“Chemistry?”
He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “You know, like all those chemicals that work in your brain when you’re upset or excited. I thought maybe it needed something more than just regular fear or being angry, something really strong, like a nightmare. So I decided to try it. But it’s not just strong emotion. If it were, we’d be home right now.”
Susan was quiet awhile. Then she said, “It couldn’t have been, anyway, if you think about it. If it were, things would be changing here anytime someone lost his temper or fell in love.”
“How do we know they aren’t?”
“Did Liyla say a thing about it? Did Omet? No. They talked about rally real, but they didn’t say it happened anytime they got angry or scared. Don’t you think those sleeper kids are scared enough to make something happen? If it’s like that, what happened to all those kids they took to the workshop?”
He couldn’t escape her logic. Max bit his lip. Experiment failed.
Susan lay back down, and he waited in the dark, listening until her breathing deepened. Then he crawled over to Kate, her sleep interrupted every few breaths by small hiccups left over from the tears. He found her hand and leaned down close to her, keeping his voice low.
“Kate,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She was only half asleep. At the sound of his voice, she rolled over and put her other hand on his. A lump rose in his throat. He knew what it was like to feel small, and helpless, and like nothing made sense. If this was hard for him, what must it be like for Kate, or Jean? He sat and thought about that, long after Kate’s breath evened and he knew she was asleep.
To escape the dreams and the half-heard wail of the valley, the exile sought the sea. Four clearings from home, a cliff stretched to the end of land and looked to water. Below, the distant surf, blue and gray, reached endlessly for the sand. In ancient times, men had crossed the sea and seen the lands beyond. The world then had been busy with trade and invention.
Now the great cities were husks, and the last of the wise devoured their own. Ancient promises had turned to torment, and the song of the valley had become a lament.
Nell emerged from the cave in time to catch a falling peach with her head.
“Hey!” she yelled at Max, snatching it from the dirt and rubbing furiously at her hair. “What do you think you’re doing?!”
Max thought it was pretty obvious what he’d been doing. After a sleepless night, he’d come out at dawn and decided that he’d better try some experiments that didn’t include sisters.
At least he thought they wouldn’t include sisters, until Nell inconveniently decided to put her head in the way.
“Sir Isaac Newton,” he said, by way of explanation. He retrieved the bruised peach from her hand and tossed it again. It shot up into the glare of the rising sun angling through the trees, performed a little somersault, then fell back into his hand, slightly stickier than when it had started.
All the while Nell stared at him blankly.
“You know? The guy who discovered gravity? It’s an experiment. If the laws of physics are different here, I figure we should see it, and where would we see it better than with gravity? Sir Isaac Newton had an apple drop on his head. I’m just using a peach.”
Nell rubbed her hair again. “Well, nobody asked you to use my head, did they? Besides, we’ve got to eat those! Why didn’t you use a stone or something?”
Nell had little appreciation for the scientific process.
“That was an accident. And anyway, if I’d done that, you’d have just gotten hit in the head with a stone!”
She glowered at him, immune to logic, and nodded at the peach.
“That one’s yours.”
Gravity had flayed the peach, and the juice ran sticky through his fingers. Already an interested gnat had brought a couple of its friends over to see about it. Max remembered belatedly that there was no water to be had.
Nell waved, and the gnats dispersed and regrouped.
“It’s not even full day yet, and it’s hot,” she said. “Now we’re going to have a bug party. Great.”
Max grimaced.
“You do better, then,” he said disgustedly. He sat down to eat the peach. His hands itched.
“I will. And it won’t be with crazy experiments, either; it’ll be thinking.”
He rolled his eyes. “Experiments seem crazy until they work,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“Tell that to Kate.”
Max flushed. Nell was a born expert at poking anthills with sticks. He tried to think of something to say, found he couldn’t, and turned away, clutching the ruined fruit. By the time the others woke, he’d gotten so sick of the stickiness and the gnats that he’d rubbed his hands in the awful dirt until they stung.
The day didn’t get much better as it went along. They trooped up the mountain, and if the gnats were having a party, by afternoon a gang of mosquitoes had joined in. Max looked guiltily at Kate, who had dark circles under her eyes, and then at Susan. He knew she had every right to call him a hypocrite. It wasn’t as easy as he’d thought to have the others watch him as if he were hiding the window from them in his back pocket. At least that was one thing he could say for Nell. She wasn’t waiting. She kept trying to crack the nut.
Unfortunately, her methods were exasperating. After having complained about his peach experiment, she’d gone on to ask the others if maybe they’d dreamed an answer.
Dreamed an answer. Now, that made sense. Max tried to stifle his irritation — and found he wasn’t much good at that, either. It wasn’t just Nell, it was the whole universe he felt miffed at, or parallel universe, or maybe the space-time continuum, if that’s what had gone wonky and sent them through the window. It would have been nice to have been handed some kind of manual before you got pitched into things like this. As it was, he was sweaty and subdued, and every time he looked at Kate, he was both sorry for having scared her and full of regret that the experiment hadn’t worked. Then there was the panic that jolted him regularly as he listened for dogs and thought about being dragged back to the city. Parallel universes stank, and that was a fact.
