by Gini Koch
“No idea.” I truly had no idea if William Ward knew about Algar or not. Because it was hard enough to talk about Algar with the couple of people who I knew were aware of his existence as it was. Never saw a reason to force a migraine on myself.
Though, as I thought about it, talking about Algar with Siler wasn’t nearly as hard as it was when I was talking about him with Gower or White.
Would have tried denying things again but the door opened. And Algar came inside.
CHAPTER 46
“OH, EXCUSE ME, LASSIE, LADDIE,” Algar said politely. “One of the weasels got out again and I thought maybe it had run here.”
“Haven’t seen it,” Siler said. “Sorry. If we spot it we’ll bring it to you.”
Realized he was trying to get Algar out of the room so we could continue our conversation. Literally had no idea of what I should be doing right now, though the Inner Hyena was threatening to erupt.
Algar snapped his fingers and time stopped. “I think you should relax, lassie. You need some downtime before the next activities.”
Looked at Siler. He seemed frozen. “Um, can he hear us?”
“He cannot, actually.”
“Great. I’d take you up on that whole resting idea, only I’m experienced enough to know that I’m not going to get any real rest until we’ve saved the cosmos or whatever. So, why are you here? To help me not give you away to Siler or to let him meet you officially?”
Algar shook his head. “He’s not ready to meet me.”
Snorted. “Right. The dude has figured out that you’re out there. To me, that indicates a total readiness to meet the King of the Elves in person.”
“It would. If he was at the point where he grasped that I am a person. The thing is, he thinks I’m like ACE, a spirit.”
“You are, as well. I know you have more aspects than I’ve seen.”
He twinkled at me. “Which is merely one reason why you’re my favorite. Yes, but your friend here isn’t thinking of me as someone he could chat with in the hall. Yet. He’ll come around to it, I’m sure.”
“I could play Joan Osborne’s big hit, “One of Us,” and see if he catches on.”
“Sarcasm is such a fun trait. I’m glad you enjoy it so.”
“I like to take a lot of things to eleven, what can I say? So, what, you’re playing a game with him? Why?”
He shrugged. “Living forever gets dull. This is the first person in existence to figure out that I’m here without my letting him know. That makes him fascinating.”
“And dangerous.”
“In a way, yes. But all of life can be dangerous. You just left a planet full of danger.”
“Good point. Are you okay with him discovering who you are?”
“Is he so tightly tied to you that he would die for you if that was what was required?”
“Um, I have no idea.”
Algar sighed. “Perhaps you don’t. His mentors died for you. Willingly.”
“But he has Lizzie.”
“And he’d die for her, too. He’s not going to die for either of you unless that’s the only way—he’s smart and skilled enough to know that he can do far more for you if he’s alive. But he is willing to do that if he has to. Remember, Lizzie’s your ward for many reasons. And one of those reasons is that her adoptive father takes a lot of risks.”
“Like coming onto this spaceship to protect us, yeah. Will you let Lizzie know about you? One day, I mean.”
He grinned. “Now that’s you thinking right. Yes, I’m sure I will. And your children. They don’t know I’m here yet. But, as with your man here, they’ll figure it out eventually. Being your children, I expect it sooner than later. But Jamie knows how to keep a secret, and I’m sure Charlie will learn from his big sister.”
There was a clue in that, I was sure of it. I just didn’t know what the clue was for. “Let’s hope, at any rate. Have you told Jeff yet?”
“Not yet. Possibly soon. Possibly not. Knowing I’m here doesn’t make things easier for anyone, you know.”
“Yeah, I do, actually. So, while I have your full attention, why did you wipe out the coordinates for us to get to Ixtha? I thought you were all for us going there.”
“I am. I don’t want the galaxy and, potentially, the universe destroyed. Only, I’m not the one who did that.”
“ACE?” That seemed so unlikely, though, based on ACE’s desire to help Ixtha.
“No, not ACE. But . . . neither one of us will interfere in this situation.”
Stared at him. “Come again? I mean, seriously, we’re in the middle of nowhere and have no idea where to go. Why won’t the two of you interfere? Just dedicated to us doing it all ourselves while singing the Free Will Forever theme song?”
He sighed. “Honestly? No. We won’t interfere because it’s not our place.”
Felt a migraine threatening. “Look. It’s really hard to play the mental gymnastics with Siler that I have to in order not to give him intel about you and who knows about you. Does William, by the way?”
“Does it matter if he does or doesn’t?”
Thought about it. “No. He’ll do what he thinks is best and that tends to be what Jeff and I think is best.”
“Exactly.”
“Great, thanks for that. But, back to my impending migraine—if it wasn’t you or ACE, who wiped the coordinates?”
Algar smiled. “The same one who gave Jamie the passenger list.” Then he snapped his fingers again. “Well, laddie, thank you. Should you find the weasel, please let the ship know. I’ll be looking for it until it’s found.”
“Will do,” Siler said. “Good luck.”
“Oh,” Algar said as he opened the door, “I don’t believe in luck, laddie. It’s just hard work and perseverance belittled.” He closed the door as he left.
