Pattern Recognition

She sits down in the dust, sucks on her toothpick, and tries not to think about her feet, which hurt like hell.

She's got blisters in there she's trying not to think about, and certainly doesn't want to look at. She decides she'll try tearing up whatever's inside the Rickson's, to wrap her feet with.

She becomes aware of the sound of a jet, like part of the landscape, and wonders what she might think of it if she didn't know what it was. Were there still people in the world who wouldn't recognize that sound for what it is? She doesn't know.

Wincing, she gets to her feet and starts walking, sucking on the toothpick. It makes her mouth less dry.

SUNSET seems to take a very long time, here. Fantastic shades of red.

When she realizes she won't be able to keep walking in the dark, she gives up and sits down.

"Well fucked," she says, an expression of Damien's that seems to cover things.

She gets out her mint, unwraps it, and puts it in her mouth.

It's starting to get cold. She unties the sleeves of the Rickson's, puts it on, and zips it up. She can feel the chill on her back, still, because it's in tatters now, where she tore out strips of the interlining to use to bind her feet. They'd helped, a little, but she doubts she's going to be able to do much more walking, even when the sun comes up.

She's trying not to suck on the mint, because that'll make it go faster. Probably she should take it out and save it for later, but she has nowhere to put it. She unzips the cigarette pocket on the jacket's left sleeve, discovering the card from the curry house, the one Baranov had written Stella's address on. She looks at his precise brown italics, the color of dried blood, until it's too dark to read them.

The stars are coming out.

After a while, when her eyes have adjusted, she realizes she can see two towers of light, off in the distance, in the direction she thinks she's been walking in. They aren't like the memorial display from Ground Zero, but like the towers of her dream, in London, only fainter, farther away.

"You aren't supposed to be in Siberia," she says to them.

And then she knows he's there.

"I think I might die here," she says. "I mean, I think I could."

You might, he says.

"Will I?"

I wouldn't know.

"But aren't you dead?"

Hard to say.

"Was that you in the music, last night?"

Hallucination.

"I thought it was Mom's EVP, finally."

No comment.

She smiles. "That dream, in London?"

No comment.

"I love you."

I know you do. I have to go.

"Why?"

Listen.

And he's gone, and this time, she somehow knows, for good.

And then she hears the sound of a helicopter, from somewhere behind her and, turning, sees the long white beam of light sweeping the dead ground as it comes, like a lighthouse gone mad from loneliness, and searching that barren ground as foolishly, as randomly, as any grieving heart ever has.

40. THE DREAM ACADEMY

- /

The helicopter passes directly overhead, but the searchlight goes swooping far off, to the side, away from her. Close enough that she can see details of its oblong yellow undercarriage illuminated by a red ru

Then the searchlight winks off, and she watches the red light dwindle.

The towers are gone.

She hears the helicopter, coming back.

It hovers, about fifty yards away, and the beam snaps out again, through the prop-blown dust, to find her.

She shields her eyes. Between her fingers she watches it settle to the ground, a clumsy-looking thing, its fuselage nearly rectangular. A figure jumps down from the door in its side and walks toward her, throwing a vast unsteady shadow into the light and dust.

She hears the rotors begi

He walks up to her out of the glare and stops, about six feet away, his back to the glare.

"Cayce Pollard"

"Who are you?"

"Parkaboy."

This doesn't seem to want to process at all. Finally she asks, "Who started the thread that gave Completism its first formal basis?"

"Maurice."

"In response to what?"

"A post by Dave-in-Arizona, theoretical limits to live action."

"Parkaboy? Is that you?"

He walks around to where it's his turn to face into the light, and she sees a man with reddish, receding hair, combed straight back. He wears OD surplus combat trousers, a heavy black shirt open over a white T-shirt, and a large pair of binoculars slung across his chest. These have huge, goggle-like eyepieces, but taper to a single tube the size and shape of a flashlight.

He reaches into a shirt pocket and pulls out a card. Stepping forward, he offers it to her. She takes it and squints, through the dust in her eyes and the hard white light, at

PETER GILBERT

MIDDLE-AGED WHITE GUY

"SINCE 1967"

She looks up at him.

"Music business," he says. "In Chicago, if you're a certain type of musician, you need one."

"One what?"

"M-A-W-G. Mawg." He hunkers down, two yards away, careful to give her space. "Can you walk? There's a medic in the copter."

"What are you doing here?"

"I thought you might have changed your mind."

"About what?"

"You just broke out of the only prison in Russia that people actively try to break into."

"They do?"

"The Dream Academy, they call it. That's where one particular batch of Volkov's people took you, after Mama fed you too much roofie."

"What—?"

"Rohypnol. Date-rape stuff. Could've killed you, but that's our Mama. You had a paradoxical reaction, though. Supposed to make you anybody's kitten, but it looked like you'd gone medieval on her."

"Did I? Were you there?"

"No. I was just checking in when the ambulance and the police arrived. You know that scene in old movies, when the cowboy's dying of thirst in the desert, and the cavalry arrives, and they say, 'Drink this, but not too much"?"

She stares at him.

He unclips a plastic canteen from his belt and passes it to her.

She takes a mouthful, swishes it around, spits it out, then drinks.

"Mama was still trying to lobby for control of the situation, looked to me," he says, "but with a bloody nose and one eye swollen shut, it was hard for her to be convincing."

"You knew it was her?"

"No. Wouldn't have known it was you, either, if I hadn't heard 'Pollard,' or something like it, about five times. Actually I'd seen a couple of pictures, on Google, but you weren't exactly looking your best, on that gurney there. Seemed to me that the lady with the nosebleed, though, she was pushing so hard that she was on the verge of getting arrested. I think she was arguing they should just take you up to your room and she'd stay with you. Then three guys in black leather coats showed up, and everyone but Mama went instantly deferential. You just sort of evaporated, with your little gurney, no more muss, and Mama went with the coats, looking none too happy about it. Me, I was feeling left out. I checked my e-mail. One from you, with Stella's address. I e-mailed her. Told her I was your friend, and what I'd just seen. Thirty minutes later I was in a BMW with a blue flasher and a fresh set of black coats, ru

"Sisters?"

"Little old Commie Gothic skyscrapers with wedding-cake frills. Very high-end real estate. Your Mr. Bigend—"

"Bigend?"

"And Stella. Plus a bunch of Volkovites and this Chinese hacker from Oklahoma—"

"Boone?"

"The guy who's been hacking your hotmail for Bigend."

She remembers the room in Hongo, Boone cabling his laptop to hers.