Zig Zag (37 page)

Clissot
nodded. Elisa judged his explanation so far as superb.

"But,
what would happen if we opened strings from, say, seventy years ago?
If you look at our diagram, the tunnel would be tiny. And if we tried
it with a period like ten years, five years, one year..." Marini
drew other lines representing these time frames. The last one was
just a fat vertical line. The illustration left no room for doubt.

"I
see. There would be no tunnel. The two events would merge."

"Exactly.
An entanglement." Marini pointed to the vertical line. "The
shorter the temporal distance, the greater the possibility of
interacting with our present. This is a crude illustration, because
the real proof is mathematical, but I think it might help you
understand..."

"Perfectly."

Ric
Valente left his post at the window and walked into the kitchen. He
and Rosalyn began a heated discussion. Elisa couldn't hear what they
were saying.

"That's
why we're not concerned about experimenting with events that took
place five hundred or a thousand years ago, but we don't want to
repeat what happened with the Unbroken Glass," said Blanes.

There
was a brief silence.

"Did
something we don't know about happen with the Unbroken Glass?"
Clissot asked.

"No,
no," he said quickly. "All I mean is that we don't want to
take any risks."

There
was a slight commotion coming from the kitchen. When everyone turned
to look, Valente smiled at them from the next room, and Rosalyn, her
face red as a beet, stared angrily.

"Just
a friendly disagreement," Valente said, holding up his palms in
a sign of peace.

The
dining-room door opened. Elisa expected to see Nadja, or maybe Ross,
walk in, but it was neither of them. A voice she hadn't heard for
many days boomed across the room.

"Can
I have a word with all of you?" asked Carter.

"HOW
do
you feel?"

"Better."

Nadja
Petrova's room was almost dark. One small, battery-powered lamp on
her nightstand cast a faint glow. Elisa guessed that Mrs. Ross, who
was bustling around in the bathroom, must have brought it. She was
glad to see that her friend did, indeed, look better, and she was
obviously happy that Elisa had come to see her (Nadja was not one to
hide her emotions). She sat on the edge of the bed and smiled at her
friend.

"I
don't like this one bit; look at these lights." Mrs. Ross, ever
cheerful, emerged from the bathroom carrying a stepladder. "Not
only have the bulbs burned out, the whole light fixture is singed.
When did you say it happened, Nadja? Last night? Odd. The same thing
happened in Rosalyn's room the other day. They must be faulty
connections. I'm sorry it's not something I can fix right now."

"Don't
worry, this lamp will be fine for now. Thank you."

"You're
very welcome, darling. I'll talk to Mr. Carter. I bet he knows
something about sockets and such."

After
Mrs. Ross closed the door, Nadja turned to Elisa and stroked her arm
affectionately.

"Thank
you for coming."

"I
wanted to see you before I went to bed. And to give you the latest
gossip." Nadja arched an almost-white eyebrow and pricked up her
ears. "Carter just came to inform us that he received some news
via satellite. There's a serious storm headed for New Nelson, a
typhoon. It should hit us by midweek, but the worst of it will be
Saturday and Sunday. This rain is just the buildup. The good news is
that we have a compulsory vacation. We won't be allowed to use SUSAN
or receive any new telemetric images, and on the weekend we won't
even be allowed to boot up our computers, in case the generator fails
and we have to switch onto emergency power." Her friend looked
alarmed. "Don't worry, silly. Carter is sure we won't lose
power..."

Nadja's
expression wiped the smile off her face. When she spoke, her voice
was unrecognizable, as though someone was forcing her to repeat the
words against her will.

"That...
woman ... was ...
watching
us,
Elisa."

"No,
hon, she wasn't..."

"And
her face ... It was like someone had filed it down and then scraped
off all her features..."

"Nadja,
come on now..." Overcome by compassion, she hugged her friend.
They remained like that for a while in the poorly lit room,
protecting each other from something they couldn't comprehend.

Then
Nadja pulled away. The redness of her eyes was all the more obvious
against her snow-white skin.

