The sole explanation was infuriating. The directional mics had picked up Harkenbach asking if he could pour coffee for anyone. He must have been at the coffeemaker near the window. Then he’d said, “They’re here,” just before the gas was released. He saw someone or something suspicious, and he must have had his key to everything in hand when he did. As the gas erupted into the room, Coltrane and the girl went to Harkenbach, or he went to them, and they ported out to another timeline.

Although there was no chance that the missing three had gotten to another room before succumbing, Falkirk dispatched Blackridge and his two men to search the house.

Fresh vexation now overlaid his more profound, ever-simmering anger.

Alone with the sleepers, he hung his cane on the handle of the refrigerator door, went to Michelle Coltrane, and stood looking down at her. Although things he’d heard through the directional microphones suggested she wasn’t the bitch from this timeline, he didn’t know with certainty what she was doing here with Harkenbach or why she had been with the old man when he’d shown up at the bungalow and shot Falkirk. When she woke, he would torture the truth out of her.

She was an erotic vision, slumped in the chair, her head tilted back, eyes closed, lips parted as though to receive whatever a lover wished to press between them. He thought of how Philip Esterhaus had appeared in death—throat torn, eyes rolled back in his head, mouth open like this, a dethroned demigod. As he had been in that blood-spattered bedroom, Falkirk was overcome by euphoria, by an awareness that great power was already his, magical power, by virtue of having killed a demigod who had been able only to wound him in return, the wound so inconsequential that it pained him not at all.

Michelle’s ripe lips compelled his attention now as had the empty glass on the drainboard in Esterhaus’s kitchen. He realized that before him was another sign to be interpreted: a beautiful woman whose open mouth suggested she was whispering, conveying to him some mystery that would transform him. He leaned down and put his mouth to hers and took her soft exhalations into himself, and when he licked her lips, they tasted of cinnamon from the morning roll she’d been eating.

In the heightened state of consciousness that had come to him with two sacramental Vicodin, he understood that whatever mystery she might impart to him would not be one that elevated him, but one that weakened him and turned him away from the acquisition of power that was his destiny. She was Eve, of course, the eternal temptress, as were all women. Whatever she might whisper to him would be a dangerous lie. Everyone deceived everyone else, women and men and children, but in Falkirk’s experience, women were the better at it, especially beautiful women. He must not give her the chance to bring him to ruin with false promises.

He took his mouth from hers and straightened up and drew the pistol with which he had killed the demigod. He pressed the muzzle between her breasts. She slept on, oblivious. Slowly he slid the muzzle up her sweater to her throat. He traced the curve of her chin with the front sight of the gun. He pressed the barrel between her lips and let her exhale into it. To save himself from her bewitching deceptions, he must squeeze the trigger before she woke, before she could speak a lie that might corrupt him. Blow all the endless lies out of her lovely head.

One thing and one thing only stayed his finger on the trigger. Not mercy. He didn’t believe in mercy or in fact that it existed as more than a concept. Not desire, either. He would have enjoyed being the barrel between her lips. But now that he understood the magical nature of the world, he knew that when he had his pleasure, and she received the essence of him, she would own his soul. He delayed blowing her brains out only because to kill her in her sleep would be to deny him the sight of the terror in her eyes that would be there if she faced death while awake. He must stuff a gag in her mouth and fix it in place with a strip of duct tape to prevent her from enchanting him with lies, and then wait for her to regain consciousness. Only then, when their stares locked and she couldn’t speak to cast a spell on him, would her power be passed to him, to enhance his own.

He didn’t holster the pistol, but instead proceeded to where Pellafino slept at the far side of the round table. Because of his size and his bold facial features, which seemed to have been carved from rock, the big man might have been another demigod, this time clothed. The murder of Esterhaus had been so gratifying and had contributed so much to Falkirk’s suddenly deeper understanding of the nature of reality that he wanted to repeat the experience. After this murder, he might allow himself even greater transcendence with a third Vicodin.

