by Hugh Howey
Two Mollies dashed up, their feet slapping solid wood. They had trays of goodies with them.
“Tea and cake, Mom? We made them ourselves!” They said it in unison. In harmony.
“Now, isn’t that lovely of you girls. Go ahead, Mollie, take some.” What Molly took in was the scene around her. All four of them in identical dresses. Everything so real and yet so surreal. When she’d first arrived, the girls had looked nothing like her, but now they bore an eerie resemblance.
She managed a meek “thanks” and accepted a cup of tea. She blew the steam into wisps, but didn’t take a sip. She wasn’t even sure what it would mean if she did.
“Mom, I need to know if something important happened here. Something that might mean big trouble for the galaxy—or anything like that. Do ‘two doors’ mean anything to you?”
Parsona seemed to chew on this. She cupped her tea in both hands and nodded to the two Mollies. They ran back to the commons to join the others. “There was one thing,” she said. “My other visitor always wanted to talk about it, I’m not sure why. While we were here, a bunch of settlers started going missing. We were looking into it on the side and reporting back to the Navy, but—”
“Mrs. Fyde?” Molly and her mother both turned; a Stanley walked across the lawn to greet them. He nodded at Molly, “I’m so sorry to interrupt your visit.” Then he turned to Parsona. “You have another visitor, Mrs. Fyde. Normally I wouldn’t intrude, but it’s your account benefactor. He would love to see you at your earliest convenience.”
Parsona smoothed her dress across her thighs with both hands, her cup of tea somehow gone. “Well, isn’t this lovely,” she said. “Two visitors on the same day! Is it my tall friend?”
“I believe so, Mrs. Fyde. It’s the only other visitor you have ever had.”
“Well, this is simply too delightful! Molly, would you like to meet him?” She turned to Stanley before Molly could respond, “Can we do that?”
Stanley smiled. Molly noticed his flesh looked flawless in this place—perfectly natural.
“I will inform Mr. Byrne that you are with your daughter and see what he says.”
“Splendid,” Parsona replied.
Stanley bowed and Molly waved goodbye. Moments later, she felt a sharp prick on her arm—as if she’d been pinched. It hurt so bad, she nearly dropped her tea. Molly looked down at her skin, but it appeared normal. She glanced around the swing, but they were alone.
Probably nothing, she thought, blowing simulated steam from the surface of her tea.
••••
“Problemss.”
Cole looked over at Walter. The boy had his computer out, probably playing that stupid video game of his.
“Did your guy die again?”
Walter clucked his tongue. “No. Real problemss. Molly’ss mom hass a vissitor.”
Cole turned back to the video of a Stanley showing off a terraformed Dakura, all covered with beautiful androids living in harmony. “Yeah she does, it’s your captain—” Cole sat up in the bed. “Wait. Are you hacking into their system? I told you not to—”
Walter hissed, cutting him off. “Another vissitor, dummy. And I think… I think they’re moving Molly.”
“What?” Cole got off his bed and walked around Walter to look over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
“Sshe wass in vissitation room twelve. Now sshe iss in ssomething called Long Sstay nine-two-one.”
“What does that even mean?”
“They have a sschematic.”
“Pull it up,” Cole said, reminded again how wicked smart Walter was in some things to be so annoying and juvenile in others.
“Long Sstay nine-two-one,” Walter said, pointing to a small square on a long hallway somewhere.
“Is that on this floor?”
Walter shook his head. “Not the hotel. Thiss iss where the bodiess go,” he told Cole.
“Which bodies?”
Walter looked him in the eye. The boy’s face was a dull sheen, like an old coin.
“The dreaming oness,” he hissed.
••••
“How long has it been since you’ve seen this other friend of yours, Mom?”
“Oh, it’s so hard to keep track of time here.”
Parsona rubbed her belly as if calculating the time in trimesters. “Ten years?” she guessed.
Ten years, Molly thought. This was too much of a coincidence.
“What can you tell me about this friend of yours?”
