by James Phelan
Lora nodded. “Would you like to see them?”
“Can I?” Eva asked. “I mean, after I learned that they were only my surrogates—you know, Agents of the Enterprise—I kind of assumed that I’d not see them again.”
“Most of the surrogate parents are still dedicated to the Enterprise, though a few went over to Stella’s side, brainwashed by her crazy promises of giving them more power, no doubt,” Lora replied. “Your parents didn’t—they’re still at your old home.”
“Wow, really? It never occurred to me they’d still be there. Have you—have you spoken to them?”
“No,” Lora said, “but the Director has sent you this.” Lora handed Eva her phone, pressing “play” on a video message. It was her parents. Eva almost dropped the phone in shock.
“Hi, darling Eva!” her mom said.
“Hi, chicken!” her dad said. “We hope you’re well.”
“We miss you.”
“We’re … we’re sorry that you found out about things the way that you did, we’ve been so worried about you.”
“But now we’ve heard you’re OK.”
“We miss you and want you to know that there’s a loving home here for you whenever you need or want to come back.”
“We know you probably have questions, which we’re happy to answer.”
“We love you.”
“Panther misses you too!”
“Be careful—and call us if you want to talk. We’re so proud of you.”
Her mother looked tearful as her parents waved and the message ended.
That was so weird. What a mind trip. Talking to me as if all of this is so normal. I guess it is normal for our family … now.
“What should I do?” Eva asked, searching Lora’s face for some reaction.
“What do you want to do?” Lora asked carefully.
“I’m not sure.” Eva handed the phone back. Her mind was racing, feelings of anger and betrayal swirling around with the love and loss she still felt about her parents and her old life. She missed her home, her friends—and them. “What are our plans now?”
“We’re going to head back to the Academy in London to help out there,” Lora said. “I could see if we can arrange for your parents to visit us in London, if you’d like.”
“You think it would be dangerous for me to visit home? Even though we’re close now?”
“I’m sorry, but yes, I do,” Lora replied. “There are more than a few people who think you will be one of the last 13, Eva. It would be better if you had them come to the Academy, where it’s safer.”
Eva frowned, staring absently ahead.
“Eva? What is it?” Lora’s concern was obvious.
Something’s not right.
“What they said before, about Panther missing me too,” Eva said.
“Who’s Panther?”
“My cat.”
“Well, he probably does miss you,” Lora said.
“No, not likely,” Eva said, feeling a rush of heat around her neck as she broke into a worried and nervous sweat. “He’s dead. He died over a year ago.”
Lora looked confused, but Eva could tell that it was dawning on her what this could mean.
“They were sending me a message to not visit them,” Eva said. “Why would they be sending me a message like that?”
07
SAM
“You grew up around here?” Sam asked while driving the car. The dawn had broken, bathing the country-side in a warm, yellow glow. After breakfast they’d left the highway, eventually winding their way along quiet country lanes, cutting through dusty farms that hadn’t seen rain in a long while.
“Yep,” Tobias replied. “Watch the road ahead.”
“I’m watching,” Sam said, his hands tight on the steering wheel.
“There’s a tractor coming.”
“I can see.”
“Keep steady as it passes.”
“I got it.”
“Keep to the side of the road, give him room.”
“I got it.”
Sam did his best to keep the car steady as the big tractor trundled by.
“OK, you’re doing good,” Tobias said, relaxing a little.
“Told you I could drive,” Sam said. “Hey, how come you’re letting me drive anyway?”
“Well, you’re only a month or so off driving age, and if this race wasn’t on, that’s what would be ahead for you. Besides, driving is a very useful skill to have. Someone needs to teach you.”
“Right. Well, thanks.”
“Anytime,” Tobias said, chuckling. “Take this next right.”
Sam indicated for the turn, slowing down to a near stop as he turned onto a road that soon disintegrated into loose gravel.
