The Chronoliths

I scooted away from him almost instinctively, pushed myself up against the passenger door, feeling cold despite the summer heat.

“Can’t be,” I said.

“Fuck me if it wasn’t. He didn’t die in Portillo — he must have got out with the refugees.”

“And you ran into him in El Paso? Just like that?”

“It’s not a coincidence, Sue says. It’s tau turbulence. It’s a meaningful synchronicity. And we co

“I don’t accept that.”

“You don’t have to, far as I’m concerned. I didn’t want to accept that bullet in my leg, either. If it matters, I had to kill a couple of people to get this information to Sue. What she makes of it, what you make of it, that’s not my business.”

“You killed a couple of people?”

“What exactly do you think I do, Scotty? Travel around the country using moral suasion? I’ve killed people, yeah.” He shook his head. “This is exactly what makes me nervous. You look at me and you see this big colorful friend you used to hang out with in Chumphon. But I had killed a man before I ever met you, Scotty. Sue knows that. I was dealing drugs back there, you know, not retailing swimwear. You get in situations sometimes. Then and since. I don’t have your kind of conscience. I know you think you’re some kind of moral leper because you fucked up with Janice and Kait, but deep down, Scotty, you’re a family man. That’s all.”

“So what does Sue want with me?”

“I wish I knew.”

Twenty-one

The Marriott didn’t attract many guests in these diminished days. Sue was alone in the pool and sauna room, though Morris Torrance stood watch outside the entrance.

She looked up at me from the roiling waters of the whirlpool bath. She wore a fire-engine-red single-piece bathing suit and a yellow elastic hair cap, neither item flattering to her, but Sue had always been indifferent to fashion. Even in the whirlpool she wore her huge archaic eyeglasses, framed in what looked like scuffed black Bakelite. She said, “You should try this, Scotty; it’s very relaxing.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Hitch has been talking to you, I gather?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “Well, give me a minute.”

She lifted her pear-shaped body out of the Jacuzzi and peeled off the headgear, her hair springing out like a caged animal. “I like the deck chairs by the window,” she said, “if you’re not too warm in those clothes.”

“I’m all right,” I said, though the air was tropical and reeked of chlorine. The discomfort seemed somehow appropriate.

She stretched out a bath towel and seated herself regally. “Hitch told you about Adam Mills?”

“Yes, he did. I haven’t told Ashlee yet.”

“Don’t, Scotty.”

“Don’t tell Ashlee? Why, are you pla

“Certainly not, and I hope you won’t, either.”

“She thinks he may be dead. She has a right to know if that’s not true.”

“Adam is alive, no doubt about it. But you have to ask yourself: What purpose would it serve to tell Ashlee? Is it really better for Ash to know that Adam is alive and that he’s a murderer?”

“A murderer? Is he?”

“Yes. We established that fact beyond any doubt. Adam Mills is a devoted hard-core Kuinist and a multiple murderer, a hatchetman for one of the most vicious P-K gangs in the country. Do you think Ashlee needs to know that? Do you want to tell her her son is leading the kind of life that will likely get him killed or imprisoned in the very near future? And if that happens, do you want to watch her grieve all over again?”

I hesitated. I had been putting myself in Ashlee’s position: If I had been wondering for seven years whether Kait had survived Portillo, any information would have been welcome.

But Adam was not Kaitlin.

“Look at what she’s gained since Portillo. A job, a family, a real life — equilibrium, Scotty, in a world where that’s a rare commodity. Obviously you know her better than I do. But think about it before you take all that away from her again.”

I decided to shelve the question. It wasn’t what had brought me here, not primarily. “I’d be taking all that away from her just as surely if I went out west with you — which is what Hitch claims you want.”

“Yes, but only for a little while. Scotty, will you please sit down? I hate talking up. It makes me nervous.”

I pulled a second deck chair in front of hers. Beyond the steam-hazed window, the city baked in afternoon sunlight. Sunlight glittered off windows, rooftop arrays, mica-studded sidewalks.

“Now listen to me,” she said. “This is important, and I want you to keep an open mind, hard as that may be under the circumstances. I know there are a lot of things we’ve kept from you, but please understand, we had to be careful. We had to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind about Kuin — no, don’t act insulted, stranger things have happened — or that you weren’t caught up in Copperhead circles like Janice’s husband, whatsisname, Whitman. Morris keeps insisting we can’t trust anyone, though I told him you’d be all right. Because I know you, Scotty. You’ve been in the tau turbulence almost from the begi

“We have a sacred kinship. Bullshit, Sue.”

“It’s not bullshit. It’s not just conjectural, either. Admittedly, I’m interpreting, but the math suggests—”

“I really don’t care what the math suggests.”

“Then just listen to me, and I’ll tell you what I think is the truth.”

She looked away, her eyes distantly focused. I didn’t like the expression on her face. It was earnest and aloof, almost inhuman.

“Scotty,” she said, “I don’t believe in destiny. It’s an archaic concept. People’s lives are an incredibly complex phenomenon, far less predictable than the lives of stars. But I also know that tau turbulence splashes causality up and down the timeline. Is it really a coincidence that you and Hitch both ended up working for me, or that Adam Mills shared the turbulence with us in Portillo? In either case you can construct a logical sequence of events that’s almost but not quite satisfying as an explanation. I co

Hitch tangling with Adam, for that matter. More than coincidence. But also uninterpretable. “That’s an item of faith,” I said softly.

“Then look at me, Scotty! Look at the power I hold in these two hands!” She turned her pale palms up. “The power to bring down a fucking Chronolith! That makes me important. It makes me a player in the resolution of these events. Scotty, I am a postcedent cause!”

“There is such a thing,” I said, “as megalomania.”

“Except I didn’t make this up, any of this! It’s not a fantasy that I happen to understand Chronolith physics as well as anyone on the planet — and I’m not being vain, either. It’s not a fantasy that you and Hitch were at Chumphon and Portillo or that you and I were at Jerusalem. Those are facts, Scotty, and they demand an interpretation that goes beyond happenstance and blind chance.”

“Why do you want me in Wyoming?”

She blinked. “But I don’t. I don’t want you there. You’re probably safer here. But I can’t ignore the facts, either. I believe — and yes, this is intuition, probably unscientific, but I don’t care — I believe you have a role to play in the endgame of the Chronoliths. For good or ill, I don’t really know, though I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me or to further the interests of Kuin. I think it would be better if you came with us because you carry something special with you. The fact of Adam Mills is like a billboard. Chumphon, Jerusalem, Portillo, Wyoming. You. You may not like it, Scotty, but you matter.” She shrugged. “That’s what I believe, and I believe it very fervently. But if I can’t convince you to come, you won’t come, and maybe that’s what our destiny is, maybe that’s how we’re tied together, by your refusal.”