That kite-flyer, though, was nowhere to be found. I leaned over a bit, so that I could make out the whole of the courtyard and streets below, but they were deserted. The kite clearly must be attached to a string—if it wasn’t, the wind would grab it and whisk it away, out of sight—but no string was visible from where we sat.

  Bruce was saying, “… once trapped for more than an hour on Bus Zero, that last year before the route was discontinued. There used to be a road that went—”

  “I’m sorry, Bruce,” I interrupted, “but do you see that kite out there?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, peering out the window. “That’s a nice one.”

  “Can you tell who is flying it?”

  “Hmm,” he said, dismissing the question with a shrug. “It’s probably some guy down there.”

  “But there’s no one there,” I said. “The courtyard is empty.”

  He stood up and went to the window, then looked down, pressing his forehead against the glass. “So it is,” he agreed. “Still, the kite can’t be flying itself. So, it logically follows that there is a kite-flyer down in the courtyard.”

  I wasn’t satisfied with this response. “I don’t mean to belabor my point,” I said. “But again, we can both see that the courtyard and streets are empty. So who is flying the kite?”

  Bruce’s mouth opened to respond, but instead it broke into a grin. Soon he was laughing, and wagging a finger at me. “See that?” he asked. “You see? That’s the kind of question a Phenomenon Analyst would ask! You’re going to do just fine!”

  I was still looking out at the kite, trying to discern a string that I could follow. But Bruce had clearly moved on.

  “Yes, thank you,” I said, idly.

  “Can you start today?”

  That broke me out of my reverie. “Oh! You’re offering me the job?”

  “Of course! How could I say no to a legacy applicant with quantum tunneling expertise? Heather can get you set up in an office immediately!”

  He had been standing by the window as he spoke; now he leaned over the desk, his hand extended. I shook it, and got to my feet. The meeting seemed to be over. Bruce opened the door for me and ushered me out; he said something about letting Heather know I’d be right down. At this point, I felt a gentle buzzing from my bag. Yes, yes, I wanted to say—I know.

  I turned and held the office door open. “One more thing, Bruce,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not interested in working in the Living Tower. I’ll need Heather to get me set up in the Dead one.”

  The smile froze on Bruce’s face. He blinked, as though waiting for me to tell him I was joking. When I didn’t, he said, “That’s … that’s not usual.”

  “All the same,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, stroking his chin. “Well.”

  I waited.

  “I suppose …,” he said quietly to himself. “I suppose … if her sister … and quantum … yes, but …”

  “I don’t need Heather to take me there. Just have her give me an office number and a key, and I’ll go there alone.”

  He frowned, shaking his head. “I can’t persuade you to accept a more … conventional placement?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s the Dead Tower or nothing.”

  Slowly, he began to nod. “Yes. Yes, I see. Well, that’s impressive, if nothing else. All right, then. All right. Go on down and see Heather. You’re right; I don’t think she’ll want to take you there. But of course, the job is yours, Dead Tower and all.” He extended a hand and I shook it again. This time his grip was stronger, his shaking more impassioned. “I’m very glad you came to see us today. The Dead Tower! Your boldness and loyalty are an inspiration to us all. Go see Heather. I’ll let her know.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Thank you, Bruce.”

  ●

  Heather was on the phone when I stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby of the Courthouse. Her head was hung and her long hair dangled over the receiver, forming a sort of privacy curtain. “I will,” she said. “Of course. Yes, of course. Yes, I will. Okay. I’ll tell her. All right. Goodbye.”

  She hung up and brushed the hair away from her face and over her ear with a deft, practiced motion. “I’ve been told to issue you an office in the Dead Tower,” she said, her voice apprehensive.

  “That’s right.”

  She nodded, then bent over a drawer in her desk. I heard the sounds of rummaging. “I need to find the key to the keys,” she said.

  “Take your time.”

  Something in the receptionist’s movements suggested that she knew where to find the key, but was stalling for time. She opened and closed several other drawers, then emitted a deep sigh. She was holding a leather fob with several keys dangling from it.

  As I watched, Heather crossed the lobby to a featureless wood-paneled wall. She selected a key and inserted it into a nearly indiscernible keyhole. A section of wall opened up on silent hinges, revealing a neat metal rack of about a hundred key hooks, each labeled with a number, and about half of them populated by keys. Beside this rack a second, smaller wooden panel had been mounted; Heather opened it with a second key. This revealed a smaller rack of about forty additional key hooks, most of them occupied by keys—larger, more ornate ones than the first batch. They shared the space with a still-smaller cabinet, which Heather opened with a third key from the leather fob.

  This cabinet housed only a dozen or so key hooks, each of them bearing a sleek, gleaming silver key with a diamond-shaped head and a smooth, evenly channeled blade. The blades appeared uncut. Heather selected one after a moment of either indecision or reluctance, and turned to me.

  “Here you go,” she said. “You’ll be in 4Q.”

  “Thank you,” I said, accepting the key with my unmuffined hand.

