Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

“Sometimes I think it was, you know: Mark Schluter. The other one. The guy who used to work for a living. The sure one, who could pass all your little trick tests without even thinking. That’s who was out there, in the middle of nowhere. I ran that guy over. Killed him.”

He’d begun to double himself. This boy-man might throw no end of light on consciousness. They came back through the fields to River Run, the Homestar. They sat side by side on the concrete front steps, Mark’s legs spread too wide. The dog, Blackie Two, came up on its chain and stuck its muzzle into Mark’s hands. Mark petted and ignored it at random. The dog whimpered, unable to decode human whim. Nor could Weber. He’d sworn off anything that could be accused of exploitation. Yet surely empathy with Mark didn’t preclude a wider care. Perhaps science wasn’t over yet. He said nothing for as long as he could. Then he asked, “Would you like to come to New York for a while?” A full workup at the Medical Center, state-of-the-art equipment, the luxury of time, lots of talented researchers, interpretations less vested than his own.

Mark leaned away from him, astonished. “New York? What, and have some airplane slam me?” Weber told him there would be no danger. Mark just scoffed, well past conning. “You guys are big on anthrax out there, too, right?”

Nothing mattered but trust. “I hear you,” Weber said. “Probably safer to stick around here.”

Mark shook his head. “I’m telling you, Doc. It’s a weird world. They can hit you, wherever you are.” He studied the horizon for the clue that had to appear there, eventually. “But I do appreciate the offer. I might’ve been dead by now without you, Shrinky. You and Barbara are the only ones who have truly cared what happens to me.”

Weber flinched at the words, the most delusional Mark had spoken all afternoon.

Mark’s arms began to shake, as if his body had gone terribly cold. “Doc, I’ve got a really bad feeling about my sister. It’s been like, what? Half a year. Not even a word. Nobody willing to say what happened to her. You have to understand: she’s been checking up on me weekly since I was old enough to wet the bed. God knows why, but she’s always cared for me. She and this guardian both, disappearing without a trace. Even if they have her locked up, she’d have found some way to get a message to me by now. I’m beginning to think I’ve hosed my sister. Gotten her in trouble, maybe even killed, just for being related to me. You don’t suppose…it couldn’t have been her who…? She must be…let’s face it. I think she’s probably…”

“Tell me about her,” Weber said, to keep him from worse speculation.

Mark sucked the air and a sharp syllable of laugh shot from him. “Don’t ever tell her I said this, but there’s nothing at all to her. Simplest person in the world. She just needs petting. Give her, like, three-fifths of a gold star and she’ll go through fire for you. See, we had this mom? Nothing short of Jesus’ starting five was good enough for her. She and my sister had what you might call issues. You miserable thrill-seeking liberal ingrate, yada yada. Nine months of morning sickness followed by the most excruciating pain of my life, just so you can go and seduce your Physical Education teacher, yada yada yada. So Karin? She decides she’s going to be perfect. Find out what everyone expects of her, and serve it up to a T. Even a total stranger’s disappointment just kills her. Simpler than a household pet, though. Just needs two things: Love me, and tell me I’m doing right. Don’t call me a shiftless shit-kicker. Hey; maybe that’s three things. How about you, Doc? You got any of the sibling thing going? Hey: don’t take so long answering. It ain’t a trick question or anything.”

“A brother,” Weber said. “Four years younger. He’s a cook out in Nevada.” If he was still out there. If he was still alive. Weber had last heard from Larry two years before, with too much detail about the Liberty Riders’ annual “Lead, Follow or Get the Hell out of the Way Fest.” Fanatical conservative national motorcycle organization: Lawrence Weber’s whole life. Sylvie nagged Weber every few months to call, make some effort to stay in touch. “A good man,” Weber claimed. “He reminds me a little of you.”

“No shit?” The notion tickled Mark. “Your folks?”

“Gone,” Weber said. More than half true. His father, dead of a stroke when three years younger than Weber was now. His mother with advanced Alzheimer’s, in a Catholic assisted-care facility in Dayton where he visited once a season. He and Sylvie still conversed with her twice a month over the phone, dialogues out of Ionesco.

“Sorry to hear that,” Mark said, and by way of consolation invited Weber in for dinner. The simple kindness stabbed at Weber. How many tiny mental courtesies persisted in their own obscure loops, oblivious to the disasters that hammered them? Dinner was beers out of the bottle and frozen lasagna reheated in a deep aluminum tin. “Something the surrogate sister brought over. Eat at your own risk.”

“Are you okay?” Sylvie asked that night. “You sound different, somehow. Your voice is very…I don’t know. Unfolded. Like a philosopher or something.”

“Philosopher. Now there’s a career future.”

“Makes me nervous, Man.”

In fact, he felt different, even to himself: pooled somewhere outside the realm of public judgment. “Strange, isn’t it? Two round trips, four thousand miles each, just to see a man who really only wants me to be a detective.”

“And they say doctors no longer make house calls.”

“But what a case! Medicine needs to know about this.”

“Medicine should know lots of things. I’m glad you’re doing this. I know you, Man. This one’s been preying on you.”

“Wife? Remind me to call my brother when I get home.”

After the call, he went out and walked into town, block after gingerbread block, under the amber globe of streetlights, as if on his way to some obscure assignation. Autumn thickened the air. The year was drawing into itself, dense with preparation. Massive maples flared up on their way to going dormant. A restless insect swarm blared its band-saw death chorus. He stood at the corner of four white-wood A-frames, one flickering with nineteenth-century glow, two lit blue by television, and the fourth dark. He’d never felt more eager to find out. Find out what , he couldn’t say. What was he doing back? Something that autumn promised to answer.

He was still walking at random when the street went dark. He took four full seconds to think: power failure. The thrill of thunderstorms and ambulances came over him. He looked up; the sky was deep in stars. He’d forgotten how many there could be. Washes of them, spilling in streams. He’d forgotten how rich darkness looked. He could see, but poorly, without color, plunged into achromatopsia. Both of the achromats he’d interviewed had raged against the very words, red, yellow, blue . They lived for the night world, where they were superior to the color-sighted and merely ordinary. Weber fumbled in the dark for blocks, his sense of direction failing. When the lights surged back on, he felt the banality of sight.

The next day, Mark took him fishing. “Nothing fancy, man. Crude stuff. Maybe previous Mark might have taught you how to tie kick-ass midges and sculpins. But we’re talking commercial lures today. Scented rubber worms dragging around their lazy, fake-invertebrate barbed asses through the water until some loser crappie takes a hit. Anybody can handle it. Little kids. Neuroshrinkists. What have you.”

The fishing spot was secret, as all fishing spots are. Weber had to swear a vow of silence before Mark would take him. Shelter Lake, on private land, turned out to be little more than a dew pond with delusions of grandeur.