The Cartographers(111)

Felix felt his phone buzz in his pocket, indicating a text message.

“It’s Naomi and Priya,” he said, seeing Naomi’s name as the sender, and William nodded. He tried to skim the message quickly, without being rude.

<Felix, we’re still in the office. Something weird is going on. The Haberson Map is showing that William is also where you are, at the house.>

“I’m sure they’re worried about you, too,” William was saying.

Felix put the phone away, already knowing what Naomi was telling him, and turned up his collar to keep the rain off. “I’m sorry I ran off. I just thought if I could find Nell . . .”

Naomi’s next message came in, another urgent buzz.

“Sorry, let me just tell her everything’s fine,” Felix apologized, as William shrugged off the interruption, unbothered.

He swiped the screen to reply—but found himself confused by Naomi’s words.

<But it’s telling us that William left before you. Way before.>

“We’ll figure all this out,” William assured him. He studied the scorched ground. “As long as you can explain what you’re doing here.”

“It was supposed to be a stepping-stone,” Felix replied. “Nell lost her mother here. She died saving Nell in a house fire when she was a baby. This was the house where it happened.”

William was silent for a few moments, as if considering something.

“It wasn’t here,” he finally said.

Felix paused, confused. A prickling sensation along the back of his neck needled at him, like a tiny warning.

Naomi’s messages were coming fast now, frantic. <William left before we found Nell’s old Rockland address and put it into the Haberson Map. How did he know about the house before us? How did he know where to go?>

Felix took a deep breath. Tried to ignore the feeling, tried to think. “How do you know the fire wasn’t here?” he asked William.

“Nell would have come then, wouldn’t she?” William answered. He gestured to the ground around them, to where their cars had stirred the mud and leaves together as they’d each crept up the long driveway. “Only two sets of tire tracks—ours. Do you think she’d drive all this way and not come to the place where her mother was last alive with her?”

Felix looked at the remains of the house again. “I guess not,” he said.

But something still didn’t make sense. He tried to shake off the growing unease.

<Felix, answer us. Are you okay?>

“But if Nell’s mother didn’t die here, then why is the house burned to ash?”

“To keep a secret,” William said.

“But what secret? Nell said the fire had been an accident,” Felix replied. “And her parents’ friends confirmed it. How would her mother have died, then?”

“Maybe the secret isn’t how,” William answered. “It’s where.”

“Where?” Felix repeated.

The chill of sudden understanding crept over him then.

William turned back to the house. “It’s like the Haberson Map. This has been the eternal struggle with our algorithm, hasn’t it?” He sighed thoughtfully. “The paradox that even if our map could be perfect, every bit of data completely measurable and knowable . . . the world it represents isn’t.”

Felix had listened to him quote this very speech many times over the years—William drifted off into exploring this personal philosophy of his more often than not during their brainstorming meetings. Could a perfect map only be developed for a perfect world? Or would the perfect map make the world within it perfect? he’d ask.

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.”