The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  Cain took a wistful look at the ghosted Gothams. “You know when Xander Wingo first talked about these people, the Deps laughed him out of the Bureau. Integrity wrote him off as a nutter. But I knew the guy. Best damn detective I ever met. I asked my bosses to let me go to Quarter Hill and investigate, just to make sure.”

  “But you didn’t find anything,” Gingold said.

  “Oh, I found something. A week into my visit, I woke up in an alley with a headache and a twelve-hour memory gap. Mind you, this was back when reversal was just a theory. I had no idea it happened to me. So I brushed it off and kept digging. Two days later, it happened again. And then again the following week. Every time I got within clocking distance of these people, they counterclocked me.”

  The other agents gave Cain their full attention. He kept his sharp blue eyes on Gingold.

  “After the third time, I got the message. I knew damn well that Wingo was right about the Gothams but I kept my mouth shut.”

  “Why?” Gingold asked. “Because they got the better of you?”

  “It’s not what they did, Oren. It’s what they didn’t do. These people weren’t killers. They just wanted to be left alone.”

  Cain turned around and addressed the others. “We’re in the threat management business. Always have been, always will be. The problem these days is that we see everything as a threat. And we only have one way to manage them.”

  Gingold glowered at him. “We lost sixty-three agents at Atropos.”

  “We lost them to the Pelletiers.”

  “Who were protecting these people.”

  “From us,” Cain reminded him. “I wonder what might have happened if we’d done things Melissa’s way.”

  Gingold chuckled bitterly. The last time he tried diplomacy, he lost both eyes. “How is Masaad?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Gingold had wanted Melissa executed for her treasonous actions at Atropos, but Cain convinced the Bureau to let her off with a pink slip. He argued that it was much more prudent to let her go and follow her. If anyone could find a way to reconnect with the orphans, it was Melissa.

  Unfortunately, she flew her aerocycle into the Holland Tunnel five days ago and never came out, a disappearing act worthy of Houdini. No one could figure out her trick, though Gingold was sure as hell that Cain had a hand in it. The crafty old fox was up to something.

  Cain clapped his hands together. “Well, I’ve taken enough of your time. Whatever happens, Oren, I hope you play it smart. There are a lot of lives riding on what you do next.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Cain beckoned to Tomlinson. “Come on. I have two more people to see.”

  Tomlinson threw a confused look at his boss. Gingold nodded curtly. Do it.

  Purkey watched Cain with both humor and bemusement. “Interesting guy. Reminds me of my grandpa.”

  Gingold frowned at her. “What is it you keep trying to tell me?”

  “Underland.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the word Chisholm said to Trillinger. She was talking about some kind of underland.”

  Gingold’s face went slack. His hands dropped to his sides. He took the tablet out of Purkey’s hands and gave it his full attention.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Gothams laid their fallen souls to rest on Friday. Eleven hundred people gathered in the amphitheater in their darkest suits and dresses, their bleakest expressions. Barely three weeks had passed since their last quadruple funeral, when the clan said good-bye to Ivy, Djinni, Bug, and Mink. Now they sat and watched while tempics carried four more coffins onto the stage. The casualties were all children this time, not a single one older than twelve. They were the disparates, the misfits, the quiet shames of their families. Though everyone in the theater mourned them, only a handful would miss them. A few dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the clan should have treated them better.

  As the organist played and the choral club sang, the caskets were lowered by ropes into a temporal portal—first Squid’s, then Suki’s, then Naomi’s, and then Dunk’s empty coffin. Even the travelers didn’t know where the bodies were going. The past, the future, it didn’t matter. Time would embrace its blessed children. Time would hold them to its loving breast and give them the comfort and peace they never knew on this world. Time would heal all broken hearts and mend the threatening cracks in the walls of the universe.

  Time would go on.

  The Gothams believed these things because they had to, because the alternative was despair and despair was a dangerous thing for powerful people to have.

  The portal closed and the elders began their long-winded eulogies. Not a word was said about Gemma Sunder, who continued to languish in a vegetative state, or about Harold Herrick, who remained locked away in a solic cell until the council could figure out what to do with him. The elders also avoided any mention of the breachers, none of whom were in attendance. Mother Olga had advised them to stay home, as if they didn’t know any better, as if they were clamoring to meet the families of the sad, twisted children they had killed.

  The mood on Freak Street remained edgy all weekend. The Silvers and Golds kept to their houses, only occasionally emerging to socialize. On Sunday night, Peter went door to door to collect the weekly supply requisitions. He couldn’t take a list without getting an earful from an anxious orphan.

  “I already have a bag packed,” Jonathan warned him. “If I get so much as a cross-eyed look from your people, I’m pulling Heath out of here.”

  “You need to keep a closer watch on your malcontents,” David told him. “That mess with Gemma should have never happened.”

  “Do we even have a plan if Integrity finds this place?” Zack asked.

  “I just want an escape plan,” Mia said. “I need to know there’s a place we can go if everything falls apart here.”

  By the time Peter finished, he was spiritually drained. He kicked back on his living room sofa, a scowl on his face and a beer in his hand.

