Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Don’t be frightened.” And yes, I talk to him.

  My silent helper has no reaction to my being armed, dangerous and looking like death on a cracker, to borrow one of Carme’s expressions. Staring at me sideways, a little quizzical, a little miffed, as if wondering why he’s naked as the day he was made, wearing nothing but his tan synthetic skin. His chest unzipped and wide open, a few cables hanging out, his rubbery hands holding a set of keys like Saint Peter.

  Except these are hex keys that I misplaced the other day while trying out sensors that aren’t off the shelf but are ones of my own divining. Because information is dangerous when it’s untruthful, whether we’re talking about an airlock in a tunnel or the steel-ribbed chest cavity of a NASA anthropomorphic test device. Accurate answers to life-and-death questions are the only way we’re going to know whether an environment is safe to work in.

  Or what will happen when astronauts splash down in a certain type of crew capsule.

  Will they suffer neck or spine injuries? What happens to the pelvis? What about the head? How disastrous if the data collected by accelerometers or load and motion sensors aren’t to be trusted. Because I know all too well that humans aren’t so hot about stating the facts, all too quick to buck up, keep the good ole stiff upper lip, take it on the chin and similar BS.

  None of which is helpful, and I remind Otto and his fellow dummies that they mustn’t be macho and lie about how many g-forces they can take in vertical drop tests with and without parachutes. They aren’t being good test pilots if they make me think it didn’t hurt when they’re slammed around, shaken and stirred more exponentially ungently than the last time they took a spin in a prototype flying taxi.

  They don’t have to cry and moan in pain, but don’t call it a nice time or pretend you survived if neither would be true if a living dummy tried the same. I can’t imagine anything much worse than being responsible for a vehicle design that results in bodily harm or death, and I pick up the hex keys that Otto seems to be holding for me. Very helpful of him. But I know he didn’t find them where I might have left them last.

  “Hmmmm.”

  It’s as if he’s reminding me to take off his arms, and replace his lumbar block with a newer one that twists in 6 directions. I’m not losing my mind. I know the hex keys weren’t here the other day, couldn’t find them anywhere, was sure I absently set them somewhere illogical. That they’d turn up eventually. And they did, boy howdy, in an insanely off-nominal way, pretty much like everything else this day.

  I try to remember if Otto was holding them this morning when I hurried past. I don’t think so. But I also wasn’t looking, and standing perfectly still, I listen. I scan the rafters and all around, hardly breathing before climbing the stairs to the loft, where Carme and I still keep our separate quarters, even though she’s hardly ever home. As much as our father loves the air force, it’s not surprising that the remodeled upstairs is reminiscent of Dodd Hall.

  More so now compared to when my sister and I lived up here before heading off to Rice University at the age of barely 15. Once I moved back home after Colorado Springs, I had to do a little refiguring. Putting in a kitchenette, for example, because I can’t possibly make it to the house for every meal. No matter how much I crave my mom’s cooking.

  29

  AT THE TOP of the stairs, I take a right, padding quietly over the wooden floor. Sticky and gross in my sweaty street clothes, and I feel the noise around me. Or imagine I do.

  What I think of as dirty air, an atmosphere saturated by invisible electromagnetic energy I pick up as if I’m an antenna. Or maybe I’m overly sensitive and imaginative. But at times like this I halfway wonder if I’m a two-legged array, walking slowly along the dark hallway. Identifying different pitches and chords of the wind. B-flat. C-minor.

  Recognizing shapes and odors. The plumb cut of the rafter that isn’t perfectly vertical. The varying degrees of musty dampness as I follow the hallway to the northeast corner. Glock in hand, down by my side, intuition going wild, amygdala firing, picking up an energy field that moves as I do. Following me like a host of orbs I can’t see, and I feel strangely safe, yet warned and wary as I step into my suite.

