As Cora stood watching from the corner, Lawson helped the older man roll up his trouser cuff, which was stained with fresh mud. When the knee was revealed, he saw that Russell had wrapped it in a brace of some heavy material in which he had punched holes, lacing it together with the drawstring from his knapsack. Then he realized that it was the leather cover of a book, its title stamped on the spine. It was The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort.
Russell’s grin widened. “Fort would have appreciated it. Every writer likes to think that his work will be useful.”
He undid the lacing. Underneath, his kneecap was discolored by an ugly bruise, with red welts, like teeth marks, running to either side. Lawson took the flask from his pocket and offered the other man a drink, which he accepted. Then they sat in silence as Russell ate a bar of mintcake.
When he was done, Russell looked at his wife for the first time. “I’m sorry, Cora.”
Cora remained standing. She seemed visibly relieved but also determined to tamp it down. “What happened?”
Russell laughed. “The next time I act like I know what I’m doing, just whisper the name of this island in my ear.” He looked ruefully at his sprained knee. “I didn’t see the storm coming. By the time it hit, all I could do was hunker down in the woods. I spent the night there. It wasn’t too bad. When I set out in the morning, I slipped on a patch of mud, and my knee came down on a foothold trap that someone had thoughtfully placed at that very spot.”
Lawson nodded. “The trap houses get most of the foxes. For the rest, you use snares. And for the really stubborn ones—”
“—you set out steel traps,” Russell finished. “I guess that makes me a stubborn fox.”
He tested his leg and winced. “When I went down, I was probably two hundred paces from shore. It took me half the morning to cobble a brace together. I still can’t put any weight on it. Even with the tripod as a crutch, I didn’t get to the beach until it was almost dark. You were looking for me?”
“I spent all day calling for you,” Cora said quietly. “Shouting into the wind.”
“We must have just missed each other. I didn’t mean to worry you. Maybe it serves me right. But I got what I needed.”
Russell unbuttoned his shirt and withdrew a folded map, which he had been careful to keep dry. Cora was avoiding her husband’s eyes. Lawson wondered if she would say anything about what had passed between them, but he also saw that it didn’t matter. As Russell opened the map, he had the look of a man who was ready to stake everything he had on it, like a prospector about to pour his life into a doubtful claim, even if countless others had failed there before.
Taking a pencil and a ruler from his bag, Russell drew a line from the southern tip of Willoughby Island toward the western slope of Mount Fairweather, extending it deep into the interior. Then he drew a second line from the island to the eastern edge of the mountain, covering the same distance. He connected the far ends of the lines to make a triangle. The result enclosed a narrow wedge of territory, roughly four hundred miles long and a hundred miles across, with its vertex on the island itself. Russell tapped it with his pencil. “This is where we need to look.”
Lawson took it in. “So that’s why you came here. To narrow the search area—”
Russell set the pencil down. “Among other things. You can do a lot with an atlas and an armchair, but there’s no substitute for going into the field. If the image of a city appears here every year, there must be something real behind it. And it has to be somewhere in this triangle.”
He glanced at Lawson. “You understand, don’t you? The city is seen above the Fairweather range by observers in Glacier Bay, which means that it lies to the northwest. But it also has to be relatively far. I took the sightings yesterday. The top of the range is three degrees above the horizon from the southern end of the island. You can add another degree or so to suspend the city in the air. Each additional degree of elevation indicates seventy miles of horizontal distance, so—”
He indicated the map again. “The original of the image, whatever it is, is a minimum of two hundred miles away and a maximum of four hundred, which is the upper range for Fata Morgana mirages. And for it to appear where it does, it has to be somewhere in this direction.”
Lawson studied the area in question. “There isn’t much there. Valdez is the only real town, and there are a couple of villages to the north. I can fly you out there, if you like. The plane got pretty banged up. Once I pay for the repairs, I’d be glad to take you wherever you want—”
If Russell got the hint, he didn’t follow up on it. “There’s nothing to see. But there might be something there one day. And it will probably appear where a settlement is now. A foothold for what will come in the future. But I don’t think any of us will live long enough to visit it.”
Lawson wondered if Russell and Cora both somehow suffered from the same delusion. “You lost me.”
“I thought Cora explained it to you. You certainly seemed deep in conversation when I got back.” Russell fixed his wife with an unreadable look. “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”
Cora took a breath. “It isn’t so hard to understand. A mirage bends light rays in space. Under the right conditions, the image can travel down an atmospheric duct for hundreds of miles. And the same thing could happen in time. It would have to be rare. You might only see it in one place, a few times a year, at sunset. But if you’re standing in the kind of duct that transmits images across time, you would see a temporal mirage of what will be there. Not now. But someday.”
Lawson wanted to laugh. There was no reason for any sane man to settle there, much less build a city of spires. They were chasing a castle in the air. He had been doing it for years.
A second later, he realized something else. “You said that you only see it at sunset.”
“That’s what the witnesses say,” Russell said. “In late June and July. That’s why—”
“—you were in such a rush to come out,” Lawson finished. “If you waited any longer, you might miss your window. That’s what you told me. But you also said that you’d have me back by dinner. You were lying. No one would come all the way out here just to take some measurements. You wanted to see the city for yourself. Which means that you always meant to stay overnight.”
Russell looked back at Lawson. “Yes. I wasn’t sure that you’d agree to take me if it meant staying for the night. Once we were on the island, I planned to make myself scarce until dark, and then offer to pay you for the overtime. I wasn’t counting on the storm. The clouds were too heavy. I didn’t see anything at all. It didn’t appear tonight, either. But I don’t need to see it to know that it exists.”
Lawson could only think of the wreckage of his plane, and how it all might have been avoided if they had made it back to town on time. Rising from his chair, he spoke evenly. “We’ll be ready in the morning. Leave as much behind as you can. We aren’t going to be able to carry much weight.”
He left without saying goodbye. Outside the cabin, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, the rage now spreading freely through his body. They had played him for a fool, and he wanted to have nothing to do with either of them.
Lawson went into the warehouse and closed the door. The combination gun was still lying on the chopping block.
He picked up the gun. Hefting it, he told himself that he would only ask Russell to pay for the repairs. There was no reason to threaten violence, except as a last resort. He had the upper hand. They weren’t going back without him. A real town was worth more than an imaginary city.