“Oh,” I said, suddenly overwhelmed with a sinking feeling. “Were you able to ask him where he’d come from?”
“Another dead end. It seems the Old Ones installed a security device of some sort in the individual, and his brain melted before the security team was able to ask him any questions.”
“His brain . . . melted?”
“Yes, poor fellow. I understand he was very upset about it.”
I shook my head. “You mean his brain literally melted? Like ice cream?”
“Oh, it’s not as horrible as it sounds. I’ve seen a video of the interrogation. One moment he was asking who they were, and the next . . . Well, if I’m being honest, it actually was pretty horrible.”
“So what did the message say?” I asked.
“It says that I’m supposed to read it aloud to you. However it is getting quite late. Do you mind if I forward it to your email?”
“Yes! I mean, no! Go ahead!” I said, relieved I wouldn’t have to stay on the call much longer.
“Right-oh!” Dr. Plaskington said cheerfully. “It’s on its way now! Have a great evening.”
There was a last faint buzz in the air, and the room was silent. A moment later, my tablet dinged.
My finger hovered over the new message. The subject line read, Fw: Kindly rescue me at your earliest convenience.
According to the header information, it had been sent from my father’s personal email account to at least fifty email addresses, including some at the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and the various armed forces. Weirdest of all, almost all the remaining email addresses were just long strings of numbers with the suffix @USCIRF.gov. Here’s an example of one: [email protected]. I googled it, and the domain name belongs to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
I should probably ask about that at some point.
The final address on the list was the only one that was familiar to me, [email protected].
Here’s what the message said:
Hello, friends, acquaintances, and emergency personnel,
My name is Melvin Kross, and I’m currently being held captive by hostile forces whom I’ve been repeatedly ordered not to mention in open, unencrypted communications. If you’re getting this message, I think you can probably guess who. The facility where I’m being held seems to be located deep underground, and I’ve unfortunately been unable to get any idea of its location beyond that. I’m being treated reasonably well and am almost never tortured, unless you count the food, and also the literal torture.
Most of you will have some idea of what they have me doing down here, so I won’t bore you with details, because the details are somewhat less interesting than you might expect. I honestly wonder how they get anything done. Very little supervision, no peer review, and apparently unlimited funding add up to a lot of waste and nonsense. It’s simply ghastly.
Anyway, to get back to the matter at hand, I’d like to be rescued. I know I can’t give you a lot to go on, but I’m doing my best. I’ll be attaching a tracking and message delivery device to one Paul Merchar, one of about a half dozen “visitors” who are able to come and go as they please. If he does not notice it before he leaves here, you should get this message, along with an emergency beacon alerting you to his location. You may be able to press him for further information.
Press as hard as you like, by the way. He’s a real jerk, in my opinion. Wouldn’t even bring me a decent ink pen. All they have down here is blue ink. Like I said, ghastly.
Patricia, this last part will be sent to you only. I’d like you to convey a message to Nikola. You might recall that I arranged for her to be misled in regard to my whereabouts. I cleverly informed her that I had gone on an unexpected vacation, so she would not worry about me. Since I’ve been gone for as long as I have, she may be starting to doubt that explanation. Please read the following aloud to her:
Hello, Nikola!
Vacation was wonderful! I had the time of my life, but not such a good time that you should be jealous I did not bring you along. It rains a lot here, there are no children your age, and it’s actually quite dull. I’d tell you where I’ve gone, but the name slips my mind at the moment. It’s irrelevant, really.
My friend Carter Reagan and I have decided to set up a research facility here. Because of this, it is possible I won’t be back anytime soon. In my absence, please continue to apply yourself to the best of your abilities. I hope you do not miss your old school too much, but if you do, it is no excuse to “take it easy,” as you young people say.
As always, please remember that I hold you in high esteem and hope that you think fondly of me. With luck we can meet again quite soon.
Warmest regards,
Melvin Kross (Father)
Just a few minutes before, I’d found it difficult to cry. Suddenly it came easily. I could never handle it when Dad got all emotional and mushy like that.
I read the message three more times, at first just taking it all in and eventually considering all the information. I searched the email addresses, but apart from what I already mentioned about the agencies, none of the names seemed to match up to anyone of any interest. Something told me they were aliases.
There was one exception. The person he’d attached the device to, Paul Merchar, was apparently a famous shipping magnate who was heavily involved with politics and philanthropy. There were about a million articles that mentioned his name in passing, and a handful that spoke of his death. According to his obituaries, he suffered a traumatic head injury while skiing on his private ski slope and had died before help could arrive.
I spent close to an hour studying him and learned a great deal, but nothing especially useful. Paul Merchar was just your average superrich guy. He donated lots of money to various causes and donated many, many times that amount to politicians. He was quoted in articles talking about things like regulatory policy and new technologies to make container ships more efficient.
None of the information I found suggested whether he was human or parahuman. In his pictures, he just looked like a normal guy, if normal guys were always having their picture taken in front of helicopters and gigantic sea vessels.
