Dane had the thought, so he spoke it. “What about the ashes from the funeral home, the whole cremation?”
“A cadaver. I don’t know the legal, procedural details. Somehow they pulled it off.”
“But it wasn’t Mandy.”
“Ohhh, no. No, it wasn’t.”
“What happened to her?”
Parmenter actually laughed. “We’re all wondering that. That was the question right after the reversion started. We had her in the Machine, her vitals were dropping right off, we started the sequence”—he sighed and searched the ceiling again—“it had to be a faulty computer model or an error in the power calculations, or … we still don’t know. But … here’s how it’s supposed to work: we lay the subject in a hospital bed just as I laid the block on the table, right? Then we sedate them so they don’t know what we’re up to and transport them downstairs into the Machine. When we revert, we send them to a point on their new timeline prior to their injury and relocate them in the hospital bed so that, to them, they were in the bed, fell asleep in the bed, and then woke up in the bed a few hours, a few days later, whatever the case may be. With just a small amount of time lost, it looks normal enough. ‘Wow,’ we tell them, ‘you were out for a while but you’re all right now and very, very lucky!’
“But in Mandy’s case, there was a power surge, a time surge, an overcompensation. We didn’t expect her to live, but we did have a hospital bed prepared, we were planning to relocate her to that bed in case, just in case, she might survive. We dressed her in a hospital gown … just threw it on her as quickly as we could, it was almost an afterthought. But anyway, we’d just begun the sequence when … POOF! She vanished! Completely, totally, without a trace, and until recently we had no idea how far back she’d reverted, whether years or seconds or a fraction of a second. Worse yet, we had no idea where. She didn’t relocate to the hospital bed, or to that room, or the hallway, or anywhere on that floor or the floor above. We—can you imagine trying to check through an entire medical center to see whether an experimental subject now of younger age and disoriented, or … pardon me … a, uh, a body in such ghastly condition might have cropped up unexpectedly? Can you imagine sitting helplessly, waiting for a report to come in of a deceased or dying individual suddenly appearing in the middle of a street or someone’s yard or living room or …” Parmenter stopped to look at him, apparently to assess his reaction. “I can’t imagine how you must feel hearing all this.”
“I can help you out,” Dane replied. “At this point, I feel disdain for you and not the slightest measure of pity. And that goes for Kessler, too.”
The scientist received that and nodded ruefully. “Don’t be too harsh with Kessler. We lured her with the humanitarian benefits, then closed the net with her very first referral. She may have sold her soul, but we were the devil.” He closed his computer. “Anyway, to answer your question, yes, we can revert someone forty years, and we know that only because, by keeping tabs on you we finally found her, forty years behind our time and at the opposite end of the next state where she landed at precisely the right moment in her past that would place her at precisely the distance from the Machine that would exert precisely the amount of gravitational flux to expend the energy of the space warp needed to facilitate the time change. We still have no idea when or where that was, we’re guessing Mandy knows and we’re hoping she’ll tell us, but you can see how far we have to go before we can, you know, just ask her. We’ll need your help, if and when you decide I’m the kind of man you’d trust in the first place. But we’ll get to that. We’ll get to a lot of things.” He checked his watch. “I’ve given you more than enough to process for now.”
He slipped the computer back into his briefcase. “Isn’t that the irony, or perhaps the poetry? We tailed you and surveilled you, figuring that wherever Mandy ended up, if she was still alive she would try to find you and so we’d find her. But now the fact is”—he snapped the briefcase shut—“she’s a girl who never met you, never fell in love with you, never married you. You never lived forty years together, never had a career together, she didn’t know you from Adam, and yet”—he looked at Dane, then far away into space—“she found you. It makes me think of a salmon swimming upriver. Nothing can turn it back. It’s going to get there or die in the process.” He rose awkwardly from the child-size chair. “I have to go.”
Dane stood as well. “When do we meet again?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I know. There’s no turning back now, you have to hear the rest, and if I may—before you approach Mandy. And please, don’t make any more waves around the hospital. Things are getting dicey over there and, sparing the details for now, things could get dangerous for you and for Mandy. I’ve come forward in confidence and I ask you for your patience. Timing is everything, if you’ll pardon the pun.” He smirked at himself. “That one’s going to pop up often enough, isn’t it.”
chapter
40
Doris Branson lived in a nice, hacienda-style home with views of the Las Vegas Strip to the west and craggy, movie Western mountains to the east. Mandy didn’t find the yard much to crow about: a minidesert with rocks, cacti, and its very own dry creekbed that had never seen water and never would. Oh, well, at least you didn’t have to mow the sand.
Mandy introduced herself to the Hispanic lady who answered the door. She just said, “Come in” and led Mandy to a high-ceilinged great room toward the back, where Doris Branson appeared to be working at home, the coffee table and the couch she was sitting on strewn with paperwork and bookkeeping, a wireless headset stuck in her ear. “No, cut that order in half,” she said seemingly to herself or some invisible person in the room. “I don’t like the color, I don’t like the capacity, I want to phase them out.” She gave Mandy a wave to come in and sit down in a soft chair opposite the couch. “Since now, Larry, since now, and remind them that I’m still the manager for the next two weeks. Okay. Thank you.”
She hung up—at least that’s what Mandy assumed—and said, “So. We meet again.”
Well … that was a matter of perspective, Mandy thought. She just said, “Hi.”
“How’s the show going? I’ve heard good things.”
“I’m having a great time.”
Linda—Doris pronounced the name Leen-da—brought them coffee and they went on for a while, talking about the show—Doris hadn’t seen the show yet but liked the numbers she was getting upstairs; Vegas—Mandy was getting used to it, would always miss Idaho, and didn’t fancy herself as much of a gambler; Mandy’s future with the Orpheus—Vahidi was pleased, though he was never the type to say so, and might be speaking to Seamus about renewing Mandy’s run; Doris’s history—she’d been in the hospitality business for twenty years, had been with the Orpheus for six, loved her job, and wanted to keep it.
“So,” she said at last, “let’s talk about my accident.”
Mandy knew nothing about it. “What happened?”
Doris raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I wanted to ask you. You were there. Did you see what happened?”
Well.“I was there? I mean, you saw me there?”
Doris got impatient. “Well, of course I did, and don’t be afraid, you’re not in trouble. I just need to know, did you see where I came from? Did I come down the stairs, or did I come out of the elevator, and did I look drunk to you?”
Out of the elevator,Mandy thought, but didn’t say, not yet. And drunk? Not that she could tell.
Doris jumped into the dead space. “Here’s my situation, just so you know: I’ve had a little trouble with alcohol. I’m kicking it, getting it under control, but I wrecked my car three months ago—didn’t hurt anybody, got away without a scratch, but I was DUI so they lowered the boom on me. I paid a fine, lost my license for three months, had hell to pay with the insurance companies and all that, and I’m still not out of the woods. Now, the hotel isn’t happy about that, and they let me know that I’d better dry up or I’d lose my job. So I dried up, and that’s the honest-to-God truth. I’ve never been drunk on the job since the car wreck. But then, a week ago, last Monday, I was working like I always do, I took the elevator downstairs, I stepped out on the casino floor—and I didn’t have a drop of alcohol in me, I don’t care what the hospital says—and next thing I know I’m on the floor like I got run over.”