When the pixies finally calmed down they flitted around the little room and several landed on Clora’s protruding abdomen. “The child sings to us!” one pixie sang loudly.
“What are they saying?” Clora asked me.
“She said the child sings to them,” I said, and I couldn’t keep my tone from being slightly wooden. “Are you having any signs of labor, Clora?”
“Nope,” Clora laughed as the pixies began to croon to her belly. “Some more of the Braxton Hicks, but that’s normal. That’s the body practicing to go into labor. Besides Zizi said next week sometime. I don’t know how right she is or isn’t, but the doctor says it’s a good guess given my due date.”
“I need to speak to Ignatius,” I said. I slowly sat up and avoided the bulkhead. Last time I had been in this bunk, I had bumped my head. I didn’t feel like a repeat.
Lulu said, “Maybe you should stay in bed, Sophie.”
“I’ve got to get up,” I said. “We’re going to have a hard few days ahead of us.”
Lulu stared at me. Her head was upside down as she looked into my eyes. I jerked my head at Clora, who was giggling at the firefly pixies, and Lulu shifted her gaze. After a moment, Lulu nodded shortly. She got out of the upper berth with an agility I envied at the moment.
“I’ll get Ignatius and also something for you to eat. You’ve been living on liquids for days,” she said as she went out the door.
I leaned on the side of the boat as I climbed to my feet. The world moved around me in an odd way, but I didn’t think it was the waves. It was the leftover side effects of the morphine. I could only hope that they would fade quickly away.
Clora watched me with interest. “Why are the next few days going to be hard?”
“We need to get someplace fast. Time is running out,” I said, and I couldn’t help the shortness of my tone. I didn’t want to tell Clora anything. I couldn’t save everyone. I knew I couldn’t save everyone. In fact, I was sure that in the future, other people would die, and it might be because of something I didn’t do, but I knew deep inside that I wasn’t omniscient nor was I omnipotent.
The knowledge didn’t make me feel any better for having acknowledged it. Specifically, the knowledge made me want to flaunt it all the more.
I looked down and saw my boots on the deck next to the bunk. Next to it was my backpack. Someone had gone to the hotel and gotten my stuff. Then there was the Japanese broadsword I had left at the Naval Observatory. Someone else had gotten my weapon from where I had checked it at the party.
“The hippogriff got your sword,” Clora said as she followed my gaze. “She flew in, grabbed it, and flew out. Prosper said the soldiers were all gone by that time, but the fire at the embassy had spread to some of the other buildings. He said the Naval Observatory was burning. The Vice President’s residence and some of the older buildings, too. It’s ironic, isn’t it?”
I supposed it was ironic. Perhaps, if Maston hadn’t vanished, then McCurdy and his new army would have helped put out the flames. Maybe. I remembered that the wind started to pick up as we entered the zoo. It was as if the wind had waited for us to walk to a safer locale before destroying what could have been.
“Some of the people who caught up to us later said it was spreading over much of that part and up into Woodley Park. It looked like it was being blown north. If the wind changed, then half the District could be gone by now.” Clora frowned. “All that history. Just gone like that.”
“It’s not gone,” I said. “As long as we remember it, it will never be gone.”
Chapter 24
Urgency Is Another Word for Hurry…
Ignatius took his time. I managed to pull off the sweats and put on a pair of Lulu’s jeans. They didn’t exactly fit, but I wasn’t going to complain. I left the pink fuzzy socks on and picked up my boots. After several minutes of rediscovering what it was like to move around for myself, he followed Lulu into the tiny cabin. Lulu watched me trying to tie the laces on my boots and grunted derogatorily. I left the laces alone, only because something smelled really good. My stomach immediately growled. She handed me a large black mug that said “X-Files” on it in white letters. It smelled like chicken noodle soup. Listening to my stomach, I sipped the soup. It was chicken noodle. No one could go wrong with chicken noodle soup.
