"Rosa," Marjory said, "it's Robert--"
Cassie watched her. She, Marjory, John, Trey, and Elena were in a sage-green waiting room outside the operating theaters of Marquette General Hospital. Cassie sat numbly next to Elena and Trey on a brown cloth-covered sofa. Her sternum was shaking, as though her heart were trying to knock its way out of her chest.
"Robert's a tough little bastard," Elena said quietly. She squeezed Cassie's hand. "You know that, don't you?"
"Yes." Cassie turned to her, tried to smile. "I know." She looked back toward Marjory and John and the viewscreen in the call center. Trey, realizing he had a call of his own to make, got up, politely excused himself to Cassie and Elena, and stepped out into the hallway.
The room was set for nightside lighting. The overheads were off; round-based end-table lamps provided illumination at levels meant to promote either calm or sleep. From boxes placed for the sake of polite convenience, tissues opened white wings to the dim light. They had the room to themselves. John, upon entering, had reached up and switched off the flatpanel vid unit hanging on the wall near the door: a need for quiet, a contempt for the hyper scroll of the news, a desire to avoid, perhaps, just for now, what that news would show regarding his son. He seated himself now next to Marjory at the vid-call terminal across the waiting room from Cassie's brown-cloth sofa, and forty-five seconds later Rosa Fischer was in view on the screen, and Marjory was justifying the fear that Rosa had betrayed when she saw her parents' expressions.
In Rosa's thin face, in the space of those three words, Cassie saw everything. Felt everything. The icewater shock, the tremulous sudden choke of grief. She felt tears fill her eyes as they filled Capa's sister's kind brown eyes those thousands of miles away, where Rosa sat before a vidscreen in Sydney, Australia.
Rosa asked: "Is he alive?"
"Yes," Marge said. Beside her, John was very quiet. His face was pale and delicate in its control. "He was mugged outside the reception at Conklin Hall, at the U. He was stabbed."
"How--" For a moment, Rosa's face twisted; her jaw shook-- "Is he going to be okay, Mom--?"
Cassie pressed her hand over her own mouth to stifle a sob. Marjory glanced her way, then said gently and firmly to her daughter: "The blade perforated his femoral artery. He lost a great deal of blood. But Cassie and Trey-- Trey was at the opening, Rosie; he showed up with Elena Wagner-- he and Cassie helped keep Robert stable before the medics came, and he stayed conscious all the way here. That's important, Rosa; that was good. We're at Marquette General. Robert is in surgery now. The best vascular team in the region is working on him."
How much Rosa could look like her brother, Cassie realized, when her face went thoughtful, cool, ever-so-quietly grim: "Do they know who did it...?"
"The police are at the scene," Marge said. "They'll be sending someone here to talk to Cassie--"
"Was she with him--?" Fresh shock widened Rosa's eyes. "Mom, is she alright--?"
"She was with him, but they were a distance apart when it happened. It was dark, and she didn't get a clear look." Marjory's hand reached for her daughter's image. Her fingertips brushed the air above Rosa's left cheek, closed slowly around the nothing they felt, and lowered themselves to the table before the viewer. "She's shaken up, but she's okay. Do you want to talk to her, Rosie...?"
It wasn't out of coldness or lack of caring, Cassie knew, as she watched Rosa shake her head: no. Though she and her brother bore little physical resemblance to one another-- Rosa had her mother's coloring and her mother's mother's face, or so the story went-- they shared with regard to emotions a deep caution. Once given, though, their love and friendship was lasting and absolute, as was their regard for the feelings of those they loved. No doubt Rosa was thinking that Cassie had tears and worries enough of her own without her sister-in-law breaking down in front of her on a video screen.
"No, Mom. Give her my love, though, yeah--?" She was beginning to struggle, Rosa was. Tears shone in her hazel eyes. "Keep me posted, okay--?"
"Of course, honey."
"We love you, Rose," John said to his daughter.
"Love you, too, Dad. Mom."
Rosa gave them a brave smile. Then she leaned forward, her hand going to the edge of the image frame, and the screen went blank.
"No fuckin' respect for the dead," Loinnir Whitby told her pillow as she reached for the phone. It was her unit, not the house extension, and it was beeping on the nightstand next to her bed. "Whitby. Speak."
It was Trey. Calling from a town in Michigan some six thousand miles away. Whitby listened, and her first irritation at being woken at four a.m., rather than at the six a.m. she'd planned, debristled and died. What replaced it was a sick feeling, a sinking one. She listened to Trey so quietly that he asked: Loinnir, are you still there?
"I'm still here, Trey," Whitby said. The words felt like stones in her mouth.
Beside her, Mace was stirring. He was a light sleeper, if an efficient one, and his body was tuned to the moods of hers. He waited until she ended the call.
"Who was that?"
