We Aimless Few

by Robert J. Crane

  Now, though, I just said, “Who cares?”

  “Who cares? They do. Look around you, Mira—haven’t you noticed?”

  I glanced about in spite of myself. “Noticed what?”

  “People know you,” Borrick said. “You’ve won glory already, drawn the whispers of Seekers worlds over—they see you here now, and they’re talking, Mira. How could you have missed that?”

  I peered about me. No, I hadn’t noticed that. The screaming suit on the bridge, the hulking great reptilian thing I’d almost walked into, yes. But the larger crowd? It was little more than background—no, an obstacle course, to be navigated the same way the Antecessor temples were built to be conquered.

  Now I looked around, though, I saw: people were looking. By no means was it everyone—my name hadn’t spread so far that every Seeker in this place knew of me, likely not even more than a third—but there were faces turned my way, watching me like I was the most interesting person in the universe, doing something far, far more interesting than a stop-start forward amble in this queue. When they saw I’d clocked them, a lot turned away, averting their gaze. Others whispered to partners, pointed.

  I saw my name on more than one set of lips.

  “You wondered how I found you in London,” said Borrick, “well, you’re an icon, Mira—you have been for quite a while now. People see you, and people talk. Nothing underhand about it; it’s just the rumor mill. In your case, they happened to get it right.”

  Huh. That was one mystery solved, then …?

  It was so peculiar. A very strange burst of emotions suddenly washed over me, a collection of things I’d not expected to feel today. I was astounded—I felt vindicated—I felt so accomplished! Everything I’d wanted, everything I’d been denied—and it was here, already, just a couple of weeks after my eighteenth birthday—and I simply hadn’t seen it.

  I had found the fame and glory my parents tried to keep from me.

  No, not found it. I’d earned it.

  A swell began in my chest—

  And then I remembered Manny was gone—and the whole wretched thing came tumbling down.

  Slumping, turning my gaze back onto the head of the Seeker stooped in front of us, currently rustling in a backpack, I said, “None of it matters. Fame, fortune … they’re empty things. And if you have an ounce of sense about you, you’ll forget about chasing them, Borrick.”

  “Alain.”

  I frowned. “Sorry?”

  “Call me Alain, would you? It’s my name, after all.”

  “Right. Well—it’s all empty … Alain. It means nothing—nothing at all.”

  He considered this a moment, wrinkling his nose slightly, as though he’d detected the first faint whiffs of a bad smell. “Perhaps.” Then he smiled. “But what about the game? Seeking itself. It’s its own reward. It’s the thrill of the thing, right? I missed that, when you and I were at loggerheads, but lately I’ve tried to—take a step back, I guess, see the forest past the trees, you know? When we were fighting, I got beaten, sure—”

  I almost put in, More than once. Didn’t—just.

  “—but there really is a thrill to it. Much more of one when you’re coming out on top, I’ll admit. Still … it’s an exhilarating game.”

  That pulled at something in me. An echo of a memory came, unbidden: me and Carson and Heidi and Bub in the library, consumed with the latest part of a quest we were trying to figure out.

  Then I saw Manny cutting open a gateway to a void and slipping through it.

  That it was a game was right—nothing more than hijinks, a gas—by a high-and-mighty race of boys with magnifying glasses poised over an ant’s nest.

  “I don’t want to play anymore,” I muttered. “Not with these stakes.”

  Borrick was about to say something more—but there was a hubbub from behind us. He turned, frowning.

  “Oh,” he said. “I think it’s Heidi. And—ooh. Uh, Mira?”

  It was Heidi. I heard her a moment later, apologizing to a cluster of Seekers she’d pushed past to get back to us.

  It figured that she’d have pissed off a few of the Seekers queueing behind us. Everyone had a place to be—and this person shoving past was another to hold them up, whether or not her place had been held in the line.

  “Excuse me,” Heidi said hotly. “Sorry, sorry—could you please—thanks. Mira—” she breathed from behind.

