The washer was suddenly forgotten. "What do you mean?"
"You know—got the same hair as you. Same green eyes, too. I saw her up close." Another Cassandra? Here? "Show me, will you?"
Wonky led the way to the swinging doors that opened into the dining room. Opening one of them a crack, he gestured beyond it. "Next to the wall."
Javier squinted through the opening. Details were hard to see at that distance, but he was almost sure—
She turned in his general direction for a second and he stiffened. Pulling off his apron, he tossed it to Wonky. "I'm going to talk to her. Cover for me, okay?"
"Hey, wait, you're not supposed—" The rest of Wonky's protest was cut off by the closing door. Feeling horribly conspicuous, Javier threaded his way through the maze of tables. "Excuse me," he said as he reached the girl's side. "Are you Melynn Uhland?"
She glanced up, then took a longer look. "Yes. Do I know you?"
"I doubt it. My name's Alban Javier. I went to Aurora Northern, too, but I was a year behind you. Mainly, I know your picture from news reports of your work with Dr. Rayburn."
"What can I do for you?" she asked coolly.
"Uh—may I sit down?" This wasn't going quite as Javier had expected it to and he was beginning to get flustered.
She hesitated, then nodded curtly. He sank gratefully into the seat at her right. "I—well, I just wanted to find out what's happening in your work," he told her. "The articles I've read don't really say much."
"The final report won't, either," she said, her voice strangely flat. "At least, it won't say what you want to hear."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we haven't found a way to stop the visions."
Javier froze. "But... you said final report."
"That's right. We're quitting."
He started to speak, but no sound came out of his suddenly dry mouth. He tried again. "You can't do that. I mean—look, we've been living with this for fifteen years, some of us. We've had friends die and other friends go permanently psychotic. We can't stop until we find a cure."
"What do you mean, we?" Melynn snapped, green eyes blazing. "I'm the one who's been living in Rayburn's hellhole, not you." She glared at him for a moment as he sat there, speechless. Then, lowering her gaze, she passed her hand across her forehead; and when she again raised her eyes the anger was gone. "Alban," she said quietly, "I know what you're going through. Just because I was working with Dr. Rayburn doesn't mean I didn't get my share of the fear and misunderstanding everyone dumps on us. I did. And the job... it was ten times worse than Aurora. The staff spent half their time trying to learn what triggers the trances, and the other half looking for a way to suppress them." She shook her head. "Nothing worked, but they tried everything. I had to live through changes in diet, environment, biorhythm—I don't remember all of them. Some of them—a lot of them—made either the vision or side effects worse. I've lost ten kilograms since we started, and been on the brink of a nervous breakdown twice. Others of us weren't that lucky—two of our original eighteen are dead, and another four might as well be. I've been Dr. Rayburn's only test subject for three months now; everyone else had to drop out. Alban, I want to find out how to stop the trances; I want it so badly I dream about it. But I can't do any more. I've paid my pound of flesh. It's up to someone else now."
"I'm sorry," he said. Dimly, he was aware of how inadequate the words were, but at the moment another, more urgent thought was uppermost in his mind. "Tell me," he asked carefully, "did they ever figure out what triggers the visions?"
It was as if a thin glaze of ice had dropped over the emerald of her eyes; and in that moment Javier knew that she, too, knew the truth. "No," she said in a low voice. "And I doubt they ever will."
He nodded, trying to dislodge the lump that had formed in his throat. "You could have made it easier on yourself, you know, if you'd just told them."
Her smile was bitter. "You don't find enough hatred directed toward you, Alban? You want to try living among people who know how your visions come to you?"
"No." Javier glanced at the people sitting nearby, but if they were listening they gave no sign of it. "I'm sorry; it was a stupid comment."
"That's all right." She touched his arm. "I'm sorry, too—I didn't need to be sarcastic. I'm just very burned out right now."
"Any way I can help?"
She shook her head. "Thanks, but no. I'm just passing through, actually—I'm heading up to the most desolate part of northern Newfoundland I can afford to get to." She smiled faintly. "My first choice was central Australia, but Dr. Rayburn's budget couldn't stretch that far."
Javier nodded. "I guess I'd better get back," he said. "Thanks for talking to me."
She caught his wrist as he started to get up. "Look, Alban, I'm sorry I—well, I know how much you and everyone else has been counting on us. And we did turn up one bright spot: the virus that linked into our parents' chromosomes apparently requires a naked protein from the Auroran biosphere to make its linkage properly, and the pseudogene it forms is highly recessive besides. That means that unless you marry another Cassandra your children won't have it; and even if you do the pseudogene will probably break off and disappear before your grandchildren can inherit it."
He swallowed, unsaid, the first words that came to mind. If she wanted to see that as a bright spot it wasn't his place to burst her bubble. "Well, that's something," he said instead. "I—good luck with your trip, Melynn; I hope it helps you."
"Thanks. Good-bye, and good luck to you, too."
He made his way back to the kitchen through the sea of covertly staring eyes and returned to work, feeling a familiar numbness settling over his brain. Somewhere deep inside him, he knew, part of the drive that kept him going had died. He had never honestly admitted to himself just how much hope he had been putting in Dr. Rayburn's work; the true quantity was now painfully clear. Rayburn was the last major researcher still working on the Cassandra trances. If he was giving up, then that was it. The visions would be with Javier now until his death, ending forever any chance he might have had to live a normal life. A wife and children... he almost wished Melynn would be able to keep such a naive hope. But outside Rayburn's lab it was unlikely to last. The real world was a sobering experience for social outcasts.
Somehow Javier managed to make it through the day, and by evening his bitterness and frustration had abated somewhat. Many people throughout history, he told himself as he walked home, had survived without hope; he could, if necessary, do likewise. Besides, he seemed to be lucky these days. Maybe luck would serve him where hope had failed.
—
Two days later, his luck ran out.
He was sweeping the kitchen floor when the two-second warning came, and he had just time to step close to a wall before his muscles locked in place and the world faded away....
Lying on its side is the tangled wreckage of a tube train, squeezed between the tracks and the tunnel wall. Smoke and fire are everywhere, the crackling of flames mingling with the screams of the injured and the shouts of rescue workers. From outside the tunnel comes a barely audible roll of thunder, the sound strangely incongruous in the midst of the carnage. An eddy in the air currents momentarily clears the smoke from one car's number plate: 1404. From somewhere inside a scream goes on and on....
"Hey, Javier! Hey!"
The voice came from far away, scared and insistent. Gradually, the train wreck faded from sight. The usual wave of nausea rose into Javier's throat, and he screwed his eyes shut as he fought it down. His muscles trembled with tension and adrenaline shock, and his head ached fiercely. Opening his eyes carefully, he found himself looking into Wonky's anxious face. "I'm okay, Wonky," he croaked through dry lips. "Don't worry."