Chapter 23
I felt unsettled the rest of that morning. I suppose if a psychologist had examined me, I would have been a case study in free-floating anxiety. Of course, I knew that a good deal of that was pure worry about what might be happening with Lily. That much was obvious, even to me.
I mean, I'd trust Shelley with my life, and Angie could speak Cantonese as well as I could, but . . . well, I wanted to know what was going on there in the lab. Was Lily having hysterics because I wasn't around? Or was she doing just fine, or perhaps even better than fine, without me there to distract her? I wasn't sure which answer I dreaded more, that she needed me or that she didn't need me.
Wizzit wouldn't show me anything of what they were doing; he said Shelley had interdicted those vids, which meant that I couldn't watch them until she let me watch them. So I was stuck at the bottom of an information black hole.
That, by itself, would have been bad enough. If you have been paying close attention, though, you will have noticed that we were now at the third day after the monster attack in M'Hamid. And if you are perceptive and have picked up on how Enclave works, you will probably be expecting the monster alarm to ring at any moment. I know I was. Not consciously -- I was still too wrapped up in Lily's problems -- but somewhere just below the level of awareness, I kept expecting something to happen.
Nothing did, and that I think that extra bit of edginess was what was driving me nuts.
I probably would have been okay if anyone else had been around. Mike and Trina, though, had announced the previous afternoon that they were taking a couple of days of vacation together for the first time ever (and don't think that didn't raise a few eyebrows around HQ) and everyone else was busy in the weapons room building who-knew-what, even Toby.
So I was by myself with nothing special to do except worry helplessly about Lily. It seemed as though I had been doing nothing for the past two weeks, in fact, except worry helplessly about Lily, and I was heartily sick of it and of myself, but I didn't know what else to do.
"Trevor," Wizzit said after I had been fretting for about an hour, "get out."
I blinked in surprise. "What?" I asked -- rather stupidly, I suppose.
"I said, get out. I'm sending you away for a while."
"But . . . why?"
He gave me an isn't-it-obvious sigh. "Because you will wear out a path in the carpeting if you continue to pace at your current rate!" he replied. "Not to mention that you are not fit company for your teammates at present, and there is a thirty-eight percent probability that you will break something expensive within the next seven hours, forty-four minutes. Your heart rate is well over one hundred beats per minute, your blood pressure is far too high for someone your age, and your adrenal glands are working overtime. So out you go! You need some time away from here."
"Okay, I guess I could go visit my folks for a while."
"Nope, too quiet. You would be just as stir-crazy there as here. I'm sending you somewhere else. And don't ask; it'll be a surprise. Go pack a bag."
Well, as soon as he said the word "surprise", I gave up any idea I had of getting him to tell me where he was sending me. Wizzit likes his surprises, and while we have occasionally been able to pry "surprise" information out of him prematurely by ganging up on him as a team, ain't no way a solitary Prime like me was going to accomplish it.
So I trudged over to my room and grabbed my bag. "How long should I pack for? If it's just going to be a couple of hours, I shouldn't need much of anything. I probably won't even need a bag, actually."
"Three days minimum."
I stared at the overhead speakers in shock. "You're kidding, right? Wizzit, Shelley's expecting to go over Lily's vids with me today, or maybe tomorrow. I can't be gone for three days."
"Three days minimum," he repeated. "That's an order. I'll handle Prime Commander."
"But what about Lily?" I protested. "What if she --"
"Lily is managing to survive quite well without you," he said sharply. "Trust me, it will be better for everyone concerned if I get you out of here for more than just a few hours."
Fine. I didn't understand why Wizzit was hustling me out of HQ so quickly, but it appeared there would be no arguing with him; three days it was going to be, regardless of what I wanted. "Northern or southern hemisphere?" I asked in resigned tones.
"Why do you want to know?" he replied suspiciously.
I sighed with impatience. "Summer or winter? Shorts or long pants?"
"Ah! Northern hemisphere. Highs in the mid-to-upper eighties. Slight chance of rain."
"Anything special I should bring? Tennis racket? Scuba gear? Water skis?"
