Richard Powers - Bewilderment

“Inner,” I said. “Definitely inner.”

Okay. So, maybe the millions of planets that never launch the telescope are just as lucky as the millions of planets that do .

“Maybe,” I said, and turned my head away from him.

That one, there . He pointed. What’s happening on that one?

I told him. “On that one, people can split in half and grow back as two separate people, with all their memories intact. But only once in life.”

His arm swung to the far side of the sky. And that one? How about over there?

“On that one, chromatophores all over a person’s skin always give away exactly what they’re feeling.”

Cool . I’d like to live there .

We flew around the universe for a long time. We traveled so far that the waxing moon, two days from full, rose over the mountains’ rim and blotted out the stars. He pointed to one of the last bright lights remaining. Jupiter.

On that one? All your memories never get weaker, and they never go away .

“Ouch. A broken bone? A fight you have with somebody?”

The way Mom’s skin smelled. Seeing that heron .

I looked where his finger pointed. The light was dimming in the full wash of the moon. “Do you want to go there?”

His shoulders lifted off his sleeping pad. I don’t know .

Something called in the woods. It wasn’t a bird and it wasn’t any mammal I’d ever heard. The cry pierced the dark and hung above the roar of the river. It might have been pain or joy, grief or celebration. Robbie jerked and grabbed my arm. He hushed me, although I made no sound. The shout came again, farther away. Another call provoked another response, overlapping in the wildest chords.

Then it stopped, and the night filled up with other music. Robin turned and grabbed me harder, his face lit by moonlight. Every creature alive would feel all things they were built to feel.

Listen to that , my son told me. And then the words that would never weaken and never go away: Can you believe where we are?

IN THE DARK OF OUR SNUG TENT, ten inches from my face, Alyssa whispered, Why does it matter so much?

We’d hiked for eight hours until my feet bled. We’d swum together in the wild cascades. My exhaustion was so complete that I had struggled to light the camping stove and cook our dinner. I can’t remember what we ate. I only remember how she asked for more.

I wanted to collapse facedown on my inflatable pillow and die for a week. She wanted to keep me up all night and talk philosophy. Does it make any difference at all if it happened anywhere else? It happened here. That’s everything, right?

I was brain-dead. I could barely get my subjects to agree with my verbs. “Once is an accident. Twice is inevitable.”

She pressed my chest and said, I like this marriage business . She sounded surprised, as if that discovery settled all matters.

“Find any trace of it anywhere, and we’ll know that the universe wants life.”

She laughed so hard. Oh, the universe wants life, mister . She rolled over on top of me, compact but planetary. And it wants it now.

For a minute, we were everything. Then we weren’t. I must have fallen asleep afterward, because I woke again to an otherworldly sound. In the dark, someone was singing. I thought at first it was her. Three fluid, looping notes: the briefest melody trying out endless new keys. I looked at Aly. Her eyes in the darkness were wide, as if the wistful, three-note tune were Beethoven. She grabbed my arm in mock-panic.

Honey! They’ve landed. They’re here!

She knew the name of the singer. But I failed to ask her, and now I’ll never know. She listened, until the bird went silent. The wake filled at once with the hum of other creatures, a mesh spreading in all directions through the six different kinds of forest surrounding us. She held still in simple ecstasy, the one our son would for a moment learn.

This is the life , she said. If I could keep this with me forever …

Such a small difference, between forever and once .

I DRIFTED OFF, WITHOUT KNOWING. The zipper of the tent opening woke me. I couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten dressed and halfway out of the tent before I knew it. “Robbie?”

Shhh! he said. I couldn’t figure out why.

“Are you okay?”

I’m good, Dad . Super-good .

“Where are you going?”

Number one, Dad. Be right back . In the moonlight, his hand twisted like a spinning globe, his old signal to me that all was well. I lay my head down on my inflatable pillow, pulled the lip of my winter-weight bag around my neck, and fell back asleep.

The silence woke me. Right away I knew two things. First, I’d been asleep for longer than I thought. And second, Robin wasn’t there.

I dressed and left the tent. The grass we’d pitched in was damp with dew. His shoes and socks lay by the opening. The flashlight, too: no need for it. The moon in the clear sky turned the Earth into a blue-gray aquatint. Navigating the roots and rocks was as easy as walking by streetlight.

I called but heard nothing back, over the sound of the rapids. Rounding the site, I shouted louder. “Robin? Robbie! Buddy?” A muffled moan came from the stream, a few feet away.

I reached the bank in seconds. In the silver light, the rapids were a jumble of shards. He’d told me something once: The darker it gets, the better I can see out of the sides of my eyes . My head swiveled from downstream to up. He was curled over a boulder in the middle of the flow, embracing it.

Five feet into the current, I hit slickness. A stone turned under my foot and I tumbled. I struck with my right knee and left elbow, scraping both open. The freezing surge washed me ten yards downstream before I caught hold of another large rock. I crawled back upstream, working from stone to stone on my hands and knees. Every foot seemed to take minutes. Nearing the boulder, I saw everything. He’d been dismantling cairns. Turning the river back into a safe home.

He was soaked up to the top of his rib cage. His whole body was quaking. He tried to reach out, but his arm swung limply in the air. Slurred sounds came from his mouth, nothing like words. His whole body shook under my hand like the flank of a frightened beast. He felt so cold.

Time came apart. I couldn’t decide what I was supposed to do. His pulse felt so weak I was afraid to lift him. If I tried to crawl back with him through the cascades, it would have meant submerging him in freezing water for longer than he might survive. I gathered him up to carry him to the bank. On my second step, I lost my footing and dunked him in the water. Terrible noises came out of him. No one could have crossed those wet rocks upright, with a weight in their arms.

I lifted him onto the tiny island he’d been hugging and held him in place while I climbed up next to him. I stripped off his pants and shirt, taking forever to get the wet clothes off his skin. His T-shirt clung in a heap on the narrow boulder; his tiny jeans slipped off and washed downstream. His shivering got worse. I tried to dry him, but only succeeded in speeding the chill of evaporation.

I fought to stay calm and concentrate. I needed to wrap him in something warm, but my own clothes were wet from my fall. His breath came out in shallow, labored sighs. I tucked his knees to his chest, removed my soaked shirt, and huddled my torso around him. But my skin was as cold and wet as his.

I lifted my head. The world was silvered and still. Even the river tumbled too slowly to be real. We were miles from the trailhead. Mountains blocked all cell coverage. The nearest person was across the ridge. And still I yelled. My screaming distressed Robin, and his moaning got worse. Even if someone by some miracle heard me, they’d never find us in time.