"Thanks. But ... didn't you want to be congratulated?" she asked hesitantly.
Blanes answered with another question.
"Do you know what the Nobel means to someone like me? It's a carrot. The sequoia theory officially still hasn't been proven, and we can't publicize or even talk about the experiments we've been doing here on New Nelson because they're classified. But they want to pat me on the back. Say, 'Blanes, the scientific community admires you. Keep working for the government.'" He paused. "What do you think of that?"
She considered the question.
"I think it sounds like the opinion of an arrogant little fucker," she said, imitating his "cruel" intonation.
This time they both burst out laughing.
"Touché," Blanes replied, blushing. "But I'll tell you why I think I'm right." He ran his hand over his face, and Elisa knew that they'd reached the serious part of the discussion. There were no windows in the room, but the sound of the rain and the humming of the air-conditioning filtered through the metallic walls. For a moment, that was the only sound. "Did you ever meet Albert Grossmann?"
"No, never."
"He taught me everything I know. I love that man like a father. I've always thought the teacher-disciple relationship is much more intense in our field than in others." And how, thought Elisa. "We idealize our mentors to unbelievable extremes, but at the same time, we feel this imperious need to outshine them. I think that's because this is such a solitary job. In theoretical physics, we're like monsters locked up in cages. We change the face of the earth—at least on paper. I mean, my God, we're really dangerous ... But I'm getting off track ... Grossmann is a strong man, a real Teuton, full of energy. He's retired now. Recently diagnosed with cancer...
No one knows that, so keep it to yourself... I'm just telling you that so you see what kind of man he is. He's totally unconcerned about it, says he's got a lot of years left in him, and I believe him. He looks better than me, I kid you not. He was already retired back in 2001, but the night we obtained the image of the Unbroken Glass, I went over to his house and told him about it. I thought he'd be thrilled, thought he'd congratulate me. Instead, he looked at me and said, 'No, David,' so softly I thought maybe I'd imagined it. But he repeated it. 'Don't do it, David. The past is off-limits. Don't touch what's off-limits.' I think that was when I realized why he'd retired. A theoretical physicist retires when he starts believing that discoveries are off-limits." He was staring intensely at the black-and-white keys of his keyboard. After a pause, he added, "Anyway, maybe Grossmann was right about something. Back then, we still didn't know anything about the Impact. But there's more to it than that. There's also the company financing Project Zig Zag."
"Eagle Group," Elisa said.
"Yes. Eagle Group. But they're just the tip of the iceberg. Who's really behind all this? Have you ever wondered? I'll tell you: the government. And behind them? Big business. The Impact is just an excuse. The thing Eagle Group really wants to hide at all costs is the military interest in the project."
"What?"
"Think about it, Elisa. Do you really think all the financial backing for Zig Zag stems from their passion for Troy, or ancient Egypt, or the life of Christ? Don't be naive. When Sergio and I showed them the Unbroken Glass, lightbulbs started flashing in their heads. 'How can we use this against the enemy?' was the first thing that popped into their little brains. 'And how can we keep the enemy from using it against us?' was the second. As far as Jesus, the pharaohs, and the emperors go, well, they're interesting, but not a decisive part of the final equation." Elisa blinked. This had never occurred to her before. She couldn't even see how the ability to see the remote past could be of use to the military. But Blanes began ticking off the ways on the fingers of his right hand, as if he could read her thoughts. "Espionage. Space imaging that shows not only what's happening now but what happened ten months or ten years ago, when the enemy had yet to even imagine we were spying. That's a good way to get information on terrorist training camps, which are always dissolving, always on the move. Here one day, gone the next, without a trace. Or assassination attempt investigations. Doesn't matter that the bomb already exploded: film the area and figure out what happened on the days leading up to it, the exact methods used..."
"My God..."