“What’d you do for fun out here?” Sam asked, looking over the same endless fields of barren dirt stretching out around them.
“Eyes on the road. Well, when it wasn’t baseball season, I’d be building stuff,” Tobias said. “Little inventions—I think it’s a bit of a Dreamer trait.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure if I got much of the creative gene,” Sam replied. He eased off the accelerator as they rounded a bend, the rear tires of the powerful sedan sliding out despite his best efforts. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Tobias said, his hand on the dashboard as Sam steadied them on the worn back road. “Driving around here is a specialized skill set at the best of times. The trucks loaded up from the farms tend to tear up the roads. Just take it slow into every bend.”
“Doesn’t look like the best of times at the moment,” Sam said, noting the dry brown grass.
“I haven’t been here in about five years,” Tobias said, his eyes taking in the scenery. “It’s stuck in a long drought, though. And Duke probably doesn’t use the road at all.”
“Duke?”
“My uncle.” Tobias smiled.
“You have an uncle? Man, he must be really old,” Sam said, grinning as he drove down the long straight road. The sun was not yet high in the sky and already he could tell that today would be another scorching hot, dry day.
“Yeah, well, he is old, actually. He’s my great uncle,” Tobias clarified. “Must be ninety-two or ninety-three now.”
“So only a few years older than you then,” Sam said, and they laughed.
“OK, take the driveway on your left up here, by the big tree.”
Sam slowed the car and took the turn, seeing a large mailbox sitting at the end of a miniature rail track that ran along the length of a long fence.
“Is that mailbox …?”
“Yep,” Tobias said, grinning. “It’s a monorail system, automatically takes itself up to the house after any mail or deliveries arrive.”
“You made that?” Sam asked, taking the dirt road toward the house.
“No,” Tobias said, shaking his head. Ahead was a large squat timber house with wraparound verandas and a couple of huge barns tucked in the paddock behind. “That’s Duke’s handiwork.”
08
ALEX
“Sure you don’t want any help?” Phoebe asked.
“Not yet, Mom, thanks,” Alex said. He moved over to the table where he’d been working while his mother had slept, finally succumbing to tiredness. Rick had been watching quietly from his post at the door. “You know while you were sleeping before?”
“Yes …” Phoebe said.
“Well, prepare yourself—meet Apollo 13, Mark 2!” Alex replied, pulling the sheet off his invention.
“What on earth is that?”
“Sure, she ain’t pretty,” Alex said, looking over his handiwork. “And she sure wouldn’t pass NASA testing, but she might just do the job.”
“And what might that be, exactly?” Phoebe said.
Alex looked at her in mock surprise. “Can’t you tell? It’s a sub-orbital jet-powered super-elevator, of course.”
“Right. Of course.” Phoebe now looked at the platform with even less hope. She looked at Rick, who simply shrugged. “Well, sorry,
but it looks like something Dr. Frankenstein would put together if he switched from bodies to … scrap metal?”
“This here’s an oven door,” Alex said, rapping his knuckles on the stainless steel panel. “Found that over there,” he pointed across the room. “Can’t imagine what they were cooking, don’t want to know. Now it’s our seating platform. The rest are bits and pieces I found around the lab.”
“And these?” Phoebe asked, inspecting the four huge hoses, pointing down and secured to the corners of the seating platform.
“Our jet boosters,” Alex said.
“Formerly fire hoses?”
“Industrial fire hoses—very powerful,” Alex replied. “And the water’s on, I, ah, checked it earlier.” He motioned to where there was a huge puddle around a drain in the corner. The drain was now stuffed with rags to completely block it.
“And you want me to do what, exactly?”
“I want you to trust me,” Alex said, breaking into a grin.
“Trust you … that this will get us out of here?”
“Just you wait and see,” Alex said confidently. “Now hop on. You too, Rick.”
Rick came over, inspecting Alex’s creation. “Not bad.”
Phoebe raised her eyebrows.
