Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1)

by Olan Thorensen

“How long do you think it will take?”

  “Time is not as important for me. Or . . . as humans would phrase it . . . I have lots of patience.”

  Bobby

  A week after her third session with Simeon, Jill later thought it must have been an omen when, carrying Bobby, she opened the dorm’s main entrance on the way to breakfast and found dark skies and sleet falling.

  “Well, this is something new,” said Jane Smythe, who’d come up behind them. “I’ve only seen it snow here four times in the year I’ve been here and never rain or sleet. I’ll guess that means the temperature is right around freezing.”

  “You don’t mean it can actually rain here,” said Jill, surprised.

  “Rain, sleet, snow . . . they’re just precipitation whose form depends on the temperature,” said the site nurse. “Of course, here you’d expect snow, but remember the briefing they gave when you first came—I assume it was pretty much the same one as for me. This part of the world is classified as a ‘polar desert.’ It’s so cold there’s little precipitation, maybe only a few inches a year, but any time snow falls, it stays pretty much permanently.”

  “Whatever it is, I didn’t dress us for sleet,” said Jill.

  “Me neither. Let’s take the tunnel.”

  Later, after breakfast, Jill helped Bre check the requisition list for the next supply flight. Bobby played nearby. Besides a collection of toys and objects, he had a controller he could use to play his favorite videos on the room’s wall-mounted monitor. One of the computer techs turned off the sound, though it perhaps was not necessary. Jill could tune out Bobby’s sound effects as long as he was in sight.

  This day, Bobby was engaged with wooden fish that Jennifer in maintenance had carved and painted for him. He held each one up to compare to the aquarium fish on the monitor—one of his favorite videos. Sinclair interrupted them both when he opened the door and handed Jill a tied envelope.

  “Jill, please run this over to Howard right away and wait for a response.” With a “Thank you,” Sinclair tousled Bobby’s hair as he returned to his office.

  Jill smiled. Sinclair may have seemed imposing and gruff, but he was always polite, at least to civilians. He never said, “Do this,” but always said, “Please do this,” and “Thank you.”

  “Go ahead, Jill,” said Bre. “We’re about finished here, and I’ll watch Bobby.”

  “Thanks, but he’s been inside a lot the last few days. Do him good to be outside.”

  “Okay, Bobby, let’s go for a walk,” Jill said as she pulled his jacket off the rack. She checked the outside weather running on a banner at the bottom of the wall monitor. Not too bad—34 degrees and scattered clouds, the system bringing the sleet evidently having passed. She bundled him up, usually with more layers than he wanted. Bobby held up his arms to help her put on his coat, and they headed toward the Level 2 and 3 building. On the way, Bobby did his usual waving and saying hello to anyone they passed. And, as usual, the short trip took twice as long as necessary, due to Bobby’s curiosity for everything and his interacting with staff members. When they got to the building, Jill punched both of them through the security doors and into Level 3. The main room was relatively Bobby-proof, so she let him go say hello to the staff members who were friendly and present at that moment. Today, that meant Rachel Munoz and Chunhua Ciminoni at one large table and Freddie and Jason at a 40-inch monitor covered with mathematics. Rachel and Chunhua waved when they came in, and Bobby ran over to them—both were among Bobby’s “friends,” according to Bobby—especially Chunhua, whom he called “Wah.”

  “Hi, Bobby!” Chunhua exclaimed, picking him up and setting him on her knee. Bobby gave her a quick hug, then stared at the spread-out papers. He was always on the lookout for someone to read to him, but these didn’t resemble any of his books with the pictures and big words. Chunhua also knew the routine. “Sorry, Bobby, nothing to read here. If your mommy brings a book to dinner, I’ll read it to you after, okay?”

  “Okay,” he answered. “Bye-bye.” With that, Bobby jumped off Chunhua’s lap and headed toward Freddie and Jason.

  Jill held up the envelope. “Is Howard in?”

  “Yeah, he’s in his office,” Rachel said.

  “Thanks, I’ll just drop this off with him. Can you keep an eye on Bobby for a sec?”

  “No problem,” said Chunhua.

  “Thanks.”