"Indeed. My God." Blanes's mouth twisted. "The eye of God is watching all of it. Time, the original Big Brother. Then there's industrial espionage, political espionage, searching for proof of this or that scandal so they can oust this or that president. It's a race against time between Europe, which is financing the project, and the United States, which must already have its own personal Project Zig Zag on some island in the Pacific right now. We've proven that with a simple video camera you can see everything that happened, anytime, anyplace in the world. Zig Zag has stripped humanity naked, and the military wants to be the first Peeping Tom. And you know what? There's only one tiny yet bothersome thing stopping them." He pointed to his chest. "Me."
Elisa didn't think it was conceit talking. He really didn't seem to want the role at all. And what he said next confirmed that.
"To paraphrase an old bolero, 'I'm just a little thorn in their side,'" he warbled. "I don't like being a pain in the neck, honestly. The reason I left the States was because they were putting more money into arms than accelerators, and I'll leave Europe if Zig Zag gets used for military purposes, but I'm also aware of the fact that the reason I'm here is because they're paying me. I want to deliver, I want to give them what they've asked for. I really do. But I refuse to experiment with the recent past." His voice suddenly became edgy. "I told them there were risks and there are, Elisa... lots of them. Believe me. But that's a matter of personal opinion. Sergio, for example, is more daring, even though in the end he agreed with me. That's why they want us to carry on with our little games, to see if we can come up with something less risky they can use."
"They didn't tell me anything about all this when they hired me," Elisa said, taken aback.
"Of course not. You think they told me everything? Ever since September 11, the world stopped being divided into truth and lies. Now all we have are lies. The rest, we'll never know."
They were both silent. Blanes stared at a spot on the floor. Somewhere in the distance, the rain fell in sheets.
"You know what the worst thing is?" he asked suddenly. "If I'd refused, if I'd listened to Grossmann and abandoned the whole thing, we would never have seen a Jurassic forest, or the dinosaur's feelers, or a woman walking down a street in Jerusalem during the time of Christ. None of that excuses my actions, but it does explain them. It's like having the best present in the world and not being able to share it with anyone. So. If they award me the Nobel, you can have it, OK? You want it?" He pointed at her.
"I don't think so." Elisa scooted off the table and pulled down her cropped T-shirt to cover her midriff, smiling. "You can keep it."
"Hey! As my disciple, part of your job is to take all the things I turn down. What else do you suggest? Throwing it in the trash?"
"Give it to Ric Valente. I'm sure he'd be thrilled." They laughed.
"Ric Valente," Blanes said slowly. "One strange kid. An extraordinary student, but too ambitious ... I tried to get to know him at Alighieri, and I realized I didn't like him. If it were up to me, he wouldn't be here, but Sergio and Colin think he walks on water."
Elisa stared at him for a minute. Then, before leaving, she said, simply, "Thanks."
Blanes looked up.
"What for?"
"For sharing your gift with me."
As she walked back down the hall replaying fragments of the conversation in her head, she sensed that the rain had intensified. It must have been the buildup to the typhoon. But she wasn't worried about the approaching storm. Carter had assured them that it presented no danger, and they'd already taken "the necessary precautions."
And he was right. The typhoon would prove to be the least dangerous thing of all.
THAT downpour mad
e any outdoor activity impossible and forced the scientists to their bedrooms, trapping them in a gloomy, gray lethargy. Elisa and her colleagues were harder hit by that apathy since it was now Clissot, Silberg, Nadja, and Rosalyn who had things to do, while the physicists sat back, idly. She often met up with Clissot and Nadja in the lab after breakfast to pass the time and watch them study the image of the Lake of Sun (as they'd baptized it, rejecting Marini's chosen name: Lake of the Carnivorous Chickens) inch by inch. At first she was enthralled, but slowly the paleontologists' meticulous work began to bore her. "Examine A's first extremity, Nadja. Now compare that to B's homolateral. A has only one phalange, but B has two." Elisa yawned. If anyone had told me a couple days ago that I would get bored of this, I'd have laughed. Just goes to show...
