The Rogue World

by Matthew J. Kirby

  Eleanor looked across the cell. Uncle Jack stood there, his arm around her mom’s shoulder, trying to comfort her. Eleanor realized he was a pillar holding the world up, and she would do anything to keep him safe. And so, it seems, would her mom.

  “I didn’t know,” Eleanor whispered.

  “You’re not supposed to,” Finn said. “I’m not supposed to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your mom doesn’t want your uncle to know he’s being used that way. She’s afraid he’ll do something stupid and get himself killed.”

  Finn was probably right. Uncle Jack would never allow himself to be a pawn that way, especially if it meant that Eleanor couldn’t or wouldn’t go through with the mission. When they’d climbed into the SUV, her mom certainly couldn’t say anything about it with Uncle Jack right there. Eleanor didn’t want to think about what might have happened with all those armed soldiers around.

  “Thank you for telling me,” she said.

  “I just didn’t want you to say something you would regret later.”

  Eleanor didn’t regret anything she’d said. “Look, if she only betrayed us to save Uncle Jack, I could accept that. But that’s not what happened. She chose Watkins. She’s the one who put Uncle Jack in danger in the first place.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “What about you?” Eleanor asked. “How are things with your dad and Julian?”

  “Better,” he said. “We talked.”

  “About Cairo?”

  “Only a little. We put that behind us.”

  That sounded a lot simpler than it probably was. Eleanor knew Finn and Julian both struggled with their feelings for their father. He hadn’t been around for them and their mother. That’s not something you just get over.

  “So what are we gonna do?” Finn asked. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Not yet. I think Hobbes has to make his next move.” She looked around. “I guess we’re stuck in here for the time being.”

  “I guess so.”

  Eleanor thought about Hobbes, and wondered if he would really follow through on a threat like that. Would he hurt Uncle Jack? Or had that just been something to get Eleanor’s mom—and Eleanor—to cooperate?

  That whole speech he’d given about Mariah had seemed sincere. He loved his daughter. Eleanor knew what she was willing to do to protect Uncle Jack. What was Hobbes willing to do to protect his daughter?

  She had a feeling that, very soon, she was going to find out.

  CHAPTER

  20

  ELEANOR HEARD NOTHING FROM HOBBES FOR THE REST OF that day, and spent the time telling Dr. Powers about everything that had happened in the Himalayas. Toward evening, soldiers brought them all food in the form of ready-to-eat field rations, probably the same stuff the peacekeepers were themselves eating. Eleanor sat on her cot, chewing and swallowing, watching Uncle Jack inspect each bite as if he wasn’t convinced it was actually food.

  “I wish we had some of that fish Badri gave us,” Finn said. “That was good. Tender and spicy.”

  “It sounds delicious,” Eleanor’s mom said.

  Eleanor snorted. “Oh, please. You would have turned your nose up at it like you do to anything that’s a little different.” It came out sounding like the dig she’d meant it to be.

  Her mom went quiet, along with everyone else, but Eleanor refused to feel bad about the tension she’d brought into the tent. She hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. After they’d finished their rations, they each took one of the cots. Eleanor ended up between her mom and Julian.

  “I wonder what Hobbes has planned for us,” Watkins said. “Nothing in the middle of the night, I hope.”

  Eleanor didn’t think they could rule anything out with Hobbes. She climbed into her sleeping bag, her head resting on a very flat pillow, and thought about how she could get them all out of this cell and go after the alien ship.

  “So Finn really saw a yeti?” Julian asked next to her, keeping his voice low.

  “Yup.”

  “That is crazy.”

  “Yup.”

  “My dad was pretty pissed at him for a while. Now I think he’s proud of him.”

  “He should be,” Eleanor said.

  Julian paused. “Hey, if there’s something I can do to help with the plan, let me know?”

  Eleanor rolled her head to the side and looked at him. “How do you know there’s a plan?”

  “It’s you,” he said, smirking. “You always have a plan. And I’m glad we’re all on the same side again.”