“Hey, he breaks our necks, it’s your fault—he’s your kid,” Rick laughed.
“No way! You’re going to think I’m a genius!” Alex declared.
“Or,” she replied, “we’ll forever be stuck down here, drowned, and then we’ll never know what your true potential might have been.”
“C’mon, Mom, have a little faith!”
The three of them climbed onto the platform, cramming together to fit aboard the makeshift jet-powered elevator Alex had assembled.
“All right … ready?” Alex asked as Phoebe fidgeted, trying to get steady and keep her balance next to him. Rick looked like he was barely hanging on by a fingernail. He gave an OK signal with his fingers.
“As ready as I’ll ever be … you’re really serious about trying out this super-sub-elevator-jet thing?” Phoebe said.
“Sub-orbital jet-powered super-elevator. Yep. Saw something similar to it on TV once,” Alex said. “They lifted a car into the air with fire hoses.”
“Cars don’t have bones that can break.”
“True, but they are a lot heavier,” Alex countered. “Hang on, everybody.”
He pulled on a rope that was connected to a pulley, which in turn opened four separate valves, each connected to the fire hoses—one in this room, one in the adjoining storeroom, another by the closed blast door, and one behind the science benches. Alex swallowed hard and his mother hugged him tight, as the three of them watched the hoses fill and stiffen as the water gushed in four almighty torrents. Alex pulled again on the rope, opening the valves further, and soon all four hoses were spewing out water at full capacity.
“Is this all that’s supposed to be happening?” Phoebe shouted over the deafening rush of water. “That we get drenched?”
“Just make sure you’re hanging on tight!” Alex said. “Wait for—”
They began to rise into the air, the platform lifting slowly from the immense water pressure below, like an elevator going up into the large air vent above.
Then they stopped.
They were hovering inside the air vent cavity, about three metres clear of the ground, the tiled floor flooding underneath them.
“We’re stuck!” Phoebe said. “We’re not going any higher!”
“It’s OK, we’re not stuck,” Alex said, carefully adjusting his balance on their seating platform. “That’s as high as the force of the water will take us.”
“You knew that?”
“I planned on it!” Alex said, watching the water in the room below. There was already half a metre of water underneath them.
“We’re still a long way from the top,” Phoebe said, looking at the dot of daylight way above them, where the ventilation shaft brought in air to the underground labyrinth.
“When the room below us is full of water,” Alex said, “the water will then fill this shaft.”
“And we’ll rise like a cork,” Phoebe said, finally understanding the entire plan.
“All the way up to the top!” Rick added.
“And out of here!” Alex said. “The Archimedes displacement principle at work.”
His mother looked shocked and said, “Archimedes?”
“Only one of our greatest-ever Dreamers. Don’t you know your Dreamer history?” Alex grinned.
“Will you ever stop surprising me?” Phoebe leaned over to hug him again and the shift of weight on their little platform threatened to topple them all.
“Mom!” Alex said, leaning away to counterbalance her. “Save the hugs until we’re out of here.”
09
SAM
“Maybe no one’s home,” Sam said, watching as Tobias knocked on the door again and then peered through the window. There was no sound coming from inside the house, only the birds chirping and fluttering past the veranda in the morning sun.
“He’ll be around,” Tobias replied. “Let’s check the barns.”
They walked together from the creaky old veranda to the largest of the two barns. Sam could see its smaller neighbour was open at one end and full of the kind of equipment you’d expect to see on a working farm. This big barn, however, was far, far different.
“Maybe cover your ears,” Tobias warned.
Sam followed his advice, and Tobias pressed a large red button under a sign that read:
RING AT OWN PERIL
This was no ordinary doorbell—it was more like an alarm klaxon, and the sound rang out so loudly that it rattled Sam’s bones. Dozens of birds shot up from the surrounding fields and flapped away in fright.
“That was crazy loud!” Sam said.
