They had barely begun putting the waterfront behind them when the sound changed.
Until then New York had been a confusion of noises Nathan had not yet learned how to separate, a vast overlapping machinery of steam whistles rolling across the harbour, bells sounding somewhere among the traffic, dockworkers shouting beneath cranes, horses objecting loudly to motor lorries and automobiles, carts rattling over uneven paving and engines labouring under loads that seemed determined to test them. Thousands of human voices filled whatever spaces remained between those sounds, blending into a restless murmur that rose against the warehouses and railway sheds before disappearing beneath buildings Nathan still found himself looking up at whenever Mrs Hargreaves was not watching closely enough to remind him where his feet were going.
He had been listening to all of it with the distracted interest she already recognised as dangerous, his eyes moving between railway sidings, freight sheds, derricks and the lines of vehicles waiting beyond the piers, while T walked nearby in black armour and Horsley travelled securely in the reinforced carrier Mrs Hargreaves held close to her side. They had left Leviathan behind them, passed through the necessary formalities and begun moving inland with their luggage when a cheer rose somewhere ahead.
It was enormous, large enough that Nathan stopped in the middle of a step and Mrs Hargreaves nearly walked into him before catching herself against his arm.
The first cheer had not completely faded when another followed it, this one joined by whistles, shouted names and a confusion of voices too raw and emotional to belong to the organised work of the docks. T turned toward it immediately, his dark lenses moving first toward the sound and then toward the approaches around them, while Nathan stood listening until a man's voice carried above the crowd, a woman answered somewhere farther along the waterfront and several hundred people seemed to respond at once.
"That's not an arrival," Nathan said, his attention fixing upon the next opening between the harbour buildings as another wave of shouting travelled over the pier.
"No," T replied, shifting slightly to keep both Nathan and Mrs Hargreaves within his view while the crowd ahead thickened.
Nathan changed direction almost before he had consciously decided to do so.
"Nathan, you have been in America for scarcely long enough to leave the harbour," Mrs Hargreaves warned, tightening her hold upon Horsley's carrier as she followed his gaze and immediately recognised the expression beginning to form on his face.
"I only want to see," Nathan replied, already angling toward the sound as several other people around them began doing the same.
Mrs Hargreaves gave him a look suggesting those five words had preceded a considerable number of difficulties during their acquaintance, but the crowd was already drawing people from elsewhere along the waterfront and she followed rather than attempt the impossible task of stopping him by argument. T moved with them, not hurrying but somehow never allowing more than a few feet to open between himself and Nathan, and together they slipped between families, workers and uniformed men until the warehouses gave way to a broader view of the harbour.
Nathan stopped again.
The crowd stretched along every permitted section of waterfront from which the departing vessels could be seen. Young women stood on crates and low barriers to see over the shoulders ahead of them, mothers pressed forward with handkerchiefs already clutched in their hands, fathers craned their necks above the crowd and children were lifted onto shoulders while older men removed their hats whenever another body of soldiers passed toward the transports. Small flags fluttered everywhere. People without flags waved scarves, newspapers, hats or bare hands, and a woman several yards from Nathan held an infant against one shoulder while shouting toward a ship so fiercely that her voice had already begun to crack.
The men aboard were shouting back.
Nathan's interest in cranes, railway lines and the architecture of New York vanished almost at once.
"Soldiers," Mrs Hargreaves murmured, coming to a stop beside him and looking through the shifting gaps in the crowd.
"Yes," Nathan answered, although the word felt wholly inadequate for what was happening in front of them.
The men crowded every section of rail they were permitted to occupy, khaki uniforms packed shoulder to shoulder against the dark sides of the transports. Some were already aboard while others continued disappearing through the machinery of embarkation farther along the waterfront, carrying kit while officers and dock personnel attempted to preserve some semblance of order against the enormous human disorder of goodbye. Nathan caught fragments from the people around him—Camp Upton, Long Island, France, a regiment number, somebody's train arriving late, somebody else's son nearly missing movement—and understood enough without needing to ask anyone the questions that ordinarily came so easily to him.
These were draftees, many of them coming down from Camp Upton.
They were going the other way.
Nathan, T, Mrs Hargreaves and Horsley had crossed the Atlantic away from France, leaving hospitals, soldiers and the machinery of war behind them for America, and now America was filling ships with young men and sending them back across the same water.
Some of the soldiers appeared determined to carry the mood of camp with them. Men aboard one transport were singing loudly enough that Nathan could hear the tune without making out every word, and the song repeatedly dissolved whenever somebody on shore shouted a familiar name and another soldier abandoned the chorus to answer. Somewhere near Nathan a man mentioned the straw fires burned before departure at Upton, great piles set alight while the men shouted themselves hoarse around them, turning leaving into a celebration because perhaps the alternative was allowing everyone to admit too plainly what leaving meant. Nathan could picture it without much difficulty: firelight across young faces, smoke rolling upward, men roaring songs and insults at one another while uniforms tried to make soldiers of people who had been clerks, labourers, mechanics, shop assistants, students and farm boys not very long before.
Some of that bravado had survived the journey to the harbour.
One soldier leaned dangerously far over a rail after recognising someone below until another caught the back of his coat and hauled him upright, and laughter travelled through the men around him while a young woman on the pier cupped both hands around her mouth.
"Frank! Frank!" she screamed, pushing onto the tips of her shoes as the soldier twisted around in search of the voice. "Frank!"
He found her.
Nathan saw the change in his face even from where he stood. Whatever joke the soldier had been shouting to the man beside him vanished, and he forced his way back toward the rail, waving both arms while the young woman jumped once as though those few extra inches might make her easier to distinguish among hundreds of people.
"There you are!" she cried, laughing now as tears ran freely down her cheeks. "There you are!"
Frank shouted something back, but the harbour swallowed every word beneath a whistle and the churn of machinery.
She answered anyway.
Nathan watched them longer than he intended because the same impossible conversation was taking place everywhere around them. Names crossed the water more clearly than sentences. Promises disappeared beneath engines and whistles. Men shouted that they would write, women shouted that they had better, mothers demanded sons remember scarves, letters, prayers, socks, medicines and pieces of advice those sons had probably heard every day since childhood, while fathers determined to remain composed occasionally ruined the effort by shouting one final instruction at a ship already too far away for anyone aboard to understand it.
A small boy sitting on his father's shoulders waved a flag with both hands until the little wooden stick bent under his grip.
"Papa! Papa!"
A soldier near the rail waved.
Whether the man was actually his father Nathan could not tell.
The child was certain.
"Papa!"
The soldier waved harder.
Nathan felt Mrs Hargreaves settle beside him and, when he glanced toward her, found none of the dry amusement with which she had regarded most of New York since their arrival. She had both hands around Horsley's carrier now, holding it securely against herself while watching the families rather than the ships. T stood on Nathan's other side, his black armour ordinarily sufficient to draw stares from almost everyone who saw him for the first time, yet for once hardly anyone nearby cared what he was wearing.
The ships had them.
Nathan turned back toward the soldiers and began noticing how young many of them were. Some carried themselves with the exaggerated confidence of men determined to prove that the uniform belonged to them, laughing too loudly, shoving friends, calling down to women and swinging their caps over their heads, while others stood farther behind the rail and watched New York with a quiet intensity that made Nathan wonder whether they were attempting to memorise it before distance reduced the city to a line against the horizon.
One man had both hands wrapped around the rail.
He could not have been much older than twenty.
Nathan watched the knuckles whiten around the metal as somebody beside the soldier said something and drew a quick smile from him; the smile lasted only until the young man looked down at the water opening beside the hull, whereupon it disappeared so completely that Nathan understood what he was seeing.
