The Cartographers(12)
Status: In collection
Nell let out a long breath, her finger hesitating on the trackpad.
This would be it. Entering the final thing he was working on, its nonsensical worth aside, and closing the database out. The last goodbye.
Her eyes drifted over to the map.
She felt a tightness in her chest as she tried not to think about her father sitting at his desk in his sixties, years after that horrible fight, pulling this map out of the secret compartment in his desk to look at it.
Why? Just to remind himself of how alone he’d made himself?
Why to all of it. Why had he been, if not a good father when she was young, then at least possibly a proud mentor and colleague when she was an adult? Why had he let her work so hard her whole life, and then ruined it all in one moment? And why did he regret it afterward—enough to save this cursed piece of paper that had caused it all?
Why, Dad?
Nell stifled a hiccup before it turned into tears.
Enough.
She clicked submit, and the screen blinked as her entry was uploaded into the database. A moment later, a confirmation box popped up with her map’s log identifier number and a link to the entry. It was done.
“Hope the maps are good wherever you are now, Dad,” Nell finally said. “Better than this one, anyway.”
She closed the program.
In the darkness, Nell tossed the covers off and sat up in bed. The red numbers on her clock glowed in the dark, displaying a ghastly time.
She tried to blame it on the wine, but she knew it wasn’t that. It was the log, and her own superstitions about copying a bad entry for her own. It was silly, but so what? Even if her father didn’t deserve it, at least she’d sleep better.
Nell dragged herself to her laptop again. She reopened the database, squinting at the burst of light from the screen, and ran the same search, pulling up 213 entries this time—the same as before plus her newly created one. She clicked on the second entry in the list, to borrow that data instead.
Log Identifier: G77089257332
Specimen Name: Esso 1930 Highway Map, New York State
Date of production: 1930
Description: Mass produced foldable map depicting major highway routes of New York State by mapping company General Drafting Corporation for distribution at major gas station retailers in the relevant geographic area.
Attachments: [COVER_LEGEND.jpg]
Date of log entry: 13 May 1985
Location: Stamford County Public Library, Stamford, Connecticut, USA.
Status: MISSING
But it was missing, as well.
Nell frowned. These smaller libraries needed to take better care of their artifacts, no matter how minor. She clicked on the next one, her eyes jumping immediately to the bottom of the entry to check its status.
DESTROYED.
She backed out of that entry and clicked on the one after it.
MISSING.
What was going on?
STOLEN.
She scrolled faster, hopping quickly into and out of each entry in the list.
It had to be a coincidence. These were old, nearly worthless maps. Why would any of them be stolen? Who would risk so much to break in to a museum or library only to take something so small, when works worth thousands more lined the walls around it?
Surely these first few were flukes, she told herself. Surely if she kept going, surely, they would begin turning up safe in their archives. Frantically, she clicked again.
STOLEN.
How was this possible?
DESTROYED.
STOLEN.
MISSING.
MISSING.
STOLEN.
DESTROYED.
STOLEN.
Nell sat back in her chair, confused. Her skin prickled at some invisible chill.
All 212 copies of the same map were missing from every collection. Not a single one remained.
And she had just entered their own into the public record.
IV
Nell paced, counting the rings impatiently.
“Swann, it’s me,” she said as soon as his voicemail beeped. “Call me back as soon as you can. It’s about something from my father’s . . .” She paused. As next of kin, she probably now owned all of his belongings, but this map wasn’t his. It was the library’s. “It’s something I found while going through his things,” she finally said. “I need your advice. Call me as soon as you can.”
From the table, the folded-up map stared back at her. With a huff, Nell slid into the chair and picked it up again.
“What the heck would cause over two hundred of you to be missing or stolen?” she muttered.
The map said nothing.
Nell glanced over at her laptop nervously. She had no idea what was going on, but the longer she thought about it, the worse the idea of leaving her own listing up seemed. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d deleted something from the database—the thought seemed almost sacrilegious—but she also couldn’t think of the last time, any time, she’d come across something this strange.
She reached for the keyboard. The screen refreshed, and her entry was gone.
“There.” Nell sighed. At least that was taken care of, until she had a chance to talk to Swann.
Speaking of that. The clock on the wall now read 6:45 a.m. It was odd he had not called her back. She knew the man had risen at five o’clock every morning since before she’d been born. He was likely on his way to the NYPL or already at his desk. He definitely should have heard her message by now.