The Goodbye Man

She was climbing steadily to the bluff. The steep incline didn’t slow her. Shaw followed with sufficient distance so that if he happened to step on one of the branches or crisp leaves he was trying to avoid, she probably wouldn’t hear.

Shaw himself now heard a snap; the sound was from behind him. He stopped quickly, crouched and looked back. Though the foliage was thick — sage, holly and serviceberry — it wasn’t so dense that it would obscure the pale blue tops or gray tunics of a Companion or an AU following. Still, he saw nothing. He waited a moment longer. No more noise, no motion. If anyone had been following him, he or she had vanished... or had gone silent.

Should he double back and see? No, he decided.

He glanced up the hill. Victoria was no longer in sight.

He continued east, climbing toward the grassy bluff on the other side of the woods. When he got to the top he spotted her on one of the benches overlooking the view. Her notebook was open, though she wasn’t jotting in it. She was staring out.

Deciding not to walk onto the bluff from the same trail she’d used — she’d think he was following her — he retraced his steps a dozen yards, once again looking for anyone surveilling him. He saw no one. He found another path up to the bluff and hiked up this one, emerging on the bluff well to Victoria’s right.

He walked close to the edge himself, surveying the cliff once more. In the full light, he decided, it was still a bad one for climbing, certainly for a descent. You’d have to rappel. He reflected that the surface was similar to that of Echo Ridge, which he had never climbed but had in fact executed a high-speed rappel to get to the base. He never was quite sure why he did. The body that lay, shattered, in the dry creek bed below was long past saving.

Turning, he glanced Victoria’s way. Her eyes were on him. Her reaction was curious. She looked down to her notebook quickly. His impression was that she felt guilty, as if she’d been caught daydreaming when she should have been writing in the journal.

Shaw squinted and walked closer. “You... from last night.”

“Novice...”

“Carter. And you’re...” Frowning at his feigned defective memory.

“Apprentice Victoria.” They did the shoulder salute; hers was reluctant. She wasn’t pleased at his presence.

He said, “Didn’t remember. This whole place is kind of weird. Or maybe I’m not supposed to call it ‘place.’” Her gray eyes were mesmerizing.

“What do you mean?” Her voice was abrupt. She wasn’t nearly as timid as last night, though Shaw wasn’t the dangerous Hugh or all-powerful Eli.

“Somebody called the Foundation something like that last night and got corrected.”

“There’s no rule about not calling the Foundation the ‘place.’” She returned to her journal.

He looked over the distant mountains. “This isn’t a coincidence. Me coming up here.”

“I know. I saw you looking at me at the Discourse.”

“Just wanted to say sorry. I screwed up. Got you in trouble.”

Silence bled between them.

Shaw finally said, “That curfew — ten o’clock. Do they really have bears and wolves here, you think?”

“I don’t know. You hear howls sometimes.”

A moment passed. “Anyway. Screwed up. Sorry. That Hugh — I met him. He’s pretty... tough. Wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.”

She didn’t stiffen at the mention of his name — which Shaw had dropped to begin to build an alliance between them. But her eyes stopped scanning her notebook for a moment.

Victoria then softened. “There weren’t any serious consequences. I was careless. It was my fault.” She glanced down at her open notebook, which was filled with dense jottings, a few sketches too. Clumsy ones. Her handwriting was abysmal. “Last night at the table, I had a thought about a Plus. A good one. It felt important and I was concentrating on that.”

“A ‘Plus’?” And hadn’t somebody referred to a “Minus” too?

She was confused for a moment, then nodded. “Oh, that’s right. You haven’t met with your trainer yet.”

“No. That’s next.”

“You’ll find out. I can’t say anything. We can’t give away any of the Process to a new Companion.”

He sat. He wasn’t close but her shoulders narrowed.

“This is all pretty strange,” he said.

Colter Shaw was taciturn by nature but he found that being talkative was a helpful tool in his reward-seeking efforts. Chatting put people at ease and gave him a chance to gauge reaction to his words, maybe exposing subjects to probe. He continued to ramble. “I’ve never done, you know, group therapy. And this place seems so... I don’t know what to call it. Focused, maybe. Intense. I thought it’d be more casual. Free to come and go, maybe play some Frisbee.”

“Master Eli feels that to true up you can’t be distracted. You need to be contained for the Process to work. He says the genie gets his power from the lamp he’s confined in.”

“I like that,” Shaw said. He fell silent and looked at the distant peaks. The view was similar to the vista as seen from Echo Ridge, though there the mountaintops in the distance were like rotting teeth. Here, they were gentler, their light gray summits rising above skirts of green forest. He pivoted toward her.