“Your memory troubles,” said June. “Can you tell me about them?”
“They come and go,” her father said, frowning. “I leave myself notes, they help me remember.” His face lit up. “Wait,” he said, and pulled the notebook out of his sagging jacket pocket. Some pages were marked with colored tags. Peter saw big block lettering on the bookmarks, with labels reading “EVERY DAY” and “THINGS THAT HELP.” The Yeti opened his notebook to a page near the front, marked “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?”
He read from the paper. “I had some problems with the blood vessels in my brain,” he said. “I forget things. Sometimes I get stuck in the past. Sometimes I imagine things that aren’t true. It was my own fault. I was very stressed at work. I took medication that I should not have taken, for a long period of time. I damaged my brain. But there are things that help. If I do those things, I can manage my life. I can still do creative work.”
“When did it start?” June’s voice was soft. “How long ago?”
He lifted his eyes from the page to look directly into his daughter’s face. “Before I left the software business,” he said. “You were about five. I had those microseizures and lost my pilot’s license. It got worse over time. I took a lot of stuff to try to, you know, to medicate myself. I didn’t really understand what was going on until after you left to find your mother.”
June’s childhood was ruled by a man who didn’t know his own brain was damaged. Peter watched June assimilate this new knowledge. It was like watching the forms for a house foundation bulge slightly as they filled with wet concrete. Containing all that liquid weight.
God, she was tough.
She was even tough enough to ask the next question.
“Do you remember that Mom died last week?”
Peter was glad she brought it up, because he sure didn’t want to. But somebody had to while the Yeti was still more or less in the present.
He covered his eyes with his big hand, long white hair cascading down.
“I forget,” he said. “First I forget that she left. If I manage to remember that she left, I’ve forgotten that she died.”
And every time he remembered, thought Peter, would be like learning it for the first time.
How would that be, discovering that your wife was dead, over and over?
“I’m sorry,” said June. “You still loved her.” It wasn’t a question.
“I did,” he said. “I always loved her. It wasn’t her fault she left. It was mine.”
“Do you know who killed her? And why she died?”
“I . . .” The Yeti looked at his notebook, at the page markers labeled in his neat engineer’s handwriting, but didn’t appear to find anything to help him there. “No. I don’t.”
Peter heard a soft rattle and turned. Behind him at the black stone barns, both wide roll-up doors rose on their tracks. The golden drone’s propeller came on again and pushed it forward to some predetermined point, where it turned and rolled into one barn. From the other barn, another drone emerged, the slight sound of its propeller hidden by the sinuous clatter of the roll-up doors closing again.
The new drone turned to line itself up with the road, then rolled forward. As both doors came to a halt, the fan noise became louder, and the golden bird picked up speed, faster and faster until it lifted smoothly into the air, two feet, four feet. Then the tail dipped slightly and the drone leaped upward like a hawk in mid-flight, chasing its inevitable prey.
“Where’s it going?” asked Peter.
“I don’t know. The first drone, the one that landed, is my new prototype. Better wings, better glide, more lift. I told them it needed field testing.” He gave June a shy smile. “I just wanted to see my daughter. The one that just took off is the previous generation. They changed the encryption protocols a few days ago. I haven’t had control for a long time. But something big is happening now. You need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” June said fiercely. “I just got here.”
Peter looked up at the bare granite ridges surrounding the little valley. He could see the waterfall where the river came through from the higher elevations to the west, but he didn’t see anything that looked like a trail. He had no idea where Lewis and Manny and his people would cross over.
He hoped they were already here.
Somewhere under the cover of trees.
To the Yeti, he said, “Will you take June inside with you? She’ll be safer there.”
June said, “You’re not the boss of me, Peter Ash.”
“I know,” he said. “You’re the boss. But that drone is their eye in the sky. Maybe you and your dad could make a run on their encryption, turn off those cameras?”
She looked at him. Of course she understood. “Okay.” She turned to the Yeti. “I’ll go inside with you. We could use a little help with something.”
“Hey,” said Peter. “Take your laptop with you.”
She flashed him a smile. “Waaaay ahead of you.”
“We should all go,” said the Yeti. “It’s not safe out here.”
“You’re probably right,” said Peter. “But I have a few things to do.”
50
LEWIS