by David Palmer
As it is, I see it only through Candy's eyes: envisioning what it must be like for her, probably injured, with only a few pounds of dried rations, a canteen of water, and no shelter—it gets cold up here at night. It's hard not to feel guilty, sleeping in a warm, comfortable bed, eating solid meals, while she's lost out there.
There's ample room to get the van between the sequoias, but often that space is clogged by smaller trees of various descriptions and underbrush. Adam is confident that he can get through to pick her up when we find her, if she's too badly injured to ride out behind one of us on a trail bike. But until then he prefers not to risk the van unnecessarily; if we cripple it, we would have to abandon the trailer when we leave, and come back for it if we can. That would be inconvenient.
For that reason we've been using the bikes to search. They're Hondas, lightweight and easy to ride. They have eight forward speeds, automatic clutches, and big, high-traction, off-road knobby tires. Adam brought along five bikes, providing double redundancy in case one or more should fail under the pounding. So far none have, and they've been given every excuse. We search from sunup to dark, covering probably seventy-five miles a day or better, under conditions which range from smooth going on firm, dry, level, leaf-covered soil, to scrambling and bouncing over logs and boulders.
Adam wrapped a thick towel around the handlebars of Lisa's bike to provide secure footing, and Terry spends the day riding with her. His presence is quite helpful: I always can tell when Lisa starts getting too enthusiastic by Terry's sound level. He loves jumps, wheelies, and going fast; the more fun he's having, the louder he gets. When he becomes audible over my bike's exhaust, I point the bullhorn in that direction and speak sternly.
Lisa had an uneasy relationship with her bike in the beginning. She couldn't reach the ground from the seat; and because it outweighed her by at least four to one, she had great difficulty bracing it upright with one leg. So she has learned not to need to: She stands or sits, depending on how rough the terrain is, feet always on the pegs, never quite stopping, and never touching foot to ground. Her effortless progress through or over virtually anything Nature puts in her path is simply amazing to behold.
It's even more amazing from my perspective: I often drag one or both feet for stability and usually have to maintain my balance, when going very slowly over rough ground, by pushing with one foot or the other. Not uncommonly, I simply get off and walk it over the very worst conditions. Adam is better at it than I am but is in awe of Lisa.
We conduct the search by riding through the forest on a compass course, three abreast, Lisa and Terry in the middle, Adam and I keeping her barely in sight, all three of us studying the ground in front and on both sides, and trying to remember to keep an eye above us as well, in case Candy might be trapped in a tree. Periodically we stop altogether, shut off the engines, call through the bullhorns, and listen for a reply. We've been keeping track of the areas we've searched by chopping blazes on tree trunks as we proceed and marking our progress on the sectional map.
Because the bikes provide such speed and mobility, Adam reasoned that one of us might find him- or herself out of even bullhorn range in only a few minutes. So when shopping for the bullhorns, he picked up several sets of police personal radios, with belt-mounted battery packs and speakerphones designed to be clipped to the wearer's collar. We carry two each; one worn, one in reserve on the bike. They're a great comfort when I look in Lisa's direction and can't see her for minutes at a time.
An odd thing happened the day before yesterday, by the way, unrelated to the search: We had an earthquake. It wasn't much of one; we probably wouldn't have noticed if we hadn't been stopped for lunch, sitting on a log, watching Terry chin himself upside down from a creeper. For the briefest instant the log and ground both trembled, and we heard, or perhaps felt, a faint, distant, rumbling sort of boom.
Adam says trucks passing his parents' home in Baltimore were more noticeable. I guess that means he wasn't impressed.
But I was: This isn't really "earthquake country" up here. For us to have felt it this far from The Fault, it must have been a fairly respectable tremor.
Which means we could be cut off up here. We came up the only open road in a hundred-mile radius; if it's blocked now, we'll never get the trailer out, and probably the van as well. Both are replaceable, of course, but we'd have to replace so much equipment, as well. I haven't mentioned this to Adam; he has quite enough on his mind.
Incidentally, I wonder if I might have discovered an unsuspected partial explanation for the amount of time and effort Candy spends on these journals: Sitting down, reviewing a day's or week's events, and composing a clear, concise summary provides an unequaled opportunity to see things in perspective. Details which seemed trivial at the time often acquire significance upon reflection, or vice versa.
For instance: Years ago I had an Aunt Becky who had a charming Panama parrot named Ellery Green. They were very close. And when she died, they almost lost Ellery, too. He refused to eat or drink or take an interest in anything; he just sat in his cage and pined. They force-fed him for weeks. He probably would have died anyway had not one of my cousins overcome his grief through sheer intensity of love.
Now, Terry and Candy are much closer than Aunt Becky and Ellery were, and at first I worried that Terry might react similarly. But he hasn't. The only hint of change in his behavior is that he's reverted to his original vocabulary; he's stopped using those long, convoluted, totally inexplicable sentences. In fact, apart from that, if it is significant, I can't see that he's even noticed that she's gone! He's entirely content, and I don't understand why.
