widespread — yet as subtle as a web of cloud shadows on the skin of a pond, which makes it all the more effective. They will try to find her as soon as possible after she surfaces and before she can bring 21–21 to the world.
She knows a reporter whom she would trust not to betray her: Lisa Peccatone, an old college friend who works at the
Rose and the girl will have to fly to Southern California — and the sooner the better. Project 99 is a joint venture of private industry, elements of the defense establishment, and other powerful forces in the government. Easier to halt an avalanche with a feather than to resist their combined might, and they will shortly begin to use every asset in their arsenal to locate Rose and the girl.
Trying to fly out of Dulles or National Airport in Washington is too dangerous. She considers Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. She chooses New York.
She reasons that the more county and state lines she crosses, the safer she becomes, so she drives to Hagerstown, Maryland, and from there to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, without incident. Yet mile by mile, she is increasingly concerned that her pursuers will have put out an APB on her car and that she will be captured regardless of the distance she puts between herself and Manassas. In Harrisburg, she abandons the car, and she and the girl continue to New York City by bus.
By the time they are in the air aboard Nationwide Flight 353, Rose feels safe. Immediately on landing at LAX, she will be met by Lisa and the crew that Lisa has assembled — and the series of media eruptions will begin.
For the airline passenger manifest, Rose implied that she was married to a white man, and she identified 21–21 as her stepdaughter, choosing the name “Mary Tucker” on the spur of the moment. With the media, she intends initially to use CCY-21-21’s project name because its similarity to concentration-camp inmates’ names will do more than anything else to characterize Project 99 in the public mind and generate instant sympathy for the child. She realizes that eventually she will have to consult with 21–21 to pick a permanent name — which, considering the singular historical importance of this child’s life, should be a name that resonates.
They are seated across the aisle from a mother and her two daughters, who are returning home to Los Angeles. Michelle, Chrissie, and Nina Carpenter.
Nina, who is approximately 21–21’s age and size, is playing with a hand-held electronic game called Pigs and Princes, designed for preschoolers. From across the aisle, 21–21 becomes fascinated by the sounds and the images on the small screen. Seeing this, Nina asks “Mary” to move with her to a nearby pair of empty seats, where they can play the game together. Rose is hesitant to allow this — but she knows that 21–21 is intelligent far beyond her years and is aware of the need for discretion, so she relents. This is the first unstructured play time in 21–21’s life, the first
Theirs is a late flight out of New York, and after a couple of hours, Nina is fading. She hugs 21–21, and with the permission of Michelle, she gives Pigs and Princes to her new friend before returning to sit with her mother and sister, where she falls asleep.
Transported by delight, 21–21 returns to her seat beside Rose, hugging the small electronic game to her breast as though it is a treasure beyond value. Now she won’t even play with it because she is afraid that she might break it, and she wants it to remain always exactly as Nina gave it to her.
West of the town of Running Lake, still many miles from Big Bear Lake, following ridgelines past the canyons where the wind was born, bombarded by thrashing conifers hurling cones at the pavement, Joe refused to consider the implications of Pigs and Princes. Listening to Rose tell the story, he had barely found the self-control to repress his rage. He knew that he had no reason to be furious with this woman or with the child who had a concentration- camp name, but he was livid nonetheless — perhaps because he knew how to function well in anger, as he had done throughout his youth, and not well at all in grief.
Turning the subject away from little girls at play, he said, “How does Horton Nellor fit into this — aside from owning a big chunk of Teknologik, which is deep in Project 99?”
“Just that well-connected bastards like him…are the wave of the future.” She was holding the can of Pepsi between her knees, clawing at the pull tab with her right hand. She had barely enough strength and coordination to get it open. “The wave of the future…unless Nina…unless she changes everything.”
“Big business, big government, and big media — all one beast now, united to exploit the rest of us. Is that it? Radical talk.”
The aluminum can rattled against her teeth, and a trickle of Pepsi dribbled down her chin. “Nothing but power matters to them. They don’t believe…in good and evil.”
“There are only events.”
Though she had just taken a long swallow of Pepsi, her throat sounded dry. Her voice cracked. “And what those events mean…”
“…depends only on what spin you put on them.”
He remained blindly angry with her because of what she insisted that he believe about his Nina, but he could not bear to glance at her again and see her growing weaker. He blinked at the road ahead, where showers of pine needles stitched together billowing sheets of dust, and he eased down on the accelerator, driving as fast as he dared.
The soda can slipped out of her hand, dropped on the floor, and rolled under her seat, spilling the remainder of the Pepsi. “Losin’ it, Joe.”
“Not long now.”
“Got to tell you how it was…when the plane went in.”
Four miles down, gathering speed all the way, engines shrieking, wings creaking, fuselage thrumming. Screaming passengers are pressed so hard into their seats by the accumulating gravities that many are unable to lift their heads — some praying, some vomiting, weeping, cursing, calling out the many names of God, calling out to loved ones present and far away. An eternity of plunging, four miles but as if from the moon—
— and then Rose is in a blueness, a silent bright blueness, as if she is a bird in flight, except that no dark earth lies below, only blueness all around. No sense of motion. Neither hot nor cool. A flawless hyacinth-blue sphere with her at the center. Suspended. Waiting. A deep breath held in her lungs. She tries to expel her stale breath but cannot, cannot, until—
— with an exhalation as loud as a shout, she finds herself in the meadow, still in her seat, stunned into immobility, 21–21 beside her. The nearby woods are on fire. On all sides, flames lick mounds of twisted debris. The meadow is an unspeakable charnel house. And the 747 is
At the penultimate moment, the girl had transported them out of the doomed aircraft by a monumental exertion of her psychic gift, to another place, to a dimension outside space and time, and had held them in that mysterious sheltering limbo through one terrible minute of cataclysmic destruction. The effort has left 21–21 cold, shaking, and unable to speak. Her eyes, bright with reflections of the many surrounding fires, have a faraway look like those of an autistic child. Initially she cannot walk or even stand, so Rose must lift her from the seat and carry her.
Weeping for the dead scattered through the night, shuddering with horror at the carnage, wonderstruck by her survival, slammed by a
By the time they reach the ranch house, the girl is somewhat recovered but still not herself. She is able to walk now, but she is lethargic, brooding, distant. Approaching the house, Rose tells 21–21 to remember that her name is Mary Tucker, but 21–21 says,
Those are the last words that she will speak — perhaps forever. In the months immediately following the crash, having taken refuge with Rose’s friends in Southern California, the girl sleeps twelve to fourteen hours a day.
