by Scott Rhine
“The shyest one of nine sisters. Your mother set me up.”
“That’s not fair,” Red complained. “Can’t I just get implants?”
“No, too many health issues. My advice is to just hang around near this boy, listen, and be yourself. When you’re sure he’s the one and feels the same about you, talk to me again.”
“How do I know he’s the one?”
“Does he risk a bullet just to be near you, give up his inheritance to live with you in a cheap apartment, and stand up to his family when they hurt your feelings? Are you willing to do the same for him?”
“Wow. That’s pretty extreme.”
“Mira, when you bond, it’ll be permanent. That person is going to get a treasure beyond compare, but you have to tell him what he’s in for before you get physical. Not just the threats on your life, but the fact that you’re psi-infectious.”
“Fine.”
“And no more secrets from family. Next time, even more people will pay.”
The girl huffed. “On one condition.” Trina raised an eyebrow. Red was in no position to make demands. “I want Sojiro to be put on the short list for the Mind-Machine Interface page. That way, he can stay in the training program and draw, despite his finger.”
Her aunt drew her close one last time. “After he makes it through his first page, we’ll see if he’s willing. Not everyone has the strength.”
“He’ll adapt,” said Red. “I know it.”
Chapter 19 – Christmas
Zeiss accompanied a reluctant Red back to the island without letting her so much as shop or shower. They arrived at one in the morning. Daniel met them on the flight deck.
“Welcome to Alcatraz,” she muttered as she stormed past.
“She’s just pissed because they wouldn’t let her fly,” explained the TA.
Daniel nodded. “She’s going to be even angrier when she finds out the hot water’s turned off in her meta-pod over the break.”
“Shall I push you back to your quarters, sir?” suggested Zeiss.
“Coward.”
When they were in Daniel’s pod, Zeiss spotted a black urn on the mantel. “Someone special?”
“Elias Fortune’s ashes. I promised him he’d reach the artifact one day.”
“What’s that weird fabric it’s sitting on?”
“Memistors: that’s a prototype memory bank containing everything from the Library of Congress, fiction and non-fiction.”
“Wow. You really do have cool toys.”
Zeiss helped the man into pajamas and then into bed. He wanted to say something confrontational but had to work up to it. “Sir, I think there’s been some kind of mistake.”
“I had maintenance bring an extra cot to make things more convenient; security is still sweeping your place for nano-bugs and DNA evidence.”
“No, the bonus. I saw it when I paid for my sister’s plane ticket online. It’s too much.”
“Nonsense. Your career is on hold, and if I die, you’ll need to pay for bodyguards for the rest of your life so the torturers don’t get you.”
“I guess when you put it like that.”
“François left dinner for you and Mira on the table.”
“Thanks. What do we do next?”
Daniel shrugged. “We enjoy Christmas and plan next semester.”
“I don’t know how to find spies, sir. Nothing has prepared me.”
“Conrad, did you ever rock climb?”
“A couple times.”
“My wife loves it. She says the most important thing you learn is to trust yourself. Once you do that, anything is possible. Good night.”
Zeiss ate his beef bourguignon and then took the other foil-wrapped plate to Red’s pod. The moon was bright enough to read by, making it easy to reach her pod door. He knocked and, after a minute, she came to the door in a huge, white robe from the Four Seasons Hotel. Her hair was clean and uncolored. “What?” she snapped.
“I brought you dinner if you want it.”
She grabbed the plate and fork from his hands and began to inhale the food, moaning whenever she took another mouthful.
Zeiss cleared his throat. “Normally, I’d leave you alone to devour your kill, but I can’t sleep until we finish our conversation.”
“We have two weeks,” she whined.
“Just tell me this: what were you infected with?”
Red stopped chewing and gestured for him to lean in close. When he did, she whispered, “I’m the Index page.”
He stared. “Is that why you know so much about the alien pages and the artifact?”
