A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe)

by Leicht, Martin

  Oates, meanwhile, has been sitting quietly, taking in my every word.

  I look across the table at Dad as little Olivia chows down on her lunch. “You okay, Dad?” He’s examining the contents of his teacup hard-core, and I’m a little worried that I may have overloaded his circuitry with questionable facts. Dead wife’s not so dead; newly minted best friend is his not-so-dead-wife’s lover; daughter’s some sort of alien-human hybrid . . . Even Harry Nara couldn’t have had the foresight to make crisis folders for all of that.

  But when he looks up, my father seems the picture of tranquility. “I accept reality and dare not question it,” he says to the table.

  “Walt Whitman?” Oates asks, warming his hands on his own cup.

  Dad jerks his gaze in Oates’s direction, surprised, I suppose, that someone got his totally esoteric citation. “Indeed,” he says with a smile.

  “A wise philosophy in times like these.” Oates shifts in his hard wooden chair to face me. “So, Miss Elvie, to make absolutely certain I understand”—he pauses for an infuriatingly long sip of tea. Ssssssiiiiiiii. . . (this guy is a perfect fit for Antarctic living, because I swear his default pace is “glacial”) . . . iiiiiiiiiiiippppp—“you’re positive that Byron and the others at headquarters are well aware of the threat of these Jin’ . . . ?”

  “Kai,” I finish for him. “Jin’Kai. And yes, they do know they exist. Before the Echidna crashed, Cole downloaded Dr. Marsden’s files for Byron to examine. But . . .” I shift Olivia ever so slightly so I can take my own midsentence sip of tea. Delightful. “Marsden was hiding information from his superiors. He told me as much. He must have had personal files, files we weren’t able to access before we escaped.” I set the teacup back in its saucer with a click. “Byron and the others should be looking for the wreck. If it’s at all salvageable, it may be possible to find Dr. Marsden’s personal files. Then they’d know what we were dealing with.”

  Oates takes in that information and then, without another word, rises from the table and leaves the room. I turn to the rest of the group to see what they make of that, but they aren’t much help.

  “Why should we warn the Almiri of anything?” Zee wonders. “So these Jin’Kai fellows want to wipe out the entire Almiri race. I say we’ll all be better off.”

  It is a strange feeling, realizing you have more sense than your own mother. I sigh as Olivia pulls away from my chesticular area, letting me know that she’s finished eating. “Because,” I tell my mom. And it occurs to me, as I’m zipping up my thermal suit, that my mother has probably never done what I just finished doing. Having abandoned us right after I was born, there’s a decent chance she never even held me. “The Jin’Kai aren’t just a threat to the Almiri anymore. They literally want to take over the world. And if they think that they can use the Enosi as a means to an end somehow—if they’re already doing experiments on girls like me to find out what makes us tick—then they’re a threat to everyone. This isn’t Almiri versus Enosi. This isn’t Almiri versus humans. This is Jin’Kai versus every single person on the planet Earth. Right, Dad?”

  Dad leans forward, face scrunched up in heavy concentration. “Here’s the thing I wonder,” he says, swishing his cup so hard that a little tea slips out the side. He doesn’t even notice. “If you’re not dead, then who did we cremate?”

  Ugh, Dad. Not helping.

  Zee shrugs her shoulders as if the answer to Dad’s question is as silly as asking how long one’s legs should be to reach the floor. “Some friends broke into the crematorium with a body bag filled with butcher’s scraps.”

  “Pleasant picture.” Dad lifts the teacup to his lips but doesn’t sip. “And I’m guessing your self-inflicted coma was induced with a Tetrodotoxin Chromate variant?”

  “Hydrolyzed gyromitrin,” Zee replies.

  Slam! goes the cup in its saucer. “Hydrolyzed gyromitrin?” Dad cries, his voice dripping in disbelief. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”

  “Excuse me?” Zee is sitting straight as a rail. I’m pretty sure the hairs on the back of her neck are at attention too.

  “You could have done permanent damage to your liver!” Dad continues, practically choking on spittle. “There are a dozen other neurotoxins you could have used instead.”

