The City of Mirrors
Page 13

Thirty-six feet from stern to bowsprit with a six-foot draft, one main and one headsail, masthead-rigged, with a small cabin (though he almost always slept on the deck). He’d found it in a boatyard near San Luis Pass, tucked away in a warehouse, still standing on blocks. The hull, made of polyester resin, was sound, but the rest was a mess—deck rotted, sails disintegrated, anything metal fatigued beyond use. It was, in other words, perfect for Michael Fisher, first engineer of Light and Power and oiler first class, and within a month he’d quit the refinery and cashed in five years of unspent paychecks to buy the tools he needed and hire a crew to bring them down to San Luis. Really? Alone? In that thing? Yes, Michael told them, unfolding his drawing on the table. Really.
How ironic that after all those years of blowing on the embers of the old world, trying to relight civilization with its leftover machines, in the end it should be the most ancient form of human propulsion that seized him. The wind blew, it back-eddied along the edge of the sail, it created a vacuum that the boat forever tried to fill. With every voyage he took, he went a little longer, a little farther, a little more crazily out there. He’d traced the coasts at the start, getting the feel of things. North and east along the coast to oil-mucked New Orleans and its depressing plume of gooey, river-borne, chemical stink. South to Padre Island, with its long, wild stretches of sand as white as talc. As his confidence grew, his trajectories expanded. From time to time he came across the anachronistic leavings of mankind—clumps of rusted wreckage piled along the shoals, ersatz atolls of bobbing plastic, derelict oil rigs bestriding massive slicks of pumped-out sludge—but soon he left all of these behind, driving his craft deeper into the heart of an oceanic wilderness. The water’s color darkened; it contained incredible depths. He shot the sun with his sextant, plotting his course with a stub of pencil. One day it occurred to him that beneath him lay nearly a mile of water.
The morning of the storm, Michael had been at sea for forty-two days. His plan was to make Freeport by noon, restock, rest for a week or so—he really needed to put on some weight—and set out again. Of course, there would be Lore to contend with, always an uncomfortable business. Would she even speak to him? Just glare at him from a distance? Grab him by the belt and drag him into the barracks for an hour of angry sex that, against his better judgment, he couldn’t make himself refuse? Michael never knew what it would be or which made him feel worse; he was either the asshole who had broken her heart or the hypocrite in her bed. Because the one thing he couldn’t find the words to explain was that she had nothing to do with any of it: not the Nautilus, or his need to be alone, or the fact that, although she was in every way deserving, he could not love her in return.
His thoughts went, as they often did, to the last time he’d seen Alicia—the last time anyone had, as far as he knew. Why had she chosen him? She had come to him in the hospital, on the morning before Sara and the others had left the Homeland to return to Kerrville. Michael wasn’t sure what time it was; he was asleep and awoke to see her sitting by his bed. She had this…look on her face. He sensed that she’d been sitting there for some time, watching him as he slept.
—Lish?
She smiled.
—Hey, Michael.
That was it, for at least another thirty seconds. No How are you feeling? or You look kind of ridiculous in that cast, Circuit, or any of the thousand little barbs that the two of them had fired at each other since they were little kids.
—Can you do something for me? A favor.
—Okay.
But the thought went unfinished. Alicia looked away, then back again.
—We’ve been friends a long time, haven’t we?
—Sure, he said. Absolutely we have.
—You know, you were always so damn smart. Do you remember…now, when was this? I don’t know, we were just a couple of kids. I think Peter might have been there, Sara, too. We all snuck up to the Wall one night, and you gave this speech, an actual speech, I swear to God, about how the lights worked, the turbines and the batteries and all the rest of it. You know, up until then, I thought that they just came on by themselves? Seriously. God, I felt so dumb.
He shrugged, embarrassed.
—I was kind of a showoff, I guess.
—Oh, don’t apologize. I thought it right then: That kid’s really got something. Someday, when we need him, he’s going to save our sorry asses.
Michael hadn’t known what to say. Never had he seen anyone who looked so lost, so weighed down by life.
—What did you want to ask me, Lish?
—Ask you?
—You said you needed a favor.
She frowned, as if the question didn’t quite make sense to her.
—I guess I did, didn’t I?
—Lish, are you okay?
She rose from her chair. Michael was about to say something else, he wasn’t sure what, when she leaned forward, brushed his hair aside, and, amazing him utterly, kissed him on the forehead.
—Take care of yourself, Michael. Will you do that for me? They’re going to need you around this place.
—Why? Are you going somewhere?
—Just promise me.
And there it was: the moment when he’d failed her. Three years later and still he was reliving it over and over, like a hiccup in time. The moment when she told him she was leaving for good, and the one thing he could have said to keep her there. Somebody loves you, Lish. I love you. Me, Michael. I love you and I’ve never stopped and never ever will. But the words got tangled up somewhere between his mouth and his brain, and the moment slipped away.