I held up a hand. “Stop, we already did that. I’m thinking of doing something stupid.”
A grin flashed across her face, and she quickly hid it. “How stupid?”
“Really stupid. Dangerous. Major rule breaking. Like—”
She held up a finger decorated with a fat electronic smart-ring that looked like it was displaying a series of explosions. “Hold on.”
From a canvas backpack (which had been a spiked leather purse a moment before), she produced a piece of blue hard candy wrapped in cellophane.
“No thanks,” I said, assuming she meant to offer it to me.
Ignoring me, Fluorine unwrapped the candy, set it gently on the concrete, stood, and stomped it ferociously under one pink rubber boot. Instantly, every neon sign on both sides of the street went out, and the streetlight above us turned itself on and politely died with a shiver of electricity. My own tablet flickered, sparked, and went black.
“Piezoelectric EMP,” she said by way of explanation. “Everything will repair itself in about five minutes, so talk fast while the Chaperone can’t listen in. I doubt she’s monitoring us now, but if something goes wrong later, I don’t want them finding anything weird in the logs.”
I knew I’d come to the right person.
As I’d hoped, Fluorine had no qualms about helping me provide aid and comfort to an alleged enemy. “She might be okay; she might not,” was all she had to say on the topic.
According to Fluorine, my idea was indeed stupid, not to mention catastrophically dangerous. “I sure wish I could come with you,” she added, “but this anti-time-shifter thing only works when it’s linked up with the network here, so leaving town would give me away in a heartbeat.”
I asked why it didn’t die when she zapped every other electric device in the neighborhood, but she only replied with a stare that seemed to mean How stupid do you think I am? So I dropped it.
Fluorine consulted her handheld, which had also somehow survived the candy EMP, and gave me the details. “I’ve added a new unescorted field trip to the official school schedule. That should take care of getting you past the bees and through the gap both ways. It also takes care of transportation. The bus leaves tonight at midnight from the bus lot behind the maintenance building. It will get you home by 7:00 AM, assuming you don’t stop at any tourist traps.”
Then she handed me a compact spring-loaded umbrella. “You’ll be leaving after curfew, so the Chaperone will be watching for anyone out and about. Stay under this at all times, and she won’t notice you. Careful you don’t hit that button till it’s time to go; the charge only lasts about an hour.”
I stowed the umbrella carefully in my bag and stood. “Listen, I really appreciate this. Just so you know, I’m a hundred percent certain it’s the right thing to—”
Fluorine scoffed audibly. “If you get busted, I had nothing to do with any of it. If you don’t, I want my umbrella back after. Oh, and you have to tell me all about it sometime, even if I’m too young to remember helping.”
I had to ask. “Is that really true? Sometimes it seems like you remember more than you let on.”
Fluorine eyed me studiously for a moment. “Okay, sometimes I ham it up a bit. Can you blame me? It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card that renews every ten minutes or so. But if I go from being ten to twenty, the thing that happened five minutes ago for you happened ten years ago for me, so it’s not totally fake.”
“So . . . do you really not remember what caused it in the first place?”
Fluorine produced a juice box from her bag, stabbed it with a straw, and took a long, puckering sip before responding. “Kind of . . . I remember it a little more every day.”
“Oh yeah? What was it? Did you go back in time and hang out with Isaac Newton or something?”
Fluorine took another sip and tossed the box into a nearby trash can. She folded her arms, like she was hugging herself, and sighed. “Did you know my parents joined the Old Ones? Willingly?”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing how to respond. “I . . . I hadn’t heard that.”
Fluorine was looking straight ahead like she was talking to the empty street. “It doesn’t surprise me. People don’t usually talk about that stuff. It’s a bit rude, you know? Pointing out that so-and-so’s folks are traitorous rats . . . Plus Granny keeps it pretty quiet.”
I went to put a hand on her shoulder, but Fluorine flinched away like I’d threatened her with a hot poker.
“Granny says they were kidnapped, but . . . You know how sometimes the truth can be so awful that you’d rather force yourself to believe a lie? Rubidia saved the note they’d left. I found it in her room.” Fluorine shook her head. “It was all the garbage people who join the Old Ones are always spewing. ‘It’s humans against parahumans. They’re going to wipe us out. We parahumans should be in charge. Think of what we could accomplish . . .’”
“Jeez, Fluorine, I don’t know what to—”
She shook her head and went on. “I was six, but I was smart enough to understand that my own parents had abandoned us to go be terrible people. That’s a hard thing to have in your brain, you know? But . . . I still wanted them back.”
I had no idea what this had to do with her being unstuck in time, but something told me I shouldn’t ask. I just nodded.
Fluorine went on. “I liked to pretend that maybe Granny was right, and maybe the Old Ones would just let them go someday.” She paused and stared straight up at the clouds. “Let me ask you a question. If someone told you they could bring your dad back, but first—”
The box on Fluorine’s shoulder clicked and buzzed again. She glowed for the briefest moment, and then she was suddenly about five years old.
