And sitting in a chair against the far wall, his face lit by the glow of his omnipresent Game Boy, was Little Pete.
The only sound was muddy, unintelligible conversation.
“Here it comes,” Sam said.
Suddenly a Klaxon sounded, harsh and distorted on the audio.
Everyone in the control room jumped. People rushed to the monitors, to the instrument readouts. Astrid’s father shot a worried glance at his son, but then leaned into his monitor, staring.
Other people swept into the room and moved with practiced efficiency to the untended monitors.
Panicky instructions were shouted back and forth.
A second alarm went off, more shrill than the first.
A strobe warning light was flashing.
Fear on every face.
And Little Pete was rocking frantically, his hands pressed over his ears. He had a look of pain on his innocent face.
The ten adults now in the room were a terrifying pantomime of controlled desperation. Keyboards were punched, switches thrown. Her father grabbed a thick manual and began snapping through the pages, and all the while people shouted and the alarms blared and Little Pete was screaming, screaming, hands over his ears.
“I don’t want to see this,” Astrid said, but she couldn’t look away.
Little Pete jumped to his feet.
He ran to his father, but his father, frantic, pushed him away. Little Pete went sprawling against a chair. He ended up flung against the long table, staring at a monitor that flashed, flashed, flashed a warning in bright red.
The number fourteen.
“Code one-four,” Astrid said dully. “I heard my dad say that one time. It’s the code for a core meltdown. He would make a joke out of it. Code one-one, that was minor trouble, code one-two, you worry, code one-three, you call the governor, code one-four, you pray. The next stage, code one-five, is…obliteration.”
On the tape, Little Pete pulled his hands from his ears.
The Klaxon was relentless.
There was a flash that blanked out the tape. Several seconds of static.
When the picture stabilized, the warning alarm was silent.
And Little Pete was alone.
“Astrid, you’ll notice that the time signature on the tape says November tenth, ten eighteen A.M. The exact time when every person over the age of fourteen disappeared.”
On the tape, Little Pete stopped crying.
He didn’t even look around, he just walked back to the chair where he had been sitting, retrieved his game, and resumed play.
“Little Pete caused the FAYZ,” Sam said flatly.
Astrid covered her face with her hands. She was surprised by the tears she felt rising, and their force. She struggled to keep from sobbing. It was a few minutes before she could speak. Sam waited patiently.
“He didn’t know he was doing it,” Astrid said in a low, unsteady voice. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Not the way we do. Not like, if I do ‘this,’ then ‘that’ will happen.”
“I know that.”
“You can’t blame him.” Astrid looked up, eyes blazing defiantly.
“Blame him?” Sam moved to sit beside her on the couch. Close enough that their legs were touching. “Astrid, I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, but I think you overlooked something.”
She turned her tear-stained face to him, searching.
“Astrid, they were having a meltdown. They didn’t seem to be getting it under control. They all looked pretty scared.”
Astrid gasped. Sam was right: she had missed it. “He stopped the meltdown. A meltdown might have killed everyone in Perdido Beach.”
“Yeah. I’m not crazy about the way he did it, but he may have saved everyone’s life.”
“He stopped the meltdown,” Astrid said, still not grasping it fully.
Sam grinned. He even laughed.
“What’s funny?” she demanded.
“I figured something out before Astrid the Genius. I am totally enjoying that. I’m just going to gloat here for a minute.”
“Enjoy it, it may never happen again,” Astrid said.
“Oh, believe me, I know that.” He took her hand, and she was very glad to feel his touch. “He saved us. But he also created this whole weird thing.”
“Not the whole thing,” Astrid said, shaking her head. “The mutations prefigure the FAYZ. Indeed, the mutations were the sine qua non of the FAYZ. The thing without which the FAYZ could not have occurred.”
Sam refused to be impressed. “You can hammer me all you want with your ‘indeeds’ and your ‘prefigures’ and your ‘sine qua nons,’ I am still gloating here.”
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed his fingers.
Then she released him, stood up, paced across the room and back, stopped, and said, “Diana. She talks about it being like cell phone bars. Two bars, three bars. Caine is a four bar. You are, too, I would guess. Petey…I guess he’s a five or a seven.”
“Or a ten,” Sam agreed.
“But Diana thinks it’s like reception. Like some of us can get better reception. If that’s true, then we aren’t generating the power, just using it, focusing it.”
“So?”
“So where’s it coming from? To extend the analogy: Where’s the cell phone tower? What is generating the power?”
Sam rose with a sigh. “One thing for sure: This never gets out. Edilio knows, I know, and you know. No one else can ever know.”