I shook my head. “Hypatia, at that point, I’ll have already broken the first two promises. I’m not sure you could trust my word in that situation. How about we make it a bet so if I end up hating you, I have to pay you twenty bucks? You’ll at least get something for your trouble.”
“How do I know you’d pay me?” she asked.
“Because I promise to pay you if I start breaking promises. You can’t lose. Unless you lose the bet; then you lose. But if you win, you can’t lose.”
This seemed to perplex her a bit, and I was starting to wonder if it made sense myself.
“So what’s the big lie?” I said.
She leaned forward. “I did something awful . . . treasonous, really,” she said.
I leaned in close. “This sounds good. Are you spying for North Korea?”
“What? No. Nothing like that. Remember when I convinced you that you should report that Old One we found in the forest?”
“Darleeen. Yeah, I remember,” I said. “Is this about how you tipped her off that she should clear out?”
“I couldn’t stand knowing that if she wasn’t really evil maybe we were doing an awful . . .” She trailed off and cocked her head to one side. “You knew?”
“Yeah, I was just about to tell you,” I said. “I emailed her right after that, and when she wrote back, she said you’d warned her first.”
Hypatia’s voice went strangely flat, but her eyes took on a vivid shade of glowing red I was starting to know well. “I’ve been feeling guilty about that since we got back. I wrote you, like, four letters and then shredded them. I even tried to make an appointment to see the school therapist to talk about it, but he was booked out for eight months.”
“Well, let me tell you, I’m not mad at all.”
“Well, of course you aren’t!” she said, her voice rising again. “Because you did the same thing and didn’t bother to mention it. Were you ever going to tell me, or were you going to just let me wallow in my own guilt and self-recrimination?”
I leaned back a bit to keep myself out of spittle range. “Listen, Hypatia, I meant to tell you, but in my defense, I didn’t bother to think about your feelings at all and pretty much forgot about the whole thing after I brought Botfly up to speed and my own part of the problem was solved. Plus I’ve been really busy.”
“How is that in your defense? That’s what I’m mad about. You should have told me.”
“Well, since you’re already angry, I suppose it’s a good time to mention that you basically owe me twenty bucks, since I didn’t get mad and resent you.”
“Oh, that’s rich!” she said.
“I’ll make you a deal. How about you forgive me, and in exchange I’ll apologize and agree to feel guilty about it for a while? I’ll also let you keep the twenty bucks you owe me as a sign of good faith.”
She thought it over for a second. “Yeah, okay,” she grumbled.
“Great, I’m glad that’s settled,” I said. It really was a load off. Having Hypatia mad at you is no fun. Every time you see her, her eyes get all red and glowy, and she insists nothing is wrong. To make matters worse, she doesn’t even drop little verbal barbs in conversation or slam doors like people are supposed to do when they aren’t admitting they’re angry about something. It’s intolerable.
Fortunately, one of my favorite quirks about parahumans is that they can be bargained with emotionally, and once you strike a deal where they agree not to be angry with you, it’s done completely.
Hypatia took a deep breath and blinked, and her eyes went from bright orange to a cool pastel violet. “You want to go home and clean the kitchen?”
As fun as that sounded, I had other ideas. “Or . . . I just got a new video game. We could play that. It’s banned in Australia.”
“How about we meet halfway? Let’s camp out on the sofa, turn on a reality TV show, and make catty comments all night?”
I have to admit, she found the perfect midpoint.
9
FREE CANDY!
One morning the following week I awoke to the most terrible realization I can imagine. I was up early. Worse, Hypatia was already out of the house, so there was nobody to blame but myself. One strong cup of tea later, I figured out what my mistake had been. I’d properly set my alarm for the last possible moment the night before but had missed the fact that my 8:00 AM Basic Macrosociology class had been canceled at some point the previous day. My next class, Precision Horology, wasn’t scheduled until “noonish” according to the schedule forecast. Unable to get back to sleep, I showered, dressed, and did the unimaginable. I tried to think like a morning person.
Unpleasant discovery number one: morning television is nothing but boring infomercials; bad reruns; chipper, vapid newscasts with recipes I’d never make and reviews of movies I’d never see; or grave, substantial newscasts with real information that I really didn’t feel like burdening myself with that early. The newscaster had just begun describing some endangered condor the president had promised to “wipe off the face of the earth as soon as possible” when I switched it off.
Unpleasant discovery number two: there was nothing to eat in the kitchen, apart from a lot of gross, unappetizing stuff I’d ordered from the School’s grocery delivery drone. Wheat germ chowder . . . what had I been thinking? In my defense, it sounded good at the time, and getting your groceries delivered by a drone is super cool.
The lack of edible food led me to unpleasant discovery number three: I’d have to leave the house. At least it was something to do.
