But now, Felix heard the words with new, frightening clarity.
“But there’s no such thing,” he insisted. “Perfection—complete accuracy—is the goal of every map, but it’s not actually . . . it’s not actually possible, William. Even for us. Even if we could manage to make the Haberson Map completely accurate for every single data point for one instant, the world is always changing. Something will shift, and we’ll be right back to square one again.”
“You’d be surprised,” William said. “Sometimes you just need to get something working on a miniature scale, and then everything unfolds.” He turned back to the charred, rain-soaked heap in front of them and then looked beyond it, out into the woods. “The smallest thing could be the key. Like a building, for example. Or a town.”
Felix’s heart stuttered.
There it is, Nell had said, the night they had crouched over her coffee table, staring at her father’s map, her voice full of wonder. The phantom settlement. We found it.
“I know you’ve always thought of the Haberson Map’s philosophy as more of a charming intellectual exercise to push your team rather than an actual truth, but seriously consider it, Felix. Open your mind. It’s already almost real,” William urged.
“No, it’s not.”
“Sure it is. Just think of how far the field of cartography has come, these last few decades. Ignore the Haberson Map for a moment—think about how people now use even just our little city streets app on their phones while walking.” William reached into his pocket and pulled out his own phone, as if to demonstrate. “They don’t look at the street and check HabWalk. They walk with their eyes glued to HabWalk. They only stop when the map says they’ve arrived, and then they look up to see they’ve reached their destination.” He looked back at Felix. “They’re not comparing our map to the world—they’re comparing the world to our map.”
“William—”
But William continued, unperturbed. “And if that’s true, if we could just take it one step further . . .” His eyes were distant, focused on something that wasn’t there, rapt with wonder. “If we could just assimilate the final piece of data . . . our map would truly be perfect.”
Felix took a step back.
“All of it,” he whispered. Dr. Young. Irene. Even the library security contract. “It was you. You did all of it.”
But how was that possible?
“That’s the wrong way,” William said calmly. “We want to go south from here.”
Felix looked at his car. He had to get away. As far as he could, as fast as he could.
“If you leave now, you’ll miss Nell,” William added, almost an afterthought. He shifted his umbrella and reached into his suit jacket to retrieve something—a photograph. He held it out to Felix.
Felix hesitated. But if William somehow really knew where Nell was, Felix couldn’t leave now. He couldn’t let William do the same thing to her that he’d done to everyone else in his path, standing in his way of the map.
“How did you even begin to suspect she was the one who had it?” Felix asked. “How did you know Dr. Young had owned it before that and hidden it at the library?”
In response, William simply held the photo out farther.
Finally, Felix gave up and took it. He leaned over slightly, so he could study the image without letting the rain touch it.
It was an old picture, slightly faded, one of the corners creased where it had been accidentally bent at some point. Felix lifted it up to examine it closer and froze.
But how . . .
It was an image of a couple standing in front of a packed car, on a driveway that looked just like this one. In the man’s arms was a small child in a pair of purple overalls, mid-squirm. They all smiled back at him through the aging glossy paper, their eyes sparkling.