Archimedes made an ugly sound, like a buzzsaw biting into a nail. I pushed the pain aside, even though I had to clench my teeth and squint. “You hurt. Suffer. Burn!”
My voice might be muffled, but that only let me focus my hatred. I swung it at her like a sledgehammer, and it was her turn to stiffen.
I pressed my advantage. “Give up! Surrender! Let go! It’s over, Juno!”
The commands slid off her, the invisible tentacles flickering like stuttering fluorescent lights. Archimedes’ scream drove them off, but my knees shuddered.
I wasn’t nearly done, and neither was she. That was fine. With all this shouting, backup would arrive shortly. I didn’t have to win, just keep her occupied.
Juno’s smile came back, tight and mean. Her lips barely moved. “You can’t keep up this anger, human child. Soon, it will turn against you. You call yourself a villain, and part of you wants to open the gate yourself, watch humanity kneel in their multitudes to the will of the Jovians, and laugh at the destruction you have caused.”
The temptation speech? Really? Except… she was right. It would be so much fun, standing atop a stone arch on a blasted moon of Jupiter, and unleashing a flood of monsters out into space.
A twinge of guilt plucked at me, then disappeared under a tidal wave of fury. What kind of person did she think I was? Just because I liked playing supervillain, I would feed humanity to her?!
“Shut! Up! You! Evil! Two! Dimensional! Puppet!” I bellowed at her. Archimedes meowed over and over, and I lost track of what I was attacking her with. My words hit her like fists, knocking her backwards.
Actually like fists. Her body recoiled from the impact, not from emotion. Archimedes was telekinetic.
Tesla’s Magnetic Monocle, I wish I’d known that sooner.
I knew it now. Yelling wordlessly, I hit her with my anger as hard as I could, but now she was prepared and the flickering, almost-there tentacles pushed my attacks aside.
Fine. I grabbed the bed behind her and threw it at her.
The attack was far from perfect. I couldn’t feel what I was trying to grip, or aim, and the bed merely skidded sharply across the floor. It still knocked her legs out from under her.
I stuck my hand in my pocket and grabbed my last remaining cursed penny. If I threw it at her before she got back up, her defenses would be broken and I could finish this.
Close footsteps. Calvin stepped into the doorway next to me.
I might not need the penny after all. “Calvin, do you know what this thing has been using your revolution to cover up?”
The second it took me to realize he might not care was a second I didn’t have. Calvin grabbed Archimedes’ neck in one hand, pulling him upwards. As Juno rolled back upright, Calvin’s other hand closed on Archimedes’ tail, yanking it off my neck.
Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow!
“Sleep,” said Juno.
I slept.
woke up in a tiny, dark room. The cracks around the edges of the door let in just enough light to create hints of shadow, and with my back to the wall, my feet almost touched the door itself.
My head hurt. My neck hurt. The back of my neck stung horribly. I reached around and brushed my fingers over my spine. Would I know blood if I felt it? Maybe not, but I felt a scab clearly.
At least Mom wouldn’t suspect that was a hickey.
I lifted my knees, laid my head on them, and wrapped my arms around my legs. She wouldn’t get the chance. I had messed up. Badly. I would die out here, and so would Ray and Claire. This wasn’t Earth, and nobody worried about rules here.
I couldn’t give up. Was there anything I could do? I had my jumpsuit. I had my goggles and my hair bows. I reached into my pocket, and yes, I still had my one cursed penny. I checked my wrist…
The Machine wasn’t there. They’d taken the Machine. Cold crept into me, an unbearable aloneness I couldn’t remember feeling before. What was worse, dying out here in this empty closet, or losing the Machine forever?
No, what was really worst of all was that I’d asked for this. I had fallen into my own trap. I’d beaten adults at their own game by letting them underestimate me because I was a child. They thought they were toying with me, and I’d been serious and careful and thought before I acted.
