way it feels in Their teeth. For years, the cults feed Them, the big man thrives. But it falls through, or he cheats, or there’s a terrible insult, or maybe the big man in the next valley simply makes a better deal. They come up, and destroy everything. Many, many times. Noah’s flood. Atlantis. Heraclaeion. Mu. Tunguska. Uruk.”
“You’re just saying random syllables now.” I stared at the picture, then her, then the picture again. Someone had depicted this disaster in tiny rocks, long after it happened. Maybe just from stories. Second-hand, third-hand, a hundred years later. But in Germany, just sixty years ago, almost close enough to touch... “Are you saying that Hitler...?”
“Yeah. The thing is, his magic didn’t work and he never did open the gate underneath Berchtesgaden. He screwed up, the Nazi researchers screwed up. So do I want to get into the Nazi archives? Even if I could, I don’t think so.”
“Jesus. Not if they did it wrong. But where else can you look?”
“Do you know where the oldest library in the world is?” she said.
CHAPTER TEN
RUTGER WAS WAITING at the airport for us, standing awkwardly between the rows of empty seats in Departures, clutching Johnny’s brown waxed canvas bag. It was bulging, like he’d stuffed a watermelon in there. I knew it well—she took it everywhere, lecture tours, trips to the mall, whatever. She used them till they fell apart, which took a long time, but she loved things like that, very expensive things that looked cheap, except that a cheap imitation would never survive so many years of her abuse, soaking it in the rain and throwing it off luggage carts and dropping it off train platforms, dragging it along conveyor belts and the sharp teeth of escalators, cramming it with razor-edged textbooks and unsheathed soil knives, having lipglosses and yogurts and bacterial samples explode inside it.
The company had offered her free ones because of all the free publicity, but she always turned them down. Turned everybody down. I would have taken one of those bags no problem, but she never offered to buy me one and I’d never asked. Part of our unspoken nod to basic economic facts: I gave gifts that I could afford, and she gave at the same level, so that we wouldn’t embarrass each other.
It occurred to me, with a pang that felt like someone had poked me sharply in the neck, that Rutger was at the airport not only because he had packed for his employer, but because my family had been put on a plane, no doubt kicking and screaming, and sent far away. I opened my mouth to ask him about it, then thought better of it, seeing his face. He wasn’t even looking at me.
“Thanks,” she said, slinging the bag on her shoulder. “Um, this is a bit much. Hang on.” She fished out handsful of clothing; I turned my head as she got to a layer that seemed inappropriately silky and patterned for me to look at. Now was not a good time for an unexpected hard-on, not that there ever was. “We won’t be gone for long.”
“I am against this,” he said, holding the discarded garments in both hands, nearly but not quite hiding how his knuckles stood out white against his tan. His face, usually so impassive and consistent, with its painted-on expression of polite curiosity, was trembling, wavering as if seen through water. I wondered how much he had seen at the house. How much he believed; how much she had told him. Whether I should pity him. “I am going to ask you again. Don’t go.”
“That wasn’t a question,” she pointed out, repacking the bag and hefting it experimentally.
“Will you stay?”
“No.” She looked up at him. “I know you’re trying to find some loophole that will result in me agreeing to stay put. And I know you don’t like this. But we have to go.”
“I will go with you,” he said, all in a rush, as if it had just occurred to him. “Don’t take... this one. Take me, instead. Whatever is happening, I will be of more help.”
“No.”
“But—he isn’t—I would—”
“Usually, I’d tell you that was true,” she said, trying to find gentleness in her voice, to remove the unintended insult he felt he’d received. I wished I could tell him that my going wasn’t a slap in his face, that it wasn’t that I was being preferred over him because of some talent I had or skill she wanted me