1

Jack stared at the thin figure slumped in the wheelchair.

Not that he disbelieved Veilleur, but how could this wizened crone be the Lady?

Veilleur had called yesterday to give Jack and Weezy the good news, but suggested they wait till morning before visiting. He’d directed them to the furnished apartment below his own. Its floor plan was identical to Glaeken’s, but the windows onto the park weren’t as grand.

They’d found her propped up in a wheelchair by one of those windows, a frail old woman with tangled gray hair and rheumy, sunken eyes.

He looked around. “Where’s Mister Veilleur?”

“Upstairs with his wife,” the old woman said. “Magda is having one of her bad days. Every time he goes out, she suspects he’s with another woman. This morning she found me there and became hysterical.”

“Poor man,” Weezy said. “Poor woman.”

“The good thing is, she’ll forget by this afternoon. The bad thing is, he won’t.”

Jack looked around again. Something else was missing. Then he realized what.

“Where’s your dog?”

She shook her head. “He couldn’t make it back.”

“Oh,” he said, feeling a stab of guilt. “I’m sorry. I did everything I could to stop—”

She lifted a gnarled hand. “He is not gone. He simply cannot be here. But you . . . you must not feel you failed. You could not have stopped him. No one could have.”

He knew she was right. He’d done everything possible with the weapons at hand. And even if he’d had a grenade launcher or a surface-to-surface missile, the end would have been the same. But that didn’t make him feel any better. Not after how she’d been there for him, intervening when he’d had nowhere else to turn.

Weezy stepped forward and laid a hand on her stooped shoulder. “What happened? You disappeared. Where did you go? Where did that strange awful man go?”

“Mutual obliteration. The three of us died. I was nothingness. I did not exist. And then . . . awareness returned. Somehow, for some reason, the noosphere was able to restore me. But only me. It should not have had the power to do that, but it did. It does.”

Weezy frowned. “I don’t understand. You aren’t the noosphere, just a manifestation of it. Did your . . . ‘obliteration’ damage it?”

“No. But don’t forget, I grew as the noosphere grew. When the sentient biosphere was small, the young noosphere initiated my existence. I began as a spark that became an infant, that became a child, and so on. It took millennia for the noosphere to grow, and as it developed, so did I, finally developing into adulthood at the dawn of the First Age. An unforeseen, profoundly tragic consequence of my matured existence was that it signaled the sentience of this world throughout the multiverse.”

Jack said, “Attracting the attention of the Ally and the Otherness.”

“Exactly. The Conflict was very much in the open then, much more head-on. After the Ally gained the upper hand and the Otherness caused the Great Cataclysm, more oblique means were sought by the other side—such as shutting down the beacon. Thus I became a target, and Opus Omega was born.”

Jack took his turn at the window and looked left. He couldn’t see the Turtle Pond from here, but he could make out Belvedere Castle, which had overlooked everything that had gone down yesterday.

“So yesterday was the culmination of millennia of effort to destroy you. But if eliminating you wasn’t going to hurt the noosphere that created you, why did they think the Fhinntmanchca would accomplish anything? The noosphere would simply re-create you and put you back out there as the beacon.”

“It is not that simple. Obliterating me should have required the noosphere to re-create me from scratch again—from that spark I mentioned. I can act as a beacon only when I am mature. My development wouldn’t have taken as long as before, but more than long enough for the Ally to turn away and the Otherness to achieve a stranglehold.”

“Why didn’t it happen that way?”

“The only possible reason is that the noosphere is stronger and more resilient than I or anyone else ever imagined.”

“But you’re so . . .”

“Weak and old? Yes. But that the noosphere could do even this is miraculous. I am here—as an adult. And as such I remain the beacon. That is what is important. In the past, once I matured, I was able to appear at any age I wished. I often chose to be an old woman—no one feels threatened by an old woman. Now I have no choice.”

“But at least you’re back,” Jack said.

She nodded. “Yes, I have returned. Barely. But I had to come alone. The noosphere did not have enough to send back my companion. I did not want to return without him, but I had no choice. I had to appear again, had to take human form, even if it is only this. I have just enough strength to keep the Ally aware of the sentience of this biosphere.”

Weezy went to the window and gazed out at the city.

“They failed. Nine/eleven . . . the Septimus Order and R brought down the Towers, killed all those innocent people . . . for nothing.”

“Not entirely for nothing.” She fumbled with the hem of her cardigan, then lifted it to bare her belly. “I have been sorely wounded.”

Jack saw what she meant: A second tunnel ran through her—this one to the left of her navel. Weezy stepped back from the window for a look.

“Ohmygod!”

The Lady lowered the sweater. “I shall not survive another attack.”

Jack thought of that ruined, leaking, deflated sack of . . . whatever in the Lodge’s subcellar. The “egg” in Diana’s Alarm. Big enough to contain a man and hatch him as something else. But all the king’s horses and lackeys weren’t putting that thing back together again.

“There won’t be another Fhinntmanchca,” he said. “The Orsa is dead. It’s created its first and last.”

Weezy said, “But you’ll get stronger, won’t you?”

The Lady nodded. “With time and an unbroken feed from the noosphere, I will soon return to my former strength.”

Jack said, “How soon?”

“A year.”

That long? pushed toward Jack’s lips, then he realized that a century didn’t qualify as an eye blink in her frame of reference. A year was barely measurable.

“I have never been able to influence the conflict itself,” she added. “The Ally and the Otherness are far too vast. My importance has centered around my function as a beacon.” She looked at Jack. “But as you know, now and again I have been able to intervene and provide assistance in earthly matters involving the Conflict.”

Jack nodded. He’d never forget how she’d stepped between Rasalom and him during his darkest hour, yanked Gia and Vicky back from the brink of death. He owed her for all that—and for what else? He wondered what she’d done for him without his knowing . . . say, as Mrs. Clevenger.

“And I will be forever in your debt.”

She shook her head. “No need. And no more from me for a while. Until I’m fully restored, I can play no part in what goes on about me. Nor can I move so freely among you as I used to. All my focus must be centered on simply existing. The beacon must remain lit.”

Weezy dropped to one knee beside the wheelchair and gripped her hand.

“You said you won’t survive another attack. How might they attack you again?”

“It must be with something from the Other side—like the chew wasps from the cenote at the nexus point, or the Fhinntmanchca. Nothing of this Earth can harm me.”

Jack watched Weezy give a knowing nod. He’d explained what had happened in Florida last year.

“But Darryl was of this Earth,” he said.

“No. He was no longer human. His very molecules had been changed to something Other, something from outside.”

“What about R?” Weezy said.

“Even the Adversary himself is powerless in that regard. Though he has become something more than human, he is of this Earth.” She patted the armrest of her wheelchair. “His minions could wire this chair with explosives and set them off, and I would not be scratched. So, unless they come up with something from the Other side—and I don’t think they will—or complete Opus Omega—equally unlikely—I believe I am safe for now.”

“So it’s just a matter of time before you’re back on your feet.”

She nodded. “As long as the noosphere retains its present intensity, I shall be as new by this time next year.”

Weezy smiled at him, and Jack did his best to return it. But he worried. Many signs pointed to a coming darkness, an endless darkness that would arrive next spring.

A year might be too long.