The Book of M (32 page)

CURLY WAS THE LAST ONE IN, SLOWED BY THE WEIGHT OF
carrying the old man down the stairs. The rest of them pulled the heavy storm doors shut, and Marie clicked the padlock and slid all the boards through so the entrance was braced every few inches.

“What's your name?” the amnesiac asked the old man. He realized he didn't know it yet. They were all becoming so bad with names. He himself didn't have one, and the shadowless kept forgetting theirs.

“Harry,” the old man rasped.

“Someone please get Harry some water and sit with him,” the amnesiac said.

“I'll do it,” Downtown offered, and followed Curly as he took Harry over to a pile of blankets.

“None of you have shadows,” Harry murmured wondrously. Whatever was failing inside was getting to him—heart, lungs, exhaustion. The amnesiac could hear it in the way his words lengthened, like a song slowed down. “I wish I could give you mine, to thank you for all this. I won't need it much longer.”

The amnesiac turned back to Dr. Avanthikar. “Are you sure you're all right? You're sure you're not injured?” he asked again.

“Please,” Dr. Avanthikar snorted. “I'm not
that
old.”

“I'm so sorry. I was just thinking of the others. I'm—”

She swatted the air. “Stop. You did well. I would have done the same thing if I had patients.”

Outside, the rain was falling so heavily they couldn't hear the intervals between when each drop struck the roof anymore. It was just one endless, rolling roar.

“I was transferred to Delhi after Hemu died,” she told him once
they found flashlights and a spot on the floor. “They set up another research facility there. On my way home one night, some men grabbed me, threw me into a van. I thought maybe it was the family of a shadowless we were failing to cure, but it turned out they were U.S. Marines.” She shook her head, as if still amazed. “They smuggled me onto the last flight out of India hidden in a body bag. It was the fastest and safest way they could think of to bypass Indian security and avoid being attacked by the angry crowds flooding the airport. Everyone thought a shadowless was inside. They stayed far back.”

“Marines kidnapped you?” The amnesiac stared.

She sighed. “Well, we all wanted the same thing. To stop this. The president apologized to me when I made it to Washington, D.C. He had asked the prime minister to send me first, because he already had other doctors from Germany and Japan, and a huge classified facility in Washington, D.C.—he just wanted to fix things as fast as he could. When the prime minister wouldn't agree, your president figured it would be better to do whatever he had to do to give his international committee the best chance at succeeding and deal with a diplomatic disaster later, rather than to back off and then maybe fail.”

“Failed anyway.” The amnesiac sighed.

“I think he was right to do it,” Dr. Avanthikar said, a little angrily. “Of course I didn't want to turn my back on India. But it was just me and one other team from Mumbai, and it was already too late. Half the country was afflicted. Your president had fifty of the most respected medical researchers in the world, and all the money, all the equipment. If I didn't go, there wasn't going to be an India anyway.”

“I'm sorry,” the amnesiac said. “I didn't mean any offense.”

She waved his words away with a hand, calm again. “We've all done what we had to,” she continued. “I'm just glad I made it here, once the classified facility—fell apart. I didn't know if anything would still be standing in New Orleans either, but I couldn't think of another place anyway. I don't know anyone else in the United States.” She rubbed her hair gently, to loosen some of the mud from it. “I got
lost for six months in the north of Florida.” She laughed. “Did you know that now the crocodiles are the size of cruise ships? But they're lit up like them too, and you can hear the music from a mile away. They're probably in more danger of extinction now than they were before, even though they're a hundred times more terrifying. Probably the only thing they can catch is one another.”

“It's good to see you again,” the amnesiac said, smiling.

Dr. Avanthikar hugged him. “I'm so glad you're alive,” she whispered. Her tiny arms were almost crushing. He let her hold on until his back started to cramp from leaning so far over. “And . . . Dr. Zadeh?” she finally asked when she pulled back.

Telling her was not as hard as the amnesiac thought it would be. It wasn't as hard as going into his office alone had been.

