The Chronoliths

I spent the morning cleaning up some code I had grown for her, a little routine that would go out into the world and search media nodes for relevant synchronicities, according to a noun-sorting algorithm Sue herself had cooked up. Morris passed in and out of the office a couple of times, looking leaner than he used to. Older, too. But still obstinately cheerful.

Sue was in her own office, and I stopped and knocked to tell her I was leaving. For lunch, I meant, but she must have heard something in my voice. “Long lunch? How far are you pla

“Not far.”

“We’re not done, you know.”

She might have been talking about the code we’d been evolving, but I doubted it.

Sue’s leg wound had healed years ago, but the Jerusalem experience had left other scars. Jerusalem, she told me once, had made clear to her how dangerous her work was — that by placing herself near the center of the tau turbulence she had put at risk not only herself but the people around her.

“But I suppose it’s inevitable,” she had said sadly, “that’s the worst of it. You stand on the train tracks long enough, sooner or later you meet a train.”

I told her I’d finish the debugging that afternoon. She gave me a long, skeptical glare. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

“Not at the moment.”

“We’ll talk again,” she said.

Like most of her prophecies, this one would come true, too.

Morris offered to join me for lunch but I told him no, I had some errands to do and I’d probably just grab a sandwich on the run. If he found this suspicious, he didn’t show it.

I closed out my account at Zurich American, transferred most of the funds to a transit card and took the rest in old-fashioned folding green. I drove around a while longer to make sure Morris wasn’t tailing me, unlikely as that was. More probably he had tapped the locator in my car. So I traded in the Chrysler at a downtown dealership, told the salesperson there was nothing I liked on the lot and would she mind if I shopped the other franchises? No, she said, and she’d be happy to walk me through the virtual inventory in the back room. I tentatively selected a snub-nosed Volks Edison in dusty blue, possibly the most anonymous-looking automobile ever manufactured; left my Chrysler at the lot and accepted a courtesy ride halfway across the city. Up close, the Volks looked a little more battered than it had in the virts, but its power plant was sturdy and clean, as near as I could judge.

All of this amateur espionage bullshit left an e-trail as wide as the Missouri, of course. But while Morris Torrance could surely make a few co

There was a big ration camp where the highway crossed the Ohio, maybe a thousand threadbare canvas tents flapping in the spring breeze, dozens of barrel fires burning fitfully. Most of these people would have been refugees from the Louisiana bottomlands, unemployed refinery and petrochemical workers, farmers flooded out of their property. The consolidating clay of the Atchafalaya Basin had at last begun to draw the Mississippi River out of its own silted birdfoot deltas, despite the best efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. More than a million families had been displaced by this spring’s floods, not to mention the chaos that resulted from collapsed bridges and navigational locks and mud-choked roads.

Men lined the breakdown lane begging rides in both directions. Hitchhiking had been illegal here for fifty years and rides were scarce. But these men (almost all men) had ceased caring. They stood stiff as scarecrows, blinking into the glare of the headlights.

I hoped Kait had found a safe place to sleep tonight.

When I reached the outskirts of Mi

I desperately needed sleep, but before that I needed to talk to Janice.

It was Whit who answered the phone. “Scott,” he said, cordially but not happily. He looked like he needed some sleep himself. “I assume you’re calling about Kaitlin. I’m sorry to say there’s been no further information. The police seem to think she’s still in the city, so we’re cautiously optimistic. Obviously, we’re doing all we can.”

“Thank you, Whit, but I need to talk to Janice right now.”

“It’s late. I hate to disturb her.”

“I’ll be quick.”

“Well,” Whit said, and wandered away from the terminal. Janice showed up a few moments later, wearing her nightgown but obviously wide awake.

“Scotty,” she said. “I tried to call you but there was nobody home.”

“That’s all right. I’m in town. Can we get together tomorrow and talk this over?”

“You’re in town? You didn’t have to come all this way.”

“I think I did. Janice? Can you make an hour for me? I can drop by the house, or—”

“No,” she said, “I’ll meet you. Where are you staying?”

“I’d as soon not meet here. What about that little steak house on Dukane, you know the one?”

“I think it’s still in business.”

“Meet you at noon?”

“Make it one.”

“Try to get some sleep,” I said.

“You, too.” She hesitated. “It’s been four days no Scotty. Four nights. I think about her all the time.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said.

Eleven

There’s a difference between seeing someone in a phone window and seeing the same person in the flesh. I had phoned Janice half a dozen times in the last couple of months. But I almost failed to recognize her when she walked through the door of the steak house.

What had changed her, I think, was the combination of prosperity and dread.

Whit had done well despite the economic downturn. Janice wore a visibly expensive blue tweed suit and day jacket, but she wore it as if she had reached into her closet and yanked it off the hanger — collar bent, pockets unbuttoned. Her eyes were red, the skin under them swollen and gray.

We hugged cordially but neutrally and she took the chair opposite mine.

“No news,” she said. She fingered her handbag, where her phone undoubtedly was. “The police said they would call if anything turned up.”

She ordered a salad she didn’t touch and a Margarita she drank too eagerly. It might have been nice to talk about something else, but we both knew why we were there. I said, “I’m going to have to walk you through this whole thing one more time. Can you deal with that?”

“Yes,” she said, “I think I can, but Scott, you have to tell me what you intend to do.”

“What I intend to do?”

“About — all this. Because it’s in the hands of the police now, and you could create a problem if you get too involved.”

“I’m her father. I think I have a right to know.”

“To know, yes, certainly. But not to interfere.”

“I’m not pla

She offered a wan smile. “Why do I find that less than convincing?”

I began a question, but Janice said, “No, wait a minute. I want you to have this.”

She took a manila envelope from her handbag and passed it to me. I opened it and found a recent photograph of Kaitlin. Janice had printed it on slick stock; the image was crisp and defined.

Kait, at sixteen, was tall for her age and undeniably pretty. Fate had spared her the curse of adolescent acne and, judging by the poise in her expression, adolescent awkwardness as well. She looked somber but healthy.