Ground Zero

17

“Do we have to do this here?” Hank said as Drexler set the glasses on the table.

He glanced uneasily at Darryl’s still form stretched out inside the Orsa. It looked like some monstrously oversized transparent coffin, and made him feel like he was at a weird wake.

“Most certainly,” Drexler said. “No place could be more appropriate.”

At Drexler’s request he’d moved a couple of chairs and a small folding table down from the basement—a little tight getting through that trapdoor—and set them up about a half dozen feet from the Orsa. Drexler arrived moments later carrying two odd-shaped wineglasses and a bottle of Poland Spring.

Hank pointed to the water. “That’s your ‘special drink’?”

“Don’t be silly.” Drexler alighted on one of the chairs. “Please turn off the lights.”

“We’re going to sit in the dark?”

“Not quite. I promise you illumination sufficient to our needs.”

Shrugging, Hank walked over to the light switch by the stairwell and flipped the toggle. He expected to be plunged into darkness, but instead a faint blue light suffused the subcellar.

The Orsa was glowing.

He stared at it as he returned to Drexler at the table. It hadn’t been glowing this morning when they first arrived. The light didn’t seem to radiate from any point within, but from the very substance of the thing. The only reason had to be . . . Darryl, who now looked more than ever like a fly in an ice cube.

“Sit down,” Drexler said.

He dropped onto the other chair and watched the man. His air of repressed excitement only compounded the weirdness factor.

“All right, I’m sitting. What next?”

Drexler pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and removed a pair of sugar cubes and a strange slotted spoon. From another pocket he produced a silver flask.

This was getting interesting.

“Some hard stuff, ay?”

Drexler’s lips twisted. “You have no idea.”

He opened the water bottle and set it aside. Then he removed the cap from the flask and poured maybe three inches of clear green fluid into the globular base of each glass. He placed a sugar cube in the slotted spoon and held it over one of the glasses as he poured a thin stream of water over the cube. Hank watched fascinated as the green liquid turned a cloudy pale yellow.

“What the hell?”

“A hundred years ago we would have been at the tail end of the absinthe era in France.”

“Absinthe. I’ve heard of that. Makes you crazy.”

“Rubbish. Propaganda put forth by the winemakers who were afraid of the competition. In nineteen hundred the French consumed twenty-one million liters of absinthe. It was so popular that five o’clock became known as ‘l’heure verte’—the green hour.”

He added another sugar cube to his spoon and moved it to the second glass, with the same effect.

“My father taught me the technique. He found absinthe most entertaining and was quite a co

“Was he in the Septimus Order too?”

He nodded. “My family has an unbroken string of membership back as far as anyone can remember.”

“Was he an ‘Actuator’ too?”

Another nod. “He accomplished many great things for the Order. One might even say he helped change the course of history. Before he died he passed his vast store of arcana to me. He also passed me his cane and his private stock of absinthe. This is a custom blend from that collection.”

Hank snorted and shook his head. “Hell, I barely knew my daddy. He only came by now and then. But I’m pretty damn sure he didn’t drink anything like that.”

Drexler had fixed up two glasses. He didn’t really expect Hank to drink that stuff, did he? Obviously he did. He lifted one and held it out.

“Bitte.”

Bitter? Was he warning him about the taste?

He took the glass, saying, “It’s not going to make me go crazy now, is it?”

He said it jokingly, but he was concerned. He’d stayed pretty straight and clean since this Kicker Evolution got rolling. Used to do weed regularly and a little crank now and then, an Oxy or two when he could get them, but he’d cleaned up once Kick found a big-time publisher that wanted to put him out in front of the public. He was the face of the Kicker Evolution now. He had a good deal going, the best deal imaginable, and he wasn’t going to let anything screw it up by landing him in jail.

He was on a mission to change the world, to get everyone dissimilated, make everyone a Kicker.

Kickerworld.

Then what?

He had no idea. And that worried him at times.

“I’ve been drinking it since I was fifteen,” Drexler said. “Do I seem crazy to you?”

“No.”

Might have made him into one weird-ass dude, but Hank sensed he was not the least bit crazy.

“Then here.”

Hank took the glass and checked out the cloudy yellow liquid. He swirled it but it didn’t stick to the sides. He sniffed it. Not much of a smell.

“To the end of history,” Drexler said, raising his glass. He clinked it against Hank’s, then sipped. He tilted his head back and swallowed. “Ahhh. Wonderful.”

Hank didn’t drink—not just yet.

“ ‘End of history’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A stolen phrase. I use it in my own sense. We are nearing the point when, as the Secret History of the World is revealed, we will see the end of history as you knew it—or thought you knew it. Then the reality to which the world has been blind through the mille

Hank stared at the liquid. One sip and already Drexler was talking crazy. How powerful was this stuff?

He took a sip and the burst of bitterness rocked his tongue. He looked for someplace to spit, didn’t find one, so he swallowed. The back of his tongue tasted like sweet dirt. He’d never tasted sweet dirt, but if such a thing existed, that was how it would taste.

“That’s like licorice mixed with—I don’t know.”

“That’s the wormwood. This blend has extra. Come. Drink up. I wish to show you something.”

Hank set the glass back on the table. “I’ll pass.”

“No-no. You must drink it. The wormwood will open your eyes to things that you ca

“What is it—like LSD?”

“Not at all, not at all. It has a unique property I discovered quite by accident.” He pointed toward the Orsa. “And it has something to do with our friend over there.”

“Darryl?”

“No. The Orsa itself. You will see it as you have never seen it before, as only a privileged few have seen it. It is a . . . revelation, one I promise you will cherish because it concerns the future of you and your Kickers, and even your father’s Plan.”

Hank stiffened with surprise. “What do you know about that?”

“Everything.”

“Can’t you just tell me?”

He shook his head. “No. You must see. Drink up and you will see—literally.” He took another sip from his glass. “Come, come.”

Hank looked at the glass, then at the Orsa. Nothing else was making much sense right now. Might as well go with this and see what Drexler was talking about.

But he’d be damned if he was going to sip it.

He grabbed the glass and tossed down the contents in one bitter, convulsive swallow.

“Oh, my,” Drexler said. “This is going to be quite entertaining.”