suddenly Iris was there and engaged, finding the courage to endure contact with another, wiping tenderly at Winny’s left ear, at his neck. The nanothings tingled over Sparkle’s hands, like thousands of swarming ants, but they didn’t bite or sting, and Winny’s face remained unscathed. As she wiped her hands vigorously on her clothes, the horde already seemed to be moving more sluggishly across her skin.
As everyone came together in the middle of the hallway, finishing plaster cracked and fell from overhead and drywall screws popped loose. A slab of Sheetrock swung down like a big trapdoor, fanning Bailey with powdered gypsum and nearly knocking Tom Tran to his knees. Overhead, seething between the ceiling joists, death-loving life in pale profusion squirmed and thrashed and reached down for them.
Jamming the muzzle harder into Ignis’s throat, Tom Tran shouted, “
The One seemed to have decided it must risk its creator’s life, because out of the blue light of the elevator surged a furious swarm of hideous manifestations, animal-plant-machine entities at the sight of which his eyes rebelled and his heart shrank, a hobgoblin horde that might have been the denizens of the nightmares that demons dreamed when they slept in Hell. This pack would have torn them to pieces if sudden sheets of blue light had not shimmered up the walls. The transition reversed, the roar of bedlam voices abruptly silenced, rust and ruin vanished, as did the dead Pogromites and those borne by the elevator. And here were the surviving neighbors, here where the future had not yet happened, here in the still point of ever-turning time, where all was possible and nothing was yet lost.
Home.
One
In the basement corridor, the gap in the ceiling was closed as if it had never opened. No creaking issued from within the walls or ceiling, no slithering, no voices. The demonic multitude had vanished before their eyes, as had Witness.
Having been released by Tom, one hand still clamped to his shoulder wound, Ignis said, “You won’t regret sparing me, Bailey. I
Bailey said, “Silas, can it be coincidence that this one house in all the world happens to be built over a fault in space-time?”
“In the courtroom, it’s cause and effect, motive and intent. We don’t like coincidence.”
“Neither do I. Tom, can it be coincidence that the man who will ruin the future just happens to live in the one house in the world that’s built over a fault in space-time?”
“Coincidence is mere random chance,” Tom Tran said. “I believe in patterns and mystery.”
Grimacing in pain, impatient, Ignis said, “What’s the point of this? I’m bleeding here. I need medical attention.”
“Padmini,” Bailey said, “if the real ruiner of the world was a man named Von Norquist, why wouldn’t
“Your question is a riddle I can’t solve,” Padmini said.
Sitting at the table, Mickey Dime said, “My mother liked you, Dr. Ignis. She said you had vision. She didn’t mean just eyesight.”
To Ignis, Bailey said, “Time and fate are complicated things. Is there just one future … or many possible futures?”
“This is all moot,” Ignis said. His face had gone pale. Fine beads of sweat stippled his brow. “I will not let that future happen. It will never come to pass.”
Bailey said, “Which came first—the work you did to ruin the future or your glimpse of that possible future where the One rules? Did you make that future before we saw it … or after seeing it, have you now been inspired to make a ‘better’ future?”
“What are you saying? Look, I’m in pain here. I’m not thinking clearly. I’m not following you.”
“Time and fate,” Bailey repeated, “are complicated things. Do you think each of us, every person in the world, is an instrument of destiny?”
Shaking his head, Ignis said, “I don’t know what that means.”
“I do,” Padmini said. “I am an instrument of destiny, Mr. Hawks. We all are.”
“What power employs you?” Bailey asked Ignis. “What dark destiny works through you to be born?”
“Don’t be stupid, Bailey. I know you’re not a stupid man. Don’t talk to me about crap like destiny. I’m not doomed to that future we saw. I have the power to shape a better world, a freer world, a world as safe and clean as Eden, a world where the human impulse to corrupt and destroy is put back in the bottle forever.”
Bailey shot him three times point-blank in the chest with Mickey Dime’s pistol, perhaps saving the world as he had been unable to save his mother from a drunk and violent father.