The doctor looked me up and down, clearly assessing my health or assessing something anyway. “Well, you’re certainly more alert today,” he said dryly. “Not yelling about hurrying and rushing and moving our collective asses.”
“If you give me a shot of morphine again without asking me, I’ll swab the decks with your head,” I said mildly. “Maybe give you an Australian hair noogie, too.”
“Thank you works very well,” Ignatius said. “You know, I left all of my stuff behind in D.C. I don’t have anything now except a single medical bag. They say it’s burning now. Every once in a while the wind blows from the south, and I swear you can smell the smoke.”
The Burned Man would appreciate that. But Maston hadn’t intended on burning down the District. No, he’d wanted to display the directed-energy weapon like a prize, a method of further intimidating what he couldn’t absolutely control. He hadn’t anticipated on frying the Embassy of the United Kingdom either. It was more likely that the President hadn’t understood the full capabilities of the machine. After all, anyone who had designed it or knew how to use it, were long gone.
Damn. I hoped the argopelters got out safely with their little boy.
“I had a first edition of Tom Sawyer in my condo,” Ignatius said without rancor. “I also had pictures of my parents who died in a car wreck five years ago. And it isn’t like we’re going to be taking photographs anytime soon. Poof. Probably gone up in a blaze of scorching glory.”
“I’m not sure if I should take blame for that,” I said. I took another gulp of chicken noodle soup and slurped noodles. “I didn’t have soldiers drag that weapon back to my lair of doom. In fact, I didn’t even tell McCurdy about the weapon to begin with.” The last part was heavily sarcastic. Ignatius winced.
“Don’t eat so fast,” Lulu warned, “or you’ll barf it back up.”
“What she said,” Ignatius said.
I glanced at Clora. I was sitting on the edge of the bunk with one boot on and laced and the other one with the tongue askew and the laces helter-skelter. My hands were cupped around the mug as if someone might steal if I didn’t have it that way. “How long before we get to the other side of the lake?”
“An hour maybe,” Ignatius said. “I think we saw a mermaid. It was a lot uglier than Ariel. Kind of purplish, like a plum.” He scratched his head. “I had the impression it wouldn’t have minded eating us, too.”
“We’re not in Disney World,” I said.
“Great. I’ll remember that.” Ignatius looked meaningfully at the firefly pixies.
“Do you remember how one took out someone’s eyeball?” Lulu asked. “All she had was a silver toothpick.” She sang a few words in the pixies’ language. The rough translation was, “Fireflies rule. Stupid humans drool.” The girls had been teaching Lulu some of the phrases they thought were funny. She might have been teaching them some things, too.
The pixies giggled at Lulu’s sung words. They could have been laughing at the phrase or laughing at her wretched accent, but they flew around Lulu’s head and landed in her hair, nodding approvingly.
I took another gulp of soup and decided I was full. It didn’t take much, but I already felt a little better. “Seriously, no more morphine unless I’m missing some vital part of my anatomy.”
Then I gestured at the door. “I’d like to get some fresh air,” I said and slowly got to my feet. Lulu took the cup from me and shook her head.
“Ignatius, walk me around the upper deck,” I said.
We climbed up top, and I talked with the captain of the boat for a moment. Ranjan seemed about the same. I didn’t know if he knew we were fleeing from the new administration or not. Perhaps he w
as setting up his own business on the Great Lake. After all, there weren’t many other ways to cross at the moment. I didn’t know how many steamboats were about, but I reckoned there weren’t many and even less people who knew how to make them operate.
Once I finished my brief conversation with the captain, he didn’t look so happy. I couldn’t do much about that. He needed to know what I needed to say to him.
It was a clear afternoon, and the wind was barely blowing. The lake was almost like glass, as if everything was cooperating with us once again, to ensure we made it where we needed to go. It was even likely Ranjan had an agreement with the things that now lived in the lake. Anything was possible. It seemed as if people adjusted faster than they ever had before.
