by Ned Rust
CHAPTER 58
Remote Control
Basking in the neatly produced strains of Creed once again, Rex sipped at his kale smoothie and sat back as he continued to examine the maps displaying inside his head. One was of a small commune in the Aquitaine region of France, the other of the densely built suburbs just north of New York City.
Each map was marked with a single orange dot, stationary on the former, moving slowly east on the latter. On the New York map, three blue dots were converging. On the French map, a single purple dot was racing toward the orange.
It might have seemed out of balance to bring three agents on the one and just the one on the other, but the solo agent—Victor Pierre, the highest-scoring novitiate he’d ever recruited—was probably going to execute (Rex smiled at the double meaning) his mission faster and more efficiently than the other three would.
In fact, the New York scenario made him a tiny bit nervous. The enemy combatant had already gotten the better of one field agent, and now it had fled into such a very crowded area. The chances of them taking out their target with complete or even partial silence were now slim to none. Not that there weren’t media inoculations, counter-stories, and corporate levers that would enable the situation to be controlled, even made advantageous. But, still, it would cause some mess. And mess would need to be cleaned up. And, rather than worrying about cleaning up little spots like this, really he wanted to get on with cleansing the entire world.
CHAPTER 59
Momma Don’t Play No Games
When the call came, Mary Meyer Griffin, Patrick’s mother, was already steeled for action.
Her Patrick was still missing. And, as she had just expressed to her husband—after being wakened by a dream of her missing son, in which he was playing a trumpet atop a huge pyramid—she was done being paralyzed by the situation. She was going to do something (anything, everything she could) about it.
She had managed to not let Lucie’s teachers label her an artist so they could rationalize her slipping math grades.
She had not allowed Neil to be labeled as a jock, a boy who was meant for success on playing fields, and none on standardized tests.
She’d not let the mothers in the neighborhood stigmatize Eva as a mean girl.
She had not allowed Carly to be branded a spoiled brat by her friends.
She had not allowed the Twins to be called “special,” at least in that condescending sense in which it was said by certain parents in their day care.
And she was not about to allow her least troublesome, most considerate, sweetest-tempered son, Patrick, to entirely disappear from the face of the Earth.
“I’m simply not going to let him remain lost,” she said to Rick.
“No, of course not,” her husband groggily replied.
They had barely slept the past two nights, talking to the police, talking to relatives, talking to colleagues (their son officially having been gone more than twenty-four hours, neither was going to the office today), talking to friends, and researching missing child cases on the Internet. So it was understandable that they were just waking up like this. It was nearly nine a.m.
Mary put on her slippers and pulled back her hair with a speed that bordered on frenzy. The day was not getting any younger and there was a child to be found.
“Come on, Rick,” she said to her husband, still sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to blink the fog of strange dreams from his own mind.
There was a buzzing noise, and another.
“My phone!” she said.
Rick sat up and watched as she picked it up from its charging dock on the bedside table.
“E-Y-E-T-H it says. Is that somebody we know?”
“Or maybe it’s a company,” replied Rick, entirely awake now. If a telemarketer had had the poor judgment to call his wife at a time like this—
“Here, let me answer it!” he said.
Mary passed him the device.
He pressed the green Answer icon. “Hello!?” he said distrustfully, prepared to let the person on the other end of the line really have it. “Who is this!?”
CHAPTER 60
Long-Distance Communications
“It’s me, Dad,” said Patrick.
Enough silence followed that he looked at the screen to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected.
“Patrick!?”
“Hey,” said Patrick. “I’m okay, Dad. Look, I don’t have much time—I gotta get moving—”
“Patrick, it’s you! Buddy! What a scare you’ve given us—are you really okay—where are you, what’s going on, where did—”
“Dad,” said Patrick, interrupting his father’s emotion-strained voice as he tried to fight back tears himself. There was too little time and already the portable censer was frothing on the van’s front seat, tendrils of gray-green transcense emerging from its slotted sides and coming up over the console.
“It’s too weird to explain but, really, it’s nothing bad. I’m safe. Look, just keep an eye on the news for anything really, umm, abnormal, okay? And get gas masks—really good ones with extra filters—for the family, will you? Probably you won’t need them anytime too soon, but—”
“Patrick?” said his dad, the timbre of his voice changing suddenly. “Buddy?! What are you talking about? Are you doing drugs?”
“What?! No. Seriously, Dad, I just kind of got into something, not drugs—I know it sounds insane, but there’s some bad stuff going on—it’s really for the best that I not come home right now.”
“Patrick, you’re a twelve-year-old boy, what are you talking about!? Where are you!?”
“I think I’m in France, but that doesn’t matter right now.”
