Duplex

by Orson Scott Card

  “Dianne’s in school, and Mom’s . . . at work.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Dad. “Work.”

  “My mom will be there,” said Bizzy.

  “I imagine so,” said Dad. “Isn’t she the actual target?”

  “She thinks so,” said Bizzy.

  “Any reason to think she’s wrong?” asked Dad.

  “None,” said Ryan.

  “Apart from the fact that she’s a lunatic witch, no,” said Bizzy.

  “Lots of that going around,” said Dad.

  Which was as close as Ryan had come to hearing Dad say anything disrespectful about Mom.

  21

  Once Ryan had Dr. Withunga on Dad’s phone, Dad reached for it and Ryan handed it over. He had serious misgivings about Dad and Dr. Withunga talking together, though he wasn’t sure which he was afraid of—that Dad wouldn’t get what Dr. Withunga was trying to do with micropotents, or that Dr. Withunga would look down on Dad as a nonuniversity guy who built things with his hands.

  But apparently they got along perfectly, or at least understood that this was a serious problem they were working on together. “I don’t think you want to bring your people through the front door,” Dad said, right at the start.

  “All I know is the front door,” said Dr. Withunga.

  Dad told her the streets that would get her and her crew parked on the street behind. Fortunately, Dad and the back-door neighbor got along well enough that there was an unlocked gate in the fence, and Dad said he’d call the guy and tell him that a bunch of people were coming through and please don’t call the cops on them.

  Then they talked about what they’d do inside the house. “Here’s what I think,” said Dad. “I know that house. I know every route from one place to another inside it. If all you really need right now is proximity, so their superpowers—no, right, micropowers—so they’re augmenting each other, right?”

  Apparently Dr. Withunga said yes.

  “Then I think we should try to bring you all in more or less secretly, depending on how close a watch they’re keeping on the house. And inside the house, I want everybody to stay with me.”

  Ryan was surprised that Dad thought he was part of this.

  Bizzy apparently felt the same, because she raised her eyebrows at Ryan.

  “Um, Dad,” said Ryan.

  “I’m on the phone here, Ryan,” said Dad, in a voice Ryan hadn’t heard since he was five.

  “But I didn’t want you to—”

  Dad put the phone on speaker. “Hush up, please, Ryan,” said Dr. Withunga. “Of course your father will be with the rest of us. You have to stay with Bizzy and her mother. So you can’t be with the rest of us.”

  Ryan hadn’t really thought it through. He thought he would be in charge of getting everybody set up, but no, he would be in the Horvats’ living room and there he would stay, because if anything could activate his micropower, it would be any kind of threat against Bizzy and her mom.

  Bizzy reached out her hand and placed it over Ryan’s. It had a cooling, calming effect. She thinks it’s okay this way, so that’s enough, thought Ryan. Enough for me.

  Dad had the phone off speaker mode now, and he was describing where he would put the GRUT volunteers. And Dr. Withunga told him which powers she had invited. “Once you’ve got the first group into the house from the back,” said Dad, “then you go out to the street behind and wait for the others, lead them to the gate in the fence. When you’ve got them all through, come on in yourself. I don’t think they’ll make their move till dusk. At least that’s when I’d make my move, if I were trying to get into the house.”

  When Dad disconnected the call to Dr. Withunga, he said, “Okay, you heard that?”

  “Your side of it,” said Ryan. “Till you went on speaker.”

  “You’ve got enough to worry about,” said Dad. “Dr. Withunga and I will do crowd control. The crowd being your fellow micropotents.”

  “Makes sense,” said Ryan, though he still felt a little embarrassed that Dad thought he could just take over something he hadn’t even been a part of. It was my show, Ryan heard himself thinking, like a petulant child.

  Well, I am a child. But Dad’s a lot more experienced than me in pretty much everything. He’s led bunches of people before, and I couldn’t even lead Defense. If I can handle myself, then it’s a good thing I won’t be distracted by having to worry about where other people will be.