“Oh, I would love for you to just meet him and see for yourself. I’ll have the girls make some more tea and cake.”
Molly sighed. “It would just be nice to know what sorts of things he enjoys talking about, so we can avoid any awkward moments.”
“Aren’t you thoughtful? Hmmm. I do recall him being into politics.”
“Politics? What kind?”
“Navy stuff. The war with the Drenards. Hey, is that war still going on?”
“Yeah, Mom. It hasn’t let up. Speaking of Drenards, did you and Dad ever go to their planet?”
Parsona gaped at her as if she’d lost her mind. “The Drenard’s planet? Of course not, dear! They were my sworn enemy. Still are, I suppose.”
“So, you don’t speak Drenard?”
“Where in the world—?” Parsona paused. “Although, if I did, the Navy would’ve taken me a bit more seriously, wouldn’t they?” She studied her daughter closely. “Now, where are these questions coming from? What has your father been telling you?”
“Nothing, Mom. I just heard you guys were onto something really important on Lok and that maybe my being born messed some things up. I hoped—”
“You hoped you could make things better by picking up where we left off? Oh, sweetheart, that is such a wonderful gesture. It really is.” She put her arms around Molly’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Thank you, but I don’t have any regrets. I’m perfectly happy here, and I have so many wonderful girls to keep me company.”
“Maybe I need to do this for me, Mom. To make myself happy.”
Parsona’s eyes twinkled, as if something registered. “You know, you mentioned two doors. Well—and it’s probably nothing—but after you were born, I was in pretty bad shape for a while. Your father would hardly leave my side. We were here, inside this very house. Wait, that’s right! The group we were investigating, they took us in that night. Kept us warm. Mr. Byrne didn’t come with us for some reason, just led us to the porch. Carried me, in fact, while I carried you. We didn’t see him again until I got really sick. But I—the last thing I remember is those people we were cracking down on—they tried to do everything they could to help me.”
“What about the doors, Mom?”
Parsona looked at Molly and brushed some of her brown hair off her head. She gazed out over the commons where dark clouds and rainbows battled for supremacy.
“Oh, they took great care of you,” she said. “And your father—he was a wreck. When my fever wasn’t too bad, I can remember them talking. About the Drenards. About a race from another galaxy. No, maybe that was something I dreamt at the time. We haven’t made contact outside of our own galaxy, have we? So hard to remember.”
Parsona shook her head.
“I do recall one of the fellows, an older gentleman with a thick white beard—clever fellow. He went on and on about hyperspace. Very agitated man. I’m sorry, dear, I’m afraid I forgot what I was thinking… wait! I do remember. Oh, no. That must’ve been a symptom of my fever.”
“What was it?”
“Oh, nothing. Just a dream I must’ve had. I’m just awful at remembering.”
“Even if it’s weird, Mom, I’d love to hear it.”
“Promise not to laugh? Because this is not the sort of dream I usually have, but I wasn’t in the best of shape at the time.”
“I promise, Mom.”
“One night—like I say, it must’ve been a dream, but vivid as this one that I live in now—the wall of the liv
ing room opened up. They had you and me set up on a cot out there, keeping us warm by the fire. I remember—what a crazy dream—that the wall just opened right up, like it’d been zipped open. And—don’t laugh—but people came out of it. Well, not people, aliens! All kinds. Thousands of them.”
“Thousands?”
“You promised not to laugh.”
“I’m not laughing, Mom, I’m flabbergasted. This house doesn’t look big enough for twenty people, much less a hundred.”
“It was a dream. It had to be. But they weren’t all in there at once. They passed from one wall to the other, appeared and disappeared. They marched right through the living room for hours.”
“Sounds like a great dream.”
“It wasn’t. I remember being terrified and powerless to do anything. You were bundled up next to me; I thought they might take you, or do something awful. It must’ve been the fever. And every last one of them wore armor and carried foul weapons of all sorts. Probably a metaphor for my body trying to fight off whatever took me. Or nearly took me. It was one of the last things I remember before we came here. That, and the fight in the commons.”
