“That’s a shame. I’m kind of funny.”
Carolyn’s brow furrowed…but then she relaxed. “Yeah,” she said, smiling a little. “You are. I’ve missed that. And maybe I am less angry.” She held her hand out for the lighter.
Steve passed it over. “That’s good. You need to get stuff out of your system. If you let it fester, it’ll eat you up.” She was looking at him strangely. “What?”
“You’re one to—Nothing.”
“So…four months, huh?”
“Give or take.”
“That’s longer than the last time.”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you wait?”
“I wasn’t going to bring you back at all.”
“Are you mad at me?”
She winced. “No. Not mad. I just…I didn’t think I could bear it if you…did, you know, something. Again.”
“Oh.” Steve considered this. “Well…I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. I understand why you did it. Or, I think I do, anyway.” She walked around the kitchen island and fetched the copy of Black Beauty off the counter. “This is for you.”
He took it. “This is that, whatchacallit, the token thing? From the porch? Right?”
“It is, yeah. Open it.”
He handed it back to her. “I don’t have to.”
“What? What do you—”
“It’s got my name inside the cover, right? Handwritten, in red ink. This isn’t like the one I had, it is the one I had. When I was a kid, I mean. Right?”
“You remember?”
“Sort of. I dreamed about it. After the fire. The first time I, you know…”
“You did?”
“Yeah. And again, just now. I dreamed I was reading it in the car, on the day my parents…you know, the day of the wreck. Then I was handing it to this little kid I was friends with, a little girl from the neighborhood. I hadn’t thought about her in years.” He shook his head. “We used to talk about books and stuff. I couldn’t remember her name, though.” He smiled. “And then I could. You used to be so blond.”
Carolyn smiled back. “I’ve changed.”
“Yeah. I guess you have. Me too, for that matter. I was wondering why that one house—that one where the beagle was hanging out—looked so familiar. I didn’t recognize any of the rest though.”
“You wouldn’t. There was a fire. Most of it’s been rebuilt.”
“Oh?” He frowned. “It seems like I remember what happened, but…it can’t be real. Can’t be. Your Father did something, didn’t he? To my mind, my memory.”
“He did, yeah.”
“So what really happened? Wait! No.” He rubbed his temples. “On second thought, don’t tell me. Whatever happened, I bet I was a huge asshole in some way.”
Carolyn blinked. “No. You weren’t an asshole. Not at all. You really couldn’t be more wrong.”
He looked up, not sure whether to believe her.
Carolyn’s expression was gentler than he had ever seen it. “I have a proposal for you, Steve. What if I told you that there was a way to make it all better?”
Steve gave her a sharp look. “What exactly are we talking about?”
“The sun,” she said. “The earthquakes. Everything.”
“You’re going to put what’s-her-name back?”
“Not exactly. I really can’t do that. Mithraganhi is with Father now.”
“Dead, you mean?”
“No. Not dead. They went away. Mithraganhi, Nobununga, Father. We won’t see them again.”
Steve raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean, ‘away’?”
“A new universe, I think. One Father created. One where he makes all the rules.”
Steve shook his head. “You guys really are playing at just a completely other level. You know that?”
“Well…you might be surprised. I’m really not that different from you. Anyone could have done what I did.”
“You know, I really doubt that.”
She stood quiet for a long moment, looking down. Then, softly, “It has a price, though. In the service of my will, I have emptied myself.”
Steve nodded. “Yeah. I get that, too.”
She looked at him. “Do you? Do you really?”
“Yeah. I really do.”
Carolyn smiled. “You know, I believe that you do. Thank you.” She reached out and touched his cheek. Her fingertips were warm. For some reason this surprised him. “But I will be wiser than that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She let her hand drop. “I’m going to fix it, Steve. I should have listened to you. You were right all along.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You’re going to bring the sun back?”
She nodded. “By this time tomorrow it will be just the way it used to be.”
