The Chronoliths (26 page)

And was the technology necessary to create a Chronolith already in Kuin’s hands?

Yes, probably, Sue told me.

This was Sunday morning. Ashlee, still nervous, had gone off to visit her cousin Alathea in St. Paul. (Alathea eked out a living selling decorative copper pots door to door. Visiting Alathea on Sundays was an expression of familial piety on Ashlee’s part, since Alathea was a disagreeable woman with eccentric religious beliefs and no talent for housekeeping.) I sat with Sue at the kitchen table, picking at breakfast and generally savoring my day off, while Ray went out to hunt for a source of fresh coffee—we had used up the house supply.

There were, Sue told me, only a handful of people in the world who understood contemporary Chronolith theory well enough to envision the means to create one. She happened to be one of them. That was why the federal government had taken such an ambivalent interest in her, alternately helping and hindering her work. But that wasn’t the big problem right now. The big problem, she said, was that the increasingly desperate Chinese government had years ago established its own intensive research programs into the practicality of tau-bending technology and had isolated these facilities from the international community.

And why was that a problem?

Because the fragmented Chinese government had finally collapsed under the weight of its own insolvency, and those same research facilities were presumably under the direct control of Kuinist insurgents.

“So it all fits into place,” she said. “Somewhere in Asia there’s a Kuin, and he has the technology in his hands. We’re only a couple of years away from the Chumphon conquest, and that looks like an entirely plausible event. We can’t do anything about it, either. All of Southeast Asia is in the hands of various Kuinist insurgent movements—it would take a huge army to occupy the hills above Chumphon, and that would mean recommitting troops and supplies from China, which nobody is willing to do. So it comes together very, very neatly… you might say, inevitably.”

“These are the shades of things that
must
be.”

“Yes.”

“And we’re helpless to stop it.”

“Well, I don’t know, Scotty. I think maybe there
is
something I can do.” Her smile was both mischievous and sad.

But the whole subject made me uneasy, and I tried to divert her by asking whether she had heard from Hitch Paley lately. (I hadn’t: not since Portillo.)

“We’re still in contact,” she said. “He’ll be passing through town in a couple of days.”

I suppose it’s evidence of Sue’s innate (if awkward) charm that by the following evening Ashlee was sitting beside her on the sofa, listening raptly to Sue’s interpretation of the Age of Chronoliths.

As I joined them, Ash was saying, “I still don’t understand why you think it’s so important to
destroy
one.”

Sue, pondering her response, looked as intensely thoughtful as a religious zealot.

Which, perhaps, she was, at least on her own terms. In her pop-physics seminar at Cornell she had been fond of comparing the particle zoo (hadrons, fermions, and all the varieties of their constituent quarks) to the deities of the Hindu pantheon—all distinct, yet all aspects of a single encompassing Godhead. Sue was not conventionally religious and she had never even visited her parents’ native Madras; she used the metaphor loosely and often comically. But I recalled her description of two-faced Shiva: the destroyer and bringer of life, the ascetic youth and the lingam-wielding impregnator—Sue had detected the presence of Shiva in every duality, every quantum symmetry.

She put the tips of her fingers together. “Ashlee, tell me how you define the word ‘monument.’”

“Well,” Ash said tentatively, “it’s a thing, a structure, like a building. It’s, you know, architecture.”

“So how is it different from a house or a temple?”

“I guess you don’t
use
a monument, the way you use a house or a church. It just sort of stands there announcing itself.”

“But it does have a purpose, right? The way a house has a purpose?”

“I don’t know if I would say it’s
useful…
but I guess it serves a purpose. Just not a very practical one.”

“Exactly. It’s a structure with a purpose, but the purpose isn’t practical, it’s spiritual… or at least symbolic. It announces power and preeminence or it commemorates some communal event. It’s a physical structure but all its meaning, all its utility, is invested in it by the human mind.”

“Including the Chronoliths?”