  “One thing to keep in mind,” Bizzy said. “Once my mother has any of the loveks within earshot, she can curse them and mess them up. So they’ll be trying to be as stealthy as possible in their approach.”

  “Or sly,” said Ryan. “Remember the driver of that car? How he said he was from a faction that didn’t want your mother killed? Maybe he was telling the truth, or maybe it was a con to try to get into the house without a curse. Ditto with the guy who broke his fist on the door.”

  “What’s been going on around here?” Dad muttered.

  “It’s all hell, Dad,” said Ryan, “and I think it’s going to break loose tonight.”

  “Do you think they’ll try another trick to try to get in?” asked Bizzy.

  “If I were them,” said Ryan, “I would take three failures as a sign. Car guy, door guy, the fake FBI guy at school—I think they’ve shot their wad on subterfuge.”

  Bizzy shrugged. “I didn’t even believe they were real till we started seeing people showing up more than once, stalking us.”

  “Funny thing is that the first stalker I spotted was Aaron Withunga, so, not a bad guy at all.”

  “But it made me start to take Mom’s paranoia seriously,” said Bizzy.

  “Strange how parents aren’t always wrong,” said Dad.

  “Yeah, yeah, the generations don’t understand each other,” said Ryan.

  “No,” said Dad. “Your generation doesn’t understand mine, because you haven’t lived long enough yet. But I was your age. And I remember.”

  Ryan wanted to give a snotty answer about how being older didn’t mean he understood anything, it just meant that he thought he did.

  Then Ryan thought about taking out the garbage and putting away dishes and getting along with Dianne, and how much more peaceful the house was, and how Mom didn’t always look so tired and frazzled. And he also thought about how doing all those things made Ryan feel a stronger sense of responsibility for his family. He no longer did those chores and showed patience with Dianne because Dad asked him to, or because he wanted to prove to Dad that he was ready to work for him. He did those things because they were the right things to do for the family.

  So yeah, Dad did in fact understand some things about life that Ryan didn’t know yet, and when Ryan listened, even for selfish reasons, life got better for everybody.

  I need Dad back in my life. Back in the house. Mom needs him too, and Dianne. We need to get Humpty-Dumpty back into his shell. And I have no idea how to do it. Somebody has to swallow their anger and pride and just accept that some bad crap happened and people were hurt but not so much as to make it worthwhile to break the family apart.

  And again Bizzy took Ryan’s hand, as if she knew the anxiety churning inside him and understood.

  I should be thinking about Bizzy and Mrs. Horvat and how I’m going to protect them. But by now I know that I’m not capable of making any kind of rational plan, because it always just comes to me in a rush, faster than I can hear myself think it. And it’ll be something I would never have thought of, never would have believed I could do. Like pushing Lieutenant Alford’s skull into the doorjamb and making a nice slot for the jamb to hold the man’s head in place.

  I killed a man today, thought Ryan. He began to tremble.

  “You’ll be okay,” whispered Bizzy.

  Ryan realized that she had felt his trembling and thought he was afraid. “I’m not worried,” said
Ryan. “I’ll do whatever needs doing.”

  She held his hand more lightly, so that it trembled in hers.

  “I killed a guy, Bizzy,” Ryan whispered.

  She nodded and gave an oh-that’s-it face.

  From the driver’s seat, Dad—who apparently could hear all whispers—said, “Did the guy need killing, Ryan?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ryan. “I didn’t plan to kill him. I just had to stop him, and I couldn’t wait until he started using combat moves on me. He had me by six inches of reach and probably fifty pounds of muscle. Or more. I don’t have a lot of muscle.”

  “You had enough,” said Bizzy.

  “Hey, Bizzy, was it bloody and disgusting?” asked Dad.

  “Yes, sir,” said Bizzy. “And Ryan was bloody wonderful.”

