End of the Century (18 page)

“It has been a long time, Kongbai,” the ancient woman said. She motioned with one hand, the white nails on her fingertips impossibly long. “Come closer that I might see you better. These eyes of mine…” The albino trailed off, indicating her violet eyes with a long-nailed finger.

“You never could see very well, could you?” Blank said, meaningfully. “But that was your problem all along, wasn't it?” He took a step closer, but Miss Bonaventure hung back. “Come along, my dear,” he said to his companion, reassuringly.

Miss Bonaventure shrugged and swung her parasol up onto her shoulder.

“It
has
been a long time, Quexi,” Blank said, somewhat sadly, stopping a few dozen feet from the dais. “I must say that you're looking…well?”

The Ghost Fox made an angry gesture, and the guards on either side of the room rippled into motion, raising their halberds menacingly. Then the ancient albino moved her bone white hands in a soothing gesture and leaned back in her chair, sighing heavily. “At least have the good graces to lie more convincingly, Kongbai. I know very well that I am hideous with age.”

“Are you?” Blank raised an eyebrow. “I hadn't really noticed.”

“Bah!” The Ghost Fox curled her white lip in disgust.

“Blank?” Miss Bonaventure said in a low voice, leaning close. “Just who
is
this woman, anyway?”

“Have I never mentioned her?” Miss Bonaventure shook her head, and Blank gave a playful scowl. “Oh, I was sure that I had. Well, in any case. The Ghost Fox”—he mimed an abbreviated bow in the direction of the ancient woman—“controls the lion's share of all criminal activity conducted in China and throughout Asia.”

“Crime?” the Ghost Fox sneered, tapping her long white fingernails on her chair's arm. “Crime, is it? A great empire seizes an entire nation and calls it expansion. A small band of men and women take back what little they can, and it is called theft. If that is your notion of justice, Kongbai, you can keep it. But we are not relegated to the Eastern Hemisphere any longer. These last years, the reach of the Ghost Fox Triad has extended, first to Australia, then India, and now as far as your beloved London itself. There is no ‘crime' committed within the boundaries of the Limehouse without my permission, and no crime committed elsewhere by Limehouse's inhabitants but that they pay a percentage in tribute to our cause.”

“My, my,” Blank said, nodding admiringly. “You
have
been busy, haven't you?”

“Blank, you do have the most
interesting
friends,” Miss Bonaventure said, spinning the parasol on her shoulder. “I admit I'm often forced to wonder what your life was like before that day six years ago when we met.”

Blank looked at her and smiled. “Bleak and lonesome, my dear. Bleak and lonesome.”

“Enough of this prattle!” the Ghost Fox snapped.

Blank turned back to the ancient woman, shaking his head disapprovingly, clucking his tongue. “Such manners, Quexi. What would Michel Void say, if he were to see you now, hmm?”

The Ghost Fox exploded out of her chair, jumping to her feet with a loud curse. From all sides came the clang of steel on steel as the armored guards took a step forward, brandishing their halberds, eyes narrowed at Blank and Miss Bonaventure.

“If you wanted to kill me, Quexi, you'd have tried it long,
long
before now,” Blank said with a slight smile, inclining his head.

The ancient albino breathed heavily, violet eyes flashing menacingly, but by inches relaxed, bringing her emotions once more under control.

“You bring out the worst in me, Kongbai, and always did.” Then she gently eased her ancient bones back onto the chair and addressed the guards to either side. “You may leave us,” she said, a subtle thrumming sound humming beneath her words at the very edge of hearing. “You will be called if needed.”

The thrumming continued for a long moment and then stopped, at which point the guards turned as one and filed out of the chamber in an orderly fashion. The last to leave closed the large red-lacquered door behind them, and Blank and Miss Bonaventure were left alone with the ancient Chinese albino.

“It's your fault I've become as I am now, you know,” the old woman said in a quieter voice, sighing. “I could have lived a long life of service, not thinking to ask the questions that couldn't be answered. And then you had to teach me to segment my thoughts, to hide myself away from Omega, and now look what's become of me.”

“I am looking, Quexi,” Blank answered, tenderly.

“Youth lost, beauty faded,” the ancient albino said. “But worth it in the pursuit of the cause.”

Blank scoffed. “What cause is that?”

“You know full well! I fight against empire, Kongbai!” The Ghost Fox's voice rose now, with a pleading tone. “Just as you always said. And like you said, I pay whatever price necessary.”

“But…” Blank began, shocked. “I never meant…” He shook his head. “We've had this conversation a thousand times before, child. There's little to be gained from another performance. As I told you when last we spoke, all those years ago, I work for the end of the empire, and against the interests of Omega, but not at the cost of civilization itself. There is a balance to be struck.”