She put a finger to his lips. “Not outside a secure room.”
“You’re probably the most important person on the planet right now,” Zeiss said, flabbergasted. “You should be sleeping in Professor Sorenson’s pod.”
“No, that would be too weird for a lot of reasons.”
“But their place is shielded.”
She all but licked the plate clean and handed it back to him. “I’ll show up for the meals.”
****
When Red wandered over at eleven o’clock, the men had been up for four hours. She wore baggy pajama bottoms, her aunt’s top, and goggles at maximum tint. “No air conditioning in my pod, really?”
“All unnecessary functions have been suspended until people return,” Daniel explained.
“I took the liberty of sketching your schedule for next semester,” Zeiss said, handing her a pad. “Risa and Herk already filed theirs. I tried to plan it so that there are always two members of the club in any class.”
“That’s so sweet. That way, if Sojiro has trouble adapting, we can help him.” She signed it without hesitation.
“Not for help, for safety. I don’t want any more blanket parties. Until we catch whoever did this, none of us can be alone. You have Minerals with Risa; I know you like gems. You take Exploring Talents with Herk. You’ll interview a lot of people to see what page you want to pick.”
“I don’t need to decide.”
“Nobody else knows that, Red. You have to keep up your cover. It’ll give you a chance to ask odd questions that I can’t in order to help us locate the enemy talents.”
“Wait, you put me with Herk so he could be my protection?”
“Juice?” offered Daniel.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Apple-cherry mix. I got it just for you.”
“A little.”
Zeiss continued, “This January, you wanted to train for the tournament, so I put you in Independent Study at the dojo with Sojiro. Yoga won’t keep the bullies away.”
“That boy needs major help with self-defense,” she agreed. “Good call. Schedule Lou with me on my practice flights and that just leaves one class to be determined later.”
Daniel said, “I was thinking of Auckland for the flights.”
“That would raise suspicion. He’s a medic, for God’s sake. He’d be useless in a cockpit,” she complained. “Wait. Is this to make sure I don’t have any more imbalance episodes?”
“No,” said Zeiss a little too quickly.
“Maybe,” admitted Daniel.
“The last class should be one of the five core earth sciences,” the TA coached. “You need those before you start the space courses.”
“Not your quantum strangeness seminar?”
“Professor Horvath canceled it so I could devote more time to the search. I only had three students anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why the pajamas, lazy bones?” joked her uncle.
“The laundry room is shut down.”
“Oops. Sorry. Usually it’s just us and the island’s crew. Go through there and borrow some of Trina’s things if you need to. She’ll be back with your friend tonight. What are you planning to do in the meantime?”
“Clean my room,” said the girl on the way by. “Sonrisa gets so uptight about that.”
“Imagine,” Daniel chuckled. “How about you, Conrad?�
��
“I need to find a Bat Cave. My office isn’t secure enough for the search work.”
“I know just the place,” said the billionaire.
“Hey!” shouted Red from the bathroom. “You’ve been holding out.”
“The hot tub?” asked Daniel.
“He needs that for physical therapy,” explained Zeiss, shuffling data on his pad.
The professor whispered. “Actually, that one’s mainly for sex. Hoohah.”
The girl came out of the room, holding a bottle of Mountain Dew. “And this contraband behind the door under the tub?”
“Uh, I can explain,” said Daniel.
The girl unscrewed the bottle, causing it to hiss. “I get half or I tell Trina.”
“So you’re the source of the smuggling?” asked Zeiss. “I wasted days tracking that.”
“I always reassigned you when you got close,” countered the billionaire. “The whole public-health campaign is a sham; it’s all to keep me from my vices. She won’t let me have fast food burritos anymore, either.”
“She wants you around as long as possible,” said the girl, stealing a swig of the warm pop. “Ugh, like battery acid laced with sugar.”
“Yeah,” he replied with pleasure. “Hand it over. We have an icemaker she uses for wheat-germ smoothies. Yuck! Could you get me a glass of ice, Z?”
