“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. I didn’t need to decide, since Mike and I weren’t true finalists. The winner had to be chosen from among the Flower Twins and Rianne. “My head says the money, but my heart says Mars.”
Timothy beamed at me. “Go for it.”
“Maybe I will.” I did want to see Mars. I hoped Eddy kept his word and sent me there on assignment.
The six of us toured part of the Exhibition Hall together, then split up to attend the afternoon sessions. Mike, Rianne, and I went to one called Microfossils: Mars’s Past Life, while the Flower Twins and Timothy took in one on Martian soil.
Microfossils turned out to be less interesting than they’d sounded. I took out my palmtop as the lecturer brought out his thirtieth rock sample, and the three of us wrote messages back and forth.
Me: What should we do tonight for fun?
Rianne: I think Timothy has a VR set. We could play games.
Me: We can play VR any night. Let’s do something different. Something fun.
Mike: Let’s see if Timothy has the keys to the Exhibition Hall. It would be fun to see the planetarium without a crowd around.
Rianne: Even if Timothy has the keys he’ll never break the rules and let us in.
Me: Leave that to me. I think Timothy needs to have more fun. It would be good for him.
The lights came back up, the lecture ending. I closed the palmtop. Mike caught my elbow as we stood up. “What are you planning?” he whispered.
“Don’t you think I can do it?” I challenged.
He laughed. “That was never in question.” His confidence in me made me feel good.
But as it turned out, we weren’t given a chance to corrupt Timothy that evening. Timothy’s mother was home.
“Mother!” Timothy exclaimed when he saw her, both pleasure and irritation in his voice. “What are you doing here?”
If President Castellan had hoped for a warmer welcome, she hid it well. “My meeting ended early, and I grabbed an aircar. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Timothy bristled at what, to me, sounded like a perfectly innocuous comment.“I’m fine.”His words had too much emphasis.
“Why don’t you introduce me to our guests?” President Castellan was a cool customer. She didn’t betray that she knew who Mike and I were by a flicker an eyelash. She murmured something to the Flower Twins about having been privileged to meet their progenitor once, instantly winning them over. They were the only two who didn’t look secretly dismayed when President Castellan insisted on taking the six of us out for dinner at a fancy restaurant after a detailed tour of the Exhibition Hall.
At supper Zinnia wrung President Castellan dry, questioning her about her long-ago meeting with Iris Cartwright. Dahlia, too, seemed hungry for the smallest detail about their progenitor. It occurred to me that the two of them were orphans for all intents and purposes.
“She left us a tape library of herself,” Zinniasaid. “Teaching tapes with lessons, but they’re not the same.”
“Of course not,” President Castellan agreed, and then, for the four hundredth time that evening, she tried to draw out her son. For the four hundredth time, she failed. Timothy interpreted every remark she made as a personal criticism, shrinking further and further inside himself like a turtle. After a while, Timothy wouldn’t even look at her, gazing into his barley soup instead.
Timothy and Rianne together made for a conversational black hole. From Rianne’s awed looks at the china and crystal, I gathered that she felt intimidated. And typically, she didn’t like the feeling and turned surly, rejecting Timothy’s suggestions on what to order.
Thank God Mike was there to help me keep the conversation limping along.
I wouldn’t have thought the evening could get worse, but it did. When Rianne and I came back from a trip to the ladies’ room, we saw Eddy standing at the table. We hung back a moment.
“I just popped in to see how you were doing,” Eddy was saying to a delighted Timothy. “Everything looks great.”
His compliment was generic, but Timothy glowed under it. “Thanks!”
Timothy’s mother looked grim. When she’d tried to compliment Timothy, he’d started to mumble about how it wasn’t his fault the Martian waterways exhibit had flooded the floor below.
“I thought you were tied up with the Ramsey merger,” President Castellan said, steel in her voice.
“I was, I am,” Eddy said glibly. “I just flew down for the night; I’ll be back in New York in time for breakfast. I couldn’t miss my favorite nephew’s symposium, after all!”
“But if you fly back tonight, you won’t get to see any of it,” Timothy protested.
