by Henry Clark
It took all three of us heaving our weight against the release bar of the metal door at the top of the stairwell, but it finally opened and we found ourselves outside. The building’s flat black roof was dotted here and there with sooty puddles.
I didn’t know what I’d hoped to see. A helicopter full of Marines would have been nice. At least the rain had stopped.
“So how do we get down?” asked Freak.
“The only way is to your left,” replied the domino.
We raced to the roof’s edge, expecting to find something like a fire escape. Instead, we saw only a thick metal cable stretching from the roof to an adjacent chemical storage tank, an enormous gray sphere twice the height of the building. The tank was circled by a catwalk around its middle. If we could get to the catwalk, a series of metal ladders connected the catwalk to the ground, four stories below.
The cable was only about thirty feet long, but it looked like a mile.
“You gotta be kidding,” said Freak.
Fiona looked timidly over the edge of the building and started shaking.
“No,” she said, sitting down abruptly. “I can’t do this.”
I wasn’t sure I could, either. It was a long drop.
“The only way we can escape is by going hand-over-hand across that cable?” asked Freak.
“Yes,” confirmed Double Six. “And the longer you delay, the greater your danger becomes.”
“I can’t do it,” wailed Fiona, hanging her head so that her hair hid her tears.
“It’s okay,” said Freak, sitting down next to her and nudging her with his shoulder. “I’ll carry you.”
She stopped crying, looked at him, and started crying even louder.
I thought about his offer. He almost had it right. I realized I had been able to lift Fiona’s weight back in Hellsboro. My legs weren’t all that great, but here was a situation where I didn’t need them.
“I have to be the one to carry her,” I said, sitting down on her opposite side. “You run better than I do, but I can hit a baseball farther. I’ve got better upper-body strength.”
Freak looked at me dubiously.
“And,” I added dramatically, “I have the oven mitts!” I pulled them out and slipped them on.
“I’m not hot!” Fiona said indignantly.
“You can say that again,” said Freak as she wiped the tears from her face and collected herself. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the cable, her empty backpack still dangling from her back. Freak pulled the pack off and started lengthening the straps, turning it into a harness.
“I’ll need the mitts to hold on to the cable,” I explained.
“I’ll be right next to the two of you,” said Freak. “I’ll provide extra support.”
“No,” said Double Six. “All three of you cannot cross at the same time. I sense the cable’s moorings are not all they should be. The combined weight of the three of you could snap the line. The combined weight of River and Fiona is eleven pounds less than that of Fiona and Freak. Freak should cross first, by himself. Then River and Fiona should attempt it together. The eleven pounds could make a difference.”
“Right!” growled Fiona. “If we’re going to do this, then LET’S DO IT!” She helped Freak cinch the backpack to my back.
“You get behind him and twist the straps around your arms like this,” Freak explained. “And clasp your hands across his chest, like you’re the second rider on a motorcycle. And whatever you do, don’t look down.”
“I’m not even going to breathe.”
“I would recommend,” said Double Six, “that Freak put all of his spare change in his T-shirt pocket.”
“Why would he need coins?” Fiona asked in alarm. “Is there going to be a toll?”
“I sincerely hope not,” said Double Six. “It’s all about weight distribution. Hurry!”
Freak pulled loose change from his pants and dumped it in his T-shirt pocket, then he grabbed the cable with both hands and swung himself off the roof. He hung from the cable at arm’s length for a moment, then slid one hand forward about a foot and slid the other hand over to meet it. He moved in one-foot increments this way across the cable until he had reached the far end. It took him a little over a minute to make the crossing.
Freak hauled himself up on the gas tank’s catwalk. He was safe.
“Should I put my money in my T-shirt?” I asked anxiously.
“No,” said Double Six. “Put me there. It will be easier for us to talk.”
I tucked the domino in my shirt. Pausing only to adjust my oven mitts, I leaned over with Fiona clinging to me and grabbed the cable as tightly as I could.