"Trey." Whitby numbly set the receiver back in its cradle on the nightstand. She turned to look at Mace. "Robert's been stabbed," she said. "Trey says it's bad. Serious-bad. He could be dying, Stephen."
"Was Cassie with him?"
"Yes. She's alright; she wasn't hurt. They were out for a breath of air at this new building he was opening, and a fellow walked up and stabbed him and ran off. Just that quick." She could see the relief in his face at knowing that Cassie had gone unharmed; she could see, too, how he was trying to hide that relief from her. Before she could feel an abyss opening between them, Whitby caught Mace roughly but gently by the back of the head, tipped her forehead to his, nuzzled him. To her infinite relief, he relaxed slightly, nuzzled her back. "Who owes you favors on the airfield? I've got Danny Eillien; he could have us in a StratosHopper in forty-five minutes."
"One of the new BRMCs?" Mace was already easing clear, getting up, getting dressed. "Christ, Loinnir, what'd you do to deserve that--?"
"I clocked those extra practice hours with him when he couldn't get his head around that Xeno maneuvers package three months back." Whitby pulled a sweater over her head, tugged her hair free of the collar. "What'd you think I did--?"
Mace shrugged frankly. "Blowjob," he said.
"Is that all it takes...?" Whitby again had the phone to her ear, was waiting for the beeps to conjure Danny Eillien from his bed. "Might be one of your talents, Stephen, and I'm sure Danny'd appreciate it from you more'n from me, but I prefer-- Danny? Whitby here. I need a plane."
Just after they had arrived at Marquette General, just after Capa had been taken into surgery, once the double doors to the hall leading to the operating rooms had swung slowly back together in the motorized whine of their shutting, parting the fallen sunmaker from his wife and his mother, Marjory had steered Cassie into a restroom, stood her before a basin, and gently washed her daughter-in-law's hands and hers. Tendrils of Capa's blood swirled in the warm water in the sink, slipped away down the drain. Cassie thought of his eyes not quite knowing her. She thought of it, and she looked in the mirror at the careful, calm tenderness in Marge's face, and she bit her lip. Marge dried their shaking hands with soft paper towels, and they went back out into the hallway and to the waiting room outside the surgery, where John and Trey and Elena would be joining them.
That had been an hour ago. A minute ago, John and Marjory had been speaking with Rosa. Three hours ago, more or less, Capa had smiled at Cassie as she tugged his tie straight. She could still feel his blood on her hands.
"Charlie--" she said, suddenly, to the clock on the wall.
Marge looked over, ushered Cassie to the call center as John relinquished his seat for her. Trey came back in a moment later.
"Cassie, I've been trying to reach you--"
"Mom--"
Elaine Cassidy's face was a portrait of sorrow and worry. "It's been on the news. Cass, they're saying he's-- that he's going to--"
"He's in the operating room now, Mom. They're still working on him." A solicitous gathering of very quiet sobs seemed to crowd in behind Cassie's vocal cords. She spoke around them carefully. "He was still conscious when they brought him in. Marge says that's good. That's a good sign."
What she didn't say was how near he'd been to not knowing her. The most terrible despair she'd ever known: when his grip on her hand began to loosen (almost imperceptibly, but she could feel it) as they approached the steel-and-rubber-bumpered doors of the surgery area.
Since he'd come back from his mission to the sun, she'd never felt apart from him. She might fly to the moon; he might fly to London or Moscow or Sydney; they might fight; they might have their separate days, when their schedules or moods didn't mesh. But she'd always felt a connection between them--
-- and in the clean pale hall leading to the surgery, amid the bump of bodies, the medics and nurses, she'd felt him slipping away. A distance, uncrossable, opening between her and Capa--
"See you soon, sweetie," she said, quickly, keeping her eyes on his. "I love you."
Capa smiled up at her, wearily, and she knew: he didn't quite recognize her. His face for a second was troubled, and Cassie's heart caught in her throat--
No--
-- and then the doors were opening, and his gurney was swept through them, and he was gone.
Now Elaine looked at her for a long, silent moment. "Margie should know." She smiled for her daughter, bravely and sensibly, then asked: "Do you want me there, Cass? I can be on the next flight--"
"No. No, Mom, it's okay. The weather's awful. John says they'll be closing the airport. Stay where you are." She hesitated-- "Does Charlie know?"
"No. He had a big day today. Sea World, Cass-- remember? He was practically asleep when Jen brought him home." Elaine's face brightened slightly. "He wanted me to be sure to tell you, though: he held a 'squisher' today. Whatever that is."
Cassie heard herself chuckle. "A sea cucumber, Mom. You know. They keep them in the petting pools."
"Ahh-- right."
"He and his daddy are a little more keen about playing with two-pound blobs of cold phlegm than Momma is."