  “I am, too,” Eleanor said. “But I wish it didn’t take an alien ship and a guy like Hobbes to bring us back together.”

  A few minutes later, the guards switched off the overhead lights, and the tent went dark except for the camp light bleeding in through the canvas. Eleanor listened to the sounds that continued outside, the vehicles driving around, and even people talking as they walked. She couldn’t figure what everyone was doing here. The security forces made sense. But what about everyone else? Were they scientists? UN staff? Something about this whole situation was fishy, even beyond the imprisonment and threats. Hobbes had a hidden agenda. She felt certain of that, but she could only guess what it might be.

  Eleanor lay awake until she could hear Uncle Jack’s snoring coming from his cot. Then she rolled onto her side, away from Julian.

  “Mom?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

  Silence.

  “Mom?”

  Nothing.

  Eleanor wasn’t even sure what she wanted to say. Maybe she should apologize for what she’d done at dinner, even though her mom was the one who should be apologizing to her, and in a very big way. Eleanor thought about reaching over and waking her up, but worried that would make too much noise and rouse the others. After a few moments of indecision had passed, she gave up trying to figure out what she wanted and rolled onto her back to try to sleep.

  Eleanor woke to the sound of the cage door opening. When she opened her eyes, she saw Hobbes walking in, flanked by two soldiers. The light coming in through the tent had the pale blue tinge of early morning. Hobbes clapped his hands twice.

  “Wake up!”

  Those who hadn’t stirred at the sound of the cage door opened their eyes and sat up in bed.

  “This isn’t boot camp, Hobbes,” Watkins said.

  “We aren’t running a resort, either.” Hobbes looked at Eleanor. “You’re coming with me.”

  Eleanor narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing.

  Hobbes turned to Watkins. “You, too. The rest of you will stay here.”

  “No way.” Uncle Jack heaved himself to his feet, holding his side and grunting. “You’re not taking her without me.”

  “Or me,” Eleanor’s mom said.

  “I appreciate your desire to protect her,” Hobbes said. “Trust me, I do. But you’re staying here.” He turned toward the cage door. “As long as Eleanor here does as I ask, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Eleanor looked at Uncle Jack and her mom and nodded to them both, trying to reassure them. “I’ll be back,” she said, before following Hobbes outside the cell.

  Watkins came behind her, and after closing the door and relocking the cage, Hobbes led them from the tent. Outside, Eleanor could see it would be another overcast day, and it was later in the morning than she thought. As she and Watkins walked beside Hobbes, the two guards a few steps behind them, she noticed the continued activity around the camp.

  “Who are all these people?” she asked.

  “UN peacekeepers,” he said.

  “Not the soldiers,” she said. “Everyone else.”

  Hobbes glanced to either side. “Support personnel.”

  “What kind of support?” Watkins asked.

  “The usual.” Hobbes waved his hand casually. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Eleanor didn’t know what that meant, but she did know Hobbes wasn’t going to say anything more about it, so she let it g
o. They crossed the camp and came to a tent at the center of a flurry of activity. A few soldiers stood guard, but a much greater number of so-called support personnel came and went, or stood in conversation. As Hobbes approached, they all fell silent and stared at Eleanor and Watkins.

  “I think our reputations precede us,” Watkins said.

  “I wonder what they’ve heard,” Eleanor said. “Are they staring at global terrorists, or are they staring at freaks who can talk to aliens?”

  “Perhaps both,” Watkins said.

  “That’s enough talking.” Hobbes pulled the tent flap aside and nodded them in.

  This time, Eleanor found a setup very similar to the G.E.T. encampment in Cairo. Large screens displayed satellite images and new broadcasts, while UN staff manned numerous computer terminals arranged in rows. Eleanor searched them for any images of the alien ship, but Hobbes rushed them through too quickly toward a temporary wall that ran down one side of the tent. It had several doors, marking ceilingless rooms, and one of them bore a sign with Hobbes’s name.