"No, no, and no. You don't play tennis, you don't scuba, and you don't ski. Where do you think I'm sending you, anyway? A resort?"
I snorted. "I can dream, can't I?"
"Dream on. You, Trevor, need to keep yourself busy and you need to be around people you know."
"So . . . I'm going to visit someone I know?"
There was no answer, so I tried another tack. "What if the monster alarm rings while I'm out?"
This time his answer was immediate. "Then I'll yank you out of there. Hmm. I guess you'll have to make sure your host understands that you might have to leave with just a few minutes' notice."
"Won't that make them suspicious?"
"Should not be a problem."
I spent the rest of the time I was packing trying to figure out just where I was going. I mean, he had given me a few clues, at least. I'd be staying with someone I knew, someone who lived in the northern hemisphere and who wouldn't be freaked out if I simply vanished with almost no warning. That meant they had to know I was a Prime. It probably wouldn't be Alvaro or Cathy, though; I just didn't know either of them well enough to be able to pop in unannounced.
I wouldn't have minded staying with Mayumi for a few days. I liked Mayumi an awful lot, and it would certainly give me a chance to work on my Japanese. The Tokyo apartment she shared with her husband and two children was awfully small, though . . .
By the time I threw my toothbrush into my bag and zipped it shut, I had halfway convinced myself that I was going to spend the next three days punching cows on the Windham family ranch. Wondering idly how I would look in cowboy boots and chaps, I threw my bag over my shoulder and said, "All right, Wizzit, whenever you're ready. How do you want me to contact you after the three days are up?"
"Don't call us; we'll call you."
I felt the familiar tingling in the base of my skull. When the haze cleared from my vision, I was standing in the middle of a small grouping of trees which screened me off on three sides. Immediately in front of me was a sidewalk and a road. Not a city street; it looked a bit more rural than that. I looked around, gradually came to realize that I was standing in someone's front yard, and moved to the sidewalk. Nothing looked familiar, so I picked a direction and started walking.
After a while, I came upon a sign declaring that the road I was walking along was Ohio route 511. That rang a bell; I now had a pretty good idea just where I was. Given that, it was obvious with whom I was supposed to stay. It wouldn't have been in my top five guesses, but I had to admit it wasn't a bad choice.
I also realized that I had been going in the wrong direction for the past ten minutes. So I turned around and after another fifteen minutes of walking and a bit of head-scratching to figure out exactly where I was supposed to go, I finally found my way to a quaint little house, painted light green, with a white picket fence around the front. I knocked, and when the door opened, I plastered a grin on my face and said, "Hey, big sis. Mind if I crash here for a few days?"
To say that Joy was surprised would be an understatement. Standing there with my baby nephew on her hip, she looked absolutely astonished. She goggled at me for a few seconds, then reached out to grab my shirt, hauled me inside, and slammed the door shut. Th
en she peeked out through the curtains, as if she were checking to see whether I had been followed.
"You -- you're not hurt, are you?" she asked me, anxiously looking me up and down. "I don't see any blood. Do you need a doctor or -- or anything? Here, sit down." And she pushed me toward the couch.
At first, I couldn't understand her attitude. Of course I wasn't hurt; why would I be? Then I remembered how we had left things between us; she thought Toby and I were spies or something, and that Angie might be a spy or something, too. If I showed up unannounced on her doorstep, it could only be because I was in desperate straits and needed her help badly.
"I'm fine," I told her in as relaxed manner as I could manage. "I haven't been shot, I'm not being chased by anybody, and I'm not in any kind of trouble. I just came by for a visit, that's all. My, uh, my boss told me I had to take some time off." I suddenly had a worrying thought. "It's all right if I stay here, isn't it? Just for three days or so? I don't want to impose . . ."
"No, no, it's fine," she assured me. She stared at me for a moment longer, then heaved a relieved sigh. "It's pretty good timing, actually. Mark is away at a conference this week, and I don't have any classes. It's just me and the baby. Frankly, I could do with some grown-up company. Make yourself at home. You know where the guest room is, right?" She turned and began walking toward her kitchen. "I was just about to fix breakfast," she called over her shoulder. "Want some?"
