The Book of M (18 page)

WHEN THEY TOUCHED DOWN IN NEW ORLEANS, THEY PLANNED
to turn right back around and book a flight to D.C. Perhaps they could get the Indian ambassador to the United States to make an exception, if they could get him to listen.

“Let's jog,” the amnesiac suggested, but there was a gate agent waiting solemnly at the end of the jetway for them. He caught Dr. Zadeh's arm gently as they passed. “Excuse me—you're Dr. Zadeh, correct?” he interjected. In his hand was a slim white envelope. “I was instructed to deliver this message to you as soon as you disembarked.”

“What is it?” Dr. Zadeh asked. He slid his fingernail under the corner of the flap.

The agent shook his head. “I received it from customer service already sealed.” He tipped his head as he departed.

The amnesiac watched Dr. Zadeh's eyes flick down the page, faster and faster. “What does it say?” he asked.

Dr. Zadeh said nothing for a long moment. He looked up as if lost. “There was an accident. Hemu's dead.”

No.

Magic,
the amnesiac heard Hemu whisper again. He put his hands over his face.

“He was allergic to peanuts,” Dr. Zadeh continued numbly. “Dr. Avanthikar didn't know, and the sandwich—he must have forgot, or . . .” His voice trailed off. He couldn't consider the alternative.

Magic.
The amnesiac watched the rest of the passengers drift past in silence. He knew this time, for once, Hemu hadn't forgotten at all. It was only that the amnesiac gave the sandwich to him too late.

BECAUSE HEMU JOSHI'S RESEARCH UNIT HAD BEEN SHUT
down, every request to the prime minister that they put through the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C., was ignored. They couldn't find Dr. Avanthikar either—she'd been transferred to another shadowless case, either in Mumbai or Nashik, all of which were now classified.

At the assisted-living facility, Dr. Zadeh rang Charlotte, as he'd promised. The amnesiac tried not to listen and just wait. On TV, the news was reporting a shadowless incident in Brazil, the first one outside India. A child, during lunch recess.

After he hung up, Dr. Zadeh said that she told him she would come again in a little while, once she thought she could handle it. The delay made no difference to the amnesiac, as long as she would come. He wouldn't remember anything without her—one day or one month changed nothing. But then the Forgetting touched Boston, suddenly and thoroughly. Time before the accident had frozen forever, but time after it suddenly sped up. Dr. Zadeh let the amnesiac try to call her again, but cases had already started to appear nearby, in Atlanta and Baton Rouge, and it was too late. He didn't see her again.

SOMETHING I'LL NEVER ADMIT TO YOU:

In those early days, when Hemu's shadow magically disappearing still seemed like a miracle and not impending doom, I secretly wished it would happen to me, too, Ory. This was far before any cases appeared outside of India, back when it was only Hemu, and the Angels from, from . . . the Angels. Back when it was only Hemu and the Angels. It had just seemed magical then, and I wanted to be touched by the magic, too. I'm sure many people did, maybe even you. But the way I wanted it was different. I wanted it like a drowning man wants air. I wanted it so much that late at night, when you and the rest of Washington, D.C., were asleep, I'd creep out of our bedroom, go back downstairs, and turn on the television again, to stand in the bluish glow of the screen as ghostly images of Hemu Joshi dancing around the market played. I'd look at the dark simulacrum of myself stretched silently on the floor beside me.

“Disappear,” I begged it once, barely a whisper. I waited for some kind of a cold chill or moment of recognition, but my shadow just stayed there, flickering in the changing light of the television, unhearing. “Please disappear.”

When I think back about that, for however much longer I can, it makes me shiver. But none of us knew what was coming. Not for those first few days.

Of course, then we did. We saw what happened to Hemu, and I felt like a fool. Then it started to spread to Brazil and Nepal and Turkey and everywhere else. I told no one what I'd wished. I was terrified. I went to Paul and Imanuel's wedding with you, and then it happened to Boston. I thought it was coming for me. That's a stupid thing to say—it was coming for us all. But I felt like it was especially looking for me. I felt like it had
heard
me. I begged God or the universe or karma or whatever else it is that presides over the ominous
phrase
Be careful what you wish for
to take pity on me for being selfish, for wanting more than my wonderful life already was. The stores and streetlights and telephone reception were all going down; people were wandering crying down the sidewalk in Arlington, completely lost and afraid because they couldn't remember where they lived anymore or the words to ask for help; you almost got killed the first time you went out alone to steal food from the locked-up Fresh Shoppe; and all I could think was, I had asked for this. I had
asked
.

