He tossed the arm into the air and slashed up as it came down, severing the forearm. Then he slit the flesh off the humerus and hefted it. A club could silence a man a whole lot faster than a knife.
As he headed for the patient suites, he heard a rise of voices all through the building—and realized that he wasn’t the cause, because the windows were now as bright as dawn, but it was not dawn and the light was a bizarre, sickly violet.
He strode to the closest window and saw, rising on the northeastern horizon, the source of the earlier disturbance outside.
A new star was rising, and it brought a quote to his mind, “And a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water…”
The star Wormwood was here, and this was not only what the Book of Revelation foretold, but also the old calendars. It was what all the warnings from the past were about, and why they involved such exquisite calculations and precise dates.
The thing had only one meaning for him. Time was no longer running out, it
These bastards had known this, he suspected, right to the minute. That was why they had prepared their little escape hatch when they had. They would also realize that it was the most valuable thing in the world, or that had ever been in the world.
Well, they would do it all again, but not here. They would do it for him. He just very badly needed those people from the town to come up and create his diversion. Then he would take Light and Ford where he wanted to take them, and do with them what he needed to do.
16. MEMORY
As David watched the rising of the new star, the red star, he thought of the Book of Revelation. What was the past, that it was so wise that it could write such books? As he looked back from the world as it was now, history seemed to him to be a long process of going blind.
He thought,
It meant accepting that he could not keep the Acton Clinic functioning and he could not save the patients. Perhaps there had been a mission. Of course there had. But he did not think that even Herbert Action had been able to imagine the sheer scale of the catastrophe.
He tried to shake off the simmering anguish of failure, but that was not going to be possible.
“David.”
A shock went through him and he whirled around—and found himself confronting a large group of people who had entered his office so quietly that he had not heard them.
“David,” Caroline said again. He did not like that tone. He did not like this crowd. On top of everything else, now he had a rebellion on his hands.
Glen was there, Bev Cross and Sam Taylor, and a dozen or more patients, among them Susan Denman and a mysteriously recovered Aaron Stein, who had been among the most profoundly psychotic. Katie was nowhere to be seen.
Caroline said, “We’re a delegation.”
“May I know your complaint? I presume it is a complaint.”
Bev brought out a disposable syringe. “David, we’re going to do this.”
It was the substance—the gold.
“David,” Glen said, “you need to let us.”
Caroline’s lips were a stern line, but her eyes were pale clouds, heavy with tears.
“We’ve all taken it, David,” Sam said. “We all remember.”
“I’ve taken it.”
“How much have you taken?” Aaron asked.
“How much have you taken, Aaron? Any of you? I know the answer and so do you. Very damn little, just like me. So what does that tell you?
Glen asked, “Will you let Bev inject you?”
There was a stirring in the room.
“Look, I understand everything.” He gestured toward the lamp. “I even understand how Herbert Acton saw into time. But I don’t understand how this is going to help. Why would my brain require a megadose?”
“David,” Caroline said, “once you wake up, you’ll thank us.”
“For injecting me with a heavy metal? I don’t think so.”
Glen said, “It isn’t a heavy metal anymore.”
“It’s gold, for God’s sake. If you think that’s not a heavy metal, you missed high school science.” He was thinking about the Beretta he’d been issued. If he could get to his desk, he could regain control of this situation.
Bev attempted to get behind him, but he turned as she did. “You can’t put gold in somebody’s veins.”
“You can.”
“What you made in that furnace is amateur chemistry. You can’t inject somebody with amateur chemistry.”
“It isn’t amateur,” Caroline said, “and it isn’t chemistry.” She gestured toward the glyphs above the door. “It induces the union of those two principles and results in an extension of consciousness beyond space and time.”
“Look, I’m a doctor and I can only say that ingesting a heavy metal is bad, but taking one in an injection is going to be catastrophic.”
“You’re in amnesia—”
“I’ve remembered everything, Caroline! The class, all of it. So I don’t need this—this attack. I do not need it.” Again he looked toward the desk. The gun was in there.
“David, your amnesia is emotional. What the gold will do is open a door in you that’s locked tight right now. The door to the heart.”
“The heart has no place in this.”
“David, the heart is everything! Without love to sustain us, we cannot make the journey.”
“Look, folks, you need to face something, all of you. We aren’t going to be making any journeys through time. Herbert Acton was incredibly accomplished, but he was also deluded. You can see into time. But actual, physical movement? Forget it.”
He saw Glen’s eyes flicker toward Sam, who came forward and was suddenly behind him with Beverly. Once again, David started to turn toward them, but this expert restrained him by immobilizing his arms just above the elbows.
Sam said, “Sorry, boss.”
Glen said, “Either this happens with a struggle or without a struggle, it’s your choice.”
Part of him considered the provable skills of Herbert Acton and part of him the arrogance of these people— but then Bev removed the sheath from the needle and all of him felt anger.
“How dare you,” he shouted, and he kicked at them.
“Hold him,” Caroline said. “We need the neck!”
“Jesus God, NO!” But they swarmed him and immobilized him with their bodies. “Don’t do this, this is insane!”
They forced him to the floor, they held his head so that he could not move it. He felt Bev swabbing the left side of his neck just above the carotid.
“Okay,” she said, “you’ll feel this one, hon.”
The needle was fire and he bellowed; he twisted and writhed and tried to move his head enough to dislodge it but he could not dislodge it, and he felt the substance running like lava through the vein.