I said sure; my stomach was still on HQ time, which meant that I was about ready for lunch anyway. I half-expected congee and youtiao, but it appeared that Joy was a bit more Americanized than that, because she started making bacon and eggs. After I stowed my bag in the guest room, I sat down at the kitchen table, holding my nephew while Joy bustled about. "Do you want some coffee?" she asked. "I've made some fresh."
"No, thanks. Just orange juice or water will be fine."
"Suit yourself." She laid a plate of food and a fork in front of me and poured me a glass of OJ. "So why'd you decide to come see me?" she asked. "Usually you go back home when you're on vacation and visit Mom and Dad."
"It's a long story. Basically, home is too quiet; my, uh, my boss thought I'd do better if I had things to keep me busy, so he sent me here."
"Your 'uh' boss sounds like he knows you pretty well," she said with a smile. "You always did better if you didn't have time to sit around and fret about things, Younger Brother." She settled herself at the table with her own plate and a cup of coffee. "So, what's been going on with you? I felt like we didn't have much of a chance to catch up last time."
I shrugged. "There's not much to tell. I'm still --"
"I know. You're on an international Tae Kwon Do demonstration team. You go from country to country and demonstrate board-breaking and kicking techniques and free-fighting and whatever else, and that's all you can tell me. Forget I asked." She blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "How's Younger Sister doing? Have you heard from her lately?"
"Yeah, I ran into her, umm, not too long ago, in fact. She's . . . doing fine."
"For real?" She looked directly into my eyes. "Look, I know you're not really on a demonstration team, okay? And you know that I know that. And I'm pretty sure that our baby sister is not working for a cosmetics company, either, so you don't have to pretend."
I hesitated, not sure what to say. "I . . ."
"And I also know there's probably tons of stuff you can't tell me or else you'd have to kill me . . ."
"Well, I wouldn't have to kill you, exactly," I said with a smile. "I might have to give you a pretty serious noogie, though."
"Fine," she laughed. "A noogie, then. But tell me the truth, how is Younger Sister doing? Seriously."
"Seriously?" I considered my answer. "She's doing great, she really is. Her legs are as strong as ever; she's in probably the best physical shape of her life, in fact. She's fitting in well, she's making friends, she's pulling her weight, and she seems to be having a blast." I leaned forward. "And the work she's doing is very important, Older Sister. Like, saving-the-world important. But that's as much as I can tell you. You know, without having to give you a noogie."
She nodded and sipped at her coffee. "Well, it's good to know that much, at least."
We spent the rest of the morning puttering around the house. I still wasn't convinced that staying at my sister's house was the best thing for me, but since I was stuck here until Wizzit decided to bring me home, I decided to make the most of it. Doing my best to follow the number-one rule of visiting family ("Make Yourself Useful But Don't Get In The Way"), I volunteered to help her with whatever cleaning or other chores she wanted to do. Turns out, I mainly just moved furniture that day so she could vacuum. And after lunch, I played with the baby to give her some extra time to practice for a recital she had coming up in a couple of months.
My nephew was starting to act pretty sleepy after a while, so I scooped him up and the two of us wandered into Joy's studio to listen to her play. She was working on Beethoven's Pathetique sonata. Now, I'm not a huge Beethoven fan, but I do like some of the old warhorses of his that everybody knows -- the Choral symphony, the Moonlight sonata, and the Pathetique.
I had heard her practicing the first and third movements earlier; now she was working on the middle movement, the Adagio Cantabile, which for my money is the most heartbreakingly gorgeous short piece ever written for the piano. Joy didn't pay us any attention. She was busily engaged in wringing out every last drop of emotion from the work, so the baby and I happily settled ourselves in the chair there and drank it all in as she played it over and over, stopping and starting, backing up and replaying passages, each time just a little better than the last. And as I sat there with my nephew snoozing peacefully against my chest, listening to some of the most beautiful music ever written, I could feel my insides start to unclench.
I didn't even realize that I had fallen asleep until I felt my sister taking my nephew from my arms. "Time for you and Mommy to take a nap, little guy," she cooed. "And Uncle Trevor, too, looks like."