  “Just remember, Ryan,” said Dad. “The police have a lot of forensic ability these days. Not as much as on TV shows, but enough that when this is over and they interrogate you, the only thing that will help you is the truth. Because if you try to lie or hide anything, they’ll see a pattern of deception, and they’ll start to zero in on you as a bad guy.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “If you’re nodding,” said Dad, “I can’t hear the rocks rolling around inside your skull, so use your words, please.”

  “Tell the truth, conceal nothing,” said Ryan.

  “You’re still a minor,” said Dad, “and you were protecting yourself and your girlfriend from a kidnapping attempt back at the school.”

  “And what am I doing tonight?” asked Ryan.

  “Defending your home and theirs from a criminal invasion. Between Mrs. Horvat’s curses and your rapid forward defense moves, I think you might not even need the other micropots tonight.”

  “We need them,” said Bizzy, “because they make our micropowers a little less micro.”

  “Yeah, that,” said Dad. “I wonder if I’ve got a micropower.”

  “Yours is obvious,” said Ryan.

  “Oh really?” asked Dad, sounding amused. But Ryan knew he was actually taking this seriously.

  “It’s knowing the right thing to do.”

  Dad thought about that a while. Then he said, “Man, I wish that was true. Wish I always knew.”

  “Close enough,” said Ryan. “Even if you haven’t done it yet, you know what it is.”

  Dad thought a little more. “Not talking about the invasion of the loveks now, are we.”

  “Not entirely, anyway,” said Ryan. “But no pressure. Now that Mom finally told Dianne and me the truth, we get it. The whole thing is above our pay grade.”

  “Above mine, too,” said Dad. “Bizzy, you in on this?”

  “I overheard the whole conversation,” she said.

  “I didn’t make the walls that thin,” said Dad.

  “Open doors make the walls kind of irrelevant,” said Bizzy.

  “And I told her everything she didn’t hear,” said Ryan.

  “Sir,” said Bizzy, “I thought we were going in from the back of the house.”

  “That’s for the micropots and Dr. Withunga,” said Dad. “We’re coming through the front. Because we want them to know that we’re there, and to have an idea of our numbers.”

  “What are they going to think about you?” asked Ryan.

  “That because I’m a blue-collar guy, I probably belong to the NRA and they’re going to have to shoot me pretty quick.”

  “Do you even have a gun?” asked Ryan.

  “Not in the house,” said Dad. “And they’ll never see me, so there’ll be nothing for them to shoot at.”

  “Except Mother and me,” said Bizzy.

  “Depending on if they’re in shooting mode or kidnapping mode.”

  “I think that if they get close to Mom without being cursed, they’ll kill her as fast as they can, before she can get a curse out of her mouth.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” said Dad, “if your mother could curse them in her mind, without actually talking.”

  “Who knows?” said Bizzy. “With a bunch of micropots in the house tonight, maybe she can.”

  Dad parked in front of the house. “Remember, we’re not hurrying,” said Dad. “Don’t look furtive. Don’t do anything different from what you usually do.”

  “Except that we’re all going into the Horvat side of the house,” said Ryan.

  “I’m not,” said Dad. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d stay with me on the Burke side for just a couple of minutes. I want to show you what I’ll be working with when the others get here.”

  “I don’t like being away from—”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Bizzy. “Mom isn’t home yet, her car’s not here.”

  “Good idea,” said Dad. “Besides, we don’t know but what some lovek is already hiding inside their house.”

  So the three of them went into the Burke side of the house. Dad was as good as his word. He took the stairs two at a time and then pulled down the attic access stairs. He led them up the ladderway into the attic and then showed them how to walk on the ceiling joists while balancing themselves with their hands on the jack rafters overhead.

  The only light they had was from the window in the gable end on the Burke side of the house. The attic roof on the Horvat side ended in a hip roof, so there was no window. It was too dark to see much of anything, but then Dad took out one of his tiny LED flashlights and shone it down at a place where a bit of plywood had been laid out like a floor, with an opening in the middle.

  “This is my secret passage,” said Dad.

  “You’re kidding,” said Ryan.