  “So, to get there, you have to take the elevator to the second floor. Then, when the doors open, step in, press the left-arrow button, and wait for the side door to let you into the auxiliary elevator. From there, press S, and it will let you out in the skyway. Then you have to cross the skyway and enter the code 3812 into the door lock on the other side. After that, take the spiral stairs to the fourth floor.” She sighed. “I don’t know what you do from there. You’ll figure it out, I guess.”

  “I’m sure I will,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I did as Heather told me, taking the elevator to the second floor, pressing the arrow, waiting for the side door to slide open—it was quite clever, this mechanism, and invisible to anyone not aware that it was there—and stepping into the auxiliary elevator. This parallel conveyance was smaller, and paneled in the same style of wood as the lobby, but it was dusty and smelled of mildew. A cockroach stood in the corner. Perhaps it was dead.

  I pressed S and the thing groaned to life, hauling me another floor higher. The doors opened onto the skyway, which I walked across in a state of mild alarm. Its walls and ceiling were glass, and, particularly in their present state of uncleanliness and neglect, made me feel exposed and vulnerable. Above me, the pilotless kite swooped and rippled in the breeze. I reached the far door, windowless and of heavy steel, and punched in the code. A buzz and a rattle issued from its innards, and a click, and it fell open a single inch, creaking.

  The quick and labored sound of my breathing was magnified by the skyway’s glass, and I suddenly understood how frightened I was. I’d blundered my way through the interview process, following Cylvia’s instructions, and this was the result. But what lay ahead?

  I pocketed my office key and held the banana muffin under my chin for a moment, so that I could unzip my bag. This accomplished, I said, “Cylvia?”

  She glowed white, illuminating the junk in my bag. “Yes?”

  “What should I do?”

  “You should go to your office.”

  “Am I in danger?”

  Her surface throbbed for a moment, and she said, “You are in no immediate danger.”

  I took a deep breath, then pushed open the door to the Dead Tower.

  PART TWO

  Thirteen

  I gazed out over a large open-plan workspace that resembled an idealized 1970s living room as much as it did a municipal office. As Heather had promised, a spiral staircase served as a centerpiece; it helixed up into a murky space above the beige drop ceiling, where presumably my new office awaited. The near side of the staircase, in the area where I now stood, was populated by shared wooden work tables with their attendant stools; little groupings of overstuffed armchairs surrounded upholstered ottomans. All of this furniture gave the impression of having been hastily abandoned; many of the chairs and one of the tables lay on their sides, and everything was awkwardly swept, as if in fact by a wind, toward the southern wall. That wall consisted entirely of windows, many of which were empty of glass; the cavities left behind were covered by buckling sheets of plywood. I recalled seeing these windows from the plaza.

  The opposite wall was no different: broken windows, warped plywood. I could hear the sounds of the outdoors—wind and birds, and the fluttering of the kite—through the gaps between the plywood and the window frames.

  Beyond the spiral staircase lay a depression in the floor, where large velvet sofas, one of them overturned, were arrayed around a massive stone fireplace. Above the fireplace hung an enormous display monitor. Something had struck the monitor near one of its corners, damaging the glass surface, and cracks radiated out from it across the black expanse. A bearskin rug was sprawled in front of the fireplace, and the whole area, which took up the entirety of the far corner of the third floor, was paneled in knotty pine, and underlain by thick pile carpeting in shades of brown and orange. Presumably, meetings had once taken place here, though it was just as easy to imagine the area as the set for an erotic film, perhaps the kind that unfolds in the workplace.

  I slowly made my way to the base of the stairs. The wroughtiron guardrail appeared sturdy, but I gave it a kick, just to be sure. It didn’t budge, and the sound my foot made as it landed on the first step was deep and resonant. Clearly, the spiral stair had survived whatever damage the windstorm had done to the rest of the Dead Tower.

  I climbed slowly, alert for any sounds or odors that might suggest I should retreat. I noticed nothing at first. But then, as I neared the top, I detected what sounded like a strange, irregular echo of my footsteps—a distant, rhythmic pock. I stopped a moment to listen. The sound wasn’t an echo: it was coming from the fourth floor, above me.

  I said, “Cylvia, are there other workers in the Dead Tower right now?”

  “Yes,” she replied, after a moment of pulsing light.

  “Should I be worried?”

  “It is not clear to me what you deem worthy of anxiety,” Cylvia replied, in what struck me as a slightly testy tone. “But you are in no immediate danger.”

  Somewhat mollified, I continued to climb. Soon I could see the fourth floor descending around me: the staircase emerged in the center of a cross formed by two hallways, quite ordinary and officelike in design, extending to the four sides of the building. This area seemed to have suffered much less damage than the floor below; aside from some water stains around a few of the light fixtures, everything visible was intact. The lights themselves were extinguished, and the halls consequentially gloomy; an ambient hum of uncertain origin permeated the entire floor.

  The rhythmic pocking sound emanated from the east hallway, but luckily, my new office lay to the south. I knew this because of a series of surprisingly clear engraved plastic signs affixed to the walls, indicating which hall corresponded to which offices: Q, M, W, and B, for some reason. I scaled the final step of the staircase, stepped onto the hall carpet, and proceeded in the appropriate direction.

