Three hours before the lights went out.
* * *
Aaron called us into the living room. He had been on his phone again, but he tucked it back into his pocket as we settled into chairs. Geddy left the TV on but turned down the volume so we could hear my brother’s news.
“Okay,” he said. “Mama Laura, I’m sorry, but we have to go back to Washington tonight. They’re prepping a plane at the local airport, and the very next thing I have to do is call a cab.”
“Is it as bad as that,” Mama Laura asked, “what’s happening in India?”
“No one’s sure. There’s absolutely no electronic communication of any kind coming out of the country right now. We think that’s because Chinese malware took down all the telecom infrastructure—Internet nodes, telephone exchanges, satellites, and relay stations.”
The Chinese were allied with Pakistan, and a small fleet of Chinese naval vessels had been parked in the Arabian Sea for weeks, but this was the first direct intervention by China, if that was in fact what had happened. “Most likely it’s just a smokescreen,” Aaron went on. “It’s not that the Chinese are attacking India, more like they’re drawing a curtain so Pakistan can stage an attack the rest of the world can’t see. Maybe also limiting India’s capacity to respond. We’ll know more in a few hours, if our own communications aren’t affected.”
Rebecca said, “Why would they be?”
“Part of the smokescreen. Our own military has the finest surveillance satellites in the world, but about half of them have stopped talking to us. We’ve also got unexplained power grid problems in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle. Some kind of highly engineered, cleverly targeted software virus, possibly bleeding over from the attacks on Indian infrastructure. And it might get worse before it gets better. That’s why they need me in Washington. Congress is being recalled to convene an emergency session tomorrow morning.”
Mama Laura said, “Are we in danger?”
“Nobody’s bombing us, if that’s what you mean. But an infrastructure attack is technically an act of war. Of course, the Chinese are denying responsibility. Nobody really knows where it goes from here. The situation will get better eventually, but it might get worse before it improves. Jenny, you need to pack the bags. I’ll call a taxi.”
“I’m not going,” Jenny said.
We all stared at her.
“Not an option,” Aaron said. “Travel’s going to be disrupted. That’s inevitable. If you don’t fly back with me, you might be here a lot longer than you expect.”
“All the more reason. I can’t leave my mom where she is. Sooner or later she’ll hurt herself. And … dealing with her won’t be easy, but I’m psyched up for it now. Postponing it would be hard on both of us.”
This was the moment, I thought. If Aaron suspected anything, Jenny’s reluctance to leave would confirm his suspicions.
But he didn’t so much as glance at me, and the look he gave Jenny was merely contemptuous. “Look, if that’s what you want.…”
“It’s what I want.”
“Well … I’ll miss you, of course.” This was for the benefit of the family. I gave Jenny credit for not rolling her eyes. “The rest of you, please try not to worry. This is very bad news for the folks in Mumbai, but the most it’ll mean for Americans is a few days’ inconvenience. I’ll be in touch when I can.”
“Go on up and say good-bye to your father,” Mama Laura suggested.
“Right, of course,” my brother said.
* * *
Another limousine pulled up out front and carried my brother away.
It was a clear night, moonless, cool but not cold. An hour later we could have stood in the backyard and watched his chartered plane cross the sky from the regional airport on its trajectory to DC, navigation lights strobing green and red in the darkness. Two hours later we could have stood in the same place and seen the Milky Way wheeling overhead like a scatter of diamond dust, free from any obscuring urban glare. Because that was when the lights went out.
CHAPTER 16
Growing up, I had never considered my brother Aaron to be a bad person.
A pain in the ass, sure. Often. And with an undeniable streak of cruelty. The first time I noticed that streak—the first time his meanness struck me as something characteristic about my brother, distinct from the usual schoolyard cruelties—was when I was nine years old and Aaron was a week shy of his twelfth birthday. We had been in the park adjacent to the school on a slow Saturday morning, me pitching softballs (pitching was my only athletic skill) and Aaron taking practice swings. Neither of us was likely to make the MLB draft, but I was drawing my own measure of smug satisfaction from Aaron’s inability to hit my slider.
Also enjoying Aaron’s swing-throughs was Billy-Ann Blake, ten years old, who lived three streets east of us and who was amusing herself by heckling from the otherwise empty bleachers. Billy-Ann was a tall, gawky girl whose parents let her run around in pink denim overalls. That morning, the summer sun hammering down from a silvery-blue sky, she repeated what must have been every scatological epithet she had ever overheard at the town’s Little League tournaments, which was quite a catalog. Aaron was frustrated and embarrassed, and with every taunt from Billy-Ann his complexion turned a deeper shade of red. Finally he threw down the bat (“Sore loser!” Billy-Ann shrieked) and walked off the field, tossing a terse see you later in my direction.
I gathered up glove, bat, and ball and made my own way home. Aaron showed up around lunchtime, sweaty and sullen and uncommunicative.
Not long after lunch, Billy-Ann Blake’s mom knocked at the front door. Mama Laura took her into the living room, and after a brief talk Aaron and I were called to join them. It seemed that Billy-Ann, after taunting Aaron, had been walking through one of the park’s paved trails when she was pushed from behind, fell face-first into the asphalt, and suffered a spectacularly bloody broken nose. She was at the hospital with her father now, and although she hadn’t seen who pushed her, she was certain it was Aaron Fisk.
Mama Laura asked Aaron whether this was true. Aaron gave her a somber, troubled look. “No,” he said flatly. “I mean, Billy-Ann was watching us play ball, but we came right home from the park. Somebody else must have pushed her.”
Mama Laura had spent the morning in the kitchen assembling her contribution to tomorrow’s church bake sale and she had not paid attention to our whereabouts. She returned Aaron’s stare without reaction. Then she turned to me. “Adam, is that so?”
I didn’t hesitate. I knew what was expected of me. “Yeah,” I said. “We came right back.”
Billy-Ann’s mom went away unsatisfied, and Mama Laura may have had her suspicions, but no more was said on the subject in the Fisk household. Because Aaron was gold. Firstborn son, pride of the family, star of the debating team … shitty on the baseball diamond, maybe, but a first pick for soccer and a rising star of the school’s swim team. Sure, Aaron had been angry, and yeah, he had probably shoved Billy-Ann hard enough to break her nose. But stuff like that happened. It didn’t make him a bad person, did it?
And lying to protect him: that was just family loyalty. Even if Mama Laura started looking at Aaron a little differently from then on. Even if she spared some of those same glances for me.
Jenny Symanski spent plenty of time at our house in those days, but she never seemed to buy into our idolization of Aaron. Which was good. As far as I was concerned, the best thing about Jenny was that she liked me more than she liked my brother. Which is why, years later, even after I joined Tau, even after Jenny and I broke up, I was astonished when she married him. It was flattering to think she had settled for Aaron because she couldn’t have me, but it was also possible that some kind of mutual attraction had smoldered away unacknowledged until they were in a position to act on it. And, well, why not? By that time Aaron was a college graduate, involved in the family business, and already catching the eye of the local Republican party elders; I was the standoffish art-boy geek who had traded his family for some kind of pretentious, dope-smoking social club.