“You have my word, Maggie, that we’ll come for you as soon as possible,” Doc said.
It wasn’t the promise she’d been hoping for, but Maggie felt somewhat reassured.
“Now,” Doc continued, “we have plans for what to do next. We have plenty of work to do, but does anyone want to say anything before Maggie leaves?”
“I do,” Maggie said. “I have two things to say.”
Doc nodded at her.
“Actually, one is a question. The other is something I remembered that I need to tell you, Doc.”
Doc’s eyebrows jumped. “A memory you’ve recovered?”
Maggie smiled. “Not one of the original lost ones, no. Just something else I was supposed to tell you.”
“Go ahead.”
“First the question. Colin said I was the key to the prophecy. I’ve heard a few people say that. What does it mean? Aren’t we all necessary to bring down the collectives?”
“All the roles in the prophecy are essential,” Doc said. “You are right about that, so perhaps your status is something like first among equals.”
“But I am first?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Doc sighed. “It’s difficult to explain. It has to do with the structure of the prophecy.”
“I’ve been here for almost two months, and I haven’t actually read that, you know,” Maggie said quietly.
“I’ll translate it for you.” David had so far been silent at the rear of the table sitting across from Nat.
All eyes turned to him now, but his face remained passive. “It will take some time,” he said, “but I’ll translate it into English for you. I’ll have it for you when you get back.”
An awkward silence descended, which Doc broke after only a moment. “In calling you the key, I believe it means two things. The first is the function you play as opposed to the others. Each of us has a part in the prophecy, but it’s a part we perform individually that contributes to the whole. Your role, Maggie, integrates all the other roles. You bind them and bring them all together. In short, you’re the key that makes the entire thing work.”
“But what does that mean? What will I do?”
“I can only tell you what the prophecy says.”
“What’s the second thing it means?”
Doc nodded. “The second is something I have personally come to believe after years of studying the prophecy. I’ve come to believe that you are unique, Maggie. For each of the roles the prophecy names, there are a number of people that could fulfill the role. The prophecy calls for certain characteristics, certain abilities inherent in the brain chemistry. If a person meets these criteria, they can fulfill the role. I don’t think that’s true of you, Maggie.
“I think your brain chemistry is so unique that only you can do this. That is why we must keep you protected. As insensitive a thing as this is to say, even without Clay we can prevail over the collectives. We can find another to fill his spot and move forward. That’s not true of you, Maggie. If anything happens to you, all is lost.”
Silence followed Doc’s words, but Maggie noticed that no one else around the table seemed as stunned as she felt by Doc’s explanation. David had been right then about them keeping things from her. Yet when she’d asked, Doc had been completely forthcoming. She wasn’t sure she believed, as David implied, that they were lying maliciously.
“Does that answer your question?” Doc asked.
Maggie shrugged. “For now, I suppose. I could think of a whole lot more questions though.”
Doc smiled. “I’m sure you could. Perhaps David’s idea is a good one. Perhaps we should have translated the prophecy for you earlier so you could study it for yourself. I should warn you, though, that there are people, including myself, that have studied it for years. The prophecy is vague, and its interpretation is ambiguous at best.”
Maggie nodded. She suddenly had a keen interest to read the prophecy. She wished it was already translated so she could take it with her when she left.
“So,” Doc said, sounding cheerful to move onto another subject, “what did you remember that you needed to tell me?”
Maggie was still pondering the prophecy, and it took a minute to realize what he’d said.
“Oh. Remember when we were on the beach and I told you the Remembrancer told me to tell you something? I just remembered what it was.”
One of Doc’s eyebrows went up. “What was it?”
Maggie shrugged. “Didn’t make any sense to me, but she said to tell you that the roses are in bloom.”
All the color drained from Doc’s face. His eyes widened to the size of saucers, and his mouth fell open. He slumped back in his seat as if his life force were draining out. Meanwhile, from the other side of the table, Nat jumped to his feet so suddenly that his chair crashed to the floor behind him.
Maggie’s head swiveled back and forth between the two, fear boiling in her stomach. Her expression was mirrored in the faces of the others.
“What?” Marcus yelled, looking alarmed.
“Doc, what is it?” Karl had gotten to his feet. “What does that mean?”
Doc was staring at the table in front of him, lost in his own horror.
“Doc!” Joan yelled, and Doc’s head snapped up.
He looked surprised to see them all standing there.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, sitting forward in his seat again. “I…was not expecting to hear that.”
Maggie thought Doc had a gift for stating the obvious. “What does it mean, Doc? Do you know that woman, the one that called herself the Remembrancer?”
Doc looked at Maggie. It took him a moment to focus on what she was saying. When he did, he leaned forward, becoming intense.
“Yes, the woman. What did she look like, Maggie? Tell me exactly what she said.”
A bit taken aback, Maggie recounted what the woman looked like and the conversation they’d had. The others put in details as she went. Doc and Nat kept exchanging confused glances as she spoke.
When she finished, Doc still said nothing.
