Gestern

by J. Grace Pennington

  August hesitated. Ursula kept pulling on my hand.

  I had nothing at all from my own mother.

  I swallowed. “I can be quiet.”

  He hesitated a moment longer then nodded, though I knew his expressions well enough to know that the furrowed brows signaled that it was against his better judgment.

  Ursula started to pull me towards her room but I resisted. “Let me go get her,” I whispered close to her ear. “I can be extra quiet.”

  She looked up at August, looked back at me, and let go of my hand. I slipped off my boots and began to tiptoe across the stone back towards the hallway.

  When I reached her bedroom I pushed ever so slightly on the big wooden door. It opened a crack, giving off a squeak that resonated down the dark corridor.

  I winced.

  I pushed on it again and it moved another centimeter but this squeak seemed even louder to my nervous mind.

  Better to have it all done at once than make twenty such sounds and risk waking Dred with each one. I closed my eyes tight and pushed the door wide open.

  It squeaked again, then went silent. I kept perfectly still for a moment, listening for movement in the next room.

  Nothing.

  I released my held breath and slipped into the room. It was pitch black, and I stopped for a moment to pull my pad from my pocket and turn it on. Its screen illuminated the few meters in front of me well enough so that I could make my way through the maze of toys.

  I knew that yesterday we had played with her dolls in the far left corner of the room. I made my way there as stealthily as I could, feeling sure that Dred must be able to hear the pounding of my heart from the other side of the wall.

  He had a blaster, I remembered.

  I found the dolls, still seated around the little wooden toy table as we’d left them. I found little spacesuit-clad Lucy, grabbed her in one fist, and turned to leave.

  As I turned, my shoe caught a leg of the table and pulled it with me. I flew towards the floor head first but managed to roll onto one side so that my shoulder hit the floor instead of my skull. Behind me plastic dishes crashed against stone and dolls toppled from chairs, each with a thump and one with a fuzzy-voiced “Mama!”

  I didn’t dare stay there and catch my breath. Kicking the table away, I scurried to my feet and ran out the door, still clutching the doll in my hand.

  When I came back to the big room, August was already scooping Ursula up onto his back. With a quick glance to make sure I was behind him, he sprinted towards the lab.

  “Lucy!” Ursula cried.

  I waved the doll in the air. “I have it, just hold on!”

  She wrapped her arms around August’s neck and didn’t let go.

  “Stop!” came a masculine voice from behind me. I doubled my speed, leaning forward against the weight of my backpack, and followed August on his run through both labs, through the storage room, and up the narrow stone steps to the outside.

  As we neared the exit, footsteps began to echo against the stone below us. “August!” I screamed.

  He crouched beneath the door and slid Ursula down off his shoulders, then threw his weight against it. To my relief it wasn’t locked, and the beginnings of daylight flooded the passage.

  “Stop!” cried the voice below us again.

  “Daddy?” Ursula called, staring down the stairs into the darkness.

  “Come on.” August gripped her hand and jerked her up the last couple steps. I followed, but the moment I stuck my head out into the fresh, cold morning air I heard a familiar sharp, rain-like sound.

  Bats flooded the clearing from the forest ahead, hurtling in my direction. I screamed and covered my face with the doll as they flew towards me, then parted like the red sea to go past and into the ruins above. Through the gust I could barely hear Ursula’s childish voice wailing. I peered through the incessant black wings and caught a glimpse of August still pulling her along by the hand.

  I started to move forward into the living storm, heart still pounding, but was jerked back by my backpack.

  “Please don’t...” pleaded Dred’s voice next to my ear.

  I kicked backwards as hard as I could, foot connecting with his shin, but his hold on my pack didn’t loosen.

  “You don’t understand,” he went on. “If you don’t...”

  His voice was lost in the gust of bats and I kicked again, harder, but without shoes the impact lacked clout. He still held onto me. I flailed.

  “August!” I screamed, but my voice was lost in the growing gale. The bats never ran into me, but the dank, animal smell and the chirping, whizzing sounds were everywhere—above me, beside me, on both sides, bats, flapping towards me, then away, then more came. Never ending bats.

  I could no longer see him or Ursula.

  “Andi, listen to me!” Dred screamed in my ear. “You don’t understand. By now, Edmunds knows you’ve arrived. The only reason he’d send you here is to get you out of the way. It’s a trap.”

  A trap? That made no sense whatsoever. Why would Edmunds want to trap us?

  I struggled against his grip but he wrapped both arms around my middle and kept me back.

  “August!” I yelled again.

  Nothing except the endless whizzing of bats.

  I finally stopped struggling and stopped screaming and just waited, clutching the plush form of Galactic Lucy to myself, letting Dred hold me back.

  Finally, the air cleared. The last few stragglers flew past us to nestle under the stone eaves of the castle. I yanked away from Dred’s arms and he let me.

  “August!” I screamed louder, letting the syllables echo through the clearing.

  No response. There was no one near except for myself, Dred, and several hundred resting bats.

  I turned to look at him, eyes wide, stomach sinking. “Where are they?”

  He had no answer for me.

