Chaos on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  “Cat just texted that a car has turned up the driveway,” Steph says.

  We all veer off the path and into the woods, ducking down behind brush as a car rattles down the driveway. I can see it through the brush, the red minivan we saw leaving earlier. Glenys, crouching next to me, is shaking.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

  “Come on,” Steph urges us, and we strike out through the woods, parallel to the road.

  “There is a path ten feet to your left,” a flat robotic voice calls from down the road, and Glenys goes absolutely rigid. The robot comes trotting into sight. “It’s me, Cat.”

  “It’s a robot, don’t worry,” I say to Glenys, which is a ridiculous thing to say to anybody, but I don’t want to get into a full explanation right now. “Just trust me?” She relaxes slightly, and we strike out to our left. If the robot hadn’t told us about the path, we wouldn’t have found it; it’s not cleared of snow, but there isn’t a mess of bushes and vines under the snow to tangle with.

  “The weather at this location is getting worse,” a robot voice says from Steph’s pocket. I’m briefly baffled, then realize it’s Cat again, speaking through Steph’s phone. “If you can reach the car within five minutes, that may work to our advantage. If it takes more than ten, it will most definitely be to our disadvantage.”

  “When will we get there?” Steph asks Cat. “I’ve lost all track of where we are.”

  “You will need to speed up to make it in five minutes.”

  It’s getting dark around us, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s twilight or because the snow is coming down so much more quickly.

  “Where’s the robot?” Steph asks.

  “I found something useful to do with it. Just go to the car.”

  Glenys’s face looks glazed, like she’s half-asleep, or maybe half-dead, and I tug on her arm. “Come on,” I say. “We need to run.” She stumbles but more or less keeps up. I can see the road up ahead, and then we’re crossing it, running behind the closed-up gas station, and my car is in sight.

  “I can drive if you want to take care of Glenys,” Rachel says, so I hand her the keys, and Glenys and I climb into the back.

  “Where’s Cat?” I ask. “She didn’t make it!”

  In the woods, I hear a sudden barrage of gunfire.

  “Go!” Steph yells at Rachel. “We’ll buckle our seat belts, I promise. We need to start moving!”

  “But Cat—”

  “Cat is safe at home; it’s just the robot we’re leaving!”

  Oh. I suddenly remember that yes, the robot isn’t Cat.

  “I’m fine,” the voice says from Steph’s phone. “I used the robot to let the air out of the tires of the minivan so they won’t be able to follow you. It’s also blocking the entrance to the garage, so they can’t pull anything out. You’ll just need to keep an eye out for the snowmobile.”

  I buckle my seat belt, and then I reach over and buckle Glenys in, because she hasn’t moved.

  “I’ll turn on the heat as soon as the engine warms up a little,” Steph says. She digs through her backpack and pulls out a container of hummus and a bag of baby carrots. “Glenys, are you hungry?”

  Glenys takes the carrots and hummus with a whispered “thank you” and spends the next few minutes devouring them. Rachel turns on the heat full blast, and the feeling starts coming back to my feet.

  My phone buzzes in my hand, and I see that I have a text from “Glenys.” “Where are you?” it asks.

  I lean forward and ask Steph, “If I send someone a text, is there any way for them to see where I sent it from?”

  “Give me your phone a minute,” Steph says. I hand it to her. She adjusts something and hands it back. “Before, probably not; now, definitely not.”

  I text back, “Minneapolis.”

  I get another text. “Stop playing games with me, Nell.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My father took me to Minneapolis after my mom disappeared.”

  “If you want to see your mother, turn around right now and you can see her. She’s at the Fatherhold.”

  I stare at the text in absolute disbelief.

  Then a picture arrives: my mother. Staring at the camera, angry. Holding a hand-scrawled sign: TURN AROUND OR FACE JUDGMENT, NELL.

  24

  • CheshireCat •

  The robot gets ripped to pieces by a barrage of bullets—two of the legs go flying. It topples over in the snow, and it occurs to me to have it play dead. I shut off all the lights and the bits that make noise and wait to see what these humans do with it.

