Jeff Rovin - Fatalis

"No," Hannah said. "Getting this story is all I need to do. So unless you mind-"

"Not at all," he said.

The computer hummed, the breakers broke, and Grand suddenly felt warm behind the ears. The space between him and Hannah was small and the silence made it seem even closer. Intimate.

He reached for his hamburger and unwrapped it. As he did he noticed Hannah absently work a finger through the top of her blouse. She was rubbing what looked like a piece of jewelry.

"What have you got there?" Grand asked. He had to say something.

"Excuse me?" Hannah said.

He pointed at her neck.

"Oh." She smiled and pulled out a tarnished pair of dog tags. "My good-luck token."

"Were you in the military?"

"No. They belonged to my dad, in Korea. See how they're dented?"

She leaned closer to show him.

"I see," he said.

There was a moment, just an instant, when everything else in the room and in Grand's brain disappeared. He blanked on everything but the smell of the woman and the soft light on her throat. He felt warm and probably looked red all along the jaw. He hoped she didn't notice.

Hannah sat back. "The dog tags deflected a piece of shrapnel the day my father got there," she went on. "So every day after that, when he woke up, the first thing he did was hold them in his fist and pray for Life and good luck. After the war he put them away until my junior year of college."

"What happened then?" he asked, the heat fading quickly from his neck and face.

"My dad read some of my stuff in the college paper," Hannah said. "He was convinced that one day someone I wrote about would try to kill me."

"So he gave them to you as a good-luck token."

"I thought it was a little over the top," Hannah said, "but I appreciated the thought. I mean, I didn't see my life being quite like a war zone-though I did start touching them for good luck."

"And now it's a habit."

"I do it without even thinking. I guess it's weird."

"Not at all," Grand said."Totems and amulets are as old as civilization. They can signify a unity with something- with your father, for example-or they can symbolize the protection of a deity."

"So I'm actually very cutting-edge New Age," she said. "Do you have anything like that? A rabbit's foot or a lucky squeezed penny with a picture of something on it?"

"No, but my father used to have this little ritual he did. He drove a bus in Los Angeles and every time he got in, he'd step up with his left foot first. When I asked him why he did that, he said the left was his heart side and it always made him think of life, his family, and how precious both of them were."

Hannah looked at him. "Now that's sweet."

"My father's a great guy," Grand said. "He used to love talking to the regulars on his route. He's totally outgoing. My mother liked staying home, taking care of the house, and listening to opera. But as different as they were, somehow they just fit together."

"And they love you."

He nodded.

"What was the best thing they ever did for you?" she asked.

He looked at her. "That's an odd question. It's a good one, but strange."

"So what's the answer?"

He smiled. "The best thing they ever did was to take me to the Grand Canyon when I was six years old," he said. "When I was a kid I loved to collect comic books. I loved the art and I couldn't get enough of the most dramatic characters: Thor, the Spectre, the Flash, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man. Other kids were into kickball and dodgeball, but I was overweight and I didn't enjoy them."

"You were overweight?" she said.

"Yeah."

"My God," she said. "You could be a poster child for fitness."

"That also came from what my folks did for me," he said. "The kids at school started calling me Grand Canyon because I was so fat. So I just shut myself off from everyone. Comic books became my universe and my mother and father decided that probably wasn't a good thing. So during the summer between first grade and second, my parents decided to show me that the Grand Canyon wasn't just big, it was majestic and wonderful. They packed me and my younger sister Victoria in a car and we drove out there. I'd grown up knowing the mountains and the ocean but I have never imagined actually seeing anything like the awesome alien worlds and colorful subterranean realms I'd read about in comic books."

"That must have blown you away."

"Completely," he said. "Not only that, but the people who lived there loved the same things I did. They made animal fetishes-dolls of frogs, turtles, bears, and other creatures that were supposed to have magical powers. They made little corn maidens-witches that lived since the beginning of time. And some of the inhabitants even carved and painted their own forms of comic books on cave walls and mountainsides, pictures of great hunters and extraordinary animals. I came home from there with a new sense of my name." He smiled. "I also came back with an armload of books, postcards, Brownie Starflash photographs, and a purpose. The mythology of ancient peoples-the stories of real superheroes-became my new passion. I got my pilot's license years later, but I never flew as high as I did on that trip."

Hannah was smiling. "Thanks for telling me that."

Grand smiled back. "Thanks for asking. I didn't mean to get carried away."

"You didn't. And I liked it. Do you still see your folks much?"

"On Christmas and their anniversary, mostly," Grand said. "They moved to Cornwall, England, which is where my sister lives and my mother's family came from. They have a little farmhouse there. They don't raise anything but they love it there. What about you? Do you see your parents?"

Hannah's smile twisted. "I'm expected to make the pilgrimage back to Rhode Island every few months. My mom keeps setting me up with this yacht-guy and that stock broker-guy because she's the only one at the club who doesn't have grandchildren and I don't have any siblings. My dad wants to make sure I'm still alive and that the newspaper isn't being printed in red ink."

"Is he one of your investors?" Grand asked.

"No, he's my only investor," Hannah said. "Nineteenth-century railroad money is underwriting my-"

Hannah stopped speaking as the computer pinged. Grand swung to the keyboard.

"What happened?" Hannah asked.

"I'll be damned, it found a match," Grand said.

"After just eight minutes?" She jangled the dog tags. "Thanks, Dad. What is it?"

Grand stopped the search and clicked on the highlighted file.

"It's in paleoanthropology, my department," he said. "That's why it came up so quickly."

"Doesn't your department only deal with ancient things?" Hannah asked. "Extinct races and animals?"

"Yes," Grand said.

The file opened and the database DNA map was displayed side by side with the original DNA fingerprint that Grand had given the computer. The database map was from a sample that Grand had discovered himself in Mexico, the only fossil minutely detailed enough to yield a complete DNA fingerprint.

He stared at the two sets for a second, the stacks of horizontal dashes that signified genetic sequences. The loci-the individual patterns-were identical in both samples. Everything was right.

Yet everything was wrong.

The sea seemed louder, the air somehow different as he tried to process what the search had turned up. Even the suggestion of it being true did, for an instant, make Grand feel as though two points in time had somehow folded back on themselves, like a ribbon being twisted round. The campus, thousands of years, all of human knowledge seemed to vanish for that instant.

The moment itself passed quickly, though the aftershocks stuck in his mind like the remnants of a nightmare.

Or a vision?

"So what is it?" Hannah pressed. "What does it say?"