by Eoin Colfer
“I don’t believe it,” gasped Ditto. “Those blue bubbles are baby Parasites?”
“Not babies. They come out all grown up and thirsty for life force.”
Ditto climbed up on a stool beside the table. “It’s the energy-scrubbing part that interests me. These creatures are part of nature. Like us. Maybe we should think about what helping them to reproduce means to the ecology.”
Mona rounded on him. “The ecology! These monsters are sucking the life out of people! You wouldn’t be worried about nature if you’d ever had one sitting on your chest.”
“Hey, come on, Mona; don’t blow a valve. I’m only saying that we have to find another way. Speeding up the Parasites’ reproduction process is not good for anyone.”
Mona took several breaths, then punched Ditto gently on the shoulder. “You’re right, of course. It’s a shock, that’s all. I thought we were doing the right thing. Actually saving people. Now I don’t know, and Stefan, well, he won’t even talk to us. . . .”
Ditto walked across the table, wrapping his short arms around Mona’s shoulders. “He’s supposed to be our leader.
But sometimes we forget how young he is. Stefan will be okay in the morning, you’ll see. Now, you set up the dish. Take your time. We won’t be going hunting tonight.”
Mona sniffed. “Okay.” She turned to Cosmo. “Sorry about the dramatics. I am glad to see you back safely. Let’s go up on the roof, and I’ll show you how to operate the Parabola.”
Cosmo nodded, smiling, but Ditto slapped a thermo-strip on his head. “Absolutely not. Cosmo needs to get some sleep. Oh, I’m sure you two youngsters would love to spend the day discussing circuit breakers beneath the smog. But this young man is not properly healed from his adventure on the rooftop. If he doesn’t rest, we could be looking at a fever or even rejection. He must be dead on his feet.”
As soon as Ditto said it, Cosmo began to feel tired. Suddenly his forehead ached and his knee sent twinges of pain from ankle to hip. “Actually, I am a bit tired. Maybe I could come up later. . . .”
“That’s okay,” said Mona. “You sleep as long as you need to. Ditto is right, you’ve been through a lot. I can show you the Parabola tomorrow.”
Cosmo nodded. He would sleep now, even though he would love to spend the day discussing circuit breakers with Mona Vasquez.
After his time in the vat, Cosmo barely had the energy to crawl to his bed. Already the narrow cot seemed like home to him. Something of his own. Although his body was in Abracadabra Street, his dreams roamed abroad, stopping off in Clarissa Frayne and Myishi Tower. The vat man and Redwood morphed into one person, shaking a fist at him. A fist dripping with cellophane sludge. Come back to us, the mixed-up man said. Come back, Cosmo, we’ve got a dark room waiting for you. A dark room full of sharp things.
Cosmo woke with a start, tumbling from his bed onto the pig-iron floor. The military green blanket was tangled around his legs, and for a moment, Redwood’s insane face hovered before his eyes.
Cosmo sat still for a moment, letting consciousness get a grip on his vision. Gradually, reality overpowered his dreams. The sleep, however troubled, had done him good. The swelling had gone down on his forehead, and his knee barely hurt at all.
Once my hair grows back, I’ll almost pass for human, he thought with a wry smile.
Cosmo stood, pulling on the army-style fatigues provided by Bashkir. You could never have too many pockets, apparently. The warehouse was quiet, apart from a croaking snore from Ditto’s cubicle. To look at him, you wouldn’t think the Bartoli baby’s lungs were big enough to produce a noise like that. Stefan’s curtain was still pulled across, but Mona’s bed was empty and made. Either she was up already, or she hadn’t been to bed.
There was something else unusual. An absence of a noise that was as much a part of the Abracadabra Street warehouse as the curtains. The computer off-line. Of course it was. There would be no more midnight jaunts. No more lightning rods and no more blue spheres. People would just have to lose their life force, as they had probably been doing for thousands of years.
Cosmo poured a cup of sim-coffee from the pot. More for the warmth of the mug in his hands than the actual taste. There was another cup on the table; its chrome handle fashioned to resemble an exhaust pipe. Mech-lube said the letters on its face. Cosmo filled the mug and headed for the elevator.
