Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

The same…? The same person as what?

What do you mean, same as what ? Same as each other.

You’re saying…you’re saying they’re…the same as themselves?

Well, it’s not rocket science; not even brain surgery. Kind of a simple concept, actually: somebody’s been following them around. They shouldn’t have been going up and down the streets so obviously. They should have mixed things up, randomized. They’ve been suckers, predictable. Walked right into this.

Listen. I know this is going to sound a little out there. But there’s…one guy who keeps coming back.

Coming back? Back where?

You know what I’m saying. Following us. One house to the other. And I think I know who this person is.

This prompts her to say a number of fairly dopey things. Understandable: she’s freaked. Him, too, but he’s had a little more time to think about it. Bonnie is still back in beginner’s denial: How can anybody be following us? How could they get into the next house, put on a disguise, etcetera, all before we get there?

Pretty lame objections, that dissolve the minute you examine them. But Bonnie’s upset; she doesn’t want to make the rounds anymore. He should have guessed this would happen. She probably thinks her life is in danger. He tries to explain: the disguise artist is interested in one person and one person only: Mark Schluter. But Mark can’t convince her to stay with the search. Maybe that’s best, after all. The hunt has produced nothing, and who can say when this little cat-and-mouse game might turn violent? After all, there’s been violence already. Last February 20, to be precise.

He carries on alone. He works the Public Library and Moraine Assisted Living. But interestingly, few people are willing to give him handwriting samples, and every third person who does pretends they’re someone they aren’t. The disguise artist keeps trailing him. Someone he hasn’t seen in many years. There’s a sad droop about the eyes that gives it away every time. Like we’re all hosed and this lone, wise face is the only one to fully understand the fact. Danny boy. Riegel, the birdman of Kearney.

It occurs to Mark: his accident happened right at the very start of bird season. Sure, that could be just coincidence. But now that Mr. Migration has taken to following him around, it lends more than a little weight to a larger theory. What’s more: Riegel and his fake sister are rubbing genitals. It’s all too much. Mark doesn’t know exactly what to make of it, but he’s got to make something soon, or it’s going to make him.

He confronts the artificial Karin. Nothing to lose. He’s in the crosshairs already. He waits until she shows up at the would-be Homestar with her latest bag of unrequested groceries. Then he asks her point-blank, before she can confuse him: Just tell me, honestly. What is your friend the nature man up to? Don’t lie to me; we’ve known each other a while now, right? Been through some rough times.

She gets all shy, holds her elbows and studies her shoes like they just jumped onto her feet. I don’t know, exactly, she claims. Strange, isn’t it? How he keeps coming back into my life at different crises? First when Cappy died, then Mom, and now—

Kind of strange how he keeps coming back into my life. Every time I try to talk to anyone about my little message from heaven?

She stares at him, like at a firing squad. Guilty, as charged. But then she goes into a major stall routine. Following you around? What are you talking about? She starts to cry, one step away from an admission of guilt. But then she turns worse than worthless. She gets on her cell phone and calls Bonnie, trying to synchronize their stories. Ten minutes later, it’s two against one, with both of the women carrying on about the most irrelevant shit, handing him the phone and telling him it’s Daniel on the other end, just say a few words to Daniel…

He’s got to get out of this place, someplace he can think. He’s got a little spot down by the river where he can just sit in the flats and let those hundreds of muddy, liquid miles wash over him. He starts south, on foot. He hasn’t been on the Platte since last fall. He’s been afraid to discover that somebody’s jacking with the river as well. He leaves the house without his hat, and the sun scalds him. Birds track him from tree to tree. A pack of grackles, animal spies. They make an entirely uncalled-for racket, like they’ve got a problem with him. Their so-called songs echo in his head, going gaw, gaw, go, goat-head, goat-head, goathead …

And then the words are already there: the words he was saying, just before his truck took to the air. Goat-head may be the Ram, like he was saying the truck’s name. But no. Goat-head : something more, if his life means anything. He gets to the edge of River Run Estates, slips through the fringe of sycamores. He reaches the long cut, a mile and a half of headland thick with black flies and pollen, nothing to protect him from the elements. The river recedes as he walks toward it. The grackles get on his case. Goat-head, goat-head.

Go ahead.

The force of it sits him down smack in a patch of prickleweed. He was saying, Go ahead . Or someone was saying it to him, in the cab of the truck. He’d picked up some angel hitchhiker, someone who survived the flipped truck, walked away from the wreck back to town, to call in the disaster. And afterward, followed him to the hospital, to leave the note, instructions for Mark Schluter’s future. An angel hitchhiker, telling him, Go ahead . Go where? Toward the wreck; through the wreck. Here.

He stands up, shaky with insight. In the singed green of this field, black spots rise and his vision tunnels. His body wants to go down, but he fights upright. He turns back toward Farview, jogging. His brain spurts like a hot coal stabbed with a poker. He reaches the fake Homestar, doubled over by a stitch in his side. How did he get so out of shape? He bursts in the front door, eager to tell anyone, even people he probably shouldn’t tell. A manic Blackie Two almost knocks him down, already knowing, with animal telepathy, about this breakthrough. The woman is still there, sitting at his desk, at his computer, like she owns the place. She swings around, guilty, caught by his return. Even redder than usual, pushing the hair back, like: Oh, nothing. Trying to hack his credit card cookies or such. She logs off quickly and turns toward him. Mark? Mark, are you okay?

Unbelievable question. Who in the whole godforsaken world is okay? It may be death, to tell her what he’s discovered. She might be anyone. He still has no idea whose side she’s on. But they’ve grown close over these months, in adversity. She feels something for him, he’s sure of that. Sympathy or pity, seeing what he’s up against. Maybe enough to make her break ranks and join him. Or maybe not. Telling her may be the stupidest thing he’s ever done, since whatever he did to lose his real sister. But finally, he wants to tell her. He needs to tell her. Logic’s got nothing to do with it. It’s about survival.

Listen, he says, excited. Your fiancé? Boyfriend, whatever. See if you can find out what he was doing the night of my accident. Ask him if the words go ahead mean anything to him.

For a moment, Weber couldn’t find his left arm or shoulder.No sense of whether his hand was underneath him or above him, palm up or down, flung out or drawn in. He panicked, and the alarm congealed him, bringing him almost alert enough to identify the mechanism: awareness before the full return of the somatosensory cortex from sleep. But only when he forced his paralyzed side to move could he locate all his parts again.

An anonymous hotel, in another country. Another hemisphere. Singapore. Bangkok. A slightly more spacious version of those Tokyo morgue hotels, with businessmen filed away in drawers, rented by the night. Even when he remembered where he was, he couldn’t credit it. Why he was there lay beyond answer. He read the clock: an arbitrary number that might have meant either day or night. He flipped on the diffident bedside light and headed to the bathroom. A hot shower would help to disperse his lingering displacement. But his body came back only tentatively. None of the bizarre neurological insights acquired over the course of his professional life unsettled him more than this simplest one: baseline experience was simply wrong. Our sense of physical embodiment did not come from the body itself. Several layers of brain stood in between, cobbling up from raw signals the reassuring illusion of solidity.