“Balance? Ha!” The ancient albino waved her long-nailed fingers in a dismissive gesture. “You sell yourself short,
lacuna
, if you think you don't still serve the interests of Omega and empire alike. You protect a system which facilitates the domination of one people by another. Or did you fail to notice the white men lounging on the couches in the opium den upstairs? Or the poor who crowded the streets through which you came to this building?”

Blank shook his head. “It is unfortunate, but I am forced to take a longer view.”

The Ghost Fox exploded with anger, leaping out of the chair. Her bone white hair streaming behind her like a nimbus, she rushed towards Blank, long-nailed fingers out like claws. Miss Bonaventure moved to block a blow, but Blank waved her away at the last instant and stood still as the old woman came to a halt just short of him, her talonlike nails stopping bare inches from either cheek.

“Ask the innocents if they should take a longer view. Ask the men, women, and children who were ground underfoot in the Opium Wars. Ask them!”

Blank closed his eyes for a moment, a pained expression on his face, the memories of those dark times rising unbidden from the depths of his mind.

“I didn't come here to argue,” Blank said at length, opening his eyes and meeting the violet gaze of the ancient albino. “And I'm sure you didn't bring me here to replay old discussions. What is it you want of me?”

The anger slowly bled from her, and the white-haired, white-skinned dervish who had leapt from the chair seemed to diminish, reduced once more to an elderly Chinese woman of short stature, her hands small and frail, her bones thin. She looked up at him, standing no taller than Blank's chest, and for a brief moment he could see in her the girl she'd once been, the daughter he'd never had, the child who'd been lost to him forever.

“Kongbai,” she said in a quiet voice, her violet eyes glistening. She reached out her hand to him again, but tenderly this time, not in anger.

“Child,” he said, his voice cracking, and reached out his own hand.

Their hands drew nearer, nearly touching, but the years had driven a gulf between them that could never be breached, and there were things they had done and said which could never be taken back. With bare inches of empty space separating them, the old woman snatched her hand back and turned away. They stood frozen for a moment in tableau, the man reaching out, the old woman turned away, hand clutched to her chest. And then the moment was gone, passed as quickly as it had come, and they were no longer a man and the child he'd lost, but a consulting detective and the mistress of crime, staring at one another across an impassable gulf.

The Ghost Fox returned to her chair and with a groan eased her tired
bones back down. She drew a ragged breath and let out a sigh. Then she turned her violet eyes back on Blank and Miss Bonaventure.

“The police hunt the streets of my Limehouse for a killer,” the Ghost Fox intoned, regal and aloof. “They seek to protect the interests of their bitch queen and of the coddled masses who live above the bridges. This interferes with my business and with the operations of the Triad, and I would have it stopped.”

“You would, would you?” Miss Bonaventure said, hands on her hip. She'd followed little of what had gone on between Blank and the ancient albino, but she clearly recognized a puffed-up piece of self-importance when she saw it.

The Ghost Fox ignored the jibe, focusing her attention on Blank. “I want this killer caught and this harassment stopped, detective. I know you have been engaged in this matter, but it is not for
their
sake that you must catch this killer, but for ours. The Triad must be free to pursue its cause unimpeded.”

Blank nodded, thoughtfully. “The matter already has my every attention,” he said. “But if I were to have the assistance of, say, a large network of resources, I might find a solution that much sooner.”

The Ghost Fox narrowed her violet eyes. “Go on.”

“Will you cooperate?” Blank asked, flatly. “If I call for your assistance, will you give it?”

The Ghost Fox regarded him for a long moment, unspeaking. Then she folded her thin arms across her chest, wrapping her long-nailed fingers around her upper arms. “In this one regard,” she said, closing her violet eyes, “yes.”

A long silence stretched out between them. Miss Bonaventure shifted uneasily, glancing from side to side. Finally, Blank broke the silence. “Quexi, I…”

The Ghost Fox interrupted with a quick shake of her head, her eyes still squeezed shut. Then, taking a deep breath, she said simply, “You may go.”

The ancient albino fell silent and would not be induced to speak again. Their audience with the Ghost Fox had come to an end.

BY THE TIME THE PLACE REALLY STARTED TO FILL UP
, when all the banks and shops closed down for the day, Alice and Roxanne had moved over to the booth vacated by orange-shirt-blue-tie and company and become fast friends.

