Hypatia pulled me over and leaned my head on her shoulder with her arm around mine. A ring of her perfect curly golden hair sprang into my nose, tickling my nostril a bit. She didn’t say anything. Sometimes Hypatia knew exactly the right thing to do.
Then I sneezed in her hair, and the moment was over.
* * *
According to Hypatia, most school trips are usually pretty straightforward, but most school trips aren’t run by Ms. Botfly, who insisted on stopping at every mildly interesting tourist trap along the way. We had funnel cakes; visited an antique mall in Cuba, Missouri, where I bought an Eiffel Tower figurine; and hit up about nine gas stations, where I made a point of stocking up on gum and candy to take home. Let me tell you, it was nice to go shopping somewhere I didn’t have to worry about accidentally buying peach-onion-gunpowder-flavored bubble gum.
After a couple hours on the road, we arrived at our destination—a random dead-end gravel path off a random dirt road, which was off a random, unnamed country highway somewhere in northern Arkansas or southwest Missouri. (I’d quit paying attention a few hundred miles before.)
Incidentally, the fact that our drive should have taken the better part of eight hours, but my tablet said it was barely 9:30 AM suggested that perhaps the school bus might not have been 100 percent normal after all.
It wasn’t until the bus pulled to a stop just behind a stand of trees that I started wondering why exactly we had come. All the way I’d kind of assumed the reason for going would be obvious once we arrived. But the only obvious thing was that there didn’t seem to be a lot going on in that particular corner of the world. For all I could see, it was your basic forest, albeit an unusually dense and cold one.
Ms. Botfly gathered everyone in a clearing once the bus had abandoned us. She was dressed in jeans and a thermal jacket complete with matching hat, and held a baby wrapped in a blanket on one hip. It threw me for a loop until I realized the baby was Fluorine.
There was a bright flash, and a tall, slender woman in her midthirties was sitting on Ms. Botfly’s hip where the baby had been a moment before. Ms. Botfly was ready for it and dropped her on her full-grown butt the moment the change occurred. Adult Fluorine was perturbed by this rough treatment and wondered aloud whether school employees should be throwing people around all willy-nilly.
I doubted the School would drag me along on field trips if I had a similar problem, but being the granddaughter of the School’s owner and principal meant a little more special treatment than the rest of us could expect. A good example of this was the fact that Ms. Botfly helped Fluorine to her feet and apologized. If Ms. Botfly had dropped any other student, she would have just chastised them for falling and moved on.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ms. Botfly began, speaking in her loud official voice. “Everyone open your FieldTrip app and make sure your tablets are recording sound and location data for evaluation later. This will be a major examination and counts as roughly thirty percent of your grade in my class, so no slacking off and no funny business. I’ll be watching.”
She made a point of issuing a free supplemental warning sneer at everyone before continuing. “As some of you know, at the School we get about ninety percent of our students through enrollment of children born to known parahuman families, and the other ten percent are regular humans we hear about from testing, grade reports, science fairs, and things like that. HOWEVER, from time to time we have a student who does not come to our attention via our traditional processes. We find these students through rumors, satellite data, and reports in human media. Recently we started seeing articles in local papers like this one.”
She produced and held aloft a copy of the Ozark Mountain Times Shopper, which was emblazoned with two-inch-high letters spelling out one of the most amazing headlines I’d ever seen: MIRACLE MULE BARKS LIKE A DOG.
“We can’t take him!” I cried. “THAT MULE BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!”
“Not that, dummy,” Ms. Botfly snapped. “Look here . . . ,” she said, leafing through the paper until she found the article she was seeking. “Read that aloud to everyone, won’t you, Princess SmartButt?”
I didn’t hate Princess SmartButt, as far as nicknames went, so I didn’t correct her.
Third Ozark Mountain Creeper Sighting Raises Concerns
by Shopper Staff Reporter Kitty Willis
The Tomahawk County Sheriff’s Office today issued its first official statement on the Ozark Mountain Creeper phenomenon that is sweeping the tri-county area. Speaking with reporters yesterday afternoon, Sheriff’s Deputy George Willis said, “We have no evidence of anything unusual happening up in them woods. There’s plenty of animals, but we don’t have any creepers, or prowlers, or howlers, or Wookiees, or anything like that. Anyone who says they saw some big, weird animal or whatever is probably remembering things wrong. Every animal looks bigger and scarier in the dark.”
Despite the official position of denying growing public concern, the Sheriff’s Office has investigated several reports of a creature some have described as something between “a big worm and a moose.” So far no creatures have been captured, and miraculously, no citizens have been killed or eaten alive.
When pressed to account for his organization’s stunning failure in protecting the public from an unknown menace, Deputy Willis grew defensive. “Darn it, Kitty, your mom didn’t raise you to go throwing insults at family like that. You probably heard someone hunting off season or doing something they shouldn’t be doing. You shouldn’t be going up in there anyway. Besides, you never even saw it. It got cold, there was a shooting star, and you heard a noise and reckoned whatever made it must look like a moose worm. What the heck kind of sound does a worm make, anyway?”