When he'd finished, Dr. Avanthikar turned back to look at the door, to see how many locks they'd managed to add to it. “Exterminators,” she murmured, shuddering. “That's monstrous.”

“It's all right now. There are other things, but the exterminators aren't a threat anymore, at least,” the amnesiac said. She glanced at him, brow raised. “Whoever was running things from inside city hall, funding them, lost their shadow, too. The exterminators went right in and did their job. Then there was no one left to keep paying them.”

Dr. Avanthikar stared blankly at the amnesiac for a few moments. Then she burst out laughing.

Finally he did, too. They laughed so hard their eyes stung with hot tears, and Dr. Avanthikar fell over. Some of the shadowless who remembered the most even joined in, chuckling in spite of how much they missed Dr. Zadeh.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Dr. Avanthikar finally said, wiping her face. She struggled into a crouch. “I'm sorry, dear. It's all right.”

“Scared,” Adam whimpered. He was down to just a few words now, but they were all useful ones. “Scared.”

“It's okay,” Marie said to him.

Adam shivered and went to sit by her. “Scared,” he said. “Who?” he asked when he looked at her.

“Marie,” she said, pointing at herself. “Adam.” She pointed at him when his expression conveyed that he hadn't been asking about her. “Dr. Avanthikar,” she tried again, to no avail.

Adam made a confused face, but stayed sitting there. “Who . . . ,” he murmured, looking absently around the room.

“Poor thing,” Dr. Avanthikar sighed. “He's been here some time?”

“One of Dr. Zadeh's original Alzheimer's patients. Lost his shadow first of everyone here,” he answered. “Recently he's gotten much worse. I don't know what to do—Dr. Zadeh didn't tell me what we should do once they forget everything. He was so convinced we could figure something out in time. After the exterminators, I tried, but I didn't know how to continue his research.”

“Might be no point anyway now,” Wifejanenokids said. He pointed at the ceiling. “After this.”

“That's grim,” Marie scolded.

“Only because we aren't trying,” Wifejanenokids replied. “At least if we tried.”

Marie pointed at the same ceiling. “And how could we stop a shadowless from—” She gestured chaotically. “Once it hits?”

“All right, that's enough,” Dr. Avanthikar cut in sharply. The shadowless all startled, then watched her in rapt silence. She was so new to them, and her age and title gave her an air of authority. And she still had her shadow. “We won't have a fight in this tiny space. Since we're already down here, it doesn't make sense to leave unless we have a better idea. So instead of squabbling, all of us will spend our time thinking of any possible strategies to help us survive if this hurricane . . . changes.” She eyed them all, not unlike a schoolteacher. It made the amnesiac smile to see her treat them not with fear, but with the same love that she had shown Hemu—it only looked tough, on the outside. “Okay?”

They all nodded.

“That means you, too.” She nodded her chin at the amnesiac.

He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Outside, above them and beyond the walls, there was a faint cracking sound, like wood splitting. Something was giving way in the garden, maybe a tree. He tried to imagine what might happen when the full brunt of the hurricane hit New Orleans, a city filled with thousands of shadowless still alive and waging a fifteen-way war against all the tiny factions of struggling shadowed survivors, and they all panicked as it drowned the empty parts of their memory. If the misremembering didn't kill them, the struggle between all of the magic would. The amnesiac sat down to try and think. Then he realized.

“Shit,” he said. He moved all the blankets, checked every box of food. “
Shit.
” It wasn't anywhere.

“What did we forget?” Buddy asked quietly. His voice was high with fear.

“No,” the amnesiac said. “You didn't forget anything. I made a mistake.”

Marie edged up to where he was leaning against the stack of rations. Thunder made the ceiling of the basement shiver.

“Wait.” Curly suddenly stood up. “Where are we?” He had forgotten.

Marie put a hand on Curly's shoulder, to calm him. “Too late now, whatever it is,” she said softly to the amnesiac. “I doubt the building above is going to hold.”

“It'll only take a minute,” he said.

“Where are we?” Curly repeated. “Someone tell me.”

