I nodded. “I checked my house, too.” I knew of many people who had.
“Well, whatever it was that allowed survivors to continue on the next day, didn’t allow families to come through together. I haven’t encountered a single soul who has a living relative or spouse from before the change.” Maston let his voice die away, and a chill wind blew in from the north. Flakes of snow began to flutter down on us. We turned toward the house and cut across the grass. The snow had been shoveled so that people could come and go. There had been another black wrought iron fence, but a new entrance had been added.
I didn’t say anything about what survivors had made it through that night. It wasn’t like the man needed a confirmation.
“And then the new critters everywhere. There’s things that fly, creep, come out of the ground. There’s folks who have a connection with the beasts.” Maston glanced meaningfully at my cheek. “You’ve got your little glow-in-the-dark fairies.”
“We call them firefly pixies,” I said. “They’re quite intelligent. They have a matriarchal system and don’t think much of male leaders.”
“Oh, my dear, I was the first one on my block to sign the petition for the ERA,” Maston said with a smile. “Your firefly pixies don’t have to worry about equality in my administration.” He paused for a second and then continued to walk, taking me with him in such an effortless fashion that I was nearly taken aback. He could have been a kindly grandfather or just a man interested in the safety and security of all Americans. He was a politician. He was charming and practiced and he knew what to say. Furthermore, McCurdy was one of his men, an individual who was training military to guard the Capitol.
Was Maston also building an army of the best psychics available? Was that why Landers was along for the ride?
“Of course, any man worth his mettle is going to surround himself with the most capable individuals,” Maston said. “Landers was most impressed with your moth event.”
That news hardly surprised me. I had saved our collective bacon by being able to talk to the immense moths. I don’t know that the giant moths would have killed us, but they might have caused some serious damage until we were able to leave that area. And we would have killed many of them in the process, leaving a potentially lethal enemy seething with rage. “We rolled right through their nesting grounds,” I said. “I agreed that we would ask for permission before doing it again. I think we can renegotiate with the moths to garner unfettered passage.”
“Planting more flowers?” Maston asked. “I love that. Why not just move the moths or wait until they migrate?”
Oh God. “You’re on the right track, Mr. President,” I said. “This isn’t the same country. This isn’t the same world. The same old politics won’t work here. They will never work again. If you try some harebrained tactics taught by the military—” I glanced at the stone-faced McCurdy “—officer who believes that all we have to do is apply the same techniques that worked for us so well in the past, then you’re going to fail, and anything we have left is going to hell in a handbasket.”
We approached the large white-colored house and the expansive veranda that curved around to the right side. A very tall woman wearing a winter parka was cooking on an open grill in front. She nodded at us and continued to cook.
Maston grinned again. “And there you have it. This is why we need you, Sophie. You can talk to them, and we can work it out in a way that we would have never been able to do before.”
Chapter 13
What Goes Up, Must Come Down…
I woke up the next morning disappointed that I hadn’t had a dream about Zach. Instead, I was in a room in a downtown Washington D.C. hotel with a balcony that overlooked the White House, Washington Monument, and the National Mall. (I was mildly ashamed to admit I was disappointed that the National Mall wasn’t a real mall.)
The door didn’t lock because they were electronic but I hadn’t minded that the only lock was the swinging arm security guard in the middle. I helped out my peace of mind by sticking a couple of chairs under the handles of the door. I had cracked open the balcony doors, and the firefly pixies came out of their cage to hunt. Sure the room was cold, but there were extra blankets. I woke up with the sun in my face and Spring perched on my nose. She was literally sitting on my nose.
I sang, “That’s not a seat for your tiny little butt.”
Spring flashed a little pixie grin at me. “Now that we’re here, when can we go back to our home?”
