Endgame: The Calling (20 page)

If he had not pulled away, his hand would have been shattered. He is certain of it.

She tries to hit his neck, but he sidesteps and slides a foot forward, hoping to knock her over, but she just moves back. It is like she has eyes all over her body. Can see everything he’s doing before he does it. He goes for her face, and she bends over backward, completely, keeps going, and then her feet are coming up for his chin and
he
bends over backward but cannot do the flip that she has just done so he springs back upright. And when he does he flicks his sleeve and a closed butterfly knife slides into his hand.

He twirls it. Its hinges and pegs are coated with high-grade carbon nanotubes, and the blade is totally silent. He is going to stab her in the heart, between the 6th and 7th ribs on the left side.

But before he can get the knife open she sticks a finger into the works and it twirls the wrong way and for three seconds the two of them are staring at the knife as it dances in the air between them. The toes of their shoes are touching. He has trained with this knife—this very knife—since he was five, and now, with this person thwarting him, it’s as if he’s never even seen a butterfly knife in his life.

One more second and the unthinkable happens: she has the knife, its point pushing into the skin below his belly button.

The matron yells again, this time telling someone to see what the commotion at the front is all about.

An breathes and slides back and she slides forward and he slides back and she forward. Their combined chi is incredible.

Intoxicating.

Overwhelming.

And that’s when he realizes that since he has been in her presence, his tics have disappeared. No
blinks
or
SHIVERS
, head twitches or nerves. None.

For the first time since before his training began—since before he was beaten and starved and frightened and led around by a chain like a mongrel—he feels calm.

One of the employees yells, “They have a knife!”

An grabs Chiyoko’s wrist and orders, “STOP!”

And by the Maker, the Maker of all Makers, she does.

“How are you doing that?” he asks, his stutter also gone.

She tilts her head.
Doing what?
the gesture says.

“My tics are gone. I feel . . . young.”

He lets go of her wrists.

She lowers the knifepoint.

The energy pulses from his body.

A new kind of energy.

His ears tell him that the matron is moving toward them now, cursing and threatening. An can’t help but look. She’s huge, fat, slobbering, and waving a thick wooden baseball bat with a massive nail sticking out of its business end. She wants none of this crap in her place.

An feels the breeze again.

He turns.

The door is already closing. The knife is folded and falling to the ground. Chiyoko’s bags are gone.

And so is
blink
so is
blink
so is
blinkSHIVERSHIVERblink
.

So is she.

47.921378, 106.90554
^lvi

Wei’s B
ngu
n Lobby, Chang’an District, Xi’an, China

Jago wakes with a start early the next morning. His sheets are soaked. His skin is burning. His eyes are throbbing out of their sockets.

He sits up with a groan.

Sarah is not in her bed.

The bathroom door is open.

Her things are here, but she is not.

Jago leans over and grabs the pen and paper from the side table. Tears off the sheet with Sarah’s numbers and throws it on the floor and clicks the penpoint out and starts making frantic lines all over the sheet. His hand moves automatically, and Jago becomes aware of himself in a way that he never has been before. He is observing himself as if from above. His mind is detached and lucid. It is like the deepest of meditations. The past—all that he has done to get to this point—is here in the present.

Everything.

Here.

Nothing anywhere else.

The drawing is nonsense. Harried. Abstract. The lines are curved, or as straight as a razor, or bent by forced perspective, or twirled like a lock of curling hair. All of them are short. No more than three centimeters long. They are disconnected, littered across the page, random. They don’t add up.

For a moment Jago actually closes his eyes as his hand continues to dart over the page.

When he opens them, Jago sees something. The contour of a nose, the curl of an ear. The line of a sword’s blade. A bunching of cloth over a muscle. A paintbrush streak of hair. The sharp angle of armor. Fingers. A mustache, and high, arching eyebrows. Deep-set eyes that stare into the unknown past.

He closes his eyes again.

Lets his mind go, his hand go.

Until he is finished.

And his mind returns to his body.

And his skin cools, and a breeze comes through the window and he shivers.

He opens his eyes.

The drawing takes up the whole page. It depicts a heavily armored Chinese warrior in ¾ profile. His hair is done up in some kind of ribboned headdress. His sword is short and true. His shoulders are broad, his face delicate.

In one hand he holds a disk that looks exactly like the one Jago took from the Calling.

His hand has drawn the clue that kepler 22b put into his head.