"I see." Elaine studied her daughter's face, seemed to find what she saw acceptable-- "You'll keep me updated, Cassandra, right?"
Cassie nodded.
"He'll be in my prayers," her mother added. "You both will. Even if Robert might not appreciate it."
"He'd appreciate it. Of course he would, Mom."
Mother Cassidy smiled gently. "Get some rest, Cassandra." The same subconscious gesture Marjory had made when she spoke to Rosa: Elaine reached out now to touch her daughter's image, and Cassie saw the barest flicker of sadness in her mother's face as Elaine, quietly catching herself, lowered her hand again. "Call me when you know more."
"I will, Mom. I love you. Good night."
"I love you, too, Cassie. Good bye."
Cassie kept her eyes on her mother as Elaine leaned forward to terminate the call. Then she sat for a moment longer looking at the ghosts of images on the blank screen.
The byproducts of waiting: tension, frustration, a settling silence. Marjory stepped out to the center desk in the emergency reception area and spoke with the head nurse on duty. They knew one another. "Nothing yet, Marge: I'm sorry," Cassie heard, and after that, as Anne, the nurse, and Marjory lowered their voices, less in the way of words and more in the way of elemental tones and sympathy. Marge came back into the waiting room a minute later; she spoke quietly with John, who got up and politely invited Elena to join him in a raid on the cafeteria, which was open for the hospital's night-shift workers. Cassie was sitting with Trey, who had turned on the television. A moment's look at the news-- TRAGEDY IN MICHIGAN, the bottom scroll cried, while the visuals switched between the scene outside Conklin to people gathering outside the doors of Marquette General to, finally, footage of Capa speaking earlier that night. A stock photo of him, then, the face of Project Icarus, Robert Charles Capa, the man who had saved the world, handsome and delicate and earnest, his eyes clear and far-seeing and intense.
"Did he ever tell you, Cassie," Trey said, looking up at the screen, "how much he hates that fucking picture? Says it makes him look like a fruit. Told him I have to admit I agree."
Despite herself, Cassie laughed. "Yes, he's told me."
Trey smiled, then changed the channel. They were in neutral territory, not quite watching a program on armadillos on a nature channel, when John and Elena returned. John carried a tray. Soup in lidded paper bowls, creamy tomato or chicken noodle; chunks of bread wrapped in wax paper; water and cartons of milk. None of them wanted to admit how hungry they were, but they'd all gone without dinner, and all of them but Cassie were nursing alcohol on tension and otherwise empty stomachs.
John saw Cassie not reaching for a cup of soup. "Eat something, my dear," he said, looking at her with Capa's tenderness in his too-blue eyes. "Then get some sleep."
To that end, Elena placed a folded blanket next to Cassie on the sofa. She'd brought a pair of soft knit booties, too, with rubberized traction skids on the soles.
"Your feet must be killing you," she said, with her filter-free frankness, as she set the booties on the folded blanket. "I know mine are."
They ate, and again grew quiet. Cassie took John's advice and Elena's blanket. She rinsed her teeth with a last swallow of water and curled herself on the sofa and closed her eyes. She'd never sleep, she knew, but she owed it to the concern of those around her to make a show of trying. And she wanted to close her eyes, just for a moment, to the waiting, the awful stillness of it. Just for a moment.
She woke. She opened her eyes. The television was still on, but the others had gone. John and Marjory, Elena and Trey: they weren't in the room.
But she wasn't alone. Her head was resting against something. Warm cloth, over flesh. A thigh. She looked up--
Capa was looking down at her. He was sitting next to her on the sofa. He was still wearing his dress shirt, his tie, his dark suit jacket. There wasn't a drop of blood on him. He smiled; his fingers gently brushed Cassie's cheek.
"It doesn't hurt any more, baby," he said tenderly.
"Robert--"
Cassie sat up. Sat up too quickly: in panic and shock she swayed for a moment while the room blurred before her eyes. She was alone on the sofa. Trey sat across from her, badly folded into one of the room's practical, squared stuffed chairs and snoring from behind twitching eyelids. According to the clock, an hour and a half had passed since Cassie closed her eyes.
She focused, stood. Her heart pounded with unreality and dread. She padded to the doorway in the skid-soled booties Elena had brought for her and looked out, toward the nurses' station.
John and Marge and Elena were there, talking to two men in dark coats. One of them was tall, dark-haired, moderately heavyset. The other was about Capa's height and build, with reddish-brown hair and a homely, expressive face. He turned her way as the others did, as Cassie approached.
"Mrs. Capa--?" he asked, politely.
Cassie for a moment ignored him. She looked at Marjory: "Is there any word--?"
"They've got the artery sealed. Dr. Smith was here, honey; you just missed him. Now they're working on the damage to the surrounding blood vessels." Marge took Cassie's hand, squeezed it. "Circulation to the leg looks good, and they don't think he suffered a stroke at any point. There's still plenty to be done, but he's strong, Cassie. He's doing alright."