I might have done some more research, but just then I heard the front door open and ran to fill Hypatia in on the news so I would have someone to speculate with.
5
THE OZARK MOUNTAIN CREEPER
That night, I slept fitfully. Every time I woke even slightly, my brain hammered into overdrive trying to process every minor detail of my father’s message. I hadn’t come up with any new insights, but that didn’t stop me from trying. The next morning, when Hypatia woke me at 4:45 AM to weigh in on her choice of outdoors garb, I decided to give it up and started getting ready for the trip.
I had located a warm coat in my school-supplied wardrobe and was dressed and ready to go more than an hour early, which was something of a minor miracle for me. There was also the fact that I didn’t want to miss my ride. Something told me Ms. Botfly wasn’t kidding when she said missing the bus meant walking several hundred miles.
After six months at the School, I was starting to wonder if the outside world was still out there. I didn’t think it had ceased to exist or anything, but . . . You have to understand, nobody watches TV at the School, and it’s not like newspapers deliver to Nowhere, Iowa. Sure, we have Internet and all that, and I’d been up to orbit and back, but life in the School Town can make a person feel pretty isolated.
When people want to see their families, the parents usually travel to the School Town, rather than the other way around. It makes sense from a safety angle, but the fact is some students remain in town for years at a time, apart from occasional brief summer vacations. Some even settle in town after they’re done with school, because it’s one of the largest parahuman communities in the world and anyone can live there free
if they agree to teach at least one class. Initially, that had seemed like a great deal, but I was starting to realize that if I spent too much time here I might lose my mind.
Plus my dad was out there somewhere. If I’m being honest, that’s at least part of why I was excited about leaving. Sure, he’d want me to leave him to his own devices, but Dad’s own devices are easily distracted and prone to malfunction. I pictured him sitting in a cell, hoping his desperate ploy to send an SOS had worked, not yet knowing it had failed.
What I’m trying to say is that after months of doing nothing, getting out there and keeping my eyes open was at least slightly more than nothing.
* * *
As we walked toward City Hall, I imagined what the School’s bus would look like. Amazing contraptions floated in my imagination—flying saucers, luxury trains with mechanical spider legs and a special dining car, high-speed blimps where we all got our own beanbag chair and a private room with really great Wi-Fi and free snacks.
When I finally saw it, I made a mental note that I probably shouldn’t allow myself to get excited like that very often. The School’s bus sat idling in front of City Hall, looking like any one of the millions of grimy yellow student freighters you might see rumbling down the road on any random school day. Apart from large black text on the side that read PILSSRTA, nothing marked it as belonging to the School or being special in any way.
I won’t deny I was a bit disappointed at first. But then Hypatia and I stepped onto the bus and I got a look inside. The moment I saw where we’d be riding, I went from mildly disappointed to completely depressed. It was just a normal school bus, down to the creaky floors, the rows of seat belt–free fake leather benches, and the twin lines of windows you can just tell are all messed up so you can’t open them properly. I smelled rust, plastic, and the faintest trace of vomit.
“You’re twenty minutes EARLY,” the driver growled when Hypatia and I climbed aboard. “In my day, kids were disrespectful and irresponsible about punctuality.”
The way she said it was a lot like how you might point out that someone else in your elevator was covered in dog poo. As it turns out, both school buses and school bus drivers are crappy and inhospitable wherever you go. Now you know.
“We didn’t want to keep anyone waiting!” Hypatia said in a voice that made me want to poke her in the back of the head with a pencil.
“My roommate is pathological about things like this,” I added. “We won’t be any trouble.”
“Ow!” said Hypatia.
“Except for that,” I said, slipping my pencil back in my bag.
The only good thing about arriving early for a field trip is getting to snag the back seat of the bus. At my old school I’d always been a bit of an outcast (shocking, right?), which meant being relegated to the single seat just behind the driver. Or worse, sharing a seat with the teacher. Now that I attended a school made for oddballs by oddballs, I could claim the cool seats without having to worry that my classmates would use that as an opportunity to sharpen their best insults on me.
Hypatia had already started going over the checklist. She’d polished and charged her superstring slicer and let me know that the battery still showed a 99 percent charge. I had my own gravitational disruptor in my pocket, not because I’d thought ahead, but because I never left home without it. You run into the Old Ones a couple times, and it can make you paranoid pretty fast. I’d also brought my agar bracelet, which I never remove, even when I sleep.
Hypatia, always prepared, had a pretty sizable pack with camping gear, a pup tent, emergency flares, a drone helicopter with remote and camera, bear deterrent spray, a water purifier, about twenty granola bars, spare clothes, and two military MREs.
I had a thermos filled with hot coffee from the Event Horizon, heavy on the cream and sweetener, and two spare pairs of socks in my bag, in case things got muddy.
“Why don’t we pool our supplies in case one of us comes up lacking something?” I suggested.
