“No one’s going to make you go back,” I assure him.
“Why are you crying now?”
“I’m a sympathetic crier!” I say, rubbing at my eyes. I hadn’t even noticed.
He laughs, choking halfway through on a sob. “Just because I don’t have a Resonator doesn’t mean I have to sit on the sidelines. Same as your mom. I can help. I’m not worthless.”
“I don’t think you’re worthless, Dex.”
“I know. It’s just… well, I can’t help but feel like I’m meant to be a part of this too.”
“We’re in it together,” I assure him. And for a moment I’m not thinking about aliens and robots, electric guitars and the techno-Armageddon. I’m just there for Dex, the same way he’s always been there for me.
Dad would have called that family, too.
Chapter Eight
“Throw your mobile communication devices in here,” Mixy instructs us, offering a small bin to us.
“How come?” I ask, holding onto my phone.
“They must be destroyed,” Mixy answers. “The Carnegie insulates us from their signal, but it is best to be safe. We must minimize any chance of the Synthesizers tracking us.”
“But I’ve got three years’ worth of memes saved up!” Dex protests.
“You will be permitted to keep your notepad, if that is any consolation,” Mixy assures him.
Dex grasps at his pencil and notepad protectively, like Mixy might change his mind.
Tori is the first one to drop her phone into the bin. Mom follows suit, then Mr. Patel. Reluctantly, I toss my phone in too. Dex is the last to comply, grumbling as though he were a museum curator asked to dispense with an original Caravaggio. Once all of the phones are in the bin, Mixy reaches behind the Carnegie’s kitchen counter and pulls out a clear bottle of liquid. Dumping it into the container, the liquid begins to bubble as the phones start dissolving.
“Could you not keep the acid so close to the club soda?” Dorian chastises Mixy.
“You would not mistake one for the other,” Mixy explains. “I assure you from experience, they taste quite different.”
“How will we get in contact?” Mom asks, her eyes meeting mine. “We’ll need some way to get in touch.”
“These are much more secure,” Mixy says, removing a series of small black discs from the counter and distributing them to each of us.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Communicators. I thought I made that obvious.”
“Thanks,” I say sarcastically, turning the small disc over in my hand. “I mean: How do they work?”
“Forgive me for inferring your idiocy,” Mixy says, twirling two of his arms and performing an elaborate bow.
Lydia smirks, taking the communicator from my hand and holding it for all to see. “Take one digit and press it flat to the disc,” she instructs, pressing one of her shimmering blue fingers against the disc. It pulses once and one side of the disc pops up, exposing a small mount. She hangs the communicator over her ear. “Testing,” she says, and her voice chirps quietly from the other discs.
“Our comms can also interface with a number of media players,” she adds, walking farther down the counter to a worn wooden box. She flips the lid back to reveal an old-school turntable. She sets the disc down atop the turntable. “Pair the device with the appropriate media player,” she continues, setting the turntable spinning. She sets the needle atop the disc like it’s a small vinyl record.
“Try yours,” she says to Tori, who in turn holds her disc up by her face.
“This is Tori Patel and I would like to thank all of our listeners for tuning in to National Public Radio this morning.”
Her voice comes from the record player this time, clearer and louder.
“So cool,” Dex says, studying the disc.
“Why vinyl?” Mom asks, pointing at the record player.
“Lydia’s a snob about her music collections,” Dorian responds. “Music from over fifty civilizations, and she converts most of it to vinyl.”
“Are you a space-hipster?” Dex asks Lydia. Her skin ripples with a shade of red as she glares at Dex. He sheepishly resituates himself on the other side of Tori and me. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” he brandishes his steno-pad, almost defensively. “I like old-school sometimes, too.”
There’s a chirp from Mixy’s pilot’s station. “We are approaching the Strait of Gibraltar,” Mixy announces. “I must pilot the Carnegie very precisely if we wish to remain underwater and avoid detection.” With that, Mixy goes running to the glass dome, which is slowly turning from black to the deep blue of an ocean permitting at least some light.
“Where’s that?” I ask.