Fear.
Not panic, and certainly not cowardice.
Just fear.
Nathan recognised it well enough.
"Look at them," he said quietly, resting one hand against the brim of his hat while his attention remained upon the men aboard.
Mrs Hargreaves turned slightly toward him. "I am."
"They're frightened," Nathan continued, his voice nearly lost beneath another cheer from the pier.
"Some of them," T replied.
"Most of them, I'd imagine," Nathan said, watching the young soldier's hands remain locked around the rail. "Some simply hide it better."
Another whistle sounded, longer this time, and sailors began moving with greater purpose around the vessel. The crowd seemed to understand what it meant before Nathan did, because conversations changed almost at once and people pressed toward every available opening along the waterfront.
The transport was leaving.
The movement was so small at first that Nathan might have missed it had he been watching anything except the strip of water between hull and pier.
The families did not miss it.
Everything became louder.
Women who had been waving steadily began using both arms. Soldiers crowded the rails until officers were forced to push some of them back. A mother somewhere behind Nathan screamed her son's name over and over until another woman caught her around the shoulders, and men aboard removed their caps and swept them through the air while officers who might ordinarily have objected appeared to decide that discipline could survive several minutes of humanity.
Nathan watched the water widen.
The young man gripping the rail looked toward shore, his fear still visible in the rigidity of his shoulders and the whiteness of his hands.
He stayed.
Nathan removed his hat.
T turned his helmet toward him as Nathan lifted it above his head and began waving alongside the families.
"You know someone aboard?" T asked, not mocking him this time.
"No," Nathan answered, continuing to wave as several soldiers looked toward their part of the crowd.
One of them waved back.
Nathan raised his hat higher.
"No," he repeated more quietly. "I don't."
The ship moved another few yards from the pier and the crowd followed it along every stretch of waterfront available to them, people walking until barriers, equipment or buildings forced them to stop. Nathan moved with them almost without noticing, Mrs Hargreaves staying close with Horsley while T remained at his shoulder, and soon Nathan found himself beside a young woman whose face was wet with tears despite the enormous smile she kept directing toward the transport.
He followed her gaze and found the man she was watching because there was something almost physical about the line between them. The soldier had removed his cap and was waving it above his head, repeatedly pointing toward her before touching his own chest.
The woman blew him a kiss.
He caught it theatrically.
The soldiers around him jeered and shoved his shoulders.
She laughed through her tears.
Nathan smiled with her, then noticed the infant held against her body.
The soldier pointed again.
The woman understood, carefully lifting the baby higher so the child could be seen above the heads surrounding her.
The man's smile disappeared.
For several seconds he simply looked.
Nathan lowered his hat slightly as the soldier's face folded before he caught himself, and one of the men beside him put a hand against the back of his neck, squeezed once and deliberately turned away, offering the peculiar kindness of pretending not to notice.
The woman kissed the baby's forehead.
The soldier raised his cap again.
Nathan did the same.
"Those men have courage," Nathan said, watching the ship pull steadily farther away.
"Yes," Mrs Hargreaves replied, her own eyes fixed upon the mother and child.
"No, I don't mean simply because they're going," Nathan said, shaking his head slightly before looking toward T. "People talk about courage as though fear somehow spoils it, as though a courageous man is one who doesn't understand what can happen to him."
"A man who isn't afraid of anything is usually a fool," T replied, keeping his attention on the departing soldiers.
Nathan smiled faintly. "Exactly. They know enough to be afraid. Perhaps they don't know France yet, not truly, but they know men are dying there; they read casualty lists, they receive letters and some of them must already know someone who went before them. They know enough to imagine what may be waiting."
Mrs Hargreaves looked toward the young man who had been gripping the rail.
"And still they're standing there," she said.
"Yes," Nathan replied, raising his hat again as another group of soldiers waved toward them. "They're afraid, and they go anyway."
A second transport farther along the waterfront was preparing to leave, drawing another movement through the crowd as families hurried from one viewing position to another, desperate not to surrender a single minute in which faces could still be recognised. Nathan remained where he was, watching men search the shore, sometimes finding the person they wanted and sometimes continuing until the crowd became too dense or distance made the effort pointless.
"What makes a man do that?" Mrs Hargreaves asked, her voice low enough that Nathan knew the question was meant for him and T rather than anyone around them.
"Different things," Nathan replied after thinking for several seconds, lowering his hat to his chest as he studied the families. "Duty for some, pride for others. Some were drafted and came because the law told them to. Some probably came because their friends did, and some because they would rather face France than spend the rest of their lives wondering whether they were afraid to go." He gestured gently with the hat toward the people around them. "And some because of this."
Mrs Hargreaves followed the gesture.
Home was all around them, but not as an abstraction and not as something printed upon a recruiting poster. It was a woman holding a baby high enough for her husband to see. It was a mother crying into her husband's shoulder, a younger sister standing on a crate, a father waving with one hand because the other had risen to cover his mouth, children screaming names toward the water and a city of windows rising behind all of them.
"This," Nathan repeated. "The people waiting here."
"Something worth coming back to," T said.
Nathan looked at him, finding his own reflection faintly caught in the dark lenses. "Yes."
The answer remained between them while the first transport continued outward and Nathan lifted his hat once more.
"I won't say the cost is good," he said, his voice becoming quieter even as something harder settled beneath it. "I won't call any of this good merely because men are capable of meeting it bravely, and I won't say it was right to ask it of them merely because they answered. Those are different things."
Mrs Hargreaves watched him rather than the ship now.
"But I will not dishonour their choices," Nathan continued, turning back toward the men at the rails. "Not theirs."
Another cluster of soldiers saw the waving crowd and answered with their own caps. Nathan's arm had begun to ache from holding his hat above his head, but he ignored it as a thought escaped him before he had properly considered where they were standing.
"Perhaps not even half of them will come back."
"Nathan," Mrs Hargreaves said sharply, turning toward him at once.
He heard what was wrong with the sentence as soon as she said his name.
It was not that she possessed a better prediction. It was that these men were alive, their wives and mothers were standing within earshot and there was something cruel about burying them with arithmetic before their ships had even cleared New York harbour.
Nathan's jaw tightened as he looked back toward the soldiers.
"No," he said after a moment, lowering his hat. "That wasn't fair."
Mrs Hargreaves did not scold him further.
"I don't know how many will come home," Nathan corrected quietly, accepting the uncertainty rather than disguising fear as certainty. "I hope every one of them does."
"They won't all come back the same," T said.
Nathan looked toward him.
T did not elaborate, because he did not need to.
Nathan thought of hospitals, missing limbs and lungs damaged by gas; he thought of faces altered by fragments of metal and bodies reconstructed as far as surgery could manage, of men who jumped at noises that were not artillery and others who stared through walls because part of them remained somewhere no physician could reach.
"No," Nathan agreed, his expression losing the last of its earlier warmth.
"But they'll come back," T said, still looking toward the ship. "Some of them."
"For the people here."
T nodded.
Nathan raised his hat again.
The transport was far enough away now that faces had begun dissolving into uniforms. Nathan could still distinguish arms, caps and handkerchiefs, but no longer eyes or mouths, while the crowd continued shouting names as though volume alone could preserve the connection.
"Frank!"
"Johnny!"
"Tom!"
"Write to us!"
"Come home!"
"Don't forget!"
"I love you!"
The last cry came from somewhere Nathan could not see, followed by a man's answer from the water that disappeared completely beneath the harbour noise. The woman who had called began crying, and Mrs Hargreaves moved a little closer to Nathan until her shoulder nearly touched his.
