The Apprentices

by Mailie Meloy

  “He’s waiting in the hall.”

  Pip’s stomach grew cold, and he stared at Opal, who looked back at him with a runny nose and unsympathetic eyes.

  Then she burst into laughter. “I scared you,” she said.

  Relief flooded Pip. “That you did,” he said. “See, you’re clever, whatever your dad says.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A Confession

  You developed this substance on your own?” Benjamin’s father asked. “Without telling me?”

  They were in the apartment above the apothecary shop in Manila. They had joined the floods of people leaving Vietnam, or trying to leave. In Hanoi, they had found a small steamer going to a Catholic mission in Manila and talked their way on board, assuring the priest in charge that they had medical skills to volunteer for the journey, and only needed the passage. They had sweetened the deal with a packet of an extremely effective new painkiller, and finally the priest had nodded them aboard.

  The Manila apothecary, Mr. Vinoray, had a shop on Calle Ilang-ilang, near the port. Vinoray knew about the work Benjamin’s father was doing, although his own interest was in the treatment of cancer. He was small and round-faced and bald, and moved silently around the shop and the apartment, where he lived alone. He had gone out, but was returning soon to take Benjamin’s father on a collecting expedition, to gather the local medicinal plants and to see a real ylang-ylang tree. A steel fan blew street smells in through the window. The smells of Manila were different from those in Vietnam, but the sweltering heat was the same.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” his father asked.

  “Because I knew you’d tell me not to do it.”

  “Yes, I would have!”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  His father sighed, and pressed his hand to his twitching left eye. “I see.”

  “You expect me to take over your work someday,” Benjamin said. “But how can I do that if I don’t try things? You made me read Geberus, who said that we have to experiment and perform practical work to attain mastery. So do you believe that or don’t you?”

  “I do,” his father said. “But I would rather supervise your experiments, for now. Please explain to me how it works.”

  “I based it on one of the clairvoyance powders in the Pharmacopoeia,” Benjamin began. “The ones you said affect the insula in the brain, and increase our awareness of other minds. I knew it would have to be taken in through the stomach. Empathy began as an awareness of other people’s digestion, so we would know how not to poison ourselves. Right?”

  “That’s the theory,” his father said, looking uneasy.

  “But I changed a few things.”

  “All right,” his father said.

  “I wanted to create a substance that would let you connect with another person, if you both took it, no matter how far apart you were. It lets you see as that other person, through their eyes.” It was the first time he had talked about the powder, and it felt exhilarating to explain it. “It only seems to work in one direction at a time, though. There are incredible possibilities, don’t you see?”

  “A spying powder,” his father said, his voice full of judgment.

  “No!” Benjamin said. “A mental connection powder! An approach to telepathy!”

  “You remind me of myself when I was young,” his father said. “When I was so terribly excited about the possibilities. But you have no idea how dangerous it is, this creation of yours. And you’ve brought Janie into it. She’s only a child.”

  “She’s sixteen,” Benjamin said stubbornly. The girl he’d seen in the bathroom mirror was no child. But his father was right that there were dangers. Seeing the boy kiss Janie had pierced Benjamin’s heart like a piece of shrapnel, and he hadn’t yet recovered.

  “You’re entering another person’s consciousness,” his father said. “This is not a simple thing to do, or without ramifications. It’s not a thing to do lightly.”

  “I don’t,” Benjamin said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Has Janie told anyone about it?”

  Benjamin hesitated. He didn’t want to tell his father this part. But he had to admit the truth. “I think she’s been using it to spy on someone else.”

  His father exhaled and grew very still. Other men might pound the table or stomp about the room, but his father was more frightening when he became utterly motionless. “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I made contact with her when she was doing it, so I saw through his eyes instead.”

  “Who is it she’s watching?”

  “I’m not sure. I think, from what she said, that his name is Magnusson.”

  “And why is she watching him?”

  “I don’t know!” Benjamin said. “I always said we should take her with us, and not expect her to go back to school like a normal girl. She’s not normal anymore.”

  “She had parents. She was fourteen.”

  “And she helped us in Nova Zembla!” Benjamin said. “That trip changed me, and it changed her, too.”

  “Well, she shouldn’t be striking out on her own.”

  “But she is. And it’s our fault.”

  “And who is this Magnusson?”

  “I’m not sure. He has a mine on an island. And he has a Malay keris—a small, delicate one, a knife for a woman. And I think he got Janie kicked out of school. But I lost contact before I learned anything useful.” Benjamin thought again of Janie and the boy in the dark auditorium. He felt his face grow hot, but his father didn’t seem to notice.

  “What are the side effects?” his father asked.

  “You feel pretty awful when it’s over,” Benjamin said. “Dizzy, and like you might throw up, if you’re the one doing the watching. But that doesn’t last long. And if you take it again too soon, it makes you really sick, and doesn’t work.”

  “Does Janie know where we are?”

  “She knew we were in Vietnam. But she doesn’t know we’re in Manila.”

  His father frowned. “How do you activate the connection?”