Walking onto the roof was like jumping out of a plane. A mere building did not seem sturdy enough to stop a person plummeting earthward. Just breathe, Cosmo told himself, and don’t look down. The sun was setting now, made purple by the chemical smog. That’s why we can see the Parasites, thought Cosmo. Chemicals and near-death experiences. The trauma awakens the sixth sense, and the chemicals in our bloodstream keep it awake, in certain cases.
There was a small breezeblock hut on the roof. Squat and basic, with no luxuries except for power lines twisted through a foam-insulation-stuffed hole in the wall. On the low roof stood a mic-and-dish apparatus. It looked like an old-fashioned digital TV antennae, but closer inspection revealed three modern chip boxes soldered to its base. Obviously this was the Parabola Stefan had referred to.
Mona was inside on a plastic bench, wrapped in a foil sleeping bag. Lightweight and superinsulated, the bags had been pioneered by astronauts and made popular by homeless people the world over. Mona’s head lolled back against a large cushion with Styrofoam balls leaking from one corner.
Cosmo took a moment to study her. She was pretty, as far as he could tell, but not like the girls on TV. Pretty in a real-person kind of way, as if there were feelings behind the face.
“Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand there?” said Mona, without opening her eyes.
Cosmo tried to speak. Say something clever, he ordered his brain.
It’s not going to happen, replied his brain. You have enough spare cells for one word. Make it a good one. “Coffee,” blurted Cosmo. It could have been a lot worse under the circumstances.
Mona stretched like a cat, her wiggling toes peeking out from under the unzipped sleeping bags.
“Little piggies,” said Cosmo’s mouth before he could stop it.
Mona opened her eyes, swiveling them to spear the unfortunate youth. “Excuse me, Cosmo?”
“This little piggie went to the market. It’s a rhyme . . . for babies.”
Mona drew her toes beneath the foil. “I’m not a baby, Cosmo.”
“Sorry. There was this boy in the orphanage. He used to say that every time he saw a piggie.”
“So now I’m a piggie.”
“Exactly. No, no. Not you, your toes. How could you be a piggie? You’re too . . .” He prayed silently that Mona would cut him off before he could finish the sentence, but she had no intention of doing so.
She sat back, tilting her head to one side. “I’m too what?”
Cosmo felt as though his brain were expanding. Surely the plate in his head would pop right off. “Too . . . eh . . . human.”
Mona stared at him. “Have you ever had, like, a conversation with another person before?”
Cosmo shrugged. “Not really, unless you count Yes, Marshal. No, Marshal. Whatever you say, Marshal, sir.”
Mona accepted the mug of sim-coffee and thankfully let the subject drop. “Thanks, Cosmo. What time is it?”
“Sunset,” said Cosmo.
Mona peered through the hut’s window. “Purple tonight. People with allergies are going to suffer. Did you ever see a movie sunset, Cosmo? All orange and pretty. Do you think sunsets were really like that?”
Cosmo shrugged. “Maybe. I doubt it. They can do anything with special effects these days.”
Mona took a sip of the sim-coffee. “You’re probably right.” She shrugged off the sleeping bag, leaning forward to a control box balanced on two blocks and a plank. A green light winked on the display. “Excellent,” she said. “Fully charged. Now we can spot any Parasite within a mile of Abracadabra Street.”
Cosmo studied the box. It
didn’t look sophisticated enough to make toast, never mind tracking ghostly creatures.
“If this thing can track the Parasites, surely we can find out where they live.”
“It can spot them,” corrected Mona. “Not track them. As soon as they leave the dish’s footprint, they’re gone. The Parabola was invented by the big power companies to pinpoint power leaks, not to track Parasites. It operates on the same principal as a platypus’s beak. They use sensors in their bills to hone in on electrical charges generated by living beings. I saw that on one of those nature vids that Stefan makes us watch as part of our education.”
The Parabola control box was plugged into an ancient laptop computer. Mona booted it up, opening a 3D-grid program.
“Whenever the Parabola dish picks up a Parasite’s spectrum, it logs its position, speed, and direction. Over time we get a buildup of information.”