Nadja was feeling much better. She'd started sleeping better, and she was far less anxious. Though she was going to have a psychological checkup with Silberg the following week, nothing kept her from her daily routine at the computer.
Every time she saw her, Elisa thought about what Nadja had told her the day of the screenings. It seemed so absurd, just a figment of her imagination, but she had some doubts. Could there actually be someone else on the island they didn't know about? Why not? She'd been there two and a half months, and although she thought she knew each and every inhabitant, including the soldiers, choppers came and went with supplies all the time. Surely it was possible that a new soldier had come to replace someone and was staying with the rest of them in the garrison. But if that were the case, why wouldn't he have introduced himself? And what was he doing exploring the barracks at night, out of uniform? Ridiculous. Nadja'd had a really intense nightmare. And the effects of it were intensified by the Impact.
Still, she couldn't get that horrible idea out of her head: a man with white eyes, staring at her from the darkened hallway.
The night of Saturday, October 1, after playing (and losing) several hands of poker with Craig, Marini, and Blanes after dinner, Elisa went back to her room. By nine o'clock, she was in bed, and the lights went out at ten o'clock sharp.
The typhoon seemed to be getting worse. It sounded like the beginning of Judgment Day, like one of those Dantesque apparitions—an eagle or a cross—was flying over them. But with all those layers of insulation, it was easy to feel like you were in a metal bubble. Nothing moved. Everything was still and quiet. Still, Elisa couldn't get off to sleep.
She pulled back the sheet and got up, deciding to go for a walk. She could go to the kitchen and make herself a cup of tea. Then she remembered that Carter had forbidden them to use any electric appliances. And he was right to do so, because lightning flashed silently, momentarily lighting up parts of her room. She still liked the idea of going for a walk, though. The emergency lights in the hall would do. And besides, she was sure she could walk the entire barracks with her eyes closed.
Then she noticed something.
She looked toward the window when she saw it. At first, she wondered if she was dreaming.
It was a gap. On the upper-left-hand side of the wall, where the ceiling met the bathroom wall. It was elliptical, and if she'd tried she could have fit through it. The silent flashes weren't coming from the window but from that opening.
She was so upset at not having noticed something so obvious that she missed another strange detail.
Silent flashes.
Silent.
She was surrounded by silence. Total silence. Where had the storm gone?
But there wasn't, in fact, total silence. Something behind her made a noise.
This time they weren't footsteps echoing through the walls, but sounds that indicated a concrete presence, very nearby. The squeak of rubber soles, someone's breath. Someone in her room, inside her room, with her.
Her skin felt like it was being peeled off. It was as though each pore was an iron filing and she stood beside a powerful electromagnet that pulled each and every one, from the nape of her neck right down to the soles of her feet. It took her an eternity to turn around and look behind her. And when she finally managed to, she saw a figure.
It stood stock-still by the door, a little farther than she'd guessed by the sound of its breathing. The flashes partially revealed tennis shoes, Bermudas, and a T-shirt. But its face was enveloped by shadow.
A man.
For a second, she thought her heart was going to explode from sheer terror. Then she recognized him and almost laughed.
"Ric ... What are you doing here? You scared the daylights out of me..."
The figure made no reply. Instead, he advanced toward her, slowly, lightly, like clouds covering the moon.
She had no doubt it was Valente. The build, the clothes. Well, she was almost sure. But if it was him, what did he think he was doing? Why didn't he say anything?
"Ric?" She never thought that one little word could be so hard to get out. Her throat constricted as she said it. "It is you, Ric, right?"
She took a step back, then another one. The man walked around the bed and kept approaching, expressionless, in complete silence. He was taking his time. The flashes lit up his Bermudas and dark T-shirt, but his face was still dark beneath a curtain of hair.
It's not Ric. There's someone else on the island that we don't know about.
Her back was pressed up against the metal wall. She felt the cold metal make contact with her skin. That was when she realized she was stark naked. She couldn't remember having taken off her clothes, which made her suspect this wasn't actually happening. She was dreaming. It had to be a dream.