“Get your own, junkie,” Zeiss said with a laugh. “If she catches us, I’m the one who’ll get in trouble. I thought you were going to show me a high-security room.”
“Good idea, we can hide the rest of the stash there. Keep the warm one, blackmailer.”
Red piled her clothes in a heap outside the bathroom door, with the remaining soda bottles on top. Zeiss could hear the water churning. “I’m going to soak till I prune. God, I missed this,” she shouted.
Daniel led him to the lowest, most secure room on the island. When his assistant pushed him inside the library elevator, the professor said, “Swipe your card and say ‘Nemo.’”
“Like Jules Verne?”
“Actually like the kids’ movie. I had to watch it a lot, and it sort of stuck.”
Once the door opened onto the secret sublevel, the two went down a metal hall to an observation bubble that was half Plexiglas. As Zeiss marveled, Daniel explained, “Independent power source, independent computers, and stereo sound.”
“And it’s a submersible?” the TA said, pointing to a control panel.
“No, those are backup navigation and helm for the island.”
“Wow.”
“And a mini-refrigerator for these,” Daniel said, stowing the contraband drinks.
“I’ll need a safe and a whiteboard.”
“Use the walls in the hall. They’re magnetic and erasable. I learned that one from Jez.”
“Wow.”
“There’s tape and colored string in the green file cabinet for making physical models. You can get live security feeds on that monitor. That’s the zoom control and here’s the print button.”
“I guess you’ve thought of everything,” Zeiss said, the magnitude of his task sinking in. “Are we really going to able to do this for years?”
“One day at a time, kid.”
****
When Trina arrived, it was Christmas Eve. Sojiro was with her, his arms bulging with paints, markers, and other art supplies. She explained, “He sees everything in color now, so he wants to redo his story that way.”
As they ate, Sojiro presented new sketches to each of them. Wearing a flowered kimono, Red said, “They’re cruder, more ragged, but powerful.”
“I can’t stop drawing,” the artist confessed. “Our island is the raft that carries the remnant of our world. Magenta is the seed of hope.”
“She has something tattooed on her back?” asked the girl, looking at the new character drawing.
“The map to her inheritance. Data sleeps in vaults of night, waiting for the pilot to wake it. But she needs to find the person who can read the map,” said Sojiro.
“She looks so small,” Trina said, sipping a glass of burgundy.
“If you want to add some color to our island, we could commission you to do some murals,” Daniel said, examining the sheer volume of paper he was decorating. They all knew that manic swings were a common side-effect of Collective Unconscious.
Eventually Trina changed the subject to something more mundane. “Now that you know our secrets, Mr. Zeiss, are you going to share yours? What did your experiment show?”
“It’s what it didn’t show that’s going to change our world—after I do the calculations, that is,” the TA announced dramatically. “The space with the chlorophyll has no gravity signature.”
Red dropped her fork. “It’s under Einstein’s rubber sheet?”
“That’s my theory,” admitted the TA.
Sojiro mused, “It hides its nature from the stars and waits for the one key to open like a blossom.”
“Is he going to talk in poems for the rest of his life?” asked Zeiss.
Red wiggled her hand. “It fades sometimes. His brain is making new connections at a phenomenal rate, but it’s still him.”
Daniel spoke to the artist. “Sojiro, Fortune Multimedia has a small prosthetics team. They specialize in nano-sculpting. When your swelling goes down, I want to buy you a new finger.”
Zeiss said, “I’m ashamed that I didn’t get our hosts anything as a gift, but I did bring this from my safe.” He removed a few bars of Swiss chocolate. Red dove for the nearest sweet. He stood, easily holding it out of her reach. “This is for everyone. Daniel, do you have eggs?”
“At the restaurant,” the professor replied.