  “You think about the person. You both have to have taken the powder. Then you concentrate, and it just happens. It’s hard to describe. I guess if everyone was blind, and you tried to describe vision to them, it would sound crazy and made up. The idea that you know exactly what’s across the room without going over and touching it—it would seem like magic, for people who’d never done it before. This is just like seeing, only you can do it across oceans instead of across a room.” He could feel himself getting excited again.

  His father sighed. “You’ve surpassed me in inventiveness, in what you can do. But you don’t consider the consequences. How do you know that this Magnusson isn’t now watching us?”

  “He couldn’t,” Benjamin said, taken aback. “He doesn’t know how to do it.”

  “But people learn, as you have demonstrated. Would you know if he were seeing through you?”

  “Yes!” But honestly, Benjamin wasn’t sure. He probed in his mind for any sign of a big cigar-smoking man, but what would that feel like?

  “He could be watching Janie,” his father said. “For all you know.”

  “Why would he want to spy on a couple of kids?”

  His father’s voice rose, a thing that almost never happened. “Because you aren’t just a couple of kids, as you were reminding me just a moment ago!”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  “He might suspect.”

  “There’s no reason he would.”

  “I don’t want you to use it again.”

  “But I’m just learning how it works! And she might be in trouble!”

  “She’ll be in more trouble if she knows we’re in Manila. It’s much safer for her to know nothing. Do you understand me, Benjamin? I forbid you to use it again. For Janie’s sake.”

  Benjamin frowned. The thing that really worried him wasn’t the cigar smoker. It was the boy in the dark theater. Janie could be kissing him right now. He didn’t want to see that,
but he also couldn’t stand not knowing. His father was wise, and could advise him about so many things: dissolution, separation, calcination, the manipulation of matter, the closing of wounds. But he couldn’t advise him about this. If Benjamin tried to explain his stabbing jealousy, his father would look baffled and then stammer out something embarrassing about adolescence and hormones. A stray breeze came through the window, cooling the damp sweat on the back of Benjamin’s neck. A car horn blared in the heat outside the window, and men were shouting in Tagalog at someone who had stopped a cart in the middle of the street. Benjamin understood their curses and commands with no effort. That seemed unremarkable now.

  “There’s a boy,” he blurted. “With Janie. She’s staying with him. I saw him kiss her.”

  His father looked startled, and then his eyes grew serious. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must be painful.”

  “It’s awful!” Benjamin said, his eyes stinging.

  His father sighed. “You have to leave her alone, Benjamin. Let her live her life, and be safe, if you care for her. It’s the kindest thing you can do.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Kidnapped

  Janie packed up her few belongings while Raffaello was at rehearsal for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She said good-bye to Giovanna, who wasn’t too sad to see her go, although Janie thought she might feel a little wistful when it came time to close out the till. She threw her duffel bag over one shoulder and her knapsack over the other, and walked toward the bus station.

  She was thinking about how she had made the right decision, to go home to her parents, when a dark-windowed black limousine pulled up at the curb beside her on Kingsley Street. The back door opened, and strong hands grabbed her arms. Janie struggled, but she couldn’t get free. She saw the white-blond flash of Magnusson’s hair. She was yanked inside the car, and a bag went over her head. Everything was dark. She was pinned against the leather upholstery and she felt the car lurch away from the curb. Her heart raced with fear.

  No one except Giovanna and her parents knew she was going to the bus station, and they all thought she’d be on the bus until tomorrow. No one would notice she was gone. The car was speeding along. Janie reached blindly to find the door handle, thinking she would throw herself out into the street, but a hand came over her mouth, holding something soft. A handkerchief? She had just enough time to notice a strange smell before everything faded away.

  It seemed like a moment later when the blindfold came off, and she was in a different place. The room was bright with artificial light. As Janie’s eyes adjusted, she realized she was in the office where she had seen Mr. Magnusson talking to his secretary. There was the sleek, uncluttered desk she had seen through Mr. Magnusson’s eyes. Now she was in a chair near one of the plate glass windows and she was very groggy. The desk looked enormous from this new perspective. It dominated the room.

  She remembered that Magnusson’s office was in Boston, a two-hour drive from Grayson, but she didn’t know how much time had passed. It was still night outside the big windows. Was it the same night? On one wall of the office was a giant map of the Pacific. She thought of Mrs. McClellan’s roll-down maps in the history classroom.

  Mr. Magnusson sat down on the edge of his vast desk, his enormous hands gripping the desk’s edge. “Miss Scott,” he said.

  “Mr. Magnusson.” Her tongue felt thick and her throat dry.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t invite you here more politely. I didn’t think you would come.”

  “You’re breaking the law,” she croaked.

  “Yes, I am,” he said. “Sylvia?”

  The blond woman he had called “my love” brought a glass of water for Janie. The cool water was soothing, and Janie looked at the woman over the rim of the glass. Sylvia wore a white silk blouse and a string of pearls, and her hair was softly pinned up. The look on her face was conflicted, and Janie guessed that she hadn’t known that Magnusson’s plan involved kidnapping.

  “The thing is, Janie, I need your help,” Mr. Magnusson said.

  The water in Janie’s stomach made her feel queasy. “My help?”

  “I need you to set up a desalination plant for me. I’ve given your experiment to my engineers, but they don’t seem to have the requisite…flexibility of mind, let’s say. They don’t think it can be done.”

