In his dreams, it had been one thing—he was able to write the experience off, as the intangible nature of dreams allowed you to do. Imagination? Memory? Something divine? But to be standing very much awake and be seeing a lifelike re-creation . . . it was real.
Suzy came close, behind Petrick. “He’s tall, just like you said.” Petrick nodded.
“This is Petrick’s dream?” said Barry. “Can we watch mine next? I can never remember them.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” said Suzy.
“Moving along,” called Haber from the controls as Petrick’s doppelgänger bounded onto the meadow.
The scene before them started to go forward in fast motion: writing, building, laughing, running, stargazing. Haber had gone back far, indeed. Petrick found he could remember each one of these “lessons” with his father: building the saucer, the mishap from the other night, the medallion . . . he looked at Clarke, who was up on the table in his little harness and watching the quickly moving light show with mild curiosity.
The projection flickered slightly, and the meadow seemed to change. It was still, even though Haber was still fast-forwarding.
“Here,” called Petrick.
The scene slowed to real time. Fenton was frozen, and holographic Petrick was calling his name. A second later, the giant swarm of glow hornets rushed past as an ominous cloud of orange light.
“I can’t hear anything,” said Petrick, stepping toward the scene. “Is there any way we can hear what’s happening?”
“Working on it, young master,” Haber called out.
The hornets flew in their angry cloud up toward the sky and then descended down directly onto Fenton, who was standing unnaturally still. They swarmed around his face in a tight ball right as Haber managed to find the sound of the incredible recording. The noise of their multitude of wings blasted like the roar of a waterfall.
The projected version of Fenton whipped his head around to face the projected Petrick, his eyes glowing a distinctly inhuman orange glow—the same glow that Petrick had seen in Clarke’s eyes when he’d been so abruptly awakened—and his mouth began to move. But they couldn’t hear him. The roar of the glowing hornets was far too loud.
“Okay,” shouted Barry, “can we stop this now? Too scary.”
“Can you tell what he’s saying?” Petrick called to Haber. “I still can’t hear him.”
Petrick looked back to see Haber frowning and working on one of the panels. The roar of the glow hornets continued, and Fenton’s words were still unreachable. Holo-Petrick staggered down to the ground, pleading with his father. Petrick’s heart began to race as he remembered what happened next. The hornet-swarmed Fenton bent over his son, straining, pushing his face through the wild mess of light and noise.
“HELP ME!” he shouted.
The scene went dark.
That’s all there was.
Petrick turned and ran back over to Haber. “What was he saying? I still couldn’t hear him.”
“It seems,” replied Haber with a dour face, “this may be harder than I imagined.”
“What do you mean?” Petrick asked. “Can’t you just look up whatever, whatever lesson this was you programmed? Take it apart?”
“I have reason to believe we’re not looking at any lesson I myself or Master Fenton programmed into Clarke.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a transmission,” Haber said. “A distress call. From your father.”
Petrick awoke dripping in sweat and didn’t know where he was. Clarke lay between his legs, shivering. Petrick’s head pounded, and he realized he was going to be sick, this time for real. He scrambled off the strange green cushion he was stretched upon and stumble-felt his way through the unfamiliar dark room toward a crack of light that marked the slightly open door. He was dimly aware of a sleeping Barry and Suzy on the floor.
Outside the room, he collapsed onto his hands and knees and retched the contents of what was clearly an empty stomach. Once the painful convulsion passed, he sat and put his pounding head up against the wall.
He was in the lab, he remembered. The floor was concrete and cool.
He’d had the dream again, the distress call or whatever it was, just as before. It started like last night’s—or was it the same night’s?—dream, his father frozen in the field, the rushing sound of hornets, the contracting air, the plea for help.
Petrick forced himself to slow his breathing. Clarke, who had followed him out of the small side room that Haber had set up for them, pawed at his master. Petrick nodded and patted the ground next to him. Clarke obediently flopped down. Petrick stroked his side. Clarke was still shivering. Petrick realized the dream must have had the same horrible effects on him, too. Patiently, the two waited for them to pass.
