The Dragons of Ordinary Farm of-1

by Tad Williams

  “You can’t keep me here, Stillman,” Gideon snarled. “You’re scum and I don’t have anything to say to you. We’re going to walk out now and your hired thugs can’t stop us.”

  Stillman smiled and shook his head. “Please, Gideon. If you won’t talk to me, I can have police and FBI agents swarming all over your farm by nightfall. You really don’t want that to happen, do you?”

  “Police? That’s nonsense!”

  “Try me and find out.”

  A hard silence filled the room. When Gideon finally spoke, he sounded like he had been punched in the stomach. “What… what are you talking about?”

  “Oh, good, I have your attention,” Stillman said. “Sit down.” Gideon sat. Ragnar returned. “Gideon, my life has changed a great deal since I saw you last. I’m sure you’ve heard that my company, Mission Software, has now gone public?”

  Gideon glared at him and did not answer.

  “It made me a pretty penny. More than a few pretty pennies, in fact.”

  Mission Software-Ed Stillman! Colin had heard of him-the man was a billionaire. But why on earth would someone like that know anything about their farm?

  “If you just wanted to brag, Stillman,” said Gideon sourly, “you could have sent a press release instead of holding us at gunpoint.”

  Edward Stillman laughed. “You’re just as charming as ever. I don’t see any guns out, do you? Now, listen carefully. You and I both know that by all rights the farm should belong to me. It belongs to my family, not yours. If Octavio had been in his right mind he would have made that clear before he died.”

  Colin almost fell off his box again. This was crazy! Stillman and Gideon-related?

  “You’re full of crap,” spat Gideon, his face an angry red.

  “You aren’t even a Tinker,” said Stillman. “You just married one. Stole one, to be more accurate. Because Grace should have been mine.”

  “Don’t you dare talk about her!” Gideon’s eyes were almost popping out of his head. Ragnar put a big hand on his shoulder, to calm him or perhaps to restrain him. “Don’t you dare say a word about my wife!”

  Stillman shook his head. “I’d hoped you would be more reasonable than this. You won’t make a good impression in court, you know, with spit flying out of your mouth like that.” He sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I have no urge to make friends with you, Goldring. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to get that farm. I know there’s more going on there than simply Octavio’s collection of antiques. My uncle Octavio was a brilliant, brilliant man-the world underestimated him, but I haven’t. He would have wanted me to have that farm and have access to his research.”

  Gideon thrashed beneath Ragnar’s restraining grip. “Liar! You already tried to steal it from me with your blasted lawyers- but you lost! The farm is mine! You’ll never get it!”

  Stillman shook his head again, like a father watching a child throw a tantrum. “Gideon, Gideon, the only reason I’m warning you is that I would prefer to keep the police and FBI out of this. I don’t want the authorities running loose on that farm any more than you do. I don’t know what’s there, but I do know I’d rather not share it with the federal government. But if I can’t get the farm any other way, I’ll let them have it before I’ll let you have it, you little thief.” And now it was Stillman who was starting to turn red beneath his deep tan. “Do you understand me? One way or another, you’re as good as gone.”

  “You can’t do anything,” Gideon said. “You already lost once.”

  “Oh, but I can,” said Stillman. “Because I discovered a letter that we didn’t have the last time we went to trial-a letter from Grace.” He grinned. He didn’t look quite so much like a refined billionaire now. “That’s right. You only kept that farm because the law decided Grace disappeared after old Octavio died. But now I have a letter that makes it a lot clearer what really happened.”

  Gideon suddenly looked very old. “What… what are you talking about? What letter?”

  “Oh, I brought you a copy.” He gestured to one of the bodyguards, who produced a manila envelope and handed it to Gideon. “She wrote to my mother a few days before she so conveniently vanished. You can see what she says, can’t you? ‘Gideon is getting more angry and desperate all the time,’ I believe she says. Also, ‘I worry that there may be violence. It frightens me. Gideon frightens me.’ Dear me, that doesn’t sound good, does it?”

