“Well,” I said, “that’s only money.”
I powered up the flask and we each took a photo of the readings, time-and date-stamped, and we each of us, separately, e-mailed them to Central Records, as we were meant to do.
Then he put the flask into his pannier, padded it around, and locked it down. A little pod of energy. A capsule that could light a town.
“Know how many of these I done? Three, this month. Month before—oh, five, maybe. Used to be more like one a year, y’know?”
“All Registry?”
“Who else?”
“No one ever asked you for a favor? Wanted a cut of it? Offered you money, or—?”
He climbed back on his bike.
“If they did,” he said, “I sure didn’t listen.”
I watched him as he drove away.
“You’re getting kind of paranoid here, Chris,” Angel told me. “You can’t go round suspecting everyone.”
“I don’t, but—”
“You practically accused him there.”
“I did not! I just said—”
“Wasn’t the words,” she said. “It was the tone.”
“Well. I can’t help . . . yeah, OK.” To break the mood, I said, “Let’s find somewhere. Take a day off. Celebrate, OK?”
“You mean pizza’s not enough?”
“Let’s hit somewhere a bit more upscale, first. Shall we? Then, we do the town.”
Silverman sent me a text, forwarded from Eddie-boy.
Disappointed, guys, but may b we can talk again. What say?
“Tell him to go to hell,” said Angel.
“Actually, I want to talk to him.”
“You’re the only one who does.”
“You heard him. Says he’s got a god. I think I’d like to know about that.”
“I’m sure he’ll be happy to tell you.”
She slept most of the way south. At one point, she stirred, and I thought she said something, but when I listened, she was singing, softly at first—that weird, disjointed stuff she liked to listen to—Berg, Messiaen, whatever.
She was singing and her hands moved and her body started shaking and she got so agitated that I leaned across and woke her, and she started up, staring round as if she’d no idea where she was. She sucked in air like she’d been drowning.
“What’ve you done?” she said.
Her hands were raised. She pulled at the seat belt.
“You were having a bad dream,” I said. “I woke you.”
I heard her breathing, heavily, and then she sank back in her seat.
“It wasn’t a bad dream,” she said. “Or I don’t think it was . . .”
There is a wind farm on the plains of Indiana. It runs for miles and miles, long avenues of tall gray towers, each topped with a huge, three-vaned propeller; some turning slowly, others frozen into strange, suggestive attitudes: elegantly beckoning, or fending off, quizzical or curious . . . There is something beautiful and slightly eerie about it all, its size, its silence, and that weird trick of the mind by which these simple shapes resemble giant human effigies—the way a stick man or a smiley-face are instantly identified as human—as one of us.
They stand there like some primal memory, an army of long-vanished giants, reborn into the modern world.
The Registry has factions that would sweep aside such installations, blow away the wind farms and the dams for HEP, the coal reactors and the nuclear sites, declare them all irrelevant and obsolete. New Heaven, new Earth: let the gods regain their hold, and run their fingers through the deep veins of the world, while the Registry, as ever, strains to keep them on the leash. In service, and not in control.
There are factions, like I say.
I’m not in any of them.
Chapter 37
Stella
Silverman said, “She’ll be at church.”
I checked my watch. It was nearly noon. Tuesday.
“Devout,” I said.
“Just hungry. They run a soup kitchen.”
Michigan had been warm. Indiana too. But here, the air was thick and hot, and simply stepping from the car, I felt the sweat oozing from my skin. The town was Lexington, Kentucky: “old money and no money,” as somebody described it to me.
Well, we were about to meet one half of that equation.
The church hall offered shade and cool air. Silverman got quite a welcome. It surprised me. Some guy high-fived him. Others nodded, waved, said hi. Then someone shouted from across the room, “Hey! Paulie!”
She didn’t look homeless. Not till you realized it was pushing 90 outside and she wore layer upon layer, a sweater tied around her waist, another draped over her shoulders, a backpack hanging from one hand. She wore a New York Yankees cap pushed up on her head. Her face was dark, no makeup, and the hair that stuck out from beneath the cap had a brittle look from spending too long in the sun. She threw her arms round Silverman and hugged him like a brother. She was tiny—about five-two—but I think she half crushed him to death.
He introduced us.
“Angel, Chris.”
“Stella Douglas.” She grabbed my hand, and shook it firmly. Then to Angel, another handshake: “Stella Douglas.”