Free Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay Page B

showing it.”
    “I can tell he’s upset, even though he keeps things bottled up,” Dr. Grigorin said.
    “Except with Maria,” I said.
    “Who’s Maria?” she asked. I explained and she shook her head with amusement. “Your father was very concerned about how much time Thomas’s preoccupation was taking up. Thomas said he’s cutting back and watched a movie with you the other night.”
    “That’s not true. It was all I could do to get him to leave the house to come here today. He didn’t want to leave his work .”
    “Has he explained it to you?”
    “I didn’t know there was anything to explain,” I said. “He likes to explore the world’s cities online. It’s his thing.” I shook my head and grinned. “Although he did mention the other day that I needed a security clearance to see what he was up to.”
    Dr. Grigorin nodded. “Thomas said it would be okay if I told you what he’s been doing.”
    I sat up slightly in my chair. “What do you mean, what he’s been doing?”
    “Thomas believes he’s working for the CIA. Consulting for them.”
    “I’m sorry. The what? The Central Intelligence Agency?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Working how? What’s he doing—what does he think he’s doing for them?”
    “It’s somewhat complicated, and not everything fits together quite right, not unlike dreams where you have different elements bumping up against one another. First of all, Thomas believes there’s going to be a cataclysmic event, some kind of digital, electronic implosion or explosion. I’m not sure which. Perhaps a global computer glitch, or even something orchestrated by some foreign power—an ingenious computer virus—that will cripple this country’s intelligence-gathering ability.”
    “Oh, man.”
    She continued. “When this happens, the first thing that will go down will be online maps. They’ll all vanish instantly. Poof, gone. All the people in the intelligence community who depend on those will be scrambling, because they’ve been under orders from on high to save paper costs—” She must have noticed my eyebrows going up and she smiled. “Really, paper costs. Budget cuts are even hitting delusions now.” She looked a bit sheepish, like maybe she shouldn’t have made the joke. “Anyway, the point is, the government no longer has any hard copies.”
    My shock was giving way to fascination. Knowing Thomas as I did, it all made sense, in a bizarre kind of way.
    “And when that happens,” Laura continued, “who do you suppose the CIA is going to be turning to?”
    “Let me guess.”
    She nodded. “He’ll be able to draw for them, from memory, all the street plans of all the major cities in the world. He’s got them all up here.” She tapped her temple with her index finger. She wore red nail polish.
    “But hang on,” I said. “There’d still be old maps around. On paper, in libraries, in people’s homes. Millions of school atlases, for crying out loud.”
    “Now you’re being logical,” Laura Grigorin chastised me. “The way your brother visualizes this apocalyptic event, those resources have already been destroyed. Libraries everywhere got rid of them and went digital. Every household has put their old maps out with the newspapers in the recycling and now relies solely on the computer. That’s why this is going to be such a catastrophe. It’ll be a world without maps, and the only person who will know how to reproduce them will be Thomas. And not just maps, but how each and every street in the world looks. Every storefront, every front yard, every intersection.”
    I shook my head in wonderment. “So he’s getting ready for if and when this happens.”
    “Not if,” she said. “It’s coming. That’s why he’s spending every moment in his room traveling the world, memorizing as many cities as he can before this event. I had a patient—this was several years ago—who worked at a paper in Buffalo, and every night when he went home he took all the