ФSHIMA’S WAITING ACROSS the road as I emerge, his collar up and his rain-spotted porkpie hat angled low. He points with a jerk of his head in the Park Avenue direction, subsaying, I guess we failed the interview.
I recognize Holly from behind by her long black coat and head-wrap. My fault. I told her that Jacko was older than Jesus. I step aside for a skateboarder. More urgently, D’Arnoq was just in touch, I subreply, to say that a cell has been sent to pick her up for scansioning. I put up my rainbow umbrella as a shield and we set off, Фshima matching my pace and position on the south side of the street, me on the north.
Remind me, subsays Фshima, why we don’t just suasion her into a nice deep sleep and then go in subhollering for Esther?
One, it’s against the Codex. Two, sheis chakra-latent, so she may react badly to scansion and redact her own memories, unraveling anyone who is in residence. Three … Well, that’s enough for now. But we’ll need her goodwill, and should only suasion her as a last resort.
The green man flashes as Holly reaches Park Avenue, so Фshima and I rush, dodge traffic, and get honked at to avoid being stranded on the island in the middle. We lengthen our strides and get to within twenty paces of Holly. Фshima asks, Do we have a strategy here, Marinus, or are we just following her like a pair of stalkers?
Between here and her hotel, let’s just secure her some head space to let her consider what she’s just learned.New leaves and old trees drip, gutters slosh, drains gargle. With luck, the park will work itsmagic on her. If not, we may have to use ours. A doorman peers up at the rain from under an awning. We reach Madison, where Holly waits in the drizzle while I stand in the doorway of a boutique, watching that dog walker, those Hasidic Jews, the Arab-looking businessman over there. A couple of cabs slow down, hoping to lure a fare, but Holly is gazing into the small green rectangle of Central Park at the far end of the block. Her mind must be in turmoil. To write a memoir in which psychic events irrupt occasionally is one thing, but for psychic events to dreamseed you, serve you Irish tea, and spin you a whole cosmology, that’s another. Maybe Фshima’s right; maybe I should suasion her back to 119A. A metalife of 1,400 years is no guarantee that you always know the right thing to do.
DON’T WALK turns to WALK and I miss my chance. Crossing Madison, I taste paranoia, and glance at people in the waiting vehicles, half expecting to see Pfenninger or Constantin staring back with hunters’ eyes. The last block to the park is busier with foot traffic so I’m even jumpier. Is that iShaded jogger with the baby stroller really a jogger? Didn’t that curtain twitch as Holly passed by? Why would a young surveyor with his tripod watch a gaunt woman in her fifties so closely? He eyes me up as well, so maybe he’s just not fussy. Фshima keeps pace on the pavement opposite, blending into the morning bustle far better than me. We pass Saint James’s Church, whose red-brick steeple once towered above this rural neighborhood of Manhattan. Yu Leon Marinus attended a wedding here in 1968. The bride and groom will be in their eighties now, if they’re still alive.
On Fifth Avenue traffic is lumbering and foul-tempered. Holly stands behind a cluster of Chinese tourists. They’re agreeing in loud Cantonese how New York is smaller, tattier, and crappier than they’d expected. Across the road, Фshima is leaning casually against the corner of the Frick Collection, his face hooded. A bus passes with a digital ad for the newly released movie of Crispin Hershey’s Echo Must Die, but Holly is staring blankly at the park. I calm down. My instinct says we’re safe from the enemy until we reach her hotel on Broadway. If she hasn’t turned around by then, I’ll have to ignore my scruples and perform an Act of Suasion on Holly for her own safety. The Anchorites won’t try anything rash. The fallout from public assassinations is too messy. Reality on Fifth Avenue this drizzly morning is exactly as it appears.
A CHUNKY NYPD 4Ч4 pulls up onto the pavement, and a young black female officer swings out onto the sidewalk, holding her ID. “Ma’am? Are you Holly Sykes?”
Holly is yanked back to the here and now: “Yes, I—yes, is—”
“And you arethe mother of Aoife Brubeck?”
I look for Фshima, who’s already crossing the street. A large male officer has joined his colleague. “Holly Sykes?”
“Yes.” Holly’s hand goes to her mouth. “Is Aoife okay?”
“Ms. Sykes,” says the female officer in rapid-fire speech, “our precinct had a call earlier from the British consular office asking for us to put out an all-unit alert for you—we missed you by minutes at your hotel earlier. I’m afraid your daughter was involved in an auto collision in Athens last night. She’s undergone surgery, she’s stable for now, but you’re being asked to fly home on the next plane. Ms. Sykes? You hearing me?”
“Athens?” Holly supports herself on the hood of the patrol car. “But Aoife’s on an island … What … How badly—”
“Ma’am, we reallydon’t have any details, but we’ll drive you to the Empire Hotel so you can pack. Then we’ll take you to the airport.”
I step forward to do I don’t know what, but Фshima pulls me back: I’m sensing intense psychovoltage in the car; if it’s a high Anchorite and we engage in full combat on Fifth Avenue, every hippocampus within a fifty-meter radius’ll get shredded, including Holly’s. Feds, Homeland Security, who knows who’ll be scouring footage ofus, looking suspicious as all hell, tracking Holly from 119A?
Фshima’s right, but:We can’t just let them take her.
Meanwhile Holly’s being half coaxed, half herded into the squad car. She’s trying to ask more questions, but she’s had a mind-bending morning and is scared into passivity. Perhaps she’s being suasioned, too. In an agony of indecision, I watch the door slam shut and the vehicle pull off into the traffic, surging over the intersection just before the lights turn red. The windows are blacked out so I can’t see who or what numbers we’re dealing with. The sign says WALK and the pedestrians begin to cross. Sixty seconds was all it took to drop and smash our Second Mission.
ФSHIMA LEADS ME over the crossing. “I’ll do the transversing.”
“No, Фshima, it was my error of judgment so—”
“Strap on your horsehair shirt later. I’m the better transverser, and I’m just nastier. You know I am.” There’s no time to argue. We step over the low wall of the park by the Hunt Monument, where we sit on a damp bench. He grips one arm of the bench with one hand, and my hand with the other. Cord yourself into my stream, Фshima subsuggests. I’ll need your advice, like as not.
“Whatever that’s worth. But I’ll be with you.”
He squeezes my hand, shuts his eyes, and his body slumps a little as his soul egresses through his chakra-eye. Even to psychosoterics, the soul is on the edge of what’s visible, like a clear glass marble in a jar of water, and Фshima’s soul is lost in a second as it transverses upwards between the dripping twigs and the weather-stained old monument. I pull Фshima’s hat down to hide his face and shield both of us under my umbrella. A vacated body looks like a medical emergency, and at various points across my metalife I’ve ingressed myself only to find smelling salts up my nose, an artery being bled, or a stranger with halitosis administering inept CPR. Moreover, as I sync up our hand-chakras, Фshima and I resemble a pair of lovers. Even by New York’s laissez-faire standards, we would be worth a gawp.
I connect with Фshima’s cord …
… and images from Фshima’s soul stream directly into my mind. He’s gliding through a Cubist kaleidoscope of brake lights, roof racks, the tops of cars, branches, and budding leaves. Down we swoop, passing through the rear door of a van, between pig carcasses swinging on hooks, through the driver’s tarry lung, then out through the windscreen, arcing over a United Parcels van, and still higher, scaring a collared pigeon off its streetlight perch. Фshima hangs for a moment, searching for the squad car: Are you with me, Marinus?
I’m here, I subreply.