Riveted by these revelations, and reacting visibly to each new voice, Norquist leaned forward in his chair, seeming loath to miss a word. When Mickey paused, the scientist said, “How do you do that—such perfect mimicry?”
“The One contains the memories of billions of people and can speak as they spoke. I guess it conveyed that ability to me. Or I’m just insane. But for what it’s worth, I have a further message for you.”
“What message?”
It was a long one, but Mickey delivered it without hesitation, without a mispronunciation, concluding with these words: “ ‘I am plant, animal, machine. I am posthuman and the condition of humanity is not my condition. I am free.’ ”
Exhausted, Mickey slumped back in his wheelchair. Listening to himself, he had been amazed at just how insane he had become. It was kind of spooky.
For a while, he and Norquist watched the squirrels on the lawn.
Spangles of sunshine twinkled through the branches of the oaks.
From his distant station near the porch steps, the male nurse frowned at them, perhaps puzzled about what a reputable man like Dr. Norquist would have to discuss at such length with a crazy person.
Mickey wondered what was on the menu for dinner. He was hungry enough to need two spoons.
Then he remembered an additional message he needed to convey. “One more thing. There’s a man named Fielding Udell who lives in the Pendleton. If you pay him a visit and ask him to help finance your research, he will be compelled to invest nearly three hundred million in the institute.”
“How do you know this?”
Mickey’s little smile was reproving.
“Right,” said Norquist. “You’re insane.”
During the next silence, Mickey realized that Dr. Norquist was not watching the squirrels. He was staring at an SUV parked along the shoulder of the county road, far out at the entrance of the Oak View driveway.
“I parked on another road a mile west of here,” Dr. Norquist said, “and walked overland, approached this place from the back.”
That statement resonated with Mickey, reminding him of the days when he had carefully planned his murders.
Norquist said, “Lately I’ve had the feeling I’m being watched.”
“Maybe you’re paranoid. You should get diagnosed.”
“Whoever it is, he’s damn careful. I never get a glimpse … but I feel him out there.”
“That SUV?” Mickey asked.
“Maybe. It’s never the same vehicle.”
“Who do you think he is?”
“I thought maybe you’d have an idea.”
“Well, it’s not my mother.”
“I never imagined it was.”
“She’s dead,” Mickey said. “But even after she died, I sometimes had the feeling she was watching me.”
“From where?” Norquist asked scornfully. “From Heaven?”
“From somewhere,” Mickey said.
Far out on the shoulder of the highway, a man got out of the SUV. He was hardly more than a shadow, too far away to be identified.
In the westering sun, something glimmered on the man’s face. Mickey thought it might be the lenses of a pair of binoculars.
Winny continued reading too many books and avoiding manly musical instruments. He spent some time with Iris nearly every day. It wasn’t a boy-girl thing and never could be. They were friends. They never talked about the world of the One, in part because she didn’t talk much and because he didn’t know what to say. Besides, if he did eventually know what to say about that experience, he couldn’t tell anyone without ending up in a nuthouse like Mickey Dime. There was Mr. Hawks to think about, as well. He had killed Mr. Ignis, and if the true story were known, he might go to jail. Killing Mr. Ignis had been the hardest kind of right thing to do, and Mr. Hawks was the hero that Winny could never be. One night Winny dreamed of the Cupp sisters. His grandfather Winston, who died in the coal-cracker explosion when Winny was a toddler, was in the dream, too, and all he remembered of it was that it felt good, like it always felt when he visited his grandma Trahern on the farm that his mom had bought for her. But it was a strange dream, too, because a couple of times he woke from it, and the Cupp sisters were sitting on the edge of his bed, not any bed in a dream but his own real bed, sitting there smiling at him. He swore he could feel one of them smooth the hair back from his forehead the way his mother sometimes did, and he felt the other one kiss him on the cheek, not the way you feel things in dreams but as real as anything. One of them said, “Brave boy,” and whether they were really there or only in a dream, Winny didn’t know what to say to them. After that, however, he felt the sisters were all right. They weren’t stuck in 2049 inside some tree or fungus or anything. They were somewhere better than either the present or the future. One day Iris got a socializing dog from an organization that provided assistance dogs to people with severe disabilities, and what a difference it made. If Iris had ever been happy before, you couldn’t see that she was, but you could see how happy she was with that golden retriever. They said she could rename the dog if she wanted, and for a while Winny hoped that she would name it Winny, but of course that would have caused a lot of confusion. She named him Bambi, and Winny didn’t have any hurt feelings. One day his mom showed him a newspaper story about this scientist who died when for some reason he drove his car over a cliff. His name was Norquist, and he’d worked with Dr. Ignis. Not long after