Roxanne had explained that she lived not far from here, in Bayswater, but that she traveled a great deal. She stopped in at the pub when she was in town, but since most of her friends lived elsewhere, or “kept different schedules” as she put it, she was most often alone. And since she hated drinking alone, she usually struck up conversations with strangers, a favorite hobby of hers, and passed the time getting to know them.

She'd been on the other side of the pub when orange-shirt-blue-tie had tried to put the moves on Alice, as it were, and had seen the whole thing.

“Oh, God,” Alice said, feeling a blush rise in her cheeks. “Was I rubbing my stomach and licking my lips like a hungry cartoon character?” Roxanne nodded. “Jesus.”

Roxanne raised one of her dark eyebrows, quizzically. Her eyebrows were one of the first things Alice had noticed about her. That, and the fact that she knew how to use judo or kung fu or whatever on big drunk guys in ugly shirts and ties, which was a habit that certainly must have come in handy. Roxanne had really striking eyebrows and looked to Alice like an older, taller, blonder Natalie Portman or someone like that. She was maybe thirty years old, but didn't show any signs of slowing down.

Before Roxanne had a chance to say anything, Alice went on. “Anyway, I thought the guy was gay when I saw him earlier. I mean, that shirt? Really?”

Roxanne laughed. “No, not gay, just English. But sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.” Then she narrowed her eyes and studied Alice closely. “Is this something you do often, though? Zone out and make like a cartoon thinking about something good to eat?”

Alice shook her head, sheepishly. She hesitated for a moment, and then figured, why the hell not? It wasn't as if she was going to be seeing this woman again, right? She reached into the backpack on the ground by her feet and pulled out a little orange plastic bottle with a bright white childproof cap. She popped the top, effortlessly, and then shook out a single tablet onto the table between them. It was tiny and salmon pink, with a little symbol and a couple of letters stamped on it in black.

“What's that?”

“That's 125 milligrams of Depakote,” Alice said. “Divalproex sodium. If I take that, then all of my problems go away.” She chuckled ruefully. “At least, that's what my doctors and my mother think.”

Roxanne reached across the table to pick the tablet up, and as she stretched out her arm her leather jacket rode up enough to expose the bracelet on her wrist, a wide silver band with a big round gem inset, like the face of a watch. She put the tablet on the palm of her hand and held it up for inspection. “It's an anticonvulsant, right? Used for seizures and the like?”

Alice raised her eyebrow. Impressive. She nodded.

Roxanne looked up from the tablet and met Alice's eyes. “You epileptic, then?”

Impressive, once more. Alice nodded again. “Not the grand mal kind, though. No frothing at the mouth and writhing on the floor. Just the kind where you hear and see things that aren't there.”

Roxanne hummed, thoughtfully. “The god spot.”

“The what now?”

“A scientist name Michael Persinger did some experiments back in the eighties, where he stimulated the temporal lobes of patients with electromagnetic fields. He found that he was able to generate something very much like temporal lobe seizures, and that in many cases the subjects reported a feeling of a presence in the room with them, and some even had visual or auditory hallucinations.
Some said it was God, some said it was angels, or aliens, or demons, but some just thought it was indistinct presences. It's called the ‘god spot' because some people think that's where all religious experiences come from.”

Alice remembered what Mr. Saenz had said, about Lewis Carroll and van Gogh and Tennyson all having TLE, and all of them taking their seizure experiences and turning them into art.

“Do you believe in God, Roxanne?”

Roxanne cocked an eyebrow and quirked a smile. “I thought that politics and religion were topics never to be discussed in the pub. Or was that the dinner table?” She chuckled. “But it depends on what you mean. If you mean a guy with a beard sitting up in the sky, lording it over us, then no. If you mean something more like the universe itself as a living mind, and us as its thoughts…then maybe. I've seen a great many strange things, Alice, and while I've more questions than answers at this stage, I'm still very much interested in the asking.” She tapped the bracelet on her wrist, thoughtfully.

“My grandmother believes…believed…in everything,” Alice said. “My mother doesn't believe in anything. I believe in something, but I'm not sure what it is. Something bigger than me, bigger both in space and in time. I've caught glimpses of it during my seizures, my episodes, my visions, whatever they are, but I just can't put it into words.” She thought of the hundreds of spiral notebooks she'd filled over the years. “No matter how hard I try.”

“It isn't just eldritch horrors that are indescribable, you know.”

Alice caught the Lovecraft reference, but let it slide. “I wonder sometimes about religion, you know. They think that Joan of Arc and Ellen G. White were probably epileptics who thought their seizures were messages from God. And they think maybe even Moses and Saint Paul were, too. So what if all religions, everywhere, are started by people whose neurons keep misfiring, experiencing hallucinations while they drool on themselves or tap their feet…”

“Or lick their lips while rubbing their tummies like hungry cartoons?”