  “She didn’t mean violent toward her,” said Gideon weakly. “She was worried that I might lose my temper with that old… with Octavio.”

  “Yes, yes, you will explain it to a jury, I’m sure. And we will all be fascinated to hear again how my sweet little cousin Grace-beautiful, kind Grace-just happened to run away on the night her grandfather died, leaving you the sole master of Octavio Tinker’s property. How touching! How dramatic! How convenient!”

  Gideon shoved the copy of the letter back into its envelope. “I’ll never give you a square inch of Ordinary Farm. Nothing-not even a spoonful of dirt!”

  Stillman shrugged. “I’m bored with you now, Gideon. You’re just as petty as you ever were. Don’t you realize you can’t win?” He tipped his head toward his bodyguards. “Come on, gentlemen. We have work to do-lawsuits to file, murder investigations to reopen.”

  “You’re bluffing,” Gideon said. “You want the farm too much yourself to risk getting the police involved again.”

  “Yes, you tell yourself that.” Stillman stopped in the doorway. “Oh, and remember this-you’ve only been surviving so far because I’ve been buying your antiques. I know your finances better than you do, and so far it’s suited me to keep the farm in business. But if I decide not to buy any more of what is clearly my own family’s legacy, and I pass the word among my collector friends, for good measure, that I caught you selling fakes, where are you going to find the money to run that place, let alone hire enough lawyers to keep me from getting it?” He laughed and walked out.

  “That scum.” Colin could see Gideon’s face through the crack. He looked as though he’d been beaten up. For a moment, despite years of dislike, Colin almost felt sorry for him.

  “Is he really your wife’s clansman?” asked Ragnar. He didn’t seem very sympathetic to Gideon’s position, although Colin always had trouble reading the Norseman. “You did not tell me that.”

  “Why should I? What difference does it make? He’s a liar. I had nothing to do with Grace disappearing.” He looked at Ragnar and his expression hardened. “You’re not questioning that, are you? You don’t think I’d murder my wife, do you?”

  “I judge no man,” Ragnar said.

  “Thanks for that vote of support,” Gideon said bitterly. “Come on. We have to pick up the boy and go home.”

  “We promised him ice cream.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” said Gideon.

  Colin crouched silently until he heard them leaving, then went to the window and watched them get into the truck, Gideon moving like a very, very old man. It was only as he watched them drive away that he realized they would probably beat him back to the coffee shop, and that Gideon’s bad mood would get worse if they had to wait for him.

  They did and it did. Colin didn’t get any ice cream. Gideon and Ragnar looked like they’d just come from a funeral. The drive home was a very quiet one.

  Chapter 17

  Ain’t Going to Tarry

  A fter dinner Tyler knocked on his sister’s door and actually waited until she said, “Come in,” before bursting in. He ran to the window and drew the curtains while Lucinda watched, puzzled.

  “What’s that about?”

  Tyler waved away the question. “So where’s the book?”

  Lucinda pulled it out from under her mattress. She was curious, but not quite as worked up as her brother. While they had been taking care of the baby griffins with Ragnar, Tyler had just kept hopping from foot to foot as if he had to use the bathroom. Badly.

  “Let me look,” he said now. “Come on, I found it!
”

  “Booger. We both found it. Besides, it’s hard to find anything left to read.” She leafed through a few pages. Chewed-page confetti rolled out in little showers. “The mice have chewed almost all of it.”

  “Here, let me see.” But instead of snatching it, he waited until she put it in his hands, then carefully pushed the shredded pages apart. “Look, here’s some bits in the middle they didn’t get. Really weird old handwriting.” He spread a page as flat as he could and began to read out loud.