  Through the microphones, I can hear the crunch of someone’s boots approaching through the snow. He picks up the robot, turns it over in his hands, and then drops it in a bag.

  “Who sent that after us?” one voice asks.

  “I think we both know who sent it,” the other voice answers.

  A loud noise comes through the mics. I run the vibrations through a database of possibilities and confirm that it’s the snowmobile returning. I watch the GPS signal from the robot as we rapidly travel back to the house and inside. Since I’m not moving the limbs and I’ve cut power to all the lights, this robot could have up to eight more hours of battery life. That’s a lot of potential eavesdropping.

  But it’s going to have to be audio only; the bag is covering the cameras. It’s a shame, because facial recognition systems are a lot more reliable than voice recognition, especially with the quality of the microphone in the robot. Still, there’s some good data coming through.

  I can hear seven distinct voices. All are probably adults. Five are probably male, two are probably female, although I am basing that on pitch, which is not a reliable method of determining gender. I try to match the voices to data I find online, but the only one I’m confident about identifying is the man who goes by Brother Daniel. I try to assess the emotions in the voices—anger, tension, fear?—and I’m not sure. I upload some samples of their voices to see if one of my human friends can help me figure this out later.

  Also, while I’m thinking about it, I place an order for a replacement robot to be shipped to Steph’s house as quickly as possible.

  The adults here have discovered that Glenys is missing, although they are all calling her Sonia. As the conversation goes on, I decide they’re definitely angry, especially since someone says straight out, “I am so angry right now.” Someone else insists that he is not angry, not angry at all, and I don’t think he’s telling the truth and upload a sample so someone can confirm for me later. A voice I haven’t heard much says, “Maybe it’s for the best.”

  Then someone else says, “Could it be Ellen’s kid? Wasn’t she friends with Sonia?”

  “I told you leaving her behind was a mistake,” a woman’s voice says.

  “Can you get her to turn around?”

  “Hard to know.”

  “What if you tell her you’re here?”

  “Think she’ll believe it?”

  “You could send her a picture.”

  “I’ll try. But she has a rebellious spirit, which is why you didn’t want her here, as I recall.”

  Wait, I realize, and quickly check a database: Nell’s mother’s name is Ellen Reinhardt. They’re talking about Nell; Nell’s missing mother is here. I start trying to analyze the implications. This means she left Nell on purpose and let her believe that she’d been kidnapped. That is cruel. Steph’s mother also disappeared and left her loved ones unsure of what had happened to her—but she didn’t leave Steph. And she had a good reason.

  Ellen must have had a reason. Was it a good reason?

  * * *

  In the car, Nell gasps when she sees her text, and Steph says, “What’s wrong?”

  “My mom,” Nell says. “They have my mom.”

  “What do you mean, they have your mom? Do we need to mount another rescue?”

  “Her mom is a member of the group,” I say. “She’s not
a prisoner like Glenys was; she’s a participant. But she’s there, in the house, talking with the other adults.”

  “How do you know this?” Nell asks sharply.

  “Well, they decided to bring the robot into the house. I’ve just been using it to eavesdrop.”

  “Can you play us what they’re saying?” Nell says. “I want to hear what they’re saying.”

  “Is that a good idea?” I ask, genuinely unsure and hoping for an answer from Steph.

  “Yes, it’s a good idea. Let me hear what my mom is saying, Cat! If you can!”

  “I can,” I say, since Steph isn’t objecting.

  “As long as they can’t hear us…” Rachel says.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “This will be a one-way broadcast only.”

  25

  • Steph •

  I plug the phone into the car stereo so that we can hear it clearly through the speakers. We’ve come in mid-argument. “She’s not replying,” a woman’s voice says.

  “That’s my mom’s voice,” Nell whispers.

  “We should have just brought her here when we brought Sonia,” says another voice. “There are five sheds, after all.”

  “Bringing both girls here at the same time was a recipe for a conspiracy. They’d have reinvented Morse code if they’d had to.”