I stretched out on the couch and slept for probably an hour. We all took a walk after that, and then I insisted on taking us all out to a restaurant for dinner. I don't get any kind of a regular stipend as a Prime -- there wouldn't be much point, since there's nothing to spend it on at HQ -- but Wizzit always makes sure we have sufficient pocket money whenever we go out on vacation.
The next day was pretty much a clone of the first, except that I did yard work in the morning and Joy made dinner for us at home that night. The day after that, I mowed the lawn and we ordered out for pizza. All three of us took naps every day after lunch and we went out for walks every afternoon. In all, it was the most peaceful time I could remember spending recently, and I was surprised at how relaxed I felt by the end of it.
We talked a lot in those three idyllic days. Or rather, Joy talked and I listened. She told me how she was progressing with her Master's degree at Oberlin. She mentioned that at the moment Mark held a temporary appointment with the conservatory, teaching an introductory music history class and biding his time until she could finish up, and then they would go get their doctorates together, although they hadn't decided just where yet.
We spoke Mandarin a good deal of the time. Mark was Chinese-American like us, but his Mandarin was atrocious, what there was of it, and I think my sister enjoyed speaking the language of home with me. We spoke Cantonese as well, and some Korean. I had figured that her Korean would have deteriorated for lack of practice, but it was actually a bit more polished than mine. She said she had made friends with a Korean art professor at the college, and the two of them had lunch quite often.
I also got to know my baby nephew a lot better. I'm around kids hardly at all, so I was a bit apprehensive that first day when Joy disappeared into her studio to practice. Playing with him wasn't too bad, though, and once I got over my self-conscious
ness about making goofy sounds and faces, it was actually kind of fun. I even changed a few diapers, and it wasn't as bad as all those silly movies and sitcoms make it out to be. I mean, it's not on my top ten list of favorite activities, but I've done worse. Trust me, I'd rather clean up a poopy diaper than set a broken arm any day of the week.
That last evening, the pizza came while Joy was putting the baby down for the night, freshly bathed and diapered and with a tummy full of milk. As I set the pizza box out on the coffee table in the living room, Joy got a couple cans of beer from the fridge, handed one to me, and sat down beside me on the couch. After we had eaten the pizza and watched TV for a while, she turned to me and said, "So, you're going to leave tomorrow morning?"
"Probably," I replied. "My boss said he wanted me to take at least three days off; I don't know how much longer he'll want to stretch it out."
"Isn't there some kind of schedule you have to keep? Anywhere you have to be?"
"Nope. Not unless there's an emergency, and then I'd have to leave right away, like I told you."
She considered that for a moment. "Need a ride to the bus station?"
"Umm . . . sure, if you want. You don't have to, though."
She looked closely at me. "Because you won't be taking the bus, will you?" she guessed. I smiled, but didn't answer. She sighed in resignation. "I know, I promised I wouldn't ask any questions." She leaned back on the couch and took a sip of her beer. "Tell me a story, Younger Brother," she said after a bit.
"What kind of story?"
"Any kind." She shrugged. "Just as long as you make it about yourself. Something that you've done or an experience that you've had, something like that."
"I can't really . . ."
"I know you can't. But it doesn't have to be true, or even believable. Just . . . tell me something. Anything. Fictionalize it, change the names around, or just make something up -- I don't care. I feel like I don't know what's going on with you any more, Little Brother. I just want to hear your voice, and I want to connect, you know?"
I did know. The whole time we had been together, in fact, I had been racking my brains for stories I could tell her about my current life, some clever way I could share something of myself without letting her know things she shouldn't know. I hadn't been able to come up with anything, though. I mean, there were a lot of adventures I could have shared with her, but all my best stories, it appeared, started off with "One day the monster alarm started ringing and . . ."
But then I realized that there was a story I could tell her, one that didn't rely too much on specifics, but that would indeed let her in on something important about my life. Now, it may be obvious to you, sitting at home in a comfortable chair reading this, but honestly, it just hadn't occurred to me until right then. Maybe it was because this wasn't just an anecdote; it would be a long story, something that would take more than just a couple of minutes to tell.
Regardless, I took a swallow of beer to screw up my courage and said, "All right, sis, let me tell you about this girl I know. Her name is Lily."