  “It’s what I had available. What difference does it make now?” Zee asks.

  “Only that it was irresponsible in the extreme!” Dad shouts. I haven’t seen the veins in his forehead bulge like this since I was eight, when Ducky and I mixed Pop Rocks and GuzzPop in the back of his brand-new car.

  “What business is it of yours how I poison myself?” Zee says, her voice getting shrill.

  “Guys,” I butt in, “maybe now’s not the time—”

  “Elvie, please,” Dad says sharply. “I’m having a discussion with your mother.”

  “A discussion?” Zee bellows. “More like a lecture. Where do you get off . . .”

  Suddenly I feel woozy. I rise up and, just as Oates did, make my way briskly out of the storage room without saying a word.

  Neither Cole nor Ducky are anywhere to be seen in the canteen. Only Clark and a few of Jørgen’s cronies.

  “How’s it going in there?” Clark asks me.

  “Where’s Oates?” I reply.

  Clark peers at me for a moment, as if debating whether or not to respond, but eventually motions to the entry hallway. “He’s up topside. Said he needed to check something.”

  “Thanks.”

  As I exit the climate-controlled stairs and make my way up into the cabin, the cool air hits my skin, settling my nerves a little. But they quickly return to unsettled status when I hear Oates’s voice.

  “Don’t you give me a lecture on ‘need to know,’ ” he declares loudly. It might be the first time I’ve ever heard the dude raise his voice. “You didn’t think this aggressor was a threat we might need to protect ourselves against?”

  The response comes from a distorted—yet familiar—voice. “The threat of the Jin’Kai discovering a couple of prisoners marooned at the South Pole was minimal.”

  I pause at the top of the stairs, just listening. Thankfully, Livvie is full from her recent feeding and feeling groggy, so she’s content simply to listen too. I rub her back slowly, one hand on the door.

  “A minimal threat?” Oates shouts. “You’ve hidden their existence from me for fifty years, you ponce!”

  One step farther up the stairs, and the door swooshes closed silently behind me. I look around and find Oates sitting at the table in the corner, hunched over the old ham radio. He clutches the speaker in his hand.

  “Lawrence,” comes the voice again over the radio. I recognize it now as Byron’s. “You are no longer privy to security matters. This should not come as a surprise.”

  “I’m privy when it suits you,” Oates says. “When it has to do with protecting your precious—”

  “BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPP!”

  And that would be Olivia, ruining my eavesdropping moment. I’m starting to figure out why spies never bring babies along with them.

  Oates stops midsentence and turns to look at me.

  “Sorry,” I tell him, feeling my face burn. “I shouldn’t have . . . I was just . . .”

  “Oates?” blusters Byron’s voice from the radio. “Is that her?”

  “Never mind the girl,” Oates retorts, turning his attention back to the radio. He waves me away, but I stay put, patting Livvie’s back. “The matter at hand is these Jin’Kai chaps and their apparent knowledge concerning the hybrids.”

  “Good girl,” I whisper into Olivia’s tiny curled ear. “Good job with the burping.” But my focus is on the conversation in front of me. So Oates is a prisoner, but he has private powwows with Byron on this antique radio? What do they do, chat about baseball?

  “We have the files from the Echidna,” Byron tells Oates. “There is no mention of any experiments involving Ibrida.”

  “I have it on good authority tha
t there may be files still aboard that would speak otherwise.”

  There is a long pause from the radio. I walk over to the table and stand next to Oates, who doesn’t bother to shoo me away this time. Instead, he actually pats my hand in a reassuring manner before he continues speaking.

  “Byron, if these cousins of ours are up to something, we should know about it.” He is beginning to sound much more calm. Determined, even.

  “I’ll see about getting a task force together,” Byron answers finally. “If I can get the other Council members to agree—”

  “No time for politics,” Oates cuts in. “Within weeks the weather will warm, and the ice will melt. The thing could be completely underwater by the time your people get here.”

  “Wait,” I whisper. “The Echidna is here?”

  “Oates, don’t do anything foolish. You don’t have the manpower, or the authority—”

  “Feel free to extend my sentence, then, if you must,” Oates says, rising from the table.

