Gypsies

Laura blinked. “Why would you say that? You don’t know anything about us.”

“Maybe I was only fifteen, but hey, I had eyes. I have a memory.”

“Just look at it from our point of view,” Laura said. “Try to do that.”

He seemed to bite back an answer. “I am trying; I’m just not sure what you want.”

The waitress brought coffee in a steaming carafe. Karen watched Michael offer his cup and wondered when he had started drinking coffee. Maybe it began with puberty, like shaving.

She tried to focus her attention on the conversation but couldn’t. What could be safer than a hotel coffee shop? But she felt uneasy here, exposed…

Laura said, “I would at least like to know what we’re walking into.”

“It’s an old city,” Tim said patiently. “It’s called Washington and it’s on the Potomac but it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the city you know by that name. It’s winter and the climate is colder than ours, so you can expect snow. There’s a building called the Defense Research Institute. It’s a government installation. There are people there who want to talk to you.”

“They can help us?”

“I was given to understand that they can show us a way to travel without leaving traces—basically, a way to leave Walker behind.”

“Have they done you this favor?”

“No. Not yet.”

“So we’re taking their word for it.”

Tim assumed a long-suffering expression. “They can’t hold us there. There’s no punishment, there’s only the reward. Obviously they don’t want to give it away too soon.”

“They want us that badly?”

“For their work. Nothing terrible. It’s our cooperation they need.”

A thought crossed Karen’s mind. “How do we know he’s not working for them?”

Laura and Tim turned to regard her. She reddened but pressed on: “I mean the Gray Man. He could be working for them. He’s the punishment.”

Laura considered this, nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe. How about it, Tim?”

“You’re being paranoid,” he said. “How often do I have to say this? These are reasonable people we’re talking about. Not monsters.”

Karen finished her coffee. Tim put down money for lunch and a huge, excessive tip. He said, “I’ve told you everything I know. What it comes down to is, I’m going back soon and I think you should go with me.”

It was like an ultimatum. Karen heard it in his voice. It was a demand or a plea, or some bullying combination of the two. He had not changed.

There was a silence.

“I’ll go,” Laura said suddenly.

Karen gawked at her. Tim seemed equally taken aback.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

More looks.

“Well,” she demanded, “why not? The sooner, the • better, right? But,” she added, “only one of us. One of us will go. I’ll go. And if everything looks all right I’ll come back and bring the others.” She looked intently at her brother. “Is that all right with you?”

There was an even lengthier silence. Tim looked at Laura, at Karen, finally at Michael. Inspecting us, Karen thought, for sincerity.

But why this distrust? What was he afraid of? Tim said, “I think you’re being unreasonably cautious. But all right—it’s a begi

Karen said, “You don’t have to.” Laura said, “I know.”

They had gone back to the hotel room. Michael was in the shower; Karen was alone with her sister.

Karen said, “It’s dangerous. I don’t feel good about it.”

“Well, Christ, I don’t either. But I’m not a big enough prize to keep. I think Tim is duty-bound to bring me back. So I get a little tour, and maybe it’s fraudulent, maybe it’s designed to lure us there… but maybe I can learn something anyhow.”

Karen said, “We’re assuming he’s a liar. That he might be working for the Gray Man.”

“It’s at least possible. There was that co

“But then it’s too dangerous. You can’t go.”

Laura sighed and put her head back. “What choice do we have? Run and keep ru

That was true, Karen thought, but also frightening—the implications were frightening. “So who is the prize?”

“Not you or me,” Laura said. “I think… ultimately, I think it’s Michael they want.” Please, no, Karen thought.

But maybe Tim was not lying, maybe it was all the truth, maybe everything was okay.

Karen lay in bed and wanted to believe it.

Maybe it’s true, she thought, maybe there really is a place we can call home. Not the kind of Utopia Laura had set out to find in her town at the end of the continent, not Paradise, maybe not even an especially good place—but home, a real and true home where they belonged.

That would be good.

But she thought of her dream, which was not a dream, of the ravine behind the house on Constantinople and the darkness of a cobbled alley in an old smoky sea town. She thought of the lonely factories and warehouses and the black obsidian buildings. She thought of the snow that had begun to fall.

It was the kind of world Tim would have willed himself into. Karen had listened to her sister’s speculations about this talent they shared. It was a talent as wide or as narrow as the imagination itself. Which is to say, the soul. She recalled Tim as a child and guessed that he had opened doors into a dozen or more of these sullen, haltered, chilly Earths. Maybe it was the only kind of door he could open… out of all the web of possibilities, nothing but these dark alleys and cold cities.

Drifting at last to sleep, she remembered what Laura had said: It’s Michael they want. The words echoed in her head.

Not my son, she thought. Please not Michael. And she thought of the Gray Man all those years ago, of the gifts he had given them, the gifts they had accepted, the gifts which had languished in a closed drawer for three decades.

The kingdoms of the Earth. What did it mean? The fairest in the land. A riddle.

Your firstborn son. She trembled, sleeping.

Laura, in the opposite bed, thought similar thoughts.

Walker’s gift for her had been a mirror. The same mirror she had found in the desk back in Polger Valley… the mirror she could see clearly now in her mind’s eye. It was a cheap pink plastic mirror and the chromed glass had corroded over the years. But it was obvious what Walker meant by it. It was his way of saying, You are vain. Your curse is vanity.

And it was true. She felt that now. It was what her life amounted to. Drugs were a mirror she had gazed into for a time. Turquoise Beach was a mirror, a magic mirror that cast up only pleasant reflections. Emmett was a mirror, and she had watched herself in his eyes.

And it all amounted to shit, Laura thought bitterly, and it had left her here, lonely and stranded on this shoal of time.

So, she thought, it has to be me. The logic was obvious. That was why she had offered to go with Tim. It was a good idea, but it was also a gesture: let me take this risk on behalf of someone else. For the first time, please, God, let me really care.

But she was frightened.

But that was all right. It was normal to be frightened. She was staring down the hard truths now, final confrontations, ultimate secrets.

She thought, I’ll never sleep. I’m too wired to sleep.

But sleep crept up on her without warning.

She slept, and Karen slept, and the night rolled on, and when they woke the sun was shining and Michael’s bed was empty.

Chapter Nineteen

The capital city of the Novus Ordo was dark and wintry and Michael wasn’t dressed for it.

He had put on two shirts, heavy denim pants, and a Blue Jays baseball cap pulled down to cover the tips of his ears. But it wasn’t enough. Wind came down these narrow streets like a knife and the snow infiltrated his sneakers.