Jago gets out of bed and fills the sink with water and splashes the water on his face. He gets dressed and grabs the drawing. He grabs the backpack that contains the disk and he looks at the clock. It is 6:47 a.m. He walks out of the room and sees Sarah sitting cross-legged in the little courtyard. Her back is to him.

She is perfectly still.

Thinking.

Waiting.

Breathing.

He won’t bother her.

He wants to get to the computer, do a search for the picture. It’s so accurate that there must be something like it out there somewhere.

He finds Wei sweeping the lobby. Wei straightens and says, “You’re up too? I thought young people like you slept in.”

Jago stops. “No, not me. I never sleep in.”

“Me neither. Good for the soul. Always nice to start the day in peace. From peace flows peace.”

Wei may be right, but Jago feels sorry for this guy. For his boring life that will soon be over. “I guess,” Jago grunts.

Wei leans on the broom handle, trying to get a look at Jago’s drawing. “What’s that?”

Jago holds it up. “This? Uh, something I drew.”

Wei studies it.

“It’s remarkable.”

“Yeah.” Jago squints at the drawing, still a little surprised that it came from his hand. “Thanks.”

“It looks just like one of them, though I’ve never seen one with a plate like that one is holding.”

“You recognize it?” Jago’s pulse speeds up.

“Of course. You’re very talented.”

“Thank you,” Jago repeats. A total lie. Left to his own, Jago can barely draw a convincing stick figure. Practicing art wasn’t covered in his Endgame training.

Wei’s eyes shift from studying the picture to studying Jago.

“But you don’t know what it is, do you? Even though you drew it?”

Something in his look makes Jago feel uncomfortable. He shrugs, playing it off. “I just copied it from a picture Sarah tore out of some magazine.” He lies without missing a beat. “Why? What is it?”

“That is a general in the Terracotta Army.”

“Oh yeah! How stupid of me.” He knew he’d seen it somewhere before. The Terracotta Army is world-famous. Over 8,000 life-sized warrior statues guard the remains of the first emperor of China. His tomb is a local attraction, and it dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE. “Sarah was talking about going to visit it while we were here.”

kepler 22b must be telling me that I—we—need to go there. And we need to bring the disk.

“Of course she was. Everyone goes to visit the Terracotta Army. It’s quite impressive.” Wei resumes sweeping. “I’m kind of crazy for it myself.”

“That so?”

“Yes.” And then he says unexpectedly, “And why are you lying to me, by the way?”

“Lying?” Jago feels the muscles in his neck tense, readying.

“There is no way you copied that from a photo.”

Jago shakes his head. “But I did.”

“No warrior of Emperor Qín Sh
Huángdì ever held a disk like that.”

Jago swallows. “Oh, I just made that part up. I was dreaming about Frisbees.”

“Frisbees, hm? That doesn’t look like a Frisbee.”

“What can I say? I can’t draw Frisbees. No one’s perfect, I guess.”

“No. I suppose not.” Wei sweeps some more. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. Weren’t you going to use the computer?”

“Yeah, I was,” Jago says, heading to the alcove.

Jago finds the computer and sits at the terminal and opens a browser window and starts searching. He reads more about the Terracotta Army and the Chinese pyramids and Emperor Qín. He finds cryptic internet rumors—which is to say, a load of bullshit—about the Great White Pyramid.

Jago surfs for a while longer. Checks an old email account. Nothing but junk. Reads the local news from Juliaca and Omaha and a few other crater sites. Googles
alien disk
and gets a ton of useless garbage written by crackpots.

After 17 minutes his phone vibrates.

He is not expecting a call.

Only four people have the number.

He pulls it from the bag, careful to keep the disk hidden inside, and studies the number.

It’s local.

He frowns and hits talk.

“Hello?”

A pause before an automated female voice speaking jovial Mandarin comes over the line.

A robocall wrong number.

Jago hangs up, a little uneasy. Normally he might wonder if his phone was just tagged by a tracker, but he has the most secure, most advanced smartphone that exists.

He erases the history and cache on the computer and quits the browser and heads back to the room, hoping that Sarah is done with her meditating. They need to get moving.

As he passes through the lobby, Wei says, “You know, I have a cousin who is a researcher at the site. I think he would very much enjoy your picture. I’ll give him a call and see if he might be able to give you and your girlfriend a tour. He could probably let you into some areas other tourists don’t get to visit.”