by Ben English
"I’m dealing with a lot of stuff here," she said. "Last summer was the best time I’ve ever had. I can’t imagine being that happy again.”
Say it, Jack thought furiously at her. Tell me the truth. He felt a moment of onrushing doom, his feet glued to the railroad tracks, the pier beneath them breaking apart, a tidal wave poised overhead, over the whole wharf, ready to smash everything below to splinters.
“But you can’t stay.” Her words were feather-soft, yet bladed.
Jack’s mouth was dry. He had to swallow twice. As gently as possible he said, “Why won’t you tell me that you’re sick?”
Her green eyes went flat, unreadable. “Who told you that?”
Jack found himself in an odd point of calm, like he stood over a fulcrum while everything around him lifted and pivoted slightly, changing angles and distance.
The dry inner voice seemed to sigh and shrug away.
His mouth was dry. “Everyone in Forge—”
“Who did you tell?” Before he could answer, she said, “No! You can’t fix this that way. You can’t fix this.” Now she was getting angry. “You coming all the way down here, this grand romantic gesture—what did you think would happen? Music swells, cue ‘happily ever after’?”
She stabbed her finger at him. “Nobody gets to have me, Jack. I’m not a reward for your persistence. There’s no time for you, everything’s just – you can't make my heart do that. You can’t make me.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeves, and he reached for her, but she stood up.
“Don’t do this again. Don’t ever come here again. Do not call or email or whatever.”
The horizon had changed. The fog was lifting. It was as though a subtle compression rippled through the air, and the world itself had evolved into a slightly different set of colors and shapes. He struggled for breath, and even the air tasted wrong.
Mercedes was furious, but on the brink of tears. “I would love to love you, Jack.” The tears were not winning. “You have to leave me. You don't need me.”
And finally, she was ice. “You'll forget."
Another chowder-laden group was advancing toward the end of the pier. Mercedes slowly stood. He must have reached for her, because she took a quick step away and said, “Let me go, let me go. I have to get us a taxi.”
The sun began to shine in earnest, throwing tinted happiness down on the city. Jack considered heaving the crystal falcon out into the bay. It was almost a goodbye present.
*
She waited for him inside a cab. They rode around the edge of the city, stopping near another BART station. The cabbie shifted in his seat slightly.
The rain began again.
Mercedes leaned forward, passing bills and instructions to the driver, and rested her hand briefly on Jack’s chest. He felt his heart beat a few times under her touch.
She looked at her hand, then again at Jack, as if expecting him to say something. When he didn’t, she backed away and stepped out of the cab, into the mountains of falling rain. The cab lurched forward before Jack could call her back.
And say what? Jack pressed himself into the corner, away from the side still warm from her, still smelling of rain and that apple-pear scent that followed her like a soft prayer. He wanted to throw up, and he couldn’t seem to think. The numbness that reigned over his mouth seemed to extend into the sinews of his heart as well, and his stomach roiled.
Signs indicated they were near the bridge to Oakland. The radio announcer gave an update on the weather and traffic, adding, “Northbound 101 is clear now; all debris off the roadway. Reports coming in now that traffic conditions initially took a turn for the worse when a motorcycle with a sidecar was found abandoned in the center lane during this morning’s rush hour commute. Everybody’s driving at tourist speeds today.”
Someone else in the broadcast studio laughed at that, then mentioned the sidecar. “Do they even sell those anymore?”
“Must be something,” the cabbie said, without preamble. “Must really be something to have a woman like that.”
His eyes twinkled at Jack in the rearview mirror. Eyes that looked sad one moment, and merry the next. They were the kind of eyes you’d expect Santa Claus to have, and without thinking, Jack said, “Bart?”
“We just left BART. Thought she said to take you to the Oakland Airport? Name’s Luke.” They had to stop for a traffic light, and the cabbie half-turned. “I watch a lot of people in this job, bud, and believe me, after driving taxi long enough you get a feel for this kind of thing. Yep,” he faced forward again. “She’s nuts for you. Nuts if she’s not.”
Jack blinked hard. The hair was just about as long, but with no grey, and pulled back in a ponytail underneath a Forty-niner baseball cap. The shape of the man’s jaw was slightly different too, though the voice was the same, and – but the resemblance was too close. The driver could have been Bart’s son, or a much younger brother.
He relaxed somewhat in the seat. “That’s really nice of you to say, but she was pretty final the other way.”
“Must have something else on her mind. Heh. Said to drive you across the bridge. She gave me enough money to drive you there twice, with a nice tip besides.” He paused. “If you don’t mind my asking, bud, what are you going to do now?”
Were all cab drivers this curious? Did any of them mind their own business? Jack’s total cab experience was less than five minutes, so he played along. “I don’t know. Go home, I guess. Fly back to Idaho. My school starts tomorrow, so—”
The cabbie sighed. “That’d be a real shame, now, wouldn’t it. Too bad you can’t stay on a day or so, try to fix things.” The cabbie’s eyes twinkled, and again Jack had the impression, irrational though it was, that Bart Nutt was somewhere behind that smile.