Hypatia nodded enthusiastically. “Great idea! Can I have a drink of your coffee?”
I poured her a tiny sip, and she gave me a dirty look.
“This is all the coffee we have,” I said, grabbing the only peanut butter granola bar for later. “Can’t have you guzzling it all.”
Some people just don’t understand cooperation and sharing.
We had twenty minutes to wait, so I took the time to download some reading materials before we left town, since accessing the Internet from a school computer when off campus was strictly prohibited.
Then it hit me.
A gigantic water balloon collided with my face, exploded, drenched my tablet, soaked all of Hypatia’s supplies, and left us both sopping wet. My tablet sparked once and winked out. I swallowed a huge, choking mouthful of water and looked up to see Warner and Dirac giggling madly at us from behind a row of seats.
I sprang to my feet. “OPEN CASKET OR CLOSED?”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Dirac said hastily, tapping at the screen of his phone. “It’s reversible. We made them last night. When I activate it, all the water will be sucked back out of your clothes, and it will return to balloon form. It’s the world’s first recyclable water balloon.”
Let me tell you, their invention worked perfectly, but it’s only fun if you haven’t swallowed any of the water.
* * *
The School has wormholes it can direct to any location on Earth in an instant. But how does our group of twenty-five students get to Arkansas? A grimy yellow bus with a top speed of fifty that needed new shock absorbers about three hundred thousand miles ago. Apparently, transporting more than a few people by wormhole is a security risk of some sort, so old-fashioned have this machine physically carry us there travel is still the best option.
And you know what? It wasn’t that bad.
The worst part was at the beginning. As the bus trundled down the road, I became aware of a low humming, and before I could wonder if there was something wrong with the tires, I saw that we were entering the bees’ territory. The School’s last line of defense, the bees are several million autonomous attack drones designed to kill any unauthorized intruders by poking them with stingers filled with special toxins that can hurt even the Old Ones.
One by one, the bees stuck themselves to our windows, until the interior of the bus was as dark as midnight, except for a small space so the driver could see. Everyone behaved like this was normal and not gravely terrifying. I knew they were just checking us out, as they did with every vehicle entering or exiting school grounds, so it didn’t make me nervous at all. I might have chewed on my knuckle a bit, just until it started bleeding a little, but that was mostly because I was bored.
At the window next to my head, a twitchy little bee with a small brown spot on one side used his front leg to point at one of his bulging eyes and then at me, before drawing it along his “neck” in a threatening gesture. I was pretty sure it was Bzzlkrullium, a specific bee I’d tangled with shortly after coming to the School, but bees can be hard to tell apart from one another.
After a minute, they concluded we were not much of a threat and dispersed.
I shuddered. “Do they have to do that every time?”
“You get used to it,” Hypatia said.
After that, we passed through the gap, which is the School’s primary defense. It’s kind of like a dome that stretches over the whole school, but instead of something solid, it’s made of a very thin sheet of unreality—a hole in the fabric of space-time where nothing exists. If you were to try passing through the gap without permission, you wouldn’t regret it, because you’d have vanished into nothingness before you had time to process regret. It’s also a great way of killing an Old One, if you ever find yourself in a jam.
For a while, I passed the time playing around with my tablet, not really paying attention to anyone else.
“What game is th
at?” Warner asked, pointing at my tablet.
“Nothing,” I said, shoving it into my bag.
“Let me see,” he said, deftly snatching the tablet from my fingers. “Is it a contraband game? I downloaded one where . . . What is this?” he asked, flipping through the pictures in my photo album.
Hypatia, now keenly interested, snatched it from Warner and took a gander herself.
“Is that your dad? Why are you both posed the same way in every photo?” she asked.
“I only have the one picture of him, so I edited the image to look like different places,” I said, grabbing the tablet back from Warner and closing the image on-screen of my dad and me in front of Big Ben in London. It seemed like the sort of place he’d take me to visit if he were around.
Warner looked slightly abashed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all grabby.”
“Don’t sweat it. I got this email from him and . . . I feel a little guilty, you know? Because things are going so well here, and I know he’s . . .”
Hypatia sent a copy of my dad’s email to Warner so he could read it (and maybe to shut him up for a bit).
Hypatia patted my knee. “I’ve heard how clever he is. I’m sure he’ll figure out how to get away from them sooner or later.”
I nodded in agreement, but I had to wonder if his attempt to signal the outside world had gotten him in trouble. The Old Ones must have known someone had done something, because they’d had to melt that Merchar guy’s brain. Maybe there were loads of people wherever my dad was being held who were capable of smuggling out an emergency transmitter, but somehow I doubted it. My dad and the guy obviously talked sometimes, so they must have known my dad at least had the opportunity to plant something on him.
What would they have done if they’d figured out it was my dad? Was he being tortured or held in solitary confinement? Maybe they’d decided he was too much of a risk and had opted to cut their losses by . . .
The Unspeakable Unknown Page 5