Am I far enough away from you yet to keep you safe? I don't think I could ever be far enough, even if I ran until I reached the West Coast. You spent so much time after it happened to me wondering why some people lose their shadows and not others. Why it was mine instead of yours. Every time you asked, I always said that I didn't have any idea either. That I don't know if there is an answer. And that's partially right—no one knows for sure. But what I'm terrified might be true, what I'm too afraid to say out loud to you, Ory my love, is that maybe it happened to me because at one time, for one brief moment, I had
wanted
it to happen . . . And my shadow knew it, too.

IT WAS A STRAIGHT SHOT UP NEW HAMPSHIRE AVENUE, THE
finder said. But it was dangerous. There were a few shadowless there, sometimes forgetting things like streets or turns, so they'd have to run. Ory didn't care.

“Keep up” was the finder's only warning. Then they were sprinting.

They cut through crumbling concrete and skirted buildings the finder thought were inhabited. Ory saw movement in the darkness of alleys and braced for attacks each time as they darted past.
Keep up.
Their deserted mountain was one thing, but how had Max made it through a place like this, alone, and especially if she'd started to forget bigger things? It seemed impossible.

“Here!” the finder suddenly called back to Ory. The ruins of George Washington University loomed overhead. A monstrous gray skeleton. Frayed curtains flickered in one of the upper windows.

Ory slowed involuntarily. Something wasn't right. Max would never come here. The buildings were too huge, too dark, too dangerous. Even if she'd forgotten where she was going, this was not the place she'd head for.

“What's wrong?” the finder called over his shoulder, slowing but not stopping. Ory had to speed back up to stay with him. Together they swung wide around something body-shaped and still lying beneath a tarp, and kept running.

“I don't know,” Ory panted.

“You want to find your wife?” the finder asked, waving an arm as he continued to jog closer to one of the cement overhangs. “I'm telling you, this is where I last saw her. We start looking here.”

“Max wouldn't come here,” Ory said. “It's not like her.”

“Well, exactly.”

It was not a surprise. Ory knew already that a man who had never even met his wife had the same or better chance of finding her than he did—because she wasn't really his wife anymore. Not entirely. He kept running. He tried not to hate the finder for saying it.

“Right here, yesterday afternoon or the day before,” the finder said as he disappeared around the far corner of the outdoor mall.

“Wait!” Ory cried, and lurched forward to catch up to him. When he came around the corner, the finder was gone.

Ory stood there for a few seconds, unsure of what to do. “Max?” He called. There were overturned Dumpsters, heaps of concrete. “Hello?” A long empty plaza. And then finally he understood. “I have only the shotgun. No food,” he said.

Things shifted around the corners. The finder appeared again, walking slowly out from another corner of the silent campus, still breathing hard from the run.

“How many of you?” Ory asked. He could see from the shadows of the buildings that he was surrounded.
Finder,
he thought ruefully. He wondered how many before him had also fallen for it. He wanted to be angry or embarrassed, but there wasn't any point anymore. “Five? Six?”

“Enough,” the finder said.

Ory laid down the gun and took the shells out of his pockets. “I don't have any food,” he said again.

Another joined the first, holding a baseball bat. And another. And another. The sky was a dead gray color. “We'll just make sure.”

THIS TENT IS NICE. IT'S WARM AND DRY, AND EACH
PANEL IS A
different color, so the light from the sunrise through the trees turns the inside into a beautiful, rippling kaleidoscope.

I want to stay forever. Which is probably only another few weeks or so.

There are nine of us now, in total. There were twelve before, but four forgot too much, and then I joined. When I found them, they all talked it over, debating whether it was worth the risk. In the end, they decided since they'd packed the resources for twelve survivors, they could spare the extra they now had.

That makes it sound easy. It really wasn't, Ory. It wasn't at all. At first I thought they were going to kill me.

It was late at night. I was moving through the woods just off the road, as quietly as I could in case there were any wild animals or shadowless nearby, looking for a safe place that I could stop and sleep for a few hours. Something I could put my back against so I had to watch only three sides instead of four. That's when I saw it. A soft orange glow deep in the trees. A campfire.

I know, Ory. I shouldn't have gone. But I was so curious. To be brave enough to have a fire probably meant it was a group, not a single person. And a group that still remembered to stay together as a group probably meant shadows. I haven't seen one for so long—I just wanted to see one again.

I had been right. It was a group. But not like I'd been naively hoping it might be. It was no happy camp of fellow travelers, willing to share food by the fire and reminisce about the good old days. It
was more like, either you're a threat or on your way, and we'll be the ones to decide that. They saw a shadowless woman wandering alone at night, nothing more. But when I started answering their questions, I don't think they expected me to sound so . . . whole. Then things took a sharp turn when I told them that today is day sixteen without a shadow for me, and I can still remember my name.