“Then I’ll make my famous chocolate mousse. Red and Sojiro, you’re going to help.” The girl followed the chocolate without complaint. “My mom says this is a great way to show off for a date.”
“We’ll meet you there in half an hour,” said Trina, kissing her husband passionately.
“This time alone is his real present,” Daniel confessed. “I told him I have a hard time working off extra weight.”
“Like you get from soda,” she asked, poking him in the belly.
“You spies make it impossible to keep secrets,” he said, unbuttoning her blouse.
“Do you think they have any idea we set them up?” Trina giggled.
Her husband shook his head. “Not a clue. He can’t see past his duties, and she thinks he’s Sojiro’s boyfriend.”
“He cooks, he’s neat, keeps a picture of his mother. I can see why she’d jump to that conclusion. It’ll all work out. You picked a good one for her,” she said, slipping out of her skirt. “Now let’s talk about what you like for a while.”
Daniel swept his eyes over every inch of her body. “Oh-ho-ho, you know what I like.”
****
When the couple showed up, Daniel’s hair was mussed and he wore a stupid grin.
“You missed all the fun,” announced Red. “We just filled every cup in the place with delicious, fluffy pudding.”
“Mmm,” said Trina dreamily.
“It’ll have to chill for a while,” warned Zeiss. “So we need some activity to keep her hands off the mousse until it’s ready. I was thinking that we could show everyone the hidden fortress.”
“Great Kurosawa movie,” said Sojiro.
Daniel nodded. His wife pushed his wheelchair to the elevator this time.
“The library?” complained Red.
When they got to the secret level, the girl examined the controls and monitors. Sojiro went straight to the bubble viewport. Zeiss said, “No one else comes down here or knows about it, even from the club. Understand? I’m only telling you in case someone eliminates me. The active file will be on this corner of the desk. I’ll keep a log of my activities so you can track the enemy if I fail.”
Sojiro shouted, “Massive blue and baby silver dances!”
“What?” asked a confused Zeiss.
“Our blue whales,” Daniel
said. “Yes, she has a calf and it’s very playful.”
“I come down here and watch them when I can’t sleep,” said Trina, taking her husband’s hand. Without invitation, Sojiro took her other hand and stared into the deep.
“It’s an extended family, a net,” noted Red, taking Daniel’s free hand and extending her own special senses.
“I can see that,” whispered Zeiss, feeling left out.
Red sensed his depression and told him, “This was a great idea, Z. Thank you for suggesting it. I know what I want for my last class: Oceanography. As if you had any doubts.”
“I don’t force anything. I merely suggest a range of alternatives.”
“Well, you can hold Sojiro’s hand or you can grab mine—your choice.”
With extreme care, Zeiss took the artist’s injured left hand. “Merry Christmas, everyone.”
Chapter 20 – Freshman Second Semester
The first week of the new semester, Zeiss deduced that the park bench in the agriculture sector had been a frequent meeting location for Solomon. The bench had been painted with the slogan, “A glass of caffeine flushes a glass of water out of your body. Don’t waste!” He planted hidden cameras and staked it out. Sunday morning of the second week, someone left a cardboard tube underneath the bench.
At noon one of the students, the winner of this year’s video-logging contest, announced over the public-address system: “Looks like the first big storm of the season is here, folks. All hands tie down loose objects and help cover windows.”
The TA put on a set of rubber gloves from the first-aid kit in his pod and watched, palms sweating. Waiting until the sky was black and torrents poured down, Zeiss grabbed the tube before more evidence could wash away.
At 1700, he pounded on Daniel’s door, drenched, with his chamois shirt draped over the tube. Trina wanted to berate him for several mistakes, but he looked too serious. “Show me,” she ordered.
Inside were detailed blueprints of the island, with red circles by key engines.
In spite of the foul weather and the island’s rocking, she doubled the guards around the engines and steering house before taking charge of the hunt for the saboteur. “We have fingerprints and a face. Who is he?” she asked.