Glimmering

Jack took a step backwards. A letter bomb? Delivered by suicide courier? He shook his head—they’d finally caught that guy in New Rochelle, but who knew how many others might be around here? But the young man only stepped forward and slid the package into Jack’s hands. The only way he could have refused it was by dropping it. Even faced with the possibility of receiving a bomb, Jack Finnegan was too polite to do that.

“It is a gift.” Larry Muso stepped back and dipped his head. “For you…”

Jack stared at the rectangular parcel, carefully wrapped in green fabric. He drew it to his face, smelled a pleasant, slightly musty scent.

“Please,” urged Larry Muso. “Open it.”

He did. Slowly, unfolding the fabric until he found it, nestled within the cloth like a gold ingot.

A book; a very old book. Its cover looked like watered silk, crocus-colored with an Art Nouveau pattern of acanthus, stippled with gold, and in the center the title in raised gold letters.

“Wow.” Jack laughed. “I don’t believe it.

“For your collection,” said Larry Muso.

Jack opened the book gingerly. The frontispiece showed a Beardsley-esque line drawing of a grotesque mask and the date 1895, opposite the title page.

THE KING IN YELLOW

BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

“The King in Yellow,” said Jack. “This is incredible…” Carefully he turned the pages to the first tale, “The Repairer of Reputations.”

Now that the Government has determined to establish a Lethal Chamber in every city, town, and village in the country, it remains to be seen whether or not that class of human creatures from whose desponding ranks new victims of self-destruction fall daily will accept the relief thus provided. There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of life. If death is welcome let him seek it there.

He closed the book and looked up. Larry Muso was beaming, stray light striking the tip of his pompadour so that he looked like a burning candle.

“It is very beautiful, isn’t it, Mr. Finnegan? The first edition. Eighteen ninety-five.”

Jack shook his head. “But—” He started to explain that it had been his grandfather, not him, who collected books, then stopped. “But I don’t understand. Who are you?”

His visitor slipped a hand inside his velveteen jacket, withdrew a card case embossed with a hologram of the same logo that appeared on his satchel. He opened it and presented Jack with an illurium business card. The iridescent metal was etched with Japanese characters and a skeletal winged creature with grasping claws. When Jack tilted the card, English letters flickered beneath the Japanese. There was the nearly imperceptible sound of bells. A woman’s voice whispered the words as Jack read.

“Gorita-Folham-Ized: The Golden Family.”

“Altyn Urik,” Larry Muso offered. “That is our name in the archaic tongue of the Mongol people.” With a soft click he snapped the card case shut and replaced it inside his jacket. “It means ‘The Golden Family.’”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “And that means… ?”

“My employer. We are a joint Japanese-American-Mongolian corporate enterprise, engaged in mining and other industrial operations, but also incorporating your ALTCOM and the entire NOREX Telecommunications Group. We are based in Dalandzagad, and of course the Pyramid here is our American headquarters, but our work extends very far, far beyond these places.”

Jack stared at his visitor with growing despair. He knew all about GFI, of course; but obviously this guy wasn’t from GFI. Some kind of terrorist? He had some vague sense that things were unsettled in Mongolia, but then they were unsettled everywhere. In the wake of the glimmering strange alliances had sprung up across the globe, most especially in those places heretofore ignored because of their very isolation. Places like central Canada and Siberia and Mongolia, now besieged with investors and developers fleeing the flooded coasts, the diseased cities and ruined farmlands.

“The Golden Family has many interests!” Larry Muso said brightly. “But today I am here on other business—”

He turned and for the first time seemed to take in the room around him: swaybacked bookshelves, outdated computers, and all. He breathed in sharply, and Jack watched, bemused, as a beatific expression spread across Larry Muso’s face. After a moment he looked back at his host.