“I have, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
An uneasy feeling began seeping through Ernst. “What do you mean?”
“It’s rather fantastic. But before you read it, I want you to understand something very important: My grandfather was an electrical engineer—a logical man, a practical man, and an honorable one. He was brutally honest about himself in that memoir—the redacted parts—so I cannot conceive of him fabricating other parts. If he wrote it, then he believed it to be the truth.”
“Then what is the problem?” Ernst said.
“As I said, I’m sure he believed what he wrote, but some of it is simply not believable to me…not believable in a sense that I don’t see how it can be true. But if it is true…” Her expression turned bleak. “Then this world is not what we think it is.”
No one spoke for a few heartbeats until Slootjes said, “This is very generous of you, Grace. We will study it and store it safely in our archives.”
Ernst found his voice. “What…what happened to my grandfather?”
“It’s not clear, exactly,” she said, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so I think it’s best you read it yourself. Good day, gentlemen.”
Without another word or a backward glance, she turned and scooted from the office.
After a long pause, Slootjes said, “Do you want me to review it first?”
Ernst could tell that the loremaster wanted nothing more in the world than just that. And Ernst had to admit that he wanted to grab the manuscript himself, shove Slootjes out the door, and pore over it. But his schedule was packed—so much going on all over the region—and he knew he wouldn’t be able to bestow the kind of attention it deserved.
“Yes. Do that. And while you’re at it, do some vetting of whatever facts you find. See if it’s worth my time or just the fever dream of some demented old Kauz.”
“Yes-yes!” Slootjes said as he hurried out. “Absolutely!”
Alone finally, Ernst stepped to the window and stared out at the busy street, full of people going about their everyday lives, completely unaware that the Change was imminent. And yet now, on the verge of the apocalypse, was he about to learn his grandfather’s fate? Were they somehow linked?
Mrs. Novak’s words echoed through his brain: You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so I think it’s best you read it yourself…
Her ominous tone and bleak expression as she’d spoken those words had left Ernst with an unsettled feeling.
BARBARA
“Whoa!” Bess said when she saw what Ellie had been building. “Looks like we’ve got a budding Gaudi here.”
I have to confess I didn’t know what she was talking about. I knew she’d been taking artsy courses so I assumed he was a sculptor of weirdly shaped objects, because Ellie’s construction was very weird. Disturbingly so.
I’d called Bess last night and told her not to go to the hospital because Ellie was already gone. So she’d arrived at the apartment where we watched Ellie begin her “shelter.” She’d barely spoken while she worked at attaching her found objects to the wall, so Bess finally returned to her dorm.
Normally I wouldn’t let one of my daughters get away with that sort of rude behavior, but Ellie was not herself. Nor was I, not really. She’d been through a horrible ordeal and I wasn’t about to start an argument. For the time being she had carte blanche.
On the way home from the hospital we’d made a couple of stops to pick up the hammer, nails, screws, drill, glue, soldering iron, and protractor she claimed she needed. I’d been too happy to see her up and about to argue or question, I just paid for it all.
As soon as we reached the apartment she went to work, attaching her junk to the wall. I could see the wall was going to need a lot of repairs to bring it back to its original state but, again, I didn’t argue or protest. Anyway, she seemed so driven, I didn’t think I’d have any influence.
When she ran out of junk, she’d go out searching for more. I’d trail along because I was afraid of letting her out alone at night. Midtown was pretty safe, but she was a distracted teenage girl, not exactly tuned in to her surroundings. My presence worked out to her advantage though, because she used me as a pack mule.
Wood, metal, plastic straws, Styrofoam, flattened aluminum cans, paper towel tubes, doweling, wire coat hangers, pens, pencils, the broken neck of an old guitar, anything that caught her eye. Then back to the apartment again to affix it to her construction.
We did this all night, back and forth, in and out. At times she had me help her—hold something just so while she glued or screwed or soldered it in place. I’d started off thinking this was just some hodgepodge conglomeration of junk—one of those “street art” constructions that found their way into museums now and then.
“Do you have any idea about what this is going to look like when you’re through?” I asked her when it had reached halfway up the wall.
“I don’t have just ‘any’ idea, Mother, I have an exact idea about what it’s going to look like—what it must look like when I’m through.”
I didn’t see how that was possible, considering the random way she seemed to be throwing all the trash together. Well, it looked random, but as it grew, and as I saw how precise she was with the placement of her pieces of junk, I began to think she might have a plan. When she had me hold a piece in place while she affixed it to the whole, I had to hold it just so. Many times she’d use a protractor to get an angle exactly right.
Gradually, as we worked through the night—sleep was not an option—it began to take shape. Exactly what sort of shape I’m not sure, but a shape of some sort. In the base was
