Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca… She clicked the streets off, climbing and diving with the strangest sensation, feeling as if she were wanding through them. As she walked, the high-resolution, water-lapped horizon swelled and filled, without pixilating or dropping frames. She swung her head side to side, and life tracked her pan seamlessly. The piers, Alki Point, Pike Place Market: all appeared to her astonishingly solid, with fantastic color depth, and no trade-off between realism and responsiveness. When the sun chiseled its way through a chink in the stratocumulus and, for fifteen seconds, blazed the cityscape into highest contrast, Adie discovered the real use of binary. The greatest value of the clumsy, inexorable, accreting digitization of creation lay in showing, for the first time, how infinitely beyond formulation the analog would always run.
She prowled, one blustery Saturday, up and down the four floors of the Mindful Binding, that fantastic, expanding, used-book universe perfect for getting lost in. She headed first for Architecture, searching for scannable plans that might be of interest to Ebesen and Vulgamott, peace offerings for having abandoned them. Then — old bad habit— Art. The oversized color coffee-table books just sat there on the shelves, past hurting anyone. And there was no one at all to catch her looking.
She moved on to Travel, Victoriana, and Local History. Then, decorously delayed, she paid the obligatory visit to her first love, Juvenile Fiction. And there in that most unlikely place, she ran into Stevie Spiegel. The last person alive she would have figured on meeting under that heading.
He saw her, and his eyes darted quickly away to check if he might slip off unseen. But they were both caught. Adia Klarpol! What brings you out into the light?
She laughed. Not a full-blooded vampire yet. Still just a novitiate, remember? Don't we get to venture abroad for short intervals during the first year?
Sure, sure. Whatever gets you through the night.
Besides, I could ask you the same thing.
Me? I like the light. I make it a point to get out in it. Once every other month or so, whether I need to or not.
She gestured to the motley-colored bindings. Kids' books, Stevie? You're not responsible for any illegitimate little charges that I don't know about, are you?
He blushed. Hope not. It's… He wrestled with expediency. It's just that I've been looking for this one story…
Since you were nine?
Well, seven, if you must know.
Called?
Oh. Now. If I knew what the damn thing was called, I wouldn't still be looking for it after all this time, would I?
Author? Subject?
Gone. All gone. My daughter, my ducats.
Hang on a minute. You've been trying to locate a book for thirty years, and you can't remember what it's about?
Oh, it was a fabulous story, if that's what you mean. This boy has the ability to make the things he imagines come into existence, just by — and here I'm a little shaky on the exact mechanism—
Stevie. You're hopeless. Was this an older book? American? English? Translated?
It was about so big. Amazing illustrations, mostly sepia and magenta. Oh. Why didn't you say so in the first place? That narrows it down
considerably.
He hung his head. They scoured the shelves together, separately, in silence. Each looking for a secret buried treasure. Neither of them finding.
She capitulated first. That's it I'm taking off.
You going somewhere? Or do you have a minute?
I have my whole life, she told him. Until Monday.
They wandered at random through the afternoon-soaked streets. The air thickened and expanded around them as they stirred it with their bodies. They talked shop, their only safe common denominator.
So how s Art s Greatest Hits going?
She shrugged. It's still a jungle out there.
They looked up: Pioneer Square. Sit for a minute? he asked. Expecting to be refused.
They found a vacant bench. Adie sat and exhaled. Unfolded. The sun ducked in and out through a scattering crowd of cloud.
God, she said. Damn. I feel like the Mole-Woman. You know? The one they've buried in that hermetic sunken shelter? The woman who lives in that Ramada Inn lab at the bottom of a mine shaft, with the flock of video cameras and microphones pointed at her around the clock? What's her name again?
Mmm… Doris.. Singlegate?
Stevie. You never cease to amaze me. How long has she been underground?
Good question. It has to be at least a year.
And what's the point, again?
Study her physiology. Changes in biological clocks and such. In the absence of all outside cues.
You science types are all sickos.
He laughed, a little offended. Since when do you lump your old fellow traveler with the science types?
Ever since you wired up your iambs.
Look who's talking. But I'll admit to a certain sick fascination with the Mole-Woman. I hear she's gone sidereal. That her body's reset itself onto a twenty-five-hour cycle. Can you imagine? Every four weeks, she loses a whole day.
What do you mean, "imagine"? How long have I been working for you thugs, anyway? I'ò ahead of schedule.
At least we let you come up for air now and then.
Spiegel produced a sack of slightly linted honey-coated peanuts from his jacket pocket. Adie ate the minimum that politeness dictated. Stevie swung his head east to west, a pivoting Minicam. Through his eyes, she saw the square unfold. A clump of people queued up for the next Seattle Underground tour. Knots of autonomous agents milled about the lost pergola, each holding to the hem of a private goal.
People school, Adie said. They flock. Have you ever noticed?
He nodded. They're looking for places of power. But they cant find them, because none exists anymore.
Places…?
You know. Stone circles. Barrows. Temples, cathedrals, mosques, pagodas. Even town halls, I suppose, once upon a time.
Stevie. I thought you'd graduated from poetry. I thought you were sticking to subroutines these days.
He flashed his can't-hurt-me-with-that smile. Not entirely incompatible, I've found.
And these places of power of yours…?
All dried up. Where's our Stonehenge these days?
What, they've moved it from Salisbury Plain? Those vandals.
Spiegel snickered. No, it's still sitting there. Behind a chain-link fence. Salisbury Cathedral, down the road, is no better. Two pounds for a peek, and a little numbered walking booklet demystifying all the high points.
Adie waved her hand outward. I don't suppose you'd be willing to count a colorful totem pole and a tasteful bust of Chief Seathl as magic lenses?