For the second time since Capa had been stabbed, the first having come the moment she saw the steam rising from his blood as it spilled out onto the snow, Cassie thought she might pass out. John saw with a gentleman's instinct her sudden unsteadiness and put his arm around Cassie's waist. The smaller of the two dark-coated men watched her closely, his face neutral.
"Perhaps we should come back later--" he said, uncritically.
"No," Cassie said. She felt suspicion in the taller man's gaze; she looked from him to the smaller man and said: "You're the police, aren't you?"
"Yes, ma'am. Detective Joshua Wilhelm." He offered Cassie his hand, nodded toward his partner. "Detective Craig Mann. May we have a word with you, Mrs. Capa?"
"Of course." Cassie gently eased clear of John. A consulting room near the nurses' station was open; Wilhelm ushered her inside. Detective Mann followed, closed the door.
The room held a small desk, three chairs. Wilhelm politely gestured; Cassie just as politely shook her head, remained standing.
"I need to ask--" Detective Wilhelm said, then, his voice apologetic-- "-- Mrs. Capa, did you stab your husband?"
There was shock, but it wasn't staggering. Cassie replied, with an officer's calm: "No, Detective, I did not."
Wilhelm didn't quite smile, but his face relaxed. His eyes were oak-brown, twinkling, honest. He sat at the desk and gestured again, at the two remaining chairs. Cassie now sat down. Detective Mann remained standing, but he moved himself so as not to tower over her. He moved, too, she noted, where he could watch her face more easily, though his expression bore nothing in the way of open skepticism. He seemed to trust his partner's initial assessment of the woman in their midst. He leaned slightly against the wall as Wilhelm continued:
"I ask only because as of now we have no one in custody and no witnesses other than yourself, and the snow is making analysis of the crime scene difficult. The trampling, too: footprints everywhere, and more than one set with blood on them. You do understand."
"Yes."
"Could you tell us what happened?"
Cassie told; they listened. She'd taken advantage of Capa, she said; at the bemused furrowing of Detective Wilhelm's homely forehead, she explained how she'd played her pregnancy against Capa's old-fashioned manners, there in the pelting snow, and made him flee: a one-sided snowball fight, with her winning and her husband running. And then the man in the long coat had approached Capa on the sidewalk, forty feet away, maybe fifty, from where Cassie was standing--
"Did you recognize him, Mrs. Capa?"
"No. It was dark; they were too far away--" She paused, remembering the jerk of the stranger's shoulders as he heard her cry Capa's name, how he raised his head and looked at her, faceless, from the shadows beyond the streetlamps. Something, though: something in how he moved-- "I couldn't see his face," she said, frowning.
She told them what she could, though: the stranger was male, and tall; his coat, though, was long, and it hid his build. He was a tenor, and his voice was that of a young man. No discernible accent. He hit Capa only once, hard. He was in shape: he was a fast runner. And he knew how to run on snow.
"He headed back toward the campus," Detective Mann said. "Either he had a car parked, or--"
"The residence halls," Wilhelm finished. "He could be a student. One shot, and he knew where to place it." He looked at Cassie. "You say your husband didn't realize immediately that he was hurt?"
"No. He--" She had to stop for a moment. It was happening that way for her: one moment she would be a professional among professionals, a pilot speaking to two police officers, and then the front would fall away and the nerves behind would find themselves exposed and her eyes would fill with tears. Detective Wilhelm seemed to understand. There was a box of tissues on the desk; he nudged it her way. Cassie took one, wiped her eyes. "He thought he'd been punched; he realized his wallet was gone; he went to run after him. He took maybe half a dozen steps. He was angry, but he seemed fine. And then he--"
"Didn't even realize he was stabbed," Wilhelm said softly. "Very fine-bladed weapon, I'm thinking. His attacker knew what he was doing."
"No surprise there," Mann said. "Half the kids around here grow up with a skinning knife in one hand and a filleting knife in the other."
"But that's it, Craig: don't you see? Local, young, possibly a student at the U. Somewhere to start."
They left her shortly after that, bound again for the scene outside Conklin. No word as yet on whether anyone had found Cassie's phone, let alone whether it had recorded anything of importance regarding the attack. Both men looked tired as they thanked her for her time and left her with their contact cards; Cassie herself was feeling exhausted. It was nearly one a.m.
She detoured to the washrooms before she returned to the waiting room. When she was nearly back, a woman's voice behind her called: "Mrs. Capa--?"
Cassie turned, thinking that, possibly, Wilhelm or Mann had sent a message after her. If the news involved Capa, she felt certain, Marjory or John would be the one to bring it. "Yes?"
