Connie Willis - Passage

“Between the wheelhouse and the what?” Greg demanded, but she had already wrenched free of his arm, was already running.

Mrs. Davenport told Richard she had spoken to Joanna only yesterday. “She has a message for you,” Mrs. Davenport said. “She said to tell you she is happy and doesn’t want you to mourn her, because Death is not the end. It is only a passage to the Other Side.”

“I need to know when the last time you saw her on this side was,” Richard insisted. “Did you see her on the day she was killed?”

“She was not killed,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Only her body. Her spirit lives eternally.”

I’m wasting my time here. Mrs. Davenport doesn’t know anything, Richard thought. But too much was at stake to turn on his heel and walk out. “Did you see her on the day her body was killed?” Richard asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. Davenport said. “I saw her walking toward a bright light, and in the light was an angel, extending his hand to her, leading her to the light, and I knew then that she had crossed over, and I was glad, for there is no fear or sorrow or loneliness on the Other Side, only happiness.”

“Mrs. Davenport,” Richard said, and her psychic powers must have told her his patience was at an end.

“I did not see her in her earthly body that day,” she said. “I hadn’t seen her for several weeks, even though I’d paged her a number of times.” She smiled beatifically. “Now I speak with her nearly every day. She said to tell you that you cannot find the truth of death, or life, through science. Instead, you must seek the light.”

“Did she also say, ‘Rosabelle, believe’?” Richard asked.

“Yes, now that you mention it, I do remember her saying that,” Mrs. Davenport said eagerly. “She said, ‘Tell Richard, “Rosabelle, believe.” ’ What does it mean?”

That you’re just as in touch with the Other Side as all those bogus spiritualists Houdini’s wife consulted, Richard thought. “I have to go,” he said.

“Oh, but you can’t,” Mrs. Davenport said. “You have to tell me what ‘Rosabelle, believe’ means. Is it some kind of secret code? What does it mean?”

“It means it isn’t Joanna you’ve been getting messages from, it’s Houdini,” he said.

“Really?” Mrs. Davenport said, thrilled. “You know, I had a feeling it was. Oh, I must tell Mr. Mandrake.”

Richard escaped while she was reaching for the phone, and went back up to the lab and science. He called up Amelia Tanaka’s scans, and then, after a moment, deleted the command. The secret, if there was one, lay in something Joanna had experienced, something Joanna had seen. He called up Joanna’s.

Her scan appeared on the screen, a pattern of purple and green and blue. Telling him something. “Is it some kind of secret code?” Mrs. Davenport had asked. It was, and like Houdini’s mind-reading code, it had to be deciphered a little at a time. He began going through her scans, analyzing the patterns grid by grid, mapping the areas of activity, the receptors, the neurotransmitters.

The last time he’d talked to Joanna, he’d told her about the presence of DABA in her and Mrs. Troudtheim’s scans. Could she have discovered something about—? But she didn’t know anything about inhibitors, and DABA was present in other NDEs.

Still, it was a place to start. He checked for its presence in each of Joanna’s sessions. It was present in high levels in her last three sessions and at trace levels in her first one. He went through Mr. Sage’s scans. No DABA at all, but high levels in all but one of Amelia Tanaka’s, and trace levels in the template scan. Wonderful.

He started through each session’s data, graphing the neurotransmitters. Cortisol in 60 percent, beta-endorphins in 80 percent, enkephalin in 30 percent. And a long list of neurotransmitters present in only one blood panel: taurine, neurotensin, tryptamine, AMP, glycine, adenosine, and every endorphin and peptide in the book.

All right, combinations of neurotransmitters, he thought, and started looking for endorphins in tandem, but there weren’t any. It’s totally random, he thought at ten-thirty, grabbed a stack of transcripts to read through, and went home.

But the answer wasn’t in Ms. Kobald’s “The angel touched my brow, and I knew Death was only the beginning,” or in Mr. Stockhausen’s “Brigham Young was standing in the light, surrounded by the elders.” It lay in the Titanic.

He looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. The Tattered Cover and Barnes and Noble would both be closed. Who would have books on the Titanic? Kit. She had said Joanna had asked her to find out about fires and fog, and Mr. Briarley had been an expert on the Titanic.

Richard picked up the phone and then put it down again. It was too late to call her, but as soon as he got to the hospital the next morning, he got her on the phone and said, “When you come to pick up the transcripts, can you bring me an account of the sinking of the Titanic?”

“Yes, but I’ve got a problem. Eldercare can’t send anyone over till this afternoon, and I really wanted to get started on the transcripts.”

“I could bring them over to your house,” Richard offered.

“No, I don’t want you to have to do that. Look, I can bring Uncle Pat with me, I just can’t leave him in the car by himself. Could you meet us in the parking lot at ten with the transcripts?”

“Sure,” he said, but, looking at the transcripts, he knew there was no way he could get them all down to the parking lot in one trip. He needed a box. He went down to Supplies to get one.

They didn’t have any. “Records might have one,” the pretty clerk said, smiling winsomely at Richard. “They go through a lot of computer paper.”

He went over to Records and told an imperative-looking woman with “Zaneta” on her nametag, “I need a box—” but she had already swiveled in her chair to a rack of forms.

“A box of what?” she said, her hand poised to pluck the correct form from its slot.

“Just a box. An empty box,” and amazingly, she handed him a requisition form.

“Fill out the size and number of boxes you need,” she said, pointing to a square on the form, “and your office number. It’ll take a week to ten days.”

“All I want is an empty computer box,” he said, and his pager went off. He switched it off. Zaneta pushed the phone toward him.

“I’ll call from my office,” he said and went down the hall and out a back door to the Dumpsters, found an empty IV-packs box, and took it back upstairs. Back in the lab, he filled it with the transcripts, keeping a close eye on the clock, and started down to the parking lot. At the elevator, he remembered he hadn’t answered his page, and lugged the heavy box all the way back to the lab on the off-chance it was Vielle who had called.

It wasn’t. It was Mrs. Haighton, asking if she could reschedule. He didn’t call her. He glanced at his watch and started down again, glad he already knew the quickest route to the parking lot and thinking he needed to add it to his map. Kit’s car was already pulled up next to the handicapped entrance, its motor running, when he got there. “Sorry I’m late,” Richard said, leaning in the window Kit rolled down.

“Do you have an excuse from your first-period teacher?” a man’s voice demanded, and Richard looked across her at the graying man he’d seen at the funeral. Joanna’s Mr. Briarley.

“Don’t just stand there,” Mr. Briarley said. “Sit down. We’re on page fifty-eight, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ ”