“Maybe we have to type it into the system.” He went over to the terminal, sat down and switched it on, and began entering any phrases and references to flags that came to mind.
“This could take until the next ice age,” Lilly said bleakly as she began to get the idea.
“I told you, having to try and hit on the right thing from twelve years back doesn’t help. If it was a connection that meant something a couple of days ago, the way it was supposed to, it would probably be obvious already.”
He carried on resolutely. Lilly looked around the room, searching for anything that might suggest itself. She was about to say something when the headlights from a car turning into the driveway outside came in through the window.
Corrigan stopped what he was doing and got up to cross the room and peer out. A familiar tall, loose-limbed figure, yellow-haired in the glow from a nearby streetlamp, straightened up from behind a Ford parked next to Corrigan’s Mercedes and headed with tense, agitated footsteps toward the front door of the house.
“Well, there’s one lot of questions we won’t have to worry about for very much longer,” Corrigan said, letting the drape fall back. “Tom’s here.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
The bell started ringing when Corrigan was halfway to the door and carried on ringing until he opened it. Hatcher looked as if he had been in a private war. His hair was tousled, his face showing two days of yellow stubble, and his eyes, which in all the years they had worked together Corrigan had never seen other than mild and mockingly easy-lazy, mirroring the way Tom ambled through life, were red-rimmed and glazed. He was wearing a gray, hooded zipper jacket, torn on one side, over a stained khaki shirt and blue jeans.
He gestured back toward the driveway and said without preamble, “Can I move the car into the garage? I need to get it out of sight, off the street.”
“Well . . . sure, Tom.” Corrigan went past him to open the garage door, while Lilly watched from the doorway. Corrigan heard the door of Hatcher’s car slam behind him, and the engine start. He fumbled with the keys and had to try several before he found the right one to open the door. Hatcher drove in past him and got out; Corrigan closed the garage door from the inside and led the way through a side door into the kitchen. Lilly joined them from the hallway a few seconds later.
“I was right, wasn’t I? It happened to you too,” Hatcher said, again wasting no words on preliminaries. “You couldn’t remember which key opened the garage. It’s been twelve years since you did it last, right?”
Corrigan waved a hand to indicate one of the chairs by the kitchen table. “Why don’t you take a load off your feet before we get into this, Tom? You look beat. We’ve just made some fresh coffee.”
“What does it matter—any of it? We’re not really here. None of it’s really here. Coffee? You act like . . .” Hatcher checked himself, then indicated the surroundings with a wave of his arm. “Just to be sure that we’re talking the same language—we do both know what all this is, right?”
Corrigan nodded. “It’s the simulation. We know that. And to save any more comparing of notes, yes, we both went through twelve years of it. And yesterday we woke up back at the beginning, all set to start over.”
“Her too? You mean she’s not a . . .” Hatcher threw up a hand in a way that said call them anything you want.
“This is Lilly Essell,” Corrigan said, his tone making the point that bizarre circumstances didn’t excuse bad manners. “Space Defense Command, Inglewood. Lilly’s a scientist with OTSC—one of the surrogates recruited from outside. She was involved with DIVAC development. We met in the simworld the first time around.”
Hatcher sighed, sank down onto the chair, and nodded wearily. “Excuse me, Lilly. . . . Yeah, man, could I use some coffee.”
Lilly had already taken down an extra mug and was filling the three of them from the pot. “Thanks,” Hatcher acknowledged as she set one of them down in front of him. Some of the fury that Corrigan had sensed when Tom came into the house was abating, but his movements were still tense. He picked up his mug and sipped from it, clasping it in both hands. “Having those freaks around for too long,” he said by way of explanation. “That’s what it does to you.”