Triggers (30 page)

Nothing. Nothing at all. Ranjip got off the gurney.

“Power nap, guru?” asked Kadeem.

“Just trying to see if I was linked in the same way, but I’m not. Still, let’s check our facts.” He pulled out his BlackBerry and a small Bluetooth earpiece for it, then walked across the room, far enough away that Kadeem couldn’t possibly hear what the earpiece was conveying. Then he placed a call. “Agent Dawson. It’s Ranjip. Can you talk?”

“Yes.”

“You are with President Jerrison?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Tell me: does he still have a respirator on?”

“No, they removed that about an hour ago.”

Ranjip felt his heart pounding. Still, it didn’t prove anything other than that Kadeem had Agent Dawson’s memories, as before. “I need your help to conduct an experiment.”

“Sure,” Susan said. “Two seconds.” He heard her begging President Jerrison’s indulgence. Ranjip happened to be looking over at Kadeem when he heard Jerrison say, “I’m not going anywhere,” and he saw Kadeem smile in amusement—but was it at the president’s quip or something else?

When Susan was back, Ranjip spoke loudly so Kadeem could hear from across the room. “Private Adams?”

“Yo.”

“I’m going to ask Agent Dawson to think of a series of numbers from one to ten. As she thinks of them, please hold up the right number of fingers, okay?”

Kadeem nodded.

“All right, Agent Dawson, you heard what I said. Give me a series of numbers, from one to ten. Not any sequence you know by heart, like your social security number, but random numbers, one per second. Just whisper them to me, starting…now.”

“Four,” said Susan, and Kadeem held up his left hand with the fingers splayed and the thumb tucked against his palm.

“Two,” said Susan, and Kadeem made a peace sign.

“Seven,” she said; he kept the peace sign up and added a full hand with all five fingers.

“Six.” Kadeem made the polite choice about which finger to drop from the peace sign.

“Ten.” Both hands, all fingers splayed, like a child showing he’d successfully washed.

“Amazing,” said Ranjip.

“What?” asked Susan.

“That real-time link that Private Adams had with you at the moment you shot Latimer? It’s persisting. He can still read your thoughts.”

“Oh, shit,” Susan said.

And, from across the room, Kadeem added, “She’s wondering what’ll happen if Bessie Stilwell ends up being able to do the same thing with Prospector.”

DORA
Hennessey’s internal clock wasn’t adjusting properly to the five-hour time-zone change between London and Washington: although it was only 3:00
P.M.
here, it was already 8:00
P.M.
back home. And it hadn’t helped that they’d made an incision in her side on Friday morning; the stitches itched. Still, she didn’t like just lying in the hospital bed, and so instead was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out at the November afternoon.

Dora and her father each had a private room, which was all to the good. She’d be ready to go to sleep in a few hours; the last thing she needed was a roommate who’d want to watch television in the evening.

Dora could read the memories of Ann January, a nurse who had been part of the team that had saved the president. She still wasn’t happy about having her own surgery postponed to accommodate him, but she did know, because Ann knew it, just how close they’d come to losing Jerrison,
and although her father was thinking of suing, she couldn’t bring herself to contemplate that.

There was a knock on her door. “Yes?” she called.

The door swung inward revealing Dr. Mark Griffin. She’d met him on Friday; he’d come to see her after she woke up from the anesthetic to explain why the surgery had been halted. “Hello, Dora,” he said. “May I come in?”

“Sure.”

There was another chair in the room, a smaller one. He turned it around, and straddled it, facing her, his arms folded across the top of its back. “Dora,” he said, “I’m so sorry, but I’ve got some bad news.”

“You’re not postponing the transplant again,” she said. Did he have any idea how nerve-racking all this was for her?

“There won’t be a transplant.”

“Why not? The tissue match was perfect.”

Griffin took a deep breath. “Dora, your father is dead.”

“What?”

“I’m so, so sorry.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

She was quiet for a time, then: “If this is because you postponed giving him my kidney—”

“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. Dora, your father tried to kill someone this afternoon—and he was shot by a federal agent.”

