Amortals

by Matt Forbeck

  I shrugged. "No."

  "Not at all?" He stared at me in disbelief.

  "Well, it would be easier to protect the President if nobody ever wanted to talk to her, but that's not the way it works. She needs to be out there and engaged with the people. All politicians do. Otherwise, they can't get elected."

  "Yeah, but these protesters, you don't find something unAmerican about them?"

  I shook my head and patted Six's knee. "Not at all. Sure, they have some crackpots mixed up with them sometimes, but most of the time they're just citizens who want to make sure that somebody's listening to their point of view."

  Six sat back and ran his hands through his hair. "I just find it so…"

  "Embarrassing?"

  "Yeah!"

  I laughed. "They're your parents. Of course they're embarrassing."

  He chuckled at that, and I knew then that he'd be all right.

  "So your dad kicked you out just because he found out you'd been to see me?"

  Six hemmed and hawed over that. "Well, that was only the start of it. Once he got going on that, he asked me what had gotten me so interested in you in the first place."

  "Outside of the fact you're my direct descendant."

  "And that I'm named after you – right!"

  I waited for a moment, then prompted him again. "Well?"

  He frowned as he considered what to say next. He might only be seventeen, but he was far less impulsive than I'd been at that age. He came to a decision and spoke.

  "I told him it was because I'd been poking around the Shack."

  I cocked my head as if I hadn't heard him properly. "Run that past me again?"

  "We have this family cabin in northern Wisconsin, up in the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. We used to spend a lot of time up there when I was a kid. Whenever Mom and Dad needed to get away from the city, we all piled in the hovercar and headed out there. I spent a couple weeks every summer there growing up."

  I remembered the Shack well. My parents had bought it when I was a little boy, and it had passed down to me. I'd given it to Cal sometime after my first revivification, and he'd presumably passed it on to his kids. I'd spent many summers there too, although hadn't been back there in decades.

  "Sounds idyllic," I said.

  "Sure. Sometimes, though, it was just dull. When I got really bored, I started rummaging around the place, looking for something to do. They have a library in the basement filled with actual books. On paper, you know? I found some books about you there, and I read every one of them."

  I stifled a smile at that. I liked the fact that Six had wanted to learn more about me – and that Five apparently had too.

  "While I was poking around in the library, I found a hidden door behind one of the bookshelves. I tried to pull the shelf away to get a better look, but even though I could see this door behind it, it was fastened to the wall. I was curious now, so I took all the books down until I found it."

  "Found what?"

  "The catch. The bookshelf was set up like a door itself, hanging on hinges. Once I lifted the catch, it swung out toward me, and I could see the whole door."

  I pursed my lips. From Six's description, that would have been the part of the basement that had been set aside for storage. It sounded like it had been repurposed for more than just that though. Most people didn't go to that much trouble to protect old kayaks and snorkeling gear.

  "And what did you find behind that?"

  "Nothing." Six scowled. "I couldn't get it open. It had a combination lock built into it. I thought about just popping it off its hinges, but they were on the other side of the door."

  "So what did you do?"

  Six shrugged. "I put everything back the way I'd found it. I figured I could come back later with some better tools and give it a shot some other time. But then Dad figured out what I'd been up to. He'd noticed that someone had moved some of the books around on the shelf, and he confronted me about it. I'd never seen him so mad."

  "Until today?"

  "I suppose," said Six. "I mean, he didn't kick me out of the house then, but he wasn't as mad today. More like determined. He sat me down and cussed me out and made me swear I would leave that door alone. He told me to never tell anyone about it either. It was his private stuff, and I had no right to violate that."

  "And did you ever mention it to anyone?"

  Six flushed red. "Not until just now," he said. "I probably shouldn't have told you about that."

  "You're right," I said. "But the secret is safe with me."

  Six sighed in relief at that.

  "So how does that tie in to what happened today?"

  Six grimaced. "I told him why I went to see you. The real reason, I mean."

  I realized I was holding my breath, and I let it out slow.

  Six put his hands out before him, palms up. "I was tired of all the secrets in the family. I wanted to know what was going on. If I couldn't get into that room to figure things out, then I was going to talk with you instead."

  I was confused. "But I don't know anything about that room. That was just a storage room when I owned the place."

  "You owned it?" He threw up his hands. "There's another thing I didn't know. But talking with you was the only other thing I could think of to do. When Dad heard that, he just got quiet. He was mad, but he wouldn't let it show. At least that's what he thought. I could see him shaking.

  "Then he asked me to leave. At first, I didn't get it. I just walked out of the room and sat down to play some games on the thrid.

  "He followed me and hauled me up out of my chair. 'No,' he said. 'You need to leave this house. Now. And do not come back.'