True, Terry likes both Adam and me. He lets us feed and water him and clean his stand, and he's obviously grateful when one of us offers him a head-rub. But his attitude toward us remains more a matter of courtesy and friendliness than love.
Lisa falls into a different category, of course. Before we lost Candy, Lisa was his second-favorite playmate: If she was around and Candy wasn't, he wasn't happy unless he was either on her shoulder or close enough for frequent, mutually reassuring physical contact. That's still the case; they play riotous games, laugh uproariously, and "converse" for hours.
But Lisa isn't Candy, and his relationship with her is very different from that which he shares with his "twin." For instance, only with Candy has Terry ever participated in hours-long Rapt Silences, snuggling quietly in her arms, both content just to be together.
There are other distinctions as well, of course; but the point is that, no matter how satisfactory we three are as baby-sitters, the center of Terry's universe is Candy, just as Aunt Becky was for Ellery, and I find it strange that he's taking her absence with such aplomb.
But what bothers me most of all is the fact that Lisa isn't worried either. I attempted to explain that Candy has had an accident and may be hurt, or may even have Gone To Heaven, like Daddy. I know she feels the same way about Candy that I do, but she was completely unconcerned. She told me not to worry; that Candy is fine. I've probed this as deeply as I dare, considering her age and the potential for trauma, and I don't think that what she's doing is refusing to face facts. Lisa is serenely, utterly confident that Candy is all right—no, correct that: Lisa knows that Candy is all right. But she doesn't know how she knows.
And then there is the curious thing that happened the morning that we lost Candy and early the very next day.
We were sitting around the living room, listening to Candy report road conditions. Adam was at the radio; I was on the couch. Lisa was in a chair in the corner, Terry on his stand. Things happened very quickly after Candy's distress call, and neither Adam nor I had time to pay attention to Lisa and Terry, consciously anyway. Since then, however, I've had time to assemble a composite of what they were doing by retrieving memories of peripheral glimpses of things I saw but which didn't register.
Lisa sat, staring glassy-eyed into space, holding both arms of her chair with white-knuckled hands, smiling enigmatically. Terry was
crouched, his body level, tail extended. His expression was even more gleefully vacant than usual. His head bobbed, his wings were half-open, and both he and Lisa swayed unevenly in unison. A short while after we lost the signal, Terry suddenly flapped violently. Both he and Lisa weaved and bobbed back and forth, squealing, "Wheee-e-e-e . . . !" until either Adam or I snarled at them to shut up. They did; but I heard Lisa whisper to Terry, "That was neat!"
Then early the next morning, as Adam guided the rig swiftly but smoothly along the fire trails toward the search area, they did it again! The silence echoing from the rear of the van attracted my suspicions—that's something mothers learn early.
Terry again wore that silly, delighted, not-here expression; crouched on his stand, tail slightly elevated, wings half-spread. Lisa, too, was staring vacantly into space again, holding the arms of her chair tightly with both hands, and smiling. Both leaned and shifted their weight in unison; Terry's movements especially were reminiscent of an aircraft banking for turns.
I watched surreptitiously in the sun-visor mirror until it was over. As before, both returned to an awareness of their surroundings simultaneously but apparently independently. Lisa blinked a couple times and then sighed happily. Terry resumed his normal upright posture and shook himself briefly to settle his feathers. Lisa glanced at him and grinned. The bird bobbed his head in reply.
Now, I'm an engineer. My training deals with concepts capable of mathematical proof, and their relationships to tangible objects or provable intangibles. I have an imagination, but it's under control. Thus far I've never had trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality. Nor have I had difficulty keeping what I want to be separate from what is.
But now I'm not sure. Events of the past few days hint at things beyond my training and experience. Sometimes I wonder if I'm letting my imagination run, fed by Adam's previous speculations, and seeing more than is there. At other times I wonder if even his suspicions fall short of the truth; if perhaps we're seeing surface indications of a phenomenon operating on a level we're not equipped to perceive.
However, I've always prided myself on an open mind. I've never ruled out something without hard evidence and/or math to justify my opinion. I've always believed in, and tried to practice, the scientific method: When faced with an enigma, I've always deferred judgment until completing a proper study of the available data. Mere absence of positive data does not prove the negative. In fact, several times I have refused to venture a professional opinion when I judged that the data, while unanimously pointing to a certain conclusion, was insufficient to support it.
Nor have I ever allowed my own involvement to influence my observations and/or conclusions. So far, that is. I wonder if I have this time. I'm very uncomfortable about this. Lisa is my baby, my first born, all that remains of the love I shared with Jason. I may, in fact, be guilty of resisting the conclusion that a growing body of evidence increasingly suggests:
Lisa or Terry, or both, may, through some unknown mechanism, be in touch with Candy. I can't imagine how they could be, but neither can I prove that they aren't. If they are, they're not any clearer about how it works than I am—and whatever it is, if anything, it's not directional; Lisa has no more idea where Candy is than I do.