  “Oates! Don’t you drag that child on some damned goose chase! I’ll know if you—”

  With that, Oates shuts the radio off and turns to me.

  “Everything all right downstairs, lass?”

  “The Echidna is in Antarctica?” I ask him, incredulous. I suppose it makes sense that a ship that big would be pulled toward one of the poles, but . . . “How do you know?”

  “A crash that size could not go unnoticed,” Oates says matter-of-factly. “Carnage like that, a place like this . . . Even a blind man can spot fire in the ice a hundred miles out.” He shoves the radio back into the corner. “I informed our little Lord Byron of the crash when it happened. That’s when we got to discussing your coming here for a sojourn.”

  “Why were you talking about me with . . .” My eyes bug out. “Lord Byron? That Byron”—I point to the radio, as though I think he’s inside it—“is Lord flipping Byron?”

  “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” he says. “We go way back, he and I.”

  That explains the ugly-ass oil painting on the wall of Byron’s study, the one with the mustachioed dude in the headscarf. My tenth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Kwan, would practically crap herself if she knew who I’d been talking to. She might even rethink that B- she gave me.

  “Holy shit balls,” I say, in the spirit of being poetic. The head of the Almiri goon squad isn’t just 1950s heartthrob James Dean. He’s also an eighteenth-century Don Juan—and the freaking boringest poet I’ve ever read. Even the baby can’t believe it.

  “Buuuuuuuuuurp!” she burps again. And this time she leaves a little spit-up on my shoulder.

  “Come, let’s get down below,” Oates says, heading for the door in the floor. “We’ve many preparations to make, and I don’t work well on an empty stomach.”

  “Preparations for what?” I ask.

  “You’re the one who said these files were important,” Oates tells me as the door swooshes open. He takes one step down before turning to me. “And you know the ship.” My confusion must be evident, because Oates steps back into the room again, as though to better explain. “The man’s been keeping information from me, and I won’t have it. Our expedition leaves at dawn.”

  “Our . . . expedition?” I gasp.

  “There’s no time to waste,” Oates calls, descending out of sight. “I will put on the tea, and then we’ll begin.”

  Chapter Six

  In Which the Ice Begins to Crack

  “Elvie, I know you’re kick-ass and everything,” Ducky tells me as I hug baby Olivia even tighter in the papoose slung around my arms. “But maybe you don’t take the infant on a five-day dogsled trip to an alien spaceship crash site.”

  I shake my head, staring at Liv’s tiny flecks of eyelashes as she sleeps so peacefully. It’s only four in the morning, but thanks to the wonders of the Antarctic summer, it’s bright enough that it feels like midday. “I’m not leaving her, Duck. I’m her mother, for God’s sake. I’m the one who knows how to feed her and change her diaper. I know what all her cries mean.”

  “How are you going to change her diaper when you’re huddled on the back of a sled going thirty miles an hour in below-freezing temps?” Ducky’s really not backing down. “Elvie, I’m sorry, but you’re being unreasonable. Your daughter needs to stay here. Maybe you should too. Let the others handle it.”

  “I’m the only one who’s been on the ship,” I argue.

  “Cole’s been on the ship,” Ducky corrects me.

  I raise a wary eyebrow at him. “And you really want Cole in charge of saving the world?”

  Ducky thinks on it for a good hard second before letting out a sigh. “No,” he concedes. “But the baby, Elvie, I’m serious. Even if it’s not too much for you, it will be for her. Even if she is a half-alien superbaby.”

  I turn to my dad, who is loading up one of the dogsleds with what appears to be 500 kilograms of pemmican. Dad takes in the situation in one glance—me holding my baby close, my pleading eyes. And he responds in typical Harry Nara style.

  “It’s not for me to say what’s right for you, Elvie. Besides, you already know.”

  There is a lump in my throat that I can’t gulp down, no matter how hard I try. But I know Ducky is right. If I want to go on this adventure to save the planet, the safest place for my baby is without me.

  Stupid planet.