Petrick remembered now how Haber had found cushions for the children to sleep on. It had taken more convincing for Barry and Suzy to believe that Haber was, in fact, not evil, but they had eventually agreed it was too late to head back to Childer’s that night. They’d decide what to do when morning came. Petrick wondered how long he’d been able to sleep.
A clanging sound came from up toward the front of the lab. Clarke perked up his ears and looked questioningly at Petrick. Haber must have been working on something. Petrick knew Clarke wanted to go see what it was. So often, Petrick felt he could read the fierce little fur ball’s mind, and vice versa. Haber had said they had an empathetic connection; Petrick wondered . . .
“Let’s see what Haber’s up to,” he said.
He rose to his feet unsteadily. The headache was still there but manageable, and his legs seemed to have returned to him.
They were able to walk briskly toward the clatter to find Haber at a workbench, muttering in frustration to himself and typing commands into a control panel. In the center of the dais was a holographic projection of the dream, frozen in the last moment. Fenton was stooped over a terrified holo-Petrick, swarmed with hornets. His eyes burned orange, and the light streaks from the hornets’ bioluminescent abdomens were angry wires caging in the two figures. It was striking and terrifying.
The frozen holo-image flickered, caught for one more brief moment, and then clicked off. At the workbench, Haber held in some sort of verbal curse and instead ripped out a metal rectangle from the control panel and threw it wildly out among the rows and rows of storage. It clanged loudly against something in the distance.
“So that’s what the noise was,” Petrick said aloud.
Haber whirled around, startled. Seeing the boy and Clarke, he put a hand up to his chest. “Kindly do not sneak up on me, young master,” he said. “I don’t have the disposition for such things.”
“Sorry,” said Petrick. His gaze went over to the workbench. “What are you working on?”
“The message,” Haber said with a sigh. “It is uncommonly perplexing.” He looked down at where he’d torn the metal rectangle from the control panel, then back at Petrick. “I woke you, didn’t I?”
“No.” Petrick shook his head. “The dream did. I had it again.”
“Really?” said Haber. “Same as before?” Petrick nodded in the affirmative. “Fascinating.”
Petrick walked forward to the workbench and grabbed a stool to gain a view of what the android was working on. “It must be some sort of repeat.”
The surface of the workbench was dotted with a series of inlaid video monitors, buttons, switches, work surfaces, and other miscellaneous technologies. Petrick ran his hands over the nearest keyboard, careful not to press any keys. Haber swatted at his hands anyway.
“If you don’t mind, young master,” he said.
Petrick nodded. “What is it about this . . . this message that’s so . . .”
“Perplexing?” Haber reached for another rectangular metal device like the one he’d tossed away in frustration. He plugged it into a similarly shaped slot next to a monitor and keyed in a few commands.
Behind them, Petrick heard the holo-projection of t
he dream click on again.
“I was able to download the message packet from Clarke easily enough and load the beginning,” Haber explained, “as you can see.” He gestured to the projection without looking up from what he was doing. The hornets rushed to the scene and swarmed Fenton. Everything was orange fury, and then everything froze. “Then it stops. The message ends.” Haber pointed to his monitor; Petrick looked down. “But there’s more to it,” he said, tapping the readout. “I can see that plain as anything.”
“Maybe it’s coded,” Petrick said.
Haber’s eyebrows raised. “An astute suggestion,” he said. “I have decided the same.” He tapped a switch on the small metal rectangle, and it started flashing and humming. “So, I plugged in a decryption module to see if I could access the rest—”
There was a sudden bzzzt from the module, and behind them, the holo-projection of the dream flickered off, just as it had when Petrick had surprised Haber. A tiny puff of smoke rose from the burned-out module, and just like the last one, he ripped it out of its slot and tossed it away in frustration.
“It’s burned out every time I’ve tried to access the rest of the message.” The android clenched and unclenched his fists. “I’m afraid I’m at a loss.”
In the silence that followed as the two contemplated the predicament, Petