“I am here at the behest of Mr. Shank,” Whitlow said. “He informs me you have recently arrived, and already you have flipped the heart of one of our operatives.”
“Ah,” Glaucous said, feeling his body go gelid. The Mistress’s implied disapproval could do that to the strongest of men. “I have never been punished for weeding our fertile ground.”
“Circumstance changes,” Whitlow said. “You have reduced our company in a crucial time.”
“I work my territory alone, Mr. Whitlow,” Glaucous restated with low dignity. Slowly, he was coming to realize the dreamlike impropriety of this meeting, and what that might signal—that his intuition had been correct. A noose was being cinched. Otherwise, why reveal so much? For now he knew that Mr. Shank still lived, still worked, and still found favor with the Chalk Princess—despite his apparent absorption in the most dreadful Gape that Glaucous had ever experienced, that dark day of August 9, 1924, in Rheims.
“There are discreet ways to make inquiries,” Whitlow said.
Glaucous knew he was being toyed with. “I have worked unsupervised for nine decades. I speak with my employer only when there is a delivery. My last delivery was several years ago, and there was no mention of change.”
Penelope watched through the crack of her bedroom door.
Sensing Glaucous’s quiet anger, Whitlow still refused to enter. Hunters always visit with caution, approach with deliberation. His smile had not changed, however. Glaucous wondered if the elder collector had become a marionette—a dandled sacrifice to hostility—not that he had ever witnessed such a thing, or even heard of it. But nothing could be ruled out where their Livid Mistress was concerned.
“How has it been for you, my boy?” Whitlow said, his throat bobbing.
“Fair to middling,” Glaucous said. “And you, sir?”
“Brambles, thorns, and nettles,” Whitlow said. “So many have been recalled, and yet…here we are. Have you visited the home country?”
“Not for years. Built up, I hear.”
“Unbearably. We have lived too long, Max.”
“You’re welcome to come in, if you wish, sir. My partner is under control.”
“Kindly spoken, Max. I will make my report, issue my invitation, and then we will be done for today.”
Whitlow grinned. His teeth were mottled ivory perfection. “It is good to know you are well. Refreshes so many memories.”
“Indeed, sir.”
Whitlow drew himself up and his smile crackled and straightened. “We have all been brought here— all
.”
Glaucous quickly calculated how many that might be—based on years of speculation and observation. Dozens, certainly, perhaps hundreds.
“I am told little beyond that,” Whitlow said, “but I trust we are now clear how important your territory has become—fortunately for you. We have reports, and so do they.”
“They?” Glaucous asked. Penelope cleared her throat from the other room—listening behind the door. Whitlow solemnly shook his head. “We have both kissed our Lady’s hem, and our Lady’s hem sweeps close. How much do you already know, young Mr. Glaucous—sly nimrod that you are?”
Glaucous’s small eyes grew wider, though no match for Whitlow’s. “Is it over?” he asked, his throat dry.
“Terminus is a possibility.”
“Are the sum-runners here?”
“I am told, and feel, that a quorum will soon occupy our time. I beg of you, young shikari: do not remove more colleagues. Your thread is mine, and mine is wound inextricably with the Moth’s, our great conveyer. We are united in one fate.”
Whitlow bowed and backed away, never letting Glaucous out of his sight. “Must hurry on. Many hockshops to visit.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Close and lock the door, Max,” Whitlow said. “Let me hear the dead bolt shot home.”
“Of course,” Glaucous said. “Apologies.” He closed the door, latched it, and listened for the familiar, off-center punk-thumpof Whitlow’s step as he hastened to the stairs. Even then Max’s fingers twitched to do the old man a mischief.
CHAPTER 28
Wallingford
After four hours of talk in the living room—preceded by a bowl of chicken broth, a glass of milk, and a glass of red wine, all of which Daniel gratefully accepted—Mary pulled her husband aside in the hallway to the kitchen and whispered harshly into his reddening ear, “What in hellare you doing? The man’s sick—he’s been stalking us, he thinks he’s my brother, for God’s sake—my deadbrother.”
Fred was clearly chagrined, but could not contain his enthusiasm. “All true—but you should listen to what he’s been saying. I’m writing it down. He may be the most brilliant man I’ve ever met.”
“What’s so brilliant?”
“Fourier transforms—phi of k and r—maximum deviations from zero-energy states of overlapping discretely variable systems…”
“Crazy talk.”
“Is it?” Fred pulled back, indignant. “He’s feeling better, Mary—your soup is pulling him through. He’s had a hard time since he came here.”
“ Camehere? To our house?”
“Crossed over. He’s relaxed, he’s just getting started explaining to me—this could be something big.”
“He’s talking about alternate worlds, Fred.”
Fred made a wry face. “Nothing new to physics. And that may becrazy, but it’s the math—he’s either read unique stuff or done the work himself, ideas and solutions I’ve never heard of. Some of it’s even more brilliant than Sütõ’s solution for minimum total energy. Consider an infinite lattice of branching and debranching lines, each capable of producing another lattice—you’d think that would be totally intractable, but the secret is, the branches don’t last—they sum to the least energy and greatest probability, the greatest efficiency…He said something so utterly brilliant it was stupid.He said, ‘Dark matter is stuff waiting to happen.’”
Mary observed her husband over tightly folded arms, her lips growing thinner with each passing word.
“He wrote down some equations. Sure, it’s alternate worlds—but it’s also the most efficient states of protein motion and interaction, stacking solutions for sand and salt crystals, perhaps even distributions and probabilities for sparticle production in high-energy accelerators. Mary, if you don’t like it—just please butt out.Go read or bake bread or something. The man’s a gold mine.”
His wife’s eyes went round. “Have you even asked him why he knows so much about us?”
Fred’s nostrils flared. “You won’t like the answer.”
“Try me.”
“He knows what happened before Daniel died—some of the stuff you’ve told me. I didn’t prompt him—he volunteered.”
“That wouldn’t be impossible to learn.”
“Have youtold anyone about how you sprayed silver paint all over your terrier when it bit you?”
Mary glared, and tears came to her eyes.
“Right,” Fred said. “He knows about your older brother. He knows what your father was like.”
Mary’s face took on a yearning pain. Worse than not believing was not wanting to believe. “Does he know how Daniel died?”
“That wouldn’t be logical.”
“ Youmust have told somebody,” she said, working up to anger.
“I never told anyone. Take it to the bank, Mary—he knowsabout you and your family, but not much matches up after he died—after Daniel died, I mean. This Daniel—he didn’t die. And in his world, we never got married. Even if it is a delusion, it’s brilliant. I won’t say I’m convinced—but I do need to listen. Please, Mary.” He gently squeezed her rope-taut forearm. “Maybe he’ll just tie himself in logical knots and we can boot him out, or call the cops and hand him over.”