They trudged up the mountain as the sun burned a hole in the horizon, orange and white against the black stripes of the trees. It was Jean’s turn to carry the peaches, but she and Kate said they were too heavy and had instead decided to share their turns, holding the edges of Nell’s blanket like a sling. The peaches bounced inside it, and every so often, when the ground was level enough to permit easier walking, the girls would bend toward the little hammock they’d made, just to breathe the smell of the fruit.
Max watched them worriedly. He’d counted peaches that morning, only to discover that Nell had been right about her fear of wasting them. Even if they were careful, the fruit would last another four days — no more.
To distract himself from that unpleasant thought, he added another item to the long list he’d been compiling of equipment he could have used in a place like this: a map. He wouldn’t mind knowing where they were heading. For now, away from the city would have to do. But it wouldn’t do forever.
“We’ve got to walk faster,” he said to the others. “Fish could turn into fossils quicker than we’re moving.”
“But it’s hotter than it was yesterday,” Jean said. “And the peaches are heavy.”
“I’ll take your turn,” he said, retrieving the blanket. “You guys just walk.”
But he knew there was only so much anybody could do living on peaches. He needed to find another way.
The sunlight sizzled on the leaves and slicked the dirt with white puddles as he tugged silently at the knot of the problem. Nell was doing the same — minus the silent part.
“Maybe it was you guys being desperate,” she was saying to Susan. She’d given up proposing theories to Max after his reaction to her dream idea.
Susan only shrugged. Nearby, falling pine needles sparked in the sun.
“Can’t be just desperate. There were
too many desperate people in that city. We’d have seen it more than once.”
“Were we desperate in that rally?” Kate asked. “Is that what that’s called?”
Nell shook her head. “Desperate! More like crazy. Everybody there was crazy.”
An awkward silence followed that comment. Max knew exactly what she meant. For a second, he’d adored the Genius up there in his ugly red cloak.
“He changed the buildings, too,” Jean said. “Remember?”
You could count on Jean. Thinking about the buildings changing was a hundred times better than having to remember the way the Genius’s voice had gotten inside his head.
“I thought we were just seeing things,” he said. “But now I’m not so sure. What if the buildings really did change? Just like the wind and the peaches? That means we’re not the only ones who can do this. He can, too.”
“But how?” Nell asked. “What exactly did he do at the rally?”
Susan looked away from them, into the trees. “It felt like a song,” she said. “You know how it is when catchy music comes on? It’s hard not to dance, right?”
“Yes, but what about the buildings?” Nell asked her. “Was that just a catchy song, too?”
Catchy song, Max thought scornfully. What did that even mean? He wondered if Gottfried Leibniz had had these kinds of conversations with his sister.
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “But I think I loved him so much for that second that whatever he said — I just wanted it to be true, so it was. Buildings included.”
Max looked uncomfortably at his feet. Mention of the Genius was like a burr in his shirt, rubbing an already sore place. He didn’t like to think that his own mind had betrayed him. It had seemed so right, what the Genius had said. Just for a second, but still . . .
“How did he make us forget like that?” Kate asked.
“Forget?” Nell said. “We weren’t forgetting. He was washing our brains out.”
“Brainwashing, you mean,” Susan said.
“Whatever it was. He did it.”
Max squinted into the trees. Was he still forgetting? It was midday already, and the heat pressed the whole wood down. Even the chirping of the birds in the trees had gotten drowsy and slow.
Susan sighed. “It did feel like a kind of forgetting,” she said. “I forgot I hated it here. Is that what you meant, Kate?”
“Yeah. I forgot I wanted to go home. Just for a minute.”
Susan drew her sleeve across her face. The heat had reddened her cheeks and damped the hair at her neck.
“That’s just what it was like,” she said. “He crowded me out of my own head.”
How did Susan always manage to find the right words? Max felt crowded out right now, his brain full of random bits of information he couldn’t add up.
“All that mattered was what he was saying,” Susan went on. “How did he do that?”
“By telling lies,” Nell said.
“Big, mean lies,” Jean added.
“Maybe,” Susan said. “But it didn’t have to be a lie, did it? The point was it was his thought, not mine. I could only think of what he was saying, and like Kate said, I forgot all the rest. He made me think of just the one thing, and for a second, it was all that mattered.”
Max nearly stopped walking.
One thing, he thought. One thing.
The words clanged in his head like a bell.
It had often seemed to Max, when he was younger, that things were easier for Susan. She knew how to behave in school; she had always earned gold stars for sitting nicely and doing her homework. She didn’t get sent out for roughhousing or for talking too much in class. She didn’t get KICK ME signs stuck to her back for having too many brainiac ideas. It bothered him, made him think something was wrong with him, to always be the one getting into one kind of trouble or another.