Another vessel began moving.
The waterfront erupted again.
Nathan raised his hat with everyone else.
The soldiers were not solemn figures arranged for some heroic painting. They shouted, laughed and contradicted one another; one group began singing and lost half the words because another group nearby was singing something entirely different, while a man at the rail blew kisses toward three different women until his companions accused him loudly of having forgotten which one was his sweetheart.
"You were always a bastard, Eddie!" somebody shouted from shore.
The soldier bowed magnificently from the waist.
Laughter travelled through the crowd.
Less than a minute later the same man turned from the rail and wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
Nathan saw that too.
The laughter mattered.
So did the tears.
Neither diminished the other.
Near the rear of the second transport, a young soldier spotted an elderly couple and nearly climbed over another man in his effort to reach the rail. The old woman immediately began waving both hands while the man beside her removed his hat.
"Ma!" the soldier shouted.
Nathan heard that one clearly.
The old woman did too.
Her face crumpled so quickly that she could not answer.
"Ma!"
"She sees you!" the older man shouted for her, placing one arm around his wife while lifting his hat with the other. "She sees you!"
The soldier laughed and continued waving until the movement of the ship carried him beyond the section of pier where they stood, yet the old woman kept waving after he had disappeared behind part of the vessel.
Nathan lowered his hat, surprised by the tightness in his throat.
Mrs Hargreaves noticed.
She had the decency not to mention it.
For the first time since stepping onto American soil, Nathan stopped looking at New York as something to be understood.
The skyline still towered behind the families, windows beginning to glow as the last daylight faded, but the buildings had changed in meaning. Earlier Nathan had marvelled at their height, their steel, their audacity and the enormous organisation required to make a city climb upward rather than merely spread across the earth; now he looked at those buildings and understood why so many soldiers aboard the transports kept turning their heads toward them.
Those streets contained mothers.
Those windows contained wives and sweethearts.
Somewhere among those buildings were bedrooms left behind, dinner tables that would have an empty chair tonight, workshops where somebody else would temporarily stand at a bench, churches in which people would pray for them, bars where friends would exaggerate their courage and apartments where letters from France would be opened carefully, read repeatedly and eventually softened along the folds.
New York was not merely the city behind the soldiers.
It was what they meant when they said home.
"They're protecting that," Nathan said, looking toward the skyline before shaking his head when Mrs Hargreaves followed his gaze. "Not the buildings."
He moved his hat toward the crowd.
"That."
A woman had buried her face against her husband's coat. A little girl had fallen asleep in someone's arms despite the noise. An elderly man remained standing straight while tears ran freely down his cheeks.
"They're leaving all of this behind because they want it to still be here when they return," Nathan said.
"Or because they were ordered to," T replied.
"Yes," Nathan said immediately, unwilling to romanticise conscription simply because the farewell moved him. "Some because they were ordered to, some because they chose it, and most probably because life is rarely kind enough to give anyone one clean reason. Whatever brought them aboard, they're there now."
Another cheer rolled through the crowd.
Nathan raised his hat.
"And I will respect that."
Time passed strangely after that. Nathan had been impatient to move inland less than an hour earlier, already thinking about trains, schedules, Kansas and the work waiting farther west, but none of them suggested leaving now. Ten minutes became twenty, twenty became forty and the harbour darkened while transports moved away one after another, some already beyond recognition while others remained near enough for families to distinguish individual men.
The crowd changed with every departure. People who had watched their own sons or husbands disappear sometimes left immediately, grief apparently easier to bear while moving, whereas others remained at the waterfront long after their particular ship had gone because going home meant admitting the departure was finished.
Nathan stayed.
Mrs Hargreaves stayed with him.
T stayed because Nathan did, although after a while Nathan suspected that was not the only reason.
Horsley shifted occasionally inside the carrier and settled again, and nobody joked about him.
A young woman near Nathan stood with both arms folded tightly around herself, staring at a vessel now so distant that nobody aboard could possibly identify her. An older woman, perhaps her mother or sister, tried once to guide her away, but the younger woman shook her head and remained where she was.
Nathan understood.
There was an irrational hope in remaining visible. If the men aboard were still looking toward shore, someone ought to be there looking back.
So Nathan remained there too.
His hat rose whenever another cheer moved through the crowd, lowered when his arm tired and rose again when the soldiers answered.
"Your arm hurts," T observed after some time, glancing toward him.
"A little," Nathan admitted, rolling his shoulder once without lowering the hat.
"Put it down."
"No."
"They can't tell who you are."
"That isn't why I'm doing it."
T watched him for a moment before turning back toward the water.
The hour slipped past.
Night gathered properly over New York, transforming the city from stone and steel into thousands of illuminated windows stacked impossibly high above the streets. Harbour lamps broke into trembling lines across the dark water, whistles sounded from vessels moving beyond the piers and smoke softened the lower skyline until the tallest buildings appeared to rise out of it.
Nathan thought of the Atlantic the previous night.
The darkness below.
The unknown.
He had stood beside T and wondered what might live beneath the water, marvelling at how little human beings truly knew about the world beneath their ships.
Now men were sailing into that darkness.
The same route.
The opposite direction.
Nathan, T, Mrs Hargreaves and Horsley had crossed safely from France into New York, and these men were leaving New York for France.
The thought sat uncomfortably in him.
A transport farther out sounded its whistle, long and deep enough that Nathan felt some of it in his chest.
The crowd answered.
Nathan raised his hat again.
The young woman beside him waved a handkerchief so hard that it slipped from her fingers and landed near Nathan's shoes. He bent, retrieved it and returned it without lowering his hat completely.
"Thank you," she said breathlessly, taking the cloth before pointing immediately toward one of the ships. "That's my husband."
Nathan followed her hand toward hundreds of men crowded along the vessel.
"Which one?"
"Near the middle, second rail. He has his cap off."
Several men had their caps off.
Nathan searched anyway.
"I see him."
Perhaps he did.
Perhaps he did not.
The woman smiled as though the distinction hardly mattered. "He's never been out of New York before," she said, laughing once through her tears as she began waving again. "He was a clerk. Can you believe that? He complained about going to Brooklyn."
Nathan smiled and looked back toward the indistinguishable man at the rail.
"He'll come home," she said.
It was not a question.
Nathan could have answered with uncertainty, probability, war, hospitals or the simple admission that neither of them knew what waited across the Atlantic. Instead he lifted his hat toward the ship.
"I hope he does," he said.
The woman nodded.
That was enough.
Eventually there were no more faces, only ships, and then even the transports became difficult to distinguish from the other lights moving through the harbour. The crowd began coming apart gradually, families peeling away in small groups, some supporting one another while others talked too loudly because ordinary conversation offered something to do besides cry. Children were carried toward waiting vehicles, young women folded handkerchiefs into handbags, fathers replaced hats and mothers looked back.
Nearly everyone looked back.
Nathan did too.
His arm finally lowered and the hat hung beside his leg while Mrs Hargreaves adjusted Horsley's carrier and moved closer.
"We should go," she said, touching Nathan lightly at the elbow as she watched the last of the families begin moving inland.
"Yes," Nathan answered, although he remained facing the water for another few seconds.
T waited beside them.
The three stood amid what the departure had left behind: trampled paper, cigarette ends, footprints, a fallen ribbon and one little flag abandoned near the barrier until a boy came running back, snatched it from the ground and hurried after his family.
Nathan could no longer tell which distant lights belonged to the transports.
France lay somewhere beyond them.
So did the war.