“I like the Ard Ri,” Siler said. “He seems like an intelligent crackpot.”
“Um, yeah. I’m not going to point out that, per every enemy we’ve ever had, I’m considered quite lucky.”
“Just because they belittle you doesn’t mean that they’re right. I agree with the Ard Ri—it’s not actually luck. It’s hard work, perseverance, a willingness to try anything that might have even the slimmest chance of success, and dedication to doing what’s right and saving the day.”
“I’m gonna blush.”
He grinned. “Well, the President hasn’t had a good jealousy rage for a while now.”
“Hey, that’s my line. So, anyway, I’m not planning to talk to the DJ.”
Siler raised his eyebrow.
“Fine. I’m not going to talk to him now because I don’t think he’s ready to meet you yet. You’ll just have to deal.”
Siler opened his mouth—to argue, most likely—but he was interrupted. By alarms.
We looked at each other. “Oh my God, are you kidding? We literally just finished saving an entire solar system. We get five minutes of downtime and that’s it?”
“All personnel to stations,” Mother said crisply, in a way that said she’d like to be shouting these orders, but couldn’t because she wasn’t programmed that way. “All passengers to crash couches or the equivalent. All command personnel to command deck.” Due to the alarms, she was having to repeat herself in order to be sure we could all hear everything. By now even JR was probably clear on what the alarms meant.
Siler grabbed my hand and we took off. He let go of me right before we reached the command deck, so like in two seconds. “I’ll make sure the kids are safe. You handle the ship.”
“Good plan.”
He raced off for the Nonessential Personnel section and I raced to my seat. Was really glad I’d hadn’t felt confident enough to take my purse off earlier. Hoped the bunnies were going to be okay, but didn’t have a lot of time to worry about anything other than what was right in front
of me.
Jeff, Hughes, Walker, Tim, and Tito were already in position with their helmets on. “What’s our status?” I shouted as I flung my helmet onto my head and my butt into my seat, once again ensuring that my purse and I were strapped in.
“Coordinates are activating,” Mother said. “But not under my command.”
“Not any of ours, either,” Tim shouted.
“Mother, the alarms. Can they go to less loud? I think all passengers and crew are aware of the direness of our latest situation.”
The alarms didn’t mute but they went down about a million decibels. “Apologies,” Mother said. “Everyone was scattered.”
“No worries, I’d assume they’re all where they should be now, right?”
“Yes . . . all personnel are accounted for and in assigned locations.”
“Are the children all supervised?” Jeff asked.
“They are, and all children were strapped in first by any adult nearby.”
“Good. Nice to know everyone has their priorities straight. Now, someone talk to me because I wasn’t here when this all started—what’s going on?”
“We don’t know again,” Hughes said. “We were all discussing possible directions when Mother said that something was wrong. Drax and the hackers went to work on it.”
“They did not arrive in time,” Mother said. “They are safe, but they were not able to stop this malfunction.”
“So, where are we heading?”
“As near as I can tell,” Mother replied, “across the galaxy.”
“Of course we are,” Jeff said.
“Are you sure that this isn’t the original coordinates resurfacing somehow?” Tito asked.
“Yes, I am certain. Expect warp in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
Felt the slamming back in your seat feeling of going into warp. “Remember,” Tito said calmly, “deep breaths and don’t fight it.”
We all did better this time, which was nice. What wasn’t was that the pressure seemed to be going on for a long time. “Um, Mother? When does the pressure stop? Again, asking for a friend.”
“And again, she’s asking for me,” Tim said.
“I have no idea,” Mother said. “I am not in control of the ship.”
Let that sit on the air for a moment. “Excuse me?” Jeff asked finally. “You told us we were going to warp.”
“Yes, because I could determine that was what the ship was doing. But I have no control right now.”
“Think the hackers screwed something up, intentionally or accidentally?” Tim asked.
“Only if Drax wanted his prized creation ruined,” Jeff said. “Per Brian, Drax oversaw everything the freeloaders did, and Drax has a lot riding on the Distant Voyager. I find it hard to believe that he’s sabotaged his own ship or allowed anyone else to do it right under his nose. If he wanted to go visit somewhere, all he had to do was tell us and set the coordinates. And unless we’re heading for Vatusus, I don’t buy it.”
“We are not, as far as I can tell,” Mother said.
“The hackers don’t have anything riding on the ship,” Tim said. “And they snuck on.”
“They snuck on because it’s the coolest thing ever and they’re idiots in some ways. But sabotage like this isn’t like them, honestly, and I’ve known them all a long time. So has Chuckie. If these guys weren’t a hundred percent loyal and then some, Chuckie would have already had them taken out. And before you argue, yes I mean that seriously, yes they’re his friends, and yes he’d still take them out if they weren’t trustworthy. I know for a fact he still has them all wearing the self-destruct watches and I also know that Dulce hasn’t been allowed to remove them.”
“It’s kind of miraculous that he doesn’t have us all wearing them,” Walker pointed out.
Rightly, as I thought about it. Maybe Siler had been correct when we’d talked about this at the end of Operation Fundraiser—Chuckie trusted more people than he liked to let on.