“France? Patrick, look, if you drank some beer, or smoked some pot, it’s totally not a big deal. How old are you now? Twelve? Listen, I never told you, but I was only a year older than you when—”
“Seriously, Dad, do me a favor and ask the Twins if they saw a big talking rabbit the other day. Just do that, okay? And if they say yes, then please know I’m not drinking or doing drugs. And that you’ve got to watch the news, okay? There’s a good chance that a very bad terrorist kinda thing is coming; you’ve got to protect the family, okay? And don’t say you heard from me, all right? You’d be in danger if you did. There’s this guy named Rex Abraham—though he may be going by another name—”
There was a shuffling sound, and then his mom’s strained, breathless voice was in his ears.
“Patrick, my baby,” came his mother’s sob-racked voice, “are you okay!?”
Patrick felt the tears forming in his eyes but he didn’t have a chance to shed any—something very bad was happening outside.
CHAPTER 61
A Flock of Griffins
“That’s just plain freaky,” said Neil. He was talking about the transplanted crucifix.
“There’s a squirrel under here?” asked Lucie, nudging the loose earth with the toe of her Doc Martens.
“Deer Rabbit put it there.”
“A cat killed it,” said Cassie.
“It was gray,” said Paul.
“The squirrel was gray, or the cat was gray?” asked Neil.
“The squirrel!” laughed Cassie.
Lucie had accepted something very strange was going on but she was still looking for some evidence, some proof, of whatever it was. And, while there was no doubt in her mind that this apparent grave on a golf course island, a quarter mile from their house, was part of it, it hardly put the matter to rest.
For one thing, she certainly wasn’t ready to accept that a giant jackalope was running around Hedgerow Heights. It had to have been a man in a jackalope costume. Her brother had been in a car accident, so he probably hadn’t had that good a look. And the Twins … the Twins were four years old.
“What are you guys doing!?” came a shrill voice behind them.
The four Griffin kids spun around to see two other Griffin kids, Eva and Carly—having tailed them from the house—emerge fro
m their hiding place in the woods.
Eva was looking disgustedly at her little sister. She’d firmly instructed her to stay quiet.
“Well,” said Neil as the two girls came down the hill toward the bridge, “we’ve got a little situation going on. A very weird little situation.”
“Does it have to do with Patrick?” asked Eva as she got close.
“We don’t know,” said Lucie. “But it’s definitely weird. Like, can’t-talk-to-adults-about-it weird.”
“Like what?” asked Carly.
But nobody had to explain anything to Carly because Mr. BunBun broke cover then, too, hopping out of the woods from the direction of the Tondorf-Schnittman residence.
“Oh, hello, young people! Would you possibly all be Griffin children?”
CHAPTER 62
Short-Distance Communications
A loudspeaker squawked. Patrick turned to look out the van’s dingy rear windows.
His mother’s pleading voice was coming through the phone but—though he very much wanted to reassure her—it was clearly not a good time to talk. He muffled the binky against his belly as he took in the sight at the end of the driveway.
A tall man was standing there, looking down at—Patrick’s stomach dropped as he recognized the object—a binky. Eyes still on the screen, the man slowly turned toward him, but fortunately, before he could look up and see Patrick’s face in the van’s window, a little French police car came into view behind the man. Its loudspeaker squawked again: “Arrêtez! Les mains en l’air!”
The man regarded the police car and scowled, then took off running in the opposite direction, hopping a wall and crossing the field faster than … it was just plain freaky how quickly he ran. He moved like something out of a superhero—or, perhaps, a horror—movie.
Well, at least there was seriously no question what Patrick had to do now.
He lifted the phone and heard his mom sobbing. “Mom!”
“Patrick!??”
“Mom, it’s okay, but I gotta go. Don’t worry, okay?”
“Patrick—what’s happening?!!”
“Mom, shh, I love you.” And then, because it seemed like the kindest thing he could say—both for her and for him—he said, “See you soon.”
He closed out the phone application, quietly got down on the van’s floor, rolled onto his back, and, shoving his binky in his ninja suit’s leg pocket, tried not to freak out so badly that he’d screw up the transubstantiation.
He couldn’t get past his mind’s image of that man running. This was so bad. It had to be one of Rex’s killers, one of the ones My-Chale had told him might be here. Who else would have a binky? And who else would be able to move that fast? And if he was this close already—
“Please hurry please hurry please hurry,” he mouthed to himself as he forced himself to concentrate on the first of the preparations. But telling yourself to relax was one thing, actually doing it was obviously quite another, especially when you were lying on lumber scraps in the back of a van in a foreign country with a superhuman assassin trying to track you down and kill you.
The van shook. Somebody was trying the driver’s-side handle. There was yelling outside. The words were French but not ones Patrick had been taught in school. Angry words. Then there was a very loud noise, brief as a drum-strike—or a gunshot—and then there was screaming, a woman screaming.
Now the van really began to shake, rocking back and forth like it might tip over. And then there was another bang and a ripping noise and Patrick looked up to see an inch-round of daylight had been punched through the door at the back of the van, right near the handle. There was a new smell in the air now, a smell like electricity and smoke.
