Elisa
had no trouble picking up her stress on the word "all."
But, of course, Jacqueline was right.
If
I see Zig Zag, they should, too. Otherwise, they'll never believe me.
"I'll
record them and make copies. I'll need some media."
"So
sorry," Carter quipped. "I
completely
forgot
to pick up any CDs at the supermarket in Yemen."
"There
must be a CD around somewhere," Elisa said.
Carter
lit a cigarette and affected a smooth, radio announcer's voice.
"They'd thought of
everything...
except
the CDs." He chuckled huskily.
"Maybe
there's one in Silberg's lab," Blanes said.
"I'll
go see," Victor offered. He walked out of the room, avoiding the
tangle of coaxial cables coiled up on the floor like dead snakes.
"It's
all going to be OK," Elisa said.
It
was a lie, of course, but they all knew that. She thought they might
just think of it as a defective truth.
CARTER
pulled
the metal door shut.
Like
a tombstone seen from inside the grave.
She
was all alone now. All she could hear was the moaning wind. It was
like being in a hermetic diving bell several fathoms under the sea.
An immense, boundless fear gnawed away at her. She looked at the
blinking control lights, the flashing computers, and tried to
concentrate on her calculations.
She
knew the exact time that had to be explored. The clocks on the
computers had stopped on the night of October 1, 2005, at exactly
4:10:12. In round numbers, that worked out to three hundred million
seconds ago. She stopped a moment to reflect on how much her life had
changed over those three hundred million seconds.
Elisa
was sure that she'd calculated the exact energy required to open two
or three strings from just before that time. The camera behind her
was filming, and she'd send its footage to the accelerator to make it
collide with the calculated energy. Then she'd recapture the new beam
using the open time strings and upload it onto the computer for
viewing.
And
then, we'll just have to see,
she
thought.
We'll
just have to see.
She
checked over equations again and again, scanning the columns of
numbers and Greek letters, trying to ensure there were no errors.
Now
go correct that damn error!
What
had Blanes said in class that day?
Physics
equations are the key to our happiness, our fears, our lives, and our
deaths.
She
was convinced she had the right solution.
The
yellow lines indicated that the accelerator had reached the
configuration levels it needed. In the growing darkness of the
control room, those lines seemed to bisect Elisa's sweat-drenched
face and her half-naked body, her tank top now tied just beneath her
breasts. Unfathomably, it was getting hotter. Carter said it was due
to the low-pressure system and the storm. The wind in the palm trees
sounded like a swarm of locusts. It hadn't started raining yet, but
she could hear the sea roar.
The
numbers all added up: 100 percent. She heard a familiar buzzing. The
initial process had finished. The accelerator was now preparing to
receive the image and send it into gyration at something approaching
the speed of light.
Feverishly,
she began to key in the data for the amount of energy calculated.
This
just might work. This just might identify Zig Zag.
But
what would she do if it did? What would she do if she found out Zig
Zag was a split that had come from David, or Carter, or Jacqueline
... or herself? Hadn't Blanes been right when he said that getting it
right would be as bad as getting it wrong? What were they going to
do?
She
pushed those nagging doubts aside and focused on the screen.
31
BLANES
removed
the batteries from the transmitter.
"Take
the batteries out of everything you've got on you: cell phones, PDAs,
all of it. Carter, have you checked the flashlights and the kitchen
sockets?"
"I
unplugged all the appliances. And this is the only flashlight that
still has batteries in it."
Carter
darted back and forth with flashlight in his right hand, his left one
extended like a beggar, his palm full of round, flat coinlike
batteries. He approached Victor, who held up his wrist and smiled.
"Mine's
a windup."
"What?
Come on..." Carter looked him up and down in the flashlight
beam. "Here we are in 2015 and you don't even have a computer
watch?"
"I
have
one,
I just don't use it. This works fine. It's an Omega classic. Used to
be my grandfather's. I like mechanical watches."
"You're
full of surprises, Father."
"Victor,
did you check the labs?" Blanes asked.
"There
were two laptops in Silberg's. I took the batteries out."
"Good.
I told Elisa to disconnect the accelerator and unplug the computers
she's not using," Blanes said, cupping his hands for the
batteries Jacqueline was handing him. "We should stash all this
someplace."
"Leave
it on the console." Carter had gone to the back of the room,
leaving them in darkness.
"David..."
It was Jacqueline's quivering voice. She'd sat down on the floor. "Do
you think he'll make his next move ... soon?"
"Well,
the nights are riskier because the lights are on. But we really don't
know when he'll attack, Jacqueline."
Carter
came back and found a spot on the floor, too. The four of them took
up less than half the space in the screening room. They were all
crowded together by the screen, as though sharing a small tent.
Blanes sat in a chair backed up against the screen, Carter and
Jacqueline were on the floor, and Victor sat in another chair
opposite Blanes. It was pitch black, except for the yellow beam of
Carter's flashlight, and hot as a sauna.
