, Casey Skett arrived, still as skinny and slack-eyed as he had been a decade earlier when Flora first found him. Mikel went upstairs to admit him and they rode down in the elevator. Casey worked for the Department of Sanitation, “DAR” division—dead animal removal. He was good at his job, but Flora also appreciated his discretion and his connection to the shelters—specifically, the ones with incinerators. He lifted Arni's body into a refrigerator on wheels with its contents and shelves removed. If anyone happened to notice Casey wandering around the shelter before dawn, he would say he was cleaning up more of the dead, decaying rats that had been in the news—did they want to take a look inside?

Flora and Mikel then spent forty-five minutes triple-washing the floor and two agonizing hours scrutinizing every inch of the laboratory and the locker room for anything that might catch the eye of a police officer. Then Flora went ahead and scuffed and dirtied things up, so the lab didn't look too scrubbed.

When they were done, Mikel went about seeking a potential cause. He'd noticed hours ago that his carved meteorite was sitting on the table and the Geiger counter was out. He approached the object cautiously and waved the wand over it for several minutes but nothing happened. Finally, he picked it up, wrapped it in cloth, and strode to the safe to stow it.

“Not there,” Flora said. “We're putting all the relics in the deep freezer.”

“For what?”

“As a precaution,” she replied.

“Don't you think you're overreacting?” Mikel asked.

“As my great-uncle Commander Hunt said during the Blitz, ‘One cannot overreact to this.' Anyway, it's my prerogative.”

“But we don't know that this or any of them had anything to do with Arni's death.”

“We don't know they didn't.”

“That argument is ridiculous,” he said. “We have to try and reconstruct what he was doing—”

“And we will, after we've had a pause and a good think. I've read your report about the trip. There isn't a damned thing in this building that we know as little about.”

His impatience evident, he held up his find. “Which is why we need this here, now. This has more writing than any of them. We can learn from it.”

“We will,” she said. “Please, Mikel—consider all that's happened already, the rats in Washington Square, the birds around your plane. Those phenomena all have artifact proximity and they began after this
thing
started its journey.” She shook her head ruefully. “Arni was a synesthete. These objects may be connecting with animal and possibly human consciousness on some level. Perhaps there was something emitted by this rock at an inaudible frequency, triggered by a certain kind of light or sound, perhaps, for example, the electrical output of an airplane or a Geiger counter.”

“The rats weren't anywhere near
my
artifact.”

“They were not,” she agreed. “But they came running here, to the collection. Which is why I want all the objects stowed and stabilized until we've examined this more thoroughly.”

Mikel shook his head. “That's the reason we have to
keep
studying them
now
,
Flora,
while
they are being influenced. And I mean, why freeze it? Why not superheat it?”

Flora snatched it from his hand.

“You're being a little extreme here,” he said.

“Arni is dead!” she said, showing the first real sign of emotion.

“I'm sorry too but we have a bigger picture here,” Mikel insisted, “a force we don't understand and that we haven't understood for a long damn time. Being able to read some of the symbols is one thing. We're getting pretty good at that. Understanding the mechanics of these objects is bigger.”

“You don't think I know that?”

“Of course you do. Look, this thing has obviously been through tremendous heat before and survived. Arni didn't heat it—no burner. No cigarette lighter. I don't think we're going to know the full extent of its functionality until we start ruling things out.”

Flora turned away. “It goes in the deep freezer with the rest, since we know that all of these artifacts have survived low temperatures for thousands of years without killing anyone,
and that's final
.”

“How do you know that?”

She half-turned. “What?”

“That they haven't killed anyone before?”

She hesitated for the briefest moment. “You're right. I don't know. All the more reason for caution.” Then, without another word, she went to the locker, loaded all the objects onto a tray, and navigated to a room down the hall. She packed each item in a plastic bag and put them away. When she returned, Mikel was leaning on the wall outside the lab, pouting. She flicked off the light, slammed the door shut, and followed him up the stairs.

“Go home,” she said. “Get some rest.”

“I'm rested. I want to work.”

“Then go to the library and read. Finish watching the videos Erika collected.”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Like what?” she asked. “Thinking?”

Mikel said nothing as they neared the landing. The old stairs creaked as they ascended in the near-darkness. Upstairs the phone was already ringing. Mikel fielded the first call from the police. Arni had been reported missing at seven a.m. by a friend he was supposed to
meet the night before, and the floodgates opened. Flora was glad she had put the artifacts away: only now it occurred to her that they may have been seized as evidence.