  Amanda watched him from the easy chair, her finger tracing a slow path around the rim of her wineglass. “You can’t blame us for being nervous.”

  “I’m only blaming myself.” He sat up straight and vented a mighty sigh. “David’s right. I should have kept a closer watch on Gemma.”

  Amanda bristled at the mention of her housemate. Ever since he got back from the vivery, he’d ditched every last shred of his emotional restraint and became a boy in love. He canoodled with Yvonne in the living room, the kitchen, seemingly everywhere but his bedroom. Amanda couldn’t walk through her home without getting caught in their cloying little nuzzlesphere.

  David was just as insufferable without Yvonne. When he wasn’t talking about her at maddening length, he conspired to make Amanda as happy as he was. “I met a turner at the vivery. He’s your age. He’s very nice.” “Yvonne has a cousin you might like.” “Did you know the tempics guild has a group devoted entirely to young singles?”

  When Amanda finally snapped and told him to ease up, he’d stared at her woundedly. “I’m sorry. You just seem lonely. I figure if Zack can move on, so can you.”

  That had been enough to send her out the door. She went to Peter’s house with a trivial addendum to her shopping list and stared at him expectantly until he invited her inside.

  She swallowed down the rest of her wine, then peeked into Liam’s bedroom. “Where did you say he was again?”

  “At his guild precursory.”

  He saw her blank-faced reaction and chuckled. “It’s an informal competition between thermics. Helps the kids prepare for their power finals.”

  “So, what? They put him in a ring and make him fight Carrie?”

  “It’s just dummy targets. Carrie’s not even there.”

  “But she’s a thermic.”

  “She’s a subthermic,” Peter s
aid. “The freezers don’t compete till tomorrow.”

  Amanda shook her head, confounded. “I used to have a normal life.”

  She moved toward the wall and examined a collage, all photos of Liam that extended back to his infancy. Only one included the boy’s mother, a heavyset woman with surprisingly plain features. Amanda didn’t know why she’d expected Jenny Varnov-Pendergen to be some lyrical beauty. Maybe she’d assumed that Peter, like most handsome men, would demand a wife of equal allure. Clearly she’d underestimated him again.

  “You never talk about your wife,” she noted.

  “You never talk about your husband,” Peter countered.

  Amanda kept her somber eyes on the collage. “He was a mostly good man.”

  “That sounds mostly awful.”

  “It could have been worse. How was your marriage?”

  “It was fine for what it was.”

  “What was it?”

  “An arrangement.”

  Amanda turned around and looked at him in surprise. “I thought only the snooty families did that.”

  Peter shrugged. “We couldn’t have the people we wanted, and the elders were pressuring us to pick someone, so we came to an agreement. It worked out better than we could have hoped. She was a real saint.”

  “It was Ivy, wasn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “The woman you loved,” Amanda mused. “The one you couldn’t marry.”

  Peter’s expression hardened. He swallowed the last of his beer. “That’s all ancient history.”

  Amanda wasn’t encouraged by the bitterness in his voice. She knew exactly what it was like to have a lover yanked away. She had hoped the anger would diminish over time. Apparently it didn’t.

  Peter joined her at the collage. “It’s all right. It all turned out for the best.” He tapped a photo of Liam. “The strings pulled me in a different direction and look at what they gave me.”

  Amanda held his arm. “He’s a wonderful kid. You should be proud of him.”

  “Every minute of the day.”

  “And he should be proud of you.”

  “Well, that’s a taller order.”

  “He’s still mad at you for leaving him?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Amanda took his hand and stroked it, her thoughts swimming with guilt. Nobody had worked harder to bring the orphans and Gothams together, yet all Peter got was grief from both sides. He should have been a hero to everyone in the village. Instead there were some who believed that he shouldn’t be trusted at all.

  Peter saw her agitated expression and gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. “Thank you, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “For not believing it.”

  “Believing what?”

  Peter eyed her cynically. “Come on. I’m not dumb. There’s been chatter about me being a certain Pelletier. It started with Rebel. Now I’ve got people in my own circle looking at me cockeyed.”

  Amanda lowered her head. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

  “I’m just glad you don’t buy it.”

  “None of us buy it.”

  “Not even Zack?”

  Amanda rubbed her brow. She wished to God she could go one day without having to think about him. “He has his own issues.”

  “I would have hoped I earned his faith by now.”

  “It’s not about you. It’s about them. The Pelletiers have got him all turned around and he’s just . . . he’ll see his way through this. Just give him time.”

  Peter’s fists unclenched. He fingered the crucifix on Amanda’s collarbone. “It’s been a long, bad week for all of us.”

  “Yes it has.”

  Amanda pulled him into a hug, a paltry little gesture that made her body seethe with frustration. It reminded her of all her unfulfilled needs, all of his needs, all the many different ways they could comfort each other. They wouldn’t have to make a whole big production out of it. They could just . . . be.

  Peter returned the embrace and stroked her back with both hands. From the way his fingers moved down the bumps of her spine, Amanda gave it even odds that she’d be sleeping with him tonight. She blamed the wine. She blamed David.