“I wish I could see it, Timmy, but I’ve got to nail the Ramsey deal for your mother.” Eddy neatly slipped the blame onto President Castellan.
Timothy looked pleadingly at his mother. “Couldn’t somebody else handle it?”
President Castellan cast a scathing glance at Eddy, then turned to her son. “No, dear, I’m afraid not.”
Timothy closed up again.
Eddy smirked at his half sister, unconcerned by the murder in her eyes. “Well, I’ve got to run now. Bye.” Turning from the table, he saw me. He winked.
The idiot! I felt my face freeze. He was going to blow my cover! Had anyone else seen?
Rianne had.
I bent closer to her ear. “Pleasetell me that man didn’t wink at me,” I said through clenched teeth.
Rianne’s lips twitched. “Sorry. He’s one hundred percent smitten. In fact he’s coming this way.”
“Arrgh!” Eddy was indeed coming closer, smiling greasily. “Don’t leave me alone with him,” I whispered furiously. I held tight to the back of Rianne’s wheelchair, chaining her in place.
“Hello, ladies. I’m Eddy Castellan, Timothy’s uncle.”
I shook his outstretched hand. “I’m Angel Eastland, and this is Rianne Beaulieu.”
“Pleased to meet you. Hey, Timothy, why didn’t you tell me your new roommates were knockouts?” Eddy called over his shoulder.
Eddy’s compliment unnerved me. My heart was rabbiting in my chest, and my hands felt icy. With a shock, I realized I was afraid. Of Eddy.
I didn’t understand why. Eddy was a creep, and he had the power to fire me, but that didn’t explain my reaction.
Timothy didn’t know how to answer his uncle’s rhetorical question. His fair skin flushed with embarrassment. “I didn’t think of it. That is—”
Eddy cut him off, still beaming at Rianne and me. “Timothy’s been doing a great job running the symposium, don’t you think? He’s been run off his feet, so don’t keep him up partying every night, okay?” Eddy winked again, and then left the rest of the table sitting in stiff silence.
Half an hour later, we returned to the Castellan house. President Castellan started to excuse herself when Timothy put an old science fiction movie— what else?—on the big screen in the living room.
“Wait,” Zinnia said, entering the room breathless, “there’s something I wanted to show you.” She stopped the movie and put in her own disk. “This one’s my favorite,” she said shyly.
A severe-looking blond with a snub nose appeared on the screen. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. I assumed my memory had another hole in it, and I braced myself for the drowning that usually followed, but it didn’t come. As the blond woman held up a child’s shapesorting toy, I realized that Zinnia and Dahlia had the same snub nose.
This must be Iris Cartwright, their progenitor.
“Don’t show them that!” Dahlia was on her feet, embarrassed, as Iris Cartwright demonstrated how to push the various blocks through the correct slots, naming the color and shape of each block as she did so. “This is one of the baby tapes.”
Zinnia ignored her, speaking to President Castellan. “I like this one because she smiles. . . . There! Did you see it?”
“I saw it,” President Castellan said gently.
Dahlia rolled h
er eyes at her clone-sister’s dorkiness. “So she smiled, so what?”
Rianne scowled at Dahlia and said to Zinnia, “You’re lucky to have the tape. I used to have one of my dad singing me happy birthday, but it broke.”
“Are we going to watch the movie or not?” Dahlia demanded.
Timothy obligingly started the movie again. “Watch this shot.Marinerhadn’t been to Mars yet, so they still thought the Martian canyons were ‘canals.’ ”
The movie was so bad it was funny. We threw popcorn at the screen whenever they said something wrong about Mars, even developing a rating system. One kernel was thrown for obscure facts, up to a handful for dead obvious ones, like the color of the sky.
One movie turned into a marathon. Timothy made chocolate milk shakes, and we all pigged out. Zinnia went to bed after the first movie. Dahlia started to fidget halfway into the second and left soon after.
I watched the first three movies but faked ayawn and excused myself when Timothy put on a fourth. I caught Rianne’s eye and signaled that she should follow me.
Mike saw and stood up, too.