“The space between Morocco and Spain that connects the Atlantic to the Mediterranean,” Tori says.
“So… we’re going to Italy.”
“Only the first stop, kid,” Dorian says. “Diane and Sai will see if they can’t track down some help. Then we are off.”
“Off where?” Mom asks, her voice nervous.
“Don’t know yet,” Dorian shrugs. “The Synthesizers will be looking for us, so we will keep moving. Until we get a lead on the Synthesizer’s latest and greatest, it’s going to be a lot of lying low. I know you want to hear that I’m going to take care of your son. But I’m going to do one better. I’m going to teach him how to take care of himself.” He tries one of his movie-star smiles on Mom.
She looks back up at him, mirroring his smile. “If anything happens to Caleb while we’re gone, you’re going to wish the Synthesizers find you before me.”
Dorian’s smile falters just the slightest bit.
Lydia laughs. “I like her, Dorian.”
* * * * *
Mixy invites Mom and me to his pilot’s deck, where the orb of glass is looking out into the Mediterranean. “I am told that aquatic viewing is of particular interest to many species with sight,” Mixy explains. “We are on our final approach. I shall leave you two in privacy while the Carnegie’s autopilot completes my task.”
With that, Mom and I are left standing together, looking out into the water.
“You know I don’t really want to leave you,” she says eventually. “Right?”
“Sure,” I shrug.
“It’s not just about finding people who can help you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to be in your way.”
“You’re not going to be in the way!” I protest.
“When that thing—Alpha—asked for your guitar… You were going to just hand it over.”
“She said they were going to kill you.”
“And you did it because you love me,” she smiles. “But do you think that was the right choice? Do you really think they wouldn’t have killed both of us?”
“How am I supposed to know what the Synthesizers will do?” I’m getting frustrated.
“You’re missing my point. I’m saying that I can’t have you worrying about me when you have to be focused on what’s right in front of you. You don’t need a distraction. You need to focus.”
“But I think that—”
“Caleb,” she interrupts, exasperated. “Trust me this time.”
I look at her for a long time. I’ve seen her afraid. I’ve seen her angry. But now she’s wearing a look that I had almost forgotten entirely. She used to wear that face a lot, right after Dad died. She wore it when she thought I wasn’t watching, when she sat up late at night with the bills that she kept piled up on the kitchen table. She wore it when we boxed up the old house and sold off as much as we could. And when people stopped us at the grocery store to ask us how we were, she smiled through that face and said things like, “Oh, we’re getting by.”
It’s grim determination.
And I know that arguing is pointless.
“You’re going to keep your communicator on you,” I say.
“Yes,” Mom nods.
“And you’re going to check in once
a day.”
“Yes, sir,” she rolls her eyes.
“Seriously.”
“Yes, I will. Really, I’m going to be the one worrying about you.”
“This is all just so—” I trail off, not really sure where I’m going. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
She pulls me into a tight hug and doesn’t let me go for a long time. When she pulls back, she takes a moment to study the guitar-pick necklace I’ve been wearing since I got it.
“I was going to ask you about this,” she says.
“Tori’s idea. It’s a piece of Dad’s old sign.”
Mom smiles brightly at that, but she looks like she’s going to cry. “She’s good to you,” she says.
It’s the chiming of Mixy’s console that interrupts us. “Down to cargo, please,” he announces, ushering everybody toward the float-tube.
Lydia is the last to join us below-deck, coming forward with her keytar slung over her shoulder and a couple of envelopes held in her hands. She offers one to Mom, and one to Mr. Patel. “This should be enough to get you by.”
Mom opens up the envelope and I look in. My eyes go, first, to the sizeable stack of colorful euros in the envelope. But there are a couple of cards in there as well, together with an Israeli passport for Mom and an Indian passport for Mr. Patel.
“Fake identities, of course. Though I would recommend steering clear of public airports and train stations as much as possible. There’s cash, for convenience,” Lydia says. “The debit accounts have approximately three million euros each, with matching credit limits on the credit cards. For food, lodging, travel: whatever you need along the way.”
