“Fascinating man, your ancestor. Did you know he liked Grand Central Terminal quite a lot?” Ash imagined the eccentric inventor standing alone in the concourse, talking to the artificial stars. Those were the last years that Earth had a sustainable population, so what had old Nikola had to worry about? “Used to come here at night.”
“Really?” Joe looked uncomfortable.
Ash knew that he’d never liked talking about the genius in the family, so he kept going. “The concourse was his favorite sanctum. It’s said he came late at night, when he could be alone, to bounce ideas off Pegasus, Hercules, and the other heroes.”
“Did he?” Joe raised his hand to order another drink.
Ash had never understood this casual disregard for his famous ancestor. “Of all the drawings to have in the family, why pass down a drawing of a toy?”
“Maybe it’s more than a toy.”
Ash picked it up and examined it. A simple hook latch on one side held the body together. On the other side was a hinge. He lifted the latch and opened the tiny man’s round stomach. Gears and cogs filled the space inside. He saw, in a rough way, how they led to the actuators that moved the arms. A clever piece of machinery, but it wasn’t the Oscillator — it was a toy. He closed it up, latched it, and handed it to Joe. Nothing interesting there.
“I can’t stay long,” Ash lied. “I have to get home to Mariella.”
“How is she?”
“The same,” Ash said. “I spend a fortune on therapists and teachers and God knows what all, but she just sits there with her broken brain and rocks.”
Joe downed his drink in one long swallow. “It’s not necessarily broken. Just different.”
The crazy man was sensitive about broken brains.
Ash kept going. “Her brain is broken. We broke it. We brought her into this polluted world with all her other risk factors, and we broke her brain.” He had read enough studies on autism and pollution, autism and genetics, autism and parental age, autism and preterm birth to know what had happened to Mariella. All that knowledge didn’t help. “Broken brains can’t be fixed.”
Joe slammed his glass onto the table. Ash felt good that he had provoked him. Joe was usually an even-tempered guy, but clearly he’d found a soft spot.
The dog nudged Joe’s knee, and he dropped his hand onto its head, fondling its ears and running his hand down its back. He might pet the dog’s neck and find the GPS tracker. Ash would have to act properly shocked if he did, but he was more than up to that challenge.
Joe packed his automaton into the satchel, stood, and exchanged a hand signal with the bartender that seemed to indicate he wanted the drinks put on his bill.
“I don’t want to keep you from Mariella,” Joe said stiffly. “She needs her father.”
Ash rose, too. “I hope to see you around more, Joe.”
Joe shook his hand. “You know where to find me.”
Ash watched him walk out the door with the dog at his side. He knew where to find him.
Every minute.
He took the secure phone out of his pocket. He’d assigned Quantum to watch by the clock in the concourse and wait for instructions. A hopeful part of him had thought that Joe might have brought the Oscillator or its plans to their meeting, and he could have had Quantum steal it from him. Instead, he’d brought a doll.
It wasn’t much, but there must be possibilities there that Joe hadn’t realized and that Ash himself hadn’t seen in the few minutes the automaton had capered about in the dim light of the bar. Even if it didn’t, Joe liked it.
He texted Quantum: take his bag.
Chapter 18
Joe walked out of the bar without looking back. Alan Wright hadn’t changed a bit with his crack about broken brains and how they couldn’t be fixed, and it pissed him off that the man would use those words to characterize his own daughter. With a father like that, the kid didn’t stand a chance.
Alan had always been a survival-of-the-fittest guy. Joe suspected his compulsion to save the world was driven by misanthropy. Alan thought that Earth would be better without humans on it, or at least everyone but Alan himself. Joe had once listened to a long lecture from Alan about the “sustainable carrying population of the planet,” and it had left him wondering if Alan would be happier if five billion (brown and a long row of black) humans suddenly died. Joe didn’t want anything more to do with him. He didn’t know why he’d even agreed to meet him.
Edison nosed Joe’s hand — a gesture designed to calm him down. Joe petted his muzzle. Edison was right. He shouldn’t let Alan get him riled up, and he ordinarily wouldn’t, but his father’s funeral had put him on edge and reminded him of his prison sentence underground.
Edison looked at the satchel and wagged his tail. He’d seen Joe put a tennis ball in there. “We’ll take a walk through the tunnels, play some fetch soon. Would you like that?”
Edison’s tail wagged again, and he bounded a few steps ahead of Joe. It was as simple as that to keep him happy. Joe needed to take a cue from him. Who cared what Alan Wright thought?
Edison was leading the way down to the concourse. Should they take the elevator and hike out to the tunnels from the house, or should they head for a platform and walk out from there? Track 36 (red and orange) was free right now. They’d be able to climb down there and hike over to Edison’s favorite spot, where a bunch of tracks converged at once. It had a large section of unused, and un-electrified, tracks so that Joe could throw the ball fairly far.
Decision made, Joe followed Edison down another flight of stairs into the concourse. He paused at the balcony and looked out over the vast room. Passengers checked out the boards, milled around the clock, and rushed off to the platforms. A guy leaning against the information booth looked familiar. He was about Joe’s height, with straight black hair. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt. Joe struggled to place him.
Then the man moved.
Joe’s research in human movement had made him aware of how people stand, how their joints move relative to each other, how they carry their heads. This man was familiar. He reached for a train schedule, pulled it out of its slot in the side of the information booth, and pretended to read it.
But he was pretending. His eyes didn’t rove across the numbers. He folded the schedule again and took a single step to return it to its original position. That step was enough for Joe to recognize the athletic grace and purpose, each movement precise and fluid. He had moved just like that when he grabbed Joe’s suitcase the day before.
“Edison,” Joe called in a low voice.
The dog caught his tone and came to heel, his bouncing joy gone.
He hesitated another moment, trying to decide where to go. Upstairs was isolated this time of night. Someone might come down out of The Campbell Apartments as they had done, but most would take the front door onto the street. If he and Edison backtracked, the man might catch them completely alone. Joe had no illusions he could best this guy in a fight. Joe wasn’t a total wimp — he’d fought as a kid and teenager at the circus. But not for years and never against anyone who moved like the man by the information booth.
He thought of calling someone but dismissed the idea. It would take too long for them to arrive, and he’d look like a paranoid fool, afraid to walk down to his own front door without an escort. He couldn’t call for help every time he had a feeling. As a crazy person, he already had so little credibility that he didn’t want to squander it.
If he couldn’t call for help and he couldn’t go back, forward was the only way. The 8:52 (purple: brown, blue) southeast train was leaving in two (blue) minutes from Track 42 (green, blue). Even this late the platform would be pretty full. That train halted for about a half a minute at an underground signal not long after it left the platform to let another train go through. When it stopped, he and Edison could get off at the last second and disappear into the underground darkness. No matter how clever this guy was, Joe could lose him in the tunnels.