“That’s the point. As a destructive weapon, a Chronolith is relatively trivial. By itself, it achieves nothing in particular. It’s an inert object. All its significance lies in the realm of meaning and interpretation. And that’s where the battle is, Ashlee.” She tapped her forehead. “All the strangest architecture is right up here. Nothing in the physical world compares to the monuments and the cathedrals we build inside our own skulls. Some of that architecture is simple and true and some of it is baroque and some of it is beautiful and some of it is ugly and perilously unsound. But that architecture matters more than any other kind, because we make the future out of it. History is just a fossil record of what men and women construct out of the contents of their minds. You understand? And the genius of Kuin has nothing to do with the Chronoliths; the Chronoliths are just technology, just people making nature jump through hoops. The genius of Kuin is that he’s using them to colonize the world of the mind, to build his own architecture directly into our heads.”

“He makes people believe in him.”

“In him, in his power, in his glory, in his benevolence. But above all in his
inevitability
. And that’s what I want to change. Because
nothing
about Kuin is inevitable, absolutely nothing. We build Kuin every day, we manufacture him out of our hopes and fears. He
belongs
to us. He’s a shadow we’re all casting.”

This in itself was nothing new. The politics of expectation had even been debated in the press. But something about this speech made the hairs on my arms stand erect. The degree of her conviction, her casual eloquence. But I think it was more. I think I understood for the first time that Sue had declared a private and very personal war on Kuin. More: that she believed she was at the very center of the conflict now—anointed by the tau turbulence, promoted directly into the Godhead.

I met Kaitlin for a Sunday dinner out, strictly fast food, this representing the last of the weekend’s windfall money.

Kait came down from the apartment over Whit’s garage looking brave but inconsolable. She had passed her first couple of nights without David, and it showed. Her eyes were shadowed, her complexion sallow for lack of sleep. The smile she gave me was almost furtive, as if she had no business smiling while David was at war.

We shared beanpaste sandwiches at a once-brightly-colored but lately scabrous People’s Kitchen. Kait knew that Sue Chopra and Ray Mosley were in town and we talked a while about that, but Kait was plainly not much interested in what she called “the old days.” She had been troubled by nightmares, she said. In her dreams she was back in Portillo, but this time with David, and David was in some mortal danger from which Kait could not rescue him. She was knee-deep in sand, in the dream, the Kuin of Portillo looming over her, nearly alive, gnarled and malevolent.

I listened patiently and let her wind down. The dream wasn’t difficult to interpret. Finally I said, “Have you heard from David?”

“A phone call after his bus got into Little Rock. Nothing since then. But I guess boot camp keeps you busy.”

I guessed it did. Then I asked how her mother and Whit were dealing with it.

“Mom is a help. As for Whit—” She fluttered her hand. “You know how he is. He doesn’t approve of the war and sometimes he acts like David is personally responsible for it—as if he had a choice about the draft notice. With Whit it’s all big issues, there’s no
people
involved, except as obstacles or bad examples.”

“I’m not sure the war is doing any good either, Kait. If David had wanted to duck the draft, I would have helped him dig a hole.”

She smiled sadly. “I know. David knew that, too. The odd thing is that Whit wouldn’t hear of it. He doesn’t like the war but he couldn’t sanction breaking the law, putting the family in legal jeopardy and all that crap. The thing is, David figured Whit would probably inform on him if he tried to evade the conscription drive.”

“You think that’s true?”

She hesitated. “I don’t hate Whit…”

“I know.”

“But yes, I think he might be capable of that.”

It was perhaps not surprising that she suffered from nightmares.

I said, “Janice must be around the house more since her job evaporated.”

“She is, and it’s a help. I know she misses David too. But she doesn’t talk about the war, or Kuin, or Whit’s opinions. That’s strictly forbidden territory.”

Janice’s loyalty to her second husband was remarkable and probably admirable, though I had a hard time seeing it that way. When does loyalty become martyrdom, and just how dangerous
was
Whitman Delahunt? But I couldn’t ask Kait these questions.

Kait couldn’t answer them, any more than I could.

By the time I got home Ashlee had already gone to bed. Sue and Ray were awake at the kitchen table, talking in low tones over a map of the western states. Ray clammed up when I passed through, but Sue invited me to sit down and join them. I declined politely, much to Ray’s relief, and instead joined Ashlee, who was curled up on her left side with the sheet tangled at her feet and a night breeze raising goosebumps on the slope of her thigh.