“I thought you said it was impossible. That David couldn’t—”
“David is gone. I let him die.”
“What? When?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“What about your whole revenge thing?”
She shrugged. “I’ve had enough revenge. I’m done.”
“Well…yay you, I guess. But if he’s not the sun, then how do you—”
She looked at him. “I found another way.”
“Wow. That’s great, Carolyn. Really. But what about outside? There’s a famine, right? People are still starving. And that volcano, and—”
“It’s not quite that bad, not yet. And I won’t let it get any worse. I spoke with the volcano under Yellowstone and calmed him down. As far as the famine…there’s a trick I know. A way to make a sort of bread out of clouds. It takes a lot of energy and a little time, but I have both. By the time the sun comes up tomorrow food will be falling down from the sky. All over the world. And I’ll do that every couple of days until the crops come back.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded.
“And the Library? The earthquakes?”
“The Library is back in hiding. The earthquakes will cease. I’ve put the moon back in its old orbit—the tides will normalize. Soon.”
“Carolyn…that’s…that’s fantastic. But why?”
“Because of you, Steve. Because of what you did.”
“Me? What the hell did I do?”
“You were my friend,” she said. “That’s what. And you were a really, really good one. The best I’ll ever have. Not just mine, either.”
Carolyn cupped her hands in front of her as if to drink. Mist rose from her palms, coalesced into a sphere. It took a moment for him to recognize it as the Earth, only basketball-sized and seen from below—Antarctica on top, South America below, clouds, oceans. It hovered inches above her palm, turning slowly. Squinting, he saw the tiny contrail of a jet over the Pacific.
“Look, Steve. Right here. Billions of people. They’re going to be OK now. As OK as they ever were, anyway. You have my word. I’m going to make it all better. Because of you.”
Steve looked. He stretched his hand out to touch, then thought better of it. He looked at Carolyn, still not understanding. Her eyes were shiny.
“You saved them,” she said. “Every last one of them. Naga. Petey. You saved them all. Just you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Steve smiled.
A single tear broke and ran down Carolyn’s cheek.
“Carolyn, why are you—”
She took her hands away. Earth hung there, unsupported now, still spinning. Steve watched, fascinated, as the contrail of the jet grew a tiny fraction of an inch.
Saved them? Me? In his mind’s eye, just for a moment, he saw Jack stepping out of the shadows into sunlight.
Carolyn stepped around to the side and whispered in his ear, speaking the word that Father whispered to Mithraganhi so very long ago when he called forth the dawn of the fourth age.
For Steve, hearing this…
…time…
…stopped.
IV
Stev
e floated weightless in the kitchen of the penthouse. Carolyn fished a dusty club soda out of the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table. She didn’t touch her drink, but she smoked cigarettes slowly, one after another. Sometimes she didn’t inhale, just let them burn down to a teetering column of ash.
By the time the pack was empty, Steve’s head was encased in a sphere of boiling energy—yellow-orange, just like the former sun. His connection to the plane of joy was very strong. If anything, he would burn even brighter than had Mithraganhi. She might have to fold space a little so that he didn’t cook Mercury to a cinder.
She untied one of Steve’s shoelaces and, using it as a leash, carried him through the great hall, up the stairs to the jade platform under the universe. David’s body was there, bloody, under a plastic sheet. His pain was in the past now. Later, she would have the dead ones carry him down. She would find whatever was left of Margaret and wrap them in a single shroud. She would bury them together.
She set Steve in the heavens, then adjusted the orbits to the way things had been, before. She didn’t even have to use a calculator. I’m getting the hang of this.
She had a great deal to do, but she didn’t want to be in the Library anymore. Not today. The bombing had reduced Garrison Oaks to rubble, and it was surrounded by tanks, soldiers, but the Library had other doors, other facades. She chose a farmhouse in Oregon, a quiet place at the far end of a long road.
