He took it and worked with the lock for a few moments. In the chilly silence I could hear his breaths and the light clicks of the two objects. Then there was a louder click, and he handed back my needle.
“I’m not necessarily proud of everything Dad taught me,” he explained in answer to my look.
He gripped the heavy doors one at a time and I helped him lower them to the ground to avoid any noise. Then he pulled out his pad and directed the screen towards the opening to give just enough light so we could see ahead of us.
Stone steps went down into the darkness. With a glance at each other, we picked up our backpacks again and he led the way into the bowels of the old castle.
“What are we going to do if we find her?” I asked, noticing that even the softest whisper gave a faint echo. “Just take her away immediately?”
“I think so. We can always get her to safety and find out more later.”
I silently agreed. Keeping her safe was the most important thing right now.
It got warmer the further down we got. The stairs were shallow and wound gradually to the right, and in what felt like five minutes we still had not seen the end of them. I opened my mouth to say I wished Crash were here, thought better of it, and instead said, “I wonder where Crash is?”
August didn’t reply.
At last we saw a faint light from below, enough to illuminate the steps ahead. August turned off the pad and pocketed it. We crept forward in complete silence now, and my stomach tightened as we got closer to the light.
When we reached the bottom of the steps, we were confronted by another wooden door. August reached out, then hesitated.
Finding the suspense unbearable, I reached forward myself and pushed. The door opened a crack, without a sound, leaving a sliver of light. We both peeked through it. I half expected to see Dred working away at some diabolical plot.
We saw only a large, empty stone room. Empty save for many crates piled along the walls.
August pushed the door open. The light came from beyond the empty room, through another closed wooden door opposite us. Trying not to let our footsteps echo against the stone floor, we stepped to that door and this time August cracked it open himself.
This room was brighter. It was also stone, but it had been set up as a modern laboratory. Tables, shelves, computers, microscopes, samples, bottles, and along one wall, rats in cages. It was all lit by strings of bare, old-fashioned light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.
August pushed the door open a little more. No one appeared to be in this room, either.
We kept still and listened. Nothing.
I looked at him, unsure how to proceed.
“Keep going,” he whispered, and slipped into the room.
We made our way through another lab, this one without animals, then the next door led to a very different room. It was about the same size, but in the middle of it sat a square wooden table and four chairs. The whole left side of the room was a kitchenette complete with a microven, stove, temp regulator, and sink. Stone counters topped with wood spanned the edges of the room, and directly across from the table was propped up a large, flat computer which was playing a holographic cartoon with very low volume.
“...what do you think, space monkey?” A holographic animated girl with blonde braids asked a holographic animated monkey.
The monkey hopped around and screeched.
“You’re right, we have to help the Zillarians find their laughter!”
No one was in the room.
We kept our footsteps as quiet as possible as we passed through. An open door at the opposite side led into a long, stone hallway with electric lights installed in metal holders at intervals along the walls. There were more wooden doors along the passage, and August stopped to press his ear to each one.
A few meters into the corridor, we heard a voice.
I started at the sound, then stopped walking and listened. It was a low hum, a male voice, droning unintelligibly.
August and I exchanged glances. He nodded, and we crept towards the sound. It seemed to be coming from an open door a few rooms away.
As we approached the door the voice grew louder, but I could still not distinguish words. At last we reached the opening, and the voice took shape just as we peered into the room.
“And then the papa bear said, ‘Looks like somebody’s been sleeping in my bed!’”
A high-pitched giggle punctuated the familiar story.
The room was large and dim, with a single window near the high ceiling letting in a patch of moonlight. Under the window sat a small wooden bed with a pink, floral cover. Under the pink cover snuggled a small girl with long, straight black hair and dark eyes. These eyes were fixed on a lanky man with salt-and pepper hair in a white lab coat who was seated on the floor next to the bed.
“And then,” he continued, “the mama bear said, ‘It looks like somebody’s been sleeping in my bed!’” He used an exaggeratedly feminine voice in speaking for the mama bear, and the girl on the bed giggled again.
“That’s a silly voice, Daddy,” she protested.
While I was still trying to take in the scene, she happened to look past him and her eyes met mine.
I jerked back and slid around the doorframe, heart rate elevated. August followed suit, and we breathed quietly, frozen.
“Who’s that, Daddy?” the little voice asked.
A pause, during which I assumed he was looking over his shoulder.
“Who’s what, pumpkin?”
“The pretty lady.”
Another pause, then, “There’s no lady there. You were just imagining things.”
“No, Daddy,” the voice protested, “I saw a lady and a man. Over there.”
We heard shuffling and shoes against stone.
Heart racing, I darted a couple meters down to press myself against another door, hoping the slight hollow in the stone would hide me from the man’s eyes. August, however, wasn’t quick enough.
“Hey!” the man’s voice barked.