The woman was a young mid-fortyish, short and a bit stocky and carefully groomed. She wore khaki slacks and a white doctor's coat over a pale blue button-down shirt. Cassie couldn't quite read the name on the tag pinned to the left of the woman's left-side lapel.
"I'm Susan Mackenzie. I'm with the associated medical resources department here at Marquette." She shook Cassie's hand while Cassie's tired brain was still processing her initial words. "May I speak to you?"
"Sure--"
Back into the consulting room she went, this time with Susan Mackenzie behind her. Cassie watched as the woman took from a portfolio papers, a datapad, and a stylus and laid them on the desk.
"I know this is a very stressful time for you, Mrs. Capa--"
"What is this about--?" Cassie asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.
"Your husband isn't registered as a donor."
For a second the air around her went black. She couldn't breathe. Cassie gripped the edge of the desk while her world fell away. It wouldn't happen like this, she thought. Marge would be here. Marge would be the one to tell me if--
"Robert isn't dead," she heard herself say, as if the words would make it so. "My husband isn't dead," she said, more clearly, directly to Miss Mackenzie.
"Of course he isn't, Mrs. Capa. The surgery team has expressed confidence in his complete recovery." There was something sickening about Susan Mackenzie, something artificially soothing and smooth and absolutely fake. Something avaricious in the set of her pale green eyes. "I am required, however, under hospital policy-- under present law, in fact-- to remind you of the current pressing need in our country for donated tissue and organs. Our records show that Dr. Capa is not registered as a donor."
"No, he isn't." Cassie straightened away from the table. "He thought it seemed redundant."
Susan Mackenzie blinked. "Pardon me?"
"Redundant. My husband is a scientist; he doesn't approve of unnecessarily replicated effort." Cassie spoke coldly. She felt as though her heart had stopped beating. "He's already saved your life, and my life, and the life of everyone else on this planet. What more do you want from him--?"
The answer, of course, was obvious: his liver, his kidneys and lungs and heart, his corneas and marrow. Cassie walked out of the consulting room before she found herself throwing up or crying or hitting Susan Mackenzie; she went past the nurses' station and the waiting room, too, blindly and breathlessly and not realizing; she went down a hall she wouldn't have recognized, had she been thinking enough to know, and she pushed her way through a set of double doors--
And the flashes went off.
Between the flight and the drive from the airport in Sault Ste. Marie, both a fool's take on "headlong," given the damnable weather, Whitby was riding enough adrenaline to know how the lightning felt, or to feel how it felt to be the god who chucked the white-hot bolts, and still it came as a shock, after she and Mace had flashed their Project Icarus idents at the parting sea of security, to sweep into the lobby of Marquette General Hospital, trailing slush and snow and traces of the ruckus outside, and find Cassandra Cassidy there, surrounded by a jackal-pack of reporters. She was an intelligent, competent woman, Cassie was, and a good pilot, but now, amid the bristling of cameras and microphones and mini-recorders, she looked absolutely lost. Whitby waded in with Mace at her side, and both he and she elbowed and shoved with open impunity and effective rudeness until they and Cassie were face-to-face. Amazement lit the tears in Cassie's dark eyes when she saw them. Whitby caught her gently but firmly by the shoulders and steered her toward the hospital interior. Mace got himself between them and the reporters, and Whitby, moving quickly with Cassie now beside her, smirked as she heard him speak--
"Hey, guys, how's it going? Slow day in the news, huh? Man, that looks like an expensive camera-- oops. Shit. Oh, man. Got a fake eye, and my depth perception's all fucked up..."
Then they were away down a corridor quieter and dimmer, where the men and women were wearing nurse's garb or doctor's coats, and Whitby slowed and then stopped and turned, and Cassie as much as fell into her arms. The girl wasn't crying, but she was obviously badly shaken, and Whitby just held her and rocked her gently and let her settle.
"How are you, Cass?"
"Fine," and it was only half a lie, by the sound of it. Two thirds, maybe. Her grip on Whitby didn't loosen, though. Mrs. Capa had had enough for the day and then some, by the feel of her.
"How's Robert?"
"He's still in surgery." Cassie relaxed slightly. "They've got the artery repaired; now they're working on the blood vessels--" She stopped; she drew back and looked at Whitby, frowning, incredulous. "What are you doing here, Loinnir...?"
"Blame Trey. He called; we came."
"But the airport is closed. How--"
"Flew in on wings and a bet," said Mace, smiling as he walked up. He'd shaken off the baying pack. Whitby passed him Cassie, and he hugged the younger woman close.
"He bet me we wouldn't get here in one piece," Whitby said. "I bet him we would."
"I think you have it backwards, baby," Mace countered.
"And I think you owe me."