Then someone dangled a chance to play hooky in front of me, and I acted like the self-centered delinquent I’d always tried not to be. Ray and Claire relied on me not to drag them into needless messes like this. I hadn’t taken school seriously. I hadn’t taken space seriously. Then I hadn’t taken Juno and Calvin seriously. So much for Ray and Claire relying on me not to drag them into needless messes.
So stupid. Not stupid. Willfully blind. Who cared what adults did? I always rolled over adults. I’d spent all my time trying to make friends, or playing tourist, or showing off, and ignored the threat right in front of me. Juno hadn’t even been subtle. She’d praised me for making the control squid. She talked endlessly about freedom without saying who she intended to free. Mind control powers had made her a lousy liar, but I’d missed her hints anyway, because I didn’t want to look. Claire had warned me, and even Remmy talked about how something was wrong with her brother.
I’d even watched him turn from concerned space cowboy to revolutionary zealot when she entered the room, and didn’t care because they were adults and adults were no threat.
Misery weighed on me like bags of concrete, crushing me down. My heart hurt worse than my neck or my head. My superpower stayed silent. I couldn’t get out. If I did, I had no way home. I was going to die here, and Ray and Claire along with me.
I was never going to see Mom or Dad again. No watching Mom flip pancakes onto plates without looking. No counting up how much Dad owed the Pumpkin jar.
How long had I been here? Where was I? I’d heard no footsteps. The air smelled different than Europa’s. I was on a spaceship, alone.
A thought I’d been trying not to have broke through. Something was horribly, horribly wrong with my superpower. It loved Puppeteer technology, and took to creating monsters and weapons like a six year old took to candy. Had it been leading me here all along?
Now I was crying. I sniffled, looked up, and nearly jumped out of my skin.
Harvey stood leaning against the wall next to me.
Or… oh, yuck. He was attached to the wall. This was no man-sized rabbit. He looked like a mummy, crossed arms and everything, carved out of red chitin. Atop his blobby head, two fat antennae twitched. It was still, unmistakably, Harvey.
His stuffy and professorial voice hadn’t changed, although I’d never heard it so clearly. “Yes, this is what I look like. There are a number of truths about me Juliet refuses to see.”
“You’re a Puppeteer,” I croaked.
He hesitated before answering. He had no expression, nothing to express with besides those waving, earlike feelers. He could still sound reluctant and sad. “I am the ganglia designed to research methods of civilizing the human race. That is the closest thing to the Puppeteers you imagine that exists.”
I almost wished despair had driven me mad, but I knew Harvey existed, and nothing I saw or heard now was really a surprise.
That didn’t mean I had any desire to talk to a Puppeteer. “What do you want?”
“I need your help to save Juliet.”
I glared up at him with eyes hot and sore from crying. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“She won’t leave while I’m in danger. The Jovian relay is coming for me. I am too self-aware for her to override at range, but if she touches me, she will control me, and through me, all of the biotools left in your solar system. That includes your vehicle, and the implants I added to Juliet before I turned to evil.”
I massaged my nose. It hurt, and I wasn’t in any condition to make sense of this conversation.
It was better than sitting in the dark and starving to death, however.
With a sigh, I gave in and asked, “You mutated her before you turned evil?”
Harvey’s voi
ce started to shake. “I have had a hundred years to have this argument with myself, and with Juliet. No matter how much you fight this truth, yes, I am evil. Broken. Insane. I value individuals more than the group. I let your race fester in barbarism for a hundred years, and sabotaged the next attempt to civilize you when we noticed you activating the gate on Jupiter’s moon. I risked my life, her life, everyone’s lives by revealing myself to the Jovian relay and luring it to the outpost in the asteroid belt. I had to set Juliet free, and I couldn’t do it alone. I’d waited a century just for that chance, distracting my equally defective partner from experimenting on her and managing her memories to minimize despair.”
Criminy. A century he’d also spent waiting for a chance to confess, apparently. If the ‘civilized’ idea of good was that individuals aren’t worth saving, thank goodness Harvey was evil. I tried to drag the conversation back on track. “Why would you need my help? The Conquerors are gone. I’ve been to Io Alpha. You have an army of bioweapons ready to unleash on Juno, and anyone else you feel like.”
