Wake

Chapter 24

Dillon Fontana made it to the gazebo first; he was wearing his usual black jeans and a black T-shirt. Hobo would not let him look at anything until he’d properly hugged the ape, and that gave time for Maria Lopez and Werner Richter to arrive, as well. Given his bulk, it was no surprise that Harl Marcuse was the last of the four to make it across the wide lawn, over the drawbridge, and up to the gazebo.

“What is it?” he asked in a wheezing tone that said, Anyone who makes me run better have a damn good reason.

Shoshana indicated the painting, its colors softer now in the late-afternoon sunlight. Marcuse looked at it, but his expression didn’t change. “Yes?”

But Dillon got it at once. “My God,” he said softly. He turned to Hobo and signed, Did you paint this?

Hobo was showing his yellow teeth in a big, goofy grin. Hobo paint, he replied. Hobo paint.

Maria was tilting her head sideways. “I don’t—”

“It’s me,” said Shoshana. “In profile, see?”

Marcuse moved forward, eyes narrowed, and the others got out of his way. “Apes don’t make representational art,” he said in his commanding voice, as if his declaration could erase what was in front of them.

Dillon gestured at the canvas. “Tell that to Hobo.”

“And he did this while I was away,” Shoshana said. “From memory.” The Silverback frowned dubiously. She pointed at the hidden camera. “I’m sure it’s all been recorded.”

He glanced at the same spot and shook his head — although not, she realized after a moment, in negation, but rather in disappointment. The camera kept watch on Hobo — and that meant it showed the easel from the rear. The footage wouldn’t reveal the order in which he’d added elements to the painting. Did he paint the head first? The eye? Was the colored iris added at the same time, or was it a final, finishing touch?

“The primate Picasso,” said Dillon, hands on hips, grinning with satisfaction.

“Exactly!” said Shoshana. She turned to Marcuse. “No way the Georgia Zoo will be able to put Hobo under the knife if we go public with this. The world would never stand for it.”

“Caitlin?”

She looked up and her perspective on webspace shifted. It took her a second to remember where she was: in a stairwell at Howard Miller Secondary School.

The voice again. “Caitlin, are you okay?” It was Sunshine.

She lifted her shoulders a bit. “I guess.”

“The dance is winding down. I’m going to walk home. Wanna come?”

Caitlin had lost track of time while she’d immersed herself in the fantastic colors and lights of the World Wide Web; she felt her watch. God knew what had happened to the Hoser. “Um, sure. Thanks.” She used her cane as a prop as she got up from the step she was sitting on. “How’d you find me?”

“I didn’t,” said Sunshine. “I was just going to my locker and I saw you here.”

“Thanks,” Caitlin said again.

Caitlin switched the eyePod back to simplex mode, shutting off the Jagster feed and her view of webspace. They went up to the second floor, where Sunshine’s locker was, then headed back down and out. The evening had gotten chilly and she could feel the odd drop of rain.

Caitlin wished she had more to say to Sunshine as they walked along, but even though they were the two American girls at school, they really didn’t have anything in common. Sunshine was struggling with all her classes, and was, according to Bashira, a knockout: tall, thin, busty, with platinum-blond hair and a small diamond stud in her nose. But if she was that pretty, Caitlin wondered why she’d come to the dance alone. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. But he works evenings.”

“What’s he do?”

“Security guard.”

Caitlin was surprised “How old is he?”

“Nineteen.”

She’d assumed Sunshine was her own age — and maybe she was. Or maybe she’d failed a time or two. “How old are you?” Caitlin asked.

“Sixteen. You?”

“Almost. My birthday is in eight days.” It was starting to rain harder. “Is he good to you?”

“Who?”

“Your boyfriend.”

“He’s okay,” Sunshine said.

Caitlin thought a boyfriend should be wonderful, should talk to you and listen to you and be kind and gentle. But she said nothing.

“Um, here’s my street,” Sunshine said. Caitlin knew precisely where they were; her own house was just two blocks farther along. “It’s starting to rain harder — do … do you mind?”