  The blackout shades are down in both windows as they always are after dark, otherwise I’d see Mom’s miniblues flickering like thousands of tiny flames in trees along the river and the dock. Flipping on the lights, I’m greeted by my computers and spectrum analyzers set up on the desk and worktables. I wander over to check, tapping the displays out of sleep mode, recognizing the usual peaks and waves streaming by in different colors, the expected noise floor.

  I stop by the window nearest the bathroom, where my star pine tree, Glinda, is looking a bit woebegone and parched in her copper pot. Gentle, fernlike with delicate feathered branches that turn a vibrant spring green when touched by affection and the sun, my pet tree hasn’t had so much as a ray of attention all day.

  “I’m sorry,” as I pick up the spray bottle of filtered water. “I know you’re thirsty and had no sunlight. Not that any of us did, as overcast as it’s been.” Giving her a quick spritzing, and I don’t need Darwin to tell me that plants are living and sensing.

  Registering pleasure and distress, their electrical pulses are easily translated into music or math. And in the case of my little pine, she’s a photosynthesis machine producing power through delicate flexible polymer “wires” and “circuits” made from organic materials that are wicked up through the xylem, the tubelike channels that transport water.

  In other words, Glinda, as I’ve named her, is a PRCH. A living charging station. A place for orbs to hang out, snooze, and wake up refreshed, making me wonder if hundreds of years from now we’ll be able to tell a drone perch from a pelican nest. Birds and PONGs might be one and the same. Maybe not even hundreds of years. Maybe decades from now at the rate technology is proliferating, and I’ve got to get out of these clothes.

  Starting with my wet leather flight jacket, spreading it flat on a towel on the bathroom floor as I call Mom on speakerphone.

  “I’m down and secure,” I say right off, pilot talk for I’ve landed safely.

  I shut the door and lock it. There. Better. I set down my cell phone on the edge of the sink, next to my pistol, keeping both hands free.

  “I was hoping that was your truck I heard on the driveway,” her voice sounds subdued inside my bathroom.

  “Just letting you know I’m about to get into the shower.” Yanking off my white cotton blouse, reminded not to wear it when there’s a chance it might get wet, not unless something’s over it.

  “I’ve rustled up a little snack and thought I’d deliver it.” Mom’s voice doesn’t sound the same as a while ago. “Boneless ribs, cheese grits . . .”

  “I don’t want you walking outside,” I cut her off, because the last thing I need right now is my mother coming here.

  With her PONGs out in plain view, and the possibility that Carme is on the property, possibly inside the barn. It’s also not like our highly evolved southern mother to volunteer to drop off dinner as if she’s Grubhub.

  She doesn’t want me at the house right now for some reason.

  That’s what I’m sensing, but it can’t be right. I must be really strung out and tired. All the same, it’s a strange thing for her to volunteer, especially when Dad’s suddenly out for the night. It’s completely out of character for her to suggest dropping anything by at this hour. It’s not like I don’t have a kitchenette with plenty to eat, if only I had time.

  “Is everything okay?” I sit on the edge of the toilet lid to pull off my pants. “You sound a little preoccupied or something, and I really don’t want you walking over here, okay? I don’t want to worry you, Mom, but there’s a lot of weird stuff going on. And I’m not just talking about the furlough and the evacuation. Or Dad being
called out in the middle of the night.”

  “I hate that he had to go anywhere, and admit to feeling sort of spooked.”

  Then why don’t you want me to come over?

  “I know I shouldn’t say it because I don’t want to give energy to it,” Mom’s voice as I look at my train wreck self in the mirror over the sink. “But I’m worried something’s not right, that something bad is going on. Maybe explaining why Dick suddenly showed up when we happen to have a big launch here in Virginia instead of Cape Canaveral.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well . . . Huh. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “And for the record, Mom, I’ve not heard a word about any problem. Hard to imagine I wouldn’t know if there’s a potential security breach, for example. Or a potential of hacking. When something goes wrong, I’m the Maytag Man no one respects. I get called.”