It was a good question. I hadn’t thought that one through before I had embarked on my great adventure. I wished I had. I hadn’t counted on the situation being what it was. I had foolishly imagined that it would be a society similar to the Redwoods Group; people who needed each other and were, for the most part, ready to do their bits in society to make it work. Those were people who didn’t want to make the same mistakes they had made before. I hadn’t agreed to stay in D.C., but I was obligated to discuss the situation in California with whomever was in charge. When I had brought it up, Corbin Maston had brushed it aside. We ate, and I forced a few bites down. Then he’d sent me on my way.
When I left the Naval Observatory there was that same pulling/pushing sensation as if I were breaking free of thick molasses. McCurdy had gotten us to the hotel where most of the group we had traveled with was located.
I had a tall glass of tea and headed up to my room, assisted by candlelight. Lulu was in the next room, and she hadn’t said much. The further we had gotten away from the Naval Observatory, the better the mood that I was in and likewise, so were the girls.
A decent night of sleep had put the cherry on top of the sundae. I almost felt normal, but of course, I could get into a lengthy diatribe about what normal really meant.
Thinking about Spring’s question didn’t help. “I need to talk to the humans about the Redwoods Group,” I told her, “about the new animals. I need to make sure they aren’t harmed. Not the pixies nor the Big Mamas or anything else that is here now. I’m not sure how long this will take.”
Spring sighed. “The sisters will stay.” She flew up in the air and went to the gerbil cage. Then as a kind of add on, she sang, “The sisters do not like Silver-Topped-Large-Tooth-Man.”
It took me a moment to realize they were talking about the President. Hell, I didn’t like him either. He was like many politicians and schemers. He would speak to you in that charismatic voice even while he was reaching for your wallet with his free hand. I winced. I didn’t really know what Maston was like. Like McCurdy, he had rubbed me the wrong way.
But the firefly pixies hadn’t really gotten close to the President.
There was a tap on the connecting door. Although it was muffled, Lulu said, “I have coffee and tea.”
I opened my side, and she presented me with a silver tray with various accoutrements on it. There were even cloth napkins. The cups were steaming. I said, “How did you know?”
“One of the pixies told me,” Lulu said smugly. “They like me now.”
Shaking my head, I nodded toward the table by the balcony doors. I closed the doors but opened the curtains so that we could see the White House and the Washington Monument beyond it. It was almost a moment of déjà vu, but I had never stayed at a fancy hotel before and especially not overlooking some of the most famous vistas around.
“You’ve been talking to the people around here,” I stated as Lulu put everything on the table. She sat down and put three heaping teaspoons of sugar into her cup. I thought about my vision of the day before, and I nearly shivered. In my head, Lulu’s lovely blue eyes were nearly opaque.
“Sure,” she said. “McCurdy’s downstairs. I think he’s waiting on you.”
“I think he needs to see a proctologist for that—”
“Sophie!” Lulu said. “He’s not that bad.”
Sitting down, I pulled a cup closer to me. I put sugar in it. Then I grabbed a third cup. (Was Lulu expecting McCurdy or had she known what I would want? I didn’t know, and I
didn’t care. McCurdy could bring his own cup.) I made one with tea and one with coffee. There was only instant creamer, but I didn’t mind. I took a drink from each one. It was heavenly. Then I saw the covered plate. Pulling the cloth off, I asked the obvious, “Are those donuts?”
“Fresh made, old fashioned,” Lulu affirmed. “Glazed, too. I already had four.”
“Somewhere Gibby is green with envy,” I said, stuffing my mouth full. The firefly pixies flew close to examine the food but obviously decided it was too disgusting for them and vanished back into the gerbil cage.
After I cleared the plate and washed most of it down with alternative drinks of coffee and tea, I sat back in my chair. “Okay, that’s better,” I pronounced. “I wonder if they have bacon down there.”
“A whole tray full,” Lulu said. “Someone has brought in pigs from the country. I guess the law about having farm animals in the city is off the books.”
“You didn’t bring me bacon?” I glanced at the gerbil cage. “I wonder if the girls like bacon.”
“They’d probably hunt pigs to extinction.”
“What does the lieutenant want?” I asked finally.