The rest of that day was filled with exhaustive questioning by an ill-tempered detective and with open and measurable concern for Arni while police inspected every corner of the laboratory space and locker room. Flora's mind was on the deep freezer but they only checked it and did not violate its contents.

Finally, at midnight she summoned Mikel from home and ordered him back to the Falklands.

“For what?” he asked, not displeased but surprised.

“I've thought,” she announced. “Do whatever you have to do to get access to the crew of the
Captain Fallow
. Find out where they located your artifact. Where there was one, there may be more.”

“We've been down that road before with other artifacts,” he said.

“That's true,” she agreed. “But as far as we know, they never caused any brains to melt. I think your artifact is too small to generate power on its own. So a theoretical external power source, the cause of this phenomenon, would likely be on the other end, where the artifact is from. It may still be connected with that source, if there is one, still charged somehow.”

He agreed with her decision. Favors were called in, arrangements made. Thankfully, Flora's sleepless night and her genuine tears the following morning had convinced the detective on his second visit that she was worried sick about Arni.

And now here she was, alone with a cup of tea . . . and, literally, for now, at a cold, dead end to their quest. She lifted her teacup and hurled it at the wall, her mind burning with frustration and rage.

Goddam
n it. Enough!
she said to the mysterious race she had spent half her life pursuing.
If you have anything to say to me, say it bloody faster.

CHAPTER 31

I
t was midnight. Outside Caitlin's cab the cloudy sky reflected orange from the lights of the city—a sight that had always struck her as ominous. It seemed more so now: danger felt imminent. The rattling of the taxi's undercarriage was like the world itself, barely holding itself together as it hurtled onward.

Or this could just be jet lag
,
she told herself.

She'd called her father while she waded through customs, but Jacob was asleep and she didn't want to wake him. As she waited in line at the curb, chilly and impatient, she read two texts Ben had sent while she was in the air. The first was sent at 7:41 p.m.:
Found possible Viking Mongolian connection.

And then at 11:11 p.m.:
Am with Maanik. Stopped them from medicating her.

She called and he picked up on the first ring. Whatever tension there was between them when she left for Iran was gone, at least from his voice.

“Tell me you're back—”

“I'm back,” she said. “What happened?”

He hesitated.

“Ben, if anyone's listening—we're beyond that.”

“Right. She lost it,” Ben said. “She just went wild and tried to throw herself from the window. Mrs. Pawar said she started to
burn
. They put her in the shower. She slept for a while and then it was more talk and gesturing, your blackberries cue, sleep—and then the same all over again. The ambassador stepped out of negotiations again to be with her; I basically invented meetings to keep the delegates in the building. I just got here at ten. They're keeping her out of her bedroom and that seems to be calming her.”

“Have you been in there?”

“I'm at the apartment—”

“No, the bedroom.”

Another hesitation. “Yeah. Cai, it's strange.”

“What is?”

“The room is dead,” he said. “When I'm in there I don't hear the pipes in the ceiling, air traffic outside the window. The air is motionless, thin.”

“Where's the dog?”

“In the hall outside the bedroom.” Ben said. “Facing the door.”

“Is he quiet?”

“Yes, but he's definitely on alert,” Ben said. “What do you know?”

“I think that room has connected, through Maanik, to another time and place. They're sharing a space like twins sharing a womb, and the older one is feeding on the younger. The room is mirroring what's happening to Maanik's mind, almost like a portal.”

“Caitlin, that's—”

“A leap, I know. But I'm going to work on that assumption until someone comes up with a better explanation.”

“Do you know why these locations are . . . colliding?”

“Not yet,” she admitted. “Don't let the Pawars give Maanik anything except water, if she'll take it.”

“I'll try but Mrs. Pawar is pretty desperate. Cai, there's one more thing.” He hesitated again.

“Just blurt it out.”

“Okay. Maanik seems to be emitting . . . something.”

“Something?”

“It's thermal, I guess, but it seems to have substance too. A constant, steady flow from her right hand. Cold, like mist. Please don't tell me it's her soul or something.”

“I don't think it's her soul,” Caitlin said. She did not add,
But I don't know what it might be
. She looked out the window. “We're on the expressway now, traffic's not so bad. I'll be there in about forty-five minutes.” She hesitated. “Are
you
okay? What's happening in Kashmir?”