He would not call the sacrifice good, would not call it right simply because men more powerful than those soldiers had demanded it and would not pretend that courage transformed death into something clean. He would remember instead the men at the rails: the young soldier gripping steel because he was afraid, the father looking at his infant, the son shouting for his mother and the clerk who had once complained about travelling to Brooklyn and was now crossing an ocean to fight in France.
Fear did not diminish any of them.
If anything, fear was what gave their courage meaning.
Nathan slowly placed his hat back upon his head.
"I hope they come home," Mrs Hargreaves said, her gaze lingering upon the harbour.
"So do I," Nathan replied.
"Every one of them," T added.
Nathan looked briefly toward the dark lenses before turning back to the water. "Yes."
Another whistle sounded far out in the harbour, and Nathan touched two fingers to the brim of his hat, holding them there for a moment in a gesture offered toward men too distant to see it.
"Brave bastards," T murmured.
Nathan smiled faintly. "Yes."
Mrs Hargreaves slipped her free hand through Nathan's arm.
He looked down at it and then toward her, but she offered no explanation and he asked for none. Nathan covered her hand briefly with his own, feeling the warmth of her fingers through the fabric, and together they finally turned away from the harbour.
New York rose ahead of them.
The city seemed different now than it had an hour earlier. The buildings remained astonishing, taller than anything Mrs Hargreaves had expected and crowded together with an American confidence Nathan found almost aggressive, but the thousands of illuminated windows no longer represented architecture alone. People lived behind them. Families were returning to them tonight with one person missing—not dead, not yet lost, simply absent and travelling east across the Atlantic.
Nathan understood the skyline better for knowing that.
They joined the thinning stream moving inland, T walking beside them while Horsley remained quiet in his carrier, and for several minutes Nathan did not ask about the railway, did not demand the name of an unfamiliar building and did not turn toward every mechanical noise echoing between the streets.
Mrs Hargreaves noticed.
She allowed him the silence.
Behind them the harbour continued its work with the indifference peculiar to great machines and great cities, unloading one vessel while preparing another, moving cargo and men according to schedules too large to stop for any individual goodbye. Ahead waited Kansas, and Nathan had crossed an ocean because men there had become sick while the soldiers behind him were crossing that same ocean because other men were dying.
For the first time since the word Kansas had entered his life, Nathan felt the two movements as parts of the same enormous mechanism: men carried by trains into camps, from camps into ports, from ports onto ships and from ships into France, while illness could travel those same routes without uniform, orders or passport.
The thought came naturally.
Nathan did not reach for his notebook.
Not yet.
Tonight the men leaving New York deserved to remain men rather than become another pattern on one of his maps.
By the time the waterfront had disappeared behind several blocks of warehouses, offices and crowded streets, New York had settled properly into night, although Nathan quickly discovered that night did not appear to persuade the city to become quieter.
The smell of salt water and coal smoke followed them for a time before giving way to horse manure, petrol, tobacco, hot food and the accumulated breath of streets filled beyond anything Mrs Hargreaves had expected. Electric lamps illuminated shopfronts, streetcars announced themselves with bells, automobiles threaded impatiently around wagons that refused to disappear merely because internal combustion had arrived to compete with them, and pedestrians crossed between both with a confidence Nathan found slightly astonishing. Newsboys called headlines from corners while uniformed men mixed with clerks, women in evening dress, labourers finishing shifts and families still making their way home from the harbour.
Nathan gradually began looking upward again.
Mrs Hargreaves noticed on the third occasion.
"You're going to walk into someone," she warned, tightening her arm around his for half a second when he nearly allowed his attention to follow the face of a building rather than the pavement ahead.
"I can look and walk simultaneously," Nathan replied, adjusting his hat as a motor car passed close enough to remind him that perhaps she possessed some evidence to the contrary.
"You said something similar about reading and eating."
"That is completely different."
"You still forgot to eat."
"I didn't forget."
"You discovered it was morning."
"That happened once."
T turned his helmet toward him.
Nathan looked at the black lenses, recognised the accusation contained in silence and sighed. "Several times."
Mrs Hargreaves smiled and kept walking.
New York fascinated him partly because it seemed to contain two ages without requiring either to yield gracefully to the other. A horse-drawn delivery wagon rolled beneath electric illumination while a motor car sounded its horn impatiently behind it, and beyond both rose structures whose steel frames had permitted architects to put more offices above a single patch of earth than some English streets appeared designed to contain altogether. The city did not seem embarrassed by contradiction. Old and new simply collided in the road and shouted until one moved aside.
Their arrangements brought them toward Grand Central Terminal, and Nathan's attempt to behave like a man who had already encountered enough remarkable engineering for one day lasted until the building came properly into view.
His pace slowed.
Mrs Hargreaves, having anticipated the reaction this time, slowed with him rather than colliding with his shoulder.
Grand Central possessed none of Leviathan's brutal industrial enormity, yet it produced the same fundamental reaction in Nathan for an entirely different reason. The great stone façade rose above the streets with enormous windows glowing warmly from within, its columns and arches giving the building an almost civic grandeur that made the terminal seem less like somewhere one caught a train than a declaration that movement itself deserved architecture. People continuously disappeared through its entrances and emerged again, the whole enormous structure seeming to breathe humanity in and out while motor cars, taxis, wagons and pedestrians gathered around it in a confusion that should have collapsed into disorder and somehow continued functioning.
Nathan's gaze travelled from the terminal to the traffic feeding it and then upward again.
"You're doing it," Mrs Hargreaves said.
"I haven't said anything."
"You don't need to."
"I was merely thinking."
"That is usually when the trouble starts."
T studied the building for several seconds before turning toward Nathan. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," Nathan confirmed, looking once more toward the illuminated windows before allowing Mrs Hargreaves to steer him onward.
Their hotel stood close enough to Grand Central that they would not have to carry luggage and a travelling rat across half Manhattan before departing the following day. Nathan had deliberately avoided anything too extravagant. He could afford extravagance, but what he wanted tonight was discretion, competent staff, clean rooms, hot water and a short journey to the station in the morning, not another hotel lobby populated by people who treated recognising wealthy or unusual guests as a professional obligation.
The hotel they entered possessed the sort of polished respectability he had hoped for: brass fittings shone beneath electric lights, dark wood surrounded a broad reception desk, leather chairs occupied small conversational groups near potted palms and a patterned carpet absorbed enough of the street noise that stepping through the revolving door felt briefly like entering another world. A bellboy hurried forward for their luggage, slowed noticeably when he saw T and then recovered with admirable professionalism.
The desk clerk performed less successfully.
He looked first at Nathan, then Mrs Hargreaves, then the reinforced carrier in her hands and finally T.
His eyes remained on the armour for several seconds before returning carefully to Nathan.
"He's with me," Nathan offered.
The clerk's gaze drifted back toward T. "I had gathered that, sir."
"Excellent."
Mrs Hargreaves closed her eyes briefly.
T remained motionless.
The clerk dipped his pen toward the register, apparently deciding that whatever explanation existed for the armed black figure in his lobby was not worth delaying people who already possessed reservations. "And the animal, sir?"
"Horsley," Nathan replied.
The pen stopped.
Mrs Hargreaves intervened before Nathan could make the situation worse. "Rat."
Nathan turned toward her. "He has a name."
"So does Mr Taylor," she replied, shifting the carrier slightly against her hip. "We don't describe him as a Joseph when someone asks what he is."
T's helmet turned toward her.
Nathan stared.
The clerk resumed writing with the focused determination of a man who had decided not to hear anything else.
