Fifty-TwoAfter D’Abro’s departure, Machuzak sends a brief message to Archangelsky, checks in on the experiments, rises. The detective hadn’t offered to drop charges and he didn’t ask. For the time being he has chosen to continue in his liminal state, this indeterminate existence on the threshold between two planes, one of a working scientist, the other of an outcast, for he knows it is in liminal states, between dreams and wakefulness, that answers whisper their presence.
Nathaniel again stands at the door between labs, glancing left and glancing right. This time he does not take the fork leading to Wilson’s lab and another night of reading notebooks. Instead he steps back into his own space and walks to the window, where he hangs his head out, staring for an infinite time at the patch he
