Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

The craft emerged from the channel onto the long stretch of the lake, where the wind was even stronger. Looking through the binoculars as best he could given the chatter, Frank saw a dark van stop at the far end of the pond, then, after a few moments’ pause, drive on.

He had made the same drive himself a couple of hours before, and it seemed to him it had taken about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, to get to the south end of the pond by way of the small roads through the woods. But he hadn’t been hurrying. At full speed it might take only half that.

But now the iceboat had the full force of the north wind behind it, funneling down the steep granite walls to both sides—and the gusts felt stronger than ever, even though they were running straight downwind. The boat only touched the ice along the edges of the metal runners, screeching their banshee trio. Caroline’s attention was fixed on the sail, her body hunched at the tiller and line, feeling the wind like a telegraph operator. Frank didn’t disturb her, but only sat on the gunwale opposite to the sail, as she had told him to do. The stretch of the lake they had to sail looked a couple of miles long. In a sailboat they would have been in trouble. On the ice, however, they zipped along as if in a catamaran’s dream, almost frictionless despite the loud noise of what friction was left. Frank guessed they were going about twenty miles an hour, maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty; it was hard to tell. Fast enough: down a granite wind tunnel, perfectly shaped to their need for speed. The dwarf trees on the steep granite slopes to each side bounced and whistled, the sun was almost blocked by the western cliff, blazing in the pale streaked sky, whitening the cloud to each side of it. Caroline spared a moment to give Frank a look, and it seemed she was going to speak, then shook her head and simply gestured at the surrounding scene, mouth tight. Frustrated.

“I guess them showing up so soon suggests I tipped them off somehow,” he said.

“Yes.” She was looking at the sail.

“I’m sorry. I thought I needed to warn you.”

Her mouth stayed tight. She said nothing.

The minutes dragged, but Frank’s watch showed that only eight had passed when they came to the south end of the lake. There were a couple of big houses tucked back in the forest to the left. Caroline pulled the tiller and boom line and brought them into the beach next to the pump house, executing a bravura late turn that hooked so hard Frank was afraid the iceboat might be knocked on its side. Certainly a windsurfer or catamaran would have gone down like a bowling pin. But there was nothing for the iceboat to do but groan and scrape and spin, into the wind and past it, then screeching back, then stopping, then drifting back onto the beach.

“Hurry,” Caroline said, and jumped out and ran up to Frank’s van.

Frank followed. “What about the boat?”

She grimaced. “We have to leave it!” Then, when they were in his van: “I’ll call Mary when I can get a clean line and tell her where it is. I’d hate for Harold’s boat to be lost because of this shit .” Her voice was suddenly vicious.

Then she was all business, giving Frank directions; they got out to a paved road and turned right, and Frank accelerated as fast as he dared on the still frozen road, which was often in shadow, and seemed a good candidate for black ice. When they came to a T-stop she had him turn right. “My car’s right there, the black Honda. I’m going to take off.”

“Where?”

“I’ve got a place. I’ve got to hurry, I don’t want them to see me at the bridge. You should head directly for the bridge and get off the island. Go back home.”

“Okay,” Frank said. He could feel himself entering one of his indecision fugues, and was grateful she had such a strong sense of what they should do. “Look, I’m sorry about this. I thought I had to warn you.”

“I know. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. It was good of you to try to help. I know why you did it.” And she leaned over and gave him a quick peck of a kiss before she got out.

“I was pretty sure my van is clean,” Frank said. “And my stuff too. We checked all of it out.”

“They may have you under other kinds of surveillance. Satellite cameras, or people just tailing you.”

“Satellite cameras? Is that possible?”

“Of course.” Annoyed that he could be so ignorant.

Frank shrugged, thinking it over. He would have to ask Edgardo. Right now he was glad she was giving him directions.

She came around the van and leaned in on his side. Frank could see she was angry.

“You’ll be able to come back here someday,” he said.

“I hope so.”

“You know,” he said, “instead of holing up somewhere, you could stay with people who would keep you hidden, and cover for you.”

“Like Anne Frank?”

Startled, Frank said, “Well, I guess so.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t stand it. And I wouldn’t want to put anyone else to the trouble.”

“Well, but what about me? I’m staying with the Khembalis in almost that way already. They’re very helpful, and their place is packed with people.”

Again she shook her head. “I’ve got a Plan C, and it’s down in that area. Once I get into that I can contact you again.”

“If we can figure out a clean system.”

“Yes. I’ll work on that. We can always set up a dead drop.”

“My friends from the park live all over the city—”

“I’ve got a plan!” she said sharply.

“Okay.” He shook his head, swallowed; tasted blood at the back of his throat.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said automatically.

“Something,” she said, and reached in to touch the side of his head. “Tell me what you just thought. Tell me quick, I’ve got to go, but I didn’t like that look!”

He told her about it as briefly as he could. Taste of blood. Inability to make decisions. Maybe it was sounding like he was making excuses for coming up to warn her. She was frowning. When he was done, she shook her head.

“Frank? Go see a doctor.”

“I know.”

“Don’t say that! I want you to promise me. Make the appointment, and then go see the doctor.”

“Okay. I will.”

“All right, now I’ve got to go. I think they’ve got you chipped. Be careful and go right back home. I’ll be in touch.”

“How?”

She grimaced. “Just go!”

A phrase which haunted him as he made the long drive south. Back to home; back to work; back to Diane. Just go!

He could not seem to come to grips with what happened. The island was dreamlike in the way it was so vivid and surreal, but detached from any obvious meaning. Heavily symbolic of something that could nevertheless not be decoded. They had hugged so hard, and yet had never really kissed; they had climbed together up a rock wall, they had iceboated on a wild wind, and yet in the end she had been angry, perhaps with him, and holding back from saying things, it had seemed. He wasn’t sure.

Mile after mile winged by, minute after minute; on and on they went, by the tens, then the hundreds. And as night fell, and his world reduced to a pattern of white and red lights, both moving and still, with glowing green signs and their white lettering providing name after name, his feel for his location on the globe became entirely theoretical to him, and everything grew stranger and stranger. Some kind of fugue state, the same thoughts over and over. Obsession without compulsion. Headlights in the rearview mirror; who could tell if they were from the same vehicle or not?

It became hard to believe there was anything outside the lit strip of the highway. Once Kenzo had shown him a USGS map of the United States that had displayed the human population as raised areas, and on that map the 95 corridor had been like an immense Himalaya, from Atlanta to Boston, rising from both directions to the Everest that was New York. And yet driving right down the spine of this great density of his species he could see nothing but the walls of trees lining both sides of the endless slot. He might as well have been driving south though Siberia, or over the face of some empty forest planet, tracking some great circle route that was only going to bring him back where he had started. The forest hid so much.