She noticed the cab driver's face tweak, turn slightly toward her. She looked at the name on his license, Shri Kapoor. Their eyes met for a moment in the rearview mirror.

“The UN sent a small force over there but not in the way we hoped,” Ben said. “We wanted a protectorate but this is playing out like martial law. The allied countries are starting to grandstand big-time, like the Allies after World War II. Everyone is jockeying for post-crisis influence even though we're not past the crisis yet. Russia was first, on behalf of India. China guaranteed loans for Pakistan. That's all I can say but it feels like we're flinging farther away from any kind of sane, predictable political process.” He paused. “Like us,” he said tiredly. “I mean, flinging farther away from each other. Not the politics.”

She smiled, then promised, “We're going to fix that.”

“There's the old college Cai with the old college try,” he said.

“Rah,” she said. “But first crisis first. Tell me about the Vikings.”

“A story in runes,” he joked. There was a flash of the old Ben as he dove in, the enthusiastic kid scholar. It made her laugh, and she could imagine his answering grin. “In the ninth century, the trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Caspian Sea was essentially conquered and controlled for two hundred years by people called the Rus.”

“Rus as in Russian?”

“Exactly, but that came later, after they intermingled with the Slavs to the point of absorption.” He was racing, as if he was trying to get
it all on the table before she reached him in the cab. “In the early days they were specifically the Varangian Rus—‘Varangian' is from an Old Norse word—and they came down from Scandinavia. They mostly stuck to the trade-and-raid routes, shopping in Baghdad, periodically attacking Constantinople, as pretty much everyone did for thousands of years—”

“Three Vikings walk into a bar in Constantinople . . . ,” she said slowly.

Ben chuckled and sucked down a breath. He realized he was rushing.

“Okay,” he continued, more slowly. “The Varangian Rus
also
traveled east beyond Constantinople, to the city of Bolghar on the Volga. The Silk Road was fully active—”

“But that trade route connecting the West to the East was much more recent than an ice-free Antarctica. What's this got to do with us?”

“The fact that it
happened
,” he said. “This all occurred between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It was written about, mapped, charted. But it could have happened before, any number of times, and if no one wrote about it, or we haven't found the writings—”

“Or we haven't
deciphered
the writings—”

“Exactly. And how do we know that in your ‘other time' things were even written? We've witnessed these words and gestures. Maybe there were people who just memorized things, like human computers.”

And communicated those thoughts en masse, at death, to another brain?
Caitlin wondered.
Was that also part of the transpersonal plane?
She
was getting ahead of herself
.

“Ben, we're coming to the Triborough Bridge and I need a minute to just absorb—”

“Of course. I'll see you in a few.”

“Wait. Do you have your equipment?”

“After all these years, do you really have to ask?”

“Thank you, Ben, so much.”

“You're welcome.”

She ended the call, sat back, and took a deep breath.

Under the portentous skies, her mind returned to the task at hand, to Maanik. She had to figure out how to approach her; this could well be her last chance. Without really thinking about it, she reached out with her left hand and touched the frame of the taxi just above her window. At first she felt only the rumble of the road through the steel, but after a second she felt something deeper. She could
feel
a path extending far beyond the shape of the cab, the traffic outside, even beyond the towers of the city and the angry sky.

It reminded her of her first day in Central Park, decades ago, when she had walked toward scattered elm trees, then among them—and suddenly the trees aligned in long, straight rows. The feeling of alignment had been almost as audible as a click. Now, here in the cab, her perspective had shifted and extended again. The expansion was clear and energetic and familiar. She had felt this on the airplane in that moment of full physical acceptance of truth. Again she felt radiance in her sternum, and took a long inhale and exhale. She continued to breathe steadily and kept her eyes open, pinging from one visual cue to another: streetlamp to car to fire hydrant to pedestrian.

Arriving at the Pawars' apartment, passing through their door, the atmosphere was so heavy it threatened to unbalance her. All was quiet and dead around her, yet there was also turmoil.

Gales of madness
, she thought, flashing back to the experiences with Atash and Gaelle.
Is that what Jack London feels?

“Dr. O'Hara,” the ambassador said with a formal nod.

“Ambassador Pawar,” she replied. She did not want to get into a conversation with him. Maanik was stretched out on a sofa, covered in a quilt, her mother by her head, stroking her hair. Caitlin took one look at the girl's drained face and turned to Ben, standing well to the side.

