Hari took a Lyft from Newark Airport straight to the Allard.
She felt content and calm. Good sex did that for her. And the sex had been very good. Donny proved to be a skilled and considerate lover, as anxious to please her as she was to be pleased. She hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long, long time. Too long.
And as a bonus, for a while she’d been able to forget about the sun rising late.
Despite her cajoling and even the application of some of the Kama Sutra techniques she’d learned, she could not convince him to return to New York with her. He was planning something. He kept saying he didn’t have a plan yet but she didn’t buy that. For some reason he didn’t want to tell her what it was. Which meant it was either foolish or dangerous or both.
But Hari had her own plan, which involved learning more about the signals. According to Donny, the last report from burbank@theallard.com said all the signals had synchronized their frequencies. A few hours after that, the sun rose late. Coincidence? Hari didn’t think so. And as far as she could see, if anyone had info on the signals, this Burbank character was the man.
She hopped out of her Lyft and headed straight for the doorman.
“Somebody named Burbank live here?”
The doorman nodded. “He’s busy right now. If you want to leave your—”
“I’m one of his subscribers.” Well, Donny had been reading his emails—close enough. “I need to speak to him ay-sap. It’s important. What can you do for me?”
He turned and called out to a tall man and two women in a far corner of the lobby. “Mister Hill? This lady here is in a big rush to meet Burbank.”
The man had ruddy skin and strong features. She didn’t get the “Mister Hill” bit, but the way the guy had turned said he had to be Burbank. She made a beeline for him.
“Hari Tate,” she said, shaking his hand. “Spelled H-a-r-i.” She guessed from his complexion and features he was Native American. “One of your subscribers. I’ve got some questions about the signals.”
“I’m busy right now,” he said. “If you want to wait—”
“Last night they all synchronized, and today the sun rose late. There’s got to be a connection.”
He shrugged. “There’s certainly a correlation but I don’t know if it’s a cause-effect relationship.”
The younger of the two women, a teenager with a weird ratty blanket tied around her neck, said, “Night is falling, the Change has begun.”
Uh-oh…was she one of those Septimus types? She was just a kid.
“What happened to ‘twilight has come…night will follow’?”
“That’s passé. Twilight is done.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Hari said. “Who are you?”
She introduced herself as Ellie and the older woman as her mother, Barbara.
“And you’re Burbank?” Hari said.
“My Burbank days are over. I’ll answer to Hill.”
Ellie turned to him. “Maybe we should take her with us.”
Hill shook his head. “I don’t know…”
“Hari says she wants to learn about the signals. The Prime generator would be an excellent place to start.”
“If we’re talking about something that generates this Prime Frequency I’ve heard about, I’m in. Lead on.”
Hill hesitated, then said. “Okay, but don’t be surprised if our way is blocked.”
He opened a door and Hari followed the three of them into what looked like a freight elevator. He inserted another key into one of two slots in the control panel and the car started down.
“What’s down here?”
“The Allard has an underground garage but we’re going below that, deep into the schist. You can’t access the bottom stop without a key.”
“What’s the schist?” Barbara said.
“It’s the bedrock of Manhattan Island,” her daughter said. “It runs close to the surface here in Midtown.”
Well, I just learned something, Hari thought. Smart kid.
But something very weird about her—a keep-your-distance brand of weird. The ratty blanket as cape, sure, weird as hell, but something much deeper. And on the subject of the blanket, did it just move, like with a breeze when there wasn’t one?
Hari was going to have to keep an eye on her.
After a long slow descent, the elevator ground to a halt. Unexpectedly, the door behind them opened.
Hari tapped the one that had stayed closed. “Where does this one go?”
“Just a rather large storage area where Mister Allard locked away mementoes of his life.”
“He must have a lot of mementoes.”
A nod. “That he does. I’ve only taken a quick look, but he left all sorts of things in there, including an intact autogyro.”
“An auto-what?”
“Autogyro—a two-seat precursor to the helicopter.”
Figuring that had to be one helluva storage space, Hari followed Hill out the rear door onto a platform and—
“Holy shit!” Hari cried and pressed her back against the wall. “I mean, what the fuck?”
That kind of language was not her style, but the words jumped out on their own. She noticed Barbara close beside her, eyes closed, looking a little sick. She understood perfectly.
