“Tell me what?”
Hamza exhaled.
“I know what it wants,” he said.
Will paused his paper shuffling and looked up at him.
“Please, Hamza—don’t tell me there’s nothing here. Don’t tell me I’m too worked up about this or some bullshit like that.I’m not. This is real.”
Hamza reached out and put his hand on Will’s shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “Just listen.”
He spoke. He described the connection he’d found between Pittaluga’s death and martial law in Uruguay and the nationalizationof the TransPipe offshore operation. He talked about the way these things had affected the global economy, the precision andforesight needed to engineer such a chain of events, and his strong belief that it almost had to be intentional.
Will went very still.
“Well,” he said.
“It’s all true,” Hamza said. “I know it sounds impossible, but I think that’s what the Site was doing, this whole time. Idon’t understand why, but—”
“Heh,” Will said. “TransPipe. I missed that one.”
Hamza narrowed his eyes.
“What?” he said.
“Right in front of me,” Will said. “Right out the damn window. Should have seen it.”
He bent back to the pile of papers and pulled out a single sheet—something that looked like a heavily annotated list. He foldedit and shoved it in his pocket, then stood up. He turned and walked to the door, slipping his feet into a pair of sandals.
“Come on,” he said, and left the room.
Hamza and Miko looked at each other, but there wasn’t really anything to be said.
The elevator ride was silent. Miko reached out and took Hamza’s hand, and they rode down all ten floors that way, with Hamzaregretting involving Miko more with each floor they passed.
The doors opened, and they stepped out into the Hotel Carrasco’s ornate, nearly empty lobby. Will headed for the hotel’s exit,avoiding eye contact with the many security guards stationed strategically throughout the huge, open space—guards armed withautomatic rifles, in uniforms that were one flag patch away from full-on military fatigues.
A few members of the staff milled around, attempting to look like they had something to do in a city that had been depletedof luxurious travelers by a declaration of martial law. A lovely young woman at the concierge desk looked up, hopeful, butdropped her eyes as soon as she saw Will. Hamza wondered fleetingly if Will had somehow taken her to the Pittaluga thing.
Will pushed through the revolving doors and out into the plaza beyond.
Miko tugged Hamza’s hand, pulling him to a stop.
“How is he?” she asked. “Because he seems bad.”
“I . . . yeah,” he said, feeling entirely helpless.
Miko gestured at the revolving doors.
“Let’s go.”
Will stood on the wide plaza in front of the hotel near a large, sparkling fountain. The white sand of the Playa Carrascowas visible past the heavy traffic on the double-lane road between the hotel and the beach, the Rambla Républica de México,and the dark, sun-dappled sea beyond. The fountain provided a light, tinkling accompaniment to the breeze coming in off thebeach. It was all very inviting, if you ignored the military emplacements.
“Before I say anything,” Will said, “especially because of that . . .”
He pointed at Miko’s belly.
“. . . I want you to know that I think you both should get as far away from me, and the Site, as you can. Stay out of it.This isn’t your problem. It’s mine. You’ve already done so much for me, and if you want to go, this is the right time to doit. I won’t be angry.”
Will folded his arms and looked back out at the sea.
“You’re better off in the dark,” he said. “I mean it.”
Hamza turned to look at his wife. A long moment, and then Miko gave a little nod.
“Tell us,” Hamza said.
Will sighed.
“Okay. There’s something happening with the Site,” he began. “It’s not just TransPipe and that one prediction about Pittaluga.It’s all of them. The predictions are connecting. They’re . . .”
Will stopped and took a breath.
“The predictions are working together. I don’t know how else to say it,” he said simply.
Neither Hamza nor Miko spoke for a moment.
“Can you try?” Miko said slowly.
Will looked at the fountain, its basin full of clear water shining in the sun. He reached into his pocket and pulled out afew coins, then held one up.
“Okay. I release a prediction, either by putting it on the Site, or selling it.”
Will tossed the coin into the fountain. Circular rings radiated out from the spot where the coin broke the surface of theliquid.
“Make a wish,” Miko said.
“Oh, I did, believe me,” Will answered. He pointed at the ripples.
“Things happen in the world because the predictions are out there. People do things they wouldn’t otherwise have done. I’mchanging the future.”
Will took more coins and dropped them into the fountain, a few inches apart, one after the other. Each created a new set ofripples, which interacted with the tiny waves generated by the others. Interference patterns—miniature geometries.
“There,” he continued. “Each prediction is a coin. It ripples out into the world, changing things, and sometimes those changesmeet up with ripples from another prediction. They bounce off each other, and then something else happens.”
Will splashed his hand across the surface of the fountain, breaking the patterns into chaos. He pointed at the roiling surfaceof the water.
“It’s impossible to predict what will happen next. Unless you’re in the future looking back,” he said. “Then you can see allof it. And then you send the information back to a person in the past who will use it how you want. He’ll put some of it upon a website, sell another bit to an oil company . . . all of which you’d already know, because from your perspective, he’salready done it.”
Miko broke in.
“I know I’m new to all this, but just playing devil’s advocate, couldn’t it just have happened randomly?”
Will pulled the folded sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Miko.
“Read that,” he said.
Miko unfolded the paper. Hamza stepped closer, reading it over her shoulder.
“The chocolate milk fad, right?” Will said. “It was the most popular nonalcoholic drink in the country for the three monthsafter the Oracle made a prediction about it. Everything else took a hit—soda, iced tea,