Mom’s eyes are wide. “Just… well… how?” she asks.
“The Composers own several notable music labels, by proxy,” Dorian says. “We don’t come around too often, so when we do, there’s a lot of cash on hand.” He smiles at Mom. “Spend it or lose it, Diane.”
“Are you bribing her?” I ask.
“You think I’d try to buy your mom’s affection?” Dorian cocks an eyebrow at me, attempting to do another wheelie on his wheelchair. This time Lydia lets him dump himself backwards onto the ground, ignoring him.
“The Carnegie will not be surfacing,” Mixy explains to Mom and Mr. Patel. “Lydia will provide you transportation to the surface. You should make land without anyone noticing you.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Patel says, all business as he pockets the envelope. “We should go.”
Tori moves forward and gives Mr. Patel a hug. I hug Mom one last time, then they follow Mixy to the featureless white wall of the Carnegie’s cargo hold. Lydia begins to play a soft melody on her keytar, sending a wave of blue Rez washing over the ground and up the wall of the Carnegie. Mixy presses his palm to the wall and it dissolves away behind the blue Rez. We’re left looking out into the water behind Lydia’s Rez.
“Take care of each other,” Mr. Patel says, looking pointedly to me and Tori.
“Love you three,” Mom says, eyes scanning over Dex, Tori, and me.
Lydia’s melody increases in complexity, and her Rez moves to envelope Mom and Mr. Patel in a bubble. It begins to move through the water, away from the Carnegie and up. Eventually the bubble breaks away, leaving another sheen of Lydia’s Rez behind, keeping the water at bay. Tori and I move forward to watch the shimmering blue sphere drifting upward, the inclining seabed illuminated underneath it. Eventually it’s just a distant point of light approaching what looks like some sort of retaining wall on the shore. Then it’s gone.
Lydia stops playing, and the Carnegie’s wall closes once again.
Then I feel a vibration in my pocket as the small disc chirps with Mom’s voice. “Safe and sound,” she says.
I’ve been holding my breath.
I exhale.
* * * * *
“So what now?” Tori says, looking to Dorian. We’re back on the Carnegie’s main deck, where Dorian abandoned his wheelchair in favor of a long sofa.
“I was thinking I could go for some pizza,” he says. “We’re sort of, you know, in the area.”
“I mean what do we do about the Synthesizers? The Prima Maestri vault? Robot invasion? Ring any bells?”
“We can’t do anything until Mixy and Dex make progress on the Synthesizer communications. And right now,” Dorian mimes drumming, “Mixy’s busy getting us back out into the ocean. You know, flying under the radar, so to speak.”
“So you want us to just… wait?”
“Bingo.”
Tori snorts, disgusted.
“Patience is a virtue. Don’t you guys say that?” Lydia comes to sit on the arm of Dorian’s couch. “I recommend you take the time to rest.”
“Can I play with the Carnegie’s computer?” Dex asks.
“No,” Lydia’s answer comes immediately.
“Well what do you guys do around here?” I ask.
“Listen to music, mostly,” Dorian says. “We’ve got a pretty big collection.”
“How big?” Dex asks.
“In Earth metrics? Oh, I dunno, over a couple of petabytes.”
Dex’s eyes go completely wide.
“What?” I ask. “Is that a lot?”
“It’s over two million gigabytes.” Dex smiles delightedly.
“Well, we Composers share music between hundreds of worlds and species. It’s not that incredible.”
“So you’ve got Earth music, then,” I say. “I was wondering how you guys know so many of our songs. Do you have like, an iTunes account, or something?”
Dorian shrugs. “Downloading iTunes always seemed like such a hassle. So we just sort of… borrowed a lot. With torrents. Humans are innovative, when they want to be.”
Dex bursts out laughing, pointing from Dorian to Lydia, back to Dorian. “You’re literally space pirates!”
“Did you have a selection in mind?” Lydia asks us. “We have a considerable catalogue of Earth’s artists.”