But in the past year or so he’d realized that Susan didn’t just behave; she made herself invisible. He didn’t envy that. Even his encounters with Ivan and Mo hadn’t made him want to shut up forever, never say what he thought or offer a new idea. He still envied one thing, though — her ability to blot out the world. Then she wasn’t invisible — everybody else was. He’d always wanted to know how she did that. His thoughts seemed to jump around in his head excitedly, and Susan would just dive deep into a book and be gone, living somewhere else, so completely immersed that the rest of them could yell and throw pillows and she’d barely notice. Now all of a sudden he knew what that was, and he thought it just might get them home. He hurried up to walk beside her, the peaches thumping against his back.
“Susan!” he said. “You know how you’re different from me? You know how?”
His unexpected enthusiasm made her jump. “How?”
“When you read a book, you don’t hear anything. Isn’t that right? We call you and call you, and you don’t even know it!”
“Well, I —”
“No, I mean in a good way. You concentrate like nobody I ever saw! Dad says that all the time, doesn’t he? And it’s true. When you’ve got your mind on something, you don’t even see where you are!”
“So?”
“So that’s why you broke us out of that room! You were thinking one thing, so hard, that it happened. Don’t you see? It’s just what you said. All you could think of was getting out! And in that rally — nobody could think about a thing but what the Genius was saying. I wasn’t even thinking about getting home anymore, and I bet you were the same! He crowded all the rest of it out with those words of his!”
Susan had been making her way around a ragged hemlock when he started talking, and now she stopped altogether, bewildered. The others caught up to them.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Nell asked him. “Is Susan okay?”
“She’s more than okay! She’s going to get us out of here!”
Nell pressed her lips into a flat line.
“Max, I think you’d better give me a turn with the peaches. Are you sure you’re feeling good?”
“I feel fine!” he said. “Susan, tell her!”
But Susan only shrugged, and Nell asked if maybe he’d hit his own head with a peach.
Max threw a hand up, sending the hemlock into shivers. “Listen,” he said, ignoring Nell. “And don’t think about what makes sense at home, but about what might make sense here. When I was hungry, hungry wasn’t enough — it was only when I started blacking out. All I could think of was peaches. I thought of peaches really hard — and they were there!”
“One thing?” Susan said. “Don’t people do that all the time? If that’s it, it should be common!”
Max nearly laughed. Of course Susan would think that — of course!
“People don’t think that way nearly ever,” he told her. “They’re always thinking a million things at once.” He pointed at Nell. “What are you thinking right now? Tell her.”
“Uh — maybe you need more protein in your diet? Dad says your brain goes fuzzy without it.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And you’re not thinking that your legs ache, and you’re worried about the dogs, and wishing we could get out of here?”
“And thirsty,” Jean said. “Don’t forget thirsty.”
“See?” he turned back to Susan. “It’s never just one thing! We can pay attention to something, but it’s hard to put all the rest away. Only you do that!”
Susan blinked a few times, looking dazed. “Just thinking?” she said. “Just that?”
“Just!” Max cried. “It’s not just anything! Don’t you know your brain makes electricity?”
“So?”
“So it does things! Back at home, they have machines that work on brain waves. What if it’s like that here, only more?”
He could feel the others catching on. Nell was nodding.
“It’s like I said before. Real here is different from what it is at home. Here you could make peaches out of the air!”
Sometimes having siste
rs wasn’t half bad. He grinned at her. “Exactly. Maybe the rules here are as different as they are on the moon, only it’s not gravity that’s funny — it’s some other thing we never heard of. Instead of being able to jump higher, you can do this!”
Susan bit her lip. “You’re saying when I think, it’s . . . louder here?”
He felt like shouting Eureka.
Jean had ducked under a hemlock branch, and now she peered at Susan from beneath a fringe of dusty green bangs.
“I don’t hear her,” she said.
Nell sniffed. “We sure heard the Genius at that rally, didn’t we?”
Max shot her a surprised look. “I guess we did! I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Nell beamed, and the electricity or whatever it was in the air must have been working right then, because Kate and Jean brightened, too.
“So Susan can make the window?” Kate asked. “We’re going home?”
Susan practically jumped onto a hemlock branch. “Whoa! Hold on! Don’t you think I would if I could? I don’t know what Max is even talking about!”
Max held up a placating hand. “It’s not just regular thinking,” he told Susan. “You’ve been wishing to get home just like the rest of us, but this isn’t like that! It’s all about setting up the right conditions.”
“You mean I need to be scared out of my wits again? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, not the fear, the focus! Just try it — will you? It’s got to be right!”
Susan did try it. All the rest of that day, as they hiked upward with renewed energy, she muttered to herself. Once he had her stop and sit, and she closed her eyes for so long, she fell asleep, an unfortunate fact he discovered when she tipped into Kate’s lap.
“Maybe part of the right conditions is not being so tired,” Susan said. “What are we going to do about that?”
But now Max was full of plans. He sent Susan ahead with Kate and Jean while he and Nell and the peaches zigzagged right and left, leaving what he hoped would be a confusing trail for the dogs. They rubbed their sweaty hands onto lone trees, plucked their own hairs out and draped them on rocks, and even sacrificed a peach, smashing it against a hickory tree and leaving some of its pulp twined among the needles of another hemlock.
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