A stone stairway led down—not against the wall, where you’d normally expect it, where any sane person would place it, but curving through the middle of the emptiness. With no handrail. Just steps, four feet wide and going down forever. Not into darkness—at least they were spared that—but down and down. Flames flickered in sconces all up and down the circular wall, lighting the stairway and all the empty space around it.
“Sorry,” Hill said. “I should have warned you.”
“Ya think?” Hari said.
Despite his rugged good looks, this Burbank or Hill or whatever he was calling himself was getting on her nerves.
Barbara still had her eyes closed. “W-we have to go down there?”
“I’m afraid so,” Hill said. “I didn’t realize you were acrophobic.”
Hari forced herself to push off from the wall and take a few steps closer to the edge.
“I’m not. I don’t exactly go looking for high places, but I’m not terrified of them.”
“Same here,” Hill said. “Even though my father and grandfather were skywalkers, I—”
Ellie said, “Like in Star Wars?”
“No, like in high-steel workers. Like many Mohawks, they had no fear of heights. I didn’t inherit that.” He waved an arm above. “My grandfather helped build the Allard and hinted that it held secrets in its foundation. I’d always assumed he meant gangsters from the Roaring Twenties had found their final resting place in the concrete, but I wasn’t even close.”
“Who clued you to this?” Hari said.
“The original Burbank occupied the penthouse from its beginning in 1931 to just last December.”
Hari did a quick count. “From 1931? He must have been—”
Hill was nodding. “Yes, he died at a very ripe old age. He knew almost everything about the building and left lots of notes. I found a section of blueprint with these keys in his papers.”
“We’re wasting time,” Ellie said, hands on hips, foot tapping. “Mother, maybe you’ll feel better waiting upstairs in the lobby?”
“No!” Barbara said. She had her eyes open now but still looked a little green around the gills. “I’m…I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t put yourself through that,” Hari said. “I’ll watch out for her.”
“But who’ll watch out for you?” Barbara muttered. Before Hari could ask what she meant, Barbara added, “You all go ahead. I’ll be fine right here.”
“Sorry, Mother,” Ellie said and started down with the nonchalance of someone descending steps a dozen times wider.
Hill followed but at a slower pace.
“I’ve been down these a number of times,” he said. “The trick is to keep your head down and your eyes fixed on the next step.”
Hari stopped on the lip of the first step and looked down and around.
“Who dug this?”
“Don’t know,” Hill said, “but Burbank’s papers say it was already here when they dug the Allard’s foundation. The owner, the original Mister Allard, would only allow natives of an obscure South American tribe to work on the section of the foundation directly above this.”
“How old is it?”
“Burbank didn’t know.”
“Okay, one more question then I’ll shut up: all these flames burning in the wall…who refills the sconces?”
“No one,” Hill said. “They never seem to run out.”
Twenty-four hours ago Hari would have called bullshit. But after spending the night on another planet, she accepted that he was telling the truth.
She started down, using his method of watching the next step, and it worked to block out all the empty air around her. She’d almost caught up to Hill by the time he reached the bottom where an obviously impatient Ellie waited before a big, pointed-arch door of riveted steel set in the wall.
Hill flipped through his crowded keyring and selected the largest one.
“You have a key for every room in the place?”
He shook his head. “No idea what all these are for. Luckily they’re labeled.” He stuck the big key in the lock but didn’t turn it. “Don’t get your hopes up, anybody. Every time I’ve opened this door I’ve run into a wall.”
When he turned the key, a latch went thunk deep within. He grasped the iron ring that served as a handle and swung it out to reveal…a stone wall.
“You weren’t kidding, were you,” Hari said.
“Close it again,” Ellie said, “then let me open it.”
Hill gave her a look. “You really think…?”
Hari looked at the solid wall of stone, the very bedrock of Manhattan, impenetrable. And yet…this weird kid had this air about her and, what the hell, anything and everything seemed possible today.
How had that mantra ended? It will begin in the heavens and end in the Earth, but before that, the rules will be broken.”
Well, the sun had been late climbing into the heavens, and here they were, deep in the Earth…and all sorts of rules had been broken back on Norum Hill…
“Give her a shot,” Hari said. “What’ve we got to lose?”
Hill pushed the door shut and stood back. As Ellie reached for the ring, Barbara cried out behind them.
“Wait for me!”
The three of them turned to find her crawling backward down the steps on her hands and toes.