  “But here is my question: Why must we think of it as simply a fourth dimension? Perhaps it would be more instructive to consider it as akin to earth’s terramagnetic field-as something that surrounds and permeates the dimensions we perceive rather than being simply one more dimension. At the places of intersection, the lines of force would cohere, much as the lines of an electromagnetic pole cohere, albeit invisibly, and influence physics in our three known dimensions, and perhaps beyond them. If so, then the structure of the Breach itself might be something familiar to most scientists, a Fibonacci spiral.

  “This Breach, as I named it in the first of these journals, or Fault Line, as I have begun to call it since setting my sights on California as the most propitious spot for prospecting, has now become my central obsession. (‘Fault’ is by way of a small jest, since the earth of America’s western coast is rotten with faults of the seismic variety, coupled with the fact that several people have suggested my fascination with this line of study is a bit of a ‘fault.’)

  “Man, it just goes on like this,” Tyler grumbled. “Old Octavio has a totally bad case of can’t-talk-normal-English.”

  “Do you want me to read it instead?”

  “No.”

  “If it does take the form of a Fibonacci spiral, there would not only be a point of intersection with physical space, but at that intersection would be found areas of greater concentration of what is currently thought to be a single medium of unchanging density-the fourth dimension expressed as a cohered monopole at the center of a fifth-dimensional rolling vortex. That is to say, at the heart of the infolding there would be a place where a near infinite expression of that medium would be located in a very small part of our four-dimensional matrix. Would that not be a very merry thing to find?

  “In any case, Father and Mother are both quite put out with these kinds of ‘maunderings,’ as Father puts it, and forbid me from such research until at least the time when I have received a doctorate and may pursue knowledge without the shame of being perceived a ‘crackpot’ … ”

  “Man, this guy is the mayor of Mad Scientist Town!” said Tyler, laughing.

  “But what does it all mean?” she asked. “What’s a fourth dimension?”

  “How should I know? In my science class we learned how to make a rocket out of a plastic soda bottle.” Tyler riffled through the pages of the ruined notebook. “That’s about all there is left to read-just a few words and sentences here and there and some math stuff. The only thing for certain is that he’s saying there’s an earlier diary, and if old Octavio’s the kind of guy who keeps diaries there might be a whole bunch of them stashed away somewhere and not eaten by mice.” Tyler handed her back the notebook. “Hide it again. If there’re more I’m going to find them. If anybody’s going to tell us what’s going on with this place, it’s the guy who built it.”

  Something fell against the window.

  Both Tyler and Lucinda jumped. Suddenly frightened, Lucinda shoved the diary under her pillow.

  Tyler went to the window and pulled back the curtain. “I knew I was right,” he said. “I knew it! Look outside, Luce.”

  Lucinda stood up and stared out the window. The cherry tree filled much of her view, its blossoms gone and the leaves turning purple-brown.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “Just the usual stuff.”

  “Okay. Stand there and watch for a minute.” Tyler clattered out of the room and down the stairs.

  Lucinda shook her head. What was it now-more ghosts? Tree ghosts? Midafternoon tree ghosts?

  Tyler appeared a few moments later in the overgrown patch of dry grass under the window. He stood there for a moment, then started walking, in the direction of the library and the rest of the unused wing without even looking back. Lucinda reached up to tap on the glass to get his attention, but before she could do it something dark hopped onto a branch high above Tyler’s head. It squatted for a moment, fat as a toad and just as still, then jumped effortlessly to the next tree.

  It was following him.

  Tyler turned around suddenly, heading back again toward the kitchen and dining room. The black squirrel followed, changing direction itself a few moments after he did. Lucinda felt a sudden surge of panic, although it seemed ridiculous-what could a squirrel, even a big one, do to a boy Tyler’s size? Still, she couldn’t help pulling up the window to warn him.

  “Tyler!”

  He didn’t turn, but the squirrel did, fixing her with the queasy yellow of its stare. For a moment she felt sure the animal was truly looking at her-as if marking her for future attention. She swallowed hard and rattled the window back down. Her brother and his hopping pursuer vanished from sight.

  Tyler came back into the room a short while later. “Did you see?”

  “That creepy squirrel again-and it was following you!”

