Cal touched his breast. It didn’t hurt but felt momentarily numb. He wondered how strong the power filtering through Tina might be, how controllable. Somehow, he managed to keep his voice calm.
“Tina, do you remember-maybe not, you were really small-when I came home from school and you were so upset because the Gage boys had set out those squirrel traps?”
She had withdrawn into herself again, behind the angry slashes of moving light. After an aching silence, she said, “I remember.”
“We’d sneak out after midnight, you’d help me find them.”
“And you’d break the lock from the inside, like they were super squirrels.” Though she wasn’t smiling, her face held an animation, a vibrancy, that summoned back a sweet ghost of what she had been.
He shook his head, the recollection was so vivid. “They were so damn mad and so damn sure it was a trick. Only-”
His eyes again met his sister’s. And it was the two of them again, spliced in the tide of remembrance, before law school, before New York. Together, they said, “No more traps.”
Cal smiled, the chilled hollow within him sparked warm. He didn’t know if Tina had the strength to save herself, or the willingness to let him try. But he knew her heart, and what it encompassed.
“What I’m thinking about,” he continued, hesitant, “is all the other ones. The ones who hear it calling, who can’t resist.” This time, she didn’t look away. “What if-before it gets any stronger, while it’s still in turmoil-we find it? What if-I don’t know how yet-but what if, together, you and me, we could stop it? What if we could save them?”
She was gazing at him now, into him, weighing all the myriad hopes and dreads, the territories they had journeyed over and might yet encounter.
Doubt iced through Cal. Perhaps he’d just be hastening her death, or worse. But it was as if he were looking at an hourglass, the sand ever more swiftly running out. And he didn’t know what else to do.
Tina’s aura faded into its cooler colors. Concern etched her face. “It’ll kill you, Cal.”
He said nothing, let silence answer. Then he asked, “You think what Nijinsky heard was God?”
It wasn’t what she expected. She contemplated it. “No.”
“If somebody could’ve stopped that voice before he jumped off the cliff, what do you think would’ve happened?”
She stared at Cal through her shimmering haze, and he felt, astonishing and harrowing, the current of her faith in him.
“He would have kept on dancing,” she said.
Toward dawn, Tina fell into sleep at last. Cal withdrew from her side and sought out the others. He found them in his room. Doc lay across the bed, dreaming fitfully. Colleen sat curled in the big chair, napping, but with a wary tension that reminded him of a sleeping cat. Goldie sat cross-legged on the floor, still fingering his guitar. When does he sleep? Cal wondered, and the thought came back to him, illogically, Never.
Although Cal strove to keep his footfall soundless, the creak of the door roused Doc and Colleen. Blinking, they turned to him, inquisitive.
“We’ll be leaving as soon as I can get everything together.” His gaze swept over them. Strangers who had become so much more than friends. In words awkwardly, embarrassingly inadequate, he began, “There’s no way I could ever hope to-”
“Listen,” Colleen bounded from her chair, trying for an easy tone. “I been thinking of stretching my legs, so if you and Miss Emergency Flare could stand some companionship from the other side of the tracks-”
“No,” Cal said, and it hit her like a blow, her surprise at his rejection cutting him to the heart. “It would be great, Colleen,” he added quickly. “But there’s been a change of plans.”
Goldie lost just a beat but kept on playing, while Doc drew up beside them.
“At first, I thought we could run from this force that’s gotten into Tina and Stern and who knows how many others, get somewhere it couldn’t reach us, reach her. But Tina sensed-saw-it’s far off, part of it to the west, part-the weaker part-to the south.” Cal gazed through gauzy curtains onto the city. He thought of dying things, and the kind of life that fed on them. “If it can reach us here, I think it probably. . I don’t know where it’s safe.”
“And so what do you propose to do?” Doc asked quietly. “She’s still plugged into it. Like a receiver that’s off the hook. If she can home in on it, we might be able to locate the part that’s not strong yet.”
“And then what?” Colleen’s tone was glacial.
“Strike at the heart of it, if we can, and make it stop.”
“This thing that can smash the world to pieces? That can shoot lightning from the sky? Boy, Griffin, it’s not enough for you to launch yourself from the top of a skyscraper latched to some fire-breathing dinosaur-”
“That’s why it has to be just the two of us.”
Colleen’s green eyes flashed protest. But before she could speak, Cal put his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve done enough.”
All of Colleen’s bravado deserted her then; she deflated. “Fine.” She stormed out of the room.
“Colleen. .”
Doc shook his head. “Calvin, my friend, I don’t want to presume to tell you your business, but I’m going to tell you your business.”
“Doc-”
“Kindly sit your behind in that chair and cease speaking.” Doc cut off Cal’s protest. “Sit.”
Sighing, Cal sat.
“You may have noticed that certain events have been transpiring around us, demanding we extend ourselves to new and surprising heights. I think we are in a process of transformation. Not physical, all of us, but. . in other ways.” Doc moved closer. “I know it feels terrible. Painful. Frightening. Some won’t even survive, but that’s how birth is.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Calvin,” Doc’s tone now gently scolded. “Three days ago I was serving hot dogs on the street. I could smile, make jokes, but I was a dead man. Or at least, in deep coma. And Goldman here. A derelict soul, friendless, living-” He gestured the image away. Goldie continued strumming, seeming not to have heard. “And you. A timid rabbit in a business suit, denying who you are.”
Doc’s eyes shifted, followed Colleen’s path of retreat. “As for her. .” Cal caught something, or thought he did. A tenderness. “Well, you would know better than I. But my point is, we are all of us changing, perhaps rising to something we might only have dreamed of. A purpose. A destiny. Is any of this getting through to you?”
“I’m not going to lead you to your death.”
“Olukh!” Doc erupted. “Didn’t you just hear me ask you to lead me away from it?”
They glared at each other, the lilting tones of the guitar swirling between them.
“What about Roosevelt General?” Cal asked finally.
“A good doctor goes to the root of the malady.” He shrugged. “Calvin, if I could have walked into that reactor, shut it down before its poison reached out to the men, their wives and children. .” And here Doc thought of his own dear Yelena and Nurya, gone to aching memory. He did not tell Cal. Let the dead have their secrets.
“The pestilence spread because there was no containment vessel,” Doc continued. “Here, perhaps, we can be that vessel.”
He crouched before Cal, grasped his hands. “You are a leader, Calvin, that is your self. And if you deny it, you weaken any chance you might have for your survival or your sister’s. It is arrogance and stupidity, two traits you have not evinced of late, so I would advise you not to start. If any of us care to follow you, let us.”
Cal peered into the lined, compassionate face. “And what if I’m wrong?”
“Then you’re wrong.”
After a long moment, Cal nodded assent. Doc grinned. “Speciba,” he said. “Thank you.”