  That’s the way it’s supposed to be, and what I can’t fathom is why Dad would have been summoned instead of me. He’s a flight dynamicist, an inventor and not the trained expert in cyber security that I am. If there’s a worry about some bad actor having a nefarious plot afoot relating to the launch, then why him? Why not me?

  “It’s . . . well, I didn’t just fall off the potato truck,” one of mom’s favorite clichés, “and it’s not like it’s normal for George to be picked up in, well I’m just going to say it. What looked suspiciously like a government SUV. A Suburban. Black. And there may have been more than one.”

  Finally, she comes clean. And if there may have been more than one, then there were, and the specter of the Secret Service is before me yet again. And she’s right. Something’s not normal, and I need to get a briefing from Rush. Or from someone.

  “I confess to feeling a bit off balance, it all seemed so hush-hush and urgent. Anyway, maybe I’m a tad lonely too,” Mom is saying.

  “Do you want me to drop by for a few minutes before I head back to Langley?” Running my fingers through my short dark hair sticking up everywhere.

  “No, no, I’ll be fine. And what weird stuff?”

  “Things at work. Not to mention, what you just said about Dad. Have you heard from him?” I inquire.

  “No. And I’m sure I’m worrying too much. It’s been quite the day, and maybe I’m a little jumpy,” her voice is wobbly. “The way the wind’s howling and moaning. And the extreme cold makes things shift, creak and crackle. Sometimes I almost think someone’s walking around.”

  “Believe me, I know the feeling.” Hanging my pants on the back of the bathroom door to air-dry before I stuff them in a dry-cleaning bag. “And we’re going to talk as soon as I’m cleaned up and human again . . . I need to ask you something, Mom.”

  “Go ahead, but I’m not sure I want to hear it if it’s going to spook me worse.”

  “I know. But I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that I’ve heard a few things that make me worry about . . .”

  And I’m about to say Carme when the power goes out, throwing me into complete blackness, the heat kicking off, everything dead quiet except for the wind strumming its creepy rhythms across the roof. Playing up a storm as if the metal corrugated ridges are strings on a sad guitar.

  00:00:00:00:0

  MY computers and equipment upstairs and down are on backup power, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with what just happened. Doesn’t mean I trust it’s a weather-related glitch. Or that my mom’s miniblues have knocked out the power grid. I don’t think any such thing.

  Carme.

  “Mom? You there? What was that?” Moving closer to the sink, feeling for my gun in solid dark. “Is your power out? Because mine sure is. Everything completely dead over here.”

  “Goodness!” Her voice inside my blacked-out bathroom. “The entire driveway . . . All my lights . . . ! Oh dear, I sure hope I’m not to blame. Oh dear and oh no! I just this very second plugged in the tree, thinking it might be cozy to sit in the living room. Maybe that did it. Could I have thrown a breaker? That will be simply awful, talk about being a terrible neighbor . . .”

  Mom’s an educator and not an electrical engineer, and the answer is no. It’s not a breaker, and we didn’t blow a fuse or put a strain on the electrical grid. I assure her she’s not to blame, but now she’s in a spin, getting more upset.

  “I mean, I’m ashamed to confess I may have miscounted and put up more decorations than I should have. We didn’t have that big inflatable Santa in a spacesuit last year, for example,” her dismayed voice over speakerphone in my black hole bathroom.

  85 watts x 24 hours = 2.04 kilowatts x 31 days = roughly adding $8 per month per 12-foot inflatable.

  “But when I found him at a yard sale, well, he’s pretty perfect, you have to admit, and certainly needed a home,” she’s saying.

  “Santa didn’t do it,” and there can be no doubt about that. “You didn’t cause whatever this is, Mom.”

  “Now where’s the flashlight? I know there was one near the toaster last I checked . . . Dear me, I can’t see my hand in front of my face . . .”