“It's Max,” I said softly, hands up to show I meant no harm. The woman holding the hunting rifle narrowed her eyes.

“Last name?”

“Webber. Maxine Webber,” I answered.

A pair of young women who looked like twins edged up behind the one with the gun. They were beautiful, tall and willowy, with high cheekbones and thin noses beneath their dark skin. One trained her deer-sized eyes on me, and the other whispered something to their leader. The older woman's hair had been buzzed almost to the skin, and I could see the younger's lips move even though they were just an inch from her ear. The gun didn't waver.

“Sixteen days, you say,” the twin on the left finally said, with a vaguely Arabic accent. I nodded. She looked at the woman holding the gun with an interested expression. The other five studied me from where they still sat, in a loose circle around the meager campfire they'd built. A man with hair so blond it seemed translucent in the dusk put a hand over his mouth, as if thinking. His fingers were stained by something, maybe mud or mashed grass, each one darkened to the second knuckle. The man beside him exhaled smoke, and tossed his cigarette into the flames. None of them had shadows—not a single one. Can you picture that, Ory? Nine of us standing there in the woods, and not a single shape of a hand flickered in the light of the fire, not a single profile warped across foliage or bark. Only the silhouettes of trees danced across the ground, rows and rows of gnarled black lines. There was no sign nine humans were there at all.

The woman in charge glanced at the first twin out of the corner
of her eye, to avoid turning her head—and her aim—from me. The twin nodded back. She wanted her to ask me something, I realized.

“Sixteen days,” I repeated, trying to sound encouraging.

The gun finally lowered slightly. I met the woman's eyes over the top of the barrel. “Can you still read?” she finally asked.

Moments later, the twins were on either side of me, one with her hands on my shoulders, the other carrying a torch made from a broken branch, guiding me through the woods at a fast walk. The woman with the gun marched beside us. I tried to keep my breathing calm, but I was panicking, Ory. I was sure I still knew how to read, but I hadn't seen any words for a few days now, since the last time I came across a road sign. What if I only
thought
I could still read, and then when they put a book or whatever it was they wanted me to decipher in front of my face, none of it made any sense? I'd never really thought about it as a thing I might lose before, but these eight must have forgotten. What if I had, too? I tried to imagine the letters of my name in my head, but the ground was so uneven and we were walking so fast in the darkness that it was all I could do to concentrate on not tripping. Suddenly, ahead of us was a giant RV beneath a draped tarp, parked in a carpet of dried leaves. They had a vehicle! I checked the ground as we approached, but the tracks looked fresh. They weren't stranded—they'd just driven it off the road to hide it here for the night.

“Here.” The woman with the gun stopped abruptly and put her arm out like a barrier. The twins halted and turned to me. Behind us, I could see the faint glow of their little campfire, and the others hunched around it.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked nervously.

The woman brushed a fly off her shorn head, and nodded at one of the twins. “Up,” she said, and the one holding my arm jogged around to the back of the RV, where there was a little metal ladder attached to its side. She climbed up and struggled with a rope tied to the roof. The other twin stood beside the vehicle, torch held high.

“I don't—” I started, but then the rope unknotted and the tarp dropped away from the RV in a hissing swoosh, hitting the grass. “Oh,” I murmured, transfixed. I dimly felt myself take a step forward.

Something had been painted across the side of the RV, stretched from front to back over the windows. Huge black letters in all capitals, each stroke as thick as one of my arms. I stared at the bold, curving shapes.

“Who painted this?” I finally asked the twin still on the ground, with the torch. She caught a warning glance from the leader and shook her head instead of answering me, but I could see the anticipation in her expression—they themselves had put it there. This was the only way they could test if I really could read, because even though they couldn't, they still remembered what this one thing said. “How long ago was this done?” I asked, stalling, but the women were out of patience.

“Ursula,” the twin atop the RV whispered to their leader eagerly.
Ursula.
I tried to burn the name into my memory with everything I had left.

“Can you read it?” Ursula asked, her voice betraying her nervous hope for the first time. The gun came up again, trained on me. The message was clear.
Read it or you won't remember anything at all.

I nodded vigorously. “I can, I can,” I said. I turned back to the RV and looked at the paint strokes. I have no idea for how much longer, Ory, but for that moment at least, the shapes were still letters, the letters still words, and I could understand them. “It reads
New Orleans,
” I said.