Small talk in a cab, that’s all it was. Jack swallowed. “So you’ve been driving taxi a long time, then?”
“Whole world in the back of my cab, son.”
Thought he was a poet or something. “You, ah, ever drive people over to places in Palo Alto?” The name was still too much like yodeling for him to say properly.
“Sure. I’ve been as far south as Santa Cruz, if you can believe it.”
Jack had no idea where that was, so he just nodded. As off-hand as possible, he said, “Do you know very much about Stanford Medical Center?”
“Oh yeah.” The cabbie took a long pull from a covered beverage as they drove up a hill. “Look, we’re about to get on the Bay Bridge, so you need to make up your mind quick. Like, right now.”
*
Stanford Medical Center was three floors of tinted glass windows. He followed the patterns of blue and pink flowerbeds to the entrance, near three peeling beech trees. The cabbie’s directions proved good—and then terrible.
Jack slowed when he saw Bela, along with three of Mercedes' big-nosed cousins, loitering in front of the entrance. He stopped completely as Bela rose to meet him. The crab cook said something in Italian to the others, and Jack could tell by the immediate bristling of eyebrows and knuckle hair that it hadn’t been complimentary. Apparently they all felt the same about his jacket.
Too bad Alonzo wasn’t here to whip up a distraction. Jack decided to give the truth another try. “Tu lo sai che io l’amo,” he said simply, hands out, empty. They moved back and let him pass.
He walked quickly through the foyer of the hospital, eyes sweeping back and forth between an artsy display of stacked lava rocks and the fake Matissses on the wall. Pastel colors, blurry art.
A security guard watched him as he looked at a map on the wall. The layout of the hospital wasn’t that difficult, and Jack actually began to have a little hope, despite himself. Now that he was actually in motion, it was like a smooth, older portion of his mind took over and let young, idiot Jack sail along and watch.
He felt the guard’s eyes linger on him. It was the jacket. Jack kept the clothes she’d given him, including the t-shirt with the techie logo, but honestly had no idea if he looked the part or fit in with th
e indigenous geek natives of Silicon Valley. With any luck, the Powers That Be would look past his worn lapel and see the company brand on the shirt he wore, recognize the business; it could be a kind of—
The guard’s gaze flicked past him.
Disguise.
“Excuse me,” he smiled at the nurse behind the desk. “I’m here to see Mercedes Adams. Has she checked in?”
“Last name?”
“Adams.”
She gave him the number and directions. “This is near intensive care, and visiting hours are shortened today, sir.” Sir? Wow! The disguise was holding.
Jack pressed the button for the elevator, then turned and mounted the stairs, taking them three at a time. A kind of ebullient, rising happiness spiraled up inside him. He knew this had to be done just right. State your case and then back right off, get the hell out of her way, the taxi driver had said. The whole process of getting into the hospital was the sharp edge of thrilling.
Endoscopy was on the first floor. The medical theater, where students could observe operations in progress, was one floor up, as was maternity.
His step slowed somewhat when he realized he was heading into a long-term care area.
The room number stood on a simple wooden door against a lime-green inevitability. He hadn’t considered this. Endoscopic surgery was a day’s trip to the hospital; why should she be put in the long-term ward? People came here to face death.
Jack passed a group of bustling professionals at the nurse’s station. Filipinos. They looked capable, but he sensed they knew they worked at the very edge of something greater than themselves. Long-term intensive care. While the doctors, nurses, orderlies and support staff worked themselves to the limits of medicine’s ability to help, usually the tenants of these tiny rooms proceeded further than the reach of doctors could extend.
Is that what Mercedes would face in a few hours? Jack wondered how to pray.
He knocked softly on the door, and went in.
Into the wrong room. The man lying next to the whirring and humming machines looked the opposite of healthy, and was connected to all manner of tubes and cables. Two visitors, a shade too old for college students, sat close to the bed. One held a voice recorder.
The other was the intruder from Mercedes’ house.
All three looked up as Jack entered, and before he could leave, the man in the bed raised a hand, beckoning him to stay. Jack stopped, hand on the door.
The Asian threw him an expression of impatience, but not recognition. The third man ignored him.
The patient’s eyes were the most peculiar shade of green. Parched yellow legal pads covered the bed, dense with equations and notes. He’s got the same crabby handwriting as his daughter, Jack thought, and he realized the receptionist’s mistake. The conversation continued without pause.
“—problem is in the hardware, it’s got to be,” the man in the bed was saying, emphatic. “I told them that two years ago. If they don’t take the research in the direction outlined in my memo, we might as well go back to fooling with electron-powered machines, and the University of Rochester is going to beat us to it.” The other man tried to interrupt, but Mercedes’ father cut him off. “It’s so simple. Direct beams of light instead of quantum entanglements. Follow the formulas I gave you today. The 7-qubit machine is the beginning. Look, when I get out of here, you and I will take their results based on quantum interference and build a computer that is just as efficient, based on light interference.”
He coughed weakly, pitifully, and the younger man had a chance to speak.“Dr. Adams, light is much easier to manipulate than quantum systems.”
“Damn right it is.”
