Who was he? Was he even real? Was anythingreal?
With no answers, ever, she could only tuck such questions away to wait for their time. She would remember his face. For now, she was swept up in everything else that had just happened, and what remained.
“Mandy,” she said. The dancer was Mandy. She was the dancer. She enfolded herself with her arms. The warmth had not left her. “Mandy Eloise Whitacre.”
There had been a development. Dr. Jerome Parmenter could see it in the face of Loren Moss, his project manager. Moss was wan and shaken as he closed the door to Parmenter’s office and sank into the chair facing the older gentleman’s desk.
“What’s happened?”
Moss had been manning the lab while the rest of the staff was away for the holidays. Now fear lingered in his eyes. “I saw her.”
The news was not a surprise, but it was not welcome. “Where?”
“In the staff room, not more than ten feet from me.”
Parmenter turned to the computer console adjacent to his desk. “Did you note the time?”
“December 26, 12:22 A.M.”
Parmenter scrolled through the readings and found a spike in activity at precisely that time. “A 23-degree fluctuation in the Kiley, 19 in Baker …” Unbelievable! “ 42in Delta! Initiating at 12:22:04, resolving 12:23:36.”
“That was it. It felt like a small earth tremor, and it woke me up. She knocked some books from the table, and my water bottle went rolling.” Moss leaned forward. “She had at least 50 percent opacity, and I’m guessing I had the same opacity to her. We could see and hear each other. I asked her who she was, and she responded. She gave me her full name, Mandy Eloise Whitacre.”
“Did you tell her who you were?”
“The corridors diverged before we got to that. But she was startled and disoriented. I don’t think she had any idea where she was or what was happening.”
“Does anyone else know about this?”
“No one.”
Parmenter immediately scrolled to the readings he’d obtained in the coffee shop. “During her levitation she deflected the Delta 29 degrees and I thought thatwas extreme.”
“She only deflected 17 during the Wallace performance, but collectively there was a trend outward.” Moss shook his head grimly. “She’s becoming very adroit at this, to the point that her inputs have priority over ours.”
Parmenter sighed, sharing the frustration. “We set, she resets, we reset, she resets again. She’s getting so we can’t keep up with her.”
“And she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. This latest event was clearly involuntary, which confirms for me that many of the events we’ve observed were also involuntary, triggered by emotions, her subconscious, maybe stress …”
“Maybe even … her spirit?”
Moss paused to weigh that. “If there is such a thing, it would correspond to what we’re observing, yes.”
“To a substantial degree, I would say. It’s a niggling question we try to avoid, but we’re not dealing with a lab rat here, or even a monkey. I believe there are aspects of Mandy Eloise Whitacre that our science can never touch or control.”
Moss considered that. “And that would provide an explanation for her behavior and these events.”
“Yeah, well, DuFresne and the others are never going to buy it, but here’s my take on it: we’ve stolen her away and she’s trying to find her way back. We can alter and revert every atom of her being, but at a certain level beyond our reach, she knows who she is and where she belongs.”
Moss sighed, visibly burdened. “So we’ve crossed the line.”
“Oh, we did that a long time ago.”
Moss looked away. “And not with impunity.”
Parmenter felt a visceral response: fear for his friend. If Mandy Whitacre’s corridor passed through the staff room only ten feet from him and only a few yards from the Machine …
“Loren, are you all right?”
Moss only looked at him, the answer in his eyes.
“Oh, no …”
“I remember everything.”
Parmenter’s hands went to his face.
“I remember volunteering and everything that happened before that: the first experiments on the lab animals, the installation of the additional mass, working with you on the Kiley/Baker protocol. All of it. A whole year.”
“We’ll have Kessler examine you.”
“The cancer’s back. I can feel it. It was a pronounced and sudden change, quite noticeable.”
The worst had occurred. Neither man could speak for a moment.
Moss offered, “The deflection of her corridor encroached on mine and overwhelmed it. Similar to what happened to the soldier, Dose.”
Parmenter looked at the computer. All the data that once promised discovery now confirmed failure. It was like reading a postmortem report.
“We saw this coming,” said Moss.
The elder scientist agreed. He just couldn’t bring himself to say it, not yet.
But Moss had had time to think about it—and now had nothing to lose. “The early models all predicted inexorable return to equilibrium, and sure enough, all the inanimates, and then the rats, and then the monkeys retraced. We could push the deflection debt ahead of us, but …”
Parmenter nodded ever so slowly, scrolling through the data on his screen. “But you can only stretch the universe so far. Looking through the lens of dead rats and monkeys—”
“ Anda retraced soldier anda retraced scientist,” Moss reminded him.
“These figures all make sense.”
“And all proverbial hell is going to break loose with Mandy Eloise Whitacre thepivotal factor.”
Parmenter hated being so cornered. “And DuFresne and Carlson in sole possession of the ears and pockets of the military.”
“I don’t suppose a moral argument will work?”
“Coming from us?” That made Parmenter chuckle in bitterness. “We’ve already explained our way around the data, disposed of the rats, incinerated the monkeys, held back what we were really thinking—that we were exploiting and jeopardizing human lives.” The moral question had always been clouded by bitter divisions over secrecy, propriety, national security, and the omnipresent god of funding, but now it was as clear as the data on the screen—and the dying scientist sitting across from him. “It’s going to be a terrible note to end on, wouldn’t you say?”
Moss sighed and rubbed his eyes. “You could say that.”
chapter
30
That evening, Eloise knocked on Sally and Micah Durham’s door. It had been so long, and the Durhams were so happy to see her. Yes, Rhea was still doing hair. Darci had moved back to Sioux Falls, Iowa, and was engaged. Two new girls, Shelly and Doris, were staying in the home as part of their probation. Sally and Micah were fine. Micah had a job with flexible hours, so he could help out more.
And how was Eloise? Once she got past “Fine,” “Doing all right,” and “Staying busy,” she sat with them in the cozy living room and got down to the main purpose of her visit: “I’m ready to tell you now. I haveto tell you. Eloise is actually my middlename… .”
The Monday after the New Year’s weekend, Arnie Harrington, fresh up from Vegas, got his first look at the Collins-Kramer-Morgan Magic Theater. “I’ll be jiggered!”
For a training stage built in one end of a shop building, the stage was one impressive piece of work. It had footlights fashioned from work lights, movable access stairs, backdrops that rolled into place on casters or lowered into place on cables, teaser curtains, a rack of lights Dane bought secondhand from a concert promoter, a spotlight, and one main curtain operated by a revamped garage door opener.
“The birthplace of exciting new talent and many new wonders to come, I trust,” said Dane.
Wow. If Eloise Kramer’s act had benefited from the same Dane Collins touch… “So where’s our magician?”