"I'm
a Christian, Elisa. When I responded to the questionnaire, I said I'd
give anything to be able to ... to see him ... But now I'm not so
sure ... I don't know if I want to!"

"Nadja."
Elisa grasped her shoulders and wiped the hair out of her face. "A
lot of what you're feeling is a result of the Impact. That
suffocating feeling, the feeling you can't breathe, the panic, the
idea that it's all somehow related to you ... I felt the same thing
with the dinosaurs. It took everything I had to overcome it. Silberg
says we'll have to study the Impact's effects more, to find out why
it happens to some of us with some images and not others. But
regardless, you have to understand that it's a psychological side
effect. You mustn't think that..."

Nadja
was crying into Elisa's shoulder, but her sobs slowly subsided. After
a while, all that could be heard was the humming of the air
conditioners and the drumming of the rain.

Part
of Elisa couldn't help but share Nadja's horror. With or without the
Impact, the image of that faceless woman was sickening. Just
recalling it, the room seemed suddenly colder, the darkness denser.

"Didn't
you like the dinos?" she joked.

"Yeah
... Well, not entirely. That shiny skin. Why did you think that was
so beautiful? It was disgusting..."

"Here
we go. You like the bones, not the packaging."

"That's
right, I do. I'm a paleo..." Nadja struggled to pronounce it in
Spanish.

"Paleontologa.
You
got it. A paleontologist."

They
both smiled. Elisa smoothed her white hair and kissed her forehead.
Nadja's doll-like hair fascinated her.

"Now
you should try to get some rest."

"I
don't think I'll be able to sleep." Fear distorted her face. Her
features weren't especially beautiful, but with that look, she
reminded Elisa of a damsel in distress out of some old painting. "I'm
going to hear more noises. Don't you hear them anymore? Those
footsteps?"

"I
told you, that's Mrs. Ross..."

"Not
always."

"What
do you mean?"

Nadja
didn't reply. She seemed to be thinking about something else.

"Last
night I heard them again," she said. "I got up and looked
in Ric and Rosalyn's doors, but they were in their beds. Didn't you
hear anything?"

"I
slept the sleep of the dead last night. But it was probably Carter.
Or Mrs. Ross in the pantry. She does a weekly inspection. I asked
her. She told me."

Nadja
shook her head.

"No.
It wasn't her. And it wasn't a soldier."

"How
do you know?"

"Because
I
saw."

"Saw
who?"

Nadja
was pale as a sheet.

"I
told you I got up and went to look. Well, I looked in Ric and
Rosalyn's rooms, but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. So I
turned around to go to your room ... and I saw a man." She
squeezed Elisa's arm tightly. "He was standing by your door,
with his back to me so I couldn't see his face. At first, I thought
it was Ric, so I called out, but then I realized that it was someone
else ... someone I'd never seen."

"How
could you know that?" Elisa whispered, terrified. "The hall
is always so dark... and you say he had his back to you..."

"But..."—Nadja's
lips were quivering, her voice a petrified whimper—"...
when I got closer I realized that he was ... he was facing me..."

"What?"

"I
saw his eyes. They were white. But his face was empty, blank. He had
no face, Elisa. I swear it. Please believe me!"

"Nadja,
you're being affected by the image of the Jerusalem Woman."

"No,
I saw her for the first time
today.
This
happened
yesterday."

"Have
you told anyone?" Nadja shook her head. "Why not?"
When her friend made no reply, she continued. "I'll tell you
why. Because deep down, you know it was a dream. Right now you can't
see that, because of the Impact..."

Her
explanation seemed to calm the young paleontologist down. They looked
at each other for a moment.

"Maybe
you're right... But it was such an awful dream."

"Do
you remember anything else?"

"No
... He came to me and ... I think I fainted when I drew near ... Then
I woke up in my bed..."

"See?"
Elisa said. Nadja squeezed her arm again.

"Don't
you think there could be someone else here, besides Carter, the
soldiers, and us?"

"What
do you mean?"

"On
the island ... Someone else on the island."

"That's
impossible," Elisa said, shivering.