Streams of Babel (11 page)

I examine the concept of disappearing chatter, frantically searching my head for the programming sequences that could bring this to pass. It is like Internet disappearing ink. I think of a few possible lines of programming, but
is the command with the sender or the server or both?

Even virtual chat rooms create a temporary script that lasts until the speakers exit. I can capture much of that with my searches, which I run up to twenty minutes apart. To capture chatter that erases from the script as soon as the intended eyes behold it? I would have to be everywhere at once, constantly.

"All chatter about Colony One appeared to cease the second week in February," I mutter. "But it hasn't ceased at all, if this is true."

Hodji chuckles without smiling. "It's true. We're being outsmarted."

Roger continues, "That's only problem number one. I said they've got a program with a
double
whammy. The chatter that's posting and disappearing is not usually in either English or Arabic. The other v-spy said that sometimes what they post is in our alphabet, sometimes in ... god knows what alphabets. It looks like they're sharing a massive translation program."

"Of some lesser-known languages," I mutter in awe. "Probably translating to lesser-known alphabets ... which makes a keyword search of chat rooms impossible."

"That's what we think. Because we can't script it, we need somebody on-site who can look at any number of languages and get the gist of what these guys are saying on the spot."

I groan, thinking of people somewhere in this world drinking the water about which VaporStrike brags with such audacity. I ought to be willing to do anything.

Uncle Ahmer tries to pull me aside, but I shake loose from him in a panic. "Tell Trinitron to just send me the hard drive. I will find the stupid program! Even if they ran it off a disk, the evidence of its behavior will be in the activity. What have you over there? A smattering of idiots?"

This time Uncle Ahmer is not so gentle. He tosses me into the now-dim café, though he fans his hand in front of my face, as if this will help at all. He whispers in a gentle tone.

"Shahzad, listen to me. Get rid of your asthma before you give your aunt Hamera a heart attack and I suffer another loss. Get the American education that your father wanted you to have. You can live with your aunt Alika and cousin Inas, go to school with Inas, and work at night, when the extremists come out of their holes. I will send you money regularly."

For once I see in his face something like affection. He does not often show this. I would think this was about the vast fortune USIC is implying he will get, except for this rare look in his eyes.

But I have not seen my aunt Alika or my cousin Inas since I was three. And I am mindful of one of Uncle's favorite sayings:
The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.
I am familiar with my uncle, with my daily routines, with asthma, even with entertaining dangerous extremists under my own roof.

Yet America is something quite different. I read online once that Americans see Vietnam as a war and not a place. Well, I see America as falling buildings and broken gas lines. It is a series
of terrible news photos that have haunted my home page for months and remind me constantly of my family's loss.

Roger comes to me. He reads my eyes and tries to keep our thoughts focused. "It's been the tradition for subversives to speak in code and make only vague allusions to their schemes online, Shahzad. But with them sharing some weird software and feeling this much protection, who knows what they're talking about. What we're missing."

I try to swallow, but I have no spit. Only a sore and rattling chest.

"We've been fruitlessly searching Africa for Colony One and have turned up nothing. You still think VaporStrike's Dark Continent is America and not Africa? I don't believe that, but would you like to prove us wrong? Here's your chance."

"So I can go there and die myself?" I turn from them to glimpse the setting sun.

Uncle says in Urdu, so they won't understand, "You're being a small boy with a wild imagination. Go get a birth certificate before I kick a second crack into your ass. Get a transcript also that makes you to be in high school. Take two twenty-dollar bills from the coffee can in the house. Go."

So, I am to go to school and do this internship at night. VaporStrike, PiousKnight, and Catalyst have been called by Hodji "night crawlers" who only chat after dark, so it would work out—for USIC. My heart is troubled.

I decide to argue this out later when my head is clear. I go to pay for false documents, but only so I can enjoy taking deep breaths under the cover of night. I don't like having to watch the Americans gloat.

CORA HOLMAN
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2002
1:15
P.M.