The press responded with a chilling imitation of the sound many have heard over recent months, eliciting laughter instead of grave concern from the ALLEGED public servant. Officials have recommended that if encountering an unknown animal–
“Okay,” Ms. Botfly interrupted. “You can stop there. The long and short of it is that people around here have been complaining about strange noises in the forest, unexplained lights in the sky, and a marked change in typical conditions. These are the classic signs of uncontacted parahuman activity. At the School, our Chaperone artificial intelligence system monitors all manner of news reports from across the nation, looking for just this sort of article. Once reports indicate someone might have run into a parahuman or one of their projects, we do further research.
“Last week satellite and drone observations determined the presence of a small antimatter reactor and some quantity of extraterrestrial genetic material within the target educational age range. We can therefore conclude that the source is at least one parahuman and that they should be attending school instead of goofing around in the woods.”
“How do you know they’re school-aged?” I asked. “Carbon dating or something?”
Ms. Botfly shook her head. “The angst readings are off the charts. It’s a teenager for sure.”
“Is that common?” someone asked. “For parahumans to live on their own, without knowing there are other parahumans out there? It seems like they would have gotten caught by now.”
“It’s not terribly common, but it happens,” Ms. Botfly explained. “In certain places, we still come across small groups of parahumans who exist in relative isolation. Some are aware of the rest of us and prefer to go it on their own, and others think they and their family are alone in a world filled with normal humans. The reason they’re here doesn’t matter. The goal today is to contact the school-aged student and to bring them back with us to begin a proper education.”
Warner raised a hand. “What if they don’t want to come? Attending the School isn’t mandatory.”
“True, Warner,” Ms. Botfly said. Warner was one of the few students whose name she could remember on a regular basis. “The issue is the technology. They can live out in
the normal human world, and they can build antimatter reactors humans haven’t invented yet. But we’d prefer they not do both at the same time. The last thing we need is for them to be discovered and cause a national panic. Whoever this is, we know from the fact that they’re making headlines that they won’t stay hidden long. If the wrong humans discovered even one parahuman, it could start a panic. They’d be using genetic tests to weed us out for research and interrogation in no time. That’s why when we see someone doing interesting things and getting attention for it, we let them know they shouldn’t do that and offer them a chance to learn how to fly under the radar, so to speak.”
Something didn’t add up for me. “So we’re here to pick up one kid? And we’ve brought two dozen armed students just to say hi?”
“Yes!” Ms. Botfly exclaimed cheerfully. “The thing you need to remember is that many uncontacted parahuman families believe they are alone in the world and live in fear of outsiders. They assume they may be attacked or imprisoned if they are discovered, which isn’t far from the truth. This one appears to be alone. Because of that, there’s a pretty significant chance they will attempt to flee or murder us all when we approach. You should see what they did to my drone. Horrifying. Speaking of which, did you all remember your weapons?”
Everyone nodded.
“And everyone brought boots suitable for hiking?”
Again everyone nodded.
“Fantastic! And everyone brought energy-dampened body armor capable of repelling a one-point-twenty-one gigawatt thermal inversion stream weapon?”
Nobody nodded.
“Hello! Earth to class?”
Hypatia raised her hand. “You just said to bring warm clothes. The email didn’t say anything about body armor.”
Ms. Botfly looked around to the other students before consulting her handheld. “Is that right? I could have sworn I told everyone that . . . No, here’s the email. You’re right, Hypatia. I said nothing about body armor. Hm. Well, you should be fine without it.”
Several students raised their hands, apparently concerned that the possibility of being murdered was even a thing, but Ms. Botfly charged forward intrepidly. “Now, every indication of parahuman activity has been within five miles of this location, which gives us a relatively small area to search.
“I want you to divide yourselves into teams of three or four, spread out, and find the source of those readings. It might look like a research facility, or it might look like a tree stump with wires coming out of it. It could be a small house, a shack, or even an inhabited cave. There’s no telling what we might run into, so the moment you spot any sign of habitation or development, please alert the class using the FieldTrip app. That will give the rest of us your location, so we can approach our rogue parahuman en masse, thus minimizing the possibility that they will put up a fight.
“Everyone got that? Great! Let’s go!” she said, bravely unfolding a camp chair. A second later, she had produced a fat paperback novel and a narrow aluminum thermos and appeared to be quite comfortable.
Then she noticed that the rest of us were still hanging around.
She took a gulp from her steaming thermos and grimaced, waving us away like we were flies trying to land on her. “What are you all waiting for? Go on! I’ll maintain base camp. Call if you have problems. Git!”
6
DOWN IN THE HOLLER
Winter in northern Arkansas isn’t quite as bad as winter in North Dakota, so it wasn’t as miserable as I’d expected. There wasn’t even a lot of snow on the ground. To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded a little more ice and snow. Wind almost cold enough to bite chapped my cheeks, and spongy, snowy earth grasped my feet with every step—it was nice to experience the real outdoors again.
For once, I wasn’t the one complaining. Hypatia, an indoors cat if I’ve ever met one, was absolutely outraged that there weren’t sidewalks or even gravel paths for us to follow. She and Dirac both complained about how “they” kept it so cold in the forest. “I should have brought Majorana’s portable microclimate generator. That would straighten this right out. Why don’t they keep it at least a little drier?”
