ALAN STUFFED MICK INTO the little airplane bathroom in our flat, squirted some liquid dish soap over his prostrate form, turned the shower on full blast and closed the door. I made some tea in the kitchen and we sat at the tiny table with a couple of chipped mugs. Alan sipped from his tea, watching me warily.
I’ve been looking for you, I said.
I know. The building manager, Eddie, he told me.
Pause.
So where have you been? What’ve you been doing? I asked.
I’ve been around. I’ve been talking with an American scientist named Corner. From Ohio.
Alan Henry laced his fingers behind his barrel neck and leaned back in his chair, provoking a groaning sound that I was sure signaled the end of the kitchen furniture.
He consulted with the Canadian propulsion crew, Alan continued, for the moon-shot mission. It was his idea to use a single blast rather than a sustained charge, cutting-edge atomic physics. Corner had some interesting ideas that predicted the present discipline of superstring theory. To link up Einstein’s general relativity and Newton’s quantum mechanics? Planets and atoms, the big and the small? Both are understood and assumed to be correct, yet the laws of each make it impossible for both to be right. The kinda thing that physicists don’t like to talk about much. The greatest scientific cover-up of the century. Corner was the one that first broke superstring theory, though of course he doesn’t get the credit for it. He’s the one who first supposed the idea that the smallest particles in existence are these loops of string that oscillate at different speeds and patterns, that in turn create the behavior of particles and create the laws of physics.
String? Little pieces of string make the universe?
Yeah, vibrating loops of string. Of course there are a lot of other variables—thickness, holes, Calabi-Yau space, between nine and thirteen dimensions. The tune they play determines whether they create hydrogen or a fruit bat. The winds of change blow through an aeolian universe.
That sounds . . . absurd.
Alan shrugged and yawned.
Matter of perspective I suppose. The position of the observer, as always, is the key to the resulting discovery.
Why did you punch me in the face like that? I said.
Alan checked his hands and scrutinized my face for a moment, as if by some indelible marking to either he might actually recall a beating he administered that escaped him at the moment.
What are you talking about?
Where’s Hanif?
Why?
What do you know about Erin Kaluza? That girl we met a few nights ago at the Lupo Bar? The night Hanif was arrested?
Alan frowned and folded his arms across his massive chest.
Nothing. Don’t know anything about her.
She’s a thief. You’re not telling me the truth. Hanif’s a thief. I know all about it.
Alan stood up, jostling our cups and spilling tea all over the table.
What the hell are you talking about, Rothschild? Hanif’s in the clink. Prison. The man’s a bona fide political prisoner. Have you lost your mind?
This wasn’t going the way I hoped it would; I didn’t want to get Alan Henry all riled up and upset, because then it would be impossible to engage him in any sort of legitimate, rational conversation.
Look, I said, I’m starving. Let’s go somewhere where I can get something to eat.
Alan followed me out the door, fuming under his breath, cracking his knuckles ominously.
We walked down Endell Street to the Rock and Sole Place Fish Shop. The lunch crowd was nearly gone and there was a small table open in the back. We squeezed in, Alan all but enveloping the table with his bulk. The place was crowded, full of Central London working stiffs, girls in executive-blazer outfits eating plates of chips with mushy peas, huddled together with gap-toothed dustmen, a wary Korean family who poked their hunks of fish nervously as if it might spring to fatty-fried life, fat-jowled cabbies with pork-chop sideburns, a couple of Greek men in leather jackets speaking Greek into their mobile phones at top volume, every other person sucking down entire cigarettes between bites. The windows steamed and the tabletops were slick with grease.
I got cod and chips, small order. Alan had a large skate, saveloy, battered sausage, chips and mushy peas. We crunched on our fish in silence. Pea-size beads of perspiration perched on Alan’s upper lip, and I shivered as the sweat trickled down my back. I needed a shower badly. It often seems as if all of Central London is like this—like being in a chip shop, crowded, noisy, smelly, a bit greasy, the damp sheen of dirty sweat on your skin, the clumsy intimacy of strangers, the absurd variety of life crammed into one place, everyone sort of blandly pretending to enjoy their food and ignore their painfully hard chair, the stench of the man opposite, the churning intestinal strain, the teenagers screaming obscenities across the room, the shouting in four different languages that nobody understood, their tired eyes and aching knees, damp shoes, knowing that waiting at home for them was an empty room, if they were lucky, with a rusting hot pot and a miserably short mattress, the essential position of their lives at that moment. I was having trouble swallowing my fish and decided to quit trying.