  The crash site recovery team is composed of six people—er, beings—and was decided on by a near-unanimous vote, by both the Almiri and the Enosi. Oates insisted that the hybrids have a say—over the protestations of Jørgen and a few other grumpy Guses—and at least one representative. As it turns out, they got two: Zee, because she’s a major pain in the ass, and Bernard, because he’s the only one of the Enosi with a damn clue about Antarctic survival. Cole and I are making the journey because, as my bestie pointed out, we know the ship. And Oates is coming too, of course, to handle the dogs and because, well, he actually knows where the Echidna came down. And, y’know, he’s Oates. The last slot was a little less obvious, but in the end, reason won out. My father rounds out the team because he knows the layout of the Echidna as well as Cole and I do, maybe even better, and we might very well need his technical know-how depending on the extent of the damage to the ship. It’ll be much harder to find anything if, say, we can’t get the doors to open (assuming there are still doors, of course). And I don’t mind saying that the thought of my daddy tagging along on my little icy slumber party puts me much more at ease.

  At the moment, Oates has put me in charge of inventory. Oates estimates the Echidna is about a two-day sled ride from here, but he’s packed enough supplies for nearly a week—two days there and two days back, one day at the site, plus one day to err on. Along the way we will sleep in a tent, perched on the ice, with nothing but a thin thermal sleeping bag to shield us from the cold. I can only imagine how thick my forearm hair is going to get after all this.

  I scan the list.

  One thermal tent. Six thermal sleeping bags. Two heating pods for cooking and, if it gets bad, warming the tent. Four canteens to fill with melted snow, for drinking. Food for the dogs. One replacement runner for each sled. One can of oil for the sled runners. One first aid kit containing bandages, gauze, antiseptic, stitching. Our rations for the journey: six loaves of hardtack bread, two boxes of protein gel packs and vitamin powders, approximately nine billion kilos of pemmican, and, obviously, two tins of tea. Lastly, our “covert ops” gear, which is really just a nice way of saying “nerd stuff”: two lap-pads, some cables and climbing gear, and a tool kit for fine wire work, in case we have to hardwire ourselves into the Echidna’s computer systems for any reason. The files we’re hoping to find will most likely be on a separate, non-networked machine, which will make locating them more of a hassle, but we’ll still want access to the main computer systems to make sure we can move around the ship.

  Honestly, I can’t imagine how Pontius and the other dogs are supposed to haul all this crap stacked on just two sleds
. I look longingly at the snowmobiles that the Enosi rode in on. My mother suggested we take them for our trip, seeing as they can go twice as fast as the dogs, but Oates merely scoffed at that. This morning, when we came outside to pack, we found out why: the overnight freeze had iced over the motors, and the mobiles were useless—just hunks of metal rusting in the snow.

  Oates has been adamant that the supplies be divided between the two sleds—so that, he explained, if half of us sled down a giant crevasse or something, we won’t all die for lack of food. Which, when Oates mentioned it, did not make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but at least you know the dude is planning ahead.

  It takes us a good two hours to pack up, check, and double-check all our supplies, and another hour for Ducky to pry Olivia out of my arms for the last time as the waterworks break and I become a sniffle monster. But finally I let her go. Cole rubs my back in little circles as he blows kisses at our daughter.

  “She’ll be fine, babe,” Cole says. “She’s going to be with her uncle Ducky.”

  “I pumped tons of milk last night,” I remind Ducky through the sniffles. “It’s—”

  “The bottle in the refrigerator marked ‘baby milk,’ ” Ducky says. “I kinda figured. And she has to be burped after every meal. And she doesn’t like when her socks bunch up by her toes.” He offers me a sympathetic smile. “I’m going to be the rockingest babysitter the girl ever had.”

  I laugh through my sobbing. “She’s never had a babysitter.”

  “Victory by default, then.”

  A few meters away, Oates is giving some last-minute instructions to Rupert, to whom he seems to have left the metaphorical keys to the metaphorical castle. (Jørgen, no shocker, seems to be not-so-metaphorically pissed about it.)

  “Make sure our guests are treated well,” Oates continues. “All our guests.”

  Rupert nods his handsome head. “Of course,” he agrees. “One big, unruly family.”