Jeremy Bushnell - The Weirdness

He looks down at the bloody ruin of Lucifer’s most recent manifestation, just a foot from his bare feet, leaking ichor. And he thinks, for just a second, about Lucifer’s promise to him. The promise of a book. And he thinks about his mission, and the Neko in the tower, and the world, and the threat that the world would burn. And some impulse in him stirs.

“I hate to be the guy who’s going to say this,” he says. “But — what about Ollard? I mean, do you think Lucifer could have been right ? Maybe Timothy Ollard is a dude we should be worrying about. You know he’s gotten past five seals of six, right?”

“Who’s Ollard?” Elisa asks.

“Billy,” says Keith. “Listen to me. The important thing at the moment is that we get out of here. The Right-Hand Path has people working on the Ollard problem. It’s not a thing that you need to worry about.”

He envisions Laurent and Barry, tries to imagine them up against Ollard. Tries to imagine them triumphant. It’s not an image that coalesces easily.

“I just don’t—” Billy begins.

“Billy,” everyone in the room says at once.

“Fine,” Billy says, and he gets his shoes back on and takes his spot at the end of the line, following the rest of them through the doorframe and out into the hallway, leaving Lucifer behind.

“Whoa,” Billy can hear Elisa say. And when he gets out there he can see why.

The air in the hallway is split. A great seam open in space, spilling incandescent torrents of light out over them. It gives off a low sound that’s half children’s choir and half roaring vacuum cleaner. Little susurrating vortices spume off of its edges. Something fascinating is happening inside it, like a set of geometry problems solving themselves very rapidly. Elisa, Jørgen, and Billy all stop in their tracks and just peer into it for a second, transfixed like deer on a rural road, deer who are about to be plowed into by some sportsutility vehicle.

“Don’t look at it directly,” Keith says to them all, and Billy averts his eyes, opting to honor this recommendation. Despite everything, he does feel humbled by this whirling, thrumming piece of magic; he does feel a little in awe of his father for ripping this magnificent hole into Hell. For the first time, Billy thinks Maybe it would be cool to learn some magic . He wonders what was in all those books his dad used to try to get him to read.

“Okay,” says Jean, drawing them all into a loose huddle. “This is a Class A Fiat Gate. Basically, it’s a portal that will take you more or less anywhere you command it to take you. This works fantastically —catch is, you have to maintain an image of the place in your mind. You have to be already familiar with the place where you’re going.”

“This presents us with a problem,” Keith says, regret in his voice.

“What problem?” Billy says.

“The problem is that we want to go to the Right-Hand Path HQ, and unless you’ve been there before, you’ll have to go with a guide. Jean and I can serve as guides, but only for one person apiece, and there’re three of you.”

“We had bad intel,” Jean says, remorsefully. “We thought there were only two.”

“Everybody always forgets about the girl,” says Elisa.

“So,” Keith says, “one of you will have to wait. Then we’ll have to reopen the Gate and come back for whoever stayed behind.”

“That’ll take time,” says Jean, “and the person left behind will be at risk during the time the Gate is closed.”

“Well, wait a sec,” Billy says, popping up his hand. “I’ve been to the Right-Hand Path HQ.”

Billy’s dad frowns at him. “What? When?”

“I told you, I met them. I was with them this morning,” Billy says. “So the picture of their HQ in my mind or whatever is pretty fresh.”

Keith and Jean exchange looks.

“You can visualize it well enough to manifest yourself there?” Keith says.

“Yeah, sure,” Billy says, although he doesn’t try to do it. “I even have their address.” He fishes Laurent’s business card out of his pocket and holds it up. It is bent and moist but still in one piece.

“Yeah, but, Billy, the address isn’t going to help you,” Keith says. “It’s not like you’re putting it into a GPS. You have to concentrate on—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Billy says, waving him off. “Maintain an image of it in your mind. I got this.”

Billy’s dad fixes him with a familiar skeptical look.

“Keith,” says Jean. “It’s time. Let’s go. Doing it in one trip makes sense; it’s safer.”

Keith frowns, looks at Billy, looks at the portal. His frown deepens.

“It’ll be fine,” Billy says. A desperation to please that he remembers all too well creeps into him. “Hold an image of the place in your mind. How hard could it be? Is there another, more complicated step, that you’re leaving out? Do I have to release the clutch at some point?”

“Not really,” Keith says, a little grimly.

“Okay, then,” Billy says.

“Okay, then,” says Jean. “It sounds decided.” He reaches out toward Elisa. “We’re going.”

“Great,” Elisa says. She takes Jean’s hand. She turns to Billy and offers him an uncertain smile. It’s intended to be reassuring, he guesses, but Billy can see the fear in it. It’s maybe the most readable expression he’s ever seen on her.

“It’ll be all right,” he says, as Elisa and Jean run into the light. He’s not sure if she hears him. They whirl apart into blobs and little flaring squibs and then they’re gone.

“Listen to me,” says Keith, taking Billy by the shoulders. “A Fiat Gate is serious magic. It can be confusing. Just stay focused on the mental image of the Right-Hand Path headquarters.”

“Check,” Billy says.

Billy’s dad takes Jørgen’s hand, makes sure Jørgen is ready, and then the two of them enter the portal, boil away into vectors.

“Don’t let them wipe your memory,” Billy says, to the empty hallway.

Billy looks at the portal or gate or whatever, remembers he’s not supposed to look directly at it, looks away, looks at it again. He takes a step forward. Okay , he thinks. Let’s do this .

And then he passes through and his mind becomes a mirrored disco ball, glassy and faceted, refracting brilliance in a thousand different directions.

Yikes! Billy thinks.

But even thinking that is a good sign: it means that Billy can at least maintain a thought among the dazzling optics and shrieking noise. Which means — presto — he can visualize the Right-Hand Path headquarters.

The image that comes to mind is the cell he woke up in this morning, which causes him to remember, just for a second, what manipulative dicks they were. This causes him to frown, or it would, if he had a body at the moment, which he doesn’t. A frown of the mind. This makes him remember joking about being immanent when Denver said that he hadn’t been present . Now he’s not even immanent: ha ha.

It occurs to him that he could use the warping luminescent matrix that he’s falling through to fling himself straight to Denver’s apartment, just show up, as he’s been longing to do all day. Show up, apologize for everything. He tries to remember her schedule, tries to remember if today is one of the days when she goes in to work at the video archive.

Today’s Saturday: she doesn’t work; Billy does. Except he probably got fired today. He feels a momentary pang for his life as it was, wishes, for just a single self-pitying second, that none of this had ever happened, and that he was just at work, with Anil, making sandwiches, the same way he’s done every Saturday for the past year and a half.