  “My office,” he said, unlocking the door. “Enter.”

  This wasn’t where Eleanor had expected him to take them. Inside, the room looked exceedingly normal. A generic veneered wooden desk, with two slim armchairs in front of it. The desk bore a framed picture, but it faced away from Eleanor. The office even smelled of freshly brewed coffee, a familiar aroma Eleanor realized she hadn’t smelled in a very long time, and she spotted the coffeemaker on a small table against the temporary wall.

  “Please,” Hobbes said, closing the office door behind them. “Have a seat. Would you like some coffee? It’s crap, but it’s coffee.”

  “I’ll pass,” Watkins said, taking one of the armchairs.

  Eleanor took the other, working to restrain her anger. “You can try as hard as you want, Hobbes, but you will never be the good cop.”

  “No?” Hobbes poured his coffee into a mug so stained inside that Eleanor wondered if it had ever been washed. “And why is that?”

  “You threatened to kill my uncle.”

  Hobbes replaced the coffeepot. “Not directly.”

  “Not directly?” Eleanor said. “That still sounds pretty bad cop to me.”

  Hobbes put the mug down on the desk and sat down in his chair. “There are a number of people who would disagree with you. They sent me here to save lives.”

  “And you decide to start by threatening my uncle’s?”

  Hobbes sighed. “Believe it or not, I don’t feel any need to convince you. So fine, I’m a bad cop, and this is a bad cup of coffee.” He took a sip. “There are more important things to discuss.”

  “Such as?” Watkins said.

  “The ship, obviously. You’ve been in contact with it, so that makes you two the earth’s foremost alien experts.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Watkins crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in his chair as if he were sitting in his living room back home. “We haven’t even seen the ship.”

  “It’s . . . something else,” Hobbes said. “But seeing it doesn’t tell us anything about it. In fact, I’m not even sure we’re really seeing it.” He paused. “You know what I mean by that?”

  Eleanor knew exactly what he meant.

  Hobbes continued. “None of our equipment can give us any information on it. If you believe the data from our sensors, the thing isn’t even there. But it is.” He held out his hand as if the ship were on his desk. “It’s right there.”

  “What’s your point?” Eleanor assumed he was trying to win them over to his side, sharing information with them, giving them the appearance of cooperation, but doing an obvious and clumsy job of it.

  “I don’t have a point,” he said. “I have a question.”

  “What is your question, then?” Watkins asked.

  Hobbes gave them both a long, pointed look. “Do you know if there are aliens inside that ship?”

  Eleanor looked over at Watkins. He cocked his head to one side and then turned toward her. That question would be very important to someone like Hobbes, who knew nothing about the ship, other than where it came from. But Eleanor knew, intuitively, that the only being on that ship was the intelligence that controlled it. The look that passed between her and Watkins confirmed that he thought the same thing, even though the rest of the earth’s inhabitants probably feared otherwise.

  In that moment, Eleanor realized they could potentially take the upper hand, if they played things right.

  “We don’t know,” Eleanor said. “We’ve only ever connected with the alien technology. Not with the aliens themselves.”

  “So there could be aliens on that ship,” Hobbes said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Anything is possible,” Watkins said.

  Hobbes leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin. “You find a car parked on your lawn, you know someone must have driven it there.”

  “Ah, now I see,” Watkins said. “That’s what all of this is for. Your support staff. You’re preparing for a First Contact scenario.”

  Hobbes nodded. “Biologists. Linguists. Anthropologists. You name it.”

  “But what are you hoping for?” Watkins asked. “These aliens did not come in peace. The Concentrators—they’re like teeth. They came to kill the earth, to extract its blood. This is war.”

  “We know that,” Hobbes said. “We don’t expect a handshake.”

  “Then what do you expect?” Watkins asked.

  Hobbes looked at the photo on his desk. “We have a number of contingencies in place.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Eleanor said.

