“They knew that you were still alive?”
“Oh. Well.” He looked up then. His smile was wide. And suddenly, I could see it: the picture on the poster. It was not his looks, it was attitude, spiteful and cocky: Johnny Appleseed, that grinning little monster.
“The Registry,” he said. “Of course they know. I grew a god. I grew a great, huge, powerful god. From a piece. From a chunk the size of a pea.” He circled his fingers, smug now. “I didn’t even need a church.”
“You don’t have shielding,” I said.
He shrugged.
“It’s like building a bomb in your backyard. You’ve no control over what’s happening here, you’ve no safety measures, you—”
“It’s a different world,” he said.
“Not that different.”
“I changed it. And that is why the Registry will take me back. I did their work for them, the work that they were scared to do. The work they said was dangerous. Unethical. The work that didn’t fit their PR plan. You see now? You with me?” He folded his arms, put his chin up in the air. “See why a fucking amateur is more important than you’ll ever be?”
Was this the man I’d chased here from New York? Who’d sold off pieces of a god, and killed old ladies from afar, who’d made test runs on the homeless and done botched jobs for a billionaire? Who’d found the secret of creating brand-new gods, in this crucible in the Nevada desert?
He was dirty and emaciated. There were yellow stains under his arms. I could smell him, even from a yard away.
But I’d no more doubts that he was everything he claimed to be.
And that meant he was right: the Registry would save him. Protect him, cherish him, and treat him like a favored son.
Too bad I’d found him first . . .
Chapter 65
The Elevator
The thirteenth floor.
I had put down cables in the room, quickly and without finesse: one path down the center, to the door, and out into the elevator lobby; two arcs round the edge. A leaf pattern. Basic, apprentice work. I’d not much hope of capturing the Second Eden god, even though I got a flask there, ready. Mostly, I just wanted it contained, the way that McAvoy had so spectacularly failed to do.
I dragged the table from the corner, knocked the coffee cup onto the floor, and set up the control box. I put it near the elevator, facing the containment room. The elevator lobby wasn’t big, and it felt crowded now. I’d got an audience. It wasn’t how I liked to work, but this time round, I’d got a reason for it.
There was one person I wanted there. Just one. Only I didn’t want him knowing that. So I’d invited everyone.
I was aware of Silverman, shadowing me while I worked, his lens fixed on my face, my hands, closing for a shot of the control deck. Then he crouched in front of me, the camera pointing up under my nose. “Hey,” I told him. “Give it a break, will you?”
Eddie-boy drank beer. He had a crate of it, and he’d offered round the bottles, only nobody was taking. There were a couple of Ballington’s soldiers, and Shwetz leaned on the wall beside the elevator, his suit rumpled and blotchy, eyes narrow with resentment. Him, I’d said I needed—for his knowledge of the building, and the god. Maybe he’d guessed those weren’t the real reasons. He didn’t speak, he didn’t interact, and under that stone-face exterior, I guessed he was still seething. Which was something else I’d factored in, as best I could.
Angel was upstairs, right above us, floor fourteen. The key to everything.
I’d got my phone back. Still bugged, not that it mattered anymore.
I called her, kept the line open. I powered up the gear, and had her do the same thing, overhead.
“Stay low. Start slow. Then bring it up.”
I counted out, a walking pace: “One. Two. Three.” I put a charge through the perimeter. “Hold that,” I said.
We stopped.
From the lobby, I could see into that big room, with its primitive containment loops, and ramshackle old engines shoved into the corners. I could feel the god. I could feel the air starting to move, hear the faintest rattle, like a flag rippling in the wind. The perimeter was up. The roof was on. Down below, on twelve, I’d got another charge running, just as a block. No way out down there.
Eddie-boy pointed with his beer bottle. “I don’t see—” But his voice trailed off. The light had changed. The shadows in the room began to shift. Perspectives deepened. There were hints of other shapes there, distant cities, landscapes . . . Smells I found evocative, though I could not say why—an evening wind across a harbor, say, the tang of ozone and the sour smell of refuse . . . and something chemical—factories, perhaps, across a bay? At once, I seemed to see great clouds of smoke, luminous, against a great, dark sky . . . An image out of childhood, maybe, or some long-forgotten journey . . . Visions, conjured by the presence of a god.
I don’t know what the others saw.
I bent to the control box, checked the levels.