Marc Zicree - Angelfire

“It was a life.”

“This is better.” She said the words with stark certainty

and meant them for both of us.

Our eyes met and locked. Detente.

“Yes, better,” I agreed.

“Doesn’t make us freaks, does it?”

“What if it does?”

She looked away. “Yeah, what if it does? Thanks, Doc.”

Her eyes met mine again at a slant. “You must have a real name.”

“Doc will suffice.”

She pursed her lips and gave me a look of grave disapproval.

“Viktor,” I said. “My name is Viktor. With a k .”

“Well, Viktor with a k , thanks.”

“For what?”

She didn’t answer, but stood and looked down at me and smiled. “Huh. Turnabout. Last time it was me flat on my back.”

The door opened. Colleen tensed; an instinctive movement. It was Magritte with a nurse and food.

“Well, I guess I’ll just go check on our progress,” Colleen told me. “Later.”

“Yes, later,” I agreed, but she had gone.

CAL

“So, you’re a lawyer, Mr. Griffin. A most maligned profession.”

Mary seated herself across from me in front of the fireplace in her office. Between us, a low coffee table of burnished pine held an odd collection of artifacts: arrowheads, a grinding rock, a rattle made of wood and leather.

“ ‘And He said, Woe to you, lawgivers also,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘for you load men with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.’ Gospel of Luke, Chapter Eleven, verse forty-six. Even God doesn’t think much of us as a tribe.”

“But I’ll bet you were one of the virtuous lawyers, weren’t you?”

I shook my head.

Her eyebrows rose. “A cynic?”

I laid a hand over my heart. “A fallen idealist.” “But repentant?”

I shrugged, smiling in the face of accusing memories. “Were you any good at it?”

I had to think about that. “I … yes. Yes, I was good at it. But not cutthroat enough to be truly great.”

“Are you cutthroat enough to take Enid away from us?” Mary McCrae didn’t pull punches.

“I don’t want to take him away. I just want to borrow him.” “For how long?”

“I don’t know. As long as it takes.”

“Days? Weeks? Months?”

“In months it could be too late.”

“For what?”

I had to search my head and heart for the right words. “I think the Source is gaining strength. I think that’s why things are continuing to change. At some point it may be too late for anyone to do anything.”

“So, if Enid were to go with you, you might be able to ‘pull the plug on the Source,’ as Goldie put it … or you might not.”

I nodded.

“And if not?”

“Then we do what we can and come back here to re — group.” If we’re still alive .

“Either way it could be weeks before Enid returns. If he returns. And while he’s gone-”

“I know. You’re stranded.”

“Worse. We have no consistent way to protect the flares, as you call them.”

“You protect them now while he’s away. How?”

She studied me, as if trying to decide how much to tell me. “A battery of sorts. Look, Mr. Griffin, let’s assume for a moment our… flares could be shielded inside the Preserve long enough for you to get where you’re going and back. Enid’s talent is essential to us in other ways. We wouldn’t survive long without it. Refugees aren’t the only thing that comes in from outside. Everything does: food, clothing, equipment. Even if I could ensure everyone’s safety, I must be able to open the door.”

I read her eyes. “Goldie,” I said.

“Goldie. You think that’s an unreasonable request?”

“No, but I can’t ask him to stay. I can’t afford to have him stay. He’s our bloodhound. He’s how we track the Source.”

She gazed at me for a moment. “So he said. No one else can do that?”

“The Change is selective, Mary. You know that better than anyone. It chose Goldie and Enid, but not me or Doc or Colleen.”

She was nodding. “Or me, for that matter. In my past life…” She paused, smiled. “Listen to me, sounding as if I’d died and been reincarnated. In my past life I was conversant, Mr. Griffin. I spoke the language. I knew the drill. I could perform because I knew the rules of engagement. There is a new language; I don’t speak it. There are new rules; I don’t know them. I don’t know the drill anymore-I’m winging it. It’s as if I’ve gone suddenly blind and Enid is my seeing-eye dog.”

“And Goldie is mine.”

“Your what?” Goldie was standing in the doorway of Mary’s office, looking from one of us to the other.

“Lucky rabbit’s foot,” said Mary wryly.

I decided to cut to the chase. “Goldie, Mary would need you to stay here and take Enid’s place if he comes with us.”

He was unsurprised. “Sure. Makes perfect sense, except that you’d be in dry dock without me.”

“You’re that sure?” Mary asked.

Goldie nodded. He wandered farther into the room, coming to squat by the coffee table.

“You couldn’t show them on a map?” she pressed him.

He chuckled, his eyes picking over the odds and ends on the tabletop. “Mary, I don’t know if you’ve tried using maps lately, but they can be awfully unreliable. Things aren’t where they belong. The Ohio is a whitewater theme park ride, and there are invisible corridors between Ohio and West Virginia. And it’s still changing. Isn’t it, Cal?” He glanced up at me, his eyes ice-pick sharp, reminding me that the Change hadn’t left me completely untouched.

If I were to twist suddenly , I wondered, what form would I take? I turned the thought aside.

“So you can’t just divine where it is on a current map and let them extrapolate?” Mary asked.

He picked up the rattle and fiddled with it, turning it over in his hands. It responded with a soft scrape of dried beans. He seemed fascinated by it. “I could point to … oh, South Dakota and say it’s there. I could even point to the Badlands and say it’s there. But the Badlands covers a hell of a lot of territory. The reality is: I feel a pull; I take a step. If it’s the right step, I feel the pull get stronger. If I take the wrong step…” He shrugged. “Right now, all I know is that the pull is coming from somewhere west of here.”

Mary sat back in her chair and looked at me. “So, that’s it, then. I can’t let Enid go. And you can’t let Goldie go. An impasse.”

I looked down at my hands. They were clenched, knuckles white. I relaxed them with effort. “Mary, I know you care about the people here. I understand that you want to protect them. But they’re a handful of people out of the millions- maybe billions-who are homeless, helpless, confused. When we left New York, it was coming apart at the seams. People were dying-worse, they were killing . Even people who didn’t change behaved like animals.”

“And your point?”

I looked up at her. “If Enid stays here, he can save a handful. If he goes with us, he could save billions.”

Mary flushed to the roots of her hair. “You overstate your case, Mr. Griffin. We have no way of knowing how widespread-”

“Did you hear what I said? We came here from Manhattan . We can vouch for the fact that the Change has affected New York, West Virginia, Ohio. Planes have fallen out of the sky, there’s no electricity, and the landscape in some places is as twisted as the people. You came here from farther west. Is it any different on this side of the Ohio?”

“Don’t push me, Mr. Griffin. And don’t try to manipulate me. Perhaps you think because I’m a woman you can do that. You’d be wrong. I can tell when I’m being jerked around.”