I've tried to question her about how she knows whatever it is she thinks she knows, but I haven't had much luck with it. I don't think she's being deliberately evasive, but somehow every conversation ends up back where it started, with no identifiable information changing. hands. When I tried to find out what she and Terry were doing right after we lost Candy's signal, for instance, it went like this:
"Lisa, what were you and Terry doing? Were you playing a game?"
"We were going fast."
"But you were sitting in a chair. How could you be going fast?"
"Candy was going fast."
"But Candy wasn't here."
"No; she was going fast ."
"But if she wasn't here, how do you know she was going fast?"
"I felt fast."
"What felt fast?"
"Candy."
"But she wasn't here?"
"No; how could she be here and go fast?"
"Well, where did the feeling come from?"
"From Candy."
"Oh. What did it feel like?"
"Fast, it felt fast!"
"What felt fast?"
"Candy did."
"How did you know she went fast?"
"By feeling it."
"But how could you know that, sitting in a chair?"
"By feeling it."
"Feeling what?"
"We were going fast."
An alternate ending to this conversation is a blank look and "I don't know."
I'm beginning to suspect that part of the problem is that Lisa and I don't share common referents to describe what she's trying to tell me. This could give the term "generation gap" a new lease on life.
A week now, and still no sign of Candy.
We're not a happy group: Adam's determination has taken on overtones of desperation. Lisa has been uneasy this past couple of days as well. She still insists that Candy is fine, but admits that she's "awful busy, and kind of scared." Which describes my own feelings in a nutshell.
Even Terry is no longer his usual carefree self. He's still eating enthusiastically, so I'm not worried that he's working on the Ellery Green syndrome, but he's growing more subdued day by day.
Apart from that, he's just plain driving us mad! His vocabulary has shifted back into high gear. He's talking absolutely nonstop again, employing words in combinations that none of us have ever used in front of him, forming sentences that he simply can't have heard before anywhere.
His behavior defies rational explanation. When Candy was here, we could speculate that he was taking it from her thoughts somehow. But she's not here; and even if she were, her presence would hardly explain this, delivered in fits and snatches over the course of several days:
". . . yellow stripe on green first, then black stripe on green, then solid red. Right? Stupid cam-latch . . . !"
". . . if the total is larger than sigma, colon; go to sub-YBVD. If larger than lambda, colon; go to sub-YBVE. If less than sigma, go to sub-YBVF . . ."
". . . twist right and pull. I mean left!—I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
Lisa says she knows where he's getting it, but her explanations haven't shed any more light on this than they have anything else.
Lord, I wish we knew something. The only thing worse than uncertainty is—probably the truth. . . .
This has been a bizzare day. Unproductive and disturbing, but especially strange!
There's still no sign of Candy after nine days—unless you count the inexplicable conduct involving Lisa and Terry, which I find very difficult to credit.
Adam doesn't believe it at all. He's quit putting up a brave front; he hasn't smiled practically since we got here, and now he's almost stopped talking. He continues to search, grimly, determinedly, refusing to admit the possibility of defeat, but without hope.
Lisa isn't very cheerful anymore, either. She says that Candy is frightened and has been growing more so daily. She doesn't know why, but it scares her as well.
Actually, none of us are too spritely. It's as though some sort of pall has settled over the forest. I've been having this growing sense of impending doom for days now. I try not to let it show around Lisa, but every day it gets harder.
And Terry's behavior steadily becomes more unusual. This morning he launched into a monologue before sunup. I heard it from the beginning—ever since having Lisa, any unusual sound wakes me instantly. And this, even compared to his normal behavior these days, and apart from the hour he started, was unusual.
It began with a singsong voice in the darkness: "Control, this is Nathan Hale. Radio check."
"Wha—huh? Now what?" muttered Adam sleepily from the bedroom.
"Roger, loud and clear," came the disembodied reply.
Adam grumbled something abou
t "dumb bird!" I heard his feet hit the floor. "I guess he means it. Well, the sun will be up soon. Might as well get up and eat so we can get going at first light." He stumbled from the bedroom and turned on a light; I shielded my eyes against the sudden glare.
Terry perched on one foot on his stand, eyes squinting, head tilted back slightly and sunk between his shoulders. He looked rather grumpy, as if we had waked him. "Inertial measurement unit alignment in progress," he said, yawning.
"This is a new wrinkle." I yawned back, stretching, standing, then folding the bed back into a sofa. I didn't wake Lisa, asleep on the converted dinette; at her age, she needs all the sleep she can get. Time enough when breakfast was almost on the table. "But sounds familiar somehow, doesn't it?"
"Uh-huh, I have heard this somewhere before," Adam replied, fumbling out cooking utensils and dishes. "But I can't think where. You want in the bathroom first?"
"Boiler control switch on. Nitrogen supply switch on."
"No; you cooked yesterday. You go first; I'll start breakfast."
"Hey . . ." Adam called from the bathroom after a while; "I know why that sounds familiar. Have you ever watched a shuttle launch on television?"
"You're right. Golly, doesn't that bird ever forget anything?" Something tugged at my memory. For a moment it eluded me. Then I had it: "Adam, I don't remember a shuttle named Nathan Hale, do you?"