“Medicine? Where do you get it?”
“Grace provides it. It comes on the helicopter. I’m careful to save a little bit from each container. I think about what would happen if they stopped sending it.”
“And you massage him every day.”
“Not every day, but usually at least every other day.”
“Can you get me some of the oil?”
“I think so. I would need to sneak it.”
Just then one of the Grace security people walked by with two rotweillers straining at their leashes.
“I do not like those dogs,” Nutka said.
“Me either.”
“You never explain exactly what you do,” Nutka said. “I know you are famous in the movies.”
“You know what? Next visit I’ll show you what I do.”
“Good. I would like that.”
“I’d better go find my brother,” Anna said.
She walked through the large kitchen into the great room where her brother did his work. In the middle of the room stood a dark walnut table, crafted without frills and graced with a single roller-wheeled desk chair. On the table sat two computer screens with cables that disappeared into a brass fitting in the middle of the hardwood floor.
Anna sat alone in the room in the overstuffed chair that Jason had designated as her seat.
Footsteps and the whoosh of a swinging door announced Jason. He looked healthy enough. Curly-haired and dark-skinned, five feet ten inches, solid but not fat, he had a spot of jet-black whiskers on his chin and a sly smile that looked a little whimsical. Because his eyes smiled with his lips, you tended to like him. When he did not have the soul-starved look of worry, just by looking at him, you assumed him to be a man of compassion and good humor. As he stared down at her, his eyes found hers and for a moment he looked more serious than she had ever seen him. It almost seemed as if he’d read her mind.
He glanced around, wary, then led her through the back door into the garden. He touched Nutka’s shoulder and smiled at her in a way that made Anna feel good and sad at the same time. If he were near normal he might be capable of loving Nutka, and there were few women as worth loving as she was.
They walked to a stand of Douglas fir trees, where Jason removed a Celine Dion CD case from his pocket and handed it to her.
“You best keep this where it’s safe. If you show it to anybody make sure it’s someone you can trust. There are people at Harvard and MIT and places like that who might understand this at least a little bit.”
She wondered what could be on the CD he’d hidden in the album jewel-case. “Do you have a name?”
“I don’t know who to trust. I can’t think about trust. Maybe Carl Fielding.” Then he looked at her and touched her cheek. “This could get you killed.”
“Can you tell me what’s on the CD?”
“Consciousness, time, space, energy, and uncertainty. See, everything at its core is uncertain until a conscious mind apprehends it. I have assisted in removing some of the uncertainty in the universe. Or rather, I am developing the equations for understanding it. We will probably need a quantum computer for me to finish. It’s a race with the Nannites, you understand. We’re toe to toe. Head to head. We’re lip-smacking, French-kissing close.” His eyes showed that he at least understood that he was losing her. “To answer your question, all of my new work is summarized on this CD. There is also something on here that may help fix brains that have been ravaged by the Nannites. You understand me?”
“Has your brain been ravaged by the Nannites?”
“I stand strong, but they have made their inroads.”
“I’m afraid what you do is… a little beyond me. And I… I… think maybe the Nannites aren’t real?” Her voice intoned the courtesy of a question.
“It’s easier for you to believe my photon paradox than Nannites? Good gracious, sis. I tell you about electron spin and the hope of quantum computing and you look as though I’ve just explained where babies come from. But when I say Nannites, you struggle not to roll your eyes. I don’t get it.”
“I’m trying, Jason. Please remember what your doctors-”
“The quarky quacks? They still think like Euclid, and you believe them?”
“I promise I will try to understand the Nannites. Now how can I help you with this CD?”
“You keep it. It will help you understand me. I’m serious about not making a mistake with this. They’ll kill you.” Then he put his hand on her shoulder and gently shook her. “Remember, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.” Then there was that wry smile and she ached-wondering.
“Tell me what you think of Nutka,” Anna said.
“I love her.”
“Jason I’m so sorry about what happened… I mean way back when you called me from France. It was my fault. You see, I believed…”
At that moment Roberto joined them under the firs, his eyes on Anna, then Jason, studying. Anna had already put the CD in her coat pocket. She kneaded nervous fingers.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We were talking,” she said. “But I’m going for a walk.”
“The rest you know,” Anna told Sam. “I grabbed a few things, called for a plane to come to the far side of the island, and ran. That’s when you saw me, before I fell.” In the telling of her story she still had omitted any reference to Jason’s CD and she hadn’t told Sam what she had been trying to tell Jason. “My brother is owned by Grace. They control everything about his life except what little I can interject. He is a captive of his own paranoia so they can construct a prison that fits his paranoid fantasies. What keeps others out, especially the Nannites-his fantasy enemy-keeps Jason in.”
“And you don’t know who was following?”
“Roberto or one of his men. Does it matter?”
“It does if Jason blew up my boat. You’d assume it was part of some fantasy, I’m guessing?”
“I just don’t know.”
“They give a paranoid crazy guy a rocket launcher?”
“They just let him shoot it at the hillside. I think it’s a game for him. Look, it’s unbelievable. I know it. But I’ll fix the boat. I’ll do something about the rocket launcher.
“There’s one other thing. Last night I heard Roberto yelling at my brother.”
“And?”
“I have been wanting Jason to go to another therapist, Dr. Geoff, for a second opinion. Not just this guy hired by the company. While Roberto tells me he’s trying to get Jason to go, I hear him trying to scare the hell out of Jason-trying to keep Jason away from Geoff.”
“What does the company doctor say?”
“Incurable but very rare form of schizophrenia. Paranoia, but not a lot else wrong with his brain. I guess that’s obvious. I wanted him to write up my brother’s case in a medical journal, but it’s never happened. I thought somebody might read it and know something.”
“So this fear of Roberto is why you jumped into the rubber boat and why you were uncertain about the helicopter.”
“It’s more like a fear of Grace Technologies. They’re huge, and definitely not on the up-and-up.”
Suddenly she smiled. “I’m sorry. You remind me a little bit of someone else. Except he was not a pushy tough guy.”
“And he would be?”
“Jimmy-a man I met who helped me when I was really down.”
Sam nodded and screwed the lid on the jar of wax-covered matches. This Nutka you told me about. How does she figure in all this?”
“Someone I trust. Jason trusts her. And she cares about my brother more than she cares about the company and certainly more than the company cares about my brother.”
I’m gonna take a nap,” Sam said. He put the bottle of matches on the rockwork next to the stove and crawled