  “It’s the only answer you’re going to get.” He took another sip of his coffee.

  “Is that your daughter?” Eleanor pointed at the picture.

  Hobbes turned the photo around so she could see it. From within the frame, a teenage girl smiled out at her, sitting next to Hobbes on a park bench with her arm through his. The Hobbes in the photo looked at his daughter with the same loving expression as the Hobbes in the office looking at her picture.

  A moment later, he turned the frame back around. “Here is what will happen. In a few minutes, the three of us will leave for the site of the alien ship. You both will connect with it, convey to it that we mean it no harm, and get it to open its doors.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Watkins asked.

  “That’s up to you,” Hobbes said. “But Eleanor here has managed to shut down four Concentrators, and you’ve managed to start a couple of them back up, not to mention controlling the World Tree. I believe you’ll figure something out. Now, ask me.”

  “Ask you?” Eleanor said.

  “Yes, ask me.”

  “Ask you what?” Watkins said.

  “Ask me what happens if you don’t do what I tell you to do.” He took a sip of coffee, and over the rim of his mug, his eyes had gone cold and empty. “Ask me what happens to your mom and your uncle.”

  Eleanor’s vision tunneled. This was what she had feared after talking with Finn. Hobbes had control of her the same way he had controlled her mother, by threatening the people she loved, and so long as she believed he meant to carry out that threat, he had her.

  “What about me?” the old man asked. “What happens if I don’t do what you tell me to do?”

  Hobbes wagged a finger at him. “You had me up most of the night asking that same question. But I think I figured it out.”

  “Oh?” Watkins folded his arms.

  “It was actually Eleanor who gave me the idea.”

  Watkins glanced at Eleanor, but she had no idea what Hobbes was talking about.

  “What idea did Eleanor give you?” Watkins asked.

  “She told me that you had joined your minds together somehow to stop the alien intelligence.” He came around the desk and sat on its edge. “I’ve known you for years, Watkins. We never got really personal with each other, but I am sure of one thing about you.”

  “And what’s that?”
Watkins asked.

  “You are a lonely old man.”

  That word. The way he said it. Lonely. It slowly settled over Eleanor what he meant, and how he would try to control Watkins, by using her. But she knew that would never work. Watkins didn’t really care about her, and she expected him to laugh or to smirk at Hobbes.

  But he didn’t. He went quiet.

  “Now you see,” Hobbes said. “And I see you. No wife. No kids. All alone. But now there’s Eleanor, the only person who has the same power you do, the same drive to use it—the only person who truly understands what you’re going through, what you’re trying to do. And my guess is, you don’t even know what to make of it. But you know it means something to you. And you’re not going to let me take that from you.” Hobbes drained the rest of his coffee in one long gulp.

  Eleanor had suddenly and inexplicably found herself being used as a pawn in the same way Uncle Jack had unknowingly been used, only this didn’t make any sense. It didn’t seem possible that this could work, not on Watkins.

  “You wouldn’t do anything to her,” Watkins said. “You’re not stupid. You know I can’t get into the ship without her.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Hobbes said. “So you’ll just have to decide whether I’m bluffing or not. Ask yourself if that’s a risk you’re willing to take.”

  They were talking about Eleanor as if she wasn’t there, as if she couldn’t hear the threat Hobbes had just made against her. No way would Watkins surrender to Hobbes for her sake, which meant Hobbes might soon carry out his threat. Eleanor looked around the room, panic taking over, wondering if the door was locked.

  “Well?” Hobbes asked.

  “I’m not,” Watkins said.

  “You’re not what?” Hobbes asked.

  “I’m not willing to take the risk,” Watkins said. “I’ll do what you want.”

  Eleanor couldn’t believe it. She didn’t know what to think or feel about it.

  “A wise choice,” Hobbes said. “Now that’s settled. And you both have a job to do.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE WITHOUT MY MOM AND Uncle Jack,” Eleanor said, still reeling from what had just happened.