Gypsies

The street was empty. He wondered whether there was a curfew in effect or it was just the weather. But it must be late here, too. These buildings were old and black and lit with sodium lamps at odd, uncertain intervals. Once in a while a bulky-looking automobile would chuff past, or a carriage behind a team of dray horses. The snow came down with a dry, sifting sound; Michael shivered.

But he was close. He could feel it. A few more of these long, narrow blocks and then right and then left again. He could not say where the knowledge came from, but it was immediate and sure; he had arrived here with it fixed in his mind.

But the weather was bad enough so that he would be in very rough shape if he tried to walk. So he stood in the meager shelter of a Gothic storefront—the sign said watches, clockworks, repairs—and tried to flag down a ride.

Two cars passed by. The third stopped for him.

It was a huge gray vehicle with a black cylinder, a gas tank or maybe a steam chamber, projecting from under the hood. The right-hand door cracked open and Michael jumped inside.

The plush interior of the car was not much warmer than the street, but at least it was out of the wind. Michael looked gratefully at the driver. The driver was a middle-aged guy wearing Russian-looking furs and heavy gloves. They regarded each other a wary minute before the driver did something elaborate with the gearshift and the car rolled forward once more.

“Late to be out,” the man said.

Michael nodded. “I didn’t plan it this way.”

“Caught in the storm?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You could die walking around in those clothes.”

The man’s accent was odd, Michael thought, like a combination of Dutch and French. The tone was cautious and neutral. Michael said, “Well, you know how it is.” There was no plausible excuse for his clothes.

“From out of town?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

“Going far?”

“Not much farther.”

“Give me an address. I can take you there.”

But he didn’t have an address. He hesitated. “I don’t know the number,” he said, “but I could give you directions.”

“Good enough,” the man said.

They drove in silence for a while. Michael watched as a huge, steaming snow plow passed them in an intersection, blue light whirling on its roof. Overhead wires hummed and clattered in the darkness. The buildings outside were odd, tall structures that looked like the pictures of Tudor houses he had seen in geography books; the ground-level windows were shop displays. This gave way to larger warehouse-style buildings and a few stone or concrete towers with false marble columns and gargoyles leering from the cornices.

Not a good place, Tim had said. But not necessarily a bad place, either. Home, he had said.

But Michael shivered against the cold upholstery and withheld his judgment.

“Left,” he said, following his instinct. “And right. Up here. Maybe a block or two …”

This new street was broader and hemmed in with tall obsidian buildings. Trolley wires were strung overhead. The rumble of the tires on the street suggested there might be cobbles beneath the snow. The growing sense of familiarity both excited and worried Michael. How could he have known which way to come? It was strange. But he had known. The instinct was strong, powerful…

“Here!” he said suddenly.

The car rolled to a stop.

There was a moment of silence, no sound but the snow hissing into the windshield.

The building was huge. There was a stone wall that opened into a courtyard. Engraved above the gate was the stark image of a pyramid and a single, staring eye.

“Government building,” the driver observed.

Finding his way here had been the easy part.

Michael had been awake long after his mother and Laura fell asleep. He was so utterly awake in that San Francisco hotel room that he thought he might never sleep again. His thoughts ran like overheated machinery. He was thinking about Tim.

Thinking about Aunt Laura following Tim back to the Novus Ordo.

He understood what she meant to do. It made sense. She distrusted Tim and she wanted to be sure about what they were getting into. Michael knew she was frightened and it was probably a brave gesture, her offering to go.

But it didn’t make sense. The more Michael thought about it, the less sense it made. If a scouting trip was necessary, why go with Tim—why trust him even that far? He supposed Laura would not have been able to find this place by herself… her talent was not immensely strong and she had only been here once, decades ago, as a child.

But, Michael thought, I can find it. He had felt it already. In a curious way, he had been able to feel it through Tim. Maybe this was how the Gray Man was able to find them: this faint but discernible sense of a road taken, a presence past. It wasn’t something you could put a word on. But he felt it in that hotel room in San Francisco.

There was also the question of physical distance— it was a city most of the way across the continent—but Michael had come to understand that this was not a substantial barrier either, that in the vortex of possibilities distance was as mutable as time. Washington or Tijuana, Paris or Peking: it didn’t really matter.

He stood up in the darkness without waking his mother or Aunt Laura. He dressed in the heaviest clothes he could find. Now, he thought. There was no reason to wait. Laura was pla

Half a step sideways, a quarter turn in a direction he couldn’t name. It was almost dismayingly easy. And then he was standing in a dark street up to his ankles in snow, flagging a ride to a building he had never seen, following an imperative so intense that he wondered whether he had ever really had any choice.

The odd thing was that the building was not better defended.

It looked like a fortress, iron gates and guard posts, but the big courtyard was open and deserted. Michael moved self-consciously through the drifting snow, his shadow multiplied by the harsh sodium-vapor lamps, shivering against the cold. He paused once and looked back through the open gateway. The car that had brought him here was still waiting, parked there, the motor cooling, and he thought that was strange. But it didn’t matter. He pressed on toward the main building, a huge slab of stone and brick with random, cell-like windows. Sheets and veils of snow fell all around him. It was like being contained in snow, wrapped up in snow. The cold didn’t feel so bad now.

The instinct or the compulsion he felt had grown very strong. He followed it to the central slab-iron door of this building, which was slightly ajar. And that was odd, too. But Michael didn’t think about it. A gust of wind carried snow down his collar, pushed him forward like a hand. Inside, it seemed to say. All right, Michael thought, that’s where I’m going. That’s where I want to go.

He entered the building.

The corridor was deserted. Half the overhead fluorescents were dark or flickering and a miniature snowdrift had accumulated inside the door. Michael pushed the door closed behind him; the clatter of it echoed down this tiled hallway like a handclap.

He thought, What is this place?

Home, he thought. The word was there in his mind. But not really his own thought: it was Tim’s word. It sounded like Tim’s voice. Or Walker’s.

Michael shook his head and proceeded down the corridor.

The corridor smelled of Lysol and charred insulation. Some of these doors were open and some were not; the open ones revealed dark, windowless offices with gray metal desks. Periodically the corridor would turn left or right or fork in two or three different directions. There were no numbers and no helpful signs. Michael walked on regardless now, feeling the imperative inside him, following it, circling closer and closer to the heart of the building—as if it had an actual warm, beating heart—to whatever was waiting for him there.