“What was that about? The fight in the—”
Parsona stopped the swing, cutting off Molly’s question. She rose, gazing out at the grassy square.
“Look, Molly. We have a visitor.”
Molly turned to follow her mother’s gaze. Over the sea of children, she could see a tall, pale man strolling their way like a mast pushing through the mist. His white linen shirt and matching pants sagged on his skeletal frame like becalmed sails. He seemed familiar to Molly, in the ephemeral way this setting did. He was a walking déjà vu and heading right for her, a wide smile on his face.
And something altogether different in his eyes…
26
Walter strolled through the lobby and ignored Cole, who was trailing along behind him. The human kept hissing at him, trying to convince him to go back to the room without being overheard. It sounded like he was making fun of how Walter talked.
“We don’t even know that she needs saving,” Cole whispered.
The lobby buzzed with activity. Several Stanleys turned to watch the two boys as they weaved through the organized chaos. Walter felt exposed—conspicuously unattended, as all the other guests had escorts—he hurried toward the elevators. The situation reminded him of many a clumsy heist he’d attempted in the past, and shouldn’t have. Well, he should’ve planned them better, at least.
“I know sshe iss in trouble,” he hissed over his shoulder. “You can sstay here if you like.”
A tour group popped out of one of the elevators—Walter veered toward it, dodging around a Stanley that seemed to be heading for the same elevator. He beat the robot to the lift and pressed the button to close the door. The Stanley stopped and stared at him, confused. Cole, unfortunately, managed to shoulder the android aside and squeeze through the shutting doors.
The human seemed angry.
“Listen, Walter—hey, where’d you get that card?”
Walter looked at the pass he’d swiped through the elevator reader; it differed in color from the ones around their necks. The human might not be quite as dumb as he looked.
“I borrowed it,” he said. He typed away at the keyboard by the elevator, then turned to look at the back wall. The tour schematic of the complex came up. It showed their elevator descending the shaft.
“How do you know how to do that?” Cole asked.
Walter sneered. “Englissh makess me ssound sstupid becausse of Englissh, not becausse of me.” He looked to his handheld computer. “They usse the ssame passsword for everything here,” he said, shaking his silvery head.
••••
Mr. Byrne stomped up the porch, the steps creaking with a heft his frame kept hidden. Parsona rose to give him a hug—Molly remained seated. As the two adults embraced, Byrne peered down at Molly over Parsona’s shoulder.
“Mollie Fyde?”
“Isn’t she lovely?” Parsona asked, breaking off the hug and gazing adoringly at Molly.
“Mr. Byrne,” the man said, holding out a thin hand, pale as a corpse’s.
Molly warily accepted the outstretched hand, then shivered as her small grasp wrapped all the way around his fingers.
Parsona clapped her hands together. “Let’s go inside where there’s plenty of seating, shall we?”
Mr. Byrne held Molly’s hand and stared at her long enough to make her uncomfortable. “That sounds splendid,” he said.
A roaring fire greeted them inside, despite the pleasant weather. Three comfortable chairs faced the hearth, a low table before them.Quaint pictures of frontier life adorned the clapboard walls, and folded quilts were draped over anything that would hold them. An especially ornate one stretched out across one wall like the skin of a cottage drying for the tanner. Random pops sounded from the fire, and worn wood creaked under their feet.
Even the imperfections are perfect, Molly noted.
“I’ll sit in the middle, if you two don’t mind,” Parsona said. “I just can’t believe my luck to have you both visiting.” She lowered herself gracefully to the center chair and turned to Mr. Byrne. He eased himself down into the floral upholstery as well. “This is Mollie’s first visit with me, and I haven’t seen you in almost, what, ten years? Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Quite,” agreed Mr. Byrne. He smiled warmly, looking past Parsona and eying Molly.
“After we catch up, perhaps we could go for a horseback ride, or head into town for a play. They always have the best shows at the opera house.”