“Please set up the camera in Maanik's bedroom.”

Ben reached for his bag but hesitated, waiting for the Pawars' approval.

“No,
not
there!” Hansa blurted. “She is much worse in her room!”

“That's why we have to be there.”

“But she nearly jumped from the—”

“I know. We will not let her anywhere near the window. Please, both of you, I
know
your daughter is still fighting this and I also know that medicine isn't the answer and that institutionalizing her will do no good. This is our last chance. We can't possibly succeed with a diluted version of the experience. It has to be vivid and I have to be in there with her.”

“What do you mean, ‘in there'?” the ambassador asked.

“I am going to hypnotize us together. I'm not going to listen and analyze like before, I'm going to experience everything that she is experiencing.” She looked at Hansa. “Mrs. Pawar, please put Jack London somewhere else. On the other side of the apartment.”

“I'll get him,” Ambassador Pawar said. “He has not been inclined to leave that spot.”

Caitlin knelt beside Maanik.
Left hand, heart hand, spiritual intake
, she thought.
Right hand, spiritual provider.

Placing her left hand on her own chest, settling herself, Caitlin placed her right hand in Maanik's left. Something softened behind the girl's closed eyes and Caitlin felt a small squeeze of her hand.

“It's time now, Maanik,” she said quietly. “Can you come with me?”

The girl struggled a moment, then nodded. Hansa made way as her daughter rose with an almost ethereal delicacy, as if she were weightless. Caitlin waited while Mr. Pawar slipped by with Jack London. The dog struggled but the ambassador held him tightly against his chest.

Caitlin led the girl down the hall. As they walked, she felt Maanik begin to stiffen.

“The room is safe,” Caitlin said.

“No—”

“We are not going back to the moment of crisis. We are going to a time an hour or two earlier.”

“
Sho
,” she said.

Caitlin glanced at Ben, who was filming from the other side of the doorway. She didn't know what the word meant but Ben must have encountered it before because he held up a finger, meaning “one.” One hour before the crisis. Maanik was already on her way back, if indeed she had ever left.

Maanik took a step into the bedroom and Caitlin felt her try to withdraw. She put the girl's left hand to her own chest. She could feel her heart throbbing through the fabric of her coat, through Maanik's hand. She took a deep breath. Maanik took one as well. They stepped into the room together and moved slowly until they reached the center. Then Caitlin took up the girl's right hand.

The polarity of Caitlin and Maanik vanished in a swirl. A different place appeared before Caitlin's eyes, the bedroom a dim backdrop fading with every beat of her heart. She was staring at a low building made of the same dark blocks with curved edges that she had seen in the courtyard. There were trees by a wooden door and Maanik—no, it was no longer Maanik—was moving to sit on a doorstep of stone. Caitlin remembered Maanik had described these trees before as part of her home. The girl held her chin in one hand and petted a white and gray seal by her feet with the other as the animal rubbed its whiskers back and forth along her calf. The girl seemed to be staring at Caitlin while engaging in conversation with an older woman who sat on the step beside her. Both were dressed in thick coats made of a kind of fur. The older woman was addressing the girl, shaking her head.

“You must not be distressed.”

“But when it comes, anything could go wrong,” the young girl replied.

“That is why we must leave before it begins,” the old woman con
tinued. “The power the Technologists are unleashing is potentially deadly.”

“And the Priests?” asked a third voice, a young man's voice. Caitlin recognized it as her own, but not her own at the same time—and not the same voice she had spoken with in Atash's vision. The girl looked at Caitlin, as did the old woman, but they were seeing him.

The old woman hesitated. “I was once a Believer, but I'm not sure anymore,” she finally said. “In any case, I would rather live now than ascend. Please save seats for us on your ship.”

“You will leave early though? Otherwise, there may not be time.”

“You anticipate panic,” the old woman said.

“When the time comes? I do. Ascent through the
cazh
requires faith,” the young man replied. “Strong faith. Most people will suddenly discover they want our strong hulls instead. I'll keep seats for you as long as I can.”

The old woman looked up, gazed at a full moon brightening in a sky nearing sunset. Caitlin thought perhaps the woman would have made a different decision if it were just herself, without her granddaughter to consider.

The grandmother rose slowly to her feet and turned to go into the house behind them but kept her eyes on Caitlin's young man for a second—and suddenly Caitlin felt she was looking at
her
. “I know you care for her as I do,” she said. “That is where I must put my trust.”