“Beats me,” she said. She drank half of her coffee and wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin. “We’re not going to have coffee like that next year. I don’t think the States can grow coffee beans. Where do they grow coffee beans? We need to move there. Or visit for a long, long time.”
“They grow some in Central America and South America,” I said. I don’t know where the obscure factoid came from. “Trade will start up one of these years.”
“And there aren’t going to be a lot of things we’ve always taken for granted,” Lulu sighed and looked out at the panoramic view. She leaned her head against the glass of the balcony door. “Manufacturing stuff. Ropes. Farm equipment. Things we’ve always assumed would be here forever and more. Ding Dongs. Arby’s Big Montanas. I’m gonna miss Horsey Sauce.”
“You’re just thinking about this now?”
“I guess it’s being here that brings it to my mind.” She waved her hand at the surroundings. “It’s like we’re in a normal place, not that it was normal for me to stay at a hotel like this. My father let us stay at the Hotel Vitale in San Francisco once. That was really nice. They put chocolate on the pillows and turned down the covers at night.”
We were quiet for a bit. I refilled the coffee cup with the carafe that Lulu had brought. I added sugar and fake cream. Finally I asked, “Yesterday, did it feel weird being over at the Naval Observatory?”
Lulu looked at me for a long moment, gauging my words. “Odd, yes. Meeting the President. Well, kind of. He wasn’t really interested in me. Not that I’m jealous. I don’t know what it means.” She glanced at the gerbil cage. “The girls were acting funny. They didn’t like it that they were right there. They didn’t like it much that you’d walked away from them. It was like—.” She frowned. I should have been jealous that a frown didn’t make her face ugly, but I wasn’t.
“That town in Colorado,” I finished.
Lulu started. “That’s right. It was like when you went walking into that town and there was that weird guy. The one who just up and vanished after we heard the train. We’ve seen peculiar stuff before, so I put it out of my head, and I was so excited to see the train running.”
I got up and went to my bag. After a moment, I pulled out the bone. I had kept it because it was so bizarre. I showed it to Lulu.
“You kept this from Colorado?” she asked. I held it out to her. She said, “I’m not touching it. It’s a fricking bone. It’s a human bone. I think it’s a human bone. There were skulls there, and those were definitely human.”
“It’s a tibia,” I said. “Look at the way it’s sliced down the middle. It’s like something cut it. Deliberately cut it.”
“That was one messed up place,” Lulu said. “It’s got a freakability factor of ten to the extreme.”
“Did you just make up a word?”
“No. It’s something I read it a book.” It took me a moment to realize Lulu was being sarcastic.
I stared at Lulu. Once I had a vision of Zach dying. I did something stupid to make it not happen. I had done something similar for Elan. I had also done something correspondingly ill-advised to save the people of the Redwoods Group. I hadn’t known what would or wouldn’t happen to me when I made the changes. Yesterday I had another vision. There was death in the vision. Lulu was in the vision and she was dying. Furthermore, she was dying in a manner I didn’t think was possible anymore. Somehow I knew that the grayness of the vision meant it was a distant future. One might have asked me if I wanted her to die because of what she had done to my relationship with Zach. I didn’t want her to die.
I was honestly beginning to like Lulu. She had been desperate. I understood desperate. She wasn’t a horrible person. She didn’t want to be “that woman that did that thing.” I was pretty sure she didn’t want to be “that dead woman” either.
I didn’t know what to do. Lulu was going to have to stay by my side, whether she liked it or not, until I could figure out where that distant threat was coming from and how to prevent it.
“So someone went wild with a butcher knife,” Lulu said. “The Burned Man was…well, you know.”
“The bone’s not even chipped.” I pushed it toward her. “If you chopped it with a butcher’s knife, it would have little chips in it or something.”
“Seriously, you’re going to make me ralph and the coffee and donuts were too good to throw up.” Lulu sighed. “The doctor’s downstairs looking at Clora. Why don’t you ask him about the bone? Maybe he’s got some obscure weird medical thoughts about it that will help you figure it out.”
