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boy might like the girl and want to help. How does that apply to
Elizabeth McDermott now? She
is
ill, after all.”
“Because she’s no different from, say, Meme here.” Kramer
tossed an airy wave in the girl’s direction. “Meme is an orphan,
no family, no friends. No one cares for her, so to whom should
Meme turn for guidance? Why, to me, of course.”
God,
Doyle marveled,
you are a bastard.
He’d seen her flinch
and the color climbing her cheeks. She kept her eyes down, but
her fingers knotted. He could swear something glimmered at the
corner of an eye.
She’s not a damn dog.
“What’s your point, Kramer?” Battle asked.
“Only this.” Kramer put a finger to his lips. There was the
tiniest
tick
as his nail struck tin. “If you grew up on a remote
island with only your parents for company and no other influ-
ences—no friends or teachers or companions, nothing to read but
what your father allows and half that his own wild writings—
is it so hard to imagine that you would fall victim to the same
unshakable beliefs?” Warming to his subject, Kramer laced his
fingers together as if forming a web. “
That
is the McDermott
family: a father, mother, daughter knit together by a singular,
elaborate, and bizarre delusional system. Travel between
Nows
;
the idea that every moment in time exists as a separate
Now
for-
ever, that there are multiple versions of us all in an infinite array
of possibilities. That
only
a select few could access relics from
an unknown and far more advanced civilization, quite possibly
beyond Earth. And the notion that there’s an energy source from
which one may craft characters and fictions that might come to
life? Yet McDermott could be
so
persuasive. His writings, even
the fragments”—Kramer’s face grew intense, and he sat forward
as if to better make his point—“quite compelling. You could
feel