“Doc!” Joan was more exasperated than Maggie had ever heard her. When Doc didn’t respond right away, her gaze swiveled to Nat, who had righted his chair and was sitting again.
“I think,” Doc finally said, “that she is a woman I knew a long time ago.”
“You think?” Marcus asked.
Doc smiled without humor. “I was sure she was dead.”
An awkward silence descended. Maggie couldn’t think of any way to break it except to ask the obvious question. “Why?”
“I saw her die. Sometime after that, a Prophesier told me she would come back into my life again. I always assumed it was figurative or something dealing with my own death, perhaps. Now it seems I was wrong.”
“Who is she?” Karl asked.
“She was a Prophesier herself, a great studier of the prophecy and an advocate against the collectives.”
“Did you know she had abilities with memories?” Marcus asked.
Doc shook his head. “No. I never heard anything like that from or about her. She never called herself a Remembrancer when I knew her.”
“What does…the thing about the roses mean?” Karl asked.
Doc waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing to anyone else. It was what you might call an inside joke, though it wasn’t really a joke, just something we often said to one another. It was a metaphor meaning that things were looking up. I don’t think she meant anything by it, except to use it to identify herself to me.”
“And to Nat, it seems,” David said quietly.
“Yes,” Doc said. “Nat knew her too.”
Everyone’s eyes went back and forth between the two older men. Maggie could tell that everyone was drawing the same conclusions she was. Nat and Doc had obviously known each other longer than anyone realized. Suddenly there were so many questions and no time to answer them.
“Well.” Doc regained his composure. “I’m glad you told
me this, Maggie. I’ll have to think on it some more. I would also like to know more about where this woman was staying—the lighthouse. I wish I could have studied it.”
“Clay did,” Joan said quietly. “He said it was a Concealment, and he studied it at length. Now there’s no way to know what conclusions he drew.”
There was a minute of silence while they all thought about what they’d heard.
“Does anyone want to say anything else?” Doc asked.
No one answered.
“Then everyone say their good-byes to Maggie.” He turned a solemn look on her. “It’s time for you to go.”
Chapter 36: Far from Vegas
The good-byes were not drawn out. Joan hugged Maggie, assuring her they’d see her soon. Nat hugged her as well, but she wasn’t as close to him as she was to the other two, and it was slightly awkward. Doc smiled at her and held her hands in his for several minutes, making her feel needed. Even Lila turned out to give her a quick hug and wish her well.
No one else came, but Doc said no one else knew. Her leaving was temporary and was the business of the team, so no announcements had been made. If asked, the team would tell people that she was on a mission and would return soon.
Maggie took a moment to wander into Medical. She wanted to say good-bye to Clay, though she knew the notion was silly. He had left long before she had. She stood in the doorway, peeking in. She’d spent a good deal of time with Clay compared to some of the others, and she felt close to him. She’d come to feel his goodness and gentleness. The fact that his child would never know him filled her with loneliness. Clay’s wife sat beside his bed, one hand holding his, the other resting on her swollen belly.
Maggie couldn’t bring herself to go in. She trudged back to her room.
She did her best to push away the pain of leaving, telling herself it was only temporary. She wasn’t sure she really believed it.
Karl and Marcus were accompanying her, so she didn’t say good-bye to them. They left the compound the same way Marcus brought her in when they’d first arrived. It seemed like such a long time ago now.
The door closed behind them, and they walked out into the field Maggie had crossed running from the Arachnimen two months before.
“It tends to make you dizzy,” Karl said, “so it may be best to hold onto each other.”
Maggie nodded, remembering hitting the ground before. Marcus walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She knew she ought to stay firm on her feet, but she rested her weight against him, knowing it would be her last opportunity to feel close to him for a while.
With Karl beside them, the world lurched. The shapes and colors of the landscape around them made blurry, elongated strides, and everything seemed hazy, as though seen through the heat mirages of Vegas.
Vertigo followed, and Maggie had the sense that she was falling. Then, with what was probably an imagined thud, it all stopped. Marcus steadied her, and she shook her head to rid it of the cobwebs.
“You all right, Maggie?”
Outside of Interchron in the future, Marcus’s soft question would have carried clearly. The landscape was so vacant, the world so unpopulated, that the silence was easily penetrated. Here, even from a distance, the lights and sounds of civilization could be heard. He was whispering in her ear so she could hear him, but the sound of his voice in her time seemed marred somehow.
“I’m fine.” Her voice sounded small.
She looked at Karl, who was completely unaffected by the vertigo, and he grinned at her. She smiled back. Mischievous as it was, she realized she’d miss his endearing smile.
“Come on.” He motioned down the mountain with his head. “Let’s get you home.”
Maggie took in the surroundings more fully. The sunset had come and gone, and the sky was still light blue but darkening rapidly. It would be dark before they reached her house.
