Six-west. What’s she doing down there? he thought, and then, the readout sinking in, 12:58. “She said two-ten,” he said and took off running, up to third, across the walkway, up the service stairs.
He made it up to sixth in three minutes and nineteen seconds and flung himself, out of breath, against the nurses’ station. “Quick. Maisie Nellis. Where is she?”
“Down there, second door,” the surprised nurse said, and it still didn’t occur to him, tearing down the hall, that the nurse wouldn’t have been just standing there in an emergency, that there was no code alarm blaring.
He burst into the room, where Maisie lay quietly on a gurney, looking at her pager.
“Did you talk to Mr. Mandrake yet?” she asked eagerly.
“How—could—I?” he said, between panting breaths. “You paged—me. What’s the idea?” He slumped into a chair next to the wall.
“The drill,” she said.
“The drill was supposed to be at two-ten, not twelve fifty-eight.”
“The two-ten was a code,” she said. “They brought me here for some tests, and I thought it was a good idea to do the pager when you didn’t know where I was, to see if it worked or not.”
“Well, it worked,” Richard said, “so no more drills. I only want you paging me in a real emergency. Understand?”
“But shouldn’t we practice a few times?” she said, looking longingly at the pager. “So you could get faster?”
I was fast enough, he thought. I got here in under four minutes, from a point in the hospital almost as far away as there is. I made it in time. And had no way to save her when I got here. “No,” he said. “You page me if you code, and only if you code.”
“What if I think I’m going to code and then it turns out I don’t?”
“Then it had better not also turn out that you just wanted to see me to tell me about the Hartford circus fire. I mean it.”
“Okay,” she said reluctantly.
“Okay.” He looked at his watch. One-ten. “I’m late for my appointment with Mandrake. And don’t say, ‘You can’t go yet.’ ”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said indignantly. “I was going to wish you good luck.”
It was going to take a lot more than luck, Richard thought, looking at Mandrake seated behind a polished expanse of desk. “I expected you at one,” Mandrake said, looking pointedly at his watch. “Now, I’m afraid I have another—”
The phone rang. “Excuse me,” Mandrake said and picked it up. “Maurice Mandrake here. A book signing? When?”
Richard looked around the office. It was even more sumptuous than he would have guessed. Huge maroon leather chair, huge mahogany desk, nearly life-sized portrait of himself hanging behind it, bookcase full of copies of The Light at the End of the Tunnel, Persian carpet. It would fit right in on the Titanic, Richard thought.
Mandrake hung up the phone. “I’m afraid we’d better make it another day. At two, I have—”
“This won’t take long,” Richard said and sat down. “You said in your eulogy you spoke to Jo—Dr. Lander the day she was killed.”
Mandrake folded his hands on the desk. “That day, and many times since,” he said.
I can’t do this, Richard thought.
“I see by your expression that you do not believe the dead communicate with the living,” Mandrake said.
If they did, Joanna would have told me what she discovered in Carl Aspinall’s room. “No,” he said.
“That is because you persist in believing only in what you can see on your RIPT scans,” Mr. Mandrake said, and his expression was a smirk. “Dr. Lander, fortunately, came to understand that the near-death experience possessed dimensions that science could never explain. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment—” He started to stand up.
Richard stayed seated. “I need to know what she said that day.”
“Exactly what I said in my eulogy, that she had realized the NDE—or rather the NAE, for that is what she had come to realize it was—was not merely a physical hallucination, but instead a spiritual revelation of the Other Side.”
You’re lying, Richard thought. “What did she say? Her exact words.”
Mandrake leaned back in his chair, his hands on the padded arms. “Why? So you can dismiss her as a crank? I realize it must be difficult, having to face the fact that your partner had reached a different conclusion about the NAE from the one you tried so hard to convince her of.” Mandrake leaned forward. “Luckily, she was not fooled by your scientific,” he put an ugly emphasis on the word, “arguments and found the truth for herself.” He glanced at the door and then looked pointedly at his watch. “I’m afraid that’s all the time I have.” This time he did stand up.
Richard didn’t. “I need to know what she said.”
Mandrake glanced uneasily at the door again. I wonder who this appointment’s with, Richard thought. Obviously someone he doesn’t want me to see. Someone he’s trying to pump about the project? Mrs. Troudtheim? Tish?
“Joanna was on her way to the ER to tell me something,” Richard said. “I’m trying to find out what it was.”
“I should think it was obvious,” Mandrake said, but his eyes had flickered suddenly with something—fear? guilt?
He knows, Richard thought, and, although it made no sense, Joanna did tell him. “No,” he said slowly. “It’s not obvious.”
Mandrake’s eyes flickered again. “She was trying to tell you what she has since told me and Mrs. Davenport, speaking from that afterlife you refuse to believe in, that there are more things in heaven and earth, Dr. Wright, than are dreamt of in your RIPT scans.” He walked around the desk and over to the door. “I’m afraid I can’t give you any more time, Dr. Wright. A gentleman is scheduled—”
A gentleman? Mr. Sage? Good luck getting anything out of him about the project. Or anything else. “I need to know exactly what she said to you,” Richard repeated.
Mandrake opened the door. “If you’d care to make an appointment for another day, we could—”
“Joanna died trying to tell me what it was,” Richard said. “I need to know. It’s important.”
“Very well.” He closed the door and went back to his desk and sat down. “If it’s so important to you.”
Richard waited.
“She said, ‘You were right all along, Mr. Mandrake. I realize it now. The NAE is a message from the Other Side.’ ”
“You bastard,” Richard said, coming out of his chair.
There was a knock on the door, and Mr. Wojakowski leaned in, wearing his baseball cap. “Hiya, Manny,” he said to Mandrake, and then to Richard, “Well, hiya, Doc. Sorry to bust in like this, but I—”
“We’re all finished here,” Mandrake said.
“That’s right,” Richard said. “Finished.” He strode out of the office, past Mr. Wojakowski and down the hall.
“Wait up, Doc,” Mr. Wojakowski said, catching up to him. “You’re just the guy I wanted to see.”
“It doesn’t look like it,” Richard said, jerking his thumb in the direction of Mandrake’s door. “It looks like he’s the guy you wanted to see, Mr. Wojakowski.”
“Ed,” he corrected. “Yeah, he called me the other day, said he wanted to talk to me about your project. I said I hadn’t worked on it for a while, but he said that didn’t matter, he wanted to talk to me anyway, so I said okay, but I had to talk to you first and see if it was okay, sometimes the docs don’t want you blabbing about their research, and I’ve been trying ever since to get in touch with you.”
He slapped his knee. “Boy, you sure are a hard guy to get ahold of. I been trying every way I could think of so I could ask you if it was okay. I know you’ve had other stuff on your mind, what with poor Doc Lander and all, but I was about to give up hope of ever getting ahold of you. Like Norm Pichette. Did I ever tell you about him? Got left behind when we abandoned the Yorktown, down in sick bay, and when he comes to, here he is on a ship that’s going down, so he hollers at the Hughes,” he said, cupping his hands around his mouth, “but she’s too far away to hear him, so he tries to think of some way to signal them. He waves his arms like crazy, he screams and whistles and hollers, but nothing works.”