The Cartographers(77)

With a whole team, it can take weeks to survey a town, and Francis and I were only two. Even so, no one noticed that we took far longer than we should have to complete each neighborhood.

Ever since that almost-disastrous night last year, I’d been ashamed to be around Romi, but I’d sworn outright never to be alone with Francis. It was easy enough with such a large group, and I thought it was the most respectful thing I could do, even though neither of them would ever know I was doing it. So, the first time Tam insisted we do the survey work, I refused. Even more than not wanting to break my private vow, I was terrified that although I’d shoved my feelings down deep, and would rather have died than act on them, Francis would be able to sense them anyway, and then might remember that night, and everything would be ruined. I would lose him, and all of the others. I finally understood why Bear was always so desperate to keep us all happy. He and I were the last ones in, and the easiest to discard, if we threatened the harmony of the rest.

But Tam was insistent. And no one could ever say no to her.

“Please,” she begged, graph paper in her hands, pencils tucked behind both ears, pushing us out of the ice cream shop as the bell jangled.

“We need the data if we’re going to get anywhere,” Romi agreed. “Francis is a good surveyor, but he can’t see the forest for the trees, sometimes.”

Neither could she.

Our first day out, I barely said anything, I was so nervous I might trigger a hazy recollection of that horrible, alcohol-soaked night. Francis was so fascinated with the town, I don’t think he noticed how quiet I was. But by the second day, it was obvious. He tried to get me to talk, and when he got nothing more than one-word answers, he spent the whole time talking instead, to fill the uncomfortable silence. He was funny, very funny. His humor was almost as sharp as Daniel’s then, although you wouldn’t know it now. By the third day, I finally talked, and Francis didn’t bring up Bear’s old party, to my immense relief. By the end of the week, I was finally convinced that he really didn’t remember at all.

Who noticed the printing factory first, I don’t remember. But we turned a corner in the shopping district off Main Street, and both of us laughed out loud at the sight, caught by surprise.

It looked just like the one where we’d celebrated Bear’s birthday—the old printer and bindery downtown that had been fashionably renovated into a speakeasy.

“Wow,” he said, reaching for the door. “What are the odds.”

Inside, it looked just like every other place in Agloe. Clean, lit, and empty. Francis began exploring, opening every cabinet, while I tried to take notes about the basic dimensions and location, like we were supposed to be doing.

“Look!” he yelled from the next room.

I came around the corner and gasped as I saw what he was pointing at—a hulking old-fashioned printing press. Just like the one that had been at Bear’s party. Or perhaps all old-fashioned printing presses look the same.

But it was even in the same place as it had been at the speakeasy, not in the center of the room but rather in a far, darkened corner—where Francis and I had found ourselves huddled near the end of that night, our backs against its bulky frame, shielded from view while the rest of the party continued obliviously on the other side. Where I leaned in to him, and almost destroyed everything, and then saved it again in the nick of time.

I watched Francis nervously as he looked at it. Did he remember now? Did he know? But he seemed mostly proud he’d found an actual object in Agloe—whereas almost every other building and house was unfurnished. Not confused, not guilty. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Do you think General Drafting’s founder and his assistant brought it?” he asked. “That’s why it’s here, when so little else is?”

“Maybe,” I allowed. It was an offset press, with a rubber roller to transfer images—ancient technology by today’s standards, but right for its time.

Later, the more we explored, we found small hints that there had been other groups there before us, in addition to the two men who had mysteriously or accidentally created this place. An old empty rucksack with a tag from the 1960s, a broken doorknob in one of the cafés. Probably tourists, or teenagers, who had once owned a copy of this same map back when they were in print, and wandered in and became trapped, not understanding what was happening.

Or perhaps they did understand—but they turned on each other before they could reveal this secret to the world.

It seemed to have gone that way for Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers, after all. And would slowly happen to us, too.

But that printing press was the very first sign we found that anyone else had been here ever before—and also the most important one, by far.

Francis crossed his arms. “What do you think they were planning to do with it?”

I could imagine a couple of possibilities, all of them tantalizing. Were they hoping to print more copies of their Agloe map? Or experiment with adding more secrets to other maps? But I didn’t say any of them.

“I don’t know, but we should go. We have a lot of neighborhood still to cover,” I replied instead. Even if Francis didn’t remember what had happened, I still wanted us out of there. We could tell the others about it, and come back later all together, when it would be safer to spend more time there. When Francis and I wouldn’t be alone.