I SAT IN MR. GLENN'S law office, watching him shuffle through paper after paper. I was glad to be out of the house again, having spent four nights by myself. That isn't to say I had spent three days utterly alone. Neighbors, teachers, and coworkers who heard the news rang the doorbell, dropping off food and offering kind words.

I'd ask them in but would find myself sitting at the edge of my chair, though I was far more comfortable than I would have been if I hadn't scrubbed the entire house from top to bottom after I got better. The mysterious flu finally left me at dawn the day after Aleese died, but I would use tiredness as an excuse if visitors started staying too long. People left after ten minutes or so, probably mystified that I wasn't completely falling apart.

"Again, Cora, let me say that you don't have to sell the house yet if you're not ready." Mr. Glenn gathered the papers into a stack that I was supposed to sign.

I still felt oddly at peace. Maybe it was the fact that I had on stockings and a black suit, with my hair twisted up in the French knot I usually save for concert choir. Maybe those things helped me finally feel older, more ready to make decisions.

"It's all right, Mr. Glenn. Really."

I had overheard the words "the wrecking-ball house" and "that Holman eyesore" a few times around town. It totally stung. I wanted it torn down as badly as the next person, and I'd had no idea how much the property alone was worth until Mr. Blumberg, my next-door neighbor, had mentioned it when he and Mrs. Blumberg stopped over the morning after Aleese passed, putting homemade ice cream in the freezer.

It had not been a tactless conversation with the Blumbergs, by any means. In fact, I had brought up selling the house, stating a longtime fantasy of owning one of the little condos down in the meadows. We ended with Mr. Blumberg saying that when I was ready, he would buy the property and add twelve thousand dollars to the market value to make sure I would "have enough." He was a stockbroker, ridiculously wealthy, Oma had always said. And the fact that he couldn't wait to get our little ranch shoveled away to extend his property didn't seem offensive to me. I understood.

I signed for Mr. Glenn. Paper after paper. First and foremost, I signed emancipation papers proclaiming me an independent for the three months until I was eighteen, so I could legally make decisions concerning Aleese's cremation, my finances, and the future. I read the fine print of most of the documents and understood more than I thought I would.

"Mr. Blumberg says to make sure you understand you can
stay and finish the school year. Take your time. Find a condo or something you really like. I will help you. He will help you."

I watched Mr. Glenn, curious about his doe-eyed look. I noticed that all the people who stopped in for brief visits at the house had had this same gaze, as if they were feeling something I couldn't quite understand.

"I'll ... um ... keep in touch about my search. I'm definitely staying in Trinity Falls, so...," I babbled, signing the last page. I could imagine the little condos quite clearly because I'd dreamed about having one all to myself since I was about eight years old. I took long walks to watch the construction and the young couples move into them. They were probably expensive with their view of the islands, but our property value was more than enough to buy a condo, even if all a new owner wanted to do was knock down the "eyesore."

I could go to college, too, at Astor College, fifteen minutes away. All the while, I could be a part of this Trinity Falls I had attached myself to through a lens. I could do it as a person with a clean house, as a respectable person. No matter who was to hear stories about Aleese from the police or the paramedics, I could prove I was different. That had become important while I was cleaning.

"Great. Well, let's go to the service," he said, standing up and looking at his watch.

"Oh! Um..." I shot up. "You don't have to come. It's just ... me and the minister. It's private. I mean that's nice of you, but um—"

"Not what the newspaper said," he mumbled, grabbing a copy of the
Atlantic City Press.

I hadn't called any newspaper. I'd had one conversation with the coroner's office about a "straight-to-the-crematory" and one conversation with Oma's minister, whom I had called.
Must have been the minister,
I decided, staring at this obituary. It said some things I didn't even know about Aleese, like that she had attended the University of Missouri. I had only heard Oma refer to her as "a dropout who couldn't even stay long enough to find a husband and have me ten grandkids." It contained the exact name of the newspaper in Beirut she had worked for, but not the dates. It seemed to me Oma had mentioned that Aleese had only kept a full-time job for six months of her adult life, "because she was out of her element, should have been having kids." Oma had always been a little nutty about her own missed dream of ten kids. Oh well. The obituary made Aleese sound respectable.