“They don’t set the temperature, you know—it’s a climate thing,” Warner pointed out.
Hypatia looked perturbed. “Of course the humans don’t set the temperature—we’re not idiots. But this is a state preserve. I just think it’s a bit inconsiderate they haven’t made an effort to . . .”
She trailed off as we crested a hill and found ourselves looking down on a humble wooden cabin. Situated at the foot of the hill, it was about thirty feet down a steep, densely wooded slope. Our viewpoint allowed us to see only the roof and a windowless back wall. A tin chimney no wider than a soda can extended from the roof and emitted a slender tendril of white smoke. The faint smell of baking bread hung in the air, making my stomach rumble.
It could have been anyone’s cabin—a hunter’s shack or even a full-time home—but something told me it belonged to our mysterious parahuman. Maybe it was the lack of a car or other means of normal transportation, or the absence of a road anywhere nearby. It could have been the weirdness of an almost perfectly tidy cabin in the backwoods connected to no power line or propane tanks. Or maybe it was the blinding shafts of vivid green light flooding out of the front and sides of the house at random intervals, like somewhere in that little shack a thermonuclear rave was going down.
“Get down!” I said on instinct. That was a bad move because Warner, Hypatia, and I all knew I meant “Take cover and conceal yourselves,” while Dirac assumed it meant “Let’s get down there!”
He took two steps forward, noticed we weren’t following, and turned to see what the holdup was. Before he could say anything, he slipped on the muddy slope and tumbled backward down the steep incline. Instantly putting his parahuman grace and physical ability to work, he grasped a tree as he tumbled past and slipped around the trunk like a gymnast on the parallel bars. The young tree, rooted in shallow, rocky soil, struggled to support his weight and tilted precariously down and out from the slope, threatening to come loose altogether. In the end, it brought Dirac to a rest just a few inches above the top of the cabin. If he had hesitated even a millisecond, he might have crashed through the roof. Instead, he lowered himself soundlessly to the shingled surface and became our forward scout.
Warner, breathing a sigh of relief with Hypatia and me, booted up his FieldTrip app and pressed the SEND NOTIFICATION button. Hypatia used her computer to scan for heat and electromagnetic signature changes in the area that might indicate some kind of alarm or response had been triggered. A buzz in my pocket told me the other students had also gotten Warner’s message and would be on their way shortly. We just had to stay still and quiet until the cavalry arrived.
Then a shrill squeal erupted from all four of our tablets.
“ATTENTION, CLASS, PLEASE CONVERGE ON THE POINT I’M TRANSMITTING TO YOUR UNITS IMMEDIATELY,” Ms. Botfly’s voice blared from each of our devices. “USE STEALTH TO ENSURE OUR TARGET IS NOT ALERTED TO OUR PRESENCE AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS!”
Shockingly, broadcasting our plans to be stealthy out loud to the whole valley did not help. Immediately, the green light went out. As the last remnants of Ms. Botfly’s orders echoed back to us from an opposing hill somewhere, a door clattered open on the front of the cabin. It was on the side facing away from us, so I didn’t get a look at whoever was there, but they were also unable to get a look at us. I motioned to Dirac that he should get down, and once I saw that he was laying flat and well hidden against the roof, I got behind a sturdy log that offered the best position and cover. Before long, Warner and Hypatia joined me, and we assessed the situation.
“How long before the others get here?” Hypatia asked in a whisper barely loud enough to carry above the slight breeze.
“The nearest group is about half a mile away, so it could be a while,” Warner said, con
sulting his phone.
Hoping his phone was muted, I jabbed out a quick text to Dirac on my phone: See anything? How many?
A second later, he replied: One young female, maybe thirteen, alone. Looking around the cabin. Stay low.
“She’s alone,” Hypatia said. “What are we scared of again? Let’s go talk to her instead of storming the house like the Marine Corps.”
“She could still be a threat,” Warner said. “She might think we’re the NSA or something.”
“Nonsense,” Hypatia insisted. “I’ll go alone and make it clear we mean her no harm.”
“And then blast her if she gives us any trouble?” I asked.
“Um . . . no?” Hypatia said, probably wondering if we’d missed her point.
“Bad plan,” Warner said. “She could take you hostage, and we wouldn’t have the option to take her down, or she could kill you before we had a chance to intervene. I say we wait for the others, and let Ms. Botfly talk to her.”
“Oh, THAT sounds like a great idea,” I said.
“She’s done it before,” he said.
“Maybe that’s why some have attacked. She almost killed me and the Basic Chemistry class yesterday.”
Warner rolled his eyes. “It was pretend.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m just worried that if we have the whole class hanging around, someone will get trigger happy the moment she sneezes,” Hypatia said. “They’ll probably blast her if she blinks.”
“That doesn’t sound very neighborly,” said a voice just over my shoulder.
“Ha-ha,” I said, trying to sound like I hadn’t noticed the voice was a new one. My disruptor was still in my pocket. Why hadn’t I bought a holster? I moved my phone into the opposite hand and ran my newly freed hand up my leg casually, like I hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary.
The Unspeakable Unknown Page 6