Their rooms were arranged close together, Nathan taking Horsley rather than allowing the carrier to be stored anywhere downstairs. Once the luggage had been brought up, he placed the enclosure where it would remain away from draughts and unnecessary foot traffic, checked the water, inspected the bedding and tested both catches despite having personally checked them before leaving the harbour. Horsley emerged briefly from the covered portion, whiskers moving as he investigated the unfamiliar room, then retreated again when Nathan adjusted the bedding.
Mrs Hargreaves watched from the doorway.
"He remains inside," Nathan said without looking at her.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was observing."
Nathan straightened. "Apparently everyone has taken up my profession."
"Someone has to do it while you're distracted by buildings."
T disappeared briefly to inspect the corridors, stairs and exits, leaving Nathan and Mrs Hargreaves to unpack only what they required for the night. Nathan removed his coat, loosened his collar and had already opened the medical folder on the writing desk when he heard Mrs Hargreaves step fully into the room behind him.
"We have only just arrived," she said, looking pointedly from him to the papers.
"Yes," Nathan replied, one hand still resting on the open folder.
"You spent eight and a half days reading those."
"I also spent eight and a half days doing several other things."
"So I've been informed by most of Leviathan's engineering department."
Nathan looked at the pages, considered the argument he might make and closed the folder instead.
"There," Mrs Hargreaves said, visibly satisfied as she removed her gloves. "America may survive you yet."
"I'm beginning to think inviting you was a mistake."
"You've said that before."
"I mean it more every time."
"No, you don't," she replied, moving toward the adjoining room with the calm certainty of someone who knew him well enough to recognise an empty threat.
Nathan could not convincingly disagree.
Their railway arrangements were already settled. The following day they would leave Grand Central aboard the Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago, where the journey west would bring them closer to Kansas and the questions that had pulled Nathan across the Atlantic in the first place. Nathan had studied enough of the arrangements to make Mrs Hargreaves suspicious of how much of the following day he intended to spend examining the train rather than sitting quietly inside it, but for tonight the railway could wait.
He checked his watch.
Then he smiled.
Mrs Hargreaves saw it immediately.
"No," she said.
Nathan looked up. "I haven't proposed anything."
"You're smiling."
"Am I not ordinarily permitted?"
"Not like that."
T returned at that moment and paused near the doorway, his armour looking even darker against the hotel's warm wallpaper and brass fittings.
Nathan looked between them. "We've crossed the Atlantic, arrived safely in New York, spent the better part of an hour watching men leave for France and tomorrow we're going to spend most of our time travelling again. I think we should have dinner."
Mrs Hargreaves waited.
Nathan waited back.
"And?" she asked.
"And nothing."
"Nathan."
He lasted another second. "And perhaps see a play."
Mrs Hargreaves's expression told him she had known there was more.
"A play?"
"Yes."
"You?"
Nathan looked offended. "I've seen plays."
"I didn't say you hadn't."
"You implied surprise."
"I am surprised."
"What play?" T asked, saving Nathan from the argument.
Nathan turned toward him with immediate gratitude. "The Fountain of Youth."
T stared through the dark lenses.
Nathan's smile widened. "I thought the title appropriate."
"Appropriate to what?" Mrs Hargreaves asked, looking between them.
"Nothing," Nathan replied slightly too quickly, reaching for his coat before her suspicion could become productive. "Come on. We should eat first."
Mrs Hargreaves glanced toward Horsley's carrier.
"No."
Nathan stopped. "I didn't suggest taking him."
"I was making certain."
"He's a rat."
"Yes."
"He doesn't attend theatre."
"That may be the first sensible rule you've established concerning him."
Nathan gestured toward the enclosure. "He stays here."
Mrs Hargreaves's eyes moved toward the catches.
Nathan saw it. "He stays here."
"He had better."
T looked toward Horsley as well.
Nathan pointed at him. "Do not encourage her."
"I didn't say anything."
"Apparently nobody needs to anymore."
The restaurant they chose stood close enough to the theatre district that they could eat without rushing afterward, which Mrs Hargreaves made a condition of agreeing to Nathan's spontaneous evening. By the time they reached it, the streets had taken on a different life from those around the waterfront. Broadway and the neighbouring blocks seemed brighter as the rest of Manhattan darkened, electric signs hanging above theatres and restaurants while automobiles drew to the curb beside horse-drawn vehicles, uniformed servicemen mixed with couples dressed for an evening out and newsboys continued calling papers as though the city had collectively agreed that bedtime was a provincial habit.
Nathan found the anonymity pleasant.
London had become too familiar in certain circles, Birmingham had required Markus and the Institute surrounded him with people who either worked for him or knew precisely who Professor Nathan Drake was. Here he could be another well-dressed man moving through a crowd in a city containing more strangers than he could reasonably hope to remember.
Almost.
T made anonymity somewhat theoretical.
"You do realise that taking you anywhere in New York makes discretion extremely difficult," Nathan said as another couple passed them, the man looking over his shoulder twice at T before his companion pulled him onward.
"You brought me," T replied.
"You could look less conspicuous."
Mrs Hargreaves glanced toward Nathan. "You had this conversation with him before we left France."
"I was hoping America might improve matters."
"It has," she replied. "More people are staring."
T kept walking.
Nathan sighed. "Marvelous."
The restaurant solved the immediate problem by giving them privacy.
From the street it appeared respectable without being ostentatious, its front windows softened by curtains and warm amber light. Inside, dark polished wood ran along the walls beneath framed prints and mirrors, brass lamps cast small pools of light over white tablecloths and the air carried the layered smells of roasted meat, butter, onions, coffee, tobacco and freshly baked bread. Waiters in dark jackets moved between tables with folded cloths over one arm, slipping around chairs with the practised ease of men who could carry a laden tray through conversation without interrupting either.
The clientele reflected the neighbourhood outside. Two officers ate near the front window with a civilian gentleman whose waistcoat looked expensive enough to announce his profession without explanation; farther in, a middle-aged couple shared wine while a younger pair leaned close over their table, and from somewhere beyond the partition came the bright burst of laughter produced by a group that had already ordered a second bottle.
The maître d' saw Nathan first.
Then T.
His professional smile survived, although it required effort.
"A private booth, if you have one," Nathan requested, removing his hat as Mrs Hargreaves stood beside him.
The man's eyes flicked once toward T's armour. "Certainly, sir."
Nathan suspected the booth might have become available even if it had not been a moment earlier.
They were shown past the main dining room into a partially enclosed space lined with dark wood and upholstered seating, where a heavy curtain could be drawn far enough to offer privacy without completely separating them from the life of the restaurant. A shaded lamp cast warm light across a white tablecloth set with polished silver, water glasses, folded napkins and a small vase holding flowers whose species Nathan resisted examining too closely.
Mrs Hargreaves slid into the booth first, removed her gloves and placed them beside her handbag, while Nathan sat opposite her, adjusted his chair and reached for the menu. T remained standing long enough to inspect the entrance and the narrow space around them.
Mrs Hargreaves looked up at him. "Do you intend to eat?"
"Yes," T replied.
"Then sit."
T looked toward Nathan.
Nathan's mouth twitched.
"Don't," T warned.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're about to."
"Must we repeat this every evening?" Mrs Hargreaves asked, unfolding her napkin across her lap with the authority of someone who considered the matter settled.
T finally sat.
A waiter appeared almost immediately, introduced the evening's soup and several dishes in a rapid, polished recital, then offered them water while leaving wine service to follow. Nathan ordered roast beef with potatoes and vegetables after Mrs Hargreaves gave him a look when he appeared tempted to claim he was not especially hungry. She chose chicken with a light sauce and seasonal vegetables, while T ordered steak so simply that the waiter seemed relieved to encounter something about him that required no explanation.
