The elevator had a false ceiling, translucent panels resting on a metal frame. I climbed onto a chair and lifted off the corner piece. A Musketeers wrapper and quite a bit of dust fell out. There were lightbulbs round the top of the cubicle. A trapdoor in the roof. I rattled at the handle till I felt it give, then swung it open.
I was on the thirteenth floor. Above, I saw Angel, leaning from a rectangle of light. She’d been making friends with Shwetz. He’d given her the elevator keys. Brooding, bitter over what had happened, he hadn’t even asked her why she wanted them. Now she kept the door on fourteen wide. She dropped a cable, flicking it until it flipped towards me and I caught it. After that, she unspooled a few dozen feet, keeping the other end plugged to the box upstairs. I dropped the trapdoor and I put the ceiling panel back in place, lifted slightly, so the cable hung into the elevator carriage, piling on the floor.
So far, so good.
I took a roll of tape, and started anchoring it to the walls.
Thirteen was the problem, though. I could set up a perimeter on three sides without entering the room itself. Even then, though, I could feel the presence there. I never seemed to be alone. I kept looking behind me. Every time I saw an open door, I’d have the feeling someone must have just walked through it. Then I’d have to check, just to be sure. I never saw a soul. That didn’t make the sense of it any less strong.
It was like I’d said to Angel: most of the time, you get feelings, and you push them to the side, and do your job.
But sometimes—sometimes, you’ve got to listen. Sometimes they’re warnings, they’re signs.
They mean you need to get out. Fast.
Garbage shifted as I stepped into the hallway. A dusty ottoman swiveled on its legs, and turned as if to face me. Papers lifted on a breeze I couldn’t feel, shuffling across the floor. I unspooled the cable. Then I reached the back door to the god room.
I took a breath, and felt myself hunch down, defensively.
I opened it.
“Hush,” I said.
I stepped inside.
The light came on.
“Hush now. Everything’s OK.”
It was like somebody looked up and saw me. But there was no one there.
“Hush, hush, hush.”
I unreeled the cable. I laid it out, moving quickly, quietly.
I did that room in record time.
To Ballington, I said, “Don’t use the elevator.”
“I own this building.”
“Mr. Ballington. I need you to follow safety procedures. You and everybody else. I’ve marked a safe route for you all. You take the public elevator to the eleventh floor, then cut through and take the stairs up to the thirteenth. Otherwise I can’t guarantee your safety. Or the success of the retrieval.”
He put a hand up to his chin. He put his head on one side, as if I’d said something risible yet still, just possibly, amusing.
I said, “You need to follow everything I say. Immediately. Understand?”
He smirked at me.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. That’s so.”
He smiled, nodded, radiating his contempt.
But he didn’t have an answer.
So I reckoned there was just a chance he saw the sense of what I’d said, and might even obey.
Chapter 64
Not Mecca or the Vatican
“They had a plan. Their first plan. They were going to use the Vatican.”
McAvoy was calmer now. I took him coffee, and I tried not to get angry with him. I tried really hard on that.
He’d pushed himself into a corner of the office, away from Ballington’s crew. He might not like me, might not trust me, but I was just about the closest thing he had here to a friend.
What he wanted wasn’t help, though. What he wanted was to boast.
“They had such big ideas. I told them, you’re all stuck on religion, because that’s the way it’s always been. But you don’t need religion. You need something like religion. I said that, said it straight out.”
He was smug. I had an urge to knock him down a bit, but I held back.
“They didn’t listen . . . ?”
“They were talking, all of them. Not thinking right. The plan—we’d take fragments, hothouse them. Grow them. Not over hundreds of years, not like the old gods. We’d do it in just months. In weeks. They’d worked out how much energy they’d need. What the input had to be. Equations, calculations . . . The sites had to be current, see? In use. Lourdes. Mecca. The Vatican. I saw where they were going wrong. They had . . . small minds. So small.”
“Stop a minute. Who’s ‘they’?”
“The Registry. They wanted Lourdes, the Vatican—”
“Who in the Registry? Was this at GH9? Is it R&D?” A bad suspicion crossed my mind. “It’s not a guy named Shailer, is it?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I want to know.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, because they all gave up. Every single one of them. Apart from—” He tapped his chest. “I saw the answer. I saw it without even thinking. Like a gift. From God. Uh-huh.”
His eyes were much too bright. His fingers twitched.
“Some people go to church, they pray. I wanted somewhere everybody prays. Even the atheists.”
“A gambling hall, a battlefield . . .”
“I did it.”
“But the Registry. They knew what you were up to? They knew you were here?”
His lower jaw stuck out. The skin around his eyes creased up.