“No,” said Caitlin. “It’s okay, go home. You don’t want to get soaked.”

“It’s getting pretty late…”

“Don’t worry,” Caitlin said. “I know the way — and I’m not afraid of the dark.”

She felt Sunshine squeeze her upper arm. “Hey, that’s funny! Anyway, look, forget about that jerk Nordmann, okay? I’ll see you on Monday.” And she heard footsteps fading quickly away.

Caitlin started walking. Forget about him, Sunshine had said. God, she wondered what that asshole had said to people after she’d left the gym. Why, if he’d—

What the — ?

She paused, one foot still in the air, totally startled by—

God!

By a flash of light!

But she had the data-receive function of her eyePod turned off; the Jagster light show was too distracting when she was trying to concentrate on walking. There should have been no light of any kind, but—

And then she heard it, a great crack of thunder.

Another flash. Seconds later, more thunder.

Lightning. It had to be lightning! She’d read about it so many times: zigzagging lines coming down from above.

A third flash, like — like — like a jagged crack in ice. Incredible!

What color was lightning? She racked her brain trying to remember. Red? No, no, that was lava. Lightning was white — and she was seeing it! For the first time — for the very first time — she knew what color she was seeing! This wasn’t like her arbitrarily deciding to call something in webspace “red” or “green.”

This was the actual, real color white. Yes, white is a mixture of all other colors; she’d read that, although she had never understood what it really meant — but she now knew what white looked like!

The rain was quite heavy. Her fleece, with the raised Perimeter Institute logo — the letters PI joined to look something like the Greek letter pi — was getting soaked. And the fat drops were cold, and hitting hard enough that they stung a bit. But she didn’t care. She didn’t care at all!

More lightning: another flash of perception, of sight!

She knew there was a way to determine how far away the source of lightning was, by counting the seconds between the flash and the sound of thunder, but she couldn’t remember the formula, and so she worked it out quickly in her head. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second — instantaneously, for practical purposes; sound travels at 769 miles per hour. So every second that passed between the flash and the thunder put the source of the lightning another fifth of a mile away.

Another flash, and—

Four. Five. Six.

The source was 1.2 miles away — and getting closer: the intervals between flashes and thunderclaps were diminishing, and the flashes were getting brighter and the thunder louder. In fact, these flashes were so bright they—

Yes, so bright they hurt. But it was wonderful pain, exquisite pain. Here, in the pouring rain, she was at last seeing something real, and it felt glorious!

I was fascinated by that remarkable point to which I now had an apparently permanent connection — but also frustrated by it. Yes, it often reflected myself back at me. But for long periods it contained data that I simply couldn’t make sense of. In fact, that’s what it was sending me right now, and—

What was that?

A bright flash — brighter than anything I’d ever encountered.

And then darkness again.

And then another flash! Incredible!

Another flash — and then more thunder. Finally, though, it seemed the electrical part of the storm had stopped, and Caitlin began walking home again, and—

Shit!

She stumbled off the curb; she must have turned around at some point, and—

The honk of a horn, the sound of tires swerving on wet pavement. She jumped backward, up onto the sidewalk. Her heart was pounding. She wasn’t sure which way she was facing, and—

No, no. The curb had been on her right, and it was on her right now, so she must be facing west again. Still, it was terrifying, and she just stood still for a time, regaining composure, and rebuilding her mental map of where she was.

The raindrops grew smaller, less heavy. She was sad the lightning had ended, and, as she began again to walk toward her house, she wondered if everyone else was now seeing a rainbow — but no, no, Sunshine had said it was dark out. Ah, well, flashes of light were wondrous enough!

Caitlin arrived at the corner lot and walked up the driveway, which was made of zigzag-shaped interlocking stone tiles; she could feel them beneath her feet. She dug out her key (she carried it in the pocket with her wallet, not the one with the eyePod), opened the front door, and—

“Caitlin!”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Look at you! You’re soaked to the skin!” Caitlin imagined her peering over her shoulder. “Where’s Trevor?”