A few minutes and one stomach-churning trip through our kitchen wormhole later, I was sitting in a dark corner booth at Forbidden Planet, working on a bowl of breakfast flakes with cranberries, a cup of parahuman-strength Turkish coffee steaming fragrantly on the table. I’d gone over my homework list, and to my surprise there was nothing needing to be done and no assignments I’d slacked my way through that needed doing properly. That is, except for my French homework. But I was starting to feel a good mood coming on; I didn’t want to ruin it by diving into the only class I could never seem to get ahead in. Why did we have to study French anyway? There were loads of other, cooler languages, and everyone had a perfectly good real-time translator app on their tablets anyway. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Out of desperation, boredom, or both, I checked my email and discovered exactly what I was going to be doing that day.
The very first message in my inbox was a frantic communication from a world-class scientist who had found an amazing way of both improving my vitality and supercharging my investment portfolio. (That wasn’t the important one.) The second was from Warner and looked like it had something to do with his beating my high score on one of the games at the Event Horizon. I skimmed the message without reading it completely and replied, No, you didn’t. Check again. The other new message was from Darleeen.
There was a fleeting moment when I wondered whether someone was playing a joke on me. Spoofing an email address is such basic hacking that I cringe to even think of it as hacking, but when I opened the email and found a much longer message than before, I also detected a faint whiff of baking bread in the air. It was all the proof I needed.
I made a mental note to find out how that worked. Imagine the money you could make in advertising if you figured out how to send someone an email containing pizza coupons and the smell of a large pepperoni pizza.
Dear Meddler:
Remember how you ratted me out and then kindly gave me a warning that I should make myself scarce for a while? Well, right after that, one of your pals dropped a cruise missile on my cabin and turned all my worldly possessions into splinters and ashes.
Gotta tell you, I’m a little sore about that.
But that’s not why I’m writing you. I’m writing because I need a ride. A couple days after you all obliterated the tiny patch of ground I once called home, one
of my ex-sisters started sniffing around town, trying to pick up my scent. Maybe they didn’t buy the whole “accidental military strike” gag. Whatever the reason, she’s here, and she’s going to find me before long if I don’t skip town pronto.
Normally, I’d just stick out a thumb, temporarily brainwash some random schmuck, and have an easy ride wherever I wanted to go, but that’s not an option anymore—she’s too close. The moment I mess with someone’s head, she’ll know where I am and what I’m up to. I can’t hitchhike or bum a ride honestly because regular humans have a kind of natural aversion to me if I’m not counteracting it somehow.
I tried to buy a bus ticket, but I only had twenty bucks on me when your friends nuked my home. Even better, my work uniform was incinerated, so I got fired from the Dairy Shed.
I’m a little sore about that, too.
So here’s the deal. You and me had an agreement, and you broke it. You tried to do right by me afterward, and I appreciate that, but you still broke your promise. You owe me. What I need is a ride out of this town and to somewhere at least a few states away. Maybe West Virginia or South Carolina. I haven’t decided yet. I’d have you wire me some money, but the Shed was paying me under the table because I don’t have a bank account. They don’t hand out bank accounts, birth certificates, Social Security numbers, and official identification to nonhumans without parents, relatives, or any proof that they actually exist. Imagine that.
You seem like an honest girl who tries to do the right thing. So prove it. I’ll be hanging around the Tomahawk County Public Library every day from open till close, and I’ll be in the dumpster behind the building after hours. Figure out a way to get me out of this town, and I’ll consider us square.
Your innocent victim,
Darleeen
I had to hand it to her—the girl knew how to lay down a guilt trip. I read the email a second time and looked around Forbidden Planet’s spacious dining room, like the chairs or decorations might give me a clue about what to do. No such luck.
The first thing was obvious; I did owe Darleeen a debt. Maybe Ms. Botfly would have called in a strike even if I hadn’t ratted Darleeen out, but she had known for hours before I talked to her and had waited to request the “accident” until I was able to pass along a warning. Even if I managed to convince myself there was nothing I could have done, it didn’t change the fact that I’d promised to keep her secret and hadn’t. Plus I did feel a little sorry for her. I happen to know a thing or two about feeling alone in the world. I couldn’t imagine not having anyone to turn to when I needed a friend. I had to help.
Sending money was out. I might have been able to send money to someone else in her town if Darleeen had any close friends, but it didn’t sound like that was the case. I considered overnighting a couple hundred dollars cash to the library, but whoever received it might just hang on to the money, especially considering Darleeen’s claim that people had a natural aversion to her. In the end, I decided there was probably a simple solution I wasn’t considering, and the best course of action was to bounce the idea off someone else.
* * *
“There’s not just some simple solution to this,” Hypatia said after I’d filled her in.
We’d met at Eastside Park, which was next to Big Roy’s Big Muffler Shop, which was where Hypatia’s 9:00 AM Android Health and Maintenance class was held.
“Come on, you’ve lived here longer than me. There must be some way around the rules. Maybe a way to sneak out?”
She sighed and checked her watch for the third time. Her class didn’t start for fifteen minutes, but the whole time we’d been talking, she had been inching toward the building. I wondered if she knew she was doing it.
I went on. “It only took us a couple hours to get there the other day. What if we—”
Hypatia held up a hand. “Just stop right there.”