“Ready?” I said.
I took her total lack of response as a “yes.”
I pulled us off the roof and we dangled four stories above the ground. My arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets. I adjusted my grip. Without the oven mitts, the cable would have cut through my fingers.
I moved us forward a couple of inches and stopped. I immediately realized we couldn’t cross the cable as quickly as Freak had, because I’d need to slide my hands forward in much smaller increments.
Fiona buried her face in my back and gripped me so tightly I had trouble breathing. Then she started thrashing her legs, and we started bouncing on the cable. I knew if she didn’t stop, we would both hit the concrete.
“Fiona,” said a new voice from the domino. It was not Guernica’s. It was more feminine and spoke more quickly. “This may not be the time nor place, but I just want to say what a pleasure it’s been, watching you work. The way you solved the keypad code back at the front door was pure genius. Your foresight in bringing a jump rope to a coal-seam fire was brilliant. And your decision to send the elevator to the lobby bought you and your friends precious time. If I were still in command of an army, I’d give you a field promotion in an instant.”
Fiona’s legs stopped thrashing. I thought, maybe, we might not fall.
“My name is Miranda,” continued the domino’s new voice. “I’m the daughter of the man you met who kept turning into a wolf. That’s Edward Disin. He conquered the entire world of Indorsia despite my best efforts to stop him. Now he’s here. And his plans for Earth are even worse.”
CHAPTER
17
High-Wire Act
may I tell you a story, Fiona?” asked Miranda. Fiona wiggled. It might have been an attempt at nodding her head. “The story of what my father did to Indorsia and what he plans to do to Earth, and why you have to be brave so you can escape and help us stop him?”
“Yr trtin oo dstck m,” said Fiona, her face pressed so tightly into my back I was sure there was a bump protruding from my chest where her nose was.
“Excuse me, Fiona. I didn’t catch that,” cooed Miranda.
Fiona loosened her grip ever so slightly and turned her head sideways. Suddenly I was able to breathe again and I filled my lungs with air. My vision stopped being blurry. I noticed my fingers had practically let go of the cable.
“You’re trying to distract me.” Fiona enunciated each syllable as though she were talking to a small child. Or to Freak and me. It sounded like the old Fiona.
“Would you prefer not to be distracted?”
Fiona returned her face to my back, but this time, I was still able to breathe. Fiona’s “no” was muffled, but unmistakable.
“My story will take the form of a timeline,” said Miranda. I looked down the length of the cable. Our destination seemed a long way off. “It will take the form of a timeline because we are crossing a line. Indorsian storytelling always references the storyteller’s immediate environment. This is why so many of our stories told around campfires are about campfires.”
I wondered if all Indorsians were crazy, or if it was just the Disin family.
“A billion years ago, Indorsia did not exist.”
I looked off in the distance. Hellsboro was covered in fog, the way it always was after a heavy rain. Groun
d mist swirled, obscuring the landscape details.
“Then Indorsia came into being.”
A sudden breeze parted some of the mist. I started inching my hands along the cable.
“Indorsia is a huge, hollow sphere where everybody lives on the sphere’s inside surface.”
I glanced at the gas tank. It seemed to loom over everything. It was so big, I almost froze. But I kept going.
“Indorsia has a sun.”
The sun broke through to the west as Miranda said this. I thought it was an interesting coincidence. The breeze picked up, and it swept my hair down into my eyes. Then it gusted, and Fiona and I bounced a little. An ominous creaking came from where the cable was attached to the building.
“The Indorsian sun shines for exactly twelve hours each day. This makes Indorsia’s weather very predictable—”
“I hate to interrupt”—Guernica ’s voice overrode Miranda’s—“but the weather station on top of the Cheshire middle school just recorded a wind gust of forty-two miles per hour. The gust is heading this way. Because of the extra weight currently being supported by the cable, there is a ninety-nine percent probability the gust will cause it to snap. The gust will be here in two minutes and eleven seconds.”