  Finding my office was easy. A bold plaque, like the ones in the hallway, read 4Q. The lock panel, a brushed-aluminum disk punctuated by a neat, clean-edged slit, awaited my key. I didn’t hesitate: I inserted the key into the lock. Once I’d gotten a third of the shaft in, some internal mechanism took it from my hand and drew it in the rest of the way. I heard a faint hum, the key turned by itself, and the door to my new office fell open.

  I pulled out the key, walked in, and shut the door behind me. As I did so, the pocking sound stopped. I held my breath, facing the closed door, and after ten or fifteen seconds, the pocking resumed, more slowly at first, then gradually faster until it had attained its original speed.

  The office was unremarkable in every way. It contained the same desk, lamp, wastebasket, and chairs as Bruce’s office in the Living Tower, except that everything was coated in a layer of dust, and one of the windows, also dirty, was cracked. The floor’s ambient hum was audible here, but quieter.

  I set my bag and key down on the desk, then used my newly freed hand to brush the dust off my chair. Once seated, I tried to clean a patch of desk with my shirtsleeve. I set the muffin down in the cleaned spot. Then I removed Cylvia from my bag and set her upright beside the muffin. I could hear something inside her bumping and whirring; the sounds were magnified by the surface of the desk.

  “Well,” I said, “I made it.”

  Cylvia, evidently detecting no particular command, remained silent.

  “I should find some cleaning supplies and make this place more welcoming,” I said.

  Cylvia’s white light came on and faintly pulsed, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll go do that now,” I said, and got up to leave the office.

  Cylvia did not react.

  I planned to walk right out, but something interrupted me: the sight, outside my window, of the kite from earlier, swooping suddenly into, and then out of, my field of view. Its fluttering sound grew louder, then faded; and for some reason I felt compelled to go to the window and look at it again. I stood in the corner of my office, which provided an unexpectedly clear angle on the entire Courthouse plaza, with its cracked cement, scraggly trees, and low memorial obelisk. But now I could see something else, or should I say someone: a small child, its arms extended, gazing up into the sky.

  It took a moment to register what I was seeing: this child was the little boy I’d observed coloring in the coffee shop, and shimmying down the rainspout at the guesthouse!

  The string was quite clear now. It extended from a spool in the boy’s hands all the way up to the kite, which the wind seemed determined to wrest from his grasp. But to every stray gust, every sudden shear, the boy parried, calmly pivoting his body, raising or lowering his hands, taking a few steps in one direction or another, maintaining control. It was hard to make out his expression from here, but his body language implied impassivity, as though he’d been flying this kite for decades.

  I watched the boy for a few minutes, until the sight of him began to make me uneasy. I couldn’t have said why, precisely, but I began to feel very strongly that he should not be down there, flying that kite. Perhaps it was the weather—the wind seemed to augur some kind of atmospheric change that might affect the boy’s safety. Or maybe I was merely annoyed with his guardians, whoever they might be, for failing to adequately supervise him.

  Only one thing could calm my nerves, I realized: cleaning. I drew a breath and headed for the door. Then, impulsively, I leaned back over the desk and grabbed the muffin to take with me.

  My search for a janitor’s closet or storage room was in vain. Every door on the fourth floor was locked. Of course, there were other floors in the Dead Tower—four, in addition to the two I’d already seen—and perhaps the cleaning supplies would be found on one of them. But I wasn’t sure how to access those floors.

  I did, however, find the source of the pocking: office 4B. The door to this office was identical to mine: a blank white expanse interrupted only by the identifying sign and the keyhole. I also noticed that the fourth floor’s now-familiar humming sound was louder here.

  I steeled myself, cleared my throat, and knocked.

  The pocking stopped. I waited, but no one came to the door. I knocked again.

  “Who is it!” came a voice, a man’s voice, over the sound of the humming.

  “I’m the woman in 4Q!” I said. “I just started today! I’m looking for the supply closet or janitor’s room!”

  Footsteps approached behind the door. “Started today, you say?” the voice said, still muffled, but closer.

  “That’s right.”

  “Doing what?”

  I was annoyed by the question, but tried not to let on. “Well, nothing yet! I just want to clean the grime out of my office before I get started.”

  The door emitted a click and it opened about an inch. An eye, bloodshot, stared out at me.

  “I don’t know about any supply closet. Or janitor, for that matter. Who told you to come up here?”

  “Bruce. And Heather.”

  “Hmm,” the man said.

  I noticed that the humming was quite loud now. It was definitely coming from this man’s office. It looked dark in there, behind him.

  “What have you been doing in there?” I said. “I heard a sound—like you’re hitting something with something else.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” the man said.

  “Try me.”

  He exhaled, shaking his head. “Do you know anything about quantum tunneling?” he asked me, with a sneer.

  There it was again! I’d left Cylvia behind, and couldn’t depend upon her guidance, so I didn’t know if I was supposed to keep lying, or whether fessing up might be the better choice. I decided to split the difference.

 

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