She seemed to notice me for the first time and gave me a wide grin. “Hi, Nikola! I’m waiting for my paradox therapy appointment. I’m not cured yet, but they say—”
* * *
Hypatia brought her fist down on the table almost hard enough to convince me she meant what she was saying. “You can’t go. That’s all there is to it. I can’t believe you’d even think of it. If anyone found out . . . well . . . I don’t know what they’d do, but you’d hate it, I’m sure.”
I leaned in close. Fluorine had given me a handful of her instant privacy candies, but there were still students all over the Event Horizon. “They won’t know. It’s simple. We can do it all in one night, and nobody will be the wiser. I already sent Darleeen an email to let her know we’re coming.”
“Well, I’m glad you have confidence, at least. They’ll be sure to knock a few years off your solitary detention sentence since you’re so—I’m sorry, did you just say ‘we’?”
I shrugged. “Well, I just assumed you’d want to ride along, in case there’s any fretting or worrying to be done.”
Warner snickered, his gaze locked on his game of solitaire.
Hypatia harrumphed. “I just think it’s awfully presumptuous to assume.”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. Like you said—”
“Well, of course I’m coming! I just don’t want you to go around assuming this is the kind of thing I like taking part in!”
“Noted,” I said.
Out of curiosity, I stole a bite of Hypatia’s sauerkraut fudge cookie. It was less horrible than I’d imagined. She studied my expression while I chewed.
“FINE,” Warner said out of nowhere.
“What?” Hypatia asked with a start.
Warner peeked under a card that had been lying facedown. He was cheating at solitaire. Who does that? “I’ll come, too. You don’t need to keep hinting about it.”
“Thanks, Warner!” I said, patting myself on the back for knowing the best way to get him to come was not to invite him. “We’ll stop by your place at about 11:30. Don’t talk about it at all after this, and don’t tell Dirac. He wouldn’t approve.”
>
“Ya think?” Warner said.
10
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Hypatia had quadruple-checked that her new superstring slicer was fully charged and re-re-recounted the three large bottles of water she was bringing. “Do you really think we’ll need weapons?”
“I sure hope not, but if we run into any trouble, being able to make someone stop existing for a while and forgetting we were ever there could turn out to be useful,” I said.
I had my own bag packed and was bringing my agar bracelet, Fluorine’s umbrella, my school tablet, my gravitational disruptor, and my slightly used magnetic singularity.
“Don’t bring that,” Hypatia said as I was taking inventory. “If you set it off by accident, it would crush the bus with us inside.”
“I doubt it even works. I’ve never charged it, and it looks pretty banged up,” I said, which reminded me to check the charge on my disruptor. It read:
85% CHARGE
PLEASE KILL RESPONSIBLY
Good enough, especially since the odds were slim I’d have to shoot anything.
“Leave your tablet, too,” Hypatia said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s a major security risk, that’s why,” Hypatia said. “You should never bring one unless the class requires one, and even then, you shouldn’t use one unless you absolutely have to.”
I figured she knew something I didn’t, so I left it charging on my bedside table.
At the door, I pulled out the umbrella Fluorine had lent me and pressed the button. It sprang up and opened over us. From the edges dropped a delicate and nearly invisible reddish lace that hung down almost to our ankles. I felt it thrum faintly, and a light on the handle turned green.
I reached through a gap in the lace and opened the door, and Hypatia and I stepped out into the night.
“This is breaking curfew,” she said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Ohmigod, Hypatia, I had no idea we were going to violate curfew. Should we go back?”
She pinched my arm in retaliation. “You’re turning me into a criminal, you know. I never would have dreamed of doing this kind of thing before you corrupted my innocent sensibilities.”
“What are you talking about? You were practically begging to be corrupted.”
She moved her head back and forth. It was dark, but I knew her I’m not going to argue but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong gesture without having to see it.
“You sure the Chaperone can’t hear us under this?” she asked a minute later as we approached Warner’s house.
“That’s what Fluorine said. It’s a full-spectrum Faraday cage with active noise canceling, so it keeps any electromagnetic waves from getting out and dampens sound. From the outside, we’re just a silent dark spot walking down the street.”
“That’s not suspicious at all,” she said.
“To a machine, we’re invisible.”
At Warner’s house, I tapped once on the door, nowhere near hard enough to kill an ant. Immediately, the door was thrown open in a completely unsneaky fashion to reveal Warner grinning mischievously at Hypatia and me.
“That thing is the coolest! You guys look like the ghost of a shadow,” he said, still making no effort to be quiet.
“Quit your croaking, toad. Get under here,” I hissed.
Thankfully, the umbrella was wide enough that the three of us could walk somewhat comfortably without having to crowd together like we were in a phone booth. “Dirac drank half a cup of maple syrup and salt before bed. That always makes him sleepy, so he was out cold. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I was more worried about the Chaperone,” I said.