“But you said you have music from hundreds of other planets,” I say. “I’ve heard Earth music. Let’s hear something else.”
“Something from your home-world,” Dex suggests to Lydia.
“All right,” she says. With a wave of her hand, a barrier drops down over Mixy’s pilot dome, shutting him inside. The sound of his drumming drops away instantly. Lydia, meanwhile, steps over to the Carnegie’s lengthy counter, where she retrieves her vintage-looking record player from before. Returning with the box in hand, she sets it atop a low table near Dorian’s couch.
“Please, sit.” She gestures to the other seats in the cluster.
I settle into an armchair and look to Tori and Dex, both of who are grinning from ear to ear. It’s infectious. Sort of like Christmas morning. I remember feeling this way each time Dad came home with a CD saying something like, “Caleb, you’ve gotta hear this song.” It’s anticipation. It’s excitement. It’s something new.
An alien record. Dad would have gone crazy for that.
Lydia takes a minute to head up the float-tube to her room, returning with a full vinyl record a minute later. That gets a sigh from Dorian. “You know we have the same songs on the ship’s library,” he says. “And they sound exactly the same. Better, even!”
“Shut up,” Lydia barks. Then she turns to us. “I have to warn you that my people’s music is quite different than yours. The Ma’an W’eea, my people, are empaths. We use our music to heighten our abilities, and sometimes there’s a free-flow effect between the Ma’an W’eea and other species. It’s been known to move non-natives.”
“Empaths?” Tori raises an eyebrow.
“Like telepaths,” Dex says. “Think Dr. X, but with emotions.”
“Yes,” Lydia agrees. “Patrick Stewart, but with emotions.”
She sets the record spinning and drops the needle onto the vinyl. There’s nothing at first, except the soft hiss of the needle. Then a low, rhythmic noise begins to fill the air. Lydia’s record player must be tied into the Carnegie directly, because the
sound comes from all around us. The noise takes shape, sounding more like the slow crashing of waves than anything else.
Another sound is added to the rhythmic, water-like noise. It’s a smooth, bass-rich noise that hums in three octaves. More noises join in with the music, abstract and infrequent but somehow coming at exactly the right time, adding something to the song that I could never have said was missing.
The voices join in eventually. I say voices, but I’m not sure. It might be one voice, or it might be a thousand. The voices shape words that I’ve never heard before, bending pitches in ways I never imagined, pulling the song in new and different directions with each phrasing. They never repeat, never imitate. The song just seems to grow.
Then something strange starts to happen. I feel like… me, but at the same time, not me. It feels like I’m standing over my own shoulder, looking at myself, noticing myself, but seeing things just a little bit removed from myself. My body doesn’t feel, but I’m not without feeling. It’s so strange that I’m not even afraid. I’m just… calm.
I feel something like cool water pulling at me, and I look to Lydia. She’s still sitting on the arm of Dorian’s sofa, her eyes closed as her skin pulses with brilliant shades of blue, matching the music’s strange pushing and pulling. The sensation of calm, of peace, is inviting. The waves push and pull. Push and pull. She opens her eyes and looks to me, smiling.
There’s warmth, too. Like sunlight pouring down from overhead, touching at the tops of my ears and cheeks, grazing my neck. The smell of flowers. A gentle breeze. It’s brimming energy, an ambition, the kind that makes me want to move worlds, to sing! There’s a touch of nervousness, too, but it’s different than dread. It’s expectant. Reaching out like tendrils of vines, up to the sky to drink in new light. That warmth is coming from Tori, seated parallel from me, feet folded up beneath her in her chair, eyes wandering dreamily about.
Dex is something else entirely. There’s a thirst, a hunger that I can feel. Not for a drink, not for food, but it’s just… a craving. It’s electric in its intensity. My mind buzzes, racing and looking for something, but I don’t know what. There’s something else mixed in there too, bubbling to the surface. A terrible cold. Fear. Loneliness. Like I’m shut in darkness, calling for somebody who won’t ever hear me. I have to pull myself back from it. It’s dizzying. Intense.
Six Strings to Save the World Page 10