  My heart hammers hard as I’m aware of the locked door, making sure it stays that way. Almost expecting something to break it down any minute, to snatch me up and maul me in the dark, and I hit my internal reset button.

  Stop it.

  Rebooting my mood. No place for panic or emotional preoccupation. That’s when bad things knock on the door.

  She wouldn’t hurt me.

  “Unless the wind took down a power line, or I suppose someone could have plowed into a utility pole, taking out the transformer,” Mom’s voice continues as the lights blink back on, the heat kicking back in and blowing loudly. Just like that.

  “Well, thank goodness!” her voice exclaims. “Wouldn’t seem my miniblues are to blame. And that reminds me, we need to pick up more.”

  “I’m pretty sure we have plenty . . .” Thinking back to the day before last, walking into the kitchen at 4:44 p.m., according to the clock on the stove.

  I was carrying groceries into the pantry when I noticed multiple unopened boxes of minilights in a bag, smoking gun evidence of my mother’s latest compulsive purchase. I always know. There’s not much I don’t notice. I’m pretty hard to fool, and unfortunate for my mother and perhaps everyone are my snap calculations, subconscious and on the spot:

  Twenty boxes, each containing two 20-foot green wire strands with 100 blue minilights per foot = 4,000 strung along 800 feet of wire, or enough to reach from our back porch, past the barn, to the river at the edge of the yard . . .

  “You looked in the pantry . . . ?” I’m cautious how I point it out, not wanting to embarrass her if it’s slipped her mind what she bought.

  Whenever she forgets anything, her first thought is chemo brain. Try as I might, she doesn’t believe what I say, and there’s nothing wrong with my mother’s cognition. With anything about her except she stared death in the face and walked away changed.

  “Because it seems I saw plenty in there on Sunday,” I add. “Close to a thousand feet of them in a Pottery Factory bag.”

  Carme.

  “Actually, nowhere near that amount as it turns out,” Mom’s voice comes back. “I happened to notice when I was getting supper ready. I must have miscalculated while running errands the other week. I could have sworn I had more than what’s left in that bag, and the way people are shopping like mad? Well, I don’t want to run out weeks before Christmas . . .”

  We won’t run out, and she didn’t miscalculate. I’m as clear as day on what I happened upon while putting away cans of beef stock, spring peas and other items needed for her famous potluck soup. I know what I saw in the pantry because in my head I still see it as if I’m standing there. It also hasn’t escaped my notice that there seem to be more lights strung along the
dock than were there last I looked.

  Carme’s been inside the house.

  She could be there now, but she’s not going to hurt our mother. If my sister spirited lights away and added them to the dock or anywhere else on the property, I don’t know why she’d do that. What’s she trying to say? Unless she’s trying to show she cares, reassure me somehow.

  “Seems like all is good,” Mom decides with a heavy sigh. “Power’s on, everything working.”

  “All good here too,” I confirm even though I don’t believe anything is good or ever will be again.

  “I do worry that power glitch is only the start of what we’re in for tonight and tomorrow, though,” and she has no idea what she’s saying. “Now, Calli, what were you starting to ask me before everything went dark?”

  “Nothing important,” not after the power conking out while I’m stripped buck naked, midsentence about Carme.

  Maybe it really was a coincidence, one of those so-called flukes or happenstances. But my instincts tell me otherwise as I stand in the lighted bathroom, holding my gun in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the door, which is still locked. And I try it again in case it’s not. But it is. I tell Mom we’ll talk later when I’m cleaned up with clothes on, and I end the call, turning on the water in the shower.

  Catching myself in the mirror as I move about, reminded that no matter how hard I work out, I’m never satisfied, never happy with my chassis. A quiet sigh as I scrutinize, wishing for more long leggedness, less of a chest, better sculpted everything else. Carme and I both bulk up easily when we do a lot of lifting. But she’s always been more buff, more cut, not tending to curves and pudge the way I am.