“Doc? Twisby’s a doctor?”
The redhead mumbles something Ptolema can’t make out over the wind.
“I strongly dislike being interrupted,” the redhead says, and she fishes another cigarette from a pocket and lights it. “Almost as much as I dislike taking orders.”
Ptolema apologizes.
“I figured that much out just watchin’ her, yeah. But afterwards I tapped a contact of mine at Cal State, and yes, she is a doctor. Neurology. Biopsych. Oxford and Yale alumnus. High profile in the APA. But then, plop, she drops off the academic radar, only to pop up on another radar. Three years, she was cryptologic, No Such Agency, Never Say Anything, black ops, clandestine research feces had her bouncing back and forth between the NSA and Homeland Security and OSIR. Mostly OSIR. Some highly weird goings-on, from what I was told. She—”
“How did your contact learn anything at all? If ‘Twisby’ is only her alias—”
“Two strikes, lady. Three, you’re out, and I’ll take my chances with your wrath.”
This time, Ptolema doesn’t bother apologizing. The redhead continues.
“As I was saying, if you will please fucking recall, Madam Doc Twisby was up to something unpleasant with covert funding from these various sources, shadow phenomenology bushwa, way above top secret. I’m guessing, obviously, some manner of next-gen weaponizing.”
“It’s better if you refrain from guessing,” Ptolema says. The lights across the Liffey have her thinking of a carnival now. The redhead is silent long enough that Ptolema has begun to believe she’s not going to get anything else out of her, when the woman starts talking again.
“We . . . they . . . pulled her. Not sure when, but, near as I can suss, no one in Washington raised a hand to prevent her departure. Even for the X, that’s kind of ballsy, dipping into TPTB’s talent pool with such complete confidence. Which sets me thinking there’s an arrangement in place, tit for tat, an exchange of information in the offing. Naturally, those fucks in the States won’t get anything but a stingy fraction of whatever comes of Twisby’s mouse-in-a-maze experiment. Whether or not they know this, bugger all if I can tell you.”
“Okay,” Ptolema says, when she’s sure she isn’t interrupting the redhead. Sure, she has orders to kill her. But she doesn’t want it to come to that. Not just yet, not with an informant who could still prove valuable further down the line. Not just yet. This could, of course, change in a matter of seconds, with a phone call, a text, the tip of a fucking hat. “We have a former high-profile psychiatric wiz using these two twins for fuck only knows what. Julia Set has Ivoire—reluctant soldier—convinced her sister will be killed unless she follows orders, and, as added insurance, extra control, they’ve infected or poisoned her, turned her into an addict, and have her dependent upon them for heroin. Have you considered she might only think she’s sick?”
“I have,” the redhead replies. “But, way I see it, pain is pain.”
“Her twin,” Ptolema continues, “with whom she’s been involved in an incestuous relationship for seven years, since the two were thirteen, not only has no problem with this, she’s helping out.” Ptolema is suddenly, and, she thinks, unaccountably seized with a need to lean over the rail and vomit her dinner and all that beer into the river.
“Sorry about that,” the redhead says. “The nausea will pass. Probably. My focus has never been spot on. Chaos can be goddamn chaotic and all.”
“Fuck you,” Ptolema mutters and tries to concentrate, but she can taste bile. “After your confab with these two sweethearts, did either of them say they’d be in touch again?”
“Nope. She did not.”
“She?”
“Doc Twisby. Got hostile there at the end. I ought to mention that. Stopped just short of making full-on, out-and-out threats. But close enough the hairs on the back of my neck were prickling. Sufficient tension in the air I was wondering if I could reach the Glock in my shoulder holster before she pulled some sort of telekinetic nonsense or what have you. Pyro- or cryokinesis. Quantum tunneling. Doesn’t matter if you wind up on the wrong end of the stick, now does it?”
“She’s TK?”
“That’s the vibe I got. Same with Thing Number Two, and, I’d bet a hundred large, same with Ivy.”
Ptolema pinches her septum, hard enough her eyes water, because sometimes that helps when she’s motion-sick. And whatever inadvertent energy has sloughed off the redhead and onto her feels more like motion sickness than anything else.
“But she didn’t do shit. Little staring match there between me and the Doc, and Bête doing some sort of origami shit with a bar napkin. Oh, hey, I haven’t mentioned that, have I. See, the twin, she kept making origami swans. They looked top notch to me, but every time Twisby would shake her head and Bête would get all hangdog and start over. Fuck me in the ear if I know what that was all about. By the way, Miss P, is it true the twins are some sort of prodigies? Geology, some sort of something of the sort?”
“Evolutionary biology,” Ptolema replies. The nose-pinching remedy has done no good whatsoever, and her stomach rolls. “Paleontology. They were both grad students before this began.”
“So we’ve a crop of brainiacs all round, don’t we. Yeah, Ivy dropped hints to that effect. But I don’t always know what’s crap and what’s for true. Though, here’s what I still don’t get. Why is it you lot are chasing after this Twisby and her pale riders? Or is that need-to-know?”
Ptolema shuts her eyes, then opens them again. She truly is going to puke. And it comes to her this isn’t an accident. This is the redhead’s safety net, just in case the meeting goes sideways and she needs an exit strategy. “You heard the recording,” she says quietly, and swallows.
“‘Black queen white, white queen black,’” says the redhead, sounding amused. “You don’t look so hot there, Miss P. Gone a little green around the gills. But, the recording. Gotta admit, don’t see how it hooks up with the twins.”
“Then you’re dumber than I’ve given you credit for. Think. Ivoire and Bête?”
“Yeah, and?”
“Ivory beast,” says Ptolema. She knows that it’s only a matter of seconds now until she loses her battle with the nausea.
“Damn, yeah. Dude, how did I not see that? White queen. Two white queens. Dangerous white queens. So, you’re thinkin’ the message refers to those two? You know, if the gods send worms, that would be kind, if we were robins.”
“And just what the hell does that—” But Ptolema doesn’t finish. Instead, she rushes to the railing and hurls into the Liffey. And when the cramps and dry heaves finally pass, there’s no sign whatsoever of the redhead. She may as well have been a ghost. A hallucination. A false memory.
5.: How Ghosts Affect Relationships
(1/1/2001; 12:01:01 a.m.)
It is everything but an understatement to call this room white. It is white in so absolute a sense that it is almost impossible for the eye to detect the intersection of angles where the four walls meet ceiling, where ceiling meets walls, where walls meet floor, to pick out each individual object placed within the room, for all of these are completely white, as well. The furnishings are few and plain: a bed, a nightstand, a white lamp with a white lampshade, a blank white canvas within a white frame, a white table and two white chairs—one placed at the north end of the table and one at the south. On the southern wall, there is a window, one window with white drapes. Outside, snow is falling so hard the land and sky blur together, whiteout conditions. The white door with its white marble knob is set into the eastern wall. However, any sense of direction would be lost as soon as one were to dare enter the white room. Indeed, even the ability to tell up from down would be jeopardized. That is how achromatic is this room.