As he pressed the muzzle of the gun to Charles Pellafino’s temple, however, he saw past him to a box of pastries on the table, next to which lay the key to everything.

For a moment, he disbelieved his eyes. Then he realized that if the radio repairman and his wiseass daughter had ported out with the Ed Harkenbach from another timeline, this must be the key Coltrane had gotten from the Harkenbach of this world, who had eluded Falkirk for so long.

He holstered his pistol and circled a quarter of the way around the table in a state of awe, as if it were an altar, as if the box of pastries were in fact a pyx from which the sacred wafer, the key to everything, had recently been removed. He stared at the precious object, afraid that if he tried to touch it, he would find that it was an illusion.

When he picked it up, the key proved to be real. Although he knew from past experience, before Harkenbach had destroyed the other two keys, that the device was light, it felt much heavier now, as solid as a brick, heavy with the fate of all humanity. The power within this sleek casing would allow him to steal the technology of more advanced worlds and become the godlike ruler of this timeline or any other, the masses his to control like puppets. His wealth and power would be beyond all measurement. Eventually billions of people would honor and serve him to an extent that the subjects of other emperors and dictators had never before in history been required to submit.

Before he had noticed the key, he had wanted a third Vicodin, reckless as such an overdose might be, for he had wished to achieve yet greater enlightenment. But now that the device was in his possession, his quest fulfilled, Falkirk was exalted beyond any level to which any drug could raise him. He slipped the precious object in a coat pocket.

He drew his pistol once more. The others in Project Everett Highways, as well as the consortium of billionaires who underwrote the project when government funds were not enough, could never know he had the key or be given reason to suspect his intent until it was too late for them to stop him.

Anyone with knowledge that the key had been here must not be allowed to live and speak of it. Pellafino and Michelle must be killed before they woke. Coltrane and his daughter and Harkenbach must be shot on sight.

87

Several worlds removed from Amity and Michelle, with the ear-piercing security alarm shrieking as though Hitler’s Luftwaffe must have traveled in time and space to conduct a major bombing raid on Suavidad Beach, Jeffy raced up the stairs in another version of the Pellafino house, close behind Ed.

One of the two cops on the porch, watching through the front door, seeing them armed with pistol and shotgun, shouted, “Police!”

“We know, shut up, shut up, we know!” Ed shouted back at them.

This version of Harkenbach seemed to be more tightly wrapped, mentally and emotionally, than the one whom Jeffy had befriended in his world. However, the two versions shared the same genes and many of the same formative experiences, and it was possible, even likely, that under enough pressure, this Ed would crack just as the other one had. Jeffy had not forgotten a single turn of events that had led him from a peaceful dinner in town with Amity, two days earlier, to this mortal and chaotic moment; yet it was incomprehensible to him that she was worlds away, under threat of death, and that their lives were in the hands of an eccentric physicist who shaved his head and took off his bow tie and thought himself transformed beyond recognition.

At the top of the steps, Jeffy glanced back, afraid that the police might force entry, not sure if that was a violation of the standard rules of engagement in a situation like this.

They didn’t have to use force. One of them tried the door. Incredibly, it wasn’t locked. Maybe Duke’s security system alerted him on his cell phone and allowed him to unlock the house remotely for the police.

“They’re in the house,” he warned Ed as he hurried after the old man, along the upstairs hallway.

He followed the physicist into a bedroom on the right and slammed the door.

“We’ve got to brace it,” Jeffy declared, but he didn’t see a straight-backed chair with which he could easily do the job.

“Not necessary,” Ed assured him. “They won’t burst in on us. They’ll take up positions out there and call for backup.”

“Let’s jump home, let’s go, get us the hell out of here.”

Frowning, Ed put his shotgun on the bed and began to search his pockets. “You didn’t notice if by chance I put the key down in the study, when we were raiding the gun cabinet?”

88