“I have no weapons.” He suddenly sounded offended, words stiff and sharp.
“I fought them!”
“You fought scavengers. Cleaners. Brooms. You fought brooms. I am a tool created by the civilized races, and by definition, civilization has no warriors or weapons. We are willing to die in any number to help others, but to even desire weapons is barbaric.” His antennae vibrated all over the place, and his voice had gone back to shaking. I was really touching a nerve. No pun intended.
I didn’t have the strength to argue with him. Laying my face on my knees again, I said, “I can’t help you. I was stupid, and she’s already defeated me. I’m surprised she left me alive.”
“You remind Calvin Fawkes too much of his little sister. He resisted killing a female and a child. Killing a female child like his sister was too much. So much of the Jovian control signal was required simply to keep him from rebelling and attacking the relay, I was able to eavesdrop on the conversation. She pacified him by marooning you instead.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m still marooned.”
“I will save you, and then you will save me, which will save Juliet.”
Could he really save me? I lifted my head, and rubbed my sniffly nose. He had my attention, but… I’d done too much wrong already. “Why Juliet?”
Hushed and haunted, he answered, “I don’t know. When I studied her to find the subtlest way of removing her selfishness so that she and your whole race could learn to love others above themselves, I discovered I valued that selfishness too much to destroy it. When my partner studied your anomalously enhanced doctors, he became addicted to their weapon experiments. Perhaps humans are diseased. Perhaps these are excuses for my own failures. Perhaps Juliet is truly as exceptional as my feelings say.”
Great. Truly star-crossed lovers. I lifted a hand and flapped it weakly. “You have a deal. Save me, and I’ll save you. I don’t know if you’re evil, but I know Juno is.”
“Thank you.” Harvey’s feelers hung limp. “She must not take control of me, and she must not open the gate. The civilized races are watching it now. They will know the Conquerors are gone. If you have to kill me to stop either of these events, so be it.”
I squinted up at him. “You don’t like yourself very much, do you?”
“No. Juliet does, and I don’t know why.”
With those words, he faded away, leaving me in the dark.
About ten seconds after that, tops, Ray ripped the handle off the door, then the door out of the frame. He threw it down, yanked me off my feet, and hugged me until my ribs creaked.
I couldn’t possibly hurt him, which meant I could squeeze as hard as I possibly could and not worry about it.
He deserved a kiss, but that would cheapen the moment. I hugged him, and hugged him, until eventually he put me down again.
Taking off his mask, he whispered guiltily, “I’m so sorry I took this long. I fell for the dumbest trap in the book. Calvin walked out the door in front of me and sealed me in. It was one of those air hatches, and I couldn’t break it down. By the time I got out through the back wall with his tools, you were gone. When I tried looking around with Archimedes… Harvey talked to me.”
“And sent you here,” I filled in.
“Here.” Ray handed me a box. I pulled Archimedes out and curled him around my neck. I tucked Vera―with one more tap to make sure I still couldn’t wake her up―into a pouch. And, with a shiver of joy, I wrapped the Machine around my wrist. When he clicked into place, I felt like me again.
Once more, mad scientist = crazy cat lady.
Dread crept up into Ray’s face, and my joy faltered. What horrible thing was he not telling me?
Closing his eyes, he whispered, “I still don’t know where Claire is.”
“I do. Juno has taken her to Kalyke. Claire’s power confuses Puppeteers. Juno thinks she can walk right up to Harvey and take over the moon, the gate, Jupiter, maybe the solar system.”
Ray grabbed my shoulders, and hauled me in for another hug. This one wasn’t as tight, but I could feel him shaking. His voice cracked. “I am… going… to hurt her.”
I pulled away carefully, and swatted him on the chest with the back of my hand. I had to go back to being the person who wouldn’t have gotten us into this mess. “We don’t kill people, even out in space where there are no rules. We’ll find some other way to make her regret this.”