But regardless, watching that silhouette draw closer and closer in dead silence was insufferable. She screamed. When she was a little girl and had nightmares, she always woke up the moment she screamed. She always thought, in fact, that screaming was what shattered the nightmare, ended the horror.
Now, it did nothing. She opened her eyes and the man was still there, advancing slowly. If she reached out, she could touch him. His face was like an abandoned building. All she could see were the hollow walls of his cheeks and, behind that, the laddered ridges of his vertebra. Aside from that there was no flesh or bones; it was totally unreal, an empty space between two parentheses, a completely black void...
His head is a rat's nest, and the rat gnawed up his face and is living in his brain. There's someone else on the island that we don't know about...
... black void, except for his eyes.
His name is White Eyes, and he's come to see you, Elisa. To see all of you, actually. A short visit, but one that will change everything. Eyes empty, like abscesses.
It wasn't a dream. He immobilized her. He was about to ...
Eyes like enormous moons that, when she looked into them, drew her into their luminescence, blinding her with their ashy vacuousness.
Please help me someone please help me this is not a dream oh god please...
That was the moment when the darkness no longer hid in shadows. It was unleashed.
THE darkness had an absurd voice.
It sounded like a schoolboy who'd just had his ice cream cone stolen by the big kids on the playground. It was a high-pitched whine. It was Ric Valente; Elisa had really pricked his pride, no matter how aloof he thought he was. His cries were so deafening that Elisa wanted to tell him to shut up or she'd prick him again, or burn his feathers, because now that she looked closer, he had feathers on his backside and feelers on his head, and he was moving back and forth on top of her. Actually, it was a carnivorous chicken of great paleontological importance, opening its beak and squawking. "But I can't laugh because this is a nightmare."
Or at least in part. She'd made love for the first and last time in her life when she was seventeen. Bernardo was his name. She'd been so traumatized by the experience that she never wanted to repeat it. Bernardo had been friendly, sweet, shy, and romantic, but the second he penetrated her he began firing on all cylinders. He grabbed her ass, gurgled, grunted, pushed, and foamed at the mouth. She'd gone to the movies with a human being an
d found herself in bed with a rabid dog that just kept stabbing his thing in between her legs and roaring, "Mmmmfff," "Uuuuff." She really didn't like it, truth be told. Her vagina burned and she most definitely did not come. When it was over, he shared a cigarette with her and said, "That was unbelievable." She coughed.
A couple of months later, on the way back from Valencia, her father was killed by a drunk driver.
It's not as though the two things were in any way related. She was sure tragedy wouldn't strike every time she got laid. But she had no desire to put it to the test.
So ... how did she end up with that man in her bed? He was much worse than Bernardo, more ferocious and with worse intuition. She'd once seen a movie (what was it called again?) in which the protagonist sleeps with the Devil himself, a being that smelled like sulfur and had white eyes and (one supposed) an enormous cock. I know it's ridiculous but I can't help it, here, now, with this thing on top of me ... its eyes bright white like lights, and someone who isn't me (but must be me) screaming their head off, practically making me go deaf...
She woke up in the dark. There was no one on top of her, underneath her, or anywhere else. She wasn't naked. She wore the same T-shirt and undies she'd worn to bed. And, of course, there was no gaping hole in the wall. But she hurt inside, and it felt like it had the first time. She couldn't think about that, though, because there were too many other disturbing things going on.
There were no flashes. There were no searchlights on the station, no station on the island, maybe no island in the sea. Just that awful wailing sound, a demented howling piercing her eardrums. An alarm.
She sat up, refusing to feel scared, and then she heard voices in the sound not filled by the vibrating bell. The voices brought fear the way a breeze brings in the smell of carrion. Screaming in an English she didn't need to translate in order to understand that something terrible had happened, because there comes a time in any emergency when people understand everything they hear without deciphering it. Catastrophe is multilingual.
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