  I glanced back. Very red-faced, she had a harried look about her—and none of the noodles she’d gone to buy from the stall five minutes ago.

  “What happened to getting our food …?” I asked.

  “I ran into someone who wants to talk to you,” she said quickly.

  I sighed. “If you think I’m signing autographs, they’re about to be sorely …”

  Mistaken didn’t get to slip from my lips. Because the queue parted once more, the hubbub increased, Seekers practically forced aside—

  By my parents.

  17

  If I’d come face to face with my parents like this any time between January, when I ran away, and August, when I finally returned home, I cannot imagine the picture my face would’ve been. Utter horror, probably, followed very quickly by me bolting as fast as I could. In this situation, it probably would’ve meant lurching ahead into the queue, shoving Seekers aside, passing the service station with nary a look at the weary clerk inside, and then madly following someone through their Entanglement-granted access point.

  But it had been hardly more than six or seven hours since I last saw my parents. Standing before them like this wasn’t the gravest shock I could’ve experienced.

  Still, my eyebrows drew in. “How did you find …?”

  “Never mind that,” Mum cried. “What in the world are you thinking? Running off like that!”

  “Err,” said Heidi, looking both guilty and incredibly uncomfortable. “Borrick, do you want to help me with this food?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, voice dripping relief. “Excuse me.” And he slipped out of the queue, angled sideways to bypass my flustered, fuming parents. He did a very good job of not looking at my mother. Smart man: never again would they engage in any conversation resembling polite (or rather simpering), at least not with him.

  My mother did not spare him a glance. Borrick would draw her ire later, I guessed, him and Heidi. Well, good luck to the both of them enduring that laser fire.

  They hurried away together, Heidi sparing me one last look that bordered on frightened before she disappeared.

  “Don’t be too long,” I called after her. “Can’t hold your spot forever.”

  Then I had no choice but to look back into the eyes of my parents, eyes that were filled with a disappointment like I had never known.

  No, that wasn’t right. I’d seen them more disappointed than this, once—when I came home, and they heard it from me, the news that had already come to them—that Manny had indeed …

  Died. Admit it, Mira. Stop tiptoeing around it.

  Your brother is dead.

  Mum wore disappointment in the way I’d known it much of my childhood: marred with a great anger, as if she could not only be let down alone but was also annoyed that someone had dared to make her feel that way. I’d hated it all my childhood, and faced with it once again, I still felt exactly the same.

  Dad, on the other hand, looked somewhat like the version of him I’d spoken to in his study this morning. He had a weary look, more lines in his forehead and radiating away from his eyes than I realized were there to cast their damning shadows. He watched me, mouth hung open, a forlorn look of betrayal in his eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. Unlike Mum, he wasn’t shouting—which had the wondrous effect of drawing every eye right to me, even those belonging to Seekers who didn’t know a celebrity stood within their midst. Instead, he sounded tired—tired and broken.

  “I’m helping my …” Friends? Not the right word. I searched for it but couldn’t find anything to go in its place.
r />   “You’re coming home with us,” said Mum, “that’s what you’re doing.”

  She whipped out a hand to grab for me—

  This time I was faster. Also, I was fortunate that in the time my back was turned, the queue had moved forward—actually by quite a considerable distance. I darted backward to evade her, and only after jerking my head around to see why I hadn’t crashed into someone did I thank my lucky stars that at least the clerks in the service station weren’t so excited by the unfolding family disagreement going on around me.

  “Mira!” Mum cried. She straightened, puffing her eyes out.

  I prepared to duck back from the actual lasers that I was fairly sure were about to incinerate me.

  “What has gotten into you?” she blustered. “After what happened to your brother … and now you’re out here again, gallivanting around? I will not have it! You will come home, at once, and stop with all this—this ridiculousness!”

  “Can’t,” I said. “I’m holding a place in the queue for Heidi and Borrick.”