  "I still didn't believe it. When my mom came into the room, I tried to explain it to her. I figured she'd understand and convince Dad to take it all back. He refused though. 'It's for his own good,' he told her. She just sat there nodding, tears running down her face."

  He fell quiet then. I let the silence grow between us for a while. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I spoke. "And so you left and came here."

  "That's about it," he said. "Exactly."

  I pondered the situation. While I was happy that Six had contacted me, I didn't have time for this sort of family drama at the moment. Tracking down my killer had to be my highest priority. Every day that passed without me finding my murderer left the trail that much colder.

  On the other hand, I couldn't just toss Six out onto the street. He'd been born a hundred and eighty-three years after me, and my blood may have run thin in him, but it was still my blood.

  I couldn't bring him back to my place though. The Kalis had seen to that.

  I didn't feel like I should let him stay with me at Blair House either. He seemed like a good kid, but I didn't want to have to assign an agent to watch over him, and I couldn't let him have a free run of the place.

  Besides, hanging out with me might make him a target. If he'd been with me at my condo this morning, he would have been killed for sure. I couldn't bear the thought of being responsible for his death, even indirectly.

  I realized I had only one real choice.

  I sent a note to the Blair House kitchen, placing an order for two hot sandwiches and cold drinks to go. They could have them waiting for me in the courtyard in less than ten minutes, and we could eat them on our way.

  "Do your parents know you're here?" I asked.

  Six shook his head. "I didn't tell anyone. I just grabbed a hovercab and came right over."

  "How did you know where I was?"

  "When I turned on the thrid to play some games, the news came on first. I saw the report about your condo on the news. We all did."

  I winced at the thought of reports of that disaster spinning out of control on the net. Patrón would probably rip off my head and hand it back to me.

  "That's part of why I couldn't get my dad to see reason," Six said. "He pointed at the wallscreen and said, 'See? He's dangerous. I don't ever want you to go near him again.'"

&n
bsp; "But here you are."

  Six shrugged. "When I refused to promise him I wouldn't contact you again, that's when he threw me out. Up until then, I thought I could talk him out of it. I figured maybe Mom would step in and stop him, but she didn't."

  He hung his head low and did a poor job trying to hide his sniffles.

  "And then you did exactly what he told you not to."

  Six wiped his face and looked up at me. His gray eyes seemed to glow at me, just like Colleen's had whenever she'd wept.

  "I contacted your office to try to reach you, but they said you weren't there. I tried Agent Querer, and she told me you were here."

  I stood up and patted the kid on the shoulder.

  "All right, Six," I said. "I've heard enough. Let's get going."

  He looked at me expectantly. "Where are we headed?"

  I ran my tongue over my teeth. These would be words he didn't want to hear, but I had to say them anyway.

  "I'm taking you home."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "Come on, Grandpa," Six said. "Think about it. You don't have to do this."

  Our hovercar slipped into a parking level about halfway up the towering building in which Six lived with his parents. It sat out on the edge of Alexandria, in a once-modest neighborhood that had fallen on harder times. Here, on the other side of the Potomac, the old DC zoning laws hadn't ever applied, and the oldest and most decrepit skyscrapers in the area teetered here, many held up by steel pillars bolted to their crumbling retrofitted façades.

  Six had been saying the same thing to me over and over since we'd left Blair House behind. The only time he'd stopped was when he gave in to his hunger and ate the vat-grownbeefburger and fries or drank from the tube of filtered water that had been waiting for us when we'd gotten to the hovercar.

  I had ignored him for most of the ride, assuming he'd eventually give up and move on to something else. It hadn't worked with Cal either. I wondered why I had thought it might work now. Since we had finally reached our destination, I spoke.

  "I can't let you wander around with me. Your father's right. It's too dangerous."

  "I'm almost eighteen," he said. "I'm old enough to take care of myself."

  I had to laugh at that. "Kid, I'm almost two hundred years old, and if today is any indication, I don't think I'm old enough to take care of myself."

  "But, Grandpa–"

  I cut him off with a wave of my hand. "Your father made a mistake. I'll explain it to him. He'll take you back in."

  Although he tried to hide it, hope shone in the kid's eyes. "What makes you so sure of that?"

  "He's your father. He loves you. He'll forgive you."

  "Just like you forgave Three?"

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, but I didn't say a thing. When I opened my eyes back up, Six gave me a sheepish look.

  "I guess that was uncalled for," he said.

  "I never kicked Three out of my house. He never lived with me. Two was his dad."

  "But wasn't the big falling out between him and you?" He edged forward on his seat, eager to learn more about his family's secrets. At least it got him to stop asking me to turn the hovercar around, if only for a minute.

