Greg Bear - Quantico

The marker fell to the floor and Griff went back to watching the blank TV until a nurse came in, saw his focus, and turned it on.

By that time, the deputy was gone.

His thoughts faded to gray. His hand made random motions over the pad. The nurse put the marker and the pad on the table.

‘That’s enough of that,’ she said.

William sat on the hospital chair and looked over the recent stack of scratches and broken words. Rebecca was in the hallway; she had been on her slate for the last two hours. They were checked out, bags packed, ambulatory-as Griff had once called being ready for action.

Griff lay with the plastic sheet pinned up and his mouth finally free of tubes. Fresh patches of pale green Gro-Guide had been spread over his cheeks and nose. The fingers on his elevated arm twitched, which the doctor said was a good sign, but his free arm lay with hand fisted like a dead bug.

William touched the fist.

‘Silesia, Ohio. What does that mean, Griff?’

Griff turned his eyes in William’s direction. ‘Churches,’ he said, and moved his eyes back to the television screen mounted near the ceiling. The TV was on but with the sound turned down. Griff’s lips moved. William placed his face between Griff and the TV screen. ‘Hello, Griff?’

‘Off,’ Griff said in less than a whisper.

‘The TV? Sure.’ William used the bedside clicker to switch off the television. Griff continued to stare at the blank screen. William thought that had his father’s face been capable of expression, he might have been frowning in concentration. His eyes showed that much.

‘Torn,’ Griff whispered. His hand relaxed and started to move. His eyes switched left to look at his hand, then, for the first time, Griff looked at William. ‘Map.’

‘Torn map,’ William said.

‘In barn. Silesia.’

‘Map of Silesia…in the barn.’

‘Churches,’ Griff said. He was staring at the TV screen again.

‘Would you like the TV turned on?’

‘No.’

‘Would you like to sleep?’

Rebecca came into the room and stood beside William. Her presence did not seem to register. Griff relaxed his fist and wriggled his fingers. ‘Write.’

William put the marker in his hand and replaced the legal pad. Griff scrawled. ‘It still hurts to talk,’ William said.

‘I wonder what doesn’t hurt,’ Rebecca said.

Griff wrote: JWS IN SILESIA 0

‘Jews,’ William said.

Griff drew a definitive slash through the 0, emphasizing that he meant zero. Zero Jews in Silesia.

‘So?’

XTIAN

Then, JWS, again.

‘Christians and Jews.’

X THEM ALL.

‘I don’t think you mean kiss them all, do you?’ Rebecca moved closer. ‘Griff, let me tell you what we think we know, and you just make a slash if you agree, or a circle if you don’t. Right?’

Griff made a slash.

‘You think the Patriarch wanted to kill Jews, period. Wherever.’

Slash, then XTIANS 2

‘Lions, nothing,’ William said.

Slash. Then, 0. Griff’s entire arm trembled now. The writing became even harder to read.

JWS XTIANS

‘All right,’ Rebecca said, staring at the pad with a concentrated frown.

ALL

Griff was writing on the blanket now. William paused his hand and replaced the legal pad with one from a box beneath the bed.

JWS XTIANS

‘That about sums them up, Griff,’ William said. ‘So, where does Silesia figure?’

DESCNT FM JWS

Then, ALL CHLDRN JWS

‘All right.’

And then,

SILESIA

MOST CHURCHES

Griff’s forehead, just below his hairline-the only part of his face, besides eyes and lips, not layered with Gro-Guide-was beaded with sweat.

‘Right, Silesia,’ William said. ‘Most-greatest number of churches.’

In rapid strokes, firm now, and covering half the page, Griff wrote:

CLOSE 1

‘Close, but no cigar,’ William said. ‘The Patriarch hated Jews and Christians. All right. I’ll believe that-lots of hate to spread around. What about it, Griff?’

The hand wrote:

Y MAP

‘Good question,’ William said. ‘We can’t see it on the video-but then, the signal was cutting in and out.’

The marker was still going, but just making squiggles.

‘Griff?’ Rebecca said.

He could not keep his eyes open to look at the TV. Perhaps that was best. The blank TV was sucking away his memory. He did not know whether his son and the woman were still there or not. The woman looked familiar. He wondered if she might be his wife, but probably she wasn’t. Too young.

The funny thing was, his memories were falling out in broad patches, he could actually feel them sloughing away. The whole process was almost pleasant-bad departing along with the good, fleas with the fur, older memories fading the fastest.

‘He’s asleep.’

Rebecca shook hands with William. In the gray light outside the hospital, she looked ten years older than she had the day before, ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Give me your receipts.’

He reached into his pocket and handed her his envelope.

‘FBI always wants paper, itemized. Guys usually forget these,’ she said. ‘I’ll take care of them.’

‘If it’s going to cause any more trouble-’

‘No. You just got sucked along. Thanks for playing a good game. I’m glad your father is improving. It’s pretty amazing, actually.’

‘What do you think he was talking about-writing about, I mean?’ William asked.

‘Loose memories,’ Rebecca said.

‘What if it has something to do with the anthrax?’

‘You heard the man. There is no anthrax. Save yourself some grief and get on with your career.’

‘You said it was real. How can you just give it up, no matter what they say at Headquarters?’

Rebecca reached out to grip his shoulder, ‘Don’t ever grow up,’ she said.

William shook his head. ‘I suppose there’s not much chance of that.’

She climbed into the cab and he closed the door for her. The cab drove down the street and Rebecca did not look back.

That’s it, he thought.

What a whirlwind.

Northern Iraq

Fouad’s mother had had a confused notion about the Twelfth Imam, a concoction of fairy tales told by her grandmother or gathered from the stories in the many books and pamphlets that she had read in both Farsi and Arabic. ‘So we tell tales of exile and waiting,’ she had once said. ‘Who can it hurt?’

Her stories had grown more elaborate as the years had dragged on in London and the United States. She had invariably begun her stories with a formula: ‘So for now, this beautiful little boy-blessings and peace be upon him!-lives in a house made of ivory and precious stones, high atop a mountain, and day after day-and in appearance he is only five years old, this is a miracle! But it has been many centuries since and the doves and the Jinn who are Muslim protect him and carry messages to the towns and cities and prayers back-and day after day, he walks around the perimeter of this compound, which no satellite can ever see nor any pilot, nor any passenger in an airplane, and no eye that passes near can behold. And the air atop that mountain is so rarefied that no man who climbs to that altitude will remember what happened when he returns, it will all go blank in his thoughts, but for a beautiful impression of a child full of wisdom, waiting to rule under the banner of al-Mahdi, peace be upon him and his progeny. And that has been reported by some whom I believe. But of course your father does not.’

She had told Fouad other tales as well, about Jesus-who had not died on the cross but whose essence awaited in another protected place-’Some say it is like this Twilight Zone, only friendly and beautiful’-and how Jesus (peace be upon him) would visit the boy, and they would eat almond cakes and drink coffee and sweet tea and listen to the soughing of the doves and the screeching of the falcons and eagles who constantly circled over the compound. And then she had added that all the great prophets and men of history who were waiting to return would also visit the boy, the greatest among them but for the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him and his progeny.