I didn’t dare look away from my meager hiding place.
No reply.
“Who are you?” The comfortable playfulness of the storyteller was gone, replaced not by sternness but by panic.
“I...” August began, but the man’s voice cut him off.
“Where’s the woman? She said she saw a woman, too.”
August didn’t answer, and the man yelled, “I know you’re there! Come out now, or I swear I’ll shoot!”
I pushed away from the door, heart still pounding, and stepped into the hall, locking my eyes on the man. He was taller than August by several centimeters, though thinner, and he held a blaster in one hand. His hand trembled.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
As I tried to think of an answer, a small form in a white nightgown slipped out of the room behind him and hid behind his leg, letting her pale face peek out at us.
“Ursula,” I breathed.
The man lowered his weapon slightly. “How do you... who sent you? How do you know who she is?”
I just kept staring at the little face and bright eyes, and I couldn’t form words. Ursula. Precious little Ursula.
August finally cleared his throat and spoke for us both. “She’s our sister.”
The words hung in the air as the man lowered the weapon further and glanced from August to Ursula. It would be impossible not to see the resemblance.
She scooted out from behind his leg and looked shyly up at August. “August?” she said, pronouncing the name awkwardly, as though it were a toy she hadn’t played with in a long time.
August glanced at me and smiled a bit before looking back at the girl. “Yes, I’m August.” Then he spoke to her in German and her face lit up. She started forward, but the man grasped her arm and held her back.
“Her mother was barely older than you,” he accused.
“She’s our half sister,” I explained.
The man’s shoulders relaxed and his expression fell
. “Then... you must be Genevieve.”
His use of my birth name startled me and I stared, my mind generating more questions than I had words to ask.
August hesitantly reached his arms out towards the girl, who wriggled out of the other man’s grasp and hurried to him. He lifted her and held her close.
The man in the white coat made no move after her, but I read defeat and pain behind his eyes, even in the dim light.
“You must be Dred,” I said at last.
“Yes. Did Edmunds send you?”
“Kindof.” I looked to August for help explaining, but he just held Ursula possessively and said nothing.
Dred sighed and rubbed his forehead vigorously. “We need to talk.”
CHAPTER X
All four of us sat at the wooden table in the room we’d passed through before. Ursula sat in August’s lap, watching the cartoon that was still projected onto the counter next to the kitchen. Dred and I sat on the other side of the table.
He had listened while we caught him up to speed. I’d been hesitant at first but I couldn’t think of any reason not to be up front with him, so we told him about Else’s letter, Edmunds’ assistance, and our long trip to the castle.
The whole scene was surreal. Being in the warm, dim stone room, Ursula happily nearby, Dred seated next to me and behaving like a normal human being rather than some maniacal mad scientist. August seemed unwilling to take his eyes off Ursula for more than a few seconds at a time, as though she might disappear.
When we finished our story, Dred propped his elbows on the table, leaned his head down, and rubbed his face wearily.
We waited.
“That’s silly,” whispered Ursula, pointing to the hologram, where a monkey in a spacesuit had tripped on what looked like a blue banana peel and slid across the ground to slam into an elaborate purple building.
August pulled her close. “Yes, it is silly.”
She happily went back to watching as Galactic Lucy and her monkey friend tried to find a way into the building.
Finally Dred sat back up. “It’s not what you think.” He put out his hand as if to stop us from interrupting. “It’s bad, okay? It is... bad, but it’s not like Edmunds made it sound.”
August looked him steadily in the eyes. “So you’re not experimenting on her?”
The man’s gaze drifted to Ursula and softened. “Not... not exactly.”
I shivered. “How do you ‘not exactly’ experiment on someone?”
“Just listen.” Dred rubbed his thin face again. “I worked with your father, okay? And I’m sorry to say it, but he was a...” He stopped and glanced at Ursula. “He was... a real...”
“We know what he was like,” I hastened to say.
Dred leaned back in his chair. “The four of us were supposed to be in it together. Once your father had what he wanted, he skipped out with most of our research.” He glanced sidelong at me. “I heard about what happened to him. I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
Unreasonable irritation bubbled up inside me. I didn’t want him to talk to us like he knew us. Like he understood our situation.
He turned away and went on with his story. “The project fell apart after that. Erasmus disappeared and Leeke and Mars moved on. I did other things but I kept researching Langham’s and radialloy as best I could. Well then Erasmus came back on the scene and got involved with the mob...” He looked from August to me and back again. “You probably already know that part. Anyway. He disappeared again and Leeke and Mars heard that his daughter was living in Graz. They contacted me and convinced me that we could use her.” He looked at me again.
“Wait...” Cold realization spread from my mind into my body. “You thought that Ursula... was me?”