In this new place she went to the kitchen and made coffee. Unthinking, she picked up the plates and cups, washed them. When that was done she went into the bathroom—it took her a minute to find it—and drew a very hot bath. The tub’s backsplash was lime-green tile, and the faucets were stiff with disuse. It’s clean, though.
A long time later she got out of the tub and dried herself. Steve hadn’t dawned yet, and it was a trifle chilly—something like ten below. She didn’t know how to turn on the furnace. But looking through the closet she found a pink terrycloth robe hanging there, waiting for her. It was brand-new, with the tags still attached, just her size. It had almost certainly been hanging there since the beginning. She shook her head. Father.
On the floor below the robe she found a box containing a pair of overstuffed slippers. The slippers were ridiculous—the stuffed head of some cartoon cat was mounted over the toes, grinning. She examined them, bemused. Father really did have a sense of humor. Who knew? But silly though they might be, they were also soft and warm.
She put them on, then went and stood at the back window. It looked out over a broad field, white with snow. There was a barn, and a small stream.
She blinked.
On the far side of this field, a man stood, almost hidden in the forest. She blinked again. “That’s impossible,” she said, remembering the smoking, perforated ruin of Mrs. McGillicutty’s house.
Then Father’s voice came to her. “I almost forgot. I left you something.” And another man’s voice, hesitant and soft. “I was with…with…the small things. Father said. Father said to study the ways of the humble and the small.”
And David. “Maybe a mouse could have snuck out. Not much else.”
She went to the back door, not quite running, and threw it open. “Michael!”
He came to her, flanked on his left by a cougar and his right by three wolves. They stopped just outside the yard. Michael stared at her, wide-eyed, and called her by Father’s old title. “Sehlani?”
Carolyn opened her mouth to deny it, then shut it again and, after a long pause, surrendered the smallest possible fraction of a nod.
Michael spoke to the wolves and the cougar, and all of them lay on their backs in the snow, showing her their bellies.
Carolyn stared at him, aghast. “No! Don’t! What are you doing? Get up!”
But he wouldn’t. He lay on his back, trembling and afraid. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
She plowed through the snow to him, the yellow eyes of her cartoon cat poking up through the crust. She clouted him in the ear—gently. “Get up, Michael. Please get up. It’s only me.”
Michael stood slowly. “You…what you did…you…”
“I’m so sorry, Michael. I had to. There was no other way. Don’t you see?”
He looked at her for a long time, doubtful. He didn’t answer.
Desperate, she smiled, then touched his cheek. “It’s freezing out. Are you hungry? Any of you? You should all come inside. There might be food, or…”
Michael considered this for a moment then, slowly, he smiled back. Seeing this, something in Carolyn unclenched. Michael turned to the wolves. He spoke to them. She didn’t quite understand it, but they wagged their tails.
She led them into the house.
It turned out that there was food in the refrigerator, lots of it, five roasts of beef and a whole turkey. Michael and the animals ate hugely, then huddled together and went to sleep in front of the bay window in the living room. Carolyn pulled a pillow onto the floor and sat with them.
Then, for the first time in a very long while, the sun rose. Under its orange glow the shadows of Michael and his pack stretched long across the floor.
Seeing the angle of the sunrise, she thought the American word for this time of year is “April” or, sometimes, “spring.” That was true, but it was also true that in the calendar of the librarians it was the second moon, which is the moon of kindled hope. Carolyn, clean and warm, sat watch over her sleeping friends. The pink cotton of her robe lay soft against her skin. The stuffed heads of the cartoon-cat slippers covered her toes. She sat this way for a time, watching as the new sun began to melt away the gray ice of the long winter.
She was smiling.
Epilogue
So, What Ended Up Happening with Erwin?
The shit that landed Erwin in prison took place in the span of a single sweaty afternoon, but it ended up costing him ten years, minus time off for good behavior. This was just after the air raid on the pyramid, around the time that food was starting to get seriously scarce. There was a trial, but it only lasted about a week. After that he went straight to USP Big Sandy, a federal high-security prison in Kentucky. Erwin was surprised to discover he didn’t mind prison.