She’d heard a sound earlier, but—
God
—she’d thought it had been a car backfiring.

“What…what happens now?”

“One of our surgeons will have a look at your incision; we’d planned to reopen it, of course, so the closure was done to accommodate that. We’ll get you fixed up.”

Her head was spinning. “I—I don’t know if I can take all this,” she said.

Griffin nodded. “I understand. We’re hoping you’ll stay here. We’re advising all those who were affected by the memory linking to stay under
our care until we get that sorted out, and, well, with everything you’ve been through…”

Dora looked out the window again, but her vision blurred as tears welled in her eyes.

AFTER
having the MRI scans, Eric and Jan went by Jan’s locker at the hospital. She kept a change of clothing there—you never knew when a patient was going to vomit on you, she said. She put the clothes in a plastic bag, and they headed back to Eric’s apartment, stopping at a CVS along the way to buy her a toothbrush and a few other things. The sky was cloudy.

Events hadn’t gone the way Eric had intended. He’d wanted to help Jan, yes, but he’d really only planned to get her to a shelter.

But now she was here, in his home.

And he knew more about her than anyone else in his life. More than he knew about his parents, his sisters, his son, his ex-wife.

He thought back to this morning, back to when he’d come to get her at the Bronze Shield, her setting up to play, rolling the characters, and—

No. No, those were
her
memories, not his; he hadn’t been there at the beginning of the game. God, they came to him just like his own memories now…like she was a part of him.

Like they were a couple.

Huh. Funny phrase that. “A couple.” A singular noun for two individuals. Except…

Except they weren’t
quite
individuals anymore. He was linked to her, and for events they had shared—the MRI session this afternoon, her collapsing before that, what went down at the gaming store, their interaction yesterday—the memories were hopelessly intertwined. He couldn’t think about any joint experience they’d had without her perspective mixing with his own.

Time was passing. It would be evening in a few hours. And then night, and—

And he did care about her.

And she did like him.

And she was very, very beautiful.

But—

But when they’d come into the living room now, and he’d sat on the long white couch, he’d expected her to sit down beside him. Instead, she took the matching chair that faced the couch and sat with her knees tucked up toward her chin.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked. “Coffee? Beer?”

She just sat there.

He lifted his eyebrows. “Jan? Did you hear me? Would you like something to drink?”

“I heard you,” she said. “I just figured you’d answer your question.”

“Jan, I can’t read your mind—just your memories. This isn’t a time of crisis.”
So far, anyway…

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

He tried to move to more neutral ground. “It’s strange that the linkages can, at least some of the time, connect not just memories but thoughts, too.”

“Why’s that strange?” she asked. “It’s all just brain activity, right?”

“Yeah, but memories involve permanent changes in the brain—an actual physical alteration in its structure. Thoughts are evanescent.”

“I wish I
could
read your memories,” she said, and she gave him the faintest of smiles. “That would save me the embarrassment of having to ask you what that word means.”

“Evanescent?” said Eric. “Fleeting. Vanishing like vapor. Unlike the laying down of memories, there’s no permanent structural change in the brain associated with having thoughts.” He shifted on the couch and looked across the glass-topped coffee table at her. “You know, it’s funny. If someone attacked you with a knife and scarred you, the courts would assess the physical damage—how long a scar, how many stitches it took to close the wound, whatever—and they’d come up with a figure that you’d be entitled to in compensation. But hurting someone with words that they’ll always remember? With an act they’ll never forget?
That’s
physical damage, too—it changes you just as permanently as a scar. But instead of tallying up what the compensation should be, we just say, ‘Get over it,’ or ‘You should develop a thicker skin,’ or—and this is ironic, given that it’s the one thing that’s impossible—‘you should just forget about it.’” He shook his head, thinking about the things Tony had said to her, had done to her.

She was quiet for a time, then, so softly that he wasn’t sure he’d heard every word correctly, she said, “I can’t take it.”

“Take what?” asked Eric.

“The memory thing.”

