Gillian Anderson - A Vision of Fire

The rest of that day was filled with exhaustive questioning by an ill-tempered detective and with open and measurable concern for Arni while police inspected every corner of the laboratory space and locker room. Flora’s mind was on the deep freezer but they only checked it and did not violate its contents.

Finally, at midnight she summoned Mikel from home and ordered him back to the Falklands.

“For what?” he asked, not displeased but surprised.

“I’ve thought,” she announced. “Do whatever you have to do to get access to the crew of the Captain Fallow . Find out where they located your artifact. Where there was one, there may be more.”

“We’ve been down that road before with other artifacts,” he said.

“That’s true,” she agreed. “But as far as we know, they never caused any brains to melt. I think your artifact is too small to generate power on its own. So a theoretical external power source, the cause of this phenomenon, would likely be on the other end, where the artifact is from. It may still be connected with that source, if there is one, still charged somehow.”

He agreed with her decision. Favors were called in, arrangements made. Thankfully, Flora’s sleepless night and her genuine tears the following morning had convinced the detective on his second visit that she was worried sick about Arni.

And now here she was, alone with a cup of tea… and, literally, for now, at a cold, dead end to their quest. She lifted her teacup and hurled it at the wall, her mind burning with frustration and rage.

Goddamn it. Enough! she said to the mysterious race she had spent half her life pursuing. If you have anything to say to me, say it bloody faster.

It was midnight. Outside Caitlin’s cab the cloudy sky reflected orange from the lights of the city—a sight that had always struck her as ominous. It seemed more so now: danger felt imminent. The rattling of the taxi’s undercarriage was like the world itself, barely holding itself together as it hurtled onward.

Or this could just be jet lag , she told herself.

She’d called her father while she waded through customs, but Jacob was asleep and she didn’t want to wake him. As she waited in line at the curb, chilly and impatient, she read two texts Ben had sent while she was in the air. The first was sent at 7:41 p.m.: Found possible Viking Mongolian connection.

And then at 11:11 p.m.: Am with Maanik. Stopped them from medicating her.

She called and he picked up on the first ring. Whatever tension there was between them when she left for Iran was gone, at least from his voice.

“Tell me you’re back—”

“I’m back,” she said. “What happened?”

He hesitated.

“Ben, if anyone’s listening—we’re beyond that.”

“Right. She lost it,” Ben said. “She just went wild and tried to throw herself from the window. Mrs. Pawar said she started to burn . They put her in the shower. She slept for a while and then it was more talk and gesturing, your blackberries cue, sleep—and then the same all over again. The ambassador stepped out of negotiations again to be with her; I basically invented meetings to keep the delegates in the building. I just got here at ten. They’re keeping her out of her bedroom and that seems to be calming her.”

“Have you been in there?”

“I’m at the apartment—”

“No, the bedroom.”

Another hesitation. “Yeah. Cai, it’s strange.”

“What is?”

“The room is dead,” he said. “When I’m in there I don’t hear the pipes in the ceiling, air traffic outside the window. The air is motionless, thin.”

“Where’s the dog?”

“In the hall outside the bedroom.” Ben said. “Facing the door.”

“Is he quiet?”

“Yes, but he’s definitely on alert,” Ben said. “What do you know?”

“I think that room has connected, through Maanik, to another time and place. They’re sharing a space like twins sharing a womb, and the older one is feeding on the younger. The room is mirroring what’s happening to Maanik’s mind, almost like a portal.”

“Caitlin, that’s—”

“A leap, I know. But I’m going to work on that assumption until someone comes up with a better explanation.”

“Do you know why these locations are… colliding?”

“Not yet,” she admitted. “Don’t let the Pawars give Maanik anything except water, if she’ll take it.”

“I’ll try but Mrs. Pawar is pretty desperate. Cai, there’s one more thing.” He hesitated again.

“Just blurt it out.”

“Okay. Maanik seems to be emitting… something.”

“Something?”

“It’s thermal, I guess, but it seems to have substance too. A constant, steady flow from her right hand. Cold, like mist. Please don’t tell me it’s her soul or something.”

“I don’t think it’s her soul,” Caitlin said. She did not add, But I don’t know what it might be . She looked out the window. “We’re on the expressway now, traffic’s not so bad. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.” She hesitated. “Are you okay? What’s happening in Kashmir?”

She noticed the cab driver’s face tweak, turn slightly toward her. She looked at the name on his license, Shri Kapoor. Their eyes met for a moment in the rearview mirror.

“The UN sent a small force over there but not in the way we hoped,” Ben said. “We wanted a protectorate but this is playing out like martial law. The allied countries are starting to grandstand big-time, like the Allies after World War II. Everyone is jockeying for post-crisis influence even though we’re not past the crisis yet. Russia was first, on behalf of India. China guaranteed loans for Pakistan. That’s all I can say but it feels like we’re flinging farther away from any kind of sane, predictable political process.” He paused. “Like us,” he said tiredly. “I mean, flinging farther away from each other. Not the politics.”

She smiled, then promised, “We’re going to fix that.”

“There’s the old college Cai with the old college try,” he said.

“Rah,” she said. “But first crisis first. Tell me about the Vikings.”

“A story in runes,” he joked. There was a flash of the old Ben as he dove in, the enthusiastic kid scholar. It made her laugh, and she could imagine his answering grin. “In the ninth century, the trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Caspian Sea was essentially conquered and controlled for two hundred years by people called the Rus.”

“Rus as in Russian?”

“Exactly, but that came later, after they intermingled with the Slavs to the point of absorption.” He was racing, as if he was trying to get it all on the table before she reached him in the cab. “In the early days they were specifically the Varangian Rus—‘Varangian’ is from an Old Norse word—and they came down from Scandinavia. They mostly stuck to the trade-and-raid routes, shopping in Baghdad, periodically attacking Constantinople, as pretty much everyone did for thousands of years—”

“Three Vikings walk into a bar in Constantinople… ,” she said slowly.

Ben chuckled and sucked down a breath. He realized he was rushing.

“Okay,” he continued, more slowly. “The Varangian Rus also traveled east beyond Constantinople, to the city of Bolghar on the Volga. The Silk Road was fully active—”

“But that trade route connecting the West to the East was much more recent than an ice-free Antarctica. What’s this got to do with us?”

“The fact that it happened ,” he said. “This all occurred between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It was written about, mapped, charted. But it could have happened before, any number of times, and if no one wrote about it, or we haven’t found the writings—”