At
one point, Carter sat his flashlight down and took two black objects
from his pants pocket. Victor thought they looked like pieces of a
faucet.
"I
suppose I'm allowed to use this," he said, screwing the pieces
together.
"Won't
do you any good," Blanes warned, "but as long as there are
no batteries, go ahead."
Carter
set the gun in his lap. Victor realized that the ex-soldier was
staring at his pistol with a degree of passion he'd never shown the
others. Suddenly, he picked up the flashlight and tossed it. It was
so unexpected that rather than trying to catch it, Victor tried to
move out of the way, and it hit him on the arm. He heard Carter laugh
as he bent to pick it up.
Idiot,
Victor
thought.
"That
means it's your turn, Father. Thanks to your windup watch, you win
the prize: first shift on guard duty. Call me at three if I fall
asleep. I'll be on second shift the rest of the night."
"Elisa
will have news before then," Blanes said. They sat in silence
for a long time, their shadows like the mouths of a tunnel projected
onto the wall in the flashlight's gleam. Victor was sure what he was
hearing was the rain. There were no windows in the screening room
(despite its drawbacks, it was the only place where they could all
stretch out comfortably), but he could hear what sounded like
interference, the crackling of a TV that wasn't tuned in. And the
wind, howling over the background noise. And closer, within the gloom
of those four walls, the sounds of labored breathing. Sobbing. Victor
realized Jacqueline had buried her head in her hands.
"He
can't attack now, Jacqueline, not this time...," Blanes soothed,
trying to convey confidence. "We're on an island. There's
nothing for miles around: the only energy he's got are the batteries
in that flashlight, and Elisa's computer. It won't be tonight."
The
paleontologist looked up. Victor no longer thought she was a
beautiful woman. She was a wounded, quivering wreck.
"I'm
next," she said in an almost inaudible voice. Victor heard her,
though. "I know it..."
No
one tried to console her. Blanes sighed and leaned back against the
screen.
"How
does he do it?" Carter asked, stretching. He placed his hands on
the wall, behind his neck, and his elbows out to the side. Chest
hairs peeked out from his T-shirt. "How does he kill us?"
"As
soon as we're sucked into his time string, we're his," Blanes
explained. "In such a short space of time, as I explained, if
we're inside a time string, we aren't 'whole,' we're not 'solid.' So
our bodies and everything around us are unstable. We're like a jigsaw
puzzle of atoms. All Zig Zag has to do is take the pieces out one by
one, or move them around, or destroy them. He can do that at will,
the same way he makes use of the energy in the lights. Clothes and
everything else outside the time string and its current just
disappear. There's nothing to protect us; there are no weapons we can
use to fight back. Inside the time string, we're as naked and
defenseless as newborn babes."
Carter
sat stock-still, as though he'd stopped breathing.
"How
long does it last?" He took a cigarette from his pants pocket.
"The pain. How long do you think it lasts?"
"No
one's come back to tell us." Blanes shrugged. "The only
version we have is Ric's. He said it felt like he was in there for
hours, but his split didn't have anything even
approaching
the
force of Zig Zag."
"Craig
and Nadja survived for months," Jacqueline whispered, hugging
her legs to her like she was cold. "That's what the autopsies
tell us ... Months or years, suffering intense pain."
"But
we don't know what happens to the consciousness, Jacqueline,"
Blanes added quickly. "Their perception of time might be
entirely different. Subjective and objective time. Remember, there
are differences. It could all be incredibly fast from a consciousness
perspective—"
"No,"
Jacqueline replied. "I don't think so."
Carter
hunted in his pockets for something, maybe a lighter or a box of
matches. He still had the unlit cigarette between his lips. But then
he gave up, took it from his mouth, and stared down at it as he
spoke.
"I've
seen a lot of torture in my time. Been on both sides of it, too. In
1993, I worked in Rwanda training Hutu paramilitary groups in Murehe.
When the war kicked off, they accused me of being a traitor and I was
tortured. One of the chiefs told me they'd be nice and slow about it:
start with my feet and work their way up to my head. First, they
ripped off my toenails with sharpened sticks." He smiled. "I've
never felt anything as painful in my whole fucking life. I cried, I
pissed in my pants it hurt so bad, but the worst thing was knowing
that they'd just begun. Those were just my feet, two dried-out crusty
things on the very bottom of my body ... I thought I'd never make it.
Thought I'd lose my mind before they got to my waist. But after two
days, another group I'd trained took the village, killed the men
holding me, and let me go. That was when I realized that there's a
limit to what a human being can tolerate. At the military academy
where I did my training, they used to say, "If the pain is
enduring, you can bear it. If it's unbearable, it will kill you and
it won't last." He let out one of his weary, sarcastic chortles.
"Knowing that was supposed to help us through tough times. But
this..."