“Your advice?” asked Miranda.
“Talk faster.”
I got my hands scurrying along the cable. It wasn’t easy, because my fingers were starting to cramp.
Fiona turned her face to the side so she could speak. “Does Indorsia have gravity?”
Immediately a loud SPROING! echoed from the direction of the building. The cable lurched, dropping six inches, and I lost my grip.
We twisted sideways as one of my hands slipped from the cable and I made the mistake of looking down. The ground seemed to be rushing up at us.
“Yes-it-has-gravity-but-it-is-a-lighter-gravity-than-that-here-on-Earth.”
I found the strength to swing my arm back up and regain my two-handed grip. “Please, could we stop talking about gravity?” I asked, between clenched teeth.
“NINETY-SEVEN SECONDS UNTIL WIND GUST!” said Guernica, speaking more urgently than it had been.
I hung motionless for a moment, trying to will my hands to start moving again. Miranda continued her story, talking more quickly than she had been.
“For want of a better explanation, Indorsia exists in a different dimension. For a long time, portals linked Indorsia to Earth, enabling Earth’s plants and animals and people to cross over and establish themselves in Indorsia. The early humans who colonized the place spread out over fifteen of Indorsia’s sixteen continents. Mighty civilizations arose. The progress was impressive.”
Miranda paused. Then she repeated, “THE PROGRESS WAS IMPRESSIVE.”
I started inching my way along the cable again. Once I got going, I found myself moving at a pretty good pace.
“SEVENTY-FOUR SECONDS TO WIND GUST,” said Guernica.
“The portals,” Miranda continued, “became fewer and fewer until finally, about thirty-five thousand years ago, they seemed to disappear completely. The many nations of Indorsia continued to advance, sometimes coming into conflict with one another. Sometimes they went to war.”
The cable dropped another foot and I was almost shaken loose. I wondered how close the cable might be to breaking. I wondered if it might break even before the wind gust. I got myself into motion again.
“A conqueror arose. At first the ruler of a small but technologically advanced country, after forty years of warfare he had all of Indorsia under his control. That man was my father.”
A crow appeared out of nowhere and landed on the cable about three feet ahead of us. He cocked his head at us, as though he sensed he might soon have some fresh meat to pick at.
I slowed my advance, but I didn’t stop.
“ONE MINUTE TO WIND GUST.”
“Many people opposed him, including members of his own family. My brother, Alf, and I were leaders of the Resistance. We almost got the upper hand, and then he crushed us. Two days before I was beheaded, Alf managed to download my consciousness into a memory chip, force open a portal, and flee through it, carrying me, a knapsack full of provisions, and a plastic figurine of Upchuck the Clown.”
The crow started screeching and flapping its wings, which shook the cable. The bird was probably smart enough to know that if it made us fall, it could have supper.
“Upchuck the Clown?” said Fiona.
“A popular Indorsian cartoon character. The figurine was part of a set. My father had every other figurine in the set, but he didn’t have Upchuck. Since one of my first acts of rebellion had been to sneeze in his face and infect him with Compulsive Completist Disorder, my father had no choice but to pursue Alf through the portal if he wanted to acquire the figurine. He expected his lieutenants to follow him through the portal, but it snapped shut as soon as he went through. Our goal was to get him out of Indorsia. The plan succeeded.”
I got within an inch of the crow and it started pecking angrily at my hands. Its beak was sharp enough to rip through the mitts. If it kept this up long enough, it would draw blood. I moved my hand quickly and pinned one of the crow’s feet to the cable.
“My father was trapped,” said Miranda. “He was in a world he never knew existed. Unfortunately, he is a very clever man and he knows a lot of Indorsian science. It didn’t take him long to become one of the richest men in your world. Now he may have found a way to force the portal back open.”
The crow pulled free and batted its wings in my face. I couldn’t fight it without letting go of the cable. My hands started to slip.