Once we went afore on the boat, we were as alone as we were going to get. There were a dozen humans loitering around the deck and another half-dozen new animals. How they had made their division I wouldn’t know, but some of the people I knew very well were present and happy to see me.
I waved them off as I glanced at the doctor. Fortunately, the hint was obvious, and they left us a large circle of privacy. “Is Clora about to go into labor?” I asked in a low voice.
“You cut to the point,” Ignatius said. “Is this about the premonition that Zizi had? Zizi told me. She said she couldn’t see Clora after the baby was born. She said Clora…vanished.”
“That’s right.”
“Predicting labor is tricky.” Ignatius spread his hands apart. “Clora doesn’t have any of the symptoms now, and I’m not an obstetrician. Her due date is based on what she remembers about her last menstrual cycle, and we’ve lost track of the calendar days so it’s all guesswork. It could be next week. It could be tomorrow. If she doesn’t go into labor after about three weeks I would recommend inducing her with drugs. I’ve grabbed what books I could when we’ve stopped, but it wouldn’t hurt to go to a medical college to get the really big volumes. Maybe in Chicago.”
“How would you prevent her from going into labor?” I asked. “And Chicago is burned worse than what we’ve left.”
Ignatius shot me an intense look. “That wouldn’t be good for her or for the fetus.”
“What if we reached a spot where she could give birth and she wouldn’t…disappear?”
Ignatius studied my features. He appeared somewhat agitated. “You really believe she’s going to vanish.” He spread out the fingers on his right hand. “Just like that.”
“I think the baby has the gift, like the rest of us,” I said. “I don’t think Clora does. I think she was pregnant with a special child before the change. I think that child is the only thing keeping Clora here with us now.”
“And when she doesn’t have the child inside of her anymore…”
“I think she’ll do what many people did. Good people. Bad people. The old. The young. The undeserving. Every one of them, simply gone, for reasons we may never understand.” I sighed and clutched the railing, leaning a little. I was suddenly tired again. My shoulder had seemed numb before, but it started to ache.
“You think the other place, the one in Colorado, will allow Clora to exist,” Ignatius whispered, and I strained to hear him over the rumble of the engines.
“I do. As long as Clora stays in it.” I looked over my shoulder and saw Clora talking to Stephen and Craig. The girl with the green hair, whose name I seemed to forget at a moment’s notice joined them. “Like Maston, except without a directed-energy weapon to play God with. Do you think Clora might want to know about her chances? Her risks?”
Ignatius rubbed his temples with the fingertips of both hands. “Jesus, I would like to go a couple of days without getting into a conversation about morality and the wishes of gods I do not understand.” He looked heavenward. “Please, God, just a few days. I’m begging you.”
I watched Clora. She laughed at something Craig said and patted his shoulder. He reached out tentatively and she nodded. The train engineer laid the palm of his hand over her swollen belly and waited. After a few moments, he chuckled and loudly said, “Dang! Girl’s got a kick!”
“Stress might bring labor quicker,” Ignatius said. “I would say don’t tell her.” He glowered. His face twisted in concentration. He used his fingers as if counting. “Train can go twenty miles in an hour, give or take. Maybe more if everything’s clear and there’s no hill. That’s about 400 miles in twenty hours, if we don’t stop for anything except food, water, and coal. It’s about 800 miles to Denver from Chicago. Craig said we change trains in Omaha, but we can push them. If we hurry, we can make it there in three days.”
“Giving us a single day of latitude. Sunshine is on the eastern side of the state, maybe a hundred fifty miles away from Denver, so maybe we have a little more time.”
“We can leave the rest of the group behind,” Ignatius suggested. “We can take a single engine and haul ass. It can be just enough people to shovel coal and make sure Clora doesn’t go into labor early.”
“And we stop at a hospital to get those drugs that will delay labor, just in case?”
