The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(86)

For four days I waited.

They were four infuriating days during which I knew perfectly well that my alibi was being checked and every aspect of my cover story examined by the Beijing Cronus Club. I was confident that they would find nothing. I had put enough safeguards between Professor Sing-Song and myself to necessitate a lifetime of investigation. On the fifth day, as I was walking out of the university and heading for my hall, a voice said from the shadow of a door, “Professor?”

I turned.

The teenage girl I had met in the house by the pond stood there, wearing khaki and carrying a satchel over one shoulder. She looked even more a child than before, dressed in her baggy-panted uniform. “May I speak with you, Professor?” she enquired. I nodded, gesturing towards the street.

“Let me get my bicycle,” I said.

We walked together sedately back through the city streets, my foreign skin and undeniably quirky nose attracting all the usual stares, only enhanced by the presence of the girl by my side. “I have to congratulate you,” she murmured as we walked, “on the thoroughness of your preparations. Every document and contact indicates that you are who you claim to be, a great achievement considering that you are not.”

I shrugged, eyes scanning the street, looking for anyone who took too great an interest in our discussion. “I’ve had a while to get this sort of thing right.”

“Perhaps it was your skill with subterfuge which saved you from being targeted?” she mused. “Perhaps that was how you escaped the Forgetting?”

“I was dead by Watergate,” I replied. “I suspect that played a bigger part.”

“Indeed. There was no indication of anything amiss until 1965. That was the year Club members began to disappear. At first we thought they were simply being assassinated, their bodies buried in unmarked graves–such things have occurred before, when linear authorities take too much interest in us–and will occur again, I think. But our own deaths and returns to life showed a far more sinister trend. Those who were kidnapped and killed had their memories destroyed first, which is a form of death that the Club cannot tolerate or accept. Here in Beijing we have lost eleven members to the Forgetting, two to pre-birth death.”

“From what I’ve gathered from the other Clubs,” I replied softly, “that seems a fairly average pattern.”

“There are more patterns,” she added with a stiff nod. “No one killed pre-birth was prior to 1896. This implies that their murderer is too young to act before that time. Assuming consciousness and faculties are obtained between four and five years old—”

“That puts our murderer’s birth at approximately 1890, yes,” I murmured.

Another strict nod of agreement as we rounded a corner. Students bustled against us, scurrying by to classes. Several groups marched together, carrying giant banners proclaiming STUDENTS UNITE FOR THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD! and other such tokens of impending calamity.

“The pre-birth killings appear to be targeted against older members of the Club,” she went on. “It would appear the intention is to remove the most active members of our kind who might be in a position to interfere at the start of the twentieth century. Naturally their removal has an impact on the future generations of the century, who are more grievously affected by their loss than if, for example, you or I were removed.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I joked, and she did not even flicker a smile.

“In 1931 there is a brief acceleration in the pre-birth murder rate. Where, before, the worldwide average for Club losses was six a year, concentrated mainly in Europe and America, in 1931 there is a spike to ten losses a year, including three in Africa and two in Asia.”

“The murderer reaching maturity,” I suggested. “Growing more active?” Yet even as the words passed my lips, I discarded them for the more obvious, more simple possibility. “Another kalachakra, one born later, is joining the killings.” I sighed. And of course I knew who.

“This seems most likely,” she confirmed. “The year in which the killings spike suggests a birthday around 1925.”

Yes, I could well believe Vincent was born in that year. “What about the Forgettings?” I asked. “Is there any pattern there?”

“They began in 1953, starting with the Leningrad Cronus Club. At first we assumed the Club had suffered some great political damage through the actions of the linears, but in 1966 both Moscow and Kiev were hit, with 80 per cent of the members of those Clubs kidnapped, their memories erased, and the bodies destroyed.”

“Eighty per cent?” I couldn’t keep the astonishment out of my voice. “That high?”

“Clearly the perpetrator has been monitoring the Club’s activities for a long time, taking note of its members. By 1967 most Clubs in Europe had been hit, as well as five in America, seven in Asia and three in Africa. Those members who had evaded attack were sent underground and all Club houses ordered closed until 2070, by which date it was assumed our attacker would be deceased. Messages were left in stone for future generations warning them of the danger. So far we’ve received no whisper reply.”

As the girl talked, my mind raced. I had known the situation was bad, known that Vincent had spread himself far and wide, but this? This was on a scale I hadn’t even considered possible.

“By 1973 the attacks on our kind were slowing, thanks to the methods employed for our own protection, but those survivors who were not exemplary in their security still risked exposure and the Forgetting. In 1975 a final bulletin was issued from the Beijing Cronus Club, urging all surviving members to take their own lives at once, to evade any pursuers in this life. Regrettably–” a twitch in the corner of her mouth that might have been sorrow “–we did not predict that after the mass Forgettings inflicted upon us our enemy would then seek to destroy so many pre-birth. We believed our attacker to be a linear agency, perhaps a government apprised of our existence. We did not realise that the perpetrator could be one of our own. The loss has been extraordinary. We tried to find out who was attacking us, who was bringing us down, but this… crime… was planned, organised and executed with a stark brutality that left us reeling. We had grown complacent, I believe. We had grown lazy. We will not be caught so off guard again.”