However, he didn’t trust them without a lot of proof and background checking, so I remained unworried about Hacker International’s loyalties. Jeff might call them freeloaders, but they were living in the best setup of any of their lives and I knew they never wanted to do anything to lose said setup. And betraying us would lose it faster than anything, and they all knew it. Plus, they loved living in the Zoo, hanging out with Chernobog, and getting to feel vital and important every day. No, Hacker International were not traitors or saboteurs.
“True, but this discussion isn’t solving our current situation,” Hughes replied.
“This feels like outside influence,” Mother said. “We confirmed my programming and the ship to be fully intact before we left the Nazez solar space.”
“What if it’s the black chlorophyll?” I asked. “Could that have done it? Or even the regular chlorophyll? It was from a foreign planet. From a foreign body on a foreign planet, really.”
“The black chlorophyll has not been used yet,” Mother said. “And we ran several tests before utilizing the regular chlorophyll. All seemed fine and as it should have been.”
“Only we get a spaceship that can’t control itself,” Jeff said. “I mean that seriously. I’m confident that other planets and, frankly, other people get ships that work as expected.”
“I apologize again,” Mother said, sounding ready to commit AI suicide.
“It’s not your fault,” Jeff said reassuringly. “We’re in this together, Mother.”
“It feels like my fault,” Mother said.
“Jeff’s right, it’s not. None of this is really . . .” It wasn’t. From the very beginning Mother had been manipulated by others, starting with Ixtha. And, speaking of Ixtha, how had she found us all in the DreamScape anyway? Had she managed it alone, or had she had help? And if she’d had help, had that help come from the same source as Jamie’s passenger list? And, per Algar, the current situation?
“I recognize the way you just stopped talking,” Jeff said. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing concrete yet.” At least, that I could say aloud. Because Algar had been pretty clear about my needing to figure out who’d given Jamie her list of spaceship travelers by myself. I’d thought it was to protect whoever the culprit was. But now I wasn’t so sure.
Now I had a feeling that the people being protected from the knowledge were on the ship.
Thought about what Algar had said just a few minutes before—what I’d felt was a big ol’ Algar Clue. He’d said that Jamie could keep a secret.
She was a little girl, so what possible secrets could she be keeping? Looked around and caught my reflection in the windshield. And gave myself a great big ol’ “DUH” for this one.
Because there was indeed a gigantic secret that Jamie had been keeping for years now. Several secrets, really, but they all related to the main one.
Which was that Naomi was still alive out there in the cosmos. And she was watching over us—throughout the multiverse.
CHAPTER 47
IN ORDER TO SAVE several of us, and to protect Jamie, aka her beloved goddaughter, Naomi had taken far more pure Surcenthumain than a hundred people could have handled. It had brought back the powers she’d lost saving D.C. from the Z’porrah attack during Operation Destruction—but it had also killed her.
Only, she’d become so powerful that her essence hadn’t died. Her body was gone, at least the one she’d been born in. However, she was still out there. And no one—the remaining Gowers and Chuckie in particular—could ever know this, because it would destroy them, in different ways.
The moment I thought of what was going on as filtered through Naomi, though, things started to make sense. Well, some sense. They might have made more sense if I could have talked about this aloud—I thought a lot better when running my yap and sharing the wonder that were my thought processes with others—but that op
tion was definitely not available in this situation. So, I’d just have to make do and do my best in terms of silent yap runnings.
Algar had pretty much said that the person who’d given Jamie the list of people to bring along wasn’t evil. And there were only a few beings out there who both Algar and ACE would feel had a right to interfere with us, at least more than Algar and ACE were interfering. Plus, ACE was emotionally attached to Naomi and had been since she’d been born.
He was more emotionally attached to her since she’d saved him from the Superconsciousness Society and allowed him to return to Earth, which was why he was residing in Jamie these days instead of Naomi’s eldest brother. Naomi’s sentence, though, had been that she couldn’t interfere with us in any way.
I was certain that Naomi had helped me get to and from Bizarro World, though it was likely that Algar had assisted, as well, since Poofs had been, if not overtly involved, at least present and very much accounted for. The Jamie in Bizarro World had told me that every Jamie in the multiverse—at least the ones who were aware of each other, which had appeared to be most or all—knew that the person to ask for help was Auntie Mimi. And Naomi was good at sneaking the help in without being caught.
Realized that I hadn’t looked in the three-way mirror much recently. That meant I was letting Jamie in Bizarro World down. Resolved that I’d get to that the moment we were back. Sooner, if Mother could create a three-way mirror for me that I could adjust to the correct angles needed. But that was for later. Right now, we were sailing off somewhere with no idea of where we were heading or why.
Which was very overt, and therefore going directly against Naomi’s terms of parole with the Superconsciousness Society. Suggesting the DreamScape to Ixtha and leading her to me—probably covert. Suggesting the passenger list to Jamie—again, probably covert. But this was not. This was done literally under our particular Superconsciousness Police’s noses. Because that’s what Sandy and his confederates were, at least for the part of the galaxy all of us on this ship called home.