Jack stood there like a ghost, hand still on the doorknob, feeling unnoticed and unseen in the room of the dying man.
He’d been strong, but was obviously in the process of collapsing in upon himself like a flickering sun. An echo of physical power still clung to him in repose. The other grownups, now obviously students of some kind, were both thinking furiously, trying to keep up.
The man with the recorder seemed to be in charge, or needed to be. “They’re looking for a quick profit. If we give them something solid – proof, an idea of what we know so far, they’ll give us all the funding we need—”
The Asian interrupted. “If you’d give us your research—”
The other man cut him off. Even a feeble wave held the grad student in check. “No. That is too dangerous, especially considering the money. Tell them—here,” he spoke into the voice recorder, which had never stopped running. “Molecular electronics – all the subfields of nanotechnology where individual molecules are circuit elements - should mature quickly and become enormously lucrative within the next decade, causing a large incremental investment in all nanotechnologies. The funding will come, but we’ve got to bide our time. It’s just a matter of time.” He faltered a moment in thought, and placed his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. The student leaned in, eyes afire.
Jack could see the weakness and fragility in the older man now, as his strength dropped away. In contrast, the younger man seemed to swell with nervous energy as he listened to his teacher. “Now, you two. You’ve got to be careful here. We’re on a precipice with this knowledge, in the same place as the men who figured out the atomic bomb. I know how you feel; I’ve felt it myself. The glitter of what you can do with this.” He gestured at the papers on the bed and side table. “It is irresistible if you come to such power as a scientist. To feel it there in your hands, to release this energy that binds the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to turn air itself into energy. It is something that gives us an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds. Can we know too much?"
The younger man tried, quietly, to argue, “But Aristotle opened the Metaphysics by saying, "All men by nature desire to know."
“Just be a moral man.” Mercedes’ father laughed. His breath was like a breeze across dried rushes. “Remember what your own father used to say, Aleks. “’Think big, then think little.’
“I sound like a Sunday school teacher, and maybe that’s apropos. Everybody has precious things, and as we care for them we eventually find the essence of our humanity. Mind your precious things, Aleks.” He spoke once more directly into the tape recorder. “In the end, it is because of our faculty for caring that I remain optimistic we will confront the dangerous issues now before us.” He sank back on the bed as the other man began to collect the papers. “Before you, now.”
The recorder clicked off. “I’ll uh, get the rest of this later,” the young man said. “Come on, George.” The Asian followed. They were both suddenly in a hurry. “I’ll call you after the meeting.” Jack stepped out of his way as they made for the door, then paused at the sound of the voice from the bed.
“Watch yourself, Aleks. They’ll try and buy you out. Look sharp.”
“Don’t worry. You know how careful I am.” The speaker never even looked at Jack as he walked out.
Jack almost followed him out the door, but the fading figure in the bed opened his eyes again and smiled. “That’s one of my shirts, isn’t it? I’ll never keep that girl out of my closet.”
There was a cluster of photos on the cabinet next to the patient, and a few more on a small table next to the window. Jack swallowed. Mercedes took most of her strength from the man in the bed, but her femininity was definitely her mother’s legacy.
“Excuse me,” he fumbled. “I think there was a mistake at the front desk. They sent me here.”
The father fixed him with a gaze that was frank as it was penetrating. “You’re Jack Flynn.” He smiled and gestured to the chair next to him. “Have a seat. She was here about half an hour ago.”
Jack sat, still feeling awkward. He scooped up some of the typed pages that had fallen on the floor.
“Jus
t leave that. They have plenty of people around here to clean up after me. Congratulations on the state swim meet, by the way.” Before Jack could ask, the man added, “My parents keep me up to date on things. I went to school in Forge too, you know. My dad still sends me the newspaper. I haven’t shown it to Mercedes yet. I was saving it for after her procedure.” He eyed Jack. “I thought you’d be a short little guy. All the swimmers I know are built like fire plugs.”
Jack smiled. “That describes most of the guys who beat me, sir.”
The older man looked back at him, faded except for his daughter’s green eyes. Jack felt himself brush up against intellect, against danger and beauty and strange understanding.
“I know what you’ve done for her, and I’m grateful. You and she are very similar, and we always knew she was destined for extraordinary things.”
He took a moment to catch his breath. “But today, surviving will be extraordinary. She’s not herself right now, as you can tell.” He paused again, breathing by an act of will. “Forgive me for coming to the point, but the question is, can you put aside everything you want? Can you limit yourself, Jack? Can you be her friend?”
*
There was a pale blue hospital paging phone across the hall from her prep room on the first floor. Before his resolve failed completely, Jack stepped to it and read the directions. All the phone extensions at Stanford used 5-digit combinations. Stabbing at the numbers, he found himself breathing thickly, a heaviness in his throat.
Pick up, he thought furiously through the wired glass across the hall.
The two other women in the room helped Mercedes sit facing the door and began to prep her lower back. Jack remembered from one book or another that the nature of the procedure suggested several ways to anesthetize the patient. The thought of that long needle going into her brought a sudden weakness to him, and he almost forgot himself when one of the attendants picked up the phone.