When the waiter withdrew and the curtain settled again, T reached toward the fastenings around his head.
Mrs Hargreaves looked over.
Then the helmet came away and she stopped.
Not frightened.
Simply caught completely unprepared.
For months T had existed to her as armour, dark lenses and a voice. She had seen him at the Institute, at The Knapp, during their preparations, in France and throughout the crossing aboard Leviathan, yet every one of those encounters had preserved the same deliberate anonymity. Even when he had joined them for dinner on the ship, the man beneath the equipment had remained concealed enough that T could occupy a room without Joseph Taylor ever truly entering it.
Now there was simply a man sitting across from her.
Human.
Younger than the armour made him seem.
Without the helmet, the stillness she associated with T changed character. What had appeared almost mechanical behind black lenses became watchfulness in human eyes, the deeply ingrained habit of someone who noticed entrances before decorations and movement before conversation. His face was not the face Mrs Hargreaves had unconsciously constructed beneath the armour, although she could not have described what she had expected instead, and for several seconds she simply looked.
T noticed.
"Disappointed?" he asked, setting the helmet carefully beside him where it would remain within reach.
Mrs Hargreaves recovered enough to straighten her napkin. "I wasn't aware I had formed an expectation."
"You had."
"Yes," she admitted, studying him again with considerably more restraint. "Apparently I had."
Nathan smiled over the top of his menu.
Mrs Hargreaves turned toward him. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were enjoying yourself."
"A little."
A waiter returned with wine, and the conversation paused while he presented the bottle to Nathan, opened it and poured a small amount for approval before filling their glasses. If the waiter was surprised to discover the face beneath the armour, he possessed the professionalism not to show more than the briefest hesitation, although his eyes flicked once toward the helmet before he withdrew.
Mrs Hargreaves waited until he was gone.
"We've crossed an ocean together," she said, taking her glass but not yet drinking, "and I realise I know almost nothing about you."
"That was intentional," T replied.
"T," Nathan interrupted gently, setting his menu down as the armoured name suddenly seemed inadequate at a dinner table.
T looked toward him.
Nathan turned to Mrs Hargreaves. "Mrs Hargreaves, Joseph Taylor."
Her eyes returned to the man across from her.
Joseph.
The name changed something immediately, not in him but in the way she understood him. T belonged to corridors, security posts, sealed doors and black armour. Joseph Taylor could sit at a restaurant table, order steak and possess a life that had existed before Nathan.
Nathan gestured toward her. "Joseph, Mrs Hargreaves, although you've both spent enough time insulting me together that a proper introduction at this stage feels somewhat ridiculous."
"It does," Mrs Hargreaves agreed, and Joseph's mouth moved in the smallest hint of a smile.
Nathan leaned back against the booth. "Joseph looks after me when you aren't there."
Mrs Hargreaves looked at him again, catching the weight beneath the deliberately light phrasing.
"When I'm not there?"
"Frequently," Nathan said, folding his hands loosely on the table. "He has prevented several situations from becoming considerably worse than they might otherwise have been."
"Several?" Joseph asked.
Nathan glanced at him. "Many."
"Better."
Nathan smiled. "He has accompanied me into places where sensible people would have stayed home, prevented me from doing things that were apparently unreasonable—"
"Were unreasonable," Joseph corrected.
"Apparently unreasonable," Nathan repeated with emphasis, "and generally made himself difficult to kill."
Something in Mrs Hargreaves's expression changed.
Nathan noticed immediately.
The armour had allowed her to treat T almost as an abstraction. He had been one of Hale's men and then, over time, simply one of Nathan's people, a security specialist whose presence belonged naturally to the increasingly strange world surrounding the Institute. She knew he was competent, knew Nathan trusted him far beyond ordinary professional confidence and knew from the way soldiers reacted to him that whatever lay behind the armour possessed a history.
She had never asked where that history began.
"Were you a soldier?" she asked, lowering her wine.
Joseph became very still.
Nathan did not answer for him.
"Yes," Joseph said after a moment.
Mrs Hargreaves's eyes moved briefly toward Nathan, but he offered nothing that was not Joseph's to give.
"When?"
"The war," Joseph answered, his gaze dropping for the briefest moment toward the white tablecloth before returning to her.
Two words, yet the way he said them made further explanation unnecessary.
"France?" Mrs Hargreaves asked more softly.
Joseph nodded once.
Beyond the curtain the restaurant continued around them, silverware touching china, glasses being refilled, a waiter apologising quietly after brushing the back of a chair and someone laughing at another table, but the booth seemed to become very still.
Mrs Hargreaves looked at Joseph's face again and understood at least one part of what she was seeing. The constant awareness of doors, the economy of movement, the dry humour that arrived in small measured pieces and the ease with which he could remain silent for long periods without ever seeming distracted all acquired another possible origin.
She thought of the young men leaving New York harbour.
Then she looked toward Nathan.
"And he looks after you," she said.
Nathan nodded. "Yes."
"When I can't."
The words affected him more than she intended. Nathan's expression softened, the memory of their first night aboard Leviathan passing quietly between them.
"Yes," he said.
Mrs Hargreaves returned her attention to Joseph. "Then I owe you thanks."
Joseph looked genuinely uncomfortable.
Nathan noticed and immediately smiled.
Joseph caught him. "Don't."
Mrs Hargreaves almost laughed. "He does that to you as well?"
"Constantly."
"I am sitting here," Nathan said.
"We know," Mrs Hargreaves and Joseph answered almost together.
Nathan stared at them.
Mrs Hargreaves's composure broke first, and Joseph's smile followed a second later.
"This introduction was a mistake," Nathan said, leaning back and folding his arms.
"No," Mrs Hargreaves replied, her amusement remaining as she looked toward Joseph again. "It wasn't. Thank you."
Joseph inclined his head, but she was not finished.
"For keeping him alive."
"That is more difficult than it sounds," Joseph said.
Nathan looked offended. "I am extremely difficult to kill."
"That isn't the same as keeping you alive."
Mrs Hargreaves pointed gently toward Joseph. "Precisely."
Nathan looked between them, realised he had somehow engineered an alliance against himself and reached for the bread basket. "I regret everything."
The first course arrived before the alliance could become more dangerous. Bowls of hot soup were placed before them with fresh bread and butter, and the simple act of eating loosened the mood enough that conversation drifted away from war. Nathan broke bread while Mrs Hargreaves asked Joseph what he thought of New York, and Joseph, after considering the question with the seriousness of a military report, answered that there were too many people.
"You lack imagination," Nathan said, buttering a piece of bread before Mrs Hargreaves pointed out that he had nearly walked into three of those people because he would not stop looking upward.
"I avoided all three," Nathan replied.
"Because I warned you."
"That still counts."
Joseph lifted his spoon. "No."
Nathan stared at him. "You have become remarkably talkative without the helmet."
"It muffles criticism."
Mrs Hargreaves smiled.
Their main courses followed, filling the booth with the smell of roasted meat, gravy, browned potatoes and buttered vegetables. Nathan's beef arrived pink at the centre beneath a rich brown gravy, accompanied by potatoes crisp at their edges and carrots that Mrs Hargreaves watched him actually eat before returning to her own chicken. Joseph cut into his steak with quiet efficiency while the waiter refreshed water and wine, removed empty plates and managed, after the first few visits, to treat the black helmet resting beside Joseph as though it were no stranger than a hat.
For a while conversation became pleasantly ordinary.
Nathan found himself enjoying that more than he expected.
