The Bone Clocks

“I want you to consider that the clause of life which reads ‘What lives must one day die’ can, in rare instances, be renegotiated.”

All the voices in the Santorini Cafй, all the gossiping, joking, cajoling, flirting, complaining, become, in my ears, a sonic waterfall.

Holly asks, “Dr. Fenby, are you a Scientologist?”

I try not to smile. “To believers in L. Ron Hubbard and the galactic Emperor Xenu, psychiatrists belong in septic tanks.”

“Immortality”—she lowers her voice—“isn’t—bloody—real.”

“But Atemporality, with terms and conditions applied, is.”

Holly looks around, and back. “This is deranged.”

“People said that about you after The Radio People.”

“If I could unwrite that wretched book, I would. Anyway, I don’t hear those voices any longer. Not since Crispin died. Not that that’s any of your goddamn business.”

“Precognition comes and goes,” I snowplow up some spilled sugar granules with my little finger, “mysteriously, like allergies or warts.”

“The big mystery to me is why I’m still sitting here.”

“Guess the name of Hugo Lamb’s mentor in the dark arts.”

“Sauron. Lord Voldemort. John Dee. Louis Cypher. Who?”

“An old friend of yours. Immaculйe Constantin.”

Holly rubs at a smear of lipstick on her coffee cup. “I never knew her first name. She’s only referred to as ‘Miss Constantin’ in the book. And in my head. So why are you inventing her first name?”

“I didn’t. It isher given name. Hugo Lamb’s one of her ablest pupils. He’s a superb groomer, and a formidable psychosoteric after only three decades following the Shaded Way.”

“Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby, what bloody planet are you on?”

“The same one as you. Hugo Lamb now sources prey, just as Miss Constantin sourced you. And if she hadn’t scared you into reporting her so that Yu Leon Marinus was informed about and inoculated you, she would have abducted you and not Jacko.”

Chatter and clinking cutlery is loud and all around us.

Behind us, a girl is dumping her boyfriend in Egyptian Arabic.

“Now, I”—Holly pinches the bridge of her nose—“want to hit you. Reallyhard. What are, life-trespassing, fantasy-peddling … I—I—I have no words for you.”

“We’re truly sorry for the intrusion, Ms. Sykes. If there was any alternative at all, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“ ‘We’ being who, exactly?”

My back straightens a little. “We are Horology.”

Holly heaves a long, long sigh, meaning, Where do I start?

“Please.” I place a green key by her saucer. “Take this.”

She stares at it, then me. “What is it? And why would I?”

A couple of zombie-eyed junior doctors troop by, talking medical prognoses. “This key opens the door to the answers and proof you deserve and need. Once inside, go up the stairs to the roof garden. You’ll find me there with a friend or two.”

She finishes her coffee. “My flight home leaves at three P.M. tomorrow. I’ll be on it, heading home. Keep your key.”

“Holly,” I say gently, “I knowyou’ve met countless crazies thanks to The Radio People. I knowthe Jacko bait has been dangled at you before. But please. Take this key. Just in case I’m the real thing. It’s a thousand to one, I know, but I might be. Throw it away at the airport, by all means, but for now, take it. Where’s the harm?”

She holds my gaze for a few seconds, then pushes her empty cup and saucer away, stands, swipes up the key, and puts it into her handbag. She puts two dollars on the photo of Hugo Lamb. “That’s so I owe you nothing,” she mutters. “Don’t call me ‘Holly.’ Goodbye.”

April 5

IN THE SILT OF DREAMS, ill-wishers were cutting off my exits until the one way out was up. I can’t remember which self I am until I find my nightlight’s 05:09 imprinted on the overheated darkness. 119A. More than a mile away across Central Park on the ninth floor of the Empire Hotel, Arkady is preparing to dreamseed Holly Sykes with Фshima standing guard. I pray he won’t be needed. Staying here sticks in my craw, but if I went over to the Empire to help, I could end up triggering the very attack I so fear. Minutes limp by as I trawl New York’s nighttime tinnitus for meaning …

Pointless. I switch on my reading lamp, and gaze around my room. The Vietnamese urn, the scroll of the monkey regarding its own reflection, Lucas Marinus’s harpsichord from Nagasaki obtained by Xi Lo as a gift after a strenuous and improbable hunt … I turn to my place in Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, but my thoughts, if not my soul, are still a mile or two to the west. This never-ending, accursed War. On my weakest days, I wonder why we Atemporals of Horology, who inherit resurrection as birthright, who possess what the Anchorites kill to obtain a twisted variation of, why don’t we just walk away from it? Why do we risk everything for strangers who’ll never know what we’ve done, win or lose? I ask the monkey troubled by its mirrored self: “Why?”