It strikes me—as it occasionally strikes me—how wondrous are Arlo Vasouvian’s old eyes: deep set and luminous, flickering with the light of careful attention, but always with shadows forming and moving beneath the surface. No matter what the subject under discussion, Arlo has always got some other thing he’s mulling over, somewhere the rest of us can’t see.
He holds up the book, turns it over delicately in his hands. “It’s an artifact.”
“An artifact.” I knew that, I guess. I didn’t want to know it. “From what was.”
“Yes. World that was.”
We are silent, then, silent on the steps of the Record, silent at the center of the State. There is a world there used to be and is gone. We live on it and in it, but we don’t know what it was. Its absence surrounds us.
Arlo turns the book over and over in his worn hands. “A novel,” he says softly. “Quote unquote. Who was this fellow again? The possessor. The man who is dead.”
“A roofer. A construction worker. Crane.”
“Crane.”
“Just a guy.”
“And why would he have a book like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“And do you think this object is something he happened to have, just as he happened to die this morning. Or do you suppose there is a line, a bridge, as yet unseen, which connects those two flat facts together?”
No,” I say, but then I taste it—I feel it. A half-truth. I catch it, correct it. “I don’t know, Arlo. There might be.”
“Well. You better find out.”
“I will,” I say. “That’s what I’ll do.”
He holds out the book so I might take it back, and I find my hands are unwilling to do so. I see now what I wanted, I wanted him to tell me the mystery of the novel is above my pay grade, that the appearance of such an artifact on my trail—a novel that is not a novel, a dangerous relic—means the trail is shut off to me. I want Arlo to relieve me of the burden of this case, which seemed so open-and-shut, so simple—the flat fact of the broken roof, the flat fact of the broken roofer, a simple and clean connection—but which now seems full of wrinkles, a welter of anomalies, a patchwork of unseen connections.
I’m sure Arlo can see it too, that I wish I didn’t have to keep going. That I am—for all of my experience, my gruff exterior, my size and strength—a tiny little man. Not at all like Charlie. He would have seized on the book, the roofer, the mystery, and leapt into whatever danger it all represented, leapt in grinning and torn out the truth. Torn out the truth by the roots or died trying.
Arlo, deep and decent, sets the book down on the bench between us. Captures turn up on the rooftops of the Plaza, panoramic, a slow-spinning capture on the top of every building, recording my insufficiency. My shame.
Arlo chews his sandwich and allows his eyes to linger on the pond in the center of the Plaza. Looks anywhere but at me for a moment, and then clears his throat and changes the subject.
“And how is it going,” he asks, “with young Ms. Paige?”
“Oh. Fine.” I catch it, correct it. “More than fine. She’s… she’s extremely gifted.” I shake my head in wonder, feeling a glad rush of relief to be talking about something other than the book. “Her sensitivity is off the charts—sorry, idiom, lazy—but it is. Man, is it. And not just locutions either. She’s catching targets from three floors up. She’s, uh—” I look at him, and he’s not looking at me. He’s leaning back, considering, gazing up toward the clouds. “She’s like Charlie. Which—by the way—is why you gave her to me.”
I am teasing him. Lovingly, yes, but definitely chiding him for having hidden the full truth of his motivations. But he responds thoughtfully, nodding. “Yes. Yes… although it is true, as I told you, that I assigned Ms. Paige to your mentorship because you are in my estimation—and Alvaro agrees, though he may not… anyway. In the collective estimation, you are the most capable member of the service. However—” Now he pauses, dabs at one corner of his lips with his big wad of napkins. “Yes. I thought… given your history. Your familiar connection…” He shrugs. I wait. “She is as good as he was, Laszlo,” he says finally. “Indeed, she…” And then, softly, as if reluctant to blaspheme. “She may indeed be better.”
I shake my big woolly head and start to deny it, but if there is any fair judge of such matters, it’s Arlo.
“I can’t attest to it, of course, because no one can. But yes, indeed. She might be better.” He nods slightly, as if ticking off a list in his mind, considering things he’s seen. And me too: I’m remembering Aysa, sitting next to me in the car after we went through Aster’s basement, politely declining a cigarette, humble about her remarkable catch, unaffected by exposure.
“Do you recall that I used to give these talks?” Arlo says. “These… these lectures at some of the high schools, as part of the… you know. To gently acclimate young people to their new responsibilities to truth telling, as they aged out of the years of exemption. I met her at one such talk. Nine years ago. It was just after… after Charlie was lost to us, actually. I remember it. She was clearly gifted, clearly registering, you know, and just leaping with excitement. It was truly just… radiating off of her. An eagerness. To join the Service. To do her part, she kept saying. Charming phrase. Do her part. Although her enthusiasm, I must say, was…” He sighs. “Sorry. It’s sad, you know. Her enthusiasm was contrary to the will of her parents.”
Arlo sighs, a long exhalation, weary but pleased. The lunchtime crowd