“Oh, are you all leaving?” Timothy sounded disappointed. “I could play a different movie.” He started to rifle through his disks. Timothy appeared to own all the Martian movies ever produced and to have seen every one of them.
I sent Mike a pleading glance.
“Sure,” Mike said easily. “What movies have you got?”
Timothy was happily listing off titles when Rianne and I slipped out.
“What is it?” Rianne asked curiously.
“I need help with something. Remember earlier when I said I thought Timothy needed to have more fun? I want to play a prank on him. Something fun, not mean.”
Rianne looked interested. “What did you have in mind?”
I told her, and she laughed.
Half an hour later, we finished. Every item in Timothy’s room had been moved and smushed up against the left wall. Bed, desk, lamps, pictures, hanging model of Mars, everything. It looked as if a black hole had tried to suck up the room and failed. I brushed my hands together, pleased with myself.
My search of Timothy’s room hadn’t turned up any sign of suicidal tendencies. No guns, no razors, no death literature. Except for his Mars obsession and a too neatly made-up bed, which could probably be attributed to Graciana, hisroom could have passed for any teenage boy’s.
“What about the closet?” Rianne asked.
“Good thought.” I crossed the room and slid back the door—and my stomach dropped to my knees.
Timothy’s mother had a right to be worried, after all. The reason the bed was so neat was because Timothy wasn’t sleeping in it. A pillow and a blanket lay on the floor of his closet.
I CLOSED THE CLOSET IMMEDIATELY, shielding it from Rianne’s view. “On second thought, let’s do Mike’s room instead.”
“Ooh, let’s.” Rianne grinned, in the spirit of things now.
If Timothy was sleeping in his closet, his nerves must be pretty on edge. I wanted to make sure that when he entered his room, he knew it was a prank and not something more sinister.
So Rianne and I tied all Mike’s clothes together and strung them down the hall, before retreating to our bedroom. We turned off the lights and got into our beds, but left the door open a crack so we would be sure to hear their reaction.
Mike didn’t disappoint me. “What the hell?” he said twenty minutes later when the movie ended and they turned in for the night.
“Are those your clothes?” Timothy sounded confused.
“Yes,” Mike said. “And no,Ididn’t tie themtogether. And I think we can rule out your mother and Graciana, too.” He came and stood right by our doorway. “Hmmm, I wonder who could have done it?” he said loudly. “Could it possibly have been Angel and Rianne?”
In the bed across from me, Rianne stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from laughing.
I faked a snore, making her shoulders shake all the more.
“Stop grinning,” Mike told Timothy as he stooped to pick up the clothes. “You haven’t checked your room yet. They might have put all your clothes on the roof.”
“Me?”
The open astonishment in Timothy’s face made me doubly glad I’d decided to play a trick on Mike, too. Now Timothy would feel included in the fun instead of singled out and picked on.
“Yes, you.” Mike gave Timothy a little shove. “Open your door and let’s see.”
They stepped out of my range of vision so I got up and put my eye to the crack. I saw Timothy approach his door warily.
“What if it’s booby-trapped?” Timothy whispered.
“Then you get wet.”
Timothy turned the doorknob and pushed open the door without stepping inside. When nothing happened, he reached inside and flipped on the light.
The two boys stared inside. “How did they do that?” Timothy sounded dazed.
Mike clapped Timothy on the shoulder. “Well, it looks like your clothes are fine.” They laughed.
Mike came back out into the hall; I retreated back into bed. “You know this means war, don’t you?” he said loudly, standing in front of Rianne’s and my door.
“How do you know it was Rianne and Angel?” Timothy asked. “It could have been Zinnia and Dahlia.”
“Trust me,” Mike said. “I know Angel. This is one hundred percent her style.”
My smile faded. Mike knew my style, but I hadn’t had any idea that I was someone who liked to play tricks until tonight.
The boys had their revenge the next morning when a beaming Graciana served Rianne and me omelets while everyone else had pancakes. “Mr. Timothy tells me you had an argument over who most likes spicy food. Here is my specialty, omelets. They are very hot.”
