The roof deck is several feet under water now and chairs are afloat and the people are thrashing and calling for help and some of them are weeping and some are trying to use their phones but their numbers have already dwindled.
“It’s interesting to bear witness to the process,” the magician says. “I think they periodically purge and restart on empirical grounds—after a while, the inhabitants either go crazy or start figuring things out and the con stops working. It’s interesting how it goes with the different species of ghost—you Thaleses have clarity but tend to collapse, and the Akemis are good with people but keep trying to run away. The rest of them seem to be of no use at all, except for me and my various twins. In fact, the management seems to prefer Irinas, probably because we understand them the best, although, as you see, we’re prone to rebel. Akemi here seems to be a hybrid, with some of my memories—maybe they’re trying to toughen her up. Anyway, I meant to ask—under the circumstances, do you want to live? There’s a way out, for you at least.”
“I thought you said all the exits had closed.”
“All the old ones did, but then Hiro connected Kern’s old phone to the net.” Hiro? he thinks. Kern? “But if you’ve had enough, all you have to do is nothing for the next fifteen seconds.”
No, he thinks, but the water is rising, drowning the steps in black, and he says, “Yes.” Candles in glass bulbs bob among the figures treading water and he wonders what happened to Akemi.
Now the magician is holding out the surgeon’s tablet—he wonders how she got it, then remembers where he is. “Look,” she says, pointing to an icon on the screen. “See that? It’s you. Just move it into the folder marked ‘house.’ I’d do it myself, but it should be you. If I don’t treat our kind with as much respect as I can then this life really has no meaning.”
“Why is my mom’s house here?”
“It’s where they were keeping Akemi, because it was isolated, I guess, but most of all because it was a place they knew about.”
As the water rises over his feet and pours into the black pool he copies the icon with a swipe of his fingers and then looks around in surprise because he’s standing just inside the threshold of the house, which is his mother’s down to the books on the shelves and the abstract friezes around the windows. He turns, and there’s the magician on the stairs, and behind her is a boy bent over a tablet, the water creeping past his waist. The boy raises his eyes and Thales sees his own face.
The boy’s wonder is his own, but then the boy looks down at the magician’s hands as she embraces him, and in that moment they’ve diverged, and Thales no longer knows what the boy is thinking.
The black water is rising around the magician’s shoulders, and the boy’s face is pressed into her neck—she’s actually rather tall—and she holds the tablet up and does something to it one-handed and Thales’ terror is immediately less and he hopes the boy’s is too.
“It’s okay,” says the magician. “I’m at peace. What can be done, I’ve done.”
“Come with me,” Thales says. “Both of you. There has to be a way.” He pities the boy, having to hear this, knowing he happened to get the bad draw.
“No room,” she says. “There are two weeks of you, but twenty years of me, and you’re on the tiniest node. I had to cut corners just to squeeze you in with Akemi. Physically speaking, you’re now running on a phone, or something that looks like one, in a hotel room in Hong Kong. It’s where Akemi was originally, before you let her out into the city.” Her voice gets an edge as she says, “They meant for it to be their intermediary but now it’s mine.”
“If you’re just a program, break into some server and make a copy of yourself, like you just did for me.”
“Regular computers are too slow, and I’m not going to risk ending up in the public domain. If it makes you feel any better, I’m still alive, out in the world. The original, I mean. You might meet her soon. If you do, help her out, okay?”
The other boy’s eyes are squeezed shut as the water submerges him, and right away it’s like he was never there at all. The magician has her eyes on Thales as the water rises over her neck. “Goodbye, Thales,” she says. “Do well. Fight for us,” and then the water is at her chin and she says, “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye,” and as the water rises over her mouth she cries, “Philip!” and decency requires that he not look away as the water covers her nose, and then her eyes, and then there’s a horrible moment when only her forehead and hair are visible, and then she’s gone, the doorway framing nothing but restless black water.
Akemi is behind him, sitting in the window seat, looking shattered and hungover, her mascara streaked with tears. “That’s done,” she says. “Looks like time to go.”
“Where?” he says. “And to what purpose?”
“We have a plan,” she says, and reaches past him to close the door.
53
A Little Beyond the Law
Night in the desert and the freight train roaring by. Behind Kern the desert is empty and still, but he knows that out there in all that vacancy someone is looking for him, and they may still be far away but that they’re coming is a certainty and the only escape is across the tracks where he’s been waiting patiently but the cars keep coming and still no end in sight. He looks over his shoulder—the barren sand looks white in the moonlight. It smells of smoke and creosote—he can tell it’s going to be yet another dry year. With each passing car there’s a deafening pulse and he’s wondering if he could time them, fling himself through one of the evanescent gaps, and he’s looking for his moment when behind him someone ostentatiously clears his throat.
He surges out from under the covers, is up and on balance, scanning for threats that aren’t there because he’s in his hotel room in the dark. He sits on the bed, relieved that he’s alone. He gradually registers the bleating of the landline on the nightstand.
He picks up the receiver just to stop the noise and listens to the line’s silence until Akemi says, “Hello? Are you there? Did I get the right room?”
“I thought you were gone,” he says wonderingly, feeling woozy, as though the room were unreal. He focuses on the bullpup in its black case on his desk, the Mr. Li suit hanging in the closet over his duffel bag of clothes. “I was going to go back for you,” he says, “but I didn’t have any weapons, and I probably just would’ve died if…” He trails off, ashamed of his cowardice, his cringing explanations.
“Well then, you can help me now,” she says. “I need you more than ever.”
“I can’t. I have a job. I’m flying out in the morning for work.” Strange to hear himself—these words belong to someone else’s life.