Should I feel guilty because in the end I hadn’t sought or achieved a private martyrdom—like Janice, bound to Whit by her sense of duty; like David, aimed at China like a bullet and about as disposable; or like my father, for that matter, who had justified his life as a martyrdom? (I was
with
her, Scotty.)

When I rolled into bed Ashlee stirred and mumbled and pressed herself against me, warm in the cool of the night.

I tried to imagine martyrdom running backward like a broken clock. How sweet to abdicate divinity, to climb down from the cross, to travel from transfiguration to simple wisdom and arrive at last at innocence.

Hitch came into town missing two fingers from his left hand and walking with a limp. It seemed to me he didn’t smile as readily as he used to, either, though he smiled at Sue and gave me an appraising look that was friendly enough. Certainly he did not make Ashlee smile.

Ashlee worked at the city water-treatment plant, writing the status reports required by state and federal regulations and staffing an Accounts Receivable desk for the financial manager. She came home tired and she nearly fainted at the sight of Hitch Paley, even though Hitch was dressed in a respectable suit and had even attempted a necktie. Hitch remained a bad memory for Ashlee—Hitch had been with her when she lost Adam.

She did not, of course, recognize former FBI desk man Morris Torrance, now even balder than Ray Mosely, who had also arrived in the big utility van parked out front. I attempted an introduction, but Ashlee said in a flat tone, “We can’t sleep all these people, Scott. Not even for a night.”

The catch in her voice reflected a little fear, a lot of resentment.

“No need for that,” Hitch said hastily. “I just rented a couple of rooms at the Marriott. Good to see you, Ashlee.”

“You, too, I guess,” she said.

“And thank you for accommodating us in the meantime,” Sue Chopra put in. “I know it’s been an inconvenience.”

Ashlee nodded, mollified perhaps by the sight of Sue with her duffel packed. “The Marriott?”

“Our fortunes,” Sue said, “have changed.”

I walked out to the van with Hitch while Sue and Ray finished packing. Hitch tucked Sue’s duffel into the cargo bin. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “I could use some help tomorrow, Scotty, if you think you can make the time.”

“Help with what?”

“Spending money on heavy machinery. Diesel generators and like that.”

“I don’t know much about machinery, Hitch.”

“Mainly I want your company.”

“Tomorrow’s a working day.”

“Running that flea market table? Take the day off.”

“I can’t afford to.”

“Yeah, you can. We’re budgeted for that.”

He named an hourly wage for an eight-hour day. A princely sum for the simple act of riding shotgun with him, particularly from a man whose friends had been begging me for sofa space just a few days ago. Hitch had obviously come into town with money, and the offer was tempting. But I was reluctant to accept it.

“Figure it out,” he said. “We have a Department of Defense charge account, at least for the time being. The cash is available and I know you can’t afford to take time off on short notice. And we really need to discuss a few things.”

“Hitch—”

“And what can it hurt?”

That was the pertinent question. “I’m sensing there’s more here than meets the eye.”

“Well, yeah. There is. We can talk about it tomorrow. I’ll call from the hotel, we’ll make plans.”

I said, “Why me?”

“Because there’s an arrow pointed at you, my friend.” He hoisted himself into the driver’s seat, grimacing as he pulled his lame leg after him. “Or at least that’s what Sue thinks.”

And so, in the sunny morning light, I drove with Hitch Paley into the shabby industrial parks west of the river. The van’s air conditioning was broken. (Which was only to be expected: Spare parts were at a premium, most of them going to the military.) The air outside was dry and climbing toward oven heat and Hitch drove with the tinted windows up but the vents wide open. By the time we reached our destination the interior reeked of hot vinyl and motor oil and sweat.

Hitch had made an appointment with the sales manager of a machine and machine-parts distributor called Tyson Brothers. I followed Hitch through reception and sat in the man’s office examining his wilted ficus and his generic wall art while Hitch negotiated the outright purchase of two small earthmovers and enough portable generators to power a small town, plus copious spare parts. The sales guy was obviously curious—he asked twice whether we were independent contractors and seemed vexed when Hitch deflected the question. But he was just as obviously delighted to write up the order. For all I know, Hitch may have saved Tyson Brothers from bankruptcy, or at least postponed that inevitable hour.