A History of What Comes Next

—I under—

—Seriously! I just left the house of a man who ordered hundreds of thousands of people killed. Lord knows how many he sent to their grave himself. As if being a mass murderer and a sadist wasn’t bad enough, it turns out he moonlights as a serial rapist. Just tell me, Mother, how bad can this fucking Tracker be?

—Mia—

—I’m not running from him, or Beria, or anyone else.

This is the first time I have something that remotely resembles a life. I’m not giving that up for this man or any other. Enough.

42 Thinking and Drinking

—What can I get you, hon?

—Do you have any tea?

—Tea? Look at the sign, dear. What does it say?

—It says… all patrons must be twenty-one or older.

—Not that sign, dummy. The big bright one. This is a bar, not a tearoom.

—I’m sorry, I never drink before noon.

—Well, that’s sad. But seeing as you’re my only customer, how about a soda?… Yes? Come on, my treat. You can’t leave a lady alone in a bar, now can you? I’m Sue, by the way.

—You can call me Charles.

—What brings you to the city?

—How do you know I’m not from here?

—Oh, hon. That’s very cute. Do you mind handing me that knife over there. I have to cut these lemons before people come in…. Thank you. Seriously, why are you in Washington?

—I’m looking for someone.

—You’re not chasing after a girl, are you?

—Two, as a matter of fact. They lived around here not that long ago.

—Maybe I know them.

—Sarah and Mia Freed.

—Doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry.

—They might have changed their names.

—Hmmm. That sounds to me like maybe they don’t want to be found.

—Oh, we’ll find them. My brothers and I are getting close.

—That’s… kind of creepy. But none of my business. Let’s talk about something else. How many brothers do you have?

—Three.

—And they’re all here with you?

—My brother Leonard is. George—he’s the eldest—is in Europe, probably drunk. Billy, the cadet, was just arrested in Chicago.

—Oh no! What did he do?

—Burglary. Someone saw him breaking in. Billy ran, but he didn’t get far. Some off-duty cop dropped three flowerpots on his head from two floors above.

—Seriously? You’re pulling my leg. That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard in my life. I’m sorry about your brother, though. I’m sure he’ll get out soon.

—He won’t. George said we should leave him behind.

—I don’t know how they do things in Chicago, but here, they won’t keep you long just for a break-in. Either way, you can’t just abandon your brother. Family’s forever, right?

—They say he killed three people.

—Oh my God.

—They worked on him for six days straight before he signed a confession. I think someone else had confessed before him but they didn’t care.

—These cops. They’ll pin anything on anyone…. They beat it out of him, didn’t they?

—They drugged him, too, but Billy wouldn’t have talked if he didn’t want to. I think he wants us to leave him there.

—Why would anyone want to stay in jail?

—It’s not… this.

—What’s that supposed to mean?

—How can I put this? You’ve seen parents screaming at their kids during a Little League game? The same parents that make their five-year-old practice four hours a day instead of playing with their friends. Our life is kind of like that. Some kids just can’t handle the pressure. Besides, Billy was always—I’m not sure how to say it—different. Our mother died giving birth to him. Father raised him by himself, the way he wanted. It was… difficult for Billy.

—Wait. Did he do it?

—One of the women Billy confessed to killing was shot in the head. That’s not Billy. He was always afraid of guns.

—If he didn’t do it, he can recant, can’t he? He can say they forced him to talk.

—There’s another woman that was dismembered. They found her head in a sewer, her torso in a storm drain. They kept finding body parts for weeks.

—That’s hor—

—I thought: Now there’s my Billy! He carved our dog into pieces when he was seven, tried to put him back together afterwards when he saw we were angry. Billy likes to chop things up. Speaking of, you cut yourself…. Your finger’s bleeding.

—It’s nothing…. I think you should leave now.

—Leave? No, I can’t leave you like that. Let me see. That’s a pretty deep cut. Run some cold water on it before you put a bandage on.

—I’m fine. I really think you should go.

—I can smell the blood from here…. That’s what set Billy off, every time. He was always so calm, ice-cold. Even as a kid, people picked on him, pushed him around. Billy was bigger than other kids his age but he never did anything, never fought back. If there was blood, though, a scrape, a small cut, anything red, Billy would just lose it. I saw him pound on someone twice his size until the man had no face left. Father said it was the smell of iron. I always thought it was the blood, you know, the symbolics of it, but it’s a physical reaction to whatever chemical is released when your skin touches metal. We didn’t believe it, so we experimented on our little brother. Sure enough, if you rubbed Billy’s hand on silverware long enough or had him count a jar of pennies, he’d start throwing things around.

—Please go, sir. Leave, before I call someone.

—You know, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about Billy, or my father. I don’t open up a lot around people. I’m not sure why. Somehow I feel comfortable talking to you. It’s like we have a connection.

43 Blue Moon

I thought I would have a ton of data from ice core samples by now. We funded a research project in Copenhagen, but it is taking longer than I thought. I see now that I am not as patient as I used to be. I want to know if the level of carbon dioxide slowly increased over millennia, or suddenly, presumably with the advent of industrialization. I thought all I needed was to measure CO₂ concentration from different time periods. Getting air from the past seemed hard enough, but Dansgaard—the man spending the money in Copenhagen—said I also need to know the temperature at the time. It makes sense. If I am to explore the correlation between climate and carbon dioxide levels, I would need to know both.

Thanks to Mia, I know how to find old air, but it does not come with a weather report. Yet I believe the answer might still be found in that ice cube tray. I was so focused on the air bubbles— if I got old ice, I would have old air—I forgot I would also have ice. Perhaps the frozen water has something to say about the temperature.

There are only so many things one can look at. Water is just hydrogen and oxygen, but both of these come in different flavors. Hydrogen has a heavier cousin called deuterium. The same is true of oxygen. There is hefty O out in the world with two extra neutrons. It takes more energy, more heat, to evaporate water that contains heavy isotopes. It should therefore rain more of it in warm weather, less when it is cold. If that is true, counting the heavy oxygen in the ice core samples would allow us to calculate temperatures in the past. More would mean warmer, fewer would mean cooler. Dansgaard is following that theory. Unfortunately, it will take months, maybe years, before we find out if it works. I require something new to keep my mind occupied.

Truth be told, all I can think about is Beria. That monster tried to rape my daughter. Mia wants me to let it go, but I cannot. She should have killed him when she had the chance. We should have moved. I understand why she did not want to. She is in love. She and Korolev are making real progress for the first time. What I fail to understand is why I did not force her to leave.