"A kick in the backside, maybe. Who taught you to fly, anyway--?" He grinned, still as high as Whitby was on adrenaline, and squeezed Cassie. He gave her a moment longer. He gave himself a moment longer, too, to hold her and calm the flyboy high from his expression and voice. Then he loosed her a bit in his arms and asked her, gently, to her face: "How is he, Cass? How are you?"
"He's--"
"Cassie, there you--" Marjory Capa, rounding the corner, stopped in mid-phrase and in mid-interruption as well. Stopped dead and stared at Mace and Whitby as though they were ghosts or green-skinned aliens.
"Hello, Marge," said Whitby-- and found herself engulfed a second later in another hug.
"Thank God you're here," she heard Marjory whisper.
From a fog of intoxication and sex, the Luna allowed Paul one moment of common sense: Take your Slammer. He left Beth dozing in her share of a post-orgasmic haze and padded out to the kitchen, where he ran from the tap a glassful of water and found in the cupboard to the left of the stove the pills that would keep his hangover from killing him in the morning. He took two of the red tablets and drank the water and felt himself swaying with the sloshing of the liquid as it descended to his belly, and then he took two more pills from the bottle, these two for Beth, and re-filled the glass. As he leaned to turn off the tap, his hand swung low and brushed on the countertop the foil packet that had contained the Luna.
It still did. Paul from his stoned distance frowned down at the two tiny blue squares the packet contained. He'd taken his hits. He'd laughed, watching Beth take hers. Then--
"Paul, is that you?"
Mike's voice, coming from the common area. Calling quietly over a hum of background voices. Pills and glass in hand, Paul padded to the kitchen doorway and looked out. Mike was sprawled like a boneless cat on the sofa. The news was playing on the three-dee, the same picture on all three screens. Snow. People in jackets, huddled in groups. Cars passing, snowflakes flashing in headlights. A multi-story building, its windows casting their glow into the snow-filled air--
-- Hospital, where, despite the weather, well-wishers are gathering to await word on the condition of the man known to the world as "The Sun-Maker," Robert Capa, who is in surgery following--
Paul stared. He tried to focus harder on the words and images, but the Luna was still in his head, and it was telling him-- or maybe he was telling himself-- No no no no--
Then she was on the screens. Cassie. Caught at the center of a thorny thicket of cameras and microphones, her face frightened and lost--
-- His wife, Cassandra, refused to comment on his condition. When asked if Professor Capa was going to--
A woman and a man, she longboned and coldly beautiful and ash-blonde, he tall and handsome and broad through the chest and shoulders, both of them in dark blue jackets bearing insignias Paul's Luna-soaked brain had no chance of identifying, waded in to the pack of reporters openly swinging elbows and fists. They made their way to Cassie. The woman got her clear of the crowd while the man turned to Paul on the screen and grinned below cold eyes while his hand reached out and the image up-ended--
-- -by and Stephen Mace, crewmates of Robert Capa on the successful second mission of Project Icarus, also refused to offer any insight into--
Paul dropped the glass. It didn't shatter; it was made of plastic. Glass glasses were too great a risk in the House of Beth and Mike. Paul flinched as water splattered his bare feet and ankles.
"Aw, look what you've done," Mike said. He was still looking at the three-dee when he said it. He rolled himself up off of the couch and smiled forgivingly at Paul. He went past him into the kitchen and tore himself a bundle of paper towels from the roll. Then he knelt good-naturedly at Paul's feet, sopped up the spilled water, picked up the glass.
Paul stood where he was, looking out into the living area. Only now he was looking at a spot in front of the three-dee. The Luna dropped into his mind a thought of bat's wings. Photos.
An image on the three-dee: A man's face, young and handsome. Pale blue eyes, wide-set, intense--
-- Robert Capa, the genius behind the second mission of Project Icarus, who on Friday night was brutally attacked outside--
"Where's the wallet, Mike?"
"The-- oh." Mike scooped up the sopping paper towels, squeezed them out in the sink, dropped the compressed white mass into the cycler bin. "I put it back in your coat pocket."
"Why--" The Luna broke Paul's chain of thought before the word could become a question. Again he frowned. "How many hits of Luna did you buy, Mike?"
"Six. Why?"
"There's--" Paul realized he couldn't remember. Or he couldn't count. "They're not all--"
Mike ran another glass of water and put the glass in Paul's hand. "We'll discuss it in the morning, okay? You get Beth her Slammer." He grinned at Paul. "Aren't you the chivalrous one--? Always thinking of our girl."
He turned Paul back toward the bedrooms, sent him off with a gentle push. Paul went back to bed.