For starters, the pressure was off. He’d sweated for a week or two before he finally took his hostage, wondering whether it was the right thing to do, worrying about, well, ending up in prison. Now that it was over and the deed was done, he could relax. Really relax. For the first time in years, there was nothing left to worry about.
Life in Big Sandy had a regimented quality that sort of reminded him of basic training. He’d made a deal to keep his mouth shut about what he’d actually done in exchange for a relatively lenient sentence. The ten years sounded like a lot, but on the whole it could have been a lot worse. The president assured him they’d find a way to make it “life without parole” in Supermax if he gave them any crap. Jail was surprisingly comfortable. Not a luxury hotel, mind you, but his cell was newish and clean, and he had it to himself. Most everybody had seen the Natanz movie or read the book or whatever, so they knew who he was. In exchange for Erwin dropping an occasional war story, one of the guards, a card-carrying Natanz fanboy named Blakely, made runs to Barnes & Noble. Dashaen, the kid Erwin had taught to fight, was now in his twenties and a successful bond trader. He insisted on paying for the books, and also put a couple hundred into Erwin’s commissary account every month. Erwin appreciated everyone going to the trouble. Also it was nice to have some way to pass the time besides jacking off.
A couple of the other prisoners tested him, of course. Erwin understood. They had tested fucking Mike Tyson when he was inside. One guy tried to take his pillowcase, so Erwin knocked out his fillings. A couple of days later the guy’s buddy, an Alabama weight lifter, came by to talk it over. Erwin hit the second guy so hard that for a couple of weeks he thought people were reading his thoughts. Actually he was muttering to himself without realizing it. He had brain swelling, or some shit. Erwin felt bad about it, but the big fella had r
ushed him. Listening to him think out loud was sort of comical, though. He got real excited when it was banana-pudding night in the cafeteria and made a lot of mental notes about who to jack off to when everyone was watching TV in the commons area. It cleared up after a couple of weeks, though, and after that everybody was polite to Erwin.
Other than that, it was pretty peaceful. He got to Kentucky just after the sun came back, but for the first couple of weeks all the prisoners were still on food rations. Six hundred calories a day didn’t leave you much energy to go starting shit. By the time that bread stuff started falling out of the sky, guards and prisoners alike had more or less concluded that the smartest thing to do with Erwin was let him be.
That suited Erwin fine.
As a new prisoner, he wasn’t supposed to get mail for the first two months. But one of the guards knew of him from Afghanistan and another had actually been there at Natanz. They accidentally dropped off letters from Thorpe, Dashaen, other guys he had served with. They didn’t know the full story, of course, but their faith in Erwin was absolute.
It was kinda nice.
So he had mail, he had books, he had a place to himself when he wanted it and people to play chess or whatever with when he didn’t. Admittedly the food sucked, but whatcha gonna do? On the whole, he was content with his lot in life.
Tonight, though, lights-out snuck up on him. He was reading a new book he’d been looking forward to—To the Nines, the next Stephanie Plum—and he’d lost track of time. The guard, Blakely, had popped an eyebrow when Erwin asked him to pick up that particular title. Erwin explained that one of the perks of being a Medal of Honor winner was that he could read whatever the fuck he wanted to. Anyway, fucking Janet Evanovich was fucking funny as fuck. Blakely, cowed, asked if he could borrow it when Erwin was done. Erwin said sure.
He’d been planning to hand it over the next day, but he’d gotten a letter from Dashaen today, and he spent half an hour answering that, and so had ten pages left when it got dark. He gave a moment’s thought to trying to read by the light spilling in through the observation slit in his door—the book was good, and he’d just put in a fresh chew—then decided against it. Instead, he folded down one of the pages and put the book on the floor next to his bunk.