Xiu bit into the sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly. But not bad really. "Have you had a chance to do your thing with the various people we saw today?"
"Play shrink, you mean? Yeah, I reviewed your Epiphany log; I posted some anonymous consults. The advice we gave Carlos Rivera was fine. He's got an ongoing problem, but that's life. As for Juan, we've done our best there, at least for the moment."
Xiu smiled around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly. It had taken her some time to realize what a genius Lena was. After all, psychiatry was such a soft specialty. Lena said little Miri loved to view her grandmother as a some kind of female wizard. She claimed to know that even though the girl never announced the fact. Now Xiu had realized Lena was everything Miri imagined, at least metaphorically. I've never understood other people, but with Lena seeing out of my eyes and chatting in my ear, I am learning .
There were still mysteries: "I don't understand why your granddaughter is pushing Juan away. Sure, the kids don't remember what really happened in Pilchner Hall, but we know they were coming to be friends. If we could only get Miri's logs" what the government was still withholding.
Lena didn't answer directly. "You know Alice is home from hospital?"
"Yes! I caught the fact from you, no details."
"There won't be any details. 'Alice was sick and now she's better.' In fact, I've known for a long time that Alice plays dice for her own soul. She nearly lost it this time, and somehow that's related to my ex-husband's grand screwup at UCSD. I think Alice will recover. That should help Juan with Miri." Lena sat back in her chair. Or rather, she let the chair tilt into a different posture. On her own, Lena couldn't really straighten up. "We've talked about this before. Miri can be stubborn to the point of being an asshole. She inherited that trait from the SOB, skipping a generation over Bob. And now that stubbornness has latched on to some deep-down guilt: subconsciously Miri feels that she and Juan messed up and did this terrible thing to Alice."
"um, that doesn't really sound like science, Lena."
"I'm sparing you the technicalities."
Xiu nodded. "You get results. There are people at Fairmont High who think I'm some sort of human-relations genius. Me!"
Lena reached her hand a few inches across the table, as far as her twisted bones could go. Xiu took the hand gently in her own. "We've made a good team, haven't we?" said Lena.
"Yes." It wasn't just Lena's way with people. It wasn't just saving Tom-mie and his friends. There had been those dark days at the beginning of her time at Fairmont, when she was sure she could never come back and Lena wasn't so happy-go-lucky either. Together they had climbed into the daylight. Xiu looked at the little old lady who was ten years younger than herself. Together, Lena and I have become something rather remarkable . Apart ?
"Lena, do you think I'll ever be good at seeing into people the way you do?"
Lena shrugged and gave a little smile. "Oh, I don't know."
Xiu cocked her head, remembering little incidents here and there across the last few months. Lena Gu almost never lied outright. She seemed to realize what that would do to her credibility. But Lena could deceive, even in the face of a direct question. "Do you know, Lena, when you say 'oh, I don't know' and shrug that means you're thinking 'not in a million years?'"
Lena's eyes widened. She gave Xiu's hand a squeeze. "um. Well, there you go. Maybe in this case it won't take a million years!"
"Good. Because I want to tell you, Lena I don't think Robert is the SOB you remember. I think he's really changed."
Lena's hand slipped away from hers. "I take it back. In your case, a million years may not be enough."
Xiu reached out, but Lena's hand was back in her lap. Never mind. There were things that had to be said. "Robert was brutal in the beginning, but look how he has helped Juan. I have a theory." She flicked the Nature citation across the table at Lena. This wasn't really her own theory. "Robert has had the equivalent of major trauma, the sort of thing that rebuilds a personality's worldview."
"You read too much crap science, Xiu. Leave that to us professionals."
"It's as if he's been all unwound. He has his memories, but physically he's just a young man. He has a second chance to get things right. Can't you see that, Lena?"
Lena flinched at the words, then hunched forward even more. She was silent for a long moment, staring down at her twisted body, her head swaying in gentle negation. Finally she cranked her gaze up to Xiu's. Something that might have been a tear glinted in her eye. "You have a lot to learn, my girl."
And with that Lena backed away from the table, her chair making an agile rise and turn." 'Fraid I'm done for the evening." She rolled off toward her bedroom.
Xiu took care of the dishes. Usually Lena insisted on doing the kitchen work. "That's something I can still do with my own hands," she often said. Not tonight. And if I were just a little more clever about people , thought Xiu, I might know why .
35
The Missing Apostrophe
Zulfikar Sharif was no longer in the graduate program at Oregon State. Robert encountered a very old-fashioned error message: "No longer a registered student, no longer at OSU." Even Sharif's enum was a stub labeled "vacated." That was a little scary. Robert hunted around. Worldwide, there were about a thousand matches for "Z* Sharif." None of the accessible ones were a good match. The rest were people trying with various degrees of competence to keep their privacy.
But the Zulfi Sharif whom Robert sought was still a techno-bumpkin. After an hour or two, Robert had tracked him down to the University of Kolkata.
Sharif was very subdued. "Professor Blandings dimissed me."
"From the OSU graduate program? In my time, we professors were not so powerful."
"Professor Blandings had help from your authorities. I spent several weeks trying to explain myself to some very insistent U.S. government agents. They couldn't believe that I was an innocent who had succeeded in being multiply hijacked."
"Hmm." Robert looked away from Zulfi Sharif, at the city all around them. The day looked hot and muggy. Just beyond their small table, crowds swirled, young people laughing and smiling. The skyline had its share of tall and ivory towers. It was the Kolkata of modern Indian vision. For a moment he was tempted to open a second, naysayer channel and try to figure out what was real and what was hype. No, concentrate on figuring what part of Zulfi Sharif is real and what is hype . "I suppose the best evidence the cops think you're innocent is that they let you return to India."
"Indeed so, though sometimes I wonder if I'm not just a fish on a very long line." He gave a wan smile. "I really did want to do my thesis about you, Professor Gu. In the beginning, it was academic desperation. You were the trophy I could sell to Annie Blandings. But the more we talked, the more I "
"How much was you, Sharif? How many ?"
"I wondered that too! There were at least two besides myself. It was a most frustrating experience, sir, especially at the beginning. I would be in the middle of speaking with you, going through the questions that I knew would impress Professor Blandings and then at a whack I was a mere bystander!"
"So you could still hear and see?"
"Yes, often that was so! So often that I think the others were using me to generate some questions for inspiration, and then warping them to their own purposes. In the end and my confessing this to your police was a great mistake in the end, I came to treasure these bizarre interventions. My dear hijackers were asking questions I would never have conceived. So I hung around throughout your Librareome conspiracy, and in the end I looked the perfect foreign provocateur."