“And—?” D’Agosta asked.
“I just did a rough count and found the ratio is only half that.”
“Which means?”
“Which means the B. meresgerii are either dividing at a lower rate, or…”
She put her eye back to the microscope and D’Agosta could hear the whispered counting again. She straightened up again, this time more slowly.
“The dividing rate is normal,” she said, in a low voice.
D’Agosta fingered the cigar in his breast pocket. “Which means?”
“They’re living fifty percent longer,” she said flatly.
D’Agosta looked at her a moment. “There’s Kawakita’s motive,” he said quietly.
There was a soft knock at the door. Before Margo could answer, Pendergast glided in, nodding to them both. He was once again attired in a crisp black suit, and his face, though a little drawn and tired, betrayed no sign of his recent journeys beyond a small scrape above the left eyebrow.
“Pendergast!” D’Agosta said. “About time.”
“Indeed,” said the FBI agent. “I had a feeling you’d be here, too, Vincent. Sorry to have been out of touch so long. It was a somewhat more arduous journey than I had imagined. I would have been here to report my encounter half an hour earlier, but I felt a shower and change of clothes to be rather essential.”
“Encounter?” Margo asked incredulously. “You saw them?”
Pendergast nodded. “I did, and much else besides. But first, please bring me up to date on events aboveground. I heard about the subway tragedy, of course, and I saw the troops in blue, massing as if for Runnymede. But there’s obviously much that I’ve missed.”
He listened intently as Margo and D’Agosta explained about the true nature of glaze, about Whittlesey and Kawakita, and about the plan to flush out the Astor Tunnels. He did not interrupt except to ask a few questions while Margo was sketching out the results of her experiments.
“This is fascinating,” he said at last. “Fascinating, and extremely unsettling.” He took a seat at a nearby lab table, crossing one thin leg over the other. “There are disturbing parallels here to my own investigations. You see, there is a gathering point, deep in the Astor Tunnels. It’s located in the remains of what was once the Crystal Pavilion, the private train station beneath the defunct Knickerbocker Hotel. In the center of the Pavilion I found a curious hut, built entirely of human skulls. Countless footprints converged on this hut. Nearby was what appeared to be an offering table, along with a variety of artifacts. While I was examining it, one of the creatures approached out of the darkness.”
“What did it look like?” Margo asked almost reluctantly.
Pendergast frowned. “Difficult to tell. I never came that close, and the NVD I was wearing does not resolve well at distance. It looked human, or close to it. But its gait was… well, it was off somehow.” The FBI agent seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “It squatted forward in an unnatural way as it ran, cradling something that I believe was meant as another addition to the hut. I blinded it with a flash and fired, but the sudden brilliance overloaded the goggles, and by the time I could see again the thing was gone.”
“Was it hit?” D’Agosta asked.
“I believe so. Some blood spoor was evident. But by that point, I was somewhat anxious to return to the surface.” He looked at Margo, one eyebrow raised. “I would imagine that some of the creatures are more deformed than others. In any case, there are three things we can be sure of. They are fast. They can see in the dark. And they are completely malevolent.”
“And they live in the Astor Tunnels.” Margo shivered. “All under the influence of glaze. With Kawakita dead and the plants gone, they’re probably mad with need.”
“It would seem so,” Pendergast said.
“And this hut you describe was probably the site where Kawakita dispensed the drug,” Margo continued. “At least toward the end, when things were getting out of hand. But it all sounds almost ceremonial.”
Pendergast nodded. “Precisely. Over the entrance to the hut I noticed Japanese ideographs translating roughly to ‘Abode of the Unsymmetrical.’ That is one of the names used to describe a Japanese tea room.”
D’Agosta frowned. “Tea room? I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I, at first. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what Kawakita must have done. The roji, or series of steps placed at irregular intervals in front of the hut. The lack of ornamentation. The simple, unfinished sanctuary. These are all elements of the Tea Ceremony.”
“He must have distributed the plant by steeping it in water, like tea,” Margo said. “But why go to all that trouble, unless…” She paused. “Unless the ritual itself—”
“My own thought exactly,” Pendergast said. “As time went on, Kawakita must have had increasing difficulty controlling the creatures. At some point, he abandoned selling the drug and realized he simply had to provide it. Kawakita was also trained as an anthropologist, correct? He must have understood the settling, the taming, influence of ritual and ceremony.”
“So he created a distribution ritual,” Margo said. “Shamans in primitive cultures often use such ceremonies to institute order, preserve their power.”
“And he chose the Tea Ceremony as the basis,” Pendergast said. “Whether reverently or irreverently, we’ll never know. Though I would guess it was a cynical addition on his part, considering his other borrowings. Remember the burned notes you found in Kawakita’s lab?”
“I have them right here,” D’Agosta said, pulling out his notebook, flipping pages, then handing it to Pendergast.
“Ah, yes. Green cloud, gunpowder, lotus heart. These are green teas of varying rarity.” Pendergast pointed to D’Agosta’s notebook. “And this: ‘dung-loving blue foot.’ Strike a chord, Dr. Green?”
“It should, but it doesn’t.”
Pendergast’s lips twitched in a slight smile. “It is not one substance, but two. What members of the Route 666 community would no doubt label ’shrooms’.”
“Of course!” Margo snapped her fingers. “Caerulipes and coprophilia.”
“You lost me,” D’Agosta said.
“The blue-foot Psilocybe and the dung-loving Psilocybe,” Margo said, turning to the Lieutenant. “Two of the most potent hallucinogenic mushrooms there are.”
“And this other item, wysoccan,” Pendergast murmured. “If memory serves, that was a ritual drink used by the Algonquin Indians during coming-of-age ceremonies. It contained significant amounts of scopolamine. Jimsonweed. A very nasty hallucinogen, causing deep narcosis.”
“So you think this is a laundry list?” D’Agosta asked.
“Perhaps. Perhaps Kawakita wanted to modify his brew in some way, making the drug users more docile.”
“If you’re right, and Kawakita wanted to keep the glaze users under control, then why this hut of skulls?” Margo asked. “It seems to me building something like that would have the opposite, inciting effect.”
“True enough,” Pendergast said. “There is still a large piece missing from this puzzle.”
“A hut, built entirely of human skulls,” Margo mused. “You know, I’ve heard of that before. I think there was a mention of something like that in Whittlesey’s journal.”
Pendergast looked at her speculatively. “Really? Interesting.”
“Let’s check the archive. We can use the terminal in my office.”