Touching Darkness

“Yeah, Mom,” Jessica said reassuringly. “Beth and I know about boys, we know about drugs, and we know about terrorism.”

Her mother smiled tiredly. “Well, okay, I guess. As long as you’re saying no.”

“Two out of three,” Beth mumbled.

Jessica shot her a look, but the pot had burst into a boil, and the rasp of spaghetti sliding from its box promised that Beth would be busy for another few minutes. She turned back to her mother.

“So how could anyone be against it?”

“No one was. And then suddenly there are all these ads in the Register. We think the whole movement’s an invention of this Broken Arrow oil family who want to drill out there. They must be crazy, though.” She kicked her leather-work satchel on the floor next to her. “Our geologist says there’s nothing out in the salt flats worth drilling, mining, or even looking at.”

Jessica’s eyes drifted toward the satchel. “Geological reports? Cool.”

“Pardon me?”

“I mean, um, they might be interesting to look at,” she said. Maybe not for any normal person, but Dess would die for a glimpse of something both maplike and numberish that had to do with the runway. She and Jonathan could fly over there tonight, and Dess would have half an hour or so to devour them. “It’s just that everyone’s talking about it at school. Maybe I could do a report or something.”

Her mother laughed and gave the satchel another contemptuous kick. “Knock yourself out. But the Grayfoots aren’t admitting that this is about oil. They’ve got city hall worked up about sonic booms and experimental crashes, like we’re building the runway to test transorbitals or something.”

“Sure, I think I heard that too. Hey… transorbitals?” Jessica said softly, her fingers lifting from the table one by one.

Her mother nodded. “Yeah, I told you about those. Airplanes that go into low orbit? They can fly from New York to Tokyo in just—”

“Thirteen!”

“What?”

Jessica’s triumphant smile faded, and she saw that Beth had turned around to stare as well. “Uh, it’s just that ‘transorbitals’ has… um, thirteen letters.”

“What?” they both asked.

“What is that fantastic smell?” Donald Day boomed from the kitchen door, dropping his golf bag to the floor with a clatter.

“I’ll set the table” Jessica said quickly. “Let me get this out of your way.”

She pulled the heavy satchel from the floor and hauled it into the living room, setting it beside the exiled non-spaghetti-related groceries. She noted its exact location for later reco

24

3:48 p.m.

TEA PARTY

“Ada,” Dess said.

She saw the knowledge go. One moment the crumpled house held fascination and promise, the sight of it filling her with intrigue and the thrill of secrecy. A few seconds later it was just another house, its curtained windows signifying nothing, like the scores of other run-down places she’d ridden by on the way here without a second glance.

Except that standing there, not remembering anything, Dess did give it a second glance. The exact geometry of its broken eaves and sagging porch triggered something inside her, a sudden, inexplicable need to speak a name aloud.

“Lovelace,” she whispered.

The door in her mind reopened, and Dess wavered on her feet. The secret history of Bixby flooded back into her mind—the kidnapped seer and hidden survivors, the crepuscular convolution and the battle lost to air-conditioning—along with memories of maps and charts she’d studied here, everything she’d learned from the veiled archive. And rising from this flood of knowledge was the pleasure of remembering that all of it had been revealed to her and her alone.

Dess smiled. Opening and closing the door in her mind was cool. Maybe one more time…

“Quit fooling around out there! You’re giving me a headache.”

Dess jumped at the booming call from the house. What was it about grumpiness and mindcasters?

She walked up the leaf-strewn path and through the screen door without knocking. Getting yelled at counted as being invited in.

“Be careful not to bump your head,” Madeleine said, pulling on a rope that hung from the ceiling. The attic stairway descended, like the gangplank of a flying saucer belonging to aliens who were really into rusty springs. When the bottom step touched the floor, the old woman climbed up with quick, confident steps.

Dess looked dubiously at the loaded tea tray she held.

“Well, come on. Don’t let it get cold! If I can make it up here, surely a young person like you can.”

Dess scowled at the unfair comparison. She hadn’t seen Madeleine carrying anything heavier than a scrolled-up piece of paper. But she placed one foot on the wobbly stair, bringing a tiny complaint from the ancient springs. Another step up and she found her balance, the objects on the tray begi

“Come on, girl! Don’t dawdle.”

Why anyone would want to build a house with an attic here in Oklahoma, Dess didn’t know. It would be a killer heat trap in summer and relentlessly fill up with dust year round. She kept climbing step by step, reaching the top with only one moment of blind terror when her center of gravity shifted, the tray pushing her backward like a heavy hand before relenting and allowing her to proceed.

Once Dess had cleared the hatch, Madeleine lifted the burden from her arms and said, “Been a very long time since I’ve had my tea up here.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Dess muttered.

But as she took in the attic, her a

With a crouching walk, Madeleine carried the tea tray to the corner with the cushions and began to arrange the dishes, calling out, “This may explain things.” She tossed the rolled-up piece of paper to Dess.

Unscrolling it, Dess immediately recognized the angles of the house, a three-quarter plan drawn back before the place had started to sag. It was like Madeleine’s map of Bixby, marked with the eddies and swirls of midnight, but scaled to show incredible detail. Dess frowned and pulled out Geostationary, checking the digits with the highest precision, effortlessly converting the plan’s quaint feet and inches to the device’s meters and centimeters.

She looked around the attic again, seeing its dimensions clearly now, and her eyes fell on the corner occupied by the tea tray. Of course, just there, where Madeleine had placed her own cushion…

“This is where you mindcast from!” Dess cried.

“I knew your grasp of the obvious wouldn’t fail you.”

Dess ignored the jibe and stared at the diagram, sinking into its geometries. No wonder they had built an attic onto the house! This was the spot from which the crepuscular contortion opened onto the rest of midnight, a one-way mirror behind which Madeleine was hidden but from which she could observe without revealing herself and maybe even…

“Hey, did you help out my friends night before last? Put something in their heads?”

Madeleine paused, a cup half poured before her, and shot a cold glance across the attic. “It couldn’t be avoided.”

Dess raised her eyebrows. “Uh, I think they appreciated it, actually. Or would have if they’d known what the hell was going on. Rex and Melissa were dead meat until Jess showed up.”

“Agreed. Come here and sit down.” Madeleine poured out more tea. “Milk, no sugar, correct?”