The Fold: A Novel Part 22

Arthur set his cane back down on the floor. "What are you implying?"

"I'm not implying anything," said Mike. "I'm asking a question. You introduced a new element and something went wrong. I'm wondering if there's a connection."

"We didn't introduce anything," said Jamie. She reached across the desk and picked up the flash drive. "I haven't even plugged it in yet."

She and Arthur shot dark looks at Mike.

"So what's on it?" he asked.

"Suggestions for an algorithm update," Arthur said.

"What kind of update?"

"I'm afraid that falls under things we don't have to share with you."

"And it's moot," said Jamie, waving the drive, "because I never did anything with them." She tossed it back onto the desk. It clattered against some equipment and fell to the floor. She didn't move to pick it up.

Arthur tapped his fingers on the head of his cane. "Did you need anything else, Mike?"

Jamie looked back and forth between them.

He let a few moments of his own pa.s.s. "Yeah," he said. "I was wondering if either of you took anything from the main floor."

Her eyes focused on him. "What do you mean?"

"After Bob...after he came through the Door, did either of you pick up anything?"

Arthur peered over his gla.s.ses. "Like what?"

"The baseball."

Jamie blinked. "The baseball?"

"The one Bob and I were tossing back and forth."

"Yeah, I figured that's the one," said Jamie. "What about it?"

"It's gone. Vanished."

Arthur frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Neil or Sasha probably picked it up," said Jamie. She turned back to her screens and the text scrolled. "They probably don't even remember doing it."

"I asked," said Mike. "Unless they picked it up and put it somewhere else altogether, it's not down there."

"You were right there," said Arthur. "Didn't you see where it went?"

"I wasn't looking when he stepped through."

Another moment pa.s.sed.

"So?" asked Jamie.

"So," said Mike, "maybe it's a clue. Maybe if we can find it, it'll help us figure out what happened."

Arthur hooked his hands in his pockets again. "We already have a lot to do, Mike," he said. "We're stripping the Door down to the wires and going over every line of code."

"It'll just take a minute to look at the video, though."

The older man cleared his throat. "We don't have the time."

"You don't have the time to find out what went wrong?"

"We have an established method for hunting down problems. I'll consider your idea and add it to the schedule."

"So just let me look at the video. I won't get in the way."

"I'd rather you not look at something that may give away insights into the workings of the Albuquerque Door."

"Are you serious?"

"Of course. That's one of the conditions of your being here."

"I was standing right there watching it," Mike said, gesturing down at the main floor, "but you won't let me watch the recordings?"

Arthur said nothing.

"It'd go ten times faster if you let me help."

Jamie stabbed at her keyboard and stopped the scroll again. She glared at Mike. "You think you can go through this faster than me?"

"I didn't mean it like that," he said. "I just meant-"

"No, please," she said. She rolled her chair back a foot and opened a path to the monitors. "Tell me what I'm missing. Tell me how I screwed this up."

"No one thinks you screwed up," said Arthur.

"If he can do it so much faster, let him," she said. "I'm halfway through, but G.o.d knows I don't want to be doing this right now."

Mike waited a moment, then stepped forward and bent to the screens. He set one hand on the back of Jamie's chair. His fingertips brushed her shoulder and he felt her tense up.

Jamie twisted out of the chair and sucked a breath between her teeth. Her eyes flashed as she spat the air back at him. "Don't!"

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to-"

"Don't you f.u.c.kING TOUCH ME!" she roared, stalking past him and out of the control room.

The room settled and Arthur cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about that," he said. "I don't think Jamie's personal s.p.a.ce issues have come up before, have they?"

TWENTY-THREE.

The bartender, a thick-armed woman with a dyed-black topknot and red lips, glanced up as light from the parking lot followed Mike inside. As promised, the place was narrow, with the actual bar itself running half the length. The stools were free standing, not bolted to the floor, and some of them formed small cl.u.s.ters and knots. A pool table and jukebox filled the back third, and a dart board was set up where it would be far too dangerous to use.

Two men watched ESPN with the volume at a murmur. An older woman drank at the bar with one hand up, holding the memory of a cigarette. A man in a business suit studied a whiskey. Jamie sat at the far end of the bar nursing a beer. Mike hesitated, three steps into the bar, still close to the door. Then she held up the beer bottle and gestured him closer with it.

He walked over but didn't sit down. "How goes it?"

"Carly," she called to the bartender, "give the government jerk a drink. On me."

"You're too kind," he said.

"It's a bar," said Jamie. "People come here to drink, not to talk."

"What'll it be?" asked Carly.

"Rum and c.o.ke." He sat down next to Jamie. The stools had a good distance between them. "Can we talk at all," he asked, "or do I have to have a drink in my hand?"

She killed her beer and let the bottle clunk on the bar. "Will the drink make you more bearable?"

"The first one won't, but probably the second one."

"Well," she said, "that answers that, then."

The topknotted bartender set down a large gla.s.s for Mike and another bottle for Jamie. She lifted the beer and held it out without looking at him. He tapped his drink against hers. She took three long swallows before setting the bottle back on the bar.

"Thanks for telling me about the wireless yesterday," she said. "Stupid mistake. I should've done that a year ago."

He pulled the straw out of his drink and had a sip. "You're welcome."

"Why'd you tell me?"

He shrugged. "Just the decent thing to do."

Jamie coughed and took another hit off the bottle. She set it down. "His girlfriend called this afternoon, looking for him. No one had told her. Anne had to break the news."

Mike decided to have another sip of his drink rather than say anything.

"I finished going through all the code," she said, "and I've run fourteen different simulations. It couldn't've happened. The accident."

"It did."

She shook her head. "Not because of me."

He waited a few moments to see if she had more to say. "You're sure?"

"Positive. Numbers don't lie, and nothing was wrong with the numbers. If something went wrong, then it's been going wrong every single time we've used the Door and n.o.body ever noticed anything."

"Or something else failed somewhere in the calculations," said Mike. "One of the science teachers at my school told me that on every test she usually has one or two kids who get an equation wrong but still get all the math right."

"You think we've had the equations wrong all this time?"

Mike shrugged and had another drink.

She snorted. "There's nothing wrong. Besides, the Door's always worked."

"Except when you tried to put it on a timer."

"Yeah, whatever. Don't nitpick. It works. The equations work. The math works. The Door opens. We go through it. It has to be something that went wrong with the hardware."

"And Neil and Sasha say it's not the hardware. So there has to be something else."

She made a rude noise and drank half the remaining beer.

"Have you considered it might be something c.u.mulative?"

"You better finish that," she said to Mike, waving to the bartender. "You're going to have another one in a minute."

"You always drink this much?"

"Only when people I know die in front of me." She finished the bottle and set it down on the counter.

He gave a slow nod and took another drink. "That's kind of impressive."

"What is?"

"Going through all the code already."

"Y'know, for a supposedly decent guy, you're kind of a cold b.a.s.t.a.r.d, aren't you?"

"Me?"

"Bob's been dead a day and a half, and you're still talking about work."

Mike downed the last of his drink in one swallow. "I don't have anything to say."

"That's what I mean," she said. "Cold b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Carly set down another gla.s.s and another bottle. She looked at Mike, then Jamie. "He still on your tab?"