Faced with hurting her feelings, Rianne and I both dug in.
I liked spicy foods, but Graciana had put in enough peppers to set fire to the plate. “Bring on the Tabasco sauce,” I said gamely, as my eyes streamed. My tongue went numb halfway through, but I ate the whole omelet.
Rianne only managed half of hers before conceding the field to me. “It’s very good,” she told Graciana weakly.
As soon as Graciana left, Rianne aimed a killing glare at Timothy. She didn’t seem to blame Mike at all. A mistake. I was pretty sure it had been Mike’s idea—as sure as Mike had been about last night’s prank being my style.
“It’s time to go,” Timothy said. “Where’s Zinnia? Is she always late?”
“She’ll be down in a minute,” Dahlia said sharply. “And she wouldn’t be late if you had a decent number of bathrooms.”
I used the time while we waited to check my palmtop for messages. I found a brief recording from Anaximander. “Angel, go to the second-floor offices at 10:30A.M.if you want answers to your questions.” I couldn’t tell from his expression if Eddy had released the information or if Anaximander was going behind his back.
I waited until everyone had picked a session to attend, then chose the one no one else had selected. Mike looked as though he wanted to change his mind and go with me, but I shook my head, and he didn’t.
The session on the Martian atmosphere turned out to be more interesting than it sounded. I was fascinated to learn that greenhouse gases that were pollutants on Earth were actually good for Mars, helping to warm up the atmosphere. I left promptly at 10:25A.M.—nopoint in irking Anaximander if he was bending over backward to help me.
But Anaximander wasn’t waiting for me upstairs. Eddy was.
If I’d seen him before he saw me, I would have quietly turned around and gone back downstairs. As it was, he smiled and waved. I came closer, reluctantly.
There was nothing to be afraid of, but I was afraid. Was Shadow Angel trying to warn me?
“Anaximander tells me you’ve been asking about Timothy’s kidnapping,” Eddy said easily.
I nodded, sparing a brief hope that my request hadn’t gotten Anaximander in trouble.
“I’ll be glad to tell you mo
re, but first, can you give me your impression of Timothy?”
“He’s nice,” I said. “Smart. A little shy until you get him going. He knows a lot about Mars.” I sorted through my other impressions.He’s defensive around his mother, and for reasons that I don’t understand, he worships you.“A little naive,” I finished.
“Did he seem depressed at all?” Eddy fished.
“No,” I said firmly. Whatever was wrong with him, I was certain Timothy wasn’t suicidal. “Maybe a little moody,” I added, remembering his behavior toward his mother.
Eddy pounced on that. “Mood swings, huh?” He shook his head. His expression was sad, but I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe Eddy had feelings for anybody but himself. “Damn it. I was hoping he was getting better. Did he seem stable to you? Not . . . violent in any way?”
I laughed—I couldn’t help it, the idea was so far-fetched. “Timothy? No.”
Eddy didn’t like being laughed at. He looked annoyed.
Fear cut me off midchuckle. What was it about Eddy that was putting me so on edge? He was shorter than I was and heavier. Dumber, too. Anger overwrote fear. If he tried anything I’d throw him on his butt so hard, he’d bounce—
Eddy said something, but I didn’t hear it. I blinked and changed the subject. “So, about Timothy’s kidnapping, what did the Spacers want? Why did negotiations drag on for so long?”
“The Spacers demanded a great long list of impossible things. It took time to whittle their demands down to something reasonable.” Eddy waved that off as unimportant. “Ever since Timothy was kidnapped, he’s been obsessed with Mars. This whole symposium is his idea; his mother indulged him by letting him put it on. I can’t help thinking it’s unhealthy.”
Eddy paused expectantly, but I didn’t chip in with an agreement. Timothy’s interest in Mars wasn’t unhealthy; sleeping in his closet was unhealthy.
“What happened to Timothy while he was kidnapped?” I asked.
“We don’t know.” Eddy shook his head and tried to look sad. “Timothy won’t speak of his time as a captive. I think the kid needs help, but his mother stopped making him see a psychologist when he asked her to.”
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