Marjory's thanks hadn't arisen from tragedy, or from a tragedy greater than the one at hand when Whitby and Mace had left Scotland. Capa was still in surgery-- he would remain thus for just over another hour-- but he was nearer to life than he'd been when he was brought in. His mother's gratitude, Whitby realized, as she and Mace sat with cups of coffee and rolls purloined from the hospital's commissary among those in the pale-walled waiting room, was purely talismanic. Very simply, pragmatic and tough though Marjory Capa might be, she had a mother's heart beating in her chest: Loinnir Whitby had brought her son back to her once, and Whitby's presence in the here and now meant that her son would come back to her again. Whitby didn't mind the responsibility of it, or the potential tragedy or disappointment in it. Let Marge believe in something if she wanted to, after what had to have been a most shocking and horrible day.
John Capa she was worried about. Mace was sticking with Cassie, and Whitby felt a chill within herself, a quiet tracing of despair, at the attention he was showing the girl he might have lost to Capa, but she could shrug that away for less-petty concerns, less-selfish, later worryings. No: John was the one to watch. She saw him losing himself in himself as she'd known Capa to do, shutting himself down outwardly until he'd as much as turned himself off to the world. So she stuck with him, kept him talking quietly to her and Marjory, until the doctor came, the fella who'd done most of the night's work on John and Marge's boy, fresh out of his bloody scrubs, his arms and hands still raw from scouring, and told them that Capa was out of surgery and alive and still unconscious, all three. They were moving him to a recovery room off the emergency area.
Marjory and John spoke their thanks to the man, as did Cassie, a grateful smile lifting the weariness and worry on her sweet face.
Only after Dr. Smith had left the room did John react. As people rose stiffly from too-long-sat-in seats, as Trey and Elena Wagner announced, with tired reluctance, that they were returning to their hotel but that they'd be back on hand in the morning, he stayed where he was. Mace stood as Cassie did, then turned to Whitby with a gentle smile. She took the hand he offered and got up, smiling back at him. Then she looked again at John.
Marjory had her forehead tipped to his; she was rubbing his shoulders. "It's alright now, sweetheart," she was murmuring. "Robbie's going to be okay. He's going to be fine."
John looked at his wife with their son's clear blue eyes. He looked at her for a long, lost moment. He tried to smile. Then he buried his face in his hands and started to sob.
He was deeply unconscious, and he looked too small on the bed. Too thin and delicate and exposed. They'd slipped his wiry arms through the short loose sleeves of a hospital gown, but they hadn't covered him with a blanket. They had to be able to see the wound in his thigh, dressed though it was: his legs were bare, and he looked pale and cold.
But his skin was warm. He was alive. Cassie was leaning over Capa with her cheek resting on his forehead. Her turn, after she'd deferred her rights as wife to those of Marjory and John, to be the first to be near their still-living son. He was breathing on his own, thank God, but to Cassie's ears it sounded shallow and somehow disjointed and nothing like the breathing of his sleep.
She had just a minute, for now, and then his caregivers wanted her away. He needed his rest. She needed hers, too. She would have given her soul to curl herself next to him on the bed.
"I'll be back soon," she whispered to him. "Wait for me."
She straightened. As she did, a tear slipped from her cheek and landed on Capa's forehead. Cassie bent again, kissed away the tiny splash. She let her lips linger on his skin. Then she went to join Marjory and John, Whitby and Mace. It was two thirty in the morning. They had a snowy drive ahead of them, and she was nearly asleep on her feet.
"They'll tear this place apart," Mike said. "The whole campus."
The Saturday ten a.m. news was much the same as the Saturday one a.m. news had been. Beth, in a rare display of domesticity, had made the day's first pot of coffee. She was quietly nursing a cream-and-sugar mugfull from her vantage point in the kitchen, holding the old chipped cup close to her sweatered chest, as she and Paul and Mike watched the chaos on the three-dee. Paul held his own mug in a shaking hand, not caring that the ceramic was hot enough to burn his fingers.
How had it come to this?
It had started, he knew, not with Mike laying the packet of Luna on the kitchen counter or borrowing his coat the night before. Nor with Robert Capa's wallet falling open on the floor next to him as he and Beth watched in drugged and stupored surprise. No: Paul first knew how doomed he was when in the pale haze of morning he looked in the harsh light of the bulb above the bathroom sink and saw the blood splattered on his face.
Robert Capa's blood.
From Mike shaking out Paul's wet coat. Not just snow-water on the cloth. The rest of Capa's blood was in the closet now. It had dripped down in the night. Blackish splatters on the worn wood-slats of the closet floor.
Now Capa was still alive but comatose following night-long surgery to repair the damage caused by a stabbing wound to his right leg. According to the news, either rumor or a police tip indicated that his attacker was a student at NMU. And now they were descending on the campus: the news media, law enforcement, and, in defiance of the weather, a blizzard that just wouldn't quit, Capa's most loyal fanatics (who, granted, were legion: he had, after all, saved the entire fucking world). One of them was on-screen, a broad-faced fifty-something man in a gray snow-flecked stocking cap, who looked in the camera with fierce blue eyes and said--
Kill the bastard. Catch him and kill him--
"What have you done, Mike?" Paul asked.