  She hugged Peter tighter and breathed a soft whisper into his ear. “This week will be better,” she promised him. “It all gets better from here.”

  —

  At midnight, Yvonne gave David a goodnight kiss before sneaking back to her surface house. Amanda and Peter retreated into his bedroom and fumbled at each other’s shirt buttons. Mia and Carrie traded kisses in the dark. Hannah, Heath, and Jonathan fell asleep on a sofa. Zack lounged in bed with Mercy, bellowing with laughter as she tinkered on a lapbook. She’d hacked into the Heavensend and had added her own special touches to tomorrow’s sky. The weather promised to be cloudy with a chance of butt photos.

  At 1:55 A.M., the last light on Freak Street went out. The only glow came from the forty-inch lumivision in Theo’s bedroom. He lay on his mattress in a fetal position, clicking the remote with glazed perplexity. The local airwaves became utterly daft after midnight. A googly-eyed sock puppet yelled all the day’s news. A clown in lingerie hosted a contentious talk show. A man dressed like Teddy Roosevelt spent an hour playing practical jokes on animals. Theo couldn’t watch any of it without wondering if humanity sensed, somewhere deep in its lizard brain, that the world was doomed and there was no point left to anything. Maybe these freaks were the true prophets. Maybe the only real fools were down here in the underland, the ones who’d placed their faith in Theo.

  He nodded off a moment, then sat up in confusion. The lumivision had switched itself off. The room was pitch-black. Soft, mellow music drifted into his ears like a lullaby. Someone in the vicinity was playing guitar. Even in his groggy state, Theo could recognize it as the opening riff to “Come Together.” But who in their right mind would be strumming the Beatles at this hour? And why did they sound so close?

  “Shoop.”

  The intro repeated. Mystified, Theo rose from the bed and followed the song to his bathroom. He pushed the door open, half expecting to find Jonathan in a musical fugue state. Instead he was doused in a flood of sunshine. His bathroom had become a gateway to a bright, grassy meadow. It stretched as far as his squinting eyes could see.

  Theo felt reasonably certain now that he was dreaming.

  He crossed over the threshold and was stunned by sensory pleasures—the warm wind, the soft grass, the enchanting smell of wildflowers. Theo prayed that his subconscious would stay nice to him for once. He’d be lucky to get through this without seeing his dead naked parents.

  “Shoop.”

  The song continued to beckon him from the distance. Theo knew, in the inexplicable way of dreamers, that the guitarist was waiting for him at the top of a hill, just slightly out of view.

  He climbed the slope until he reached the edge of a cliff. A stunning city loomed in the distance, with the most eclectic skyline Theo had ever seen. Gothic buildings stood side by side with modern glass spires. One skyscraper was shaped like a pair of crossed scimitars. Another resembled an inverted chandelier. Theo couldn’t see a trace of human life anywhere. No cars. No trains. No hovering aerstraunts. He might have wondered if he was looking at a still frame if it wasn’t for the scattered flocks of birds.

  “This place is real,” he mumbled to himself. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “You’re seeing it now.”

  Theo flinched at the stranger lounging next to him, a thirtysomething blond in a turtleneck and jeans. He faced the edge of the cliff in a patio chair, his legs propped up on a speaker. The electric guitar in his hands looked just like the cherry-red replacement that Peter had bought for Jonathan. For all Theo knew, it was the exact same instrument.

  The guitarist continued to pluck the opening n
otes of “Come Together,” punctuating each riff with a soft, hissing “shoop.”

  “Why don’t you play the rest of it?” Theo asked.

  “Because then I’d have to sing it, and I don’t know the words. I’m really just in it for the shoop.”

  Theo scrutinized the man. Though he seemed comfortable enough in his own skin, he spoke in a shy, reticent tone. He also had a faint but unmistakable accent.

  “You’re Irish.”

  “You’re Korean,” the stranger fired back. “Any other business you want to get out of the way?”

  “Yeah. I’m Filipino. And there’s no shoop.”

  “What?”

  “The shoop. It’s wrong. John Lennon never sang that. He sang ‘shoot me.’”

  The guitarist stared at him in blinking thought. “Huh. Well I don’t know this Lennon fellow but I’d bet my life savings that someone ended up shooting him.”

  Theo nodded. “That’s how he died.”

  “Of course it is.” The stranger chortled. “The strings thrive on irony. You always have to be careful.”

  He replayed the intro with a defiant smirk. “Shoop.”

  Theo took a closer look at his new acquaintance. His hair and beard were thoroughly unkempt, but he had a handsome face. A smart face. He could have been David in twenty years, a rumpled ex-professor traveling from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, sharing his cynical wisdom with anyone willing to listen.

  He was also, like the city and guitar, a maddeningly familiar presence.

  “I know you,” Theo said. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I must have seen you in visions, then.”

  “Lumivisions, maybe.”

  Theo snapped his fingers. “That’s it! You’re Merlin McGee! You’re that big, famous weather prophet.”

  Merlin scoffed. “Weather prophet. I predict natural disasters. Saved more than a few lives doing it.”