And then a young man stood before her, his face the most pleasant thing in the world to look at, his eyes laughing and kind. He didn’t try to recover Snickers from her hand, he just said, “Hi. What’s your name?”
And she looked into those eyes and told him, “Mandy.”
She could feel the grip of Snickers’s hot little feet on her finger, the nap of his feathers …
Bonkers. Somewhere far outside herself, she could feel hisfeet—and by his reaction she knew he could feel her touch. Maybelle? Yes! Maybelle was there, too, listening. Lily popped into her awareness—she could see the little dove looking right at her.
DuFresne noticed one small, jittery bar appearing on a graph. “What’s that?”
Carson popped into her consciousness, as if he didn’t want to be left out. She stroked their necks, loved them up. She was with them.
Up in the parking garage, the four doves could not sit still. They chirped, fluttered, bobbed, and bowed in their cages until their handlers turned them loose. They flew over the audience and straight for the pod, circled it as if looking for something, then alighted on the top of the crane boom like little watchmen.
Now she found others …
“Preston!” said a crewman.
A dove was flying back. Two others, perched on a building ledge, alerted, fidgeted, then took to the air, returning. Four from a streetlight followed, heading for the trucks.
Were they just flying on an impulse, or … ?
Preston and his men held the net ready.
More bars appeared on the graph.
“Wait, wait, what’s happening?” DuFresne wanted to know.
Moss tapped frantically at the keyboard. “She’s creating timelines.”
“What!?”
“Hang on, I’ll cancel them.”
“She’s supposed to be retraced!”
“She hasn’t completedthe retrace. She can still influence the Machine.”
“Well, fixit!”
Moss tapped at the keys. A line dropped off the graph.
She lost two doves. Oh, no, you don’t! You come back here.She found them again, with ten others.
She remembered Marvellini asking, “Young lady, how would you like a job?”
Forty others.
She could still hear the young man say, “Oh, by the way, my name’s Dane.”
And now she could see herself on the back of each dove, envision her arms about its neck. What a ride!
Dane’s radio crackled. Preston’s voice. “Dane, we might have something.”
The monitor in the lab was coming alive with bars on the graph, interdimensional intensity waves, deflection vectors.
“What is going on?” DuFresne demanded, and now the Watchers were stepping up for a closer look.
“I’m canceling, I’m canceling!” Moss countered.
DuFresne watched the monitors. It didn’t look like it.
She’d found it. The feel, the intuition, was different, like driving on the wrong side of the road or writing with the wrong hand, but she’d found it. Some of her reaches were dropping out for no reason, but she just had to feel around to find them again, along with a couple hundred others.
Yes! She could remember when Dane told her, “Hey, Mandy, guess what: Marvellini’s calling it quits. He’s offering us the business if we want it.”
DuFresne was losing his cool. “I thought you were canceling!”
Moss was losing his as well. “She keeps resetting!”
“Dane,” Preston radioed, “it’s working! She has them!”
The doves were returning in droves, bursting from the trailers, lining up in wing-to-wing formations, one formation behind the other, formation on formation, descending toward the net like waves breaking.
Hundreds of horizons reeled, rocked, and raced before the eyes of Mandy’s mind as each bird climbed, banked, dropped, lined up wing-to-wing with forty-four others, and descended behind other lines of doves toward the trucks, the four men, the net. She placed herself on the back of each bird to guide, prod, love it along, feeling the wind streaming over each dove’s head, the violent beating of the wings, the muscles driving like pistons. Okay, drop down, level out, you see that cord running across the net? Grab on, grab on… . That’s it! Now climb, baby, and pull! PULL!
Preston and his men had planned for this, envisioned it, hoped for it beyond all reason, but absolutely nothing came close to standing there and seeing it. Line upon line, wave upon wave, the birds took hold of each horizontal course of webbing and pulled it skyward, lifting the next course for the next line of birds who came in as one, grabbed hold, and lifted. With each additional line of birds lifting, the net rose faster, opening up more courses for more lines of doves to grab, until lines were coming in by the fives, tens, twenties, grabbing their courses and pulling, pulling toward the sky. The last hundred courses reeled off in a blur.
It was the most amazing thing these men had ever seen.
A gasp moved like a wave over the audience, from the folks in the bleachers and then the folks on the ground as heads turned toward the south. What was this, a cloud, a huge white banner? What could it be? Surely it wasn’t what it looked like: a glimmering, sparkling, living magic carpet … made of … were those birds?
People in the bleachers rose to their feet as the usual ooohhhsand aahhhhsebbed to a stupefied silence and the silence broke into a cacophony of cries, questions, exclamations. This couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.
They’d never seen anything like it.
Neither had Dane. He wanted to drop to his knees in awe and gratitude, but … not yet, and not where he’d be seen. He headed for the crane, the main point of vulnerability.
Moss fell back from the keyboard, overwhelmed by the numbers and the blinding speed with which every setting, every indication, every prediction was changing.
“Seamus!” DuFresne shouted into his headset. “What’s going on?”
Seamus stammered trying to answer, his video camera sweeping, blurring, searching.
The announcers on the television were going berserk. The cameras zoomed in on a huge white banner flying toward the Orpheus. “What is that?” they shouted. “No, I don’t believe it! I have never, ever seen anything like this!”
Seamus got his camera pointed and zoomed, but the shot was too shaky.
The television cameras zoomed in closer, stabilized.
DuFresne was on his feet, nose inches from the television screen. “Are those … are those doves?”
Moss couldn’t think of which key to press. He could only read the monitors. “Exactly four thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four—on that many timelines.”
She remembered!
The wedding cake was half gone by the time they left the reception … their travel trailer was a Terry and had a propane furnace … they kept the original Bonkers, Lily, Maybelle, and Carson on the windowsill next to the dinette … she cooked dinner on a barbecue stand in Brentwood Park in Minot, North Dakota, because they couldn’t afford restaurants … they hauled and stored all their gear in the vanishing trunk Dane built.
And she really was Mandy Collins, riding a zillion doves and marveling at the view below each bird’s pounding wings. In countless minds, through countless eyes flying free, she could see the pod dangling just below the boom of the crane.
Inside the pod, her body was racing through different hairstyles and lengths; her fingernails were growing out, jerking short again, growing out, jerking back. She may have had a few colds in the last second or two.
Okay, guys, steer for the pod … this way, this way …
Only a few seconds and they would be overflying the stage.
The TV announcers were on their feet.
“Like a flying carpet—literally!” cried Kirschner.
“At least a hundred feet long, sixty, eighty feet wide, made up entirely of white doves!” Rhodes shouted, his voice high-pitched, his mike distorting.
At the hospital, Arnie had to move up close to see around the people crowding the television.