  “Oh, those bloody friends of yours.” Bloddy again—the accent was the thickest it had ever been. “I’ll be having words with them, you see if I don’t.” Rounding on Dad, she said, “Jacob, go get them. Then they can have their bloody place in this queue, and we can go home.”

  “No,” I said, before Dad could turn around to follow Heidi and Borrick back in the direction they’d gone. “I’m not going back with you.”

  Dad’s face fell. “What?”

  In perfect opposition to his whispered shock, Mum answered with significantly more gusto. “Mira, you are not serious,” she said. “You come back with us right this instant! You cannot keep playing these stupid, foolish games!”

  Dad cringed back from Mum—but it was only because of the volume. An onlooker could possibly be convinced that Dad was a pushover, that Mum made the orders. That was absolutely not true—unfortunately. If it were, I might’ve been able to petition Dad long before things grew to a point that I’d needed to turn into a runaway.

  “This world is too dangerous for you!” Mum blustered, the roar finally growing loud enough that even the service station clerks were beginning to stick their heads out of their windows to see what was going on.

  With any luck, one of them would call security, and my parents would be escorted out.

  Of course, things rarely worked that way.

  “I’m not coming with you,” I ground out.

  “Yes, you are.” And Mum snatched for me again.

  I dodged back—the queue had shifted again, granting me a little more space to evade her—and the anger in her eyes ramped up another notch.

  “Mira,” she breathed, “you are to come back with us at once.”

  “And do what?” I snapped. “Pop down to the shop with you every morning to buy ingredients for dinner? Fine example I’ll be setting Camille, sitting around and doing nothing with my life,” I said. “No thanks.”

  “There’s university,” Dad said.

  Mum nodded quickly. “Yes,” she said, like he’d just reminded her of a very important point that she had intended to make, but which had eluded her until his mentioning of it. “Or a job. You need to get your life back on track after—”

  “After what?”

  I’d raised my voice without meaning to, without even thinking about what I was doing. Likewise, I’d puffed up, my shoulders back and my expression blazing.

  A little part of me saw all this externally—and it showed just how obviously I was my mother’s daughter.

  Later, I would be sorry for that.

  Right now, though, it was all I could do to keep myself from exploding like a bomb there in the queue to the Entanglement.

  “After I did the thing that you did—” I jabbed an accusing finger at Dad “—that Manny did, but did it better? After you spent my whole life trying to push me down?” I shook. “Or do you mean after Manny died?” My lip curled.

  Mum stared back, for once frozen.

  “You spent my entire childhood trying to tell me what I should be doing with my life,” I said. “I am not coming back so you can do it all over again. I’ve had enough of it.”

  “And what will you do?” Mum whispered. “Seeking?” She said it with a sneer. “Because you’re so good at it.”

  “I was good at it,” I snapped. “People heard of me—people who are here right now—people who were looking at me for reasons other than this circus act you’re putting on for the whole world to see.”

  Mum and Dad both glanced about them. It was true, undeniable: despite the fact that all the queues moved in their stop-start way, Seekers were watching us—watching them.

  Rather than back down, Mum redoubled on her position.

  “So very good at it,” she muttered to me, eyes flashing. “So good that your brother—”

  “I love Manny,” I whispered, cutting her off. I couldn’t hear it—not from her.

  Tears stung my eyes. The back of my throat constricted.

  “You let him go,” said Mum.

  “Manny made his own stupid choice—”

  She inflated, eyes bulging. “How dare you speak ill of your brother.”

  “And how dare you constantly tell me I was never good enough!”

  “I protected you,” Mum snarled, her teeth gritted. Again, she whipped out a hand for me; again, I backed away, and she missed grabbing hold of me.

  “You didn’t protect me. You tried to smother the life out of me, to treat me like some sort of eternal child, just like the bloody Antecessors.”