"What have I done...?" Mike got up from the couch with a bowl in his hand. He went into the kitchen. Paul heard the rattle and splatter of cereal hitting milk. "I think it's what you've done that should concern us, Pauly-boy."
Paul's stomach went hollow. He looked to Beth, but she was keeping her eyes on the three-dee and she wouldn't look back at him.
"What do you mean, Mike?" he asked. His throat closed around the words, gave them hardly any air.
"Think about it, Paul." Mike came to stand beside him. He spooned Cheerios into his mouth and chewed slowly. "Beth here was obsessed with Robert Capa. Is still obsessed, judging by the way she's watching the--"
Beth turned, looked at Mike with dead, horrified eyes. He smiled at her--
"Hey, Beth," said Mike. "Good morning." He turned his smile to Paul. "Anyway, she's obsessed with handsome, brilliant, unobtainable Robert Capa. She won't let up. She's even written a paper on him. He comes to the campus, he blows her off right in one of her own classes, in front of three dozen people, and she still won't drop it. So last night her boyfriend gets drunk and high and goes to Conklin Hall and stabs Robert Capa. That's you, Paul," he added, by way of explanation, when Paul stared at him blankly. "The drunken, high, jealous boyfriend."
"But I didn't-- I didn't do--"
"You wrote most of that paper, Mike--" Beth set down her mug before her shaking hand dropped it.
"That paper, and most or all of the four that came before," Mike said, smoothly. "Do you really want that getting out? How's your scholarship situation these days, Beth...?"
"Oh, my God--"
She came close, gripped Paul's arm. He felt her tremble against him. She was afraid. It gave him sudden, angry focus; he said to Mike: "That's it. You're insane, Mike. I'm calling the police--"
He reached for the callset on the wall to the right of the kitchen door. Mike caught his wrist.
"Not yet, Paul," he said quietly. "Hear me out."
"What--"
"It's a simple question of math." Mike's eyes were clear and calm. Infinitely reasonable. "If you turn me in, I'll take you down with me. You and Beth. We were all in on it together. What's more, you were high on an illegal substance. I wasn't. I had a bit too much wine, I had a headache, I went to bed early. Do you see where this is going, Paul...?"
"Beth and I both saw you leave."
"Or I didn't see you leave, and neither did Beth. She was passed out or high as a kite. Didn't see a thing." Mike laid his hand companionably on Paul's shoulder, moved closer. "Simple math, Paul. Turn me in, and we all suffer. Turn yourself in, and it's just you. The longer this goes on, the worse it'll become. Turn yourself in now, before the mobs turn really ugly, and the police can protect you. You save me, and, more importantly, you save Beth. Think about it."
Paul hesitated. Beth pressed closer to him, and he swore he could feel her heart pounding in time with his. He stood and stared at the infinite reason in Mike's cold eyes, and then he reached again for the callset.
This time, Mike didn't stop him.
Cassie sat next to Capa where he lay unconscious and betubed and monitored and read to him from Twain, the same Twain she'd left on the lamp table in John's library the day before (or ten days, or maybe a hundred ago. The time seemed all wrong: surely more than a day had passed between then and now.). She was rested and clean; she wore more comfortable clothing; she'd eaten. She'd spoken again to her mother, and to Charlie, too, who for now seemed content with the explanation that Daddy had hurt his leg and was taking a nap while it got better. She wasn't happy, but she was no longer immobilized by tragedy.
She'd spent the first part of this first day's visit touching him, nuzzling his face, caressing his hands. His doctors didn't know how long his coma would last, and it was important that he remain aware, however far away he might be, that the physical world was still waiting for him. Her voice was part of that world, too, so she talked to him as well. Told him about the call to Charlie, about Mace and Whitby coming to her rescue, about the still-damnable weather (the blizzard had officially become "ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, even by March standards," according to his mother, who'd regained a bit of her pluck and vinegar after a few hours' sleep, a shower, and breakfast).
Now she was reading Twain to him. He liked the rough, elegant bounce of the words, and she did, too; they both liked the man's sense of humor. She was chuckling for him over Twain's frustrated suggestion regarding the weapons to be used in a French duel-- "... brickbats at three quarters of a mile..."-- when Marjory's friend from the night before, Nurse Anne, came to the entrance of the alcove where Capa's bed was housed.
"Cassie--?" She'd been told, Anne had: no "Mrs. Capa" was necessary, definitely not for Marjory or, just as definitely, for Marge's daughter-in-law.
Cassie closed the book, looked over. "Yes?"
"We thought you should know," Anne said. She had a kind, plain face; she looked unbelieving now, relieved, a little stunned. "It was just on the news. They've got him. The boy who stabbed your husband. He turned himself in."