  October 23rd, 2321

  8:12 a.m.

  Nondorf, Austria

  By the time the man removed the gag, August’s mouth was so dry he wondered if he’d even be able to swallow again. He smacked his lips a couple times and circled the inside of his mouth with his tongue, trying to generate the barest hint of saliva. His shoulders ached from being tied behind him around what felt like a tree.

  His blindfold was removed next, allowing him to catch an image of the small, dawn-lit forest clearing.

  The man crouched in front of him, meaty face illuminated sparsely by blue flames a few feet away. “You must be Sandison’s boy.”

  Even if August had wanted to say anything to this, he couldn’t speak. He shivered and tried to relax, to quell the rising feelings of lightheadedness.

  “You’re his spitting image.” The man dropped to sit on his rear and crossed his legs in front of him. As he moved, the flickering light revealed a long scar running down the right side of his face. “Where is she?”

  August just stared.

  “Look, the secret’s out, boy. Everyone knows she has the last of the radialloy. She went in Dred’s castle with you. Is she still there, or did she give us the slip?”

  Andi. He looked from side to side. Ursula was curled up against another tree a couple meters away, tears streaking down the dust that caked her face. But no Andi.

  Cold swept over him and he forced himself to breathe deeply.

  The man gripped his arm and squeezed it until August thought his bone would crack. “Where is she?”

  Why did they want her? The radialloy was dying. And why didn’t they just storm Dred’s castle and find out for themselves? He had no way to stop them.

  He said nothing aloud, and the man finally let go of his arm.

  “Do we report?” another voice asked, a pale silhouette on the other side of the fire.

  The man with the scar shook his head and stood up. “We’ll wait for a little while. If she’s in there, she’ll be out to find them eventually.” He gave August one last glance. “And if for some reason she doesn’t, we can find a way t
o destroy the place. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  The silence as Dred and I sat at the table was deafening.

  After he’d convinced me to come inside from the clearly empty peninsula clearing, I’d plopped down at the table in the kitchen room and tried to send a hundred different messages to the Doctor.

  Nothing. Not one message would get through.

  I finally slammed my pad down on the table and screamed at him. I don’t remember what I even said, I just know I was angry and scared and it all exploded. Why had he stopped me. Why hadn’t he stopped us sooner. What had he done to Ursula. What did he know about Edmunds that we didn’t know. Why hadn’t he told us whatever it was.

  He just sat quietly and let me get it out, and when I was finished, he scooted his chair back and stood up.

  “Follow me.”

  Exhausted and ready for anything to shed some light on the situation, I pocketed my pad and followed him out of the room and towards the next room.

  Didn’t he have a right to scream at me, too? I’d lost his beloved daughter to who knew what new danger—or was she that after all? How could he do the things August had found out?

  I gave up trying to think and just let him lead me into the second lab, feeling numb. I watched as he approached the animals, put on a pair of rubber gloves, and pulled a rat from one of the cages. Then he turned, walked past me, and walked back through the other lab, into the kitchen, through it, and down the corridor. I kept following him, down the hall, through one of the wooden doors, through a winding passage, up a small flight of stairs, and finally to another door similar to the one August and I had entered by.

  Holding onto the rat in one hand, he reached out, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Then he set the rat down on the floor.

  “Go on,” he said when it just stood there. He nudged it with the toe of his boot.

  It stepped through the open door, wobbled a few centimeters away, then dropped to the ground and lay motionless.

  I gasped.

  Without a word Dred closed the doors, locked them, and carefully deposited the gloves in a chute nearby. Then he turned to look at me.

  “What...” I didn’t know what to ask. I just stared.

  He started back down the hall and I followed close behind, giving the walls a wide berth, afraid to touch anything now.

  “That’s how I knew it was a trap,” he said at last when we were far down the hall. “Edmunds knew I had the ink installed at every entrance. It’s invisible and odorless, but when it gets into the pores, it kills instantly. He didn’t know that I’d run out of ink in some places and hadn’t been able to afford to replace it. Plus... I wasn’t so... Ursula knew not to go outside without asking, but it still worried me with her around. But I liked having Edmunds think his men couldn’t get in, so I didn’t tell him some of them weren’t functioning anymore. When he sent you two, he had no way of knowing you wouldn’t be killed the instant you set foot inside.”

  A hard shudder ran through my body. “So you figured that if he realized we’d gotten through safely, he wouldn’t be letting us get away?”

  He nodded. “Edmunds doesn’t want to catch you. He wants you dead.”

  “Dead? But why would he...”

  “I can only hope it’s you he wants dead. If it’s your brother he wants...” He looked straight ahead. “Anyway. If it’s you, he’ll want to keep your brother alive. As bait to help him find you, or something. I hope.”

  I thought I was going to be sick. I’d been near death before. Several people, including my biological father, had tried to take the radialloy, which would have indirectly killed me. Then too I’d nearly been executed once on Kainus Ge, the planet we’d visited, but that was because they thought I’d committed a crime. Never before, as far as I knew, had someone actually had a reason to explicitly want to kill me.