The preparations, the preparations! he berated himself. He willed his toes to relax—
And then another bang-rip, and a new spear of daylight pierced the van’s interior. Terrified, he said the words aloud,
“Four: Do not struggle—let your impulses run free.”
But, he wondered, what if his impulse was to get up and clamber out the front door of the van and try to run away? Or to scream his head off in fear? Oh-God-oh-God-please-hurry-please-hurry!
“Hold fast to your mantra.”
And hold fast he did, figuring to himself that if “Song of the Stuntman” had worked the last time—
All right
All set
All fright
No net
He heard another hole get punched through the van. And then a sharp, keening noise, as if a sleigh bell’s ring had been caught midpeal and stretched out forever.
And then everything went green.
CHAPTER 63
Fool Me Once
The orange dot disappeared from the map, but not in a good way. The three agents had failed to locate the rabbit. The enemy combatant had taken advantage of a loophole in the lamentably imprecise local data infrastructure and tricked the agents into looking in altogether the wrong place—there had been nothing inside the Danbury Public Library but useless books and clueless civilians.
It was fine. The clever beast could have another fruitless, meaningless day on the planet. It was nearly time to thin the novitiates’ ranks again anyhow, and there would be no significant staffing deficits to bridge, even after culling three more.
Was it inconvenient and annoying? Yes, definitely. But, was it worrying? Not at all.
The entire situation was so clearly a desperate Hail Mary by his enemies. And, again, so very many precautions, plans, and redundant systems had been put in place. He’d anticipated setbacks far, far larger than this.
He was not going to waste another moment thinking about it. A squad of five agents would go out tomorrow, and seven the day after that, and, if necessary …
It would all be resolved, and soon.
But, the situation in France? Now that was a surprise.
The Griffin boy—the one who had been randomly transubbed by the arriving Anarchist, the rabbit, in the first place—had come back to Earth?
And then he had intentionally transubbed back to Ith?
It seemed inconceivable, but Victor Pierre had gotten positive visual ID and the database had confirmed his vocal identity on the intercepted calls.
But why? Why would random, unintentional boy X from Earth, inadvertently sent to Ith in the first place, have come back to his home world and then—after less than a single dunt—transubstantiated right back?
Two things were clear. First, the boy was receiving help from those idiotic Commonplacers. There was no way he’d figured out how to get back by himself, and certainly Rex’s own people hadn’t been behind it.
Second, it was clear that his enemies were investing heavily in this Griffin boy. Transcense was one of the hardest-to-come-by substances in the whole universe and he knew it wasn’t any easier for them to acquire than it was for him. The fact that they had chosen to blow not one but two entire quantities on the child was, to say the least, unprecedented.
He reviewed Patrick Griffin’s records again. It was very, very strange. There was absolutely nothing to suggest he was special in any way. Not off-the-charts on his tests, no signs of leadership, no unusual skills … and yet here this had happened?
Well, maybe one other thing was clear: the Commonplacers had served their purpose on Ith. They’d been a good foil, a valuable common enemy to keep the populace in line. But now they were starting to do things as unexpected as this, their time had come to an end. It was time to remove them—and this Griffin boy they’d adopted—from the equation.
He’d attend to it himself. It would be nice to be back on Ith for a while—to see firsthand how his vision was progressing.
And his presence here wasn’t necessary. The plans were set, the processes in motion. Earth’s purge would soon be initiated, and the boring, painstaking cleanup under way. He’d simply rewrite himself into the history afterward, just as he’d done before on Ith.
“Prepare the transubstantiation chamber,” he said to the
air and then, with something of a smile, “and hold my messages.”
CHAPTER 64
Wakey Wakey
This time it was the force of the sun on his face that woke Patrick. They were clenched shut, but still its brightness seared his eyes. He put his hand to his brow like a visor as he picked up his head and tentatively cracked his eyes open.
He was in a meadow, or a stretch of prairie. What looked like a derelict gas station was maybe a hundred yards distant. The slanted stumps of telephone poles indicated where a road once had been.
He guessed the transubstantiation had worked. He guessed he was safe. He guessed he was back on Ith.
A bird—a robin—landed near his feet. Its eyes were huge.
“Yep,” he said to himself. “Ith.”
It felt good, being here. And, yes, it did feel real. But, even if he was wrong—even if his overactive brain was momentarily fooling him into believing all this—he had at least, at last, figured out something more important.
What mattered was caring. If you cared, then when a decision had to be made, you made it—you made sure to do something. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t. It was that simple. If you don’t care about something, you might as well be dreaming it. It might as well not exist.
Like, deciding not to stay on Earth just now—what had made up his mind had been his caring about his family. Even the chance that staying there would have caused them harm had made the decision clear. There had simply been no choice but to come back to Ith. What would have been the alternative? Getting killed in the back of a van in order (hopefully) to wake up and prove to himself it was just a dream?
It was like what My-Chale had said. This was the way it worked: you gave a crap, and you were awake to the situation around you. Or you didn’t give a crap, and you slept—or at least sleep-walked—through it.