  Jill walked over to where Bobby watched Freddie and Jason scrolling through equations. They appeared absorbed in an esoteric math discussion in which Jill didn’t understand even half the words. She stopped and tousled Bobby’s head.

  “Back in just a second, Bobby,” she said and then addressed the two mathematicians. “Don’t let him bother you too much.”

  Jason glanced up briefly, nodded, and turned back to Freddie, absorbed in the equations.

  Jill knocked on Howard’s door and entered when she heard his cheerful, “Come on in!” His small office had papers and books scattered over every available surface.

  Howard smiled and looked up from a folder. “Hi, Jill. How’s Bobby?”

  “He’s fine, Howard.” She held out the envelope. “General Sinclair asked me to give this to you and to wait if you have a response.”

  Howard took the envelope, undid the string attachment, and pulled out several sheets of text. He glanced at the sheets. “If you can wait a moment, I’ll just make some suggested changes to this, and you can return it to Leo.” Howard called the general Leo, but somehow it never occurred to Jill that she should do so. He was the “General” to her.

  Howard quickly scanned through the first page, making several small marks, and continued with the second page and a single edit. He paused for thirty seconds in the last paragraph of the third page before scratching through several phrases and drawing lines to indicate where words written in the margin should go. He inserted the sheets back into the envelope, retied the string, and handed it to Jill. “Here you go, Jill.”

  “Thanks, Howard,” she said and returned to the main room. She paused as she looked around to locate Bobby. Her first scan of the room didn’t find him, so she made a second try, this time looking under tables. Still no sign. She wrinkled her brow.

  Now where is that little scamp hiding? she thought.

  She called across to the room to Rachel and Chunhua, “Okay, where’s Bobby hiding?”

  Chunhua and Rachel looked up from their discussion. “He’s over watching Freddie and Jason,” Rachel said.

  Three women’s heads swiveled toward Jason and Freddie’s computer station. All they saw was Jason. Jill was getting worried.

  “Jason, where are Freddie and Bobby?”

  Jason glanced up, startled, and looked around with a confused expression. “They were right here a second ago,” he said. “We were showing some three-dimensional curved mappings on the monitor, and Bobby seemed to think it was totally cool.”

  Jill’s pulse started pounding. Bobby couldn’t have left the room on his own—everyone had to punch in the codes to leave both Level 3 and the building. She started opening doors that came off the main room, not bothering to knock, and asked any occupants whether they had seen Bobby. If the room appeared empty, she barked, “Bobby!” and moved on to the next room if no one answered.

  By this time, Rachel, Chunhua, and Jason were involved in the search, and the decibel levels of their calls to Bobby rose as each possible hiding place failed to reveal him. Howard and several other Level 3 staff members working in the building that day joined in the hunt. A chorus of the boy’s name reverberated through the rooms.

  Chunhua tried to calm Jill’s rising panic. “He’s right here, Jill. You know how he loves to hide or play in small spaces. We just haven’t spotted him yet, and maybe all this yelling has made him scared.”

  Howard hushed the searchers. “Let’s everyone be quiet for a moment and let Jill call Bobby.”

  “Jill,” said Howard softly, “call out to him in a normal tone of voice, and he’ll pro
bably come out from wherever he is.”

  Everyone stopped speaking and stood in silence.

  Jill swallowed, coughed to clear her throat, and spoke as calmly as she could into the nearest room. “Bobby sweetie, time to go. Let’s see if Kathy has anything good to eat, maybe some of those cookies you like.” When seconds ticked away with no answer, she moved to another room. By the time she returned to the main room, trailed by the entire Level 3 staff, her attempts to sound calm had taken on a frantic tone.

  Carolyn put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s got to be in here somewhere. You can’t get out of the building without punching in.”

  “Okay,” said Janet, “let’s be thorough about this. Charles, why don’t you go to Level 2 to check there on the off chance somehow he got through the door? The rest of us will make a thorough sweep starting at the entry door and look in every cabinet drawer, under tables and desks, and in the restroom. Don’t leave anything unchecked.”

  A flurry of activity ensued as they examined every possible hiding place. The search took three minutes with the number of searchers going over every nook and cranny two to three times—there wasn’t that much space within Level 3. All of them stood in the main room, looking at one another with expressions varying from puzzlement to fright.

