Passage

there weren’t any. It’s totally random, he thought at ten-thirty, grabbed a stack of transcripts to read through, and went home.

But the answer wasn’t in Ms. Kobald’s “The angel touched my brow, and I knew Death was only the beginning,” or in Mr. Stockhausen’s “Brigham Young was standing in the light, surrounded by the elders.” It lay in the Titanic.

He looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. The Tattered Cover and Barnes and Noble would both be closed. Who would have books on the Titanic? Kit. She had said Joanna had asked her to find out about fires and fog, and Mr. Briarley had been an expert on the Titanic.

Richard picked up the phone and then put it down again. It was too late to call her, but as soon as he got to the hospital the next morning, he got her on the phone and said, “When you come to pick up the transcripts, can you bring me an account of the sinking of the Titanic?”

“Yes, but I’ve got a problem. Eldercare can’t send anyone over till this afternoon, and I really wanted to get started on the transcripts.”

“I could bring them over to your house,” Richard offered.

“No, I don’t want you to have to do that. Look, I can bring Uncle Pat with me, I just can’t leave him in the car by himself. Could you meet us in the parking lot at ten with the transcripts?”

“Sure,” he said, but, looking at the transcripts, he knew there was no way he could get them all down to the parking lot in one trip. He needed a box. He went down to Supplies to get one.

They didn’t have any. “Records might have one,” the pretty clerk said, smiling winsomely at Richard. “They go through a lot of computer paper.”

He went over to Records and told an imperative-looking woman with “Zaneta” on her nametag, “I need a box—” but she had already swiveled in her chair to a rack of forms.

“A box of what?” she said, her hand poised to pluck the correct form from its slot.

“Just a box. An empty box,” and amazingly, she handed him a requisition form.

“Fill out the size and number of boxes you need,” she said, pointing to a square on the form, “and your office number. It’ll take a week to ten days.”

“All I want is an empty computer box,” he said, and his pager went off. He switched it off. Zaneta pushed the phone toward him.

“I’ll call from my office,” he said and went down the hall and out a back door to the Dumpsters, found an empty IV-packs box, and took it back upstairs. Back in the lab, he filled it with the transcripts, keeping a close eye on the clock, and started down to the parking lot. At the elevator, he remembered he hadn’t answered his page, and lugged the heavy box all the way back to the lab on the off-chance it was Vielle who had called.

It wasn’t. It was Mrs. Haighton, asking if she could reschedule. He didn’t call her. He glanced at his watch and started down again, glad he already knew the quickest route to the parking lot and thinking he needed to add it to his map. Kit’s car was already pulled up next to the handicapped entrance, its motor running, when he got there. “Sorry I’m late,” Richard said, leaning in the window Kit rolled down.

“Do you have an excuse from your first-period teacher?” a man’s voice demanded, and Richard looked across her at the graying man he’d seen at the funeral. Joanna’s Mr. Briarley.

“Don’t just stand there,” Mr. Briarley said. “Sit down. We’re on page fifty-eight, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ ”

“Uncle Pat,” Kit said, laying her hand on his arm, “this is Richard Wright. He—”

“I know who he is,” Mr. Briarley said. “When are you going to marry this niece of mine?”

“Richard’s just a friend, Uncle Pat,” Kit said. “I need to talk to him for a minute. You just stay here, all right?”

“ ‘It is an ancient Mariner, and he stoppeth one of three,’ ” Mr. Briarley said. “ ‘ “By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin.” ’ ” His hand scrabbled at his door, looking for the handle.

“No, you stay here,” Kit said, reaching across him and pushing the door lock down. “I’ll just be a minute. I have to put something in the trunk. You stay here.”

Mr. Briarley let his hand drop into his lap. “That’s what history is, and science, and art,” he said waveringly. “That’s what literature is.”

“I’ll be right back,” Kit said, opening the door. Richard stepped back, and Kit got out and went around to the back of the car to open the trunk. “What did Mrs. Davenport say?” she asked.

“A lot of nonsense,” Richard said.

“Had Joanna been to see her?” Kit pulled the trunk lid up.

“No.” He set the heavy box in the trunk. “What about the textbook? Did you find anything?”

“ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ ” she said ruefully, “but nothing about the Titanic.” She shut the trunk and came around to open the back door. She leaned in and came up with a stack of books. “Here’s the stuff on the Titanic,” she said, handing them to him. “I’ve got more if you need them.”

“These should keep me busy for a while,” he said, looking at the books.

“Ditto,” Kit said, gesturing toward the trunk. She got back in the car and started it. “I’ll call you if I find anything.”

“ ‘He holds him with his skinny hand,’ ” Mr. Briarley said. “ ‘ “There was a ship,” quoth he.’ ”

“A ship?” Richard said.

Kit switched off the ignition and turned to face Mr. Briarley. “Uncle Pat,” she said, “did you and Joanna talk about a ship?”

“Joanna?” he said vaguely.

“Joanna Lander,” Kit said gently. “She was a student of yours. She came to see you. She asked you what you said in class. About the Titanic? Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Mr. Briarley said gruffly.

“What did you tell Joanna?” Kit asked, and Richard waited for his answer, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.

“Joanna,” he said, staring at the windshield. “ ‘Red as a rose was she.’ ” He turned and looked at Richard. “It’s a metaphor,” he said. “You need to know it for the final.”

And that was that. Dead end. Try something else, Richard thought, carrying the books back up to the lab. He started in on the scans, comparing the frontal-cortex patterns with the presence of different neurotransmitters and then with the core elements, looking for correspondences.

There weren’t any, but when he graphed the NDEs for length, he saw that Joanna had awakened spontaneously after her third session, and that was one in which theta-asparcine was present. I wonder if that’s the one where she turned and started back down the passageway, he thought.

It was. He checked the accounts of the other two with theta-asparcine. The one where she had kicked out and the one where she had stepped from the elevator into the passage. But not the one where she had run headlong down the stairs and into the passage. And she had been under for nearly four minutes in the one with the elevator.

He worked until twelve-thirty and then went down to the cafeteria, got a sandwich, and started through the books Kit had given him. He checked their indexes for the entry “elevator,” not really expecting to find it, and he didn’t. He was going to have to read the books.

He started with a coffee-table book called The Titanic in Color, with detailed drawings of the smoking lounge, the gymnasium, the Grand Staircase. “At the head of the William-and-Mary-style staircase was a large clock carved to represent Honour and Glory Crowning Time.” Glory, which Joanna had underlined. But no sign of an elevator.

The Untold Titanic didn’t mention one either. It concentrated on the area belowdecks and the crew, hardly any of whom had survived: the officers who’d loaded the boats, the wireless operator, the engineers who had stayed at their posts, working to keep the dynamos for the wireless and the lights going till the very end. Assistant Engineer Harvey, who’d gone back into a flooded boiler room to rescue a crewman with a broken leg. And all the firemen and trimmers and postal clerks who’d stayed at their posts long after they’d been released from duty.

Richard read till he couldn’t stand it anymore and then went down to the ER to see if Vielle had found