Elsewhere

“I’ll get the pills and the cane.”

“Call a nurse and order her to bring them,” Falkirk said. “I need you here to help me get into this clean pair of pants. You’ll put on my socks and shoes for me, too. And kneel down to tie the laces.”

75

Jeffy enjoyed mundane work like mowing the yard, cleaning the house, doing laundry, preparing meals, and polishing Bakelite radios to restore their luster. When engaged in tasks of that nature, he seemed to have two minds. One remained focused intently on the chore before him, and the other floated free to contemplate or to search for inspiration. His contemplation involved the purpose of his life, the meaning of the world, what he had done wrong, and what he might yet do right. The inspiration he sought always involved thinking of things to make Amity’s life more fun and interesting, to keep her spirits high and help her fulfill the potential she possessed in abundance. When Amity was very young, Jeffy’s free-floating mind wrote funny poems and stories about magical animals to entertain her. By the time she was five, he gave much thought to how best to homeschool her, which continued to occupy his mind year after year. He had daydreamed of teaching her to surf, and she had learned how to thrash the waves. Now they had the joy of the sea to share. Recently she’d been learning to sail. For him, work was pleasant because it was also a chance to dream, and when work was done, the day was theirs for living out those dreams.

Now, in Duke Pellafino’s kitchen, as Jeffy measured coffee into the filter of the brewer, he wondered if he would ever again be able to lose himself in the common tasks of everyday life and allow part of his mind to float free as before, or whether what he now knew of the multiverse would always weigh his mind down with worries about what might be happening in those infinite elsewheres. He could try his best to protect Amity and ensure her happiness in this world that she shared with him. But what of all those other Amitys in so many timelines? Scores of Amitys? Hundreds? Thousands? Inevitably, in some places, she was orphaned, and he was not there to look over her. In still other worlds, she might be ill or lost or tormented in any of the myriad ways that indifferent nature allowed her children to suffer in a fallen world. He loved this child more than he loved life itself, but it seemed to him that his love must be bestowed on all the Amitys who were without him elsewhere, if it were to be a true and worthy love.

That was madness. He couldn’t possibly be father to a thousand now fatherless Amitys, or to a hundred, or even to fifty Amitys in different worlds. If they survived their current predicament, he would somehow have to be father to this version of her, as if she were the only one, and put from his mind what travails and horrors other Amitys might be enduring, though at the moment, he was unable to see how this could be done.

These thoughts troubled Jeffy as the coffee began brewing in a fragrant rush and as he took a package of bacon from the freezer, which was when Duke Pellafino entered the kitchen from the hallway, accompanied by a man at once strange and familiar.

“Spooky Ed,” said Amity.

At the same moment, Jeffy recognized the scientist. The shock of this development was sufficient to distract him from wondering how the old man had come to be with Duke. In spite of their year of camaraderie on the front porch, a flush of anger warmed his face, and he confronted Harkenbach. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Ed? How could you call yourself my friend and yet leave that gismo with me, knowing Falkirk might land on me with both feet, knowing I might have to use the damn thing?”

Harkenbach held up one hand as though to sue for peace. “You’ve got me all wrong. I was never your friend, Jeffrey. I never left it with you.”

“What’s the point of denying it? We both know exactly what you did. There’s no point in denying it, Ed.” Jeffy took a deep breath. “What happened to your hair?”

“I thought baldness and no bow tie constituted an effective disguise. Apparently I was wrong. I seldom am. It’s humbling. But I’m not wrong about the key. That was another Ed, another me who’s less responsible than I am. I was never your friend. I’m her friend in a different world and now in this one.”

“Her? Her who?”

Michelle entered the kitchen.

For seven years, Jeffy had hoped for a reunion before finally dissolving their marriage. When the key to everything had thrown his and Amity’s lives into chaos, he’d known that if stability returned, he would recklessly risk renewed chaos by using the key to search for her in a world where she needed him. Love was not an act of reason, but a leap of faith, a belief that some mysterious meaning must lie behind existence and that two particular lives were fated to be one; love was an expression of trust in the truth of the heart’s yearning and the mind’s keen intuition. In the absence of love, the heart might be deceitful above all things, but profound love was an antivenin that cured deceit. Although Jeffy had long dreamed of this moment, dreamed of it while asleep and awake, though he’d so often thought about what he would say and do if ever she were returned to him, he was not able to speak or act, as if to do so would reveal her sudden appearance to be an illusion.

Amity was the first to move. She crossed the room to Michelle and, without a word, put her arms around her mother.

Michelle’s eyes filled with tears. As she smoothed Amity’s hair with one hand, she met Jeffy’s gaze and said softly, “You died.”

“You left,” he replied.

“We’re here,” Amity said. “We’re here.”

76

Although Falkirk had popped a painkiller, it hadn’t kicked in yet, and the local that Dr. Burnside supposedly administered to his thigh before closing his wound didn’t help much. His badly bruised chest hurt like a sonofabitch, because Kevlar could stop a slug but couldn’t fully diffuse the power of its punch. Nonetheless, he caned himself out of the hospital to the waiting Suburban, spitting curses as he went, and climbed into the back seat, relying on Vince Canker’s assistance.

As they drove away with Louis Wong behind the wheel and Canker riding shotgun, Falkirk’s phone rang. Jason Foot-Long Frankfurt, the hacker’s hacker, was calling.

“How’re you doing, boss?”

“I was shot. How do you think I’m doing?”

“We were all so pissed off when we heard.”

“Pissed off that I was hit once or that Kevlar stopped the other four?”

“Good to hear you’ve kept your sense of humor through it. I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“Philip Esterhaus received two calls this morning from this guy named Charles Pellafino. He’s head of security at Hotel Suavidad, an ex–San Diego cop. They’re friends.”

Chief Phil Esterhaus was one of those straight-arrow small-time cops who chafed at the bit when any federal agent jammed one in his mouth and claimed the right to operate freely in his jurisdiction. Falkirk encountered their type all the time, and he despised them almost as much as he despised English teachers. He looked forward to the day when all law enforcement was federal, when the Esterhauses of the world were packed off to reeducation camps and had their nuts chopped off. As usual in cases like this, Falkirk’s crew had installed an unauthorized telecom mirror line on the police chief’s official and personal phones, so that Esterhaus’s every word was reflected to Foot Long’s computer.