  “Nell’s never yet found a fence she didn’t try to dig under or climb over,” Nell’s mother says. I glance back at Nell, who’s shrinking back in her seat, her forehead furrowed.

  “We had a plan,” a man says. “It just involved bringing Sonia back into the fold first, then using her loyalty to inspire Nell.”

  “I think that’s Brother Daniel,” Nell says.

  “Let’s get the snowmobile,” another man’s voice says.

  There’s a brief argument cut off by a man’s voice saying, “No,” at which point, the other voices go silent. “Are you thinking of shooting out their tires and hauling all four back to base? We are not kidnapping the other girls. Talk about a way to bring the law down on our heads. I promise you, even if they didn’t tell anyone where they were going, they’ve been seen.”

  There’s a pause.

  “I think that’s Brother Malachi,” Nell says. Glenys nods in agreement.

  “You still have legal custody of Nell, don’t you?” That’s Brother Daniel again. “So you have every right to bring her here as a mother. Every right. No drama necessary. You know where to find her. There’s no rush.”

  The adults start arguing again, and it’s harder to make out individual voices. I hear someone talking about the laws about runaways. They discuss calling Glenys’s parents, who apparently aren’t on-site, and someone else suggests “mobilizing the troops,” which makes Nell and Glenys shift nervously. There’s a break for some tea, and then someone notices the bag in the corner. “What’s in there?”

  “The robot. I thought we could—”

  “You brought it back here?”

  “I mean, what was left of it—”

  There’s a loud noise, and then the connection goes dead.

  “Sorry, friends,” CheshireCat says. “I do believe that’s the end of the robot.”

  For a minute or so, there’s no conversation. I turn up the heat, which is finally kicking in properly.

  “Well, they’re not chasing after us, at least,” Rachel says. “Right now, anyway.”

  I turn to look at Nell in the back. “So. Your mom. Wasn’t kidnapped.”

  Her face crumples, and she pulls up her scarf to hide herself. She shakes her head, not speaking. Glenys wraps her arms around Nell, and Nell looks up at her after a minute and says, her voice cracking, “This isn’t right, you shouldn’t have to comfort me,” and Glenys just strokes her hair silently.

  The big, pressing question is where we’re going now—how exactly we’re going to hide Glenys. I look at Rachel, who’s looking at me. “Let’s just all go back to New Coburg for now,” Rachel says. “No one looking for Glenys will think to look there.”

  We stop for food at another roadside diner, somewhere past Wausau. I’m still cold, or at least, stepping out of the warm car makes me start shivering violently. Nell orders the Farmhand’s Special for Glenys, along with coffee for both of them and extra bacon; the rest of us get pancakes. Glenys eats and eats and eats.

  “Were they not feeding you?” Rachel asks.

  “They gave me some food,” Glenys says a little defensively, and eyes the unfinished pancake on my plate.

  “I’m not going to finish this. Did you want it?” I ask and push it across the table. “Rachel, do you think your mother would be okay with it if we all slept over tonight? I can call my mom and let her know I’m spending the night in New Coburg. She won’t mind.”

  “We don’t really have space…” Rachel says. “Oh, but you know who does? Bryony.” She pulls out her phone and starts sending her a text. “If she says it’s okay, we can all sleep over there and figure out what to do next.”

  “I’m not going back,” Glenys says.

  “No, you’re not,” Nell says.

  I really want to bring up Rajiv—I want to ask Glenys if she knows what he was doing there—but Glenys’s eyes well up and she presses her face silently against Nell’s shoulder. Nell wraps her arms around Glenys, and I really feel like dealing with Glenys’s trauma should take priority.

  We dawdle over coffee refills while Rachel negotiates with Bryony and I text my mother. (I text, Snowing. Spending the night in NC. K? She replies, OK. Be home tomorrow by noon.) Then we dash shivering out to the car to drive down for a night in New Coburg.