I nodded. “Good thinking.” I sang to the firefly pixies, “Going downstairs. Anyone coming?”
Spring stuck her head out. “Will there be worms?”
“Even if I have to dig them out of the flower beds myself,” I answered.
Five minutes later, Lulu trailed after me, still holding the coffee cup in her hands. Spring and several other pixies fluttered around us. I knocked on the conference room door and heard a terse, “Enter.”
Opening the door, I saw a middle-aged man sitting next to Clora. Clora relaxed in a chair while he checked her blood pressure. One of her hands rested protectively on her abdomen.
The man, I assumed to be the doctor, glanced at me and barked, “You’re not a nurse, are you?”
I shook my head.
“Too damn bad. We haven’t got a nurse yet, but I keep hoping.” He adjusted the blood pressure cuff on Clora’s arm and reapplied a stethoscope to the crook of her elbow. She smiled brightly at us.
After a minute, he released the cuff and said to Clora. “Yep, still a little high, mommy. I’ll find some medication for you to take. We need to take your pressure every day. I’ll teach you how to do it so you can keep a watch on it. If it gets above 140/90 you’ll need to come see me. Check it three times a day. Come back and see me this afternoon.”
I stopped to admire the ornate ceiling adornments that ringed a huge skylight above us. The tables were set up in a basic square, and the windows surrounded us on three sides. The curtains were open, and the open-air balcony looked inviting. This was a conference room for people who made money and knew how to spend it. It seemed rather wasted now, but I tried to appreciate it for the moment.
Clora asked the doctor a few questions about nutrition and then smiled at us again as she left.
Standing, the doctor turned to us. He put the stethoscope and blood pressure cuff on the table. It was strewn with other medical type stuff. There was even a microscope and a rack of prescription bottles. A physician’s desk reference had a prominent location. “Cuts? Boils? Abscesses?” he snapped at us. “What’s the problem? You’re not knocked up, are you? Condoms are still good for at least another year, you know.”
I glanced at Lulu. Her eyebrows went up.
The firefly pixies abruptly buzzed t
he doctor and he grunted.
“I have a question,” I said. “You are the doctor, right?”
“Dr. Ignatius Taggert for my sins,” he said sardonically. His hair was silvery although he couldn’t have been forty-five years old, and his blue eyes twinkled with an amused light. He stood perhaps a few inches taller than I was and had a barrel chest and thin hips. I didn’t think he was the G.P. that Stephen had mentioned so that probably made him a specialist of some kind who didn’t get to be a specialist in the new world. I could tell by his scintillating bedside manner.
I threw the bone on the table in front of him. He frowned at it. Then he frowned at me. “Tibia. Half of a tibia anyway.”
“Is there anything you can tell us about it?” I gritted. I hated to have to dig for information. It made me think of Zach. I didn’t want to think about Zach right now. I wanted to have Zach standing next to me, but I couldn’t have that either. Zach would have me digging for information, too, but then he’d snuggle afterwards. It was all win-win.
“It’s a human bone in your leg,” Ignatius said slowly. He wasn’t a doctor in my head. He was Ignatius, and he acted like an Ignatius. Oh, what had he done to be named that? “You walk on it. You usually have two of them.” He touched the bone. “However, this individual only has one right now.”
Lulu chuckled.
“Perhaps you might, oh, theorize about how it came to be cut like that?” I suggested. I bared my teeth, but I felt certain that the older man knew I wasn’t really smiling.
Ignatius picked up the bone and examined it. Then he plucked a set of reading glasses off the table and shoved them onto his face. He looked at the bone again. Slowly, he sat down and continued to study it. He turned it this way and that. “Huh,” he grunted. Then he dug in his pile of doctor tools and found a large magnifying glass. He took the bone and the glass to the nearest window and proceeded to carefully inspect it. He looked at the cut end for an especially long time.
One of the firefly pixies landed on the bone and glared at the doctor through the magnifying glass, making herself seem a thousand times larger. Ignatius jumped, and the pixie flitted away. I swore I heard a little giggle.
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