What about the bail money? I asked Alan. The money Mick gave you?
Alan Henry was wiping his plate down with his last chip to gather all the smears of mushy peas and crumbs of fried material.
Okay, Alan said, Hanif got his barrister to hand it over to him in the pen, then blew it on a packet of methamphetamine another inmate cooked up in his sink. He got busted for that too, but the barrister says we should have him out this week.
Did you know that his girl Erin, that woman we met that night, that she stole something from the museum? Something extremely valuable?
Alan looked puzzled, delicately holding his half-eaten battered sausage in his hand like a conductor’s baton.
What was she doing in the museum? When?
Never mind, I said. What happened to your stuff? In your room? Where are you staying?
Things got a little hot for me in there, Alan said.
He lowered his gaze and muttered toward the devastated skate carcass on his plate.
People were watching me and I couldn’t trust it. Somebody broke in and was going through my things. I suspect agents from the CSA. I had an associate remove my belongings.
CSA?
Canadian Security Administration.
You’re joking, I said.
We looked at each other for a few moments. This was exactly the kind of bullshit I was expecting. He wasn’t going to come clean with me.
I’ve never heard of it, I said.
Exactly, Alan said. He raised his chin and widened his eyes knowingly.
It’s not the first time they’ve sent operatives to check up on me. The CSA is nothing to trifle with. They built the mold, taught the NSA and the CIA all the tricks. I’m currently housed in an undisclosed location on the South Bank.
I always figured Alan was a little loose about certain things, but I was starting to doubt his basic foundations of reality.
Then what are you doing around here?
Alan looked shocked.
Why, I came to check up on you, Rothschild. I hadn’t seen you around lately. And then our little friend Mick—
Remember the wrestlers from that night? The one called Gigantica? They’re in on this too. Some kind of weird plot, and I’m all wrapped up in it. And the Krishnas. It seems so damn convenient, the night I meet Hanif everything starts to go crazy . . . I don’t know what I’m saying. There’s a guy looking for you, named Okonkwo. Did you know that? I first saw him sitting at your desk, and then he followed me all the way to Cambridge and back.
Alan pursed his lips and drank thoughtfully from his water glass. For the first time I saw panic flicker across his broad face as he tipped his glass up, his eyes searching the ceiling.
Okonkwo? he said. Rings a bell. A very faint one.
Why did you do it? I said. What possible interest do you have in Egyptian antiquities? What do the Krishnas want with it? Was it for Oldcastle? Is he paying you to do it?
Easy now, my good doctor, Alan said. Oldcastle? Never heard of ’em. As for Egyptian antiquities, well, you know that I respect your work, despite the fact that it seems dreadfully boring. Tell me about this guy Okonkwo again. Did he mention formal charges?
No, no. He saw me at the British Library. He was sitting at your normal desk. Then he was on the train from Cambridge. I didn’t tell him anything. I left something in your flat, a book; that’s what Okonkwo was after me for. Or at least following me for.
What kind of book?
Some old memoir of a journey through nineteenth-century Egypt. Brown leather binding. Nothing really special, I mean I only read the first couple of chapters. But the library seems to take it very seriously. It’s pretty valuable.
Alan shrugged, his corded neck muscles rolling like snakes.
No idea, Rothschild, he said. I don’t have any such book—wait, when the hell were you in my room?
What about that scarab ring on your hand? Where’d you get that?
Alan checked his hands.
You mean this?
He held out his fingers for me to inspect. There it was, the dull red stone, the roughly incised scarab. I felt foolish even considering the possibility that crept into my mind.
Hanif gave it to me, Alan said. What about it?
I felt the waters shift, an opportunity to switch paths, the other land. To possibly make it right. To defeat Seth you have to let him transform, let him assume the shape he wants. And like Horus, when Seth becomes a hippopotamus, roaring with animal fury, foaming the Nile with his gnashing jaws, you must become the hunter and spear him from the riverbank, you harpoon him and drag him onto dry land.
Look, I have to do some things tonight. Can you meet me tomorrow? At the Spanish Bar?
Alan Henry’s eyes narrowed.
Let’s resolve this tomorrow, I said. The Spanish Bar, at noon. Meet me there and we’ll figure it all out.
I got up. Finally, I was getting to make my own exit, leaving Alan with his drawbridge mouth hanging open for once.
I gotta go, I said. I have to call my daughter. Tomorrow. Noon.