“What?”
“Look,” she said, “I know you’ve heard it before, but getting back in once you’ve gone outside the gap is impossible without permission, and nobody is going to grant you permission for that.”
“Well, obviously. But this is a school filled with teenagers. You’re telling me nobody has ever come up with a way of sneaking out and back in again?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. The Old Ones have spent years working on ways to get in. You think some kid like you or me has come up with something they haven’t tried?”
I had an idea. “What if we used the kitchen wormhole—”
Hypatia shook her head, frustrated. “Oh, you can stop that idea right there. Wormholes aren’t magic. They’re extremely trackable and traceable. That kitchen wormhole is only allowed because I spent about two months filing paperwork on it. I had to have it approved by a teacher who is a certified wormhole regulator, and every year I have to have it inspected for continuity and alignment. If we moved the exit three feet to the left, the Chaperone would alert the authorities in about two processor cycles. Never mind what would happen if we aimed it at another state. Even if we got out in the three milliseconds before anyone noticed what we’d done, they’d drop us in a containment chamber at the Wormport the moment we tried to get back in.”
That was a new word. “Um . . . Wormport?”
Hypatia took another step toward her upcoming class. “Most students use wormholes to come and go, but the School can’t allow open gateways that anyone can just walk through. The place would be crawling with Old Ones. Anyone traveling into the area via wormhole is automatically routed to the Wormport, which is on the outskirts of town, just outside the gap. You show up, and you’re locked in this room that is outfitted with all kinds of instruments to detect if the people showing up are humans, parahumans, or something else, whether they have any contraband, and whether they’ve been brainwashed. They don’t let you through the gap until they’re sure you’re okay.”
“What happens if they detect an Old One?” I asked.
“The containment chambers are supposed to be able to kill one. I’m not sure how.”
“Well, that sounds pleasant,” I said.
“It’s not, but you never lose your bags, you don’t have to wait in line for a metal detector, and nobody pats you down or makes you take your shoes off. The snacks are reasonably priced, too.”
I had about a dozen more questions, but by the time I decided which to ask first, Hypatia had sped off toward her next class, barely eight minutes early.
* * *
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day, and I just came from a lecture on using poetry in combat situations,” Warner said without looking up from his tablet.
“Hear me out,” I said. “What if we . . . I’m sorry, you said poetry in combat situations? How would you—”
“You wouldn’t. The whole point was that it’s completely useless unless the other side is also fighting with poetry. Still, I guess if I had to fight in a war, that’s the one I’d sign up for.”
I shook my head to clear away a question about the tactical viability of haiku vs. sonnets and steered myself back on track. “What about field trips? Are any classes going to that part of the country soon?”
“You could check with the Chaperone. She’d know.”
“She’d tattle, duh.”
Warner shook his head. “She has a confidentiality filter. If you ask her to keep something private, she has to, unless you’re in danger or breaking a serious rule.”
“I’m literally talking about breaking one of the most serious rules there is, for the purpose of putting myself in danger.”
“Yeah . . . then you probably shouldn’t ask her.” Warner’s tablet started blinking, and whatever game he was playing suddenly became more important than what we were talking about because he was out of commission after that.
I needed to find someone less ethical than my friends, someone who didn’t mind breaking a f
ew rules, someone who wouldn’t rat me out. Fortunately, I knew just the person.
* * *
I still had “about an hour or so” before Precision Horology when I sat down next to Fluorine outside the health center. She was about seventeen at the time and sporting a green Mohawk. Dealing with teenager Fluorine was a lot easier than when she was a baby, who wouldn’t understand anything, or a full-grown adult, who would understand even less.
“Paradox therapy,” she said. “Since you’re going to ask. Also, no, I’m not cured. They say my prognosis is good, once they figure out what caused it in the first place. And no, I don’t remember what it was.”
There was a tiny black box with little blinking lights protruding through a hole in the shoulder of her leather jacket. When she saw me studying it, she explained, “I made it to stabilize the time shifting so I only fluctuate between about five and thirty years old.”
“Cool. But that’s not what I wanted to know,” I said. “I was thinking of—”
“Here’s the deal, kid. I’ll do your homework for you, but it’ll cost you two hundred dollars. I can guarantee a perfect score on any assignment in any class up to and including graduate-level work, but I get eighty-five percent of the money if you patent anything. You keep the credit. If it’s a doctoral thesis, you have to give me six hours’ lead time, eight if you want more than three hundred pages.”
“That’s not what I want, either,” I said.
This finally got her attention. As if in response, Fluorine seemed to glow and flicker briefly. The gadget attached to her shoulder clicked and buzzed faintly, and when she stopped glowing, she looked to be almost exactly my age. She was dressed in a plain black T-shirt and jeans and had a full head of straight dark hair.
She blinked and shook her head, not remembering why we were sitting together. Finally, she said, “Paradox therapy, since you’re going to ask. Also, no, I’m not cured. They—”
The Unspeakable Unknown Page 10