“I’ll get them, but I don’t want to use them unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“This is the first baby born after the change,” I said. I kept my eyes on Clora. I knew that staring at her wouldn’t help things. She wasn’t a stupid woman, and she could easily become suspicious, but I couldn’t look away.
“I know that,” Ignatius said. He risked a quick glance at Clora. Clearly, he didn’t want her to think he was watching her, too. “I’ve heard about a few other women who are pregnant. You said one of your group was pregnant in California.”
“She became pregnant after the change.”
“That doesn’t guarantee that the child won’t—” Ignatius cut himself off. “It’s times like this when I wish I could take up smoking again. It’s just as well, since tobacco is all going to go stale, and the supply is going to be limited for some time. And who knows what kind of empire McCurdy is going to set up.”
“McCurdy isn’t like Maston,” I said, forcing myself to believe it. “Maybe he’ll see that we don’t have to live like Maston wanted us to live.”
“You look about as pale as milk,” Ignatius said critically. “Better get your butt back in a bunk. We’re going to be getting off this boat soon and you’ll need the strength.”
I found a spot on the deck and leaned against the cabin. I closed my eyes and felt a breeze across my cheeks and relished the feel of sunshine on my face. The firefly pixies settled down on my head. They didn’t really like going back into the gerbil cage someone had thoughtfully replaced, and I couldn’t blame them.
I felt someone sit beside me, and I heard Spring say, “Oh, him. He’s got pretty hair, but he’s so obnoxious. Man-Who-Talks-In-Others’-Heads.”
Landers said, “I’m glad you made the right decision.”
“Do you mean helping find the ones who were locked up or throwing Maston across an invisible line?” I’m sure the story had gotten around. I had killed the President of the United States of America. Somewhere, someone was comparing me to John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald. And I hadn’t even used a gun. Death by magical nonexistence. Try explaining that one to a jury.
“Both and more than that,” Landers said. Fab. More obfuscation.
“You could have just said something to me,” I complained. “Instead of just muddying the waters.”
“Noelle doesn’t just see one outcome,” he said.
Okay. What does that mean?
“She sees several. One goes this way. Another ends up with you dead. A third ends up with everyone dead. We had to wait to see what happened.” Landers sounded a little bitter. He expected things to be handed to him on a silver platter. Welcome to my world.
“Did Noelle say something about you being locked up?”
“They locked her up before she could.”
Dang. That surely dilled Landers’ pickle. Then I thought of something else.
“You still in communicatio
n with other people?” I asked curiously. “Like McCurdy?”
“He’s shut himself off, tighter than a barrel in a whiskey factory,” Landers said. “I’ve talked with Hanley. He’s headed back to California to talk with your people there.”
McCurdy’s shut himself off from Landers. “McCurdy is following us.”
“He gave a message for you,” Landers said, “before he stopped allowing me access.”
I sighed. It didn’t sound good. It didn’t sound like anything at all good. I didn’t really want to know. “‘Surrender, Dorothy’?” I asked.
Landers didn’t say anything to that.
“I’ve been thinking of The Wizard of Oz lately,” I said. “We need flying monkeys.”
The man finally chuckled. “You’re not that far off. McCurdy said that he understands why you did what you did but that it doesn’t make you innocent.”
“I don’t recall saying I was innocent of anything.”
“You knew what would happen when you tossed the President across an invisible wall,” Landers said.
I thought about what Landers said. I hadn’t planned the action. In the instant I was spinning the man around, I hoped it would happen. I was so angry in those isolated few moments. I wanted Maston to feel the pain that he had caused, not just to myself and the firefly pixies, but to the others with new animals, to the people he had imprisoned simply because they wouldn’t do what he wanted them to do.
“I didn’t know for sure,” I said and wondered if I was trying to defend myself. I should have felt guilty about Maston. It was a possibility that I would feel guilty later. The President had an army and a willing cohort who believed he was doing the right thing. Maston wouldn’t have stopped. The directed-energy weapon plonked down at the Naval Observatory was evidence enough of that.
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