Darwinia

“No. That’s not all.”

They sat together on a cracked concrete seawall.

“You were right, you know. My mother thought you were crazy — or she was shocked that you were still alive, which made her, I guess, an adulteress or something like that. She didn’t like to talk about you, even after he left.”

“This Colin Watson, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Was he good to you?”

“He wasn’t a bad man. Just not a very happy one. Maybe he lived in your shadow. Maybe we all did.”

“He left her?”

“After a few years. But we got by.”

“How did Caroline die?”

“The influenza, that year it was so bad. Nothing dramatic, she just… didn’t get better.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But you never came after us.”

“I wouldn’t have done either of you any good.” Just the opposite, Guilford thought. Look at Abby. Look at Nick. “So what’s next? You can’t publish anything about all this. You must know that.”

“I may be mortal, but I’m not powerless. Tom says there’s work for me in the States. Nothing dangerous. Just watching. Telling people what I see.”

“You’ll get yourself killed.”

“There’s a war on,” Lily said.

“I doubt Tokyo can hold out much longer.”

“Not that war. You know what I mean.”

The War in Heaven. Psilife, the Archive, the secret machinery of the world. He felt years of frustration boil up in him. “For your own sake, Lil, don’t get involved. Ghosts and gods and demons — it’s some nightmare out of the Dark Ages.”

“But it’s not!” She frowned earnestly at him. Her frown was a little like Nick’s. “That’s what John Sullivan believed, and he was right: it’s not a nightmare. We live in a real world — maybe not what it appears to be, but a real world with a real history. What happened to Europe, it wasn’t a miracle, it was an attack.”

“So we’re ants in an anthill, and something decided to step on us.”

“We’re not ants! We’re thinking beings—”

“Whatever that means.”

“And we can fight back.”

He stood up stiffly. “I have a family. I have a son. I want to run my business and raise my child. I don’t want to live a hundred years. I don’t want to be broken on a wheel.”

“But you’re one of the unlucky ones,” Lily said softly. “You don’t have a choice.”

Guilford found himself wishing he could wind back the days until his life was intact again. Restore Abby and Nick and the photo shop and the house on the headland, status quo ante, the illusion he had so fervently loved.

He booked a room at the hotel in Oro Delta. He paid cash and used a fake name. He needed time to think.

He called to make sure Abby and Nick were all right at her cousin Antonio’s outside Palaepolis. Tony picked up the phone. Tony ran a vineyard in the hills and owned a rambling brick house near the property, plenty of room for Abby and Nick even with Tony’s own two kids tearing up the place. “Guilford!” Tony said. “What is it this time?”

“This time?”

“Two calls in fifteen minutes. I feel like a switchboard. I think you should explain some of this to me. I couldn’t get a straight story out of Abby.”

“Tony, I didn’t call you earlier.”

“No? I don’t know who I talked to, then, but he sounded like you and he gave your name. Did you have a drink tonight, Guilford? Not that I’d blame you. If there’s something wrong between you and Abby I’m sure you can patch it up—”

“Is Abby there?”

“Abby and Nick went back to the house. Just like you said. Guilford?”

He put down the phone.

Chapter Thirty

The night was dark, the rural roads unlighted. The car’s headlights raked wheat fields and rock walls. They’re out there in the dark, Guilford thought: faceless enemies, shadows out of the inexplicable past or the impossible future.

Tom had insisted on coming along, and Lily with him, over Guilford’s objections. She wouldn’t be any safer in town, the frontiersman said. “We’re her best protection right now.”

To which Lily added, “I’m a farm girl. I can handle a rifle, if it comes to that.”

Guilford took a corner and felt the rear of the car swing wide before he righted it. He gripped the steering wheel fiercely. Very little traffic on the coast road this time of night, thank God. “How many are we up against?”

“At least two. Probably more. Whoever bombed your shop probably wasn’t local or they would have had a better fix on you. But they’re learning fast.”

“Whoever called Tony’s place used my voice.”

“Yeah, they can do that.”

“So they’re — what do you call it? Demon-ridden?”

“That’ll do.”

“And unkillable?”

“Oh, you can kill ’em,” Tom said. “You just have to work a little harder at it.”

“Why go after Abby and Nick?”

“They’re not after Abby and Nick. If they wanted to hurt Abby and Nick, they would have gone out to your cousin’s and raised hell. Abby and Nick are bait. Which gives the bad guys the advantage, unless we found out about it sooner than they expected.”

Guilford leaned into the gas pedal. The Ford’s engine roared, the rear wheels kicked dust into the darkness.

Tom said, “I have a couple of pistols in my sea bag.” Which he’d thrown into the back seat. “I’ll break ’em out. Guilford, any armaments at the house?”

“A hunting rifle. No, two — there’s an old Remington stored in the attic.”

“Ammunition?”

“Lots. Lily, we’re getting close. Best keep your head down.”

She took one of the pistols from Tom. “That would spoil my aim,” she said calmly.

Tony’s car, an old roadster, was pulled up in front of the house, just visible in the sweep of the headlights. Tony’s car. Abby would have borrowed it. How much time had passed since Abby and Nick had arrived? It couldn’t have been much, given the drive from Palaepolis. Forty-five minutes, an hour?

But the house was dark.

“Stop the engine,” Tom said. “Give us a little margin. Coast in — no lights.”

Guilford nodded and twisted the key. The Ford floated into velvety night, no sound but the crush of gravel under tires as they drifted to a stop.

The front door of the house swung open on a flicker of light. Abby in the doorway with a candle in her hand.

Guilford leaped from the car and rushed her back into the house. Lily and the frontiersman followed.

“The lights don’t work,” Abby was saying. “Neither does the phone. What’s going on? Why are we here?”

“Abby, I didn’t call. It was some kind of trick.”

“But I talked to you!”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”

Abby put her hand to her mouth. Nick was behind her on the sofa, sleepy and confused.

“Draw those drapes,” Tom said. “I want all the doors and windows locked.”

“Guilford…?” Abby said, eyes wide.

“We’ve got a little trouble here, Abby.”

“Oh, no… Guilford, it sounded like you, it was your voice—”

“We’ll be fine. Just have to keep our heads down for a little while. Nick, stay put.”

Nicholas nodded solemnly.

“Get your rifle, Guilford,” the frontiersman said. “Mrs. Law, you have any more of those candles?”

“In the kitchen,” she said dazedly.

“Good. Lily, open up my bag.”

Guilford glimpsed ammunition, binoculars, a hunting knife in a leather sheath.

Abby said, “Can’t we just — drive away?”

“Now that we’re here,” the frontiersman answered, “I don’t think they’d let us do that, Mrs. Law. But there’s more of us than they expected, and we’re better armed. So the odds aren’t bad. Come morning, we’ll look for a way out.”

Abby stiffened. “Oh, God… I’m so sorry!”

“Not your fault.”

Mine, Guilford thought.

Abby composed herself by devoting her attention to Nick: calming him, making a proper bed for him on the sofa, which Guilford had moved away from the door and into a corner of the room, back facing out. “A fort,” Nick called it. “A fine fort,” Abby told him.