At the bottom, sure enough, were the time, day, and place I'd arranged with Reverend McNaughton at the little Methodist church on Main Street that Oma and I used to go to sometimes. It said nothing about the service being private, and I realized I had not mentioned that to Reverend McNaughton, not that it would matter.

"May I keep this?" I asked Mr. Glenn.

"Absolutely."

"And don't worry about coming. Honestly. In spite of this ... it's private."
No one would come.
I agreed to let him drop me off, so I wouldn't have to walk the ten blocks.

One time back in freshman biology, Owen Eberman and I were paired up for an entire period to watch bacteria changing under
a microscope. I was more in love with his brother than I was with him, but I still found myself tongue-tied. He talked when he had to—not a lot, but not nervously, either.

He laughed a couple of times at something he did that wasn't right. When I did something wrong, he didn't laugh. He was nice like that.

The most surreal moment of my life was seeing them come walking into this church—Owen and Scott. It's just a little white church with one aisle up the center of the pews. I was standing there with Reverend McNaughton, and they were coming right toward us. They had on shirts and ties and goose-down jackets. The floor started falling out from under me.

I froze. They kept coming, and each of them hugged me.

"You guys, you don't have to be here!" I said. Scott was wearing sunglasses—the mirrored kind, which meant I was faced with my own astonished expression. Owen wasn't wearing glasses but looked half-in-there, staring up at the rafters like they were interesting.

"How are you feeling?" Scott asked.

"Fine. Great. Got over it by the next morning."

He heaved a sigh of relief. "And so, you've had four days now ... no fever, no bronchitis, no digestive tract problems, no headaches?"

I could not believe he even remembered.

"Yes, um ... how are you?"

"Been better. Ya know..." He lifted up his glasses for a split second so I could see his eyes were all swollen and glassy.

"You guys, I am so, so sorry." I was ripping in half between wanting to back away and wanting to hug Scott, who looked like he needed it, and my better judgment won out. I could feel
the same aloneness and terror wafting off him that I'd felt when Oma died, and my hand flew to the back of his head when I hugged him. I heard him sniff the same time I did, and I let go quickly.

He just shoved his glasses to the top of his head, wiping his eyes with his hands. He didn't look too self-conscious, maybe because I was wiping my eyes with my thumbs, feeling his anguish.

"Hey. We'll be here for you today, and you be there for us tomorrow. Deal?"

"Sure, absolutely." Like they needed me to be at their mother's funeral, like there wouldn't be three thousand people.

I put a hand on Owen's arm. "You guys shouldn't be doing this. Not now. This is too nice of you"

"We know what it feels like," Owen said. He knew what it
should
feel like. My life with Aleese had been far different from theirs with their mother, though I didn't attract attention to it.

Scott fumbled around with words that probably would have come easier in a home, without the echo in the rafters.

"...results of the autopsies ... cause of death on your mother's death certificate will be aneurysm, nothing about morphine, as it looks to them now like she hadn't ingested enough to overdose or to facilitate what was going on in her brain."

I sighed in relief, thinking of the lessened potential of embarrassment. But I was still confused. "So ... morphine had nothing to do with this?"

"Nothing except it might have masked pain and symptoms of illness. Do you have any idea how long she had been sick?"

I shook my head, ashamed at having not given her more of my attention, now that it had come to this. "I'd say she'd been
blowing her nose for a few weeks. She complained of nausea, but that's a side effect of morphine, so that was normal. It's hard to say."

I shrugged helplessly, but his nod was mercifully understanding. "Some of her and Mom's blood and tissue samples have been sent to the CDC. Two brain hemorrhages in town with flulike symptoms in two days, that's
Twilight Zone
material. Plus, there was some, um, unidentified bacteria in the sinus cavities. They'll be looking at that. Your blood was sent, too, just to be really safe, you know? We're hoping that we're not looking at some strange, new emerging infectious disease. God, I hope not."