Mercy 6

“It’ll be a string of coordinates. A bunch of numbers.”

“I like numbers. And I have someone who will be able to read them.”

“You have someone?”

Mendenhall was tempted to follow that direction, to make girl talk. Just something to convince herself she was normal enough, not mad. Instead she returned to business. “How many crush lines can there be?”

“Not many. Two or three. They would slide into one. The one you suggest would be new to my research. If it’s really there, then maybe it just started.”

“Just started?”

“Or it’s ending. A crescendo of sorts. Time is the hardest thing to figure. Shoemaker-Levy went on for thirty years, and we only noticed it for a few last days. The crescendo. No one looks for this stuff. Just a few trombone players like myself. A thousand hotshots around the world can locate a particle of dark matter for you, pinpoint it in some salt cave deep underground. Smash atoms and isolate their particles. Or they can show you the nearest black hole or measure the microwave background of the universe. But no one looks for regular matter, dust. Even when it’s hitting us in the face.

Just me and some others. We’re just not sexy enough.”

“But you’re here. Right here in this particular spot. Here now because you know where the crush line is. Today it runs through this city.”

Covey offered one deliberate nod, a patient’s reluctant answer.

“So,” said Mendenhall, “we’re either in the beginning, middle, or end?”

“Probably near to the end.”

“You mean it will worsen?”

“Thicken,” said Covey. “Though quicken is more accurate.”

52

“There’s someone in my lab.”

Mendenhall checked the doorway, the line of microscopes, the collecting bowls. Then she turned to Covey, who pointed to the ceiling.

“The lab up there. Not in here.” She motioned to one of the side laptops. The screen showed a man in Covey’s fifth floor office. He was scanning the room, looking at the gels.

“But you locked up.”

“People get through locked doors.” Covey leaned closer to the screen. “That’s why I have this.” She pressed her hands above the laptop.

Mendenhall was skeptical, started to speak but was interrupted.

“You’re thinking I’m nuts. But I’m not crazy. See? Someone broke in.” With her cell she got ready to notify security.

Mendenhall leaned in, studied the man. A drunk, paralyzed, dragged himself to her on his elbows. A hitchhiker, filed into a half person, spoke to her. Albert Cabral sat on the floor and asked her how she had found him. Lual Meeks curled himself into the brass cup of the boiler, kept his eyes open as his nerves whiplashed to death. The man in Covey’s study was from government security, one of those new guys sent in after containment. He wasn’t in uniform, but he had the same haircut and expression as the others, the ones she had encountered. He wore a t-shirt and sports jacket, like a lot of men in this city. She hated that look.

“He’s looking for me.”

“Why follow you?” asked Covey. “Why not just take you?”

They watched the man look at Covey’s gels as he answered his cell. He received a text, replied.

“They want to see what I’m thinking.”

“Why don’t they just take you and ask what you’re thinking?”

“Because they know I wouldn’t tell them. And they don’t want anyone to know, to call attention. Right? Like you said, it’s a virus.”

The man left Covey’s office. Her laptop showed the empty room for a moment, then went blank.

“They probably know what you’re thinking now,” said Covey.

Covey offered two choices for a change of clothes. Mendenhall took the formal one, a moss-colored cocktail number. When Mendenhall started to slip into the dress, Covey shook her head.

“That sports bra thing won’t work underneath.”

Mendenhall shrugged hard, glared.

“Go without,” Covey told her.

Covey watched her remove the bra and fling it across the lab.

“There’s no treatment for fate, Dr. Mendenhall. Fate is fatal.

Unstoppable, undeterred … Did you just need to escape?”

Mendenhall worked into the dress. The fit was close enough to right. “No. I need to show them I’m right. Even if I don’t get to act on it. And I needed to bring something in, a patient to make my point. I needed to go see the source; now I have to go back where I can do some good.”

Covey offered a thin silver necklace with a chip of peridot. “This goes.” She stood behind Mendenhall and clasped the necklace and finished the zipper. She spoke into her ear. “I would want that. In my own work. To see the source and the return. But I just catch helpless glimpses. That’s all I ever get to live on.”

53