  “It leads from here all the way down to the crawl space.”

  “There’s no room for that.”

  “In my office, where the built-in shelves weren’t so deep. Now the microwave is mounted on the wall in front of the passage. It’s just a ladder, nothing fancy.”

  “So if you need to get out,” said Ryan, “you can lead them all down to the crawl space.”

  “If they start to set the house on fire,” said Dad, “I don’t want us all trapped in the attic.”

  “Why would you build this?”

  “I read Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase when I was about six or so,” said Dad. “Always wanted a secret passage. So when I was remodeling to build my office, I put one in.”

  “You think you know your parents . . .”

  “Cool,” said Bizzy.

  “I told you,” said Ryan.

  “He told you that I was cool?” asked Dad, chuckling.

  “He told me you were crazy,” said Bizzy, “but he was obviously proud of you for that, so I took it the right way.”

  Now Dad laughed out loud. “I’m not going to take you down the secret way, I just wanted you to know that we’ll have a way out. Up to the attic, over to this end, down the ladder, and out through the crawl space. So you won’t be distracted by worrying about me and the others.”

  “Very thoughtful of you, Mr. Burke,” said Bizzy.

  “I don’t want anything to interfere with Ryan’s ability to protect you and your mom.”

  “And we’re pretending,” said Bizzy, “that protecting both of us is going to be possible. Because I love my lunatic witch of a mother, and I know that if Ryan has to choose which of us to save, he’ll pick me, and if my mother dies, it’ll break my heart.”

  Emotion was seeping into her voice, and Ryan put his hand on hers now. “I’ll take care of both of you,” he said.

  “You can’t promise that,” said Bizzy. “You don’t know what the threat will be, or what it will even be possible to do.”

  “I know,” said Ryan. “But I do get some discretion. I don’t turn into a robot.”

  “I’m just afraid that by trying to protect us both, you’ll fail at protecting yourself and us, so we’l
l all croak.”

  “Croak?” said Dad. “Really?”

  “Mother’s favorite word for dying,” said Bizzy.

  “Weird what people pick up, learning English as a second language.”

  “Sixth language,” said Bizzy. “But everybody in Slovenia is multilingual.”

  “Now we learn the other secret passage,” said Dad.

  “Come on,” said Ryan. “Really?”

  “This one you know about because you saw me building the wall between the two halves of the duplex.”

  “Oh, you mean the passage under the stairs,” said Ryan.

  Dad led them back down out of the attic. He left the attic stairs in place instead of raising them back up into the ceiling. That way if they needed to go that route, pulling down the stairs wouldn’t make a lot of noise. Dad was thinking of everything.

  Dad opened the well-oiled door leading into the closet under the stairs on the Burke side. Then they wound their way among the two-by-fours until they were at the panel under the Horvats’ stairs, leading into their living room.

  “I didn’t know this was even here,” said Bizzy.

  Dad reached to each corner and turned a flange so that there was nothing locking the panel in place. “It’s a snug fit, so it won’t just fall out into the room. But if you have to get out from the main floor, it’ll be easy to lift this out pretty quietly. Then lean it against the wall and get through to the Burke side and then get up to the attic and down into the crawl space.”

  “They’ll just follow us,” said Bizzy.

  “I suggest you move quickly if you ever need to do this,” said Dad. “Just stay ahead of them. In the attic, do you think you can find that secret ladder in the dark?”

  “Yes,” said Ryan. “Piece of cake.”

  “Just don’t put your foot through the ceiling. Make sure you walk on the joists.”

  “Tricky, but yeah,” said Ryan, “we’ll be mountain goats.”

  “And the other guys won’t,” said Bizzy, “because by then my mom will have clumsied them out the wazoo.”

  “We hope,” said Dad. He led them back out into the Burke living room. To Ryan’s surprise, the next thing Dad did was to hug him. Long and tight. “I love you, son,” he said. “I’m proud of you. Proud of what you’ve already done, proud of what you’re going to do.”