  “But... won’t they realize that the... traps are broken now? We got through the door twice all right.”

  “I thought about that... but will they want to risk trying if I could have fixed it?”

  “No, but they could send vermin through like you just did,” I pointed out, sounding more bitter than I meant to.

  He stopped and looked at me. “You’re right.” He scratched his head and sighed. “But... I don’t have enough of the ink for every entrance.”

  We reached the kitchen and just stood, thinking.

  The situation felt much more normal than it should. In an Austrian castle. Alone with a middle-aged male scientist I didn’t fully trust. With someone trying to kill me. August and Ursula kidnapped.

  The brain’s ability to adapt never failed to amaze me.

  I smiled. “You don’t need enough.”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “You don’t need enough to kill a person at each entrance,” I explained. “Just enough to kill a rat.”

  His stiff expression relaxed ever so slightly into a hint of a smile.

  ***

  I was counting the food stores in the huge, stone pantry when he entered a few hours later, sweaty and with dark circles under his eyes.

  “You have enough here for several weeks at least,” I said.

  He nodded and reached for a bottle of water. “I always worried about taking Ursula into town, and I couldn’t leave her here. I didn’t want anyone to know where we were. So I tried to really store up when I did get out. There’s a truck hidden further down the hall.” He closed his eyes and drank as though it were the first water he’d had for days.

  I sank to the floor with my back against the wall. “You got all the doors?”

  He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “All locked and rigged. Should be enough for a few rats at least.”

  I nodded and reached my hand towards the shelf of water bottles. He understood and handed me one, then settled onto the ground himself.

  I drank about half of it. It was clear, cool, and refreshing. No different than any water I’d ever had anywhere else. Its very normalcy soothed me, despite the constant stream of worries about August and Ursula that tugged at my heart.

  He just watched as I drank, then looked down during the awkward silence.

  “Why didn’t you tell us when you realized it was a trap?” I asked at last.

  He tossed his water bottle in the air a few times. “I wanted to figure out what Edmunds wanted first. Besides, I didn’t think you were going to sneak off in the dead of night.”

  It was the first hint of accusation from him, and I was beginning to think it was well-deserved. But I only said, “You should have told us.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I looked down at the smooth, cool, plastic bottle in my hand. Finally, I humbled myself enough to say, “I’m sorry, too.”

  Another silence. Then he asked, “What do we do now?”

  Why would he ask me? The twenty-two-year-old girl who had only had one good idea so far, and that was about killing rats.

  “I don’t know.”

  He toyed with his bottle. “What made you decide to take her?”

  Until now he had sounded almost too calm, but the pain apparent in his voice with that question showed him to be anything but unaffected.

  I didn’t look at him as I explained August’s findings, but in my peripheral vision I could see him jerk his head up when I came to the part about the records. “But that never happened.”

  Doubt clouded my mind again. “Then why would it be in your records? Even if Edmunds could get it there, why would he do that if he was just going to kill us?”

  “I’m sure the information wasn’t meant for you.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes, looking almost childlike in his weariness.

  “Then... who...?”

  “Anyone.” He set the bottle down. “If he was going to call the police, he’d need proof.”

  “Why, if he has enough money to buy them off? They’d... probably accept his word against yours.”

  “The Austrian
courts, yes. But if I told them he was involved? The U.S. would want to look into it. They’d need proof he was telling the truth.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the rough stone. “Why would he go to all this trouble just to be re-elected? Is being a senator really that big a deal?”

  Dred actually chuckled. “You really think that’s all he wants?”

  I had. But as soon as he asked the question, I understood, and a quick calculation built from rusty memories of Earth politics confirmed my thought. Edmunds wanted to be much more than just a senator.

  Presidential elections were two years away.

  “Did he... tell you this?” I asked.

  He laughed slightly again. “No. He didn’t need to.” A pause, then, “You’re not very familiar with politics, are you?”

  No. But I’d never needed to be.

  Back on the Surveyor, things were so much simpler.

  So much better.

  “Anyway,” he said after a long silence, “I never did anything to hurt Ursula. It wasn’t my idea to take her, and I’ve done the best I can to take care of her.” He didn’t meet my eyes as he said this, but I could hear the fatherly worries running through his tone.

  I recognized it. The Doctor spoke the same way of me.

  Someone must have taken both Ursula and August or they would have come back for me by now. Practical thinking. Planning. That was the only way I knew to keep the queasy unrest at bay.

  “What do we do now?”

  My question made him straighten his shoulders and push himself to his feet. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’m a researcher; I’m not a strategist... I don’t know what to do. I can hardly think right now.”

  It wasn’t like I was a strategist, either. If only Crash were here.

  I looked up. “Crash...” I mused.

  He frowned, and reached down a hand to help me up. “What?”

  “My cousin, Crash.” I let him pull me up. “If Edmunds wanted us to get here, and wanted us to get killed in the process... why not let Crash come with us?”

  Dred looked past me as he pondered this. “That would only make sense if...” His voice trailed off, and he met my eyes in understanding.

  Assuming Edmunds was behind Crash’s detainment, he must want Crash to remain alive.