riverbed as if it were the course of time winding into our infinitely
strange future, Bobby said, “They tore a hole in reality.
Maybe a hole like that doesn’t mend itself.”
“What does that mean? ”
“What it means, ” he said.
“Cryptic.”
“Styptic.” Perhaps his point was that his explanation might be cryptic,
yes, but at least it was a concept we could grasp and to which we could
cling, a familiar idea that kept our sanity from draining away, just as
the alum in a styptic pencil could stop the blood flowing from a shaving
cut.
Or perhaps he was mocking my tendency acquired from the poetry in which
my father had steeped me to assume that everyone spoke in metaphor and
that the world was always more complex than it appeared to be, in which
case he had chosen the word solely for the rhyme.
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of asking him to elucidate styptic
“They didn’t know about this residual effect? ”
“You mean the big-brain wizards running the project? ”
“Yeah. The people who built it, then tore it down. If there was a
residual effect, they’d blow in the walls, fill the ruins with a few
thousand tons of concrete. They wouldn’t just walk away and leave it for
assholes like us to find.” He shrugged. “So maybe the effect didn’t
manifest until they were long gone.”
“Or maybe we were hallucinating everything, ” I suggested.
“Both of us? ”
“Could be.”
“Identical hallucinations? ” I had no adequate answer, so I said,
“Styptic.”
“Elliptic.” I refused to think about that one. “If the Mystery Train was
a time travel project, it didn’t have anything to do with my mother’s
work.”
“So? ”
“So if it didn’t have anything to do with Mom, why did someone leave
this cap for me in the egg room? Why did they leave her photo in the
airlock on a different night? Why did someone put Leland Delacroix’s
security badge under the windshield wiper and send us there tonight? ”
“You’re a regular question machine.” He finished his Heineken, and I
shoved our empty bottles into the cooler.
“Could be that we don’t know half of what we think we know, ” Bobby
said.
“Like? ”
“Maybe everything that went wrong at Wyvern went wrong in the
genetic-engineering labs, and maybe your mom’s theories were entirely
what led to the mess we’re in now, just like we’ve been thinking.
Or maybe not.”
“You mean my mother didn’t destroy the world? ”
“Well, we can be pretty sure she helped, bro. I’m not saying your mom
was a nobody.”
“Gracias.”
“On the other hand, maybe she was only part of it, and maybe even the
lesser part.” . s After my father’s death from cancer a month earlier a
cancer I now suspect didn’t have a natural causei had found his
handwritten account of Orson’s origins, the intelligence-enhancement
experiments, and my mother’s slippery retrovirus. “You read what my dad
wrote.”
“Possibly he wasn’t clued in to the whole story.”
“He and Mom didn’t keep secrets from each other.”
“Yeah, sure, one soul in two bodies.”
“That’s right, ” I said, prickling at his sarcasm.
He glanced at me, winced, and returned his attention to the riverbed
ahead. “Sorry, Chris. You’re totally right. Your mom and dad weren’t
like mine. They were way … special. When we were kids, I used to wish
we weren’t just best friends. Used to wish we were brothers so I could
live with your folks.”
“We are brothers, Bobby.” He nodded.
“In more important ways than blood, ” I said.
“Don’t set off the maudlin alarm.”
“Sorry. Been eating too much sugar lately.” There are truths about which
Bobby and I never speak, because all words are inadequate to describe
them, and to speak of them would be to diminish their power.
One of these truths is the profound depth and sacred nature of our
friendship.
Bobby moved on, “What I’m saying is, maybe your mom didn’t know the full
story, either. Didn’t know about the Mystery Train project, which might
be as much or more at fault than she was.”
“Cozy idea. But how? “