The gist of it was that a lot of the knowledge he needed to do the research he’s now doing was already out there. As he put it, there is a time for every scientific idea and now is the time for this one. This is the latest volley in our argument. I’m still not buying.
Anyway, it went a long way toward explaining how he ended up getting attached to this project.
* * *
I reached the pond at the southern edge of Central Park at around ten. By then the darkness was nearly complete, and a decent chill had settled over the whole city. There was a waning moon to see by but it was playing chicken with a bank of clouds, so there were times when I had nothing but the street lamps.
I had with me the bag with all my stuff plus the still-unused satellite phone and a heavy red parka on loan from Tchekhy with Stan’s gun stuffed in one of the pockets. The red parka stood out, as it was supposed to. An hour earlier a digital photo of me wearing it was uploaded onto the MUD along with the message “taken today just outside of Central Park!” Tchekhy posted it under the name of a regular New York contributor to the site, which made more sense than setting up a new account and immediately posting information on the dodgy immortal, something we both agreed would arouse suspicion as to the provenance of that information. The only one who would be wise to it was the guy whose account we used, and since Tchekhy disabled his account right after posting, it would take days for the truth to come out. I only needed one evening.
Passing by the pond, I headed north. The plan was to parade myself up and down the park. That would still make me a tough find because it’s a big place, but I didn’t need much, just a couple of MUD groupies to snap some pictures and at least one or two bounty hunters. And no muggers. That’d be good.
At the half hour point, I passed a police officer on horseback. I resisted the urge to ask him how many cops patrolled the park at night because that could be a major problem. Hopefully if there were a lot of them, they weren’t very quick responders.
I had a conversation once with the guy who designed the landscape for Central Park. His name was Frederick Olmstead, and by God could he talk. I’d had the misfortune of sharing a passenger compartment on a train ride from St. Louis to Chicago, and I think I got in maybe three words edgewise. Everything with him was nature, nature, nature, which I guess one could expect from a landscaper, but he really went over the top with all of it. He seemed to think his arrangements let “nature speak for itself” as compared to the gigantic, artificial floral displays of exotic plants that he seemed to show great disdain for. If I’d managed get a word in I would have told him I heard nature speak for itself on a number of occasions, and I suspect he wouldn’t like what nature really had to say.
I doubt he would have liked what happened to Central Park in the years since he passed either. Even in the dark I could tell that much of his original vision had been allowed to slip away with time. But everything does, doesn’t it?
At one hour from the time I’d first entered the park I reached the northern edge and turned around again, choosing a different path. If Tchekhy was wrong about any of this it was going to be a long night.
I found an unoccupied bench and took a seat. It was time to check. I pulled out the sat phone and flipped it open. The backlit display verified that things were going as planned. It read “Cntrl Pk-Now.”
* * *
Another hour later I’d moved to a different bench, this one in the middle of the park and overlooking the lake. I could see the moisture in the clouds that had engulfed the visible sky, and I could see my breath. It was going to snow, unless it got too cold for it. I’d worry that I was going to catch my death in the form of a cold, if I caught colds.
The closest I had come to any interesting activity involved a lengthy conversation with a wino who thought I was his wife, and two separate flashbulb incidents involving unseen cameramen who probably scurried off immediately to post their images of the legendary immortal.
I was tired. I’d ingested nothing substantial beyond pizza, vodka, and coffee, and walking the breadth of Central Park with that as sustenance can be taxing. If nobody showed soon I was going to take a nap.
But then I heard something. It was footfall coming from my left, faint but unmistakable, and definitely not belonging to any horse or demon. It was getting louder. Someone was approaching.
I watched as a young woman came into view. The bench was on a low hill, so while she’d probably been on the path for a while it wasn’t until she was about fifty feet away that I could even see her. She was wearing tight-fitting acid-wash jeans, sneakers, and a faded green army jacket that looked surprisingly good on her, given that green army jackets are not generally meant to be flattering. Underneath the coat was a black turtleneck. She had long, dirty blonde hair that obscured part of her face.
I had reason to suspect everyone because Central Park at night—no matter how many cops are around—is not a very safe place to take a nighttime stroll. But it was difficult to see potential danger in this attractive, five-foot-three package heading my way.
Once she got close enough for it to be entirely too obvious that I was staring, I shifted my gaze to the lights reflecting off the surface of the water, relying on the occasional stolen glance and my peripheral vision to track her progress.
I have a failing when it comes to attractive women. I’m a starer. Can’t help it. You’d think after a few dozen centuries I’d be able to do something about this, because most women can sense when they’re being stared at and some react negatively to it. But while I can look at another man’s face and see twenty people I’d known over the centuries who looked exactly like him, every woman looks fairly unique to me. So, when I stare, it’s either out of mild wonder or outright awe, depending on how drunk I am.
When she reached the bench she sat down next to me. I was doing my damnedest to pretend I didn’t notice anything, which is stupid, because pretending not to stare is even more obvious than staring. I turned and gave her the “hey, how ya doin’?” nod that mankind has perfected over centuries of hanging out together in public places. Given neither of us was exactly waiting for a bus, this came off as silly—to me, at least—but I had to acknowledge her somehow.
We sat for another minute, staring at the lake.
“I thought you’d be shorter,” she said finally.
I looked at her. “I’m sorry, what?” Brown eyes. Very nice.
“Living so long and all,” she explained. “People were shorter way back when. I figured you’d be shorter.”
“Do I know you?”
She brushed the hair back from her face and smiled. She had a fascinating triangular structure to her face, with high cheekbones and a chin that tapered to a point. “Sure. I’m Jonas Milagro.”
A man’s name, last I checked. But that sort of thing changes so often I no longer assume. “Should that sound familiar?” I asked. And it sort of did.
“It ought to. A few hours ago somebody using my name posted a photo of you on the Internet.”
That’s where I’d heard it.
“But, I have two accounts,” she said. “I also go by the name of Alan Guff.”
That’s definitely a guy’s name. “You don’t look like an Alan.”
“Well thank you,” she smiled. “I don’t think I look like a Jonas either.”
“Not really, no.”
“It’s not unusual. You go on a MUD to pretend to be somebody else, right? So, I switch genders sometimes. Usually it’s the other way around. I belong to ten different MUDs, and I think maybe twenty percent of the ‘women’ on them are actually women.”