  “It can be done,” Janie insisted.

  “You see?” Mr. Magnusson said, smiling. “This is why I need you. You have that can-do spirit.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me?”

  “I didn’t think you were very fond of me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “That’s all right. I’m a man of business. I don’t need people to like me.”

  “You’re a criminal,” Janie said. “A kidnapper.”

  “Oh, I’ve done worse, in my time,” Mr. Magnusson said.

  Janie wondered if she could stand up, but her legs didn’t seem to want to obey her. Groggy, she was so groggy. There was a tingling feeling in her fingertips. Was Benjamin trying to control them? Was he here? Or was it just the effect of the chloroform?

  Magnusson turned to the big map and ran his finger across the blue ocean. “This is where we’re going,” he said. “I always think the island looks a bit like a seedpod, with its two rounded ends. It is in Malaya, in my wife’s homeland. It forms the uppermost point of a triangle between these two islands in the Celebes Sea, do you see?”

  “My parents will come looking for me,” Janie said.

  Mr. Magnusson smiled. “Do you know how many girls your age disappear every day? They run away, or they simply vanish…”

  “People look for those girls!” Janie said.

  “Of course they do,” Mr. Magnusson said. “But they don’t find them.”

  “Magnus,” Sylvia said.

  “How are you going to get me to that island?” Janie asked. “Someone is going to ask questions.”

  “I have long been a believer in business aircraft,” Mr. Magnusson said. “To get the important people in one’s company around.”

  “But it’s on the other side of the world.”

  “We take the great circle route,” Mr. Magnusson said, unconcerned. “We refuel along the way.”

  “Is Opal coming?”

  “Why would I bring Opal?” he asked. “Poor Opal. You should have seen her as a baby, the most beautiful child. Everyone adored her. But now she’s become so stupid and bad-tempered. And besides, she’s at your foolish dance, with a block of concrete masquerading as a teenage boy, drinking spiked punch from a plastic cup. We leave tonight. You will come quietly, I trust. I don’t have to put you back to sleep?”

  “No,” Janie said quickly. She didn’t have a plan, but she didn’t want the chloroform again, the sinking, the dry and aching throat. “I mean yes, I’ll go.”

  “Good,” Mr. Magnusson said. “Such a sensible girl. So different from Opal. You’re the daughter I should have had.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Transport

  When Benjamin lost sight of the office where Janie was being held, his mouth watered with nausea and he shivered in spite of the heat. He stumbled to Vinoray’s tiny bathroom, the vertigo compounded with horror. He splashed water on his face, trying to think straight. Janie had been kidnapped by Magnusson while Benjamin was worrying about some skinny Italian kid.

  He looked in the mirror, wet and disoriented. His father had told him not to use the powder anymore. But then Benjamin wouldn’t have known she’d been kidnapped.

  His father had gone collecting with Vinoray, and Benjamin had a few hours before they would return. He left the apartment in a panic, walked down to the port, and started hailing tied-up boats: steamers and cruisers and sampans and pleasure yachts. When the skippers would talk to him, he asked them to take him to an island in the Celebes Sea.

  Some of the skippers laughed, and some shook their heads. One old French captain said, “This is cyclone season. You don’t know where you’ll end up. Cannibals will cook you
in a pot and eat your brains.”

  “That’s not true,” Benjamin said.

  “Believe what you wish,” the man said. “I have seen this.”

  An American couple on a sleek wooden yacht called the Payday seemed ready to listen to Benjamin out of sheer boredom. The woman was blond and tan in a black dress, with a gold charm bracelet dangling from her wrist. The man wore a pressed linen shirt, and had silver in his brushed-back hair. He poured Benjamin a ginger ale with ice.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen,” Benjamin lied.

  “Eighteen!” the woman said. “Oh, to be eighteen again, with the world before you, where to choose.”

  “Here we go again,” her husband said, squeezing a lime into Benjamin’s glass. “Charlotte’s in mourning for her lost youth.”

  He handed Benjamin the sweating glass of ice-cold ginger ale, and it tasted like ambrosia. Benjamin wasn’t sure he’d ever had anything better. He held the cold glass against his neck. The man smoothed out a chart on the table, and Benjamin showed him where he wanted to go.

  “You know cyclone season is starting,” the skipper said. “Bad time to set out.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Benjamin said.

  “And why’s that?”

  “My friend is there.”

  “You paying for the charter?”

  Benjamin hesitated. “How much would it cost?”

  “Oh don’t be petty, Harry,” Charlotte said. “He’s just a kid. It would be fun!”

  “What’s your friend doing in Malaya?” the skipper asked.

  “She didn’t tell me,” Benjamin said, which was true. He didn’t think it was a good idea to say that she’d been kidnapped.

  Harry’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, it’s a girlfriend.”

  “Well,” Benjamin said.

  “Listen, kid,” Harry said. “If a girl doesn’t tell you why she’s going someplace, maybe she doesn’t want you to follow.”

  “She might be a woman of mystery,” Charlotte said.

  “I’ve learned to avoid those,” Harry said, giving his wife a wry look.