  “Wait a minute,” exclaimed Jason. “Where’s Freddie? Maybe Freddie took Bobby to go somewhere outside.”

  Charles had returned from Level 2 and heard Jason’s proposal. “No. No one has left Level 3. Manny Cardoza is working on some lines right outside the door, and he said no one came through after Jill and Bobby.”

  “But we checked everywhere,” said Rachel.”

  “Not everywhere,” said a woman’s voice from the back of the staff cluster. Everyone turned to Elizabeth Wilkens, who looked down the hallway past the offices to the security door at the far end.

  “Oh, Christ,” exclaimed Jason. “Could Freddie have taken Bobby into the Faraday room?”

  No words were needed in their rush to the door, Jill in the lead. She tried turning the handle without putting in the code. Howard gently pulled her aside to let Jason punch in the numbers. The door opened, and they pushed through onto the walkway around the room. Freddie stood on the far side by the ramp leading down to the Object.

  “Freddie!” Mueller called out. “Where’s Bobby?”

  Freddie looked at them with his naïve, some would say blank, expression. “I thought Bobby would like to see the Object,” Freddie said calmly.

  As soon as Freddie spoke, a small head poked around the end of the Object and looked at the adults. Bobby. Gasps and exclamations erupted, and Jill, followed by everyone else, raced around both directions on the walkway to the ramp.

  Bobby stood next to the Object, one hand stroking it gently. He had a wondering expression on his face. When he saw Jill, he spoke up. “Hi, Mommy. Smooth. Warm, not hot.”

  Jill was about to run down the ramp, but Rachel grabbed her arm. “Wait, Jill. Look at him. He’s not hurt.”

  “But, but,” Jill sobbed, “I thought no one could come close to this thing, that it would hurt them somehow.”

  “It certainly prevents any adult who’s tried, but somehow it allows Bobby.”

  “This is amazing,” Mueller said. “Maybe it somehow differentiates between a mature mind and one that’s immature.”

  “Yes, this is astounding, but we have to get Bobby away from it,” interjected Elizabeth.

  Rachel whispered, “Go ahead, Jill, call him.”

  “Okay, Bobby,” said Jill softly, in as normal a voice as she could muster. “Time to go. Let’s see if Kathy has some cookies.”

  “Cookies!” chirped Bobby. “Kathy cookies!” And with that, Bobby waddled back up the ramp into Jill’s arms.

  “Mommy!” Bobby protested the hug, making it hard for him to breathe.

  “He seems all right, but let’s have Emily check him over,” said Mueller, indicating the door back into the main room. “You head that way, and I’ll page her that you’re coming to the clinic.”

  Chunhua gave Jill a nudge toward the door and led her around the walkway. As they passed a confused-looking Freddie, Jill stopped and flushed.

  “How could you bring Bobby in here!” she shouted and slapped him before walking past.

  An hour later, Bobby, oblivious to the adult turmoil, talked nonstop on the way back to their rooms. He greeted everyone they saw and asked, “What’s that?” twenty times—the latest phase he was going through.

  A few minutes after she closed the door, a knock came. She opened the door, expecting to find Kathy, Bre, one of the other women, or maybe Huxler in his role as site counselor. Instead, it was Zach Marjek, concern etching his face.

  “I just heard what happened. Are you and Bobby okay?”

  “No! We’re not okay,” she answered angrily. “That weird man had no business taking Bobby into the cage with that thing! I don’t care if he’s the world’s best mathematician, they shouldn’t have someone that irresponsible here.”

  “You know he didn’t do anything deliberately that might harm Bobby,” said Zach softly. “Wilbur hasn’t said anything overtly, but everyone knows Freddie has a kind of high-functioning form of autism. If anything, he’s not that much older than Bobby, emotionally. He’s taking this episode hard. Wilbur’s trying to calm him down right now.”

  “You mean you checked on him before us?” said Jill, incredulous.

  “Wilbur said nothing happened to Bobby, and Emily gave him a clean bill of health. Anyway, Freddie’s room was on the way here.”

