“Call for Monica,” Ivy said. “Repeat what I tell you.”
“Oh Monica,” I said.
“Am I allowed in now?”
“Depends,” I said, repeating the words Ivy whispered to me. “Are you going to tell me the truth?”
“About what?”
“About Razon having invented the camera on his own, bringing Azari in only after he had a working prototype.”
Monica narrowed her eyes at me.
“Badge is too new,” I said. “Not worn or scratched at all from being used or in his pocket. The picture on it can’t be more than two months old, judging by the beard he’s growing in the badge photo but not in the picture of him at Mount Vernon on his mantle.
“Furthermore, this is not the apartment of a high-paid engineer. With a broken elevator? In the northeast quarter of town? Not only is this a rough area, it’s too far from your offices. He didn’t steal your camera, Monica—though I’m tempted to guess that you’re trying to steal it from him. Is that why he ran?”
“He didn’t come to us with a prototype,” Monica said. “Not a working one, at least. He had one photo—the one of Washington—and a lot of promises. He needed money to get a stable machine working; apparently, the one he’d built had worked for a few days, then stopped.
“We funded him for eighteen months on a limited access pass to the labs. He received an official badge when he finally got the damn camera working. And he did steal it from us. The contract he signed required all equipment to remain at our laboratories. He used us as a convenient source of cash, then jumped with the prize—wiping all of his data and destroying all other prototypes—as soon as he could get away with it.”
“Truth?” I asked Ivy.
“Can’t tell,” she said. “Sorry. If I could hear a heartbeat . . . maybe you could put your ear to her chest.”
“I’m sure she’d love that,” I said.
J.C. smiled. “I’m pretty sure I’d love that.”
“Oh please,” Ivy said. “You’d only do it to peek inside her jacket and find out what kind of gun she’s carrying.”
“Beretta M9,” J.C. said. “Already peeked.”
Ivy gave me a glare.
“What?” I said, trying to act innocent. “He’s the one who said it.”
“Skinny,” J.C. put in, “the M9 is boring, but effective. The way she carries herself says she knows her way around a gun. That puffing she did when climbing the steps? An act. She’s far more fit than that. She’s trying to pretend she’s some kind of manager or paper-pusher at the labs, but she’s obviously security of some sort.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
“You,” Monica said, “are a very strange man.”
I focused on her. She’d heard only my parts of the exchange, of course. “I thought you read my interviews.”
“I did. They don’t do you justice. I imagined you as a brilliant mode-shifter, slipping in and out of personalities.”
“That’s dissociative identity disorder,” I said. “It’s different.”
“Very good!” Ivy piped in. She’d been schooling me on psychological disorders.
“Regardless,” Monica said. “I guess I’m just surprised to find out what you really are.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“A middle manager,” she said, looking troubled. “Anyway, the question remains. Where is Razon?”
“Depends,” I said. “Does he need to be any place specific to use the camera? Meaning, did he have to go to Mount Vernon to take a picture of the past in that location, or can he somehow set the camera to take pictures there?”
“He has to go to the location,” Monica said. “The camera looks back through time at the exact place you are.”
There were problems with that, but I let them slide for now. Razon. Where would he go? I glanced at J.C., who shrugged.
“You look to him first?” Ivy said with a flat tone. “Really.”
I looked to her, and she blushed. “I . . . I actually don’t have anything either.”
J.C. chuckled at that.
Tobias stood up, slow and ponderous, like a distant cloud formation rising into the sky. “Jerusalem,” he said softly, resting his fingers on a book. “He’s gone to Jerusalem.”
We all looked at him. Well, those of us who could.
“Where else would a believer go, Stephen?” Tobias asked. “After years of arguments with his colleagues, years of being thought a fool for his faith? This was what it was about all along, this is why he developed the camera. He’s gone to answer a question. For us, for himself. A question that has been asked for two thousand years.
“He’s gone to take a picture of Jesus of Nazareth—dubbed Christ by his devout—following his resurrection.”
Five
I required five first-class seats. This did not sit well with Monica’s superiors, many of whom did not approve of me. I met one of those at the airport, a Mr. Davenport. He smelled of pipe smoke, and Ivy critiqued his poor taste in shoes. I thought better of asking him if we could use the corporate jet.
We now sat in the first-class cabin of the plane. I flipped lazily through a thick book on my seat’s foldout tray. Behind me, J.C. bragged to Tobias about the weapons he’d managed to slip past security.
Ivy dozed by the window, with an empty seat next to her. Monica sat beside me, staring at that empty seat. “So Ivy is by the window?”
“Yes,” I said, flipping a page.
“Tobias and the marine are behind us.”
“J.C.’s a Navy SEAL. He’d shoot you for making that mistake.”
“And the other seat?” she asked.
“Empty,” I said, flipping a page.
She waited for an explanation. I didn’t give one.
“So what are you going to do with this camera?” I asked. “Assuming the thing is real, a fact of which I’m not yet convinced.”
“There are hundreds of applications,” Monica said. “Law enforcement . . . Espionage . . . Creating a true account of historical events . . . Watching the early formation of the planet for scientific research . . .”
“Destroying ancient religions . . .”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you a religious man, then, Mister Leeds?”
“Part of me is.” That was the honest truth.
“Well,” she said. “Let us assume that Christianity is a sham. Or, perhaps, a movement started by well-meaning people but which has grown beyond proportion. Would it not serve the greater good to expose that?”
“That’s not really an argument I’m equipped to enter,” I said. “You’d need Tobias. He’s the philosopher. Of course, I think he’s dozing.”
“Actually, Stephen,” Tobias said, leaning between our two seats, “I’m quite curious about this conversation. Stan is watching our progress, by the way. He says there might be some bumpy weather up ahead.”
“You’re looking at something,” Monica said.
“I’m looking at Tobias,” I said. “He wants to continue the conversation.”
“Can I speak with him?”
“I suppose you can, through me. I’ll warn you, though. Ignore anything he says about Stan.”
“Who’s Stan?” Monica asked.
“An astronaut that Tobias hears, supposedly orbiting the world in a satellite.” I turned a page. “Stan is mostly harmless. He gives us weather forecasts, that sort of thing.”
“I . . . see,” she said. “Stan’s another one of your special friends?”
I chuckled. “No. Stan’s not real.”
“I thought you said none of them were.”
“Well, true. They’re my hallucinations. But Stan is something special. Only Tobias hears him. Tobias is a schizophrenic.”
She blinked in surprise. “Your hallucination . . .”
“Yes?”
“Your hallucination has hallucinations.”
“Yes.”
She settled back, looking disturbed.
“They all have their issues,” I said. “Ivy is a trypophobic, though she mostly has it under control. Just don’t come at her with a wasp’s nest. Armando is a megalomaniac. Adoline has OCD.”