Dred examined the grain of the table closely. “It was... a case of mistaken identity, yes. We thought if we could get you, if we could find some way to duplicate the radialloy...” He looked at Ursula. “Of course as soon as their men brought her we realized our mistake, but we couldn’t very well give her back. Leeke and Mars went off to try to find out where you really were, and I was left here with Ursula. Her mother was sent away soon after because of her association with your father and... we’ve just been here ever since.”
Ursula turned to him then and rubbed her eyes. “I’m tired, Daddy.”
August gripped her and looked at me.
Dred sighed. “I think... your sister would like you to sleep with her tonight. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
She looked at me dubiously. August she had heard about and wanted to meet all her life. Me, apparently, not so much. I hadn’t realized from August’s letter that my father had never so much as mentioned me to his second wife.
A pang pricked my heart.
Dred spoke gently. “I think you’d have fun with her.”
“Okay,” she said. She scooted off August’s lap and came over and laid her head against me.
My heart melted. I smoothed her hair.
“Do you have anyone else here?” August asked.
Dred shook his head. “No. It’s just her and me.” He stood up. “There’s another bedroom down from hers. You can lock the door from the inside if that makes you more comfortable. I have more to say, but... it can wait.”
I took the half-sleeping Ursula by the hand and led her down the hall without another word.
He loved her. It was plain in his eyes, the way they looked at her. The way the Doctor’s eyes looked at me. Like the Doctor, he had no one else.
Where was the evil man we had come expecting to see?
***
It was surreal to wake up in the quiet, chilly stone room, in a comfortable double bed, with a small girl cuddled next to me under the covers. She was still asleep, and I watched her small face as she breathed.
I hadn’t been around children very much.
I’d really never thought of it before. There were very few children on the Surveyor, and they really never crossed my path unless they were sick. The last child I remembered really interacting with had been Nama, a little girl we’d met on the planet of Kainus Ge. She’d been fascinated by my light hair, and dealing with her had felt natural. So did dealing with Ursula, when she was awake.
Now she slept, breathing softly through parted lips, and I wondered—how was one supposed to take care of a child?
Besides, I’d seen the way she looked at Dred. She wasn’t going to want to leave him. It was the same expression I felt whenever I looked at the Doctor.
I remembered being her age. I used to run around the Doctor’s office while he worked until he got tired of my hyperactivity and gave me some token task to keep me busy. Taking gauze from one box and packing it into another, or sweeping the floor.
When his hair was less gray, and there was no danger, and it was just the two of us. And that was just fine.
I reached to get my pad off the bedside table, trying not to shift the bed or the simple gray knit blankets too much.
It was six in the morning.
I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, trying to shake the sleepiness. I still wasn’t used to the time change. The Surveyor kept Pacific Standard Time, so transitioning to the United States had been fairly seamless from that standpoint, but Austria was off by several hours. The long train ride, designed to offset so-called “jet lag” had helped a little, but my biological clock still refused to entirely adjust.
I checked my messages, hoping against hope that I had missed one from the Doctor.
Nothing. My last few messages to him hadn’t even sent. They just sat there, going nowhere.
Using up battery.
I sighed, deleted them to save power, then placed the pad back on the table. When I turned back to the other side of the bed I saw two round brown eyes staring into mine.
A distant bird chirp broke the silence.
“Good morning,” I said with a smile.
She just kept staring. I stared back for awhile.
“Good morning,” she said at las
t. I noticed for the first time that she hardly had any accent at all.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Let’s go find some breakfast, then.” I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, shivering a bit.
“Daddy always gets me for breakfast,” she said, sitting up but making no move to leave the warm covers.
Had it been his idea or hers to start calling him that? “He’s probably waiting for us, since he knows I’m with you.”
She just stared at me.
How was I supposed to talk to her? How did one talk to a small child? Especially when that child was a sister who’d never known you existed?
“Do you have a different mama too?” she asked abruptly.
“What do you mean?”
“Mama told me that August had a different mama from me. Do you have a different mama, too?”
I settled back against the simple wooden headboard, wondering how much she knew and how to explain it all to her. “I have the same mama as August. But you and me and him all have the same daddy.”
She nodded, then scooted closer and leaned against me. I could just barely feel the warmth of her tiny body through my sweater. “Did you ever meet that daddy?”
I put an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder with my thumb. “For a little while. Did you?”
I felt her shake her head.
What had happened? Had he abandoned them? He had been a deeply troubled and twisted person, and it wouldn’t have surprised me.
“Do you have a different daddy, too?”
“You mean...” I searched for words. “Like the one you have here?”
“Yes.”
I smiled a bit. “Yes, I do.”
“Which one do you like better?”
Should I answer that? Did I really want her to know about the kind of person our mutual father was?
I went the ambiguous route. “I didn’t really know the first one very well.”
Before she could question further, a soft tap against the heavy wooden door propelled me out of bed and across the cold stone floor. “Who is it?”
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