“That would be lovely,” said Mr. Byrne. Molly saw him glance to the coffee table and then back to Parsona. “Perhaps the girls could make us some cake or tea?” he asked.
Parsona slapped her thighs. “Why, of course! I say, what manners!” She looked at Molly apologetically. “You can tell I’m out of practice. You two get to know one another while I go see how the girls are coming along.”
The floor squeaked with her passage. As the door flew open, the sounds of laughter and play flooded through like a joyous outburst, then fell silent as it closed.
Molly narrowed her eyes at the man. “Who are you?” she asked.
Byrne folded his fingers together and rested his elbows on the cushioned armrest, leaning toward Molly. “Why, I’m your godfather, Mollie.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, but I am. Your father and I were the closest of friends.”
“Then how come I’ve never heard of you before?” Molly asked.
Byrne looked to the fire; embers spat out on a rug that seemed incapable of burning. “There are many things your father never told you.”
“Yeah? Maybe that’s because I was six years old and I didn’t need to know them yet.”
Byrne shook his head and clucked his tongue. “No, no, no, Mollie. Things he couldn’t tell you.”
Molly thought about the elusiveness of her mom—the one trapped in Parsona’s nav computer—but she refused to let this creep trip her up or cast doubts. This had to be the man her mother wanted her memories kept from.
“You don’t scare me, and I don’t believe your lies,” she said.
He spread his arms; the skin above his eyes rose in surprise, or amusement—it was difficult to tell without hair on his brow.
“Scared? I’m not trying to scare you—”
“Whatever. Just so you know, my last godfather tried to mess with me and I killed him.”
“Ah, yes. Lucin. I heard about that.” He shook his head again. “Shame, really. I should have gotten to the old bastard first.”
“Yeah?” Molly challenged. “Why? What did you want with him? What do you want from my mother? Why are you even here?”
He leaned closer, his voice lowered to the level of the crackling flames. “Why, Mollie, I’m simply here to collect what’s mine.”
“Which is?” She tried to conceal the very real sense of dread creeping
up her spine. The door burst back open and Parsona entered, joined by a cough of laughter from outside. The sound of joy just augmented the creepiness of the situation. Molly stared at Mr. Byrne, her question hanging in the air.
He lifted a hand, unraveled a long bony finger and stretched it out in Molly’s direction. He didn’t say it, just mouthed the single word with thin lips that gaped open, then formed a small circle.
“You,” he mouthed.
••••
Cole still didn’t believe Molly was in any danger, and he was normally the paranoid one. Recently, he’d been right more often than not, so he decided to trust his gut and assume Molly was fine. He just needed to concentrate on keeping Walter from causing any trouble.
“Are you sure Molly was moved?” he asked.
“Possitive,” Walter said. “Computerss don’t lie.”
“Maybe they do,” Cole said. “Maybe you just can’t smell it on them the way you can on people.”
The boy glanced up from his computer. “They’re programss. They can only do what they’re told.” The elevator dinged, and the doors cracked open. Walter scrunched up his metallic face. “Unlesss they’re told to lie,” he mused aloud.
The elevator opened up on the lobby with the glass partitions. Cold strode out and saw another group standing nearby, waiting to enter a neighboring lift. It dinged open just as Walter strolled out. The Stanley with the group turned to survey the two boys.
Cole froze, speechless. He could see that they were about to get busted for walking around without an escort.
Walter didn’t miss a beat. He turned and looked back into the empty elevator they’d just exited. “After we tour thiss level, can we get ssomething to eat?” he asked, as if there was someone in there.
Cole glanced from Walter, to the empty lift, then over at the Stanley. The android gave him a fake smile and joined his potential clients in the neighboring elevator. The doors closed, meeting with a soft thud.
“We musst hurry,” Walter said. Cole nodded. He watched the boy hold his computer level and stare down at it, swiveling in place as if he needed to line up the virtual with the real in order to get his bearings. He pointed to one of the glass partitions, then started walking in that direction; Cole followed.