Schrodinger's Gat by Robert Kroese Read Free Book Online Page B

bitch to say something like that to someone who had tried to off himself two hours earlier and then flake. I don’t think she’s that person.
    On the other hand, I barely know her. It ’s not lost on me that Tali’s sudden entrance into my life and subsequent mysterious disappearance are like something out of a mystery novel. As I mentioned, on days that I’m not occupied with scribbling in red ink over incoherent high school composition essays, I fancy myself a thriller writer, and the femme fatale is an archetype of the genre. Really, the archetype predates the genre: the femme fatale goes back to Delilah, Salome, and the Sirens who tried to lure Odysseus to his doom. Tali is a textbook case: beautiful, clever, mysterious, and involved in a legally and morally dubious enterprise over which she seems to have little control. All she lacked – before she met me – was a struggling and disillusioned man whom she can lure into committing some crime of passion. Jesus, did she see me coming or what?
    But Tali is a person, not an archetype. Yes, she was somehow involved in the shooting at the pier, but her involvement was benign, wasn’t it? That’s what she led me to believe, anyway. She could have been lying. Or this whole quantum coin-flipping thing could be some sort of paranoid delusion. I’d have fallen for anything she told me, even if it was … actually, I can’t think of anything more absurd than what she actually did tell me. If she was nuts, she was also a genius to come up with something like that. And she did somehow know about the shooting in advance, unless that was just an amazing coincidence – or she knew the shooter. But I just couldn’t make myself believe it. She had saved my life, and I owed her the benefit of the doubt, at least. On the other hand, if she was to be believed, my life wasn’t actually in danger until she came along. OK, so I may be a complete sucker, but for now I’m going to take her story at face value. She’s not a homicidal maniac, and she didn’t deliberately stand me up.
    Back to the other possibilities: murder, kidnapping, rape, accident, severe illness. I have no reason to suspect any of them in particular, but if half of what she told me is true, then there ’s some reason to believe she has enemies. Could she really know about tragedies before they happen and stop them? I have to admit, as crazy as she sounded, it sure looked like it yesterday. Lots of people would like to get their hands on that sort of technology. The FBI and plenty of foreign governments, for starters. I have no idea who Tali works for, or if she works for anybody. I’d been so dazzled by her talk of quantum indeterminacy – OK, and her adorable nose – that I’d failed to get any concrete information from her. Who the hell is she? I have no idea. Dumbshit.
    All right, back to what I do know: I ’d seen her get into her Lexus, and she’d said she was going home. Where is home? Somewhere near Palo Alto, she’d said. Not particularly helpful. I pull out my phone and search the traffic sites for information about a recent accident in the area involving a Lexus. Nothing.
    What if someone had been waiting near her car? Or in her car? I realize that I’d never actually seen her pull out. For all I knew, her car might still be parked at the San Leandro BART station. I drive there. It’s almost seven now, and I’m going against the traffic, so it only takes me about half an hour. Her car isn’t there. I go home to my depressing box of an apartment.
    Had she told me anything else useful? Something that would give me a clue regarding her identity or where she lived? I don’t think so. Our whole conversation had been abstract, except for her mention of the San Mateo gas explosion. She said she lived “near Palo Alto,” but then so do half a million other people. And she hadn’t mentioned anyone by name, unless you count what’s-her-name, Ananke. Despite having read hundreds of mystery and