“Could this lead us to where the Parasites live?”
“No,” said Mona. “It’s a complete waste of time. They can come from anywhere, at anytime. Their direction depends on what disaster they’re heading for. And the dish only has a footprint of one square mile.”
“So why are we doing it?”
Mona checked behind her to make sure they were alone. “Desperate measures. We ran this program for over a year with nothing to show for it. We should be out there, hunting them.”
“But even if we find them, what can we do? The lightning rods just help them to breed.”
Mona ran her fingers through tousled hair. “I don’t know. What about water? Maybe we could spray them down. There must be something.”
A blue blip appeared on the screen.
“There’s one, look! A hundred yards northeast. Traveling at sixty miles per hour.”
Cosmo hurried to the window. In the distance a lone Parasite disappeared over the lip of a building.
“So what good is that to us?” asked Mona. “None, unless we can catch him.” She leaned back on the cushion, hugging the foil blanket tight. “What we need is a miracle.”
Cosmo smiled. “Well, we’re in the right place.”
“You got that right, Cosmo. Abracadabra Street. You know why it’s called that?”
Cosmo sat beside her on the bench, shaking his head.
“Years ago, the geniuses who designed Satellite City decided that there would be specific sections for the artisans. That’s why you have Van Gogh Arcade and Whitman Heights. All the painters were supposed to live in Van Gogh, and all the poets in Whitman. Abracadabra Street was for Vegas people. Magicians, lounge singers, and dancers. It was a stupid idea. You can’t put art in a box. Nobody with real talent is going to be told where to live. Stefan picked this place up for a song. He doesn’t even pay taxes. Smart guy, most of the time.”
“Most of the time,” said Stefan’s voice behind them. His tone did not resonate with cheer. Nobody would be asking Stefan to play Santa in the Christmas pageant, even if there were more than a couple million people still celebrating that holiday.
“Mind if I take over? I need to talk to our new Spotter.”
Mona got to her feet, holding the blanket around her shoulders. “Sure. I could do with a few hours in a real bed. Who knows? I might even go out in the daylight, now that we have the nights off.”
Mona bent low so her face was level with Cosmo’s. “That was nice shooting with the tank. You saved me again.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks.”
“Welcome,” mumbled Cosmo. His face felt as though someone had plugged it in to a wall socket.
Mona laughed. “You keep this up, and you’ll spend your whole day getting kissed.”
Cosmo got a sentence together. “Maybe next time you’ll save me. Then I’ll owe you a kiss.” It was a grammatical masterpiece, given the circumstances.
“Maybe,” said Mona, her eyes twinkling. She walked up to Stefan. “Are you talking to me now?”
Stefan didn’t look any happier than he had the previous night. “Listen, Mona. Last night, I was in a bad way. My work got trashed.”
Mona poked his chest with a knuckle. “Our work. We’re the Supernaturalists. A team.”
“You’re right. A team. I’ll keep it in mind from now on.”
She squeezed his forearm gently. “You do that, Stefan.”
Mona ran across the cold rooftop, taking tiny steps inside the silver cocoon of her sleeping bag. Stefan stepped inside the hut, closing the concertina door. He sat beside Cosmo. “So, Cosmo, how are you feeling?”
Cosmo shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like a TV screen with nothing on it. Blank. I haven’t had time to become a person.”
“Satellite City can do that to you. This place has no respect for individuals. Fit in, do what you’re told, and don’t ask questions.” He twiddled a dial on the Parabola box. “You have time now, Cosmo. Time to be part of the group.”
“Am I really? Part of the group?”
Stefan sighed. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been in bad temper lately, Cosmo. But that’s not you, it’s me.”
Cosmo did not answer immediately, staring intently at the computer screen. “If I’m ever to be a real part of this group, you need to tell me.”
“Tell you what?” asked Stefan, though he already knew.
“Why we’re doing this? What happened to you?”
Stefan’s face was grim for several seconds, then it softened. He had made up his mind. “Okay, Cosmo. You deserve the truth. But take my word for it, sometimes knowing everything doesn’t make it any easier to sleep at night. . . .”
