A second later, an unfamiliar voice began to whisper in his head. It said that no one knew that the couple was here at all. The flight plan had only stated that he was taking two passengers on a scenic circle tour. He had not been required to list them by name, and he had not entered any additional remarks.
He thought again of the cash in the wallet, and how little would remain for him in Juneau when he returned, even if he managed to fix his plane. And as much as he tried, he could not push this new thought away.
There was a knock at the door. Lawson set down the gun, feeling a sudden wave of sickness. “Who is it?”
“Only me.” The door opened to reveal Cora outside. “I’d like to talk to you.”
Lawson took a seat, indicating the second chair by the chopping block. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Suit yourself.”
Cora came in and shut the door behind her. When she saw the gun on the table, her mouth seemed to tighten incrementally, but she made no mention of it. She lowered herself into a chair. “Sam’s sleeping. His knee is in pretty bad shape. He’ll need to see a doctor when we get back.”
“I know one in Juneau. He’s pushed my nose back into place a few times. What else did your husband say?”
“He thinks I’m mad at him.” Cora eyes strayed down to the gun again. “You’re sure we can take off tomorrow?”
“I’ll get you back if I can. Provided that we come to an understanding.” When Cora failed to respond, Lawson went on. “There’s a lot of damage to the plane. Since I only got caught in the storm because your husband wandered off, it seems fair that you cover the cost.”
Cora appeared to take this in. “And what if we decide not to pay you anything?”
“Then we aren’t going anywhere,” Lawson said. “I’m happy to stay as long as necessary. There are deer in the woods. I know how to take care of myself. But I wonder if you do.”
Cora smiled. “Don’t try to frighten me. We’ve been through more than you know.”
She took out a wallet, removed a wad of bills, and set it on the table. Lawson didn’t reach for it yet. Returning the wallet to her pocket, Cora seemed to feel something else there, which she withdrew. It was the map. She unfolded it on the tabletop, handling it with a strange tenderness. “It’s a shame. We aren’t rich, you know. All we have is Sam’s writing, and that doesn’t pay much. But we still had to come here. When you met Sam, he told you that there might be another stop after this one. If you’ll hear me out, I can tell you where it is.”
“I don’t need you to tell me.” Lawson inclined his head toward the map. “You want to see the towns in that triangle. Even if there’s nothing there now, you want to set foot there for yourself. But I still don’t understand why.”
“It’s simple. These are the most likely locations where the real city of spires will appear. If it isn’t Valdez, it might be somewhere else. We want to leave a message that will prove we were right. I’m still not sure what it will be. We can’t make a public prediction, because that might affect the future itself. Maybe we’ll bury it. Or seal it with instructions to open it under certain conditions after we’re dead.”
“I don’t see the point,” Lawson said. “Nobody alive will know you were right.”
“But somebody would. That’s what matters. We want people to see more than what’s in front of their eyes. To look past the present. That’s what Fort tried to do. If we’re right about this, we can finish what he started. We can predict that there will be a city of spires where no one would ever believe it.”
“That’s what I don’t get. You haven’t said how a mirage can come back in time.”
“It isn’t so hard to understand. You just have to ask yourself what a mirage really is. Light travels from the Sun, strikes an object, and is refracted through the atmospheric duct to the observer. That’s all. But it isn’t just visible light. It’s radiation of all kinds. Radio, for instance. Under the right conditions, signals that would be limited to line of sight can travel for hundreds of miles. Now imagine a class of particle that can move back in time. Let’s say they’re created by some kind of event at our city of the future, like a high-energy collision. Once they exist, they can travel along the atmospheric duct, just like the light from a visible mirage. And if they interact with particles in our time, we might see something. Like a picture of a ghost.”
“But why would it happen at this one spot? Why wouldn’t we see it in other places?”
“I don’t know,” Cora said simply. “But the city itself wouldn’t see any trace of it in its own time, either. It might even be an accident. They would have no way of knowing that they were casting a shadow on the past. Unless, of course, someone from our time left them a message.”
Lawson tried to get his head around this. “But why does it matter to you?”
Cora paused before responding. “It means that the past and the future all somehow exist together. If the future has already happened, then everything we do has already been decided. And maybe it means that the past still exists, in a way we can’t explain, even after we’ve lost it.”
She glanced out the window. “Sam understands this. If we can prove that this silent city will exist one day, it means that we’re all part of a pattern. Sometimes the patterns you see aren’t real, but sometimes they are. Most people avoid the places where the unknown breaks through. But some don’t. Like you.”
Lawson looked across the table at Cora. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I don’t think one person can ever know anything about another,” Cora said mildly. “But you can follow your hunches. Call it intuition, or paranoia, but it’s a mistake to only trust in what you know for sure.”
She paused. “I’ve been thinking of what you said about the foxes. Most are killed in the trap houses. Snares take care of the others. For the last few, you need traps. Those foxes aren’t smarter than the rest. They’re just born suspicious. But what if they tried to warn the others that there was a conspiracy against them? No one would believe it. The foxes think they’re being fed by a loving hand. When it kills them, they think they’re unlucky. They don’t realize that they were bred for it.”
Cora looked at Lawson. “People are the same. They don’t understand the world any more than the foxes do. That’s why you need a few who see things that might not even be there. It’s a delusion that allows the species to survive. Fort was one. I’ve tried to be another. So has Sam. We may never know what that city really is, but we have to ask. It gives us a reason to keep going. Something is coming, whether we understand it or not. Our mutual friend thought you would understand—”
Lawson felt his attention click sharply into place. “What are you talking about?”
Cora smiled. “Sam spoke with him about you. Ernie Pyle. The columnist for Scripps Howard. I gather that he took a trip with you a few years ago. He told us that you were an interesting man. Sam called him from Juneau, just before we flew out to the island, and gave him instructions in case we didn’t come back. And he knew we were flying out on your plane.”
Lawson became very conscious of the gun on the table. “What else did he say?”
“He said that you were the best,” Cora said. “But you didn’t know what you wanted. He said that he once advised you to build something for yourself. Because there aren’t any old pilots in Alaska.”
A long silence fell. Lawson kept his eyes on Cora. Finally, he reached for the table. Cora seemed to brace herself, but instead of the gun, Lawson scooped up the money. He took every single dollar that was there, without bothering to count it, and slid it into his pocket.