“Piano!” he demands. “Wheelchair! Heartbeat! Kiss!” He grunts in frustration, bears down, feeling an ache in his brain, and triumphantly pulls out her name. “Risa!” He says. “Risa! Rand McNally Risa?”
And he hears quietly from somewhere across the room, “I’m here, Connor.”
She’s been here all along, keeping her distance. How awful must he look if she has to build up the courage to approach him? Or maybe she was just trying to get her emotions under control, because he can see that her eyes are moist. If there’s one thing Risa hates it’s for people to see her cry.
As Risa comes into view, the admiral moves away. Or maybe Connor’s mind is only able to hold one of them in his awareness at once. Insulted brain, he thinks.
She takes his hand. It hurts, but he lets her take it. “I’m so happy you’re awake. We were all worried. It’s a miracle you’re here.”
“Miracle,” he says. “Happy. Miracle.”
“It’s going to be hard at first. To move and to think. You’ll need rehabilitation, but I know you’ll be back to your old self in no time.”
Old self, he thinks, and something hits him that brings on a sudden wave of anxiety. “Eating machine! Blood in the water! Amity Island!”
Risa shakes her head, nowhere near understanding him. So in spite of the pain, he raises his right arm, and finds what he’s looking for:
The shark.
It’s still there! Thank goodness it’s still there! He doesn’t know why, but the fact that it’s still a part of him gives him great comfort.
He takes a deep breath of relief. “Fireplace,” he says. “Cocoa. Blanket.”
“Are you cold?
“No,” he says, happy to have found the right word. It inspires him to hack through the thicket to find more words. “I’m warm. Safe. Grateful.” The cages begin to fall in the zoo. His thoughts begin to free themselves.
Risa goes on to tell of the things that happened while he was “in transit,” and how he’s been in a two-week coma since his rewinding.
“Trick or treat,” he says.
“Not quite,” Risa tells him. “Another two weeks.”
She tells him how she and Divan’s other Unwinds were freed, but that Argent never made it out. She tells him how Divan’s black-market auctions have mysteriously stopped. “We think he’s focusing his attention on fighting the Burmese Dah Zey.”
Connor considers that. “Godzilla,” he says. “Godzilla versus Mothra.”
“Indeed,” says the admiral from somewhere out of his line of sight. “Best way to save humanity is to turn the monsters against one another.”
Risa tries to cheer him up by talking about Cam, and what he accomplished on his own. “He’s a hero now!” Risa tells him. “He brought down Proactive Citizenry, just like he said he would—and that awful woman who blackmailed me is being tried for ‘crimes against humanity.’ They’re actually calling her ‘Madame Mengele,’ and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”
There’s more, about Lev, who, as usual, almost died but didn’t, and Grace, who made herself some sweet deal with the organ printer—and Hayden, who’s called for a march on Washington—but Connor finds he can’t hold on to the details, so he closes his eyes and lets her words wash over him like a healing spell.
He knows it won’t always be like this. It will get better each day. Maybe not easier but better . . . and yet he senses that the mere act of having been unwound has taken something from him. No matter how much he heals, he’ll always have a deep and abiding war wound. Now he knows what Cam must feel. Not so much an emptiness, but a gap between what was and what is, like air trapped between the seams of his soul. He tries to express it to Risa, but the only word that comes is—
“Hole . . .” He grips Risa’s hand tighter. “Hole, Risa, hole . . .”
And she smiles. “Yes, Connor,” she says. “You’re whole. You’re finally whole.”
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75 • Gatherings
The granite and marble markers of history hold memories that can’t be unwound, especially so, the monuments of Washington, DC. They have witnessed change and stagnation, glorious feats of justice, as well as shameful failures of democracy. Lincoln’s and Jefferson’s eyes have seen great strides in Martin Luther King’s dream, and have welcomed him as he strides forward in stone between them. Yet those same unblinking eyes have seen Vietnam War protesters teargassed, and thousands tranq’d during the first teen uprising. None of these things can they forget any more than the war memorials can forget the names they so solemnly bear.
A gathering begins to form before those vigilant eyes during the last few days of October. Airlines scramble to add flights to their schedules, the metro is at constant capacity, and vehicular traffic within the capital ensures that walking is the fastest way to get anywhere aboveground.
The grassy expanse of the National Mall begins to speckle with tents in a slow but relentless occupation days before the actual event, which, as it is scheduled for November first, has been dubbed by the media as the “All Saint’s Uprising.”
From Capitol Hill the portent couldn’t be more ominous than the obsidian-dark wall of a thunderstorm rolling in from the Chesapeake Bay.
• • •
Far to the west, there is another, smaller gathering. This one on a commune outside of Omaha, Nebraska. The gathering is a wedding—a bittersweet one at best, because of the parties involved. Una Jacali will wed Wil Tashi’ne in the only way she can.
The Arápache council forbade it to be done on tribal land. The Tashi’nes, although they love Una dearly, could not support it either, and chose not to attend.
It was Lev who came to Una’s aid, and suggested that a revival commune—a place dedicated to the virtual union of someone divided—would be openminded when it came to Una’s concept of “divisional matrimony.” And Lev knew just the guy to ask.
As it turned out, CyFi and his dads were more than happy to not only provide the venue, but also to track down the beneficiaries of Wil Tashi’ne’s parts—a task much easier now that every last rabbit hole of Proactive Citizenry’s database has been opened to public scrutiny.
Not all of Wil’s parts would come, but enough agreed. Perhaps they agreed to come out of curiosity, or for the novelty, or just for the chance to meet Camus Comprix, who is expected to be among them. All told, there will be twenty-seven grooms, representing almost two-thirds of Wil Tashi’ne. That a number of the grooms will be women seems little more than par for the course.
“True, the course is about as surreal as an Escher staircase,” one of CyFi’s dads pointed out, “but what’s life without a little vertigo?”
76 • Lev
“I gotta tell ya, Fry, you really did a number on yourself with those tattoos—and that fur hat just ain’t working.”
Lev peels the kinkajou from his head, where he often goes, but rarely pees anymore. Lev lets him cling to his shoulder instead. “First of all,” Lev tells CyFi, “they’re not numbers, they’re names; and second, don’t insult Mahpee, or he might claw your eyes out.”