There was something almost absurd about the three of them sitting in a private booth in Manhattan while Horsley waited in a hotel room, Kansas existed inside Nathan's medical folder and Europe consumed men an ocean away. Outside, New York moved around them with all the urgency of a city involved in a war and yet not physically destroyed by it; inside, warm food arrived on china, glasses caught the lamplight and people at neighbouring tables argued about theatre, business, family and things that had nothing whatsoever to do with Nathan.
For an hour they could simply eat.
Then Nathan's expression changed.
Mrs Hargreaves recognised it before he said anything.
"There's something else," she said, setting down her fork and looking at him.
Nathan paused with his own fork halfway to the plate before lowering it. "Yes."
Joseph looked up.
Nathan hesitated, not because he doubted the decision but because the evening had become unexpectedly pleasant and he disliked bringing work back into it.
"We're changing the journey slightly," he said.
Mrs Hargreaves's eyes narrowed. "How slightly?"
"Chicago."
"We were already going through Chicago."
"We were."
Joseph understood before she did, resting one forearm lightly against the table. "Now we're stopping."
Nathan nodded.
"Why?" Mrs Hargreaves asked.
Nathan reached inside his coat and removed a folded sheet rather than the entire medical file, laying it beside his plate but keeping his fingers upon it for a moment.
"Because Chicago is beginning to bother me," he said.
Mrs Hargreaves looked at the paper.
"There are reports of influenza-like illness there as well," Nathan continued, carefully choosing his language. "Not enough for me to call it the same thing described in Kansas, and I am not doing that. Similar symptoms do not make identical causes."
"But enough to look," Joseph said.
"Enough to ask," Nathan corrected gently, sliding the folded sheet into the centre of the table. "That's all."
The reports were fragmentary, precisely the sort of material Nathan distrusted most because fragments invited the reader to build whatever pattern he expected to find. Illness had been noted in Chicago, enough that Nathan was unwilling to travel through the city without speaking to physicians and examining whatever original records could be obtained, but nothing in the paper allowed him to draw the line from Kansas to Chicago simply because the line would be convenient.
Mrs Hargreaves had spent enough time around him to recognise the distinction.
"And what does that mean for us?" she asked.
Nathan met her eyes. "You should stay here."
She blinked.
"In New York?"
"Yes."
"No."
Nathan had expected resistance, although perhaps not quite that quickly. "Mrs Hargreaves—"
"You invited me to America," she said, putting down her napkin as though preparing for negotiations.
"I did."
"We have been in America for several hours."
"I am aware."
"And now you're leaving me."
"I am asking you to remain in New York temporarily."
"That is leaving me with more syllables."
Joseph looked down at his plate.
Nathan pointed toward him. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking something."
Mrs Hargreaves's mouth almost twitched, but Nathan continued before the conversation could escape him.
"Chicago changes the nature of the journey. Until now we were travelling toward Kansas with a known destination and arrangements already made; if the reports from Chicago justify investigation, Joseph and I may be moving between hospitals, physicians, offices and whatever records are available before continuing west, and I don't know how long that will take."
"You don't know what you'll find," Mrs Hargreaves said, studying him.
"No."
That answer mattered.
Nathan did not embellish it. He did not tell her Chicago was dangerous because he did not know that it was, did not tell her the illness there was the same as Kansas because the evidence did not permit it and did not manufacture urgency merely to make his request easier to win. He met her gaze and allowed uncertainty to remain uncertainty.
"If it's nothing?" she asked.
"Then we'll establish that as far as we're able and continue."
"And if it isn't?"
Nathan glanced once toward the folded report. "Then I'll want fewer people with me."
Mrs Hargreaves looked toward Joseph. "You're going with him."
"Yes," Joseph replied.
"Because you look after him when I'm not there."
Joseph glanced toward Nathan. "Apparently."
Nathan smiled faintly.
Mrs Hargreaves leaned back against the upholstery and considered the two men in front of her. Perhaps the harbour had altered something in the mood of the evening; perhaps seeing Joseph's face and learning enough about him to understand that Nathan would not simply be disappearing west alone made the request easier to accept. More than that, Nathan had spent years making decisions for people in the name of protecting them, and their conversation aboard Leviathan had forced both of them to acknowledge that Mrs Hargreaves possessed a life and choices beyond his need to keep everyone he cared for safely arranged around him.
Now the same courtesy had to travel in both directions.
"How long?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"Nathan."
"I genuinely don't," he replied, spreading one hand over the table. "I could give you a number if it would make the answer prettier, but it wouldn't make it true."
"That is becoming a very common answer."
"It's a useful one."
Mrs Hargreaves sighed, then looked around the booth as though New York itself might be called as a witness. "Where do I stay?"
"Here, if you like, or somewhere you prefer once you've seen more of the city."
"And Horsley?"
Nathan paused.
Mrs Hargreaves saw the answer immediately.
"No."
"He stays with you."
"No."
Nathan's mouth began to curve. "You wanted to preserve my record."
"I was joking."
"You've spent eight and a half days guarding him."
"I have spent eight and a half days preventing your poor judgement from becoming my inconvenience."
"Sounds like experience," Joseph observed, reaching for his wine.
Mrs Hargreaves pointed toward him. "Do not encourage him."
Nathan's smile broadened. "He'll remain securely in the carrier."
"That is what you said on the ship."
"And did he escape?"
"No."
"Then the evidence supports me."
Mrs Hargreaves turned toward Joseph. "Does he always do this?"
"Yes."
"You have known each other properly for less than half an hour," Nathan protested.
"It has been enough," Mrs Hargreaves replied, looking back at him before taking a small drink of wine. "Fine."
Nathan blinked. "Fine?"
"I'll stay in New York."
He had prepared several additional arguments and looked visibly inconvenienced by the sudden absence of opposition.
Mrs Hargreaves saw it immediately. "You look disappointed."
"I am not disappointed."
"You wanted to argue."
"I prepared."
Joseph smiled into his glass.
Nathan ignored him. "You're genuinely comfortable remaining?"
"I am an adult woman in one of the largest cities in the world, Nathan," Mrs Hargreaves replied, smoothing her napkin across her lap. "I managed to exist before you invited me across the Atlantic, and I believe I recently explained that I possess a life independent of looking after you."
"You did."
"Then consider this a practical demonstration."
Nathan smiled despite himself.
"But you will send word," she continued, pointing one finger toward him.
"Every day if possible."
"Not if possible."
Nathan recognised the tone. "Every day."
"And if you cannot?"
"Joseph will."
Joseph looked up from his steak. "Will I?"
"Yes."
Mrs Hargreaves nodded. "Good."
Nathan turned toward him. "You see what you've done?"
"I removed my helmet."
"That was enough."
Once the decision had been made, Mrs Hargreaves refused to permit Nathan to turn the rest of dinner into a planning conference. Chicago could wait until morning, Kansas could wait until Chicago and the Institute had survived eight and a half days without Nathan standing over it, which meant it could survive until dessert.
Nathan was informed of all three facts in exactly those terms.
Dessert arrived in the form of apple pie for Nathan, a lighter pudding for Mrs Hargreaves and coffee for all three, and conversation drifted back toward New York while the restaurant around them slowly changed clientele as theatre time approached. Coats were collected, bills settled and tables reset; a waiter lit another lamp near the far wall, the officers by the window departed and a new couple were shown into their place while the smell of coffee began competing with tobacco smoke.
Mrs Hargreaves admitted she wanted to see Fifth Avenue, although she refused Nathan's suggestion that this proved America had made her adventurous.
"I crossed an ocean with you," she reminded him, stirring a little sugar into her coffee. "I believe I have already demonstrated poor judgement."