  I looked out the window. A young couple with a squalling baby climbed into a scraped and battered hovercar next to us, and it took off into the sky.

  "Not really," I said. "I understood his point of view. Two, though, I think it embarrassed him. He was the grandson of this national hero, and here was his son acting like some kind of revolutionary."

  "You couldn't have stepped in and put an end to it?"

  I shrugged and looked back at Six. "I tried. It just made things worse. It gave Three a chance to shout at me in front of his father, which only embarrassed Two even more."

  Six raised an eyebrow at me. "So here you are getting involved again? What makes you think this will be any different?"

  "Hope springs eternal," I said.

  "Right," said Six. "That and you."

  I opened the door and got out of the car. I put my hand back for Six, and after a tense moment's hesitation, he followed me.

  "Lay on, McDuff," I said.

  He led me to the elevator, and we took it down to the fifth floor. We got out, hung a right, and strolled along a long hall lined with glowstrips and narrow doors on either side. We passed a few people in the hall, but none of them gave us more than a passing glance. We stopped in front of an otherwise featureless door marked 5150. Six mimed turning a door knob, but the door remained still.

  He scowled at me. "See," he said, "Dad's already deauthorized me. They don't want me back."

  "Maybe they just want you to knock first."

  I gestured him toward the door. He hesitated for a moment, then reached out and knocked on the door three times, maybe just a bit too hard.

  Three seconds later, the door slid aside. A middle-aged woman with long dark hair, olive skin, and deep brown eyes flung herself over the threshold and gathered Six into a desperate embrace. She held him tightly, as if trying to convince herself that he wasn't the product of some sort of mental delusion. When she finally seemed satisfied, she released him and held him at arm's length. "Ronan!" she said. "Don't you ever make me worry about you like that again. I've been trying to contact you for hours!"

  He tried to look tough about it but failed. "I didn't – I…" He looked down at her, younger than her but taller. "I'm sorry. I blocked you and Dad after I left. I should have answered."

  She gave him a gentle scolding with her eyes, then noticed me for the first time. "Oh! And you brought company." She looked at me while she talked to him, unable to recognize me in the hall's dim light. "Why don't you introduce me to your–"

  "Grandpa," Six said.

  She turned to stare at him. "Grandpa? But both your grandfathers are…"

  Her eyes snapped back to me again, and she blanched and stared at me in shock.

  I smiled back at her as warmly as I could and stuck out my hand. "Ronan Dooley," I said. "The First. It's a pleasure to meet you."

  She kept staring at me until Six cleared his throat. She jumped as if she'd been bit, then took my hand and gave it a firm, fast shake.

  "Mr Dooley," she said. "Of course! I'm Lexa, Ronan's wife. Ronan the Fifth, that is. It's a pleasure meeting you too." She continued to shake my hand as she marveled at me. "The First."

  I looked down at our hands, and she followed my gaze. "Oh!" she said, finally releasing me. "I'm so sorry. Please." She stepped aside, making way for Six and me. "Come in."

  I nodded my thanks to her and followed her son into their living room. It was a nice place, cramped by the standards of the Watergate, but spacious enough for them. The bulk of the place was an open-plan room that served all their common needs. A dining table separated the main living area from the kitchen to the left.

  Light streamed in through a wallscreen mounted opposite the door. A foot-tall crucifix hung next to it, much like the one my mother had hung in our house when I'd been growing up.

  Looped thrids of preserved family moments played silently on frames scattered along the other walls. I saw Six playing basketball and indoor soccer in several of them, becoming progressively older as he went. I recognized Three in a few of them, as well as a man that must have been Four, plus lots of other people I could not place. I decided not to let my ID layer try.

  A long semicircular couch sat before the large wallscreen, and Six's mother guided us to it. As Six and I sat down next to each other, I saw a distant look in her eyes and knew she would be zipping her husband a note. She didn't miss a beat, though, and offered me something to drink.

  "A little water would be nice," I said. Six nodded for the same.

  She hustled past the dining area to the left and into the kitchen beyond. It was then that Six's father entered the room from a door off to the right.

  He looked a lot like an older version of Six, but with dark hair that had grown gray around the temples. Instead of his son'
s rangy angles, he had become rounded and soft. He bore himself with a sort of weariness I would have thought not suited to a man so relatively young.

  Of course, everyone's young compared to me.

  He stared first at Six and then at me and said, "Get out." His voice trembled with emotions bound so tightly that it seemed he might burst.

  I stood up and put my hands out to calm him down, but he wasn't having any of that. "He's your son," I said to him.

  "I wasn't talking to him." Five spat the words like bullets and glared straight at me. "He can stay. You, get the hell out."