Robert Wilson - The Chronoliths

“You mentioned an arrow.”

“Well, it’s more like a game of connect-the-dots. Can I tell you a story?”

“If you keep your eyes on the road.” Half the streets in Minneapolis had reverted to their unmonitored status, nothing to prevent a collision but a vehicle’s own built-ins. Hitch had come close enough to a peddler’s cart to set the proximity alarms shrilling.

“I hate traffic,” he said.

He had been in El Paso six months ago, doing his thing on Sue’s behalf, tracking down death threats she had been receiving at her home terminal, an address no one but a few close associates should have had.

Morris Torrance was theoretically in charge of Sue’s security, but it was always Hitch who did the legwork. He was well-connected in Kuinist circles and he possessed enough street credibility to impress any number of thugs. He was good in a fight and no doubt handy with weapons of all kinds, though I didn’t ask.

Morris had traced the threats to one of the big Kuinist cells operating out of Texas, and Hitch went to El Paso to ingratiate himself with the local street armies. “But I made the obvious mistake,” he told me. “I asked too many questions too soon. You can get away with that if the mood is right. But those Texans are fucking paranoid. Somewhere down the road, somebody decided I was a bad risk.”

In the end, five Kuinist shock troops had dragged him into the back lot of an auto-repair shop and questioned him with the aid of a saw-toothed machete.

Hitch held up his left hand and showed me the stumps of his first and second fingers. Both had been severed below the knuckle. Both had been carefully sutured, but the cut had obviously been rough. I thought about that. I thought about the pain.

“Don’t flinch,” he said. “It could have been worse. I managed to get away.”

“You acquired that limp at the same time?”

“A small-caliber bullet in the muscle tissue. As I was leaving the scene. They had this ancient pistol, some twentieth-century junk piece with the stock half rusted off. But the thing is, Scotty, I recognized the one who shot me.”

“You recognized him?”

“And I think he knew me, too, or at least knew I seemed familiar. If he hadn’t been a little shook up he might have been a better shot. It was Adam Mills.”

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 connect to Adam right through you , Scotty. Adam Mills is the arrow, and he’s pointed straight at you.”

“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.”

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 planning to tell her yourself?”

“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 beginning. Both of us have.”

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