“Exactly.”

Roxanne thought for a moment. “So if God exists, then no one has ever heard from him.”

“Oh, I'm not saying that just because they're epileptic they're not hearing God.” Alice shook her head. “What if
all
of them
were
?”

Alice was lighting a cigarette, striking a match on the ridged bottom of the vesta case.

“That's nice,” Roxanne said, leaning in for a closer look. “Victorian, isn't it?”

Alice exhaled twin streams of smoke from her nostrils and looked down at the silver case. She shrugged. “I guess.”

Roxanne reached out. “May I?”

Alice handed the thing over and took a long drag of her cigarette, then followed it with the last of her beer. “My grandmother gave it to me.”

“‘J.D.'” Roxanne looked up from the case. “Are those her initials?”

Alice shook her head. “Her name was Naomi Vance. She didn't know what the D stood for, but said the J was for ‘Jack.'”

“A friend of hers?” Roxanne gave a sly grin as she handed it back.

“Something like that.”

Naomi Vance had been on her deathbed. It was the cigarettes that killed her, in the end, but not cancer. That would have been too quick. Instead it was all manner of unpleasantness. Emphysema, uterine prolapse, ulcerative colitis, you name it.

Alice was a junior at Westwood High School when her grandmother went to bed for the last time. She missed so many classes, sitting by her grandmother's bedside, that she'd have to go to summer school to keep from being held back a year. And having already
done
that once, when she was seven, she wasn't in any hurry to do it again. The fact that she was older than all of her classmates, and the only ones she really got along with were the other kids who had been held back, too, reprobates like Nancy and company, was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place.

So Naomi lay in bed, for all those weeks, waiting to die. They wouldn't let her smoke anymore, which Naomi considered incredibly rude, but she liked to make Alice lean in close when she got back from smoking cigarettes
out in the parking lot, so she could smell the scent of tobacco smoke and outside breezes that clung to her granddaughter's clothes and hair. Alice had started smoking when she first met Nancy, back when she was almost fifteen and starting high school, and kept smoking even after the accident that no one at school liked to talk about.

Naomi was tired all of the time, which was understandable. Dying took a lot out of you. So Alice spent a lot of time reading to her grandmother, when the crappy daytime talk shows and soap operas and game shows on the TV bolted high up on the wall got to be too much to take. Alice read newspapers and magazines and books, but most often she read to her grandmother from the copy of Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
that she'd stolen from the Grisham Middle School library years before. Alice's father, James Fell, had read Carroll's stories to his daughter over and over again when she was a little girl, right up until the first accident. Later, when her mother, Samantha, had gotten rid of all of her husband's things in that crazy week when she decided that she just couldn't stand to look at them any longer, just couldn't bear the memories one day more, one of the things to go had been James Fell's copy of Lewis Carroll's collected works. The next month, Samantha had come to her senses and tried to buy everything back, but one of the few things that they were never able to relocate was James's copy of Lewis Carroll, which had been bought off the shelves of Half Price Books in the intervening days. It was years before Alice had another copy, when she'd stuffed the library bound edition into her back pocket at the Grisham school library, at Nancy's prompting, and walked right out the door with it.

Alice had just gotten to the part about the Red King's dream, with the television bolted high up on the wall muted and silent, when Naomi had another one of her coughing fits, and by the time it had died down, she was ready to tell her granddaughter her last secret, the one she'd held for so long.

Naomi waved her hand, fluttering like a dying bird's wing, and motioned for the television remote, which was over on the rolling table, just past the plastic tray holding the day's lunch, untouched. Alice, taking a moment to realize that her grandmother wasn't asking for the lime JELL-O, grabbed the remote and handed it over. Naomi stabbed the buttons until the sound came up and waved Alice silent.

The television was tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station that was running a story about a volcano erupting in Iceland. Mount Hekla, it was called. The volcano had started erupting the week before, on February twenty-sixth, and had just subsided that morning, seven days later.

The news anchor started talking about something to do with computers, and Naomi shut off the television. Alice had come to distrust computers deeply, after Y2K ended up being such a disappointment. If you couldn't count on computers to bring on the apocalypse, what good were they, anyway?

Alice looked to her grandmother and was surprised to see tears streaming down her cheeks. She asked Naomi what was wrong, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

Naomi's husband had died when Alice was just a few years old, and she had only the dimmest memories of the man. In Alice's vague recollections, her grandfather was a mountain covered in a wool suit that smelled of Aqua Velva aftershave, who always had pieces of hard candy in his pockets for her.