“Yep,” Tobias said, wincing from the sound that still rang in their ears. “Duke is more than a little deaf.”
There was a jiggling sound on the other side of the solid barn door and then it opened, revealing a stooped man with bright, searching eyes.
“As I live and breathe—Tobias!” Duke exclaimed, standing at the big barn doors and pulling Tobias into a backslapping hug. “How have you been, son?”
“I’m good!” Tobias shouted in reply. “And you look well!”
“Never better,” Duke said, slapping his flat stomach under his overalls and grinning with shiny white dentures. “And who’s this whippersnapper you’ve got with you?”
“This is my friend, Sam.”
Sam shook Duke’s outstretched hand, the strong and rough handshake of someone who had spent a lifetime working with tools.
“Please, come to the house, I’ll put the kettle on,” Duke said, pointing to the old farmhouse.
“That sounds wonderful,” Tobias yelled, before adding, “Duke, do you mind if we leave something in the barn first? Just for safekeeping while we’re here?”
“Safest place on the ranch,” Duke said, still smiling. “I can never find anything in there!”
Tobias chuckled, and Sam looked at him, confused.
“The Gears,” Tobias explained, soft enough that Sam knew Duke wouldn’t have a chance of overhearing. “In case we have any unwanted visitors. The barn will be the best place to hide them while we’re here.”
Sam nodded, looking over Tobias’ shoulder into the mammoth barn. Beyond an empty area near the doors, he could see mountains of machinery and equipment overshadowing a long work bench that stood to one side. It was littered with metal off-cuts, gadgets and all kinds of hand tools. Towers of hay bales were stacked floor-to-ceiling all around the walls.
While Tobias chatted and reminisced with Duke, Sam went inside and concealed his backpack in a low corner of the dim barn, between two bales of hay, behind a stack of rusty pitchforks.
“OK, I’m done,” Sam said, coming out and shutting the barn door behind him.
They headed across the paddock to the old house. Flocks of b
irds now dotted the wide open skies and there were rabbits and other little creatures moving through the grass. There was peace here—peace and solitude the likes of which Sam couldn’t remember.
Tobias and Duke talked as they walked together, catching up on years of small, and loud, talk.
“Ah, that’s better,” Duke said, putting his hearing aids in. “Make sure you boys have some of that fruitcake, made it myself, old family recipe.”
“It’s delicious,” Sam said, finding the cake almost too hard to bite through.
“What’s that, sonny?”
“It’s delicious!” Sam repeated, louder.
“What is?” Duke said.
“This cake,” Sam said, hiding the rest in his napkin and sipping his tea.
“Oh, don’t eat that,” Duke said. “Been lying around for ages. Haven’t baked in years. Now, where’d I put my hearing aids …”
“They’re in, Duke,” Tobias said.
“Ah yes, so they are. Need to turn them up is all,” he said. “Now, my glasses. Has anyone seen my glasses?”
“Ah, they’re on top of your head,” Sam said. He looked to Tobias in concern.
And this guy’s going to help us, how?
“And so they are! Thank you, Dan.”
“Sam.”
“Pardon?”
Sam looked to Tobias.
“Duke,” Tobias said, sitting forward and close to his uncle. “Is my room still as I left it?”
“Yes, of course.” Duke’s face broke into a big smile. His lips, eyes, all of his face full of creases and lines. “Why would I change it?”
“Well, it’s been a while,” Tobias said.
“I knew you’d be home from college sooner or later,” Duke said, getting up and walking slowly over to the kitchen bench. “I’m going to put some more tea on. Think I have some left—not much, mind, what with the war rations and all.”
Tobias stood and Sam followed suit.
“What war?” Sam asked Tobias. “Does he—does he think we’re at war here?”
“You make the tea!” Tobias said. “I’ll show my friend Sam my room!”
“The broom?” Duke said. “In the laundry!”
Sam followed Tobias up rickety stairs, which had a chair on an electric rail to one side.