The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Chapter 65

My thirteenth life.

In Beijing I was given a name. A name whose owner was of the right age, right geographical base, right access to information, to have killed so many kalachakra before they could be born. There was no motive given, no understanding of what could have driven this name to do such acts, but looking at it hard and long, I began to fear that it might be right.

I sneaked out of China at the end of the week and was back in New Jersey three days later with my wife, her lover, thick carpets and solid brick walls.

I took my time. I investigated as only a criminal mastermind can investigate–slyly, cruelly, savagely and with a great deal of ruthless corruption. Dates and places, times and rumours, snatches of gossip and stamps pressed into a passport and yes, being the good historian I was, I could see the data begin to coalesce, detect the pattern of movements and say that perhaps this name was indeed responsible for bringing death.

It took a great deal of effort, time and money, but at last, having pressed every resource I had almost to breaking point, I found what I was looking for. I went to South Africa in February 1960 to confront a murderer.

We went to the farmstead as the dusk settled on the land.

A sign by the gate proclaimed that this was MERRYDEW FARM, a place of tough brown soil and tougher orange trees. Summer was at its scorching height, and the truck bounced and rattled over a dust track turned to stone as we clattered towards the glowing lights of the farm. It was the only spot of illumination in this otherwise empty place, tiny windows of tungsten yellow beneath a vast star-spanned sky. In another place, another time, it might have been beautiful, but I was here with seven paid mercenaries and an engineer, rattling beneath an infinite universe towards an encounter with some very finite possibilities. My mercenaries wore balaclavas; so did I. As we arrived at the farm a dog started barking, bouncing round the yard furiously on a length of chain. The door opened, and a man with a shotgun obscured the light, calling dire warnings in Afrikaans. My men bundled out of the truck, weapons raised, and shouted back, telling him he was surrounded. By the time he realised that this was the case, three more men had lobbed gas into the house from the back, blinding its occupants–a black maid and a white wife. Seeing these two subdued, the farmer lowered his gun, begged for mercy, and as his hands were tied together and he was dragged upstairs, swore that he would get us, some day.

The farmer we locked in the upstairs bathroom, the maid handcuffed to the sink beside him, the windows of the house thrown wide open to let the last of the gas clear.

The farmer’s wife we kept downstairs. She was old, seventy at least, but I had seen her older in my time. The heat and dryness of this place had hardened her to rock, and she had none of the usual pudginess I associated with her old age. The mercenaries kept her sitting on a tatty sofa in the parlour of the farm, hands cuffed together behind her back, blindfold over her eyes, as I prowled the house, looking for anything amiss. Family photos–the happy farmer and his wife, here on their first tractor, there on a holiday by the sea. Memorabilia of times past and places seen, gifts hand-sewn by a neighbour proclaiming, “Friendship and love”. Bills suggesting that the orange trade was not necessarily booming at this time. Postcards from a distant cousin, politely informing them that she was well and wishing them the best. Painkillers under the kitchen sink, recently purchased and being rapidly consumed. The farmer–or his wife–was dying, and I could guess who. I looked at the label. They were prescribed to Mrs G. Lill, Merrydew Farm. I wondered what the G stood for, as in another life I’d only ever known her by one name–Virginia. Virginia who’d saved me from Franklin Phearson, Virginia who’d introduced me to the Cronus Club, and now Virginia who’d betrayed us all, murdering us in our mothers’ wombs. If I’d given Vincent one drop of information more than I had, she’d have killed me before I was born too.

I went back to the parlour, where my technician was already halfway through setting up the equipment we’d dragged all this way. My mercenaries were under orders not to speak, but at my entry Virginia looked up anyway, head straining round as if through her blindfold, in the direction of the creaky floorboard beneath my boot.

“You don’t want money?” she said at last, in Afrikaans.

I squatted in front of her and replied, very softly, “No.”

Her eyebrows twitched beneath the blindfold, trying to place my voice. Then her shoulders sagged forward a little, her head bowed. “You must be retribution,” she said at last. “I wondered how long you’d take.”

“Long enough,” I replied, and rattling the little tub of painkillers for her to hear, added, “We nearly missed you this time.”

“It’s my nerves,” she replied. “Quite literally. They’re shutting down from the periphery in. I’ll suffocate to death or my heart will stop just after I become paralysed from the neck down.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“I assume you want my birthday?” she added quickly. “It won’t be hard to find now you know it’s me. If you wouldn’t mind not torturing me for it; my heart really will give out very fast.”

I smiled despite myself, and said, “It’s all right. I don’t want your birthday.”

“I can’t give you any information,” she added firmly. “I’m very sorry, dear, but I really can’t. Not that I know very much worth knowing.”

“You must know why you did it, why you killed so many of us.”

A hesitation. Then, “We’re making something bigger. We’re making something better. We’re making… a kind of god, I suppose. Yes, I think that’s what we are doing, in fact. A kind of deity.”

The quantum mirror. Just enough technology, Harry, just enough lives, and we’ll build a machine that can solve the mysteries of the universe. Look at all things, with the eyes of God. How easily the idea seduced.

My technician was ready. He looked at me for approval, and I nodded, stepping back. Virginia flinched as the first electrode was placed against her skull. “W-what are you doing?” she stammered, unable to fully bite back on her fear.

I didn’t answer. As the next electrode was settled above her right eye she blurted, “Tell me. I’ve paid my dues, I’ve done my bit–always. I always helped the young, got the children away, served the Cronus Club. You can’t… Tell me.”

She was beginning to cry, the tears driving little pink rivers through the thick make-up on her skin. “You can’t… You can’t make me… forget everything. I’m… I’m not ready. I’m… I want to see the… see the… You can’t do this.”

I nodded at a couple of my men, who held her steady as the last few nodes were attached. She gasped as a needle was pushed under her skin, a chemical cocktail to soften up the receptors. “If I’m to for-forget,” she gasped, “you can tell me your name! Show me your face!”

I didn’t.

“Please! Hear me out! He can help you! We’re doing this for everyone, for all the kalachakra! We’re going to make it better!”

I nodded at the technician. The fat machine, all electric parts and stolen technologies, which we had lumbered down the tracks of South Africa, whirred into life, building up the charge that would be blasted into Virginia’s brain. She was shaking now with the tears, and as the charge built she opened her mouth to say something more. The machine triggered, and Virginia collapsed forward–a shell, the mind burned away.

In the years to come the Cronus Club was to debate extensively what to do with Virginia, but in the end they made no radical decisions. The Virginia who had murdered so many of our kind had been destroyed, her mind wiped blank. I had made the decision for them, and that was all there was to say.