Stefan leaned forward, resting his face in his hands, and began speaking. Hesitantly at first, but soon the words rolled out like pebbles from a sack.
“Three years ago I was a hotshot cadet. Fifteen years old, and at the top of my class. Professor Faustino, my tutor and a close family friend, had put my name forward for officer school. Then one day it all went horribly wrong. My mother called me at the academy. She needed a lift home from the clinic where she worked, and I had just passed my cruiser jockey test. So I picked her up in the police cruiser. I figured I would swing by our apartment, then drop the cruiser off at police HQ.”
Stefan kneaded his eye sockets with his fists. “Stupid. A police cruiser is always a target. Always. Innocent civilians are never supposed to be taken in the car. I knew that. What was I thinking?”
“What happened?” asked Cosmo.
“We were halfway home when the car exploded. The techies said it was a camouflaged mine in the chassis. They never found out who planted it.”
Stefan ran a finger along the scar at the edge of his mouth. “I was pretty broken up. Mother was badly injured too. Very badly. But she would have lived, I’m certain of it. I’ve seen plenty of wounds, and she would have lived.”
“If it hadn’t been for the Parasites?” guessed Cosmo.
“Those blue devils swarmed down on us like bees on honey. And I couldn’t move, I couldn’t save her. I just lay there pinned by the cab. Watching while they sucked my mother dry. Three of them landed on me. Arms and chest. With those big eyes staring down.”
Stefan took a break, dragging a sleeve across his eyes. “The paramedics were there in seconds. There happened to be a unit close by. Ditto saved me with a defibrillator. But for my mother, it was too late. I was too late. I failed her.”
Cosmo thought long and hard before speaking. “You didn’t fail her,” he said. “The Parasites are natural. You can’t fight nature.”
Stefan draped an arm around Cosmo’s shoulder. “Thanks, Cosmo,” he said. “That’s a nice thing to say, but whales were natural, and we sure got rid of them.”
Compared to the preceeding week, the following days were extremely quiet. Mona monitored the Parabola closely, but the computer could not convert the sightings into a pattern.
Finally Stefan called a meeting after a trip to see his mother’s ashes. He had visited her almost every day since the meeting with Ellen Faustino. More than ever now, h
e missed her strength and guidance.
“I’ve been thinking about all this,” he said gesturing at the warehouse and its array of equipment. “It’s madness, all of it. What did I think we could do against . . . nature? Every time we blasted a Parasite, we created a dozen new ones to prey on our kind. How many lives did that cost?”
“But we have the energy pulse now,” objected Mona. “All we need to do is find a nest, and we can undo all that.”
“No, you were right, Mona,” sighed Stefan. “The Parabola never worked. I have no right to put you in danger.” He paused, looking each one of the group in the eye in turn. There was something big coming. Mona reached across under the table, squeezing Cosmo’s hand. Whatever Stefan said next would affect all of them.
The Supernaturalist leader took a deep breath. “I have made a decision. From today on, we’re officially normal people.”
The statement echoed through the warehouse. Normal people? Was there any such thing?
“You never put me in danger,” said Cosmo. “No one forced me to do anything. I did what I thought was right. All you did for me was to save my life.”
“Me too,” said Mona. “If it hadn’t been for the Supernaturalists, I’d be an oil slick by the side of a racetrack somewhere.”
Stefan shook his head. “The time has come for me to wake up. My mother has gone, I have to accept that.”
Mona jumped to her feet. “We can’t just give in, Stefan. You know what our destiny is. We fight these things until we can’t fight anymore. Tell him, Ditto.”
The Bartoli baby’s eyes were downcast. “Maybe the boss is right,” he said. “Maybe we should call it a day.”
Mona threw her hands in the air. “I don’t believe this. One operation goes bad and everybody falls apart.”
“Falls apart? That’s not it, Mona. That’s not it at all. We gave it our best shot, but it’s like trying to mop up the ocean with a tissue. Who says we can’t be happy like ordinary people for a while?”
Mona’s face was red with anger. “Normal people are being sucked dry by these creatures, only they don’t know it. You want to watch and do nothing while the Parasites go about their business?”