  Zach paused, having something else to say but unsure whether it was wise, given Jill’s agitation. Then he mentally shrugged and forged ahead.

  “You and Bobby are okay. It’s Freddie who’s in trouble. He doesn’t like to be touched, and your slapping him could have serious consequences . . . at least, according to Wilbur.”

  “Me? I’m suddenly the bad guy here? How dare you! You probably just want Freddie back at work!”

  She reached the door and pulled to slam it shut, but Zach had stopped it with an extended arm, his face granite.

  “You’re upset . . . but calm down. You want to blame Freddie for being irresponsible. But think about it. Bobby’s welfare is mainly your responsibility. You temporarily passed that responsibility on to Rachel and Chunhua—something perfectly normal—and they passed it on to Jason. We have to discount Freddie because there’s no way to be sure he understands responsibility the way most of us do. I’m not blaming you. If anyone is more at fault, it’s Rachel and Chunhua for accepting the duty to watch Bobby and then getting caught up in their work. Striking Freddie was understandable, but you need to think whether it was warranted.”

  He pulled his arm back from holding open the door. The sudden release let her continued pressure on the wood slam it shut. She stood, furious for several minutes, not wanting Bobby to see her so upset. As her pulse rate and breathing settled down, Zach’s words seeped into her thoughts. She spent the next three hours playing with Bobby and reflecting.

  That evening, Kathy came to Jill and Bobby’s rooms.

  “I don’t know what went on in Level 2 today. I surmise it involved not being able to find Bobby and somehow included Freddie. I guess you can’t tell me details because they keep things tight in there, but whatever happened, it really caused an uproar. Still, I’m sure Bobby is hungry, and you need something to eat, too. Would you rather I brought you dinner here, instead of going to the dining hall?”

  “Thank you, Kathy, but no. I’m okay. I was just so panicked when I couldn’t find him and . . . ,” Jill paused. She couldn’t say anything about the Object to anyone not authorized for Level 3.

  “Uh . . . I overreacted and blamed people who were supposed to be watching him. I’m afraid I got Freddie really upset.”

  Jill stood, arms folded, rocking on both feet. “Uh . . . Zach Marjek came by earlier.”

  “Oh,” Kathy said noncommittally.

  Jill sighed and
sat at the room’s table. Kathy sat opposite her.

  “I take it the meeting was interesting.”

  “Oh, lord. I guess it was,” said Jill. “I could see he was concerned about us, but I got all up on my high horse with him for almost accusing me of being the person at fault and Freddie the victim.”

  “I’m sure he meant well.”

  “If so, I’m afraid I was nasty enough that he pretty much told me off. Pointed out it was primarily my responsibility to look after Bobby, and blame should be shared with other people. The aggravating thing is . . . he’s probably right. If anything, maybe he didn’t think there was any major blame, and I do think he came by to check on us.”

  “He’s certainly an interesting fellow,” said Kathy. “I’d started to believe you were over being so pissed at him for getting you here. Is he back on your shit list?”

  Jill giggled. “Well . . . no. I guess I was looking for someone to focus my frustration on, and he made an easy target because he’s the one they sent to deal with me. In retrospect, he probably wasn’t the worst person for the job. He certainly can seem intimidating. Still . . . I feel a little mad that somehow I’ve turned into the bad guy.”

  “Well, Zach is an interesting person. Bre likes him, and so do I,” said Kathy.

  “Likes him? Like . . . you know, likes him?”

  “No, not that way. If anything, Bre’s got her eye on Major Jefferson. I think she wonders what being an army wife would be like. No. She told me Zach is not as rough as you might think. Oh . . . she thinks he can be dangerous, but more not someone to mess with, rather than someone looking for trouble.

  “That’s also pretty much my impression of Marjek’s sidekick, Willie. Intimidating, but hiding more depth than many might think. The two of them pretend to be only casual acquaintances, but I think they connect going back a long time and with shared experiences I’d be curious to ask about if I thought they’d tell me. Anyway . . . enough of that. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry, and Bobby must be, too. Let’s go eat.”

  “All right. I think I agree with Zach that I need to talk with Freddie and apologize for hitting him. Zach said Freddie’s having a hard time, and I’m feeling worse the longer I think about it.”