“She doesn’t listen unless you call her or she has a reason to, and even then she announces herself. Besides, she can’t be everywhere at once.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said.
“It’s true,” Hypatia said. “I heard she can only be in nine or ten places simultaneously before her processor starts getting overloaded.”
“Better safe than sorry,” I said, not quite convinced.
When we were less than a block from the central square, Warner kicked a rock and sent it skittering down the sidewalk and onto Main Street, where it hit a smaller rock, jumped into the air, and ran right into the side of a lamppost, making a frighteningly loud DING sound.
“Ow!” he said when someone pinched him.
From where we had stopped, we could see half the square, including the front door of the City Hall administration building.
I didn’t see anyone moving around, and it didn’t seem like we’d tripped any alarms. I grabbed Warner’s collar and whispered into his ear, “What if someone heard that?”
As if in response, a faint buzz seemed to sound from nowhere. The Chaperone’s calling card. All three of us drew together against the closest building and froze.
When she spoke, her voice was quieter than I was used to hearing.
“You are out of your home after curfew. This is a violation of several rules of conduct. You are ordered to return home immediately.”
Before I could start pleading innocence and ignorance and asking for mercy, someone else spoke up.
“No, I’m not,” a woman’s voice said.
On the lawn in front of City Hall, a shadowy figure rose to her feet. She had been sitting on the lawn, leaning on the memorial that had been erected in memory of the sonic cannon, which had been a perfectly harmless device used to announce class changes until it tried killing me and several hundred other students.
I squinted and had almost given up trying to see who it was when a floodlight came on, highlighting the woman in the center of a column of illumination. The woman, perhaps twenty, was sporting a rather surly expression, which went nicely with her green Mohawk and multiple spiky ear piercings. It was Fluorine.
The Chaperone was unconvinced. “You are in violation of curfew. Return home immediately or you will be reported for insubordination.”
Fluorine blew a disrespectful raspberry at the air. “What rule am I breaking, exactly?”
“You are in violation of rule 361.55, which states that—”
Immediately, Fluorine produced a tiny gadget from her pocket and pressed a button on it. The device emitted a shrill electronic chirping sound, and the Chaperone was silent.
Fluorine spoke clearly and quickly. “Enable administrator override console, commit. Get enforcement action three-six-one-dot-five-five enabled equals false, commit. Drop table evening violation log, commit. Run script reboot with system check and full holographic defragmentation, commit.”
In response, the Chaperone made a double beep sound I’d never heard before and was silent. Fluorine then gingerly picked up a soda she had been drinking and strolled away across the courthouse lawn.
The three of us were silent for a moment. Hypatia was first to speak. “Did she just . . .”
“Yeah,” Warner said.
“Let’s keep moving,” I said. “Stick to the plan.”
It was 11:57 when we finally reached the bus lot behind the maintenance building. The lot contained five or six full-sized yellow school buses and one half-sized bus, which was idling with its lights on. Hypatia, Warner, and I shared a collective sigh of relief and climbed aboard.
What I hadn’t expected was the bus driver.
The moment we stepped on, the driver peered confusedly at our umbrella device, poking at it tentatively before waving a hand at it, like she was trying to clear out a puff of smoke. Without knowing what else to do, I pressed the button on the umbrella, and it folded itself back up in less than a second.
The bus driver stared at us. She looked tired and very, very unamused.
We stared back at her.
Time passed.
Finally she spoke. “This is an official school
field trip? Exit and reentry both registered in the log and approved?”
“ . . . yeah?” I said.
“And I get overtime for this?” she asked.
“ . . . yeah,” I said.
“In that case, stand there with your mouths hanging open for as long as you like. If you wanna go, you might wanna have a seat instead.”
We sat.
The bus driver swung the door closed, and we were off.
“Tell your little friend I owe her one less favor,” the bus driver said as we passed through the gap several minutes later.
* * *
After forty-five minutes, a road sign announced that we were entering Tomahawk County. It should have been a seven-hour drive. The weird thing was that it didn’t feel like we were moving any faster than the rest of the traffic. In fact, other cars passed us on occasion.
“How is it so fast?” I asked.
“Spatial folding. The graduate engineering class just invented it a few years ago. It’s still extremely top secret, so if the bus breaks down anywhere, it will probably self-destruct,” Warner said, typing something on his tablet.
I made a mental note to stand as far as possible from the bus if one of the tires went flat. “How does it work?”
“It’s like a wormhole but much less cool. The bus just skips forward a bit when there aren’t any obstacles ahead. It’s much faster when there’s less traffic at night, and it doesn’t give off the big obvious signatures wormhole travel does.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s much less cool. You don’t even notice it happening—hey!”
“What?” Warner said, looking distinctly guilty.
“How come you have your tablet? Hypatia said they were a risk.”
“They are!” Hypatia piped up. “Warner, you should be ashamed! The School’s firewall can’t protect your computer from cyberattacks out here.”
The Unspeakable Unknown Page 11