Maggie and Marcus fled her neighborhood before, running for their lives. As they made their way back, Maggie realized how far they must have come in a short time. It seemed much longer walking back, and everything moved around in the dark, so nothing looked familiar to her. She wasn’t worried though. She was with the two men she trusted most in the world, and she knew they’d get her home. She just didn’t want them to.
She rehearsed the story she was to tell when she returned. With Traveling being inexact, there was no way to tell exactly how long she’d been gone. It could range anywhere from a few hours to a few days, Karl said. At first she thought she could claim total ignorance. No one had explained what had happened in Vegas, so perhaps she could chalk it up to another unexplained, memory-affecting event in her life.
Then she’d remembered the dead man Marcus had left in her parlor. Perhaps ignorance wouldn’t be enough.
She was to say that two men had broken into her home but were fighting each other. Hopefully everyone would believe it was some kind of gang warfare she’d gotten caught up in. She would say others of the same gang had taken her captive, drugged her, and held her for…however long she’d been gone. Then they decided to release her—simply dropped her off a few blocks from home without any explanation. Memory loss as to more details would be a convenient side effect of the drugs she’d been given.
Doc helped her work out what to say and gave her some ambiguous symptoms to report so that the exact drug she was given couldn’t be nailed down. The truth peppered with vague embellishments was the best path to believability, he said.
When they entered her neighborhood after two hours of trudging on foot through the all-too-familiar city, Maggie knew the body had been discovered. From several streets away, she could see the flashing lights of police cruisers. A large number of people were gathered out in front of her house.
Maggie halted them when they were under the canopy of a fully flowered Dagwood tree. It was totally dark now, but the moon was out, and it might be enough for nosy neighbors to witness the fact that she’d traveled here with two men, which was not part of her cover story.
“I think we’d better say good-bye here. I don’t want you two to be seen.”
“All right,” Karl said, turning to her. “Take care of yourself, Maggs. We’ll be back for you before you know it.”
Maggie smiled at him, though she wasn’t sure if he could see it or not. “Thanks for everything, Karl. I’ll miss you.”
“Stating the obvious, but thank you.” Karl grinned, winking at her.
Maggie grinned back. Then she looked over at Marcus.
Karl cleared his throat. “I, uh, saw an interesting stump a ways back. I think I’ll go sit on it for a while.” He turned and jogged in the opposite direction.
When his thudding footfalls had faded, Marcus reached out. He twined his fingers through the belt loops of Maggie’s jeans and pulled her close to him.
They stared at each other for a moment.
“Marcus,” Maggie began, but found herself at a loss for words. “I…I’m sorry. I feel like I have so much to say, but now I don’t know where to start.”
He stepped closer to her, which didn’t help.
“I want you to understand something. I’m sorry I don’t remember our time together from before. I want to remember, but—”
Marcus put a hand up, shaking his head. “Maggie—”
“No, please, let me say this. I want to remember, not just out of curiosity or because I feel badly about how unfair it all is.” She paused then took a deep breath. “After Vegas, I felt empty, like something was missing. I thought it was just the trauma of having unaccounted-for time, but it wouldn’t go away. Jonah moved on. I couldn’t. I realize now what really happened.
“You became a huge part of me, of my soul, and then you were gone, ripped out of my head and my life…” She shut her eyes. She wasn’t making much sense, but Marcus said nothing.
“Some part of me was gone, and I couldn’t explain it. I was lonely, and I missed you, even if I didn’t know it. I’ve been searching for you for a year. I wan
t to reclaim those memories, because—” She could feel her emotions welling up. She wished she wouldn’t cry—it was really annoying—but she’d begun, and she wasn’t going to stop until all her words were out. “Because I’ll finally find that piece of me that’s been missing for so long.”
He closed the small gap between them and put his hands on either side of her face. Resting his forehead against hers, his fingers gently kneaded her scalp.
“I heard what you said to Colin on the island, and maybe it was only for his benefit that you said it, but I want you to know that the impression you made on me was not worthless or negligible or something to be swept under the rug.”
“Perhaps”—he ran his finger down her cheek to wipe away a tear—“it’s a gift you have, an ability to see that which is no longer there. That’s why you saw flashes of kidnapped memories.”
“Or maybe some things are so vital that they imprint themselves on your very soul. All the flashes had something to do with you, Marcus. They couldn’t take away my memories of you, even…when they did. You had such a pull on me…”
A term Karl had used came to her mind just then. “You were my persistence of vision.”
He kissed her deeply on the mouth, pushing her backward until they were completely engulfed under the protective shadow of the Dagwood tree.
The kiss ended, leaving Maggie breathless. Marcus put his hands on the sides of her face and rested his forehead on hers once again, as though that would cement them together even after they parted.
Butterflies flared in Maggie’s stomach, but she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. He pressed his face into her shoulder, his breath hot against her skin.
“Come back soon,” she whispered.
“I promise.”
She could feel his reluctance to let go and walk away. She shared it.
“Marcus, will you do something for me?”
“Of course.”
She hesitated, knowing he wouldn’t like her request. “Will you try and mend things with David?”
Persistence of Vision Page 35