'About Malcolm?' Jonah answered. When I nodded, he went on, 'The colonel's right, Gideon. Malcolm's mental state is exceptionally intertwined with his physical condition — I think you can appreciate how and why as well as any of us. But we've known him since we were teenagers. He comes out of these episodes if he gets enough time and rest.'
'But — this time travel business—'
'Fatigue and stress, Gideon, trust us,' Eli answered. Then he cocked his head. 'On the other hand—'
'On the other hand,' Jonah finished for him, 'I certainly want to be around just in case. Beats squabbling over tenure at Yale or Harvard.' There being nothing left to say, both men removed their eyeglasses at almost the same moment, in the same gesture of uncomfortable emotion. 'Well — good-bye, Gideon,' Jonah said.
'And remember what Colonel Slayton told you,' Eli answered as they turned to go. 'Life out there may look awfully strange to you now — say the word, and we can bring you back.'
They both waved as they passed out the door, still looking and apparently feeling very awkward. I turned toward Julien, suddenly taking note of a distinct lump in my throat. Fouche stood tactfully and held up a hand, nodding toward Larissa. 'I shall warm the jet-copter, Gideon,' he said. 'It will be dark soon — a night flight always attracts less attention.'
Once he was gone I turned to Larissa, who had her arms wrapped around her body as she stood staring out at the rocky cove. Ready to sweep her away with soft, irresistible imaginings about our future together, I smiled and began to approach her—
But just as I did I experienced, with dizzying suddenness, that same feeling that had hit me at the start of my final encounter with Malcolm: a swift loss of illusions that was as chilling and draining as a razor slash through a major artery. The mournful look on Larissa's face told me in the clearest and most brutal possible manner that if I forced her to choose between her brother and me I would lose and that the contest would be only an exercise in cruel futility. All my desperate fantasies had been made possible, I now saw, by a deliberate avoidance and denial of what I knew about their shared past, as well as about the extent not only to which he needed her but to which she needed to live up to their bond. It was that bond that had preserved both of their fragile, limited capacities for intimacy and commitment during their ravaged childhoods and that had kept those capacities alive during the years that had followed. I was therefore not simply being foolish in thinking that our feelings for each other could never supersede such an attachment; I was terribly wrong even to have hoped that she would betray both him and herself so fundamentally.
'It'll be dark soon,' she said, looking at the sky. 'There isn't much time.' She tightened her hold on herself. 'Thank God,' she breathed, making clear the pointlessness of further talk.
Though it took every bit of my strength, I stayed several feet away from her. 'If he gets worse, Larissa —'
'I'll know what to do.'
I took a deep breath before continuing uncomfortably, 'There was one thing I didn't want to say in front of the others — he made a reference to suicide. It may have been argumentative hyperbole, or it may have been sincere. He really has been worn down to almost nothing.'
She nodded. 'I'll bring him back. I always have.'
The voice that spoke these few words was remarkable: utterly ageless, completely heartbroken. The young girl who had once schemed with the stricken but brave brother who had tried so hard to protect her was trying to crack through the hard, shell-like composure of the woman before me to say that though she could never leave him, she desperately wished I would not go. No sound came out of her, however, for several very painful minutes; and then, just when I thought that the composure would remain intact and the cry would go unvoiced, just as I was about to choke out a good-bye and force myself out the door, the break came. She spun around, rushed at me in emotional ruin and wrenching tears, and buried her face in my chest as she had often done.
I took her wrists gently in my hands, kissed her silvery hair, and whispered, 'Please be all right, Larissa.' Then I placed her fists by her heaving sides and fairly ran from the room, still able, it seemed, to hear her sobs long after I'd boarded the jetcopter and found myself once more cruising low over the icy North Atlantic.
CHAPTER 44
I went south, all right — I went south in every conceivable way…
During the jetcopter ride to Edinburgh's William Wallace Airport, Julien, whose understanding of and sympathy for such loss went beyond the usual Gallic insight into affairs of the heart, tried to assure me that there was no way of knowing what would happen in the future, that at least Larissa and I were both still alive, and that we were far too well matched simply to end things so suddenly and completely. The paradoxical effect of his words, however, was to confirm my despairing conviction that I had lost forever the strange but wonderful woman it had taken me a lifetime to find. When we reached our destination, Fouche climbed out of the aircraft, hugged me vigorously, kissed both my cheeks, and gave me his personal assurance that we would meet again. But when the jetcopter took off and left me standing with nothing but a small shoulder bag containing two hand weapons — one capable only of stunning, the other a lethal rail pistol, both fabricated out of composite resins impossible for any security system to detect — I had to do some very quick breathing and thinking even to begin to suppress the feeling of horrifying loneliness that swept over me. For I was indeed alone now: alone in a way that I once would have considered inconceivable and that made me quickly question the moral principles that had landed me in such an unenviable position.
The days to come were even more confused and bizarre. Everywhere I went — restaurants, bars, hotels — news about and investigations into the Moscow disaster and its aftermath dominated the media, as did reports concerning the mysterious aircraft that was rumored to have been escorting the suicide bomber on his mission. I was believed by various military intelligence agencies and police forces to have been on that aircraft, and my picture — along with those of Slayton, Larissa, and poor dead Leon — flashed onto public video screens with disturbing frequency, making it necessary for me to change my appearance and adjust my identity discs before even departing Edinburgh. It also made it necessary for me to get used to seeing Larissa's face pop up in unexpected places, an additional burden that was almost unbearable. From Edinburgh I took ship to Amsterdam (traveling by air was out of the question, given that airlines were required to run all identity discs through the universal DNA database), and from there I continued south by bus, train, and even thumb as I attempted to melt into the great global background, sticking as much as possible to areas where information technology was not ubiquitous in the hopes of staying unrecognized — and sane.
I succeeded in the first of these goals; as to the second, I cannot say. I still did not know precisely where I was going, and as the days became weeks, the constant need to fabricate new identification, hack into bank databases to secure money (after the bankroll I'd taken with me from St. Kilda had run out), and flat-out lie about almost every detail of my existence twenty-four hours a day began to take a severe mental and emotional toll. This state of affairs was sorely aggravated when one day, during a slow passage through Italy, I passed a small cafe that had a newspaper vending terminal. On the cover of every front page that flashed by on its screen were headlines containing the word 'Washington,' as well as pictures of the first American president. I dashed about until I found a place that vended
The shock of the thing was manifold. Just the reminder that I'd not so long ago been involved in so insidious an enterprise was, of course, disquieting now that I was away from it. But even more, I knew that from that moment on any news report I might happen to read or see, no matter how momentous its details, might be a lie; and the flimsy connection to reality that I had carefully nursed during my weeks of hiding began to fall away. I took to drinking heavily, telling myself that it was simply to blend in with and secure the goodwill of the locals so that
