The Bone Clocks

“Yeah. Enzo’d been picked on for saying Santa might be real. So Rivas-Godoy told Enzo he’d take him to Lapland. So the Way of Stones became the short cut to the North Pole, the Chapel was Santa’s dining room, and the view over the Dusk, that was … Lapland. Enzo’d never left his favela, so”—D’Arnoq lets out a sigh through his teeth—“he didn’t know any better. Rivas-Godoy said I was the vet in case the reindeer got sick. Enzo said, ‘Wow.’ Then Rivas-Godoy told Enzo, ‘Go see Santa’s papa, Enzo, in the painting. It’s a magic talking picture, go say hello.’ The last minute of Enzo’s life was the happiest one, I suppose. But later, on the Solstice Rebirthday, as we drank the Black Wine, and Rivas-Godoy was laughing about this dumb-ass Brazilian kid … I could hardly empty my glass.”

“But somehow you managed, of course.”

“I’m a high-ranking Anchorite! What choice did I have?”

“Step out of the Aperture halfway down Mariana Trench? You’d cure your guilt, contribute to the local aquafauna, and spare me your oh-so-shiny crocodile tears.”

D’Arnoq’s whisper is broken. “The decanting has to stop.”

“Enzo the Sгo Paolo boy must’ve been trulycute. You ought to know, by the way, I’m not sure how secure this device—”

“I’m our hacker-in-chief, nobody can hear us. It wasn’t just Enzo. Or Oscar Gomez, today. It’s all of them. Since the day Pfenninger told me of the Blind Cathar, and what he built, and what it does, I’ve been party to … Look, if you need me to use the word ‘evil,’ I’ll use it. I anesthetized myself against it, of course. I ate the lies. I digested the whole ‘What’s four a year out of eight billion?’ schtick … But I’m sick of it. Of the sourcing, of the grooming, of the murder, of the animacide. Sick of the evil. Horology’s right. You always were.”

“And when your boyish good looks ebb away, D’Arnoq?”

“Then I’d be alive again, and not … what I am now.”

Something creaks on the decking outside.

Am I being set up? I peer out: a raccoon.

“Did you share your new views with Mr. Pfenninger?”

“If you’re going to sit there and take the piss, Marinus, I’llhang up on you. Apostasy is a capital crime in the Shaded Way Codex. A fact you ought to use, by the way—my only chance of survival is to help you annihilate your enemy before they kill me.”

Damn Elijah D’Arnoq, but I have to ask: “How, exactly, do you suggest we annihilate our enemy?”

“By psycho-demolishing the Chapel of the Dusk.”

“We tried that. You’ll be aware of how it ended.” Though I’m less sure I am, after tonight’s box from Norway.

“Defeat for Horology, buton your First Trespass, you didn’t know what you were dealing with. Did you?”

“Will you cure us of that ignorance?”

D’Arnoq’s pause goes on a long, long time. “Yes, I will.”

I’d give Elijah D’Arnoq’s defection a five percent chance of being genuine, but Esther Little glimpsed it, and if I’m not mistaken, she wants me to treat D’Arnoq as an ally, or at least let him think I believe him. “I’m all ears.”

“No. We need to meet face-to-face, Marinus.”

Down to one percent. He’ll propose a meeting in a man-trap, and its jaws will snap shut. “Where do you suggest?”

The raccoon turns its Zorro-masked face my way.

“Don’t go all Deep Streamy on me, but I’m speaking from your car, on the drive. My balls are freezing. Get a fire going, will you?”

April 3

THE AIR IS SHARPER at the Poughkeepsie station than it was at Grand Central Station, but the sun is out and melting the last of the winter-long snow on the platform. With a cohort of students discussing skiing trips to Europe, internships at the Guggenheim, and viral zoonoses, I walk over the footbridge and through the turnstiles, the churchlike 1920s waiting room, and out to the curbside, where a woman a few years older than I is waiting in a black bodywarmer by a hybrid Chevrolet and holding a board for DR I. FENBY. Her foamy hair is dyed auburn but the gray is showing through, and her turquoise-framed glasses only heighten her sickly pallor. An unkind describer might refer to her face as like a party nobody’s turned up to. “Good morning,” I tell her. “I’m Dr. Fenby.”

The driver tenses: “ You’re Dr. Fenby? You?”

Why the surprise? Because I’m black? In a campus town in the 2020s? “Ye-es … There’s no problem, I trust?”

“ No. No. No. Climb in. That’s all the luggage you got?”

“I’m only a day-tripper.” Still puzzled, I get into the Chevrolet. She climbs in behind the wheel and puts on her seatbelt. “So it’s up to Blithewood campus today, Dr. Fenby?” Her voice is stippled with bronchial issues.

“That’s right.” Did I misgrade her reaction just now? “Drop me off by the president’s house, if you know it.”

“Not a problem. I must’ve driven Mr. Stein up and down a hundred times. Is it the president you’re visiting today?”

“No. I’m meeting … someone else.”