"That was voluntary."
"Exactly."
Nathan turned toward Joseph. "And you? There must be something you want to see while we're here."
Joseph considered the question. "Not particularly."
"That is impossible."
Mrs Hargreaves looked toward Joseph over the rim of her cup. "What would you see if nobody told you where to go?"
The question made him pause longer than Nathan expected.
Joseph rested his cup in its saucer and thought.
"Somewhere quiet."
Nathan laughed.
Joseph looked at him. "I spend my life with you."
Mrs Hargreaves nearly choked on her wine before putting the glass down and covering her mouth with her napkin.
Nathan waited until she recovered. "You are both becoming intolerable."
"Perhaps it's contagious," she said.
Nathan's amusement vanished for half a second.
Mrs Hargreaves heard her own choice of words at precisely the same moment, and Joseph's eyes moved toward Nathan.
Then Nathan laughed.
Not politely.
A genuine laugh that loosened the last tension the medical report had brought into the booth.
"Terrible choice of words," he said.
"I realised."
"Far too late."
"I apologise."
"No, don't," Nathan replied, still smiling as he reached for his coffee. "That was excellent."
When dinner finally ended, the bill was settled and the last of the coffee finished, Joseph reached for his helmet.
Mrs Hargreaves watched him put it on.
The transformation disturbed her more now that she knew what disappeared beneath it. Joseph secured the fastenings one after another, and with each piece the man who had sat across from her over steak and wine seemed to recede behind T: the face vanished, the eyes disappeared behind dark lenses and the human expressions she had only just learned to read became inaccessible again.
The man did not disappear.
Only the world's ability to see him.
"You do look rather alarming," she said once the helmet was secured.
"I've been told," T replied, rising from the booth and checking the fit of one fastening.
"I meant more than before."
Nathan smiled as he stood and helped Mrs Hargreaves with her chair. "Now you know."
"Yes," she said, gathering her gloves before turning back toward T. "Joseph."
He looked at her.
The use of the name seemed strange with the armour restored.
Mrs Hargreaves smiled faintly. "Thank you."
There was a brief pause before T inclined his head. "Mrs Hargreaves."
Nathan watched the exchange and, for once, possessed enough sense to say nothing.
Outside, New York received them again in light and noise.
The walk toward Henry Miller's Theatre became part of the evening rather than another journey. West Forty-third Street and the surrounding theatre district were alive with patrons arriving for performances, automobiles pulling to the curb, carriage wheels rattling across the street and men calling to one another beneath signs glowing against the dark. Restaurant warmth remained in Nathan's coat as the cooler night air touched his face, and Mrs Hargreaves walked between him and T with the relaxed pace of someone who, for the first time since France, had nowhere urgent to be.
The theatre itself still possessed the unmistakable freshness of a place only recently opened. Its façade looked restrained beside some of the brighter advertisements around it, but inside the atmosphere changed immediately: polished fittings caught the electric light, pale decorative surfaces rose toward the ceiling, gold detailing warmed the interior and fresh upholstery had not yet accumulated the worn softness of a house used by generations of audiences. The air carried perfume, tobacco, wool, polished wood and the faint dusty scent of curtains and scenery, while attendants guided patrons through a foyer full of evening clothes, military uniforms, conversation and the rustle of programmes being unfolded.
Mrs Hargreaves slowed upon entering and looked upward.
Nathan noticed instantly.
"You're doing it now," he said, smiling as he stepped closer to keep another patron from brushing into her.
She looked toward him. "Doing what?"
"Looking upward instead of walking."
"That is different."
"Of course."
"Don't become unbearable."
"T says I'm years too late."
"I am beginning to understand Joseph."
Nathan glanced toward T, whose helmet turned very slightly in acknowledgement.
"You see?" Nathan said. "I've lost both of you."
Their seats gave them a clear view of the stage, and T attracted precisely as much attention as Nathan had predicted. Several patrons openly stared before being pulled back into conversation by companions, while an attendant examined Nathan's papers and apparently concluded that whatever explanation existed for the black-armoured man attending a comedy in Manhattan belonged to a level of authority beyond his wages.
Mrs Hargreaves settled into her seat, adjusted her skirt and opened the programme, while Nathan sat beside her and T occupied the next seat with the peculiar stillness of a man whose life had somehow progressed from the battlefields of France to guarding Professor Nathan Drake during a performance of The Fountain of Youth.
Nathan looked down at the title.
A smile touched his mouth.
The Fountain of Youth.
He turned one hand beneath the theatre light and studied it for only a moment.
The hand looked appropriately older than it once had.
Fine changes had accumulated over the years with deliberate care: texture altered, lines introduced, the visible progression kept gradual enough that nobody around him possessed any reason to think of it as anything except age. The same was true of his face and hair. Mrs Hargreaves had watched him grow older in exactly the manner she expected a man to grow older, and nothing in Nathan's appearance offered her reason to suspect that time itself had very little authority over what his body could become.
The joke in the title therefore belonged almost entirely to him.
Mrs Hargreaves caught the smile.
"What?" she asked, turning the programme slightly in her hands.
"Nothing," Nathan replied, returning his attention to the stage.
"That is never true."
"I merely appreciate the title."
"Why?"
Nathan looked at The Fountain of Youth printed across the programme and then back toward her.
"No reason."
Mrs Hargreaves narrowed her eyes.
Nathan smiled innocently.
The lights began to lower before she could continue.
Conversation softened throughout the theatre by degrees, hundreds of voices becoming dozens and then whispers as late arrivals slipped into their seats, programmes folded and the restless movement of the audience gradually surrendered to expectation. Somewhere behind them a woman whispered one final remark to her companion and received a quiet laugh; an attendant moved along the aisle, then disappeared, and the stage became the brightest thing in the room.
Nathan settled farther into his seat.
For once there was nothing he needed to contain.
No organism waited behind reinforced glass. No culture required observation, no government official expected an answer and no report demanded that uncertainty be converted into another experiment. The men they had watched depart New York harbour were already moving east toward the Atlantic, the Institute continued operating thousands of miles away, Chicago waited somewhere beyond tomorrow's railway line and Kansas remained farther west with all its unanswered questions.
None of them could be helped during the next few hours.
Nathan looked briefly toward Mrs Hargreaves. She had forgotten him entirely for the moment and was studying the stage with open interest, her programme folded neatly in her lap. Beyond her, T remained recognisably T to everyone else in the theatre, black armour and dark lenses turning him into something severe and anonymous among evening coats and dresses, but Nathan now found himself thinking of the man Mrs Hargreaves had met over dinner.
Joseph.
A man who looked after Nathan when she could not.
The thought warmed something in him.
The curtain rose.
Mrs Hargreaves leaned forward slightly.
Nathan turned his attention to the performance.
For the next several hours Chicago could wait.
Kansas could wait.
The Institute could wait.
Even the war, for a little while, could remain outside among the uniforms, motor cars, newspaper headlines and trains carrying men toward ports.
Nathan sat between Mrs Hargreaves and Joseph and allowed himself to watch The Fountain of Youth unfold on a New York stage.
He laughed when something genuinely amused him. Mrs Hargreaves laughed more often, occasionally glancing toward him when she suspected he had missed a joke because his attention had wandered toward some piece of stage machinery, while T remained so still during the opening portion that Nathan briefly wondered whether he was enjoying any of it at all.
Eventually a line drew a short laugh from inside the helmet.
Nathan turned.
T immediately looked toward him.
Nathan smiled.
"Don't," T whispered.
Nathan faced the stage again.
For once, when he found himself wondering how something worked, he kept the question to himself.