He nodded; it was unequal, it was unfair, it was
unbalanced.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, I am—I don’t mean to invade your privacy.”

But Jan shook her head. “It’s not that; it’s not
you.
It’s
her.”

“Who?” asked Eric.

“Her.
That woman who is linked to you—the one who sells houses. Um, Nikki Van Hausen.”

“What about her?” asked Eric.

“She knows everything that’s happened between us, everything that happened today.” Jan looked away. “And everything that will happen later.”

“But she’s gone from our lives,” Eric said. “She left LT when the lockdown ended. I’ll probably never see her again.”

“She’s
not
gone,” said Jan. “She’s right
here.
She’ll recall this conversation, recall what happened with Tony at the Bronze Shield, and if we ever—if we ever make…” She shook her head a bit and fell silent.

Eric looked around his living room—familiar surroundings to him, alien ones to Jan, but, yes, doubtless recallable by Nikki Van Hausen even though she’d never been here. It was easy to forget that the intimate way he knew Jan was echoed by the way Nikki knew
him.

But it wasn’t the same, God damn it. It
wasn’t.
Nikki was a complete stranger to him, just as he was to her. Oh, sure, it was probably interesting to her in an abstract way that she had someone else’s memories, but there was no emotional connection between him and her.

“Sweetheart,” said Eric—and a memory, or rather a lack of a memory, hit him; Tony had never called Jan that, or any other term of endearment. He went on: “It’s okay. We never have to see her again, or even think about her.”

But Jan shook her head once more. “She knows—or will know—what you just said. And she’ll resent it—she’ll think you’re insulting her. Don’t you see? She’s got the same level of access to you that you have to me; she can’t help but be fascinated by your life.”

“I’m sure she just wants to get on with her own,” Eric said.

“Just like you did?” Jan replied, looking at him across the intervening coffee table.

“It’s different,” he said again.

“I don’t know,” Jan said sadly.

“Just don’t think about it,” Eric said. “As one of my favorite writers once said, ‘Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.’”

“I don’t think I can ignore
this.”

He hesitated for a moment, then got up, crossed over to her, perched himself on the wide padded arm of the chair, and reached to stroke her tattooed shoulder. But she flinched, and he stopped.

After a moment, she rose and walked out of the living room, heading to the second bedroom, the one that was there for when Quentin visited, leaving Eric wondering at what point in the future—the next day, the next week, the next year, the next decade—Nikki Van Hausen would recall what him having his heart broken felt like.

UNDER
normal circumstances, Bessie Stilwell might have wished to spend more time in Los Angeles. She’d always wanted to see the Walk of Fame, and find the stars there for Cary Grant and Christopher Plummer and James Dean. And it certainly was nice to be somewhere warm after Washington. But her son was still in the hospital, and although she’d seen him first thing this morning before she and Darryl had flown here, she needed to get back, to be there for him.

They left the TV studio and headed straight for the Los Angeles Air Force Base. Bessie was put in a secure waiting room, with two uniformed Air Force guards standing outside the door, while Darryl went off to speak to the base commander. She lowered herself slowly, painfully, onto a wooden seat and picked up a magazine off a table—but the type was much too small for her to read.

At last, Agent Hudkins returned. “Okay, ma’am,” he said. “Everything’s set. I’m sorry we have to make two big flights in one day.”

“That’s all right,” Bessie said. “I need to get back to my son, anyway.”

“Yes, ma’am. Shall we go?”

•   •   •

JANIS
was lying on the bed in the guest room, in a fetal position, her eyes closed, thinking about what she’d done. Part of her was elated at having left Tony. And part of her was terrified, wondering what the future held.

And, of course, there were the memories of Josh Latimer being shot. They were still vivid, but they weren’t
real
anymore; they felt like any memory felt, with no sense that the thing was happening again right now. The soldier she’d met today, Kadeem Adams, had post-traumatic stress disorder; his flashbacks felt like the horrific things were really happening again. But, thankfully, it seemed Jan wasn’t going to be experiencing that immediacy every time she recalled Josh being shot.