  “Yeah-duh. It’s been doing it for days. Everywhere I go, unless I’m out with the farm people. Even then I keep thinking I see it, hiding up in the trees, watching. And it keeps Zaza away-I hardly ever see her now.”

  “What’s going on? Why would it do that?” She felt suddenly chilly, as if she had a fever. Those eyes!

  “I don’t know. It started when I found the library. I think Mrs

  … I think somebody’s using it to keep an eye on me.”

  “You were going to say Mrs. Needle.”

  “Yeah, well, she creeps me out. I think she’s a witch or something.”

  “Tyler Jenkins! Do you hear yourself? A witch? This isn’t one of your video games.”

  “And it isn’t one of your ‘We’re all friends, everybody learns a lesson, then we all hug’ TV shows, either. There’s some creepy stuff going on around here, and I’m not just talking about dragons and… and hoop snakes.”

  Lucinda sat down on the bed, too tired to argue. She didn’t want Mrs. Needle to be bad. She didn’t care if every body hugged, but she did need friends. She was lonely with only her brother for a friend. She wasn’t used to it.

  “Look, just do me a favor,” he said. “I want you to go to that library and see if you can find any more of Octavio’s notebook. If I go that thing is going to follow me and somebody is going to know about it.”

  The library? Where Tyler said he’d seen a ghost? She absolutely did not want to do that. “How do you know it won’t just follow me?”

  “Because I’m going to take Secret Squirrel for a little walk around the property.”

  Lucinda never really said yes, but she didn’t say no forcefully enough to stop him, either. She watched from her window as Tyler wandered past, looking around like a little kid playing army spy-trying to convince the squirrel he was doing something secret and important, she guessed. She was too nervous to be disgusted-and maybe, just maybe, Tyler was right, because within a few seconds the black squirrel reappeared, then waited until Tyler had rounded the corner and headed out toward the front of the house before it hopped after him, its weight making even some of the bigger branches bounce and sway.

  Lucinda forced herself to follow her brother out of the house, but headed in the opposite direction. She didn’t look up for fear of what she might see, but once she heard a rattling noise above her head that froze her in her tracks. She stayed that way for long seconds, heart beating, breathless, until a blue jay squawked loudly and flew away past her and the trees were silent again.

  Silence and dust greeted her inside the library. In the fading evening light slanting in through the big windows she could s
ee the footprints she and Tyler had left during their last visit-or at least she hoped that’s who had left them. The place was half in shadows and extremely creepy, but Lucinda was afraid to turn the lights on in case someone at the house should notice.

  Why didn’t I bring a flashlight? She had to admit it-Tyler was better at this ninja spy-stuff than she was.

  Her footsteps made little smacking noises as she crossed the library to the picture of Octavio Tinker. What was that thing in his hand, that weird brass tangle of curves and wheels? Why was it the brightest thing in the picture? The old man’s eyes seemed to sparkle with self-regard- I know and you don’t! He must have been as hard to put up with as Uncle Gideon.

  Lucinda knew she should investigate the little room with the mirror-after all, that was where the other piece of journal had been found-but she honestly didn’t know whether or not she could walk into a place that Tyler said was haunted. Instead she stalled by exploring the rows and rows of books. A lot of the library was shelved in alphabetical order by subject. She found nothing under “Ordinary Farm,” although that seemed a little too obvious anyway, but she looked under “Tinker” and actually found a book about Octavio, titled Octavio Tinker, the Crystal Prophet. Her excitement faded a little when she saw that it was some sort of biography written for kids, a book at least sixty years old with corny-looking black-and-white photos and lots of weird diagrams. Still, she took it off the shelf. It might not be old Octavio’s journal but it was something.

  She wandered up and down the aisles, scanning the shelves of books and trailing her fingers across their dusty spines. None of the volumes seemed to be newer than decades old, and none of them looked obviously like a journal, although it would take years to open them all and make sure. She was about to give up when something caught her eye.