“The Bible. I was once in a prison cell in Colombia, under sentence of death, for three months. Tidal water flooded it up to six inches from the ceiling, morning and evening. Then the crabs came in. Big as dinner plates. All there was to read was the Bible.”
“My God, Nanci! That’s unbelievable.” Mac was shocked, shaking his head.
She laughed. “Yeah, Mac, it is. I just made it up. Truth is that I was a good scholar at the Sunday school when I was a little one. I happen to remember a lot of it. Remember most things. Call it an eidetic memory.” She turned away from him, concentrating on the wheel. “Remember more things than I want sometimes.”
They sailed on together in silence for twenty minutes or so.
“Going to bring her around, slow and easy, onto a northerly course. I don’t know how much progress the others’ll make during the night. We don’t want to pass them. And I didn’t want to risk running us onto a shoal in the dark.”
“There were some maps in the cabin.”
“I know, Mac. But if you have earthquakes powerful enough to totally alter the coastline of California, then it’s a fair bet the shallows and reefs might have shifted around some.”
Mac nodded, feeling vaguely foolish for not having thought of that. “Of course.”
She sensed his feelings. “Mac, you’re an astrophysicist. Three months ago all of this would have seemed like some drug-induced nightmare. Profoundly impossible. The world you knew, totally destroyed and reshaped. You’re doing well enough, believe me.”
His hand had dropped to clutch the steel hilt of the hunting knife on his hip. “Well enough! By Christ, Nanci… A dead wife. Two dead sons and a dead daughter. Boy, have I done fucking well!”
“You got a live wife and four live children, Mac. Batting better than fifty percent, and that’s a damn sight better than you should expect.”
“You reckon?”
“Yeah, I reckon.” A cold anger filtered into her voice. “And I know, Mac. Believe me, on this, I know.”
“You want to talk to me, Nanci?”
“About who I am and where do I come from and what makes me tick?”
The warning note couldn’t have been clearer if the woman had shoved the muzzle of the Heckler & Koch P-111 in his mouth and cocked it.
Mac shrugged, hands off. “Hey, come on, Nanci. You can’t blame any of us for being curious. Just that it seems you know so much about the Hunters of the Sun and Zelig and all that shit.”
“I know some.” A little of the ice had melted from her voice. “But not all. I truly don’t know where Aurora is. I figure it for somewhere close by the Cascades, but that covers a lot of miles.”
For another few minutes they remained silent while the Belle sailed on across the painted ocean.
Nanci spoke first. “If we can make it to Aurora, you know that it’s not going to be heaven on earth.”
“Sure. But I guess I sort of see it as…as a kind of refuge. Where some decent people have gotten themselves together to try and hit a lick for what’s right.” He laughed self-consciously. “I sound like John Wayne at the Alamo. But you know what I mean, Nanci. Someplace better.”
She nodded, looking behind, then up at the sky, “Wind’s still getting stronger. Could do with a reef in the sail. Better get below and wake up Jeff and Paul.”
“All right.”
“Then we’ll swing around northerly and start moving back toward land. Someone can spell me at the wheel for a couple of hours. Best be you, Mac.”
Mac nodded. “Good plan, Nanci.”
Chapter Fourteen
In her desert base, Margaret Tabor’s office had a large clock on the wall, with a sweep second hand. It was old-fashioned, compared with the rest of the flickering digital timekeepers around the place, but the leader of the Hunters of the Sun liked it. Somehow it gave a better feeling for the way seconds and minutes and hours were racing by. Like fine sand tumbling out of a huge hourglass. You could watch it go.