“What’s the purpose of a map?” Tamara asked her.
But Wally spoke first.
“Let me show you,” he urged her, before Nell could answer. “The Haberson Map isn’t just any map, Nell. Combined with the one you’re holding, it could be even greater. Imagine a map that not only showed every corner of the world, down to the most minute detail, but would let you control it, as well. A map that would allow you to improve reality by changing its lines.” He looked at her. “A map that is perfect.”
Nell took another helpless step back.
What Wally had built wasn’t a map. Maps were love letters written to times and places their makers had explored. They did not control the territory—they told its stories. But there could be no stories in Wally’s Haberson Map. If he could hold this secret place captive on his server and use it to shuffle the rest of the world around on a whim, rearranging reality in whatever way he needed, that was not a story. That was not love.
Wally extended his hand, inviting.
“To bring people together,” Nell finally answered her mother’s question.
The hopeful excitement that had been flickering in his gaze died out at that.
Slowly, as Nell’s knees nearly buckled, the gun’s aim swung from Felix to Tamara.
“Wally,” her mother said softly.
“Put the map on the scanner, Nell,” he repeated.
“Tear it!” Felix begged her.
“She won’t,” Wally said. “It’s the last copy. What do you think happens to a town that ceases to exist while we’re in it?”
“Under the circumstances, it sounds like a bargain I might be willing to make,” Nell replied through gritted teeth, even though she knew she couldn’t really do it. Maybe if it was just her and Wally, and no one else, but Felix and her mother were there, too. She had already lost them both once—she was not going to let there be a second time.
Wally could see she wouldn’t do it either. He didn’t bother debating her. He took hold of her mother’s arm so she couldn’t run and pulled her closer to the gun.
“Easy,” Nell pleaded. “I’m going.”
She took a slow step toward the scanner on the printing press to placate him, frantically searching for a way to drag the moment out, to buy her time to think. Wally turned himself and Tamara slightly to keep her in his sights. His focus had narrowed to the map, and nothing else.
Nell risked a glance at Felix and stared for as long as she could before Wally would remember he was still there. His eyes were filled with terror, but finally, just before she had to look away, she saw a flicker of understanding pierce through his fear. Ever so slightly, he nodded to her.
“Keep going,” Wally urged her, still staring at the map.
Nell took another step.
“That’s it,” he continued, mesmerized.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Wally,” Tamara said. “Things don’t have to repeat.”
But he ignored her. “Your mother will understand, once we show her,” he said to Nell. “Put the map on the scanner and join Haberson. Join me. You’ll have access to more maps than you could in a hundred lifetimes at the NYPL. There will be no place you cannot go. Nothing we cannot do.” His grip on the gun tightened. “When the scan completes, when you behold the Haberson Map at its full potential, you’ll both see. You’ll see this is really where you belong.”
Nell didn’t answer him, but she didn’t have to. Wally touched the muzzle of the gun to her mother’s temple.
Her resolve to drag out the walk as long as possible failed her, and Nell scrambled forward, terrified. All she could think about now was Swann, the look of shock on his face, the dimming as the light went out of his eyes. The scanner’s glass pane looked blankly back at her, hungry, empty, waiting for her to put her mother’s map into its frame. The mechanical arm with its lights and clamps and rollers waited to the side, ready to trap the page into the machine.