When the whispers said, “He won’t return,” she withdrew her gaze from the road, the bridge, and the forest, gently closed the door on objective reality, and took refuge in the shower, where warm water caressed her skin and washed away Berky’s stink. With eyes shut, she turned her face into the stream and cleansed her mouth, filling it with water but not swallowing or spitting, just letting it overflow and run down her jaw.
She huddled in the spray, imagining a rainy summer day from childhood—better times. The sun will come out soon, and I’ll get dressed, and Papa will ask me to help with the bees, and after we’re done in the garden and I’ve eaten supper, he’ll tuck me in and read me a story. She almost felt human again. She dried and dressed and bandaged her toes.
An empty stomach drew her to the food tray. When she removed the lid, her throat clutched. She hated fish and the chalky undertaste of its flesh as much as she hated the stink of Berky’s sweat. The fishes figured in her dreams about the end of the world, where only fish remained, and they were laughing.
Berky always claimed his actions were altruistic. Yesterday he said, “Fish genes can hold far more memory of their environment than human genes. They adapt faster. So you need to eat lots of fish. I’m doing this for you, Nadia, to preserve the memories in your brain—the engrams. And how your cells read your genes. I’ll keep these memories alive long after you die.”
She wondered about the engrams.
I don’t know who I am anymore. I have so many memories that seem to swim away when I think of them. It’s like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands when it knows you’re looking. How will Berky or anyone else find the slippery engrams when I can’t?
She resolved to redouble her efforts to write a comprehensive history of Assurance. That and the proper indexing of artifacts in the museum seemed like a more practical way to guard against memory extinction.
The book was a message to the future from the last living resident of Assurance. It would tell of a town that, for most of its existence, seemed undecided about whether it wanted to live or die. It would explain how the South Prong River kept Assurance alive until the day the water turned black and its inhabitants vanished. It would describe why mountain culture represented the best of all possible worlds. It would reveal who she was and who she wanted to be.
The book was a solution to Nadia’s problem: she was a ghost in a ghost town, unknown and unremembered by anyone except Berky. Her agoraphobia—her fear of open spaces—made her a prisoner in her own home. She was Berky’s resentful but obedient pet. She was nothing. Nadia was “nada.”
She reached for her notebook and wrote, Poof!
CHAPTER 2
POOF!
On a hot, dusty road in western North Carolina, near a sign for a rural bus stop, Ali Khan Ahmed climbed out of a pickup truck with his traveling bag and thanked the driver for giving him the lift. She was fortyish—twice his age, but easy to look at, with shining blue eyes, mouse-brown hair pulled into a short bob, and a yellow tank top blouse above slim cut jeans.
“You sure you got a place to stay tonight, hon?” she said, waiting, hoping, motor running.
Twenty-three-year-old Ali, standing five-two, lean and wiry in a T-shirt and jeans, adjusted his eyepatch then spoke in the choppy cadence of the Indian subcontinent. “Thank you. I have to catch a bus. I need to meet someone. They are expecting me.”
The woman gave him a come-hither smile, slid sunglasses down her nose, and waited for a reaction. When she got none, she winked, pushed the glasses back up, and put the truck into gear.
Ali waved goodbye.
As she drove away, he looked past the bus stop to a sign pointing toward the Nantahala National Forest, removed his wallet from a hip pocket, and took out his netcard—a millimeter-thin, flexible black slab that was his gateway to information and money. With the touch of a finger, he turned on the card’s map display. Enhanced GPS showed a five-mile hike ahead. He checked for messages, sent a coded text to his professor and friend at the University of North Carolina, then shut the card down, broke it in two, and buried the pieces in soft sand ten feet apart and twenty feet from the road. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be able to track him this far, but no farther.
ICE would have to assume he could be anywhere. He could have gotten on the bus with a fictitious name. He could have gotten another ride. He could have hiked north toward Cherokee, or—worst case—south, into 11,000 acres of wilderness that segued into eight hundred square miles of forests and mountains.
He snapped his fingers, replaying in his mind a magic trick performed by his friend at UNC. You put cards into a hat, turn it upside down to show the cards have vanished, and then snap your fingers, and the hat disappears. Poof!
With his bag in hand, he found the trail toward Nantahala and took it, covering his tracks as best he could.
Berky Benson walked into the Aasleagh Pub on Savannah’s East River Street carrying a duffel bag and a leather pouch. He was a man on a mission, striving to complete God’s plan. But this pub was not on his divine roadmap. It seemed to be a place where binge drinkers went after they’d visited all the good bars. He spotted his Chief Technical Officer, Gregor Popkins, in a dark corner, acknowledged his presence with a nod, but decided to order a drink before joining him.
The bartender, a full-figured thirty-something woman in a loose purple shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a dragon tattoo on her forearm, stopped wiping the counter as Berky dropped his bag near a stool. She eyed his worn red polo shirt and tattered jeans.
“Whatcha need, hon?” she said, fatigue written on her face.
“Beet juice.”
“Sorry,” she droned. “It’s not something we normally—”
“Is this enough?” he said, removing his wallet and dropping three Ben Franklins on the counter. “Two of these are for you and the other’s for the server.” He smiled. Physical currency had a much bigger impact than the digital variety.
Her face perked up. “Just a moment.” She stuffed the bills into a breast pocket and disappeared into a room behind the bar.
Berky tapped his fingers as he surveyed the pub. It was barely 7 pm, and the place was dead, with only a few patrons. Two men at a table near the door fondled beer mugs as they quietly argued over a matter of public policy. A tall woman at a table near the bar sipped an umbrella drink through a paper straw. She had an aquiline nose and wore a hat with ostrich feathers that made her look like a species of giant bird. A young man seated on the other end of the bar, who looked barely 21, wore an unbuttoned black shirt that revealed a chest full of hair too thick to be natural. The man tugged on a pendant swinging from a gold chain around his neck. A single male server flitted between the tables, taking orders, bringing drinks, spreading happy-ness.