“Logan, can you hear me all right?”
“Yes, I can hear you fine.”
“Good, I’ve been trying to set this up for days. Are you sitting down? Because you might want to.”
“Mel, what’s happening there?”
His voice grows excited. “Six days ago, an unmanned reconnaissance airship surveying the coast of the Pacific Northwest took a photo. A very interesting photo. Do you have access to an imager?”
Logan scans the room. To his surprise, there is one.
“Give me the number,” Wilcox says. “I’ll have Lucinda send it over.”
Logan fetches the proprietor, who enthusiastically provides the information and offers to man the machine.
“Okay, they’re sending it,” Wilcox says.
The imager emits a shriek. “The connection has been made, I believe,” the proprietor declares.
“Why don’t you just tell me what it is?” Logan asks Wilcox.
“Oh, believe me, it’s better if you see this for yourself.”
A series of mechanical clunks and the machine draws a piece of paper from the tray. As the print head move noisily back and forth, Logan becomes aware of a second sound, coming from outside—a kind of rhythmic beating. He has only just realized what he is hearing when Nessa enters the room, dressed for dinner. She looks animated, even a little alarmed.
“Logan, there’s a lifter out there. It’s looks like it’s about to land on the front lawn.”
“And here we are,” the proprietor announces.
With a triumphant smile, he places the transmitted picture onto the desk. It is the image of a house, seen from above. Not a ruin—an actual house. It is encircled by a fence; within this perimeter are a second, smaller structure, a privy perhaps, and the neatly planted rows of a vegetable garden.
“Well?” Wilcox says. “Did you get it?”
There is more. In the field adjacent to the house, rocks have been arranged on the ground to make letters, large enough to be read from the air.
“What is it, Logan?” Nessa asks.
Logan looks up; Nessa is staring at him. The world, he knows, is about to change. Not just for him. For everyone. Outside the walls of the inn, the racket reaches a crescendo as lifter the touches down.
“It’s a message,” he says, showing Nessa the paper.
Three words: COME TO ME.
92
Six days have passed. Logan and Nessa, in the observation lounge, sit in silence.
On an airship, time moves differently. The excitement of travel quickly wanes, replaced by a kind of mental and physical hibernation; the days seem shapeless, the ship itself barely to move at all. Logan and Nessa, the only passengers, the objects of obscene fussing by a staff that far outnumbers them, have passed the time sleeping, reading, playing cards. In the evening, after eating by themselves in the too-large dining room, they have their pick of movies from the ship’s collection and watch alone or with members of the crew.
But now, with their destination in view, time snaps back into line. The ship is headed north, tracing the northern California coastline at an altitude of two thousand feet. Towering cliffs wreathed by morning fog, mighty forests of ancient trees, the indomitable greatness of the sea where it collides with the land: Logan’s heart stirs, as it always does, at the sight of this wild, untouched place.
“Is it what you thought it would be?” he asks Nessa.
Looking raptly out the window, she has barely spoken a word since breakfast.
“I’m not sure what I thought.” She turns her face toward him, lips pressed together and eyes slightly squinted, like someone puzzling out a problem. “It’s beautiful, but there’s something else to it. A different feeling.”
Not much later, the platform appears. Standing a hundred meters above the ocean’s surface, it has the appearance of a rigid structure, though it is, in fact, floating at anchor. The airship moves gracefully into place and attaches at the nose to the docking tower; ropes and chains are lowered; the vessel is drawn slowly downward to the deck. As Logan and Nessa disembark, Wilcox strides toward them with a rolling gait: a heavyset man with an untidy beard peppered with gray, his face and arms bronzed by sun and wind.
“Welcome back,” Wilcox says as they shake. “And you,” he says, turning, “must be Nessa.”
Wilcox is aware of Nessa’s role, although he is, Logan knows, not entirely comfortable with it, believing it is too soon to involve the press. But that is part of Logan’s design. Security is never as tight as it should be; word will get out, and once it does, they will lose control of the narrative. He’d rather get ahead of the situation by giving the story to one person, someone they can trust.
“Do you need to eat, clean up?” Wilcox asks. “The bird’s fueled and ready whenever you want.”
“How long will it take to get to the site?” Logan asks.
“Ninety minutes, about.”