  * * *

  We stop to let Rachel pick up her car from the shuttered diner. Nell moves up to the front seat of her own car, and I move to Rachel’s car. “Can you follow me?” Rachel asks. Nell nods. “Call Steph if you get confused, but it’s basically straight south from here.” I climb in next to Rachel, and she peers anxiously in her rearview mirror to make sure that Nell looks ready. “You probably should have ridden with Nell, but I thought they might like some time alone together,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Also I kind of wanted you to myself for a few minutes?”

  “Same,” I say. “Or, I mean, the same but in reverse.” I turn off RideAlong so CheshireCat won’t listen in.

  “I can’t believe we actually pulled that off!” Rachel says. “We broke Glenys out of a secret cult compound and got away! But what are we going to do with Glenys? I mean, after tonight?”

  “Maybe Nell’s father’s family will help?”

  “Maybe? If Nell talks to them about it. I don’t get the sense she tells them anything. Like I bet they don’t know she even has a girlfriend.”

  “Well, she kept a lot of secrets from her mom.”

  “You’ve met her father and his, uh, the rest of the group, family, whatever. Are they anything like those people we listened in on?”

  I think about Siobhan suggesting we ditch class. “Like, their complete polar opposite, I think. But they never wash the dishes. Except now Nell’s made that her job, so maybe they’re annoying her less. I don’t think she tells them anything, though. Ever. Even though they seem nice.”

  Rachel heaves a sigh. “I guess you could always see if CheshireCat could pull an underground railroad for oppressed lesbian teenagers out of their social network.”

  “Seems likely.”

  Nell follows us down to New Coburg without difficulty and parks behind us outside of Bryony’s house. Bryony’s dog, Balto, and their kitten, Leo, meet us at the door. Their house is bright and warm. I haven’t been inside before, although I got chased away from the parking lot next door by Bryony’s father last fall when I was trying to take pictures of raccoons. They’ve got a big family room suitable for a slumber party, and while waiting for us to arrive, Bryony went out and bought a bunch of food. Their mother looks us over as we arrive, a little mystified by the fact that none of us has toothbrushes or sleeping bags, but Bryony fends her off and re
assures me that there’s plenty of bedding and yoga pants and sweatshirts if not actual pajamas to lend us.

  Glenys eats almost an entire bag of pizza rolls by herself, barely talking. Bryony’s mother hovers for a bit. She’s a tall Black woman who teaches poetry at one of the small-town branches of the University of Wisconsin. Bryony’s father is an auto mechanic. I wonder if her mother would prefer to live somewhere a little less rural, but she’s in the local bowling league with Rachel’s mom and seems to like New Coburg. The cheap housing my mother used to claim was the reason we lived in tiny rural towns probably comes in handy if you’re a poet.

  I can see Bryony’s mom watching Glenys; after a few minutes, she announces, “I’m going to put in the mozzarella sticks. Does that sound good to everybody? How about some frozen corn dogs?” and pulls a few more bags out of the freezer. She asks no more questions. “Bryony, I’m setting the timer. Can you pull everything out when it goes off?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Mom,” Bryony says.

  “Great. I’m going upstairs to watch TV.”

  We wait until her footsteps fade on the stairs, and then Bryony turns to Rachel and says, “Okay. What’s the story here, exactly?”

  “I kind of got pulled in at the last minute myself,” Rachel says, and looks at me.

  I’m trying to put my thoughts in order when Glenys pushes her empty plate away and says, “They locked me in a shed and barely fed me because Nell and I are girlfriends. They didn’t say it was because I was homosexual; they said I loved Nell too much, more than God or my community or the other people I was supposed to put ahead of myself, and I needed to pray for forgiveness. They told me Nell confessed and that’s why they knew to lock me up, because they wanted me to hate Nell. But it didn’t work, because I didn’t believe them.” She turns to Nell and says, “I didn’t think you’d come for me, though. I didn’t think there was any way you could help me.”

  “Someone locked you in a shed?” Bryony says. “And starved you? That has got to be illegal.”

  “My parents took me there, though. This was all with their permission.”