And he grinned, and it was wonderful. Grabbing my hand, he dragged me through a tight wood-paneled hall, down some stairs into another tight, wood-paneled hall, and up to a clumsy airlock with two wheeled hatches. Both stood open, because on the other side…
…was the creepy scarlet interior of the Red Herring, and Juliet grinning nervously and fiddling with her blotchy black-and-white hair.
I could make one exception to my hatred and distrust of Puppeteer tech. Charging through the airlock, I threw myself onto Juliet in a hug that at least was at the bottom of the same league as the one I’d given Ray.
She held me much more gently, and looked me in the eyes. Well, her front pair of eyes looked me in the eyes. “I wish that we had leisure for me to tell you all the wonders I’ve seen. Instead, I… you have given me far too much already, but please, Penelope, will you save Harvey for me?”
“I’ve already agreed,” I assured her, and she gave me her ugly, adorable crooked grin. Looking up into it made me giggle, despite my terrible day.
Then a thought clicked into place in my head. I looked around the Red Herring, and out at the starscape through its giant monitor eye. “Wait. Harvey, you said that you’d help me if I helped you, but you must have sent Ray and Juliet to save me hours ago.”
Juliet looked curiously past me at the wall. I followed her gaze, and didn’t see anything, but I heard Harvey’s voice. “I would have saved you anyway. I told you, I am evil, and value individuals more than what they can do for the group.”
I smirked. “Yeah, well, same here. I’m going to save you and take down Juno no matter what. I set this in motion, and I have to stop it.”
ou know what I wanted? What I really, really wanted in the bottom of my soul? To not smell like sweat. I wanted it so bad that I strangled down the chilling fear I felt stepping into the Red Herring’s bathroom, and mostly succeeded in not screaming when it grabbed hold of me.
Facing my fear was so worth it. I staggered out fresh, clean, with silky dry hair and neatly tied ribbons, and ready to save the world. Any world. I had several to choose from.
Penelope’s Log: never play hooky. You will end up locked in a closet in the icy depths of space totally stinky and wearing armor that hasn’t been washed in days.
Giving my braids an extra flip, I walked up the space fish to the control deck. I was just in time to watch us approach Kalyke, which on the monitor looked like a giant, lopsided ball of red putty.
“Is all of that Puppeteer flesh?” I asked, morbidly fascinated.
; “Uh huh. Its proper name, according to Harvey, is ‘bio-medium.’ I have personally argued that it cannot have a proper name, since he is translating into English from a completely alien language regardless. Oh, and there is quite a large rock underneath, of course.” Juliet made a show of flicking her hooved fingers across the monitor as if that were helping pilot us. I knew quite well she would fly this thing through the soles of her feet.
I resisted the urge to look at Juliet’s feet. I didn’t want to know how mutated they were, or how connected to the Red Herring.
Instead, I returned to the thought at hand. That was a whole lot of goo. “And that all came through the gate?”
Harvey’s voice answered this time. “As did humanity. As did the race that built the gate. As will the Jovians, if Juno reaches me. They are a race so used to relying on bio-control signals―”
“I still believe ‘animal magnetism’ is both better sounding and more accurate,” interjected Juliet.
“―that they view all other life as tools. Your intelligence is an unnecessary attachment to be pruned, like pulling the stem off an apple. They are the ones you should have called Puppeteers.” Harvey sounded pretty disgusted.
Ray had his head cocked. So, this wasn’t a voice in my brain. I glanced at the monitor in time to see us land.
I jumped, not because we landed with any kind of shock, but because the asteroid was so small. Even Ceres had a horizon. Yes, this was a really big rock, but, like, airport big. Not moon big.
The actual touchdown was so gentle, I had to wait a couple of seconds to be sure we’d landed. Half the moon’s surface was a big mouthlike crater. From the inside, it was obviously a hangar.
Trying not to think about what an idiot I’d look like if we left our spacesuits behind on Europa, I pointed at the gill slit airlock. “Is there an atmosphere out there?”
“And gravity, both provided by the race that built the gate. Their preferences are so close to Earth’s levels that the difference is negligible,” said Harvey.
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