  Confusion flashed upon my dad’s face then. Probably had rippled through the hall too. I was too wrapped up in this to care … although not for much longer. A backward look showed me that, over the course of this argument, my queue had accelerated quite dramatically—or perhaps it was now only that I had something to focus on that filled the time? Either way, there were only a few people left ahead of me, the service station positioned at the queue’s edge and the clerk within it not looking remotely weary anymore. Actually, as he discussed through the glass window with the pair of lanky female Seekers now, he kept shooting nervous glances our way.

  I didn’t blame him, to be fair.

  “All I’ve done your whole life,” said Mum, “is try my best to protect you. I might not have done it perfectly—but I have only ever had your best interests at heart.”

  “Funny how your protection never extended to Manny,” I shot back. “Perfectly happy to guide him into the world of Seeking, weren’t you? You were priming him before I was even born.” I folded my arms. “Doesn’t really make much sense, does it? I mean, you never tried to talk Dad out of going out in search of adventure. How many scrapes did you nearly die in, hm?” I asked him. Without giving him a chance to answer—not that I expected he’d kept count, much the same as I hadn’t—I rounded on Mum again. “‘It’s not safe out there, it’s not safe out there,’ you said. And yet you encouraged Manny to follow in Dad’s footsteps.”

  Mum’s eyes flashed. “If you’re insinuating that I am the reason …”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Just pointing out the blatant inconsistency. I mean … doesn’t really add up, does it?”

  “Your brother,” Mum started—but even those two words came out in a kind of muddle. She tried again: “Emmanuel was—your father made a name for himself, and it was—it was only right that—”

  “Save it,” I said. “I’m sure your reasoning is just as full as logic holes as it has been for the eighteen years you spent trying to clip my wings. Well—too bad. It’s not happening anymore. And I am leaving.”

  I raised my voice, booming in the same way as Mum had as she unleashed her full fury upon me:

  “Heidi! Alain! We’re up! Get over here now unless you want me to go alone!”

  “You’re not going,” said Dad. It wasn’t a threat, the way it was when Mum said it—rather, he choked it out with disbelief.

  “Watch me.”

  Heidi a
nd Borrick reappeared, squeezing through the queue from somewhere behind. Probably they’d been all the way by the pillars delineating inside and outside. They darted through a gap, Heidi apologizing, Borrick’s coat flapping behind him. Heidi sidestepped Mum—the old battle-axe turned a fiery glare upon her, then on Borrick, who came past a moment later and mumbled an apology.

  “You,” she began. “You’ve—you’ve gone and poisoned my Mira—”

  “I can assure you,” I said, “the only person here who has come close to poisoning me is you.”

  Finally at the front of the queue, I turned to the clerk manning the service station. He sat on a worn-looking chair, the sort that would’ve been at home in an ageing British office cubicle, one whose turnover didn’t stretch to replacement seats but did allow for the occasional purchase of silver duct tape to patch the holes.

  I leaned close—the clerk flinched away, wide-eyed—and I muttered, “Here, please.” And I took a sheaf of paper from a stack, printed on it LAKNURIA, HURANTAN BASIN, taking great care to shield it from my mother’s beaded eyes, then slipped it through the gap under the glass panel. “Just the three of us.” I indicated myself, Heidi and Borrick, just in case somehow he found himself confused enough to believe I was taking a little Seeker vacay with my parents.

  He took it, nodded, and began keying instructions into his computer terminal—again, a device that would’ve looked at home in an old office, seeing as the monitor was a great big cuboid thing, glowing with white text on a greenish background.

  “Where are they going?” Mum asked, pressing close to the booth—

  “Sorry,” I said, flashing an insincere smile. “That’s confidential.”

  The turnstile unlocked—

  “Ciao,” I said.

  Heidi and Borrick went through first. I followed last—

  Mum’s expression turned manic. “You are not—!” she cried, lunging forward to grab me—

  I leapt through the turnstile. It locked again behind me, the requisite number counted.

  Mum could climb it though. And she did, gripping it with white-knuckled hands, scrabbling over—

  “Ma’am,” the clerk barked. “You are not permitted—”