“THIRTY SECONDS TO GUST.”
I felt Fiona shift her grip. Then the girl who’d just been clinging to me so fiercely that I couldn’t breathe freed one of her hands, made a fist, and socked the crow in the gizzard. It tumbled beak over tail feathers, cawing indignantly.
“Fortunately, my father is opposed by a small but valiant group of individuals who may yet surprise him with their courage and their resourcefulness. Otherwise, my father will enslave the people of Earth, starting with your little town of Cheshire, and then use those slaves to strip your weird little inside-out planet of all its bounty and leave it an empty husk. He wants to build a fleet.”
“A fleet of warships?” I asked as I started to inch my way along again. We were well past the halfway point. Unfortunately, my hands had gone numb. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the crow flying toward the huge sphere of the gas tank.
“No. A fleet of spaceships.”
“TWENTY SECONDS.”
“My father intends to mine Earth’s mineral wealth and use it to build huge space-traveling habitats so he can lead the people of Indorsia in a mass migration to the stars.”
“TEN SECONDS.”
The advance part of the wind gust tangled Fiona’s hair with mine as I spotted the bullying crow again, sailing around the far side of the tank like an orbiting missile. It was aimed straight at my face. I was pretty sure in a moment we would be plunging toward the pavement.
Then something wide and flat and straw-colored dropped down like a shield in front of my nose and the crow collided with it. A quick swat sent the bird flying like a well-served tennis ball.
It was a broom, in the hands of Freak. Fiona and I had gotten to within two feet of the gas tank’s catwalk. I inched a little closer, and Freak reached down and eased Fiona off my back.
“All of this will happen,” said Miranda, “unless we all work together to stop it.”
“NOW!”
The blast of wind hit with the force of a hurricane. I had no strength left in my arms. The cable snapped off the building but remained attached to the tank. I twisted sideways, almost out of Freak’s reach, but he lunged down and grabbed the straps of the backpack. Fiona, eyes tightly closed, leaned over and grabbed me by the compass chain. For the second time that day, they pulled me to safety.
I lay on my back on the catwalk and trembled. The wind dropped off almost as qu
ickly as it had come up. “My arms feel like they’re a foot longer,” I said. “Do I look like an orangutan?”
It was Fiona’s opportunity to say, You always look like an orangutan. Instead, she leaned down and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. I was a little disappointed. But only a little.
“Where’d you get the broom?” I asked Freak.
“Get up. I’ll show you.” He helped me to my feet.
“Miranda?” said Fiona.
The domino did not respond.
“Is that the end of the story?” said Fiona, sounding wistful.
“The story never ends,” said Double Six, in Guernica’s voice. “The storyteller just moves on into a new environment, and what had been a comforting story about a campfire becomes a story about something else.”
“Where is Miranda?” Fiona demanded.
“Still safe within my circuits. But her attention is presently needed elsewhere.”
“Tell her thank you,” said Fiona. “I couldn’t have made it across there without her talking to me.”
“That makes two of us,” I added.
“Alf’s sister?” asked Freak. “That Miranda?”
“That Miranda,” I said. “I’ll explain later. Right now, we’ve got to get out of here.”
We ran about a dozen paces along the catwalk and came to an open hatch in the side of the tank.
Freak ducked inside and motioned for us to follow. We found ourselves on a large platform jutting out into the tank’s hollow interior. It looked like one of NASA’s mission control centers. The entire interior of the tank, from top to bottom, was filled with electronic equipment. Circuit boards and LEDs and things that looked like toasters were all interconnected and stretched away in every direction. Little lights winked here and there throughout the tangle of components.
“This is the Disin Corporation’s mind-control machine,” said Double Six. “It’s what’s forcing everybody to sing show tunes. Someday, it will force them to build spaceships.”
“Shouldn’t it be guarded?” asked Freak, leaning the broom against a computer workstation.
