Mount Dragon

Muriel felt a tear well up in her eye. That absentminded, slightly lost expression was so much like her son’s. She hoped that whatever had gone wrong in his life would straighten itself out before too long.

The following morning, the Pearl Street Salvation Army store and soup kitchen received an anonymous donation in the amount of a quarter of a million dollars, and no one was more surprised than Muriel Page when she was told it was in honor of her work.

Carson and de Vaca walked silently down the trail and back to the Mount Dragon complex. Outside the covered walkway leading to the residency compound, they stopped.

“So?” de Vaca prompted, breaking the silence.

“So what?”

“You still haven’t told me if you’re going to help me find the notebook,” she said in a fierce whisper.

“Susana, I’ve got work to do. So do you, for that matter. That notebook, if it exists, isn’t going anywhere. Let me think about this a while. OK?”

De Vaca looked at him for a moment. Then she turned without a word and walked into the compound.

Carson watched her walk away. Then, with a sigh, he climbed the staircase to the second floor, stepping through the doorway into the cool, dark corridor beyond. Maybe Teece had been right about Burt’s secret notebook. And maybe de Vaca was right about Nye. In which case, what Teece thought didn’t matter as much anymore. But what concerned Carson most was that horrible moment on top of Mount Dragon, when he’d suddenly felt the strength of his convictions turn soft. Since his father died and the last ranch had failed, Carson’s love of science—his faith in the good it could accomplish—had meant everything to him. Now, if ...

But he wouldn’t think about it any more today. Maybe tomorrow, he’d have the strength to face it again.

Back in his room, Carson stared at the drab white walls for a minute, summoning the energy to switch on his laptop and begin sorting through the X-FLU II test data. His eye fell upon the battered banjo case.

Hell with it, he thought. He’d play a little; without picks, to keep the noise down. Just five minutes, maybe ten. Get his mind off all this. Then he’d get to work.

As he lifted the five-string from the case, his eye fell on a folded piece of paper lying on the yellowing felt beneath. Frowning, he picked it up and unfolded it on his knee.

Dear Guy,

I’ve always hated this infernal instrument. For once, how-ever, I hope you practice with regularity. You’ve apparently already left for the morning, and I can’t delay my departure any further. This seems the best—indeed, only—way to contact you.

As you know, I’ll be gone for a couple of days. Since we spoke, I have tried without success to learn where Burt might have hidden his notebook. You know the Mount Dragon complex, you know the surrounding area, and—most importantly—you know Burt’s work. It’s quite possible that, perhaps inadvertently, Burt left behind a clue to the whereabouts of the notebook. Would you please look through Burt’s electronic notes and see if you can find such a clue?

Do not, however, try to find the notebook yourself. Let me do that when I return from my journey. Meanwhile, please don’t mention this to anyone.

Had I felt there was more time, I would not have burdened you with this. I have a feeling you are someone I can trust. I hope I am not mistaken.

Yours,

Gil Teece

Carson reread the hastily scrawled note. Teece must have come looking for him the morning of the dust storm and, not finding him, left the message in the one place Carson would be most likely to find it. When he’d opened the case on the canteen balcony, the night had been dark and he hadn’t seen the note. He felt a momentary anxious stab as he thought about how easily the paper could have fallen unnoticed to the floor of the balcony, to be discovered later by Singer. Or maybe Nye.

He angrily shook aside the thought. Another couple of days and I’ll be as paranoid as de Vaca. Or even Burt. Shoving the note into his back pocket, he punched de Vaca’s extension on the residency intercom.

 “So this is where you live, Carson? It figures they’d give you one of the better views. All I see from my room is the back end of the incinerator.”

De Vaca moved away from the window. “They say the way a person decorates their own space is a good barometer of personality,” she went on, scanning the bare walls. “Figures.”

She leaned over his shoulder while he booted up his residency laptop.

“About a month before he left Mount Dragon, Burt’s entries began to grow shorter,” Carson said as he logged in. “If Teece is right, that’s the time he started keeping the illegal journal. If there are any clues as to its whereabouts in Burt’s on-line notes, that’s where I figure we should start looking.”

He began paging through the log. As the formulas, lists, and data scrolled by, Carson was reminded irresistibly of the first time he had read the journal, a lifetime ago, on his first workday in the Fever Tank. His heart sank as he skimmed yet again the failed experiments, the recordings of hopes that were alternately lifted, then shattered. It all felt uncomfortably close to home.

As he scrolled on, the scientific notes were increasingly leavened by conversations with Scopes, personal entries, even dreams.

May 20

I dreamt lost night that I was wandering, lost, in the desert. I walked toward the mountains, and it grew darker and darker. Then a great light appeared, like a second dawn, and a vast mushroom cloud rose from behind the mountain range. I knew I was witnessing the Trinity explosion. I saw the wave of overpressure bearing down on me, and then I woke up.

“Damn,” Carson said, “if he confides stuff like this to his on-line notes, why would he bother keeping a secret diary?”

“Keep going,” urged de Vaca.

He continued scanning.

June 2

When I shook out my shoes this morning, a little scorpion fell out and landed on the floor all in a tizzy. I felt sorry for him and brought him outside. ...

“Keep going, keep going,” de Vaca repeated impatiently.

Carson continued scrolling. Poetry began appearing among the data tables and technical notes. Finally, as Burt’s madness emerged, the log degenerated into a confusing welter of images, nightmares, and meaningless phrases. Then there was the last horrifying conversation with Scopes; a burst of apocalyptic mania; and the end-of- file marker was reached.

They sat back and looked at each other.

“There’s nothing here,” Carson said.

“We’re not thinking like Burt,” de Vaca said. “If you were Burt, and you wanted to plant a clue in the record, how would you do it?”

Carson shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would. Teece was right: subconscious or conscious, it’s human nature. First, you’d have to assume that Scopes was going to read everything. Right?”

“Right.”

“So what would Scopes be least likely to read in here?”

There was a silence.

“The poetry,” they both said at once.

They scrolled back to the point in the journal where the poems first appeared, then paged slowly forward. Most, but not all, were on scientific subjects: the structure of DNA, quarks and gluons, the Big Bang and string theory.