"Would this Lily happen to be the 'old friend' you were talking with for two hours that one night?" Joy asked shrewdly.
I started. I had forgotten all about that. "As a matter of fact, she would," I said.
"Is she your girlfriend?"
I hesitated. "No."
My sister must have picked up on that hitch in my voice, because she gave me a knowing look and asked, "Are you in love with her, Younger Brother?"
I gave a shaky laugh. "Big sis, that's a really good question!"
I talked for probably an hour, telling Joy how I had first met Lily and of our various encounters since then. Of course, I had to give her the highly sanitized version. I didn't mention Li Lin-fa or any of Lily's multiple personalities. I did say that Lily had been "brainwashed" into serving as an agent for "the bad guys", but I obviously couldn't mention anything about Enclave or monster attacks.
I have to admit, Joy listened attentively and didn't interrupt me with questions, even when it was obvious that I was fudging the details. I know I made a real hash of the Iceland story, the one where Lily had nearly died of hypothermia.
First off, I couldn't really say it was Iceland, because who ever goes to Iceland? No spies that I ever heard of, that's for sure. Also, I had to dance around the reason Lily was more affected by the cold there than those of us with force shields. And when I got to the part where JB Swift, Lily, and I all teleported to his secret lab, I realized that I couldn't say anything to Joy about teleportation. Instead, I said I pulled rank and allowed Lily and JB Swift to escape in a helicopter. Pretty lame, huh?
And I had just started telling her about Guangzhou when I realized that that little episode would make no sense to her at all, not without understanding something about Li Lin-fa and about Lily's weakness for the Cantonese language. So I muttered something about how I couldn't tell her that story, and I cut it short.
When I finished, Joy was silent for a long time. We had each finished up a couple of beers by then, and she got up to dispose of the empties and the pizza box. I started to get up to help her, but she waved me back. When she returned, she sat sideways on the couch facing me, her legs drawn up beneath her.
"Little brother," she said seriously, "you do realize that what you just told me is completely incomprehensible, right? These important missions you were talking about -- they don't seem to have any sort of purpose, and your 'bad guys' aren't doing anything particularly bad. They're just there, hanging around waiting for you to come along and fight them. And then later, they disappear for no reason at all. And Lily -- half the time, she's like a frightened little mouse, and other times she's a wildcat. It doesn't make any kind of sense."
"I know," I told her apologetically. "I'm sorry it's not a better story. I, uh, had to leave out a lot of stuff."
"Yeah, I figured that out," she said with a wry grin. "Well, I said it didn't have to be believable, and that's what I got. But thank you for telling me." She leaned her cheek against her arm, staring at me. "One thing's clear, anyway -- believable or not, this story came from your heart. This Lily woman is obviously important to you."
I let out a long breath. "That's a good way to put it. I want to help her, sis, but the hell of it is, there's just nothing I can do for her right now. That's why my boss sent me away, to get my mind off of her. I was tearing myself apart back at HQ worrying about her."
"That part of you hasn't changed, at least," she said, smiling fondly at me. "You always saw yourself as a knight in shining armor -- slaying dragons, righting wrongs. You were never very good at being a passive observer. So, did getting away from there help at all?"
"You know, I think it did," I replied after a moment's thought. "The two of you kept me busy enough that I haven't had time to think about her. Thanks."
"Hey, any time you want to come over and babysit for a few days for free, just let me know!" she said, laughing. Then she grew more serious. "Where is Lily right now? In that secure location you mentioned?"
"Yeah. We've got some people trying to work through her brainwashing."
"And when they're done, are you going to try to get together with her? See where things go?"
I considered the idea. It wouldn't be as simple as that, but . . . "I should, shouldn't I?"
"I'd say so, yes."
"In that case, I guess I'll just have to hang on until then."
She shrugged. "You can stay here for as long as you like. It's been nice having you around. But," she went on, getting up from the couch, "I expect your boss will want you back before too long." She yawned and stretched. "I'm going to bed. Say goodbye before you go, would you? Even if it's the middle of the night and you have to wake me up?"
"I'll do my best, big sis."
Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee Page 24