Her face had fallen. “How?”
“He built a vircator, like what they used on me in Norway. . and he thought that if he made another one, he could fix me.”
“Did it work?” she said after a moment.
“Did what work?”
“Did it fix you?”
“I don’t think I can be fixed,” he said. “But he did manage to break New Jersey.”
He smiled. She saw this and snorted. Soon they were both laughing. They could not help themselves. The laughter was a substitute for sorrow, racking their bodies, great heaps of it rising from the depths. They were left gasping at the table.
“That man,” she wheezed. “That man.”
“He’s a good man,” Radar breathed, head resting against one of the radios on the table.
“Yes,” she whispered. “He’s the only one we’ve got.”
“I should go pack,” he said. “Lightly.”
“Make sure you bring enough socks.”
In the rush of things, he hurriedly stuffed his backpack full of socks and not much else. A sweatshirt. A cowboy hat. A toothbrush. He saw his pink Little Rule Book for Life and put that in, too. He knew he was doing a bad job planning for the future, but that took time, and he had no time.
Downstairs again, he saw that his mother had not moved from her spot in the kitchen.
“I almost forgot,” he said. He took Kermin’s phone out of his pocket. “They gave me one that will work over there. I’ll leave the number here. We can do the text.”
She smiled. “You finally learned how to say it properly.”
“Oh, Mom.” He hugged her. “I’ll miss you.”
She pushed him back. “I wanted to tell you. .”
“Yes?”
“About before. I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea. About. . T.K., I mean. I’ve no idea if he’s the one or not,” she said. “I just wanted to say that. I didn’t want you to believe something that might not be true.”
He was quiet, staring at the twin radios.
“It’s okay,” he said finally. “I kind of like the idea of having two fathers.”
“You don’t have two fathers.”
“I know,” he said. “Don’t worry. I know who’s the real one.”
He unzipped his backpack again and took out the pink notebook.
“For you,” he said, handing it to her. “It’s mostly stupid, but there’s a couple of good ones in there. Maybe you can read it while I’m gone.”
She opened to a page and read out loud: “Rule number forty-five: Cheese is important.”
He sighed. “Well, maybe not.”
“Rule number forty-six: Everything happens just once, until it happens again.”
“Okay, when you read them like that, they sound terrible!” he said. “Just forget it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want this? You might need it where you’re going.”
“I don’t think a book could help me now.”
She smiled, blinked. “I have something for you,” she said.
“I have to go.”
“I know; it’ll be quick.”
He followed her up to the bedroom. The stairs creaked beneath them, strange and loud in the darkness. Radar thought of the heavy toe-heel creaks his father made as he trudged up these same stairs. His mother always took the stairs like a bird, but his father’s footsteps sounded like those of a sullen pony. He wondered if he would ever hear those toe-heel creaks again.
In the bedroom, Charlene took his flashlight and went over to the hole in the floor. It gaped, darker than the rest of the dark, like a tear in the fabric of the space-time continuum. After rooting around, she came up holding a book.
“Here,” she said. “It’s for you.”
The book looked familiar. After a moment, he realized what it was: Spesielle Partikler: Kirkenesferda 1944–1995, by Per Røed-Larsen.
“I just saw this,” said Radar. “They showed it to me. It’s by Lars’s brother.”
“I was mailed a copy a long time ago. It’s in Norwegian, so I’ve never been able to read it, but it seems important now, particularly if you’re going to go with them. Maybe you’ll have better luck understanding it than I did.”
“Mom,” he said suddenly, the book in his hands. “I’m scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” she said. “It means you have something to live for.”
• • •
IT WAS NEARLY 3:30 A.M. by the time they parked the van next to the little cottage beneath Xanadu.
“Okay,” said Otik. “We have three hours. No dillydally.”
There would be no dillydally. They feverishly transferred the birds and much of the cottage’s contents into a white shipping container that sat on a trailer not far away in the parking garage. There was a lot of equipment. More boxes and tools emerged from that little house than seemed physically possible. All of it was apparently fragile, and Otik would bark at both of them about holding this with two hands, or not disrupting that by rattling it around too much. Radar tried to be helpful, but more often than not he felt as if he was simply in the way.
When they were finished, Radar collapsed onto the ground. He was utterly exhausted. He expected to seize, to pass out, for his body to fail him, but somehow he managed to stay online.
He opened his eyes. Lars was standing above him.
“Congratulations,” said Lars. He offered Radar a little white pill.
“What is this?”
“To make it official,” said Lars. “It’ll make you grow small. Like Alice.”
Radar must’ve looked alarmed, because Lars smiled and said, “It’s for malaria. It might give you some unusual dreams, but believe me, the alternative is much worse.”
The three of them poured a little coffee into some mugs, clinked them together, and took down the pills.
“To dreams,” said Lars.
“To entanglement,” said Otik.
“To Kermin,” said Radar. As soon as he had said it, a kernel of doubt popped open in his chest. This pill had not been meant for him.
“To Kermin,” said Lars gravely. “May we make him proud.”
“To boat,” said Otik. “We have half hour before it is gone.”
• • •
201-998-2666: Ana Cristina, hi it’s Radar. I don’t have much time to write because I’m on my way to a boat and you probably will never get this anyway since your phone is dead but I just wanted to tell you that I’m going away for a while. My father was supposed to put on this show in the Congo but he disappeared so now I’m going instead of him. Kind of crazy, I know. So I won’t be able to meet your Mom right now altho
201-998-2666: Sorry, I guess I reached the limit for a single text. I’ve never written one of these before. I guess they don’t want you rambling on for a long time. So I’ll try to keep this short. These buttons are very hard to write on don’t you think? I prefer Morse Code. I’ll teach you someday, okay? It’s not hard, you just have to get used to it. Point is I was so happy when you invited me to meet your mom before
201-998-2666: Wow. Hit the limit again. That’s embarrassing. Now I’m not sure I want you to get these. All I meant to say was: I want to meet your mom, I want to eat empanadas with you. I’ll miss you. I hope Jersey is okay after all this. Talk to you soon. Xo Radar.
609-292-4087: Radar! Hi!!:)
201-998-2666: Ana C? Your phone works?
609-292-4087: I got a new one:)
201-998-2666: I hope I didn’t wake you. It’s like 6?
609-292-4087: I couldn’t sleep
201-998-2666: Are you okay?
609-292-4087: Yeah my mama is freaking but we r okay! I M so sorry 2 hear about your papa:(I hope he is okay