Passage

trying to catch fireflies in their cupped hands, and when a car turned down the street, they had called out, “Automobile!” and flopped down flat on their backs in the grass, motionless in the sweep of its headlights. Playing dead. And even after the car had passed, they had lain there, looking up at the stars, pointing out the constellations. “There’s the Big Dipper,” they had said, pointing. “There’s the Milky Way. There’s the Dog Star.”

There were no constellations. Joanna craned her neck, trying to find the pattern of the Archer, the long spilled splash of the Milky Way down the center of the sky. But there were only stars. And they sparkled brightly, clearly, all the way down to the water, which was so still she couldn’t hear it lapping against the sides of the piano, so still the stars’ reflections were not distorted at all. They sparkled steadily, clearly, as if they were not reflections at all, as if there were sky below her instead of water.

She hugged the dog to her. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” she said, and pulled her feet up under her, away from the edge.

They were not in the Atlantic, and the thing they huddled on was not a piano. It was something else, an examining table, or a drawer in the morgue. Or a metaphor for the shipwrecked survivors of her consciousness, floating on the wreckage of her body, for her final synapses flickering out like stars, like fireflies.

And the Atlantic was a metaphor for someplace else. The River Styx or the River Jordan or Mr. Mandrake’s Other Side. No, not an Other Side, Joanna thought. It’s someplace else altogether, with no connection to the world.

“The far country,” she thought, but that was not right either. It was not a country. It was a place so far away it was not even a place. A place so far away the Carpathia could not ever come, so far away there was no possibility of being rescued, of getting back. And from which nothing was ever heard, in spite of what Maurice Mandrake said, in spite of the messages he claimed he had had from the dead.

And even the last words of the dying were not messages at all, but only useless echoes of the living. Useless lies. “I will never leave you,” they said, and left forever. “I won’t forget you,” they said, and then forgot everything in the dark, disintegrating water. “We will be together again,” and that was the biggest lie of all. There were no fathers waiting on the shining shore. No prophets, no elders, no Angels of Light. No light at all. And they would never be together. She would never see them again, or be able to tell them where she had gone.

I left without saying good-bye, she thought, and felt a stab of pain, like a knife in the ribs. “Good-bye!” she shouted, but her voice didn’t carry across the water. “Good-bye, Vielle!” she shouted, “Good-bye, Kit! Good-bye, Richard!” trying to make them out, but they were too far away. Too far even for her to remember Richard’s face, or Maisie’s—

Maisie, she thought, and knew why she had thought the stars were fireflies. Morse-code bugs, they had called them back in Kansas. Winking on, winking off, sending coded messages in the dark. “I have to get the message to Richard,” she said, and stood up on the piano, setting it rocking wildly. “Richard!” she called, cupping her hands to her mouth like a megaphone, “the NDE’s the brain’s way of signaling for help!”

It was too far. It would never reach him. Houdini, calling out, “Rosabelle, answer, tell, pray!” to his wife across the void, could not make himself heard. And neither could she. “It’s an SOS!” Joanna called, but softly. “An SOS.”

The little French bulldog was whimpering at her feet, frightened at being left alone. Joanna sat back down and reached for it, unable to find it at first in the dark, putting both arms around it, pulling it close. “It’s no use,” she said, stroking the silky head she could not see. “It will never reach them.”

The little dog whimpered, heartbroken, a sound like a child’s crying. “It’s all right,” Joanna said, even though it wasn’t. “Don’t cry, I’m here. I’m here.”

I am here. Where are you? The fireflies, trapped in a Mason jar, caught in cupped hands from which no light could escape, went on sending messages, on and off, on and off, even though it was no use. And Jack Phillips, even though the Carpathia was too far away, even though there were no other ships to hear, had kept on sending, tapping out SOS, SOS, till the very end.

“SOS,” she called, willing her thoughts to Richard and Kit and Vielle like wireless messages, through the nothingness, through the vast, dark distances of death. “Good-bye. It’s all right. Don’t grieve.” The little bulldog quieted and slept, curled against her, but she continued to stroke its soft head. “Don’t cry,” she said, willing Maisie to hear, willing Richard to listen. “It’s an SOS.”

It will never reach them, she thought, but she sat on in the dark, holding tight to the little dog, surrounded by stars, sending out signals of love and pity and hope. The messages of the dead.

56

“Coming hard.”

—Wireless message from the Carpathia to the Titanic

“Mr. Pearsall,” Richard said, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I wondered if you still needed me for your project,” he said. “I just got back from Ohio. I had to stay a lot longer than I thought I was going to. My father died,” he had to clear his throat before he went on, “and I had to settle his estate. I just got back yesterday.” He cleared his throat again. “I heard about Dr. Lander. I’m really sorry.”

That’s what Carl Aspinall said, Richard thought bitterly.

“It’s hard to believe,” Mr Pearsall said, clutching his hat in both hands. “One minute they’re there, and the next… I always thought near-death experiences were some kind of hallucination, but now I don’t know. Right before my dad went, he said—he’d had a stroke and had trouble talking, he just sort of mumbled, but he said this as plain as day—‘Well, what do you know!’ ”

Richard straightened alertly. “Did he say anything else?”

Mr. Pearsall shook his head. Of course, Richard thought.

“He said it like he’d just figured something important out,” Mr. Pearsall said, shaking his head again. “I’d like to know what it was.”

So would I, Richard thought.

“That’s why I thought if you still needed volunteers, I could—”

“The project’s been suspended.”

Mr. Pearsall nodded as if that was the answer he’d expected. “If you start it up again, I’d be glad to—”

“I’ll give you a call,” Richard said, showing him out. He shut the door and went over to his desk and the tapes, but he’d scarcely gotten started when someone knocked. And this won’t be Carl Aspinall either, he thought.

It was Amelia Tanaka. “Amelia,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

She stopped just inside the door and stood there, her coat and backpack on. Like the day she’d come to tell them she was quitting. “I came…” Amelia said, and took a deep breath. “Dr. Lander came to see me at the university.”

That’s where she went in the taxi, Richard thought, and wanted to ask her what day that was, but Amelia was having enough difficulty. He didn’t want to throw her off.

“I didn’t tell the truth about why I quit,” Amelia said. “Dr. Lander asked me if it was because I experienced something upsetting, and I told her no, but that wasn’t true. I did, and I was so scared I couldn’t face going under again, but then I heard she died, and I got to thinking about it happening to her, only she didn’t have a choice, she couldn’t back out.”

The words tumbled helplessly out of her, like tears. “I got to thinking about what a coward I’d been. She was always so nice to me. Once, when I asked her to do something for me, she did, and I—” She broke off, blushing. “She said it was important, my telling her what I saw. I shouldn’t have lied. I should have told her. How can I be a