“New Orleans,” Marie whispered to him. Even as she did it, the amnesiac saw her glance at Downtown, to make sure she was actually right—not only that she thought she was, but had forgotten, too.

Dr. Avanthikar glanced at the water, then the medicine. “What did you leave behind?”

“The bag,” the amnesiac said. “All the patient records—the book about Gajarajan.”

Everyone was quiet. The amnesiac could see on Marie's face that she agreed with him now. That was the one thing that would be worth going back for.

“I know right where I left it,” he said. The main hall, just off from the center, where he had handed Harry's nearly lifeless body to Curly in case he had to fight the stranger who had turned out to be Dr. Avanthikar. “It'll only take a minute. I'll come back. I promise.”

Marie looked down, then at Curly, unable not to. “It's not that,” she said.

“You just get back here, and I'll open the door,” Dr. Avanthikar said.

The amnesiac nodded gratefully to her. She'd cared for Hemu. She understood. She knew what they were afraid of—not that the amnesiac wouldn't come back, but that he would, and because of the stress and the danger, there was the small but terrifying chance that they wouldn't remember to let him in. It was already affecting Curly, chipping away at what he had left. And so the doctor said it before Marie had to, to spare her the shame of having to admit it.

EVERYTHING WAS MUCH LOUDER, AS IF THE STORM WAS SOMEWHERE
inside the building instead of outside it. Every crack of lightning made him jump. The amnesiac dashed across the atrium, straight for the main hall on the other side. The bag was exactly where he had said it would be, a small lump on the floor surrounded by puddles. He jumped on it like prey and hugged it to him. The rain had found its way through the attic and was pooling menacingly in the room.
That's not good,
he thought. If it was getting in there, it would start finding its way in elsewhere. If it succeeded in too many places, it might tear the place apart, right on top of them.

As if the hurricane had read his mind, the entire building groaned. The amnesiac ducked, then uncovered his head.
It had held,
he sighed. But it hadn't.

If he'd still had both eyes, he might have noticed the roof beam
being battered loose by the wind as it shuddered and finally gave way. Its wild swing as it fell might have fluttered in his peripheral vision. But on that side everything was muted, like a music system with half the speakers unplugged. He saw nothing—only heard the whine of the wood as it splintered, after the jagged edge of the beam was already halfway through its downward arc. With two eyes, he would have ducked or scrambled out of the way. Instead, he turned into it, to see what the sound had been.

For an instant, there was no pain. Only a flash of white, all encompassing, the way water hits everywhere when one slaps through its surface after a dive gone bad. The amnesiac sank into the white as it curled all the way around, sinking deeper. Then there was pain.

His face was on fire. Everything was gray, then red, then dark, a kind of dark he couldn't blink away. The fire had spread into his cheek, into his eye socket, up through the fractured cracks of his brow bone. He realized he was screaming. He tried to get up—away from the fiery pain—but he couldn't understand which way was up. He pushed harder into the floor—or was it a wall? He couldn't tell if the air his hands swiped through was beside or above him. He was on stone again, he realized dimly, not flooded grass. It meant he'd been knocked several feet backward, out of the atrium and back deeper into the main hall.

“The bag,” he wailed. “Where's the bag?” The darkness deepened, boring into his brain, agony. There was nothing then, no color, no gradient of light, no registry of movement. His vision was obliterated.

More cracking threatened overhead. The roof was caving further. The amnesiac found his way to his knees and scrambled aimlessly, swinging his arms in wide circles, delirious from pain.
Where was the bag? Where was the fucking bag?
Had it stayed in the courtyard? Had it flown from his hands in the fall, even deeper into the main room? His fingers hit chunks of concrete, splintered wood, splashed into freezing puddles. “Where's the bag?” he cried again. The voice
that came out terrified him. Just beside his knee, a boom shattered the stone floor as another rafter gave way. “Gajarajan!” He flung his head back and forth, even though he couldn't see anything out of whatever was left of his remaining eye.
This is how I die,
he realized. Crumbles of cement powdered the top of his head, another beam groaned. He couldn't stop. “Gajarajan! Gajarajan!”