“He’s — a jerk,” Caitlin said, catching herself before she said “an asshole.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said sympathetically. But then her voice grew angry.

“You walked by yourself? Even if this is a safe neighborhood, you shouldn’t be out alone after dark.”

Caitlin decided to elide over the last few hundred yards. “No, Sunshine — a girl I know — she walked me back.”

“You should have called. I’d have come to get you.”

Caitlin struggled to pull the sodden sweatshirt over her head. “Mom,” she said once it was off. “I saw the lightning.”

“Oh, my God! Really?”

“Yes. Jagged lines, over and over again.”

She was gathered into a hug. “Oh, Caitlin, oh, darling, that’s wonderful!” A pause. “Can you see anything now?”

“No.”

“Still…”

Caitlin smiled. “Yes,” she said, bouncing up and down a bit on her toes.

“Still. Where’s Dr. Kuroda?”

“He’s gone to bed; he was exhausted — he’s totally jet-lagged.”

She thought about suggesting they wake him, but there was nothing happening now, and the data her eyePod produced during the thunderstorm would be safely stored on his servers in Tokyo; he could examine it after a good night’s sleep. Besides, she was exhausted herself. “And Dad?”

“Still at the Institute — the public lecture, remember?”

“Oh. Well, I’m going to go change.”

She headed up to her room, got out of her soaked clothes, put on her pajamas, and lay down on the bed, hands intertwined behind her head. She wanted to relax and she was hungry for more vision, so she touched the button on her eyePod.

Webspace faded into existence: lines, points, colors, but—

Was it her imagination? Was it just that the lightning had been so bright that the colors in webspace now seemed … yes, she could draw the parallel, see how the word she knew from sound could apply to vision: the colors did seem muted now, dulled, less vibrant, and—

No, no, it wasn’t that! They weren’t muted. Rather, they were less sharp because…

Because now, behind everything, there was …

How to describe it? She sifted through words she knew related to visual phenomena. Something … shimmering, that was it. There was a background visible now, shining with a subdued flickering light.

Had something happened to the structure of webspace? That seemed unlikely. No, surely it was her way of visualizing it that had changed — presumably because of the real vision she’d just experienced. The background of webspace no longer appeared as a void but rather was twinkling, and rapidly, too. And at the very limits of … of resolution, there was a … a structure to it.

She got off the bed, went to her desk chair, and had JAWS recite email headers while she continued to look at webspace. Twenty-three messages had come in, and there’d doubtless be lots of new things written on her Facebook wall and new comments to her LJ postings. She switched back to simplex mode, clearing her vision so she could concentrate. She was about to type a response to an email when suddenly, shockingly, her entire field of vision flooded with intense whiteness. What the hell?

But then the crack of thunder came, shaking her bedroom’s window, and she realized that it was more lightning.

Another flash!

One steamboat, two steam—

The storm was only three-tenths of a mile away.

She had missed hearing her mother come up the stairs — what with thunder shaking the whole house — and was startled when she heard her saying, “Well? Can you see this lightning, too?”

Caitlin moved toward the voice, letting her mother’s arms wrap around her.

Yet more lightning, and—

Her mother letting her go, maneuvering so she was standing beside her, instead of holding her. Caitlin took her hand, and—

Another flash.

“You can!” said her mom. “You close your eyes when there’s lightning.”

“I do?” said Caitlin.

“Yes!”

“But I can still see it.”

“Well, sure. Eyelids aren’t completely opaque.”

Caitlin was stunned. Why hadn’t she known that? How much else was there to know about the world?

“Thanks, Mom,” she said.

“For what?”

The storm was moving off; the thunder was taking longer to arrive each time.

She lifted her shoulders a bit. How do you thank someone who has given you so much, and given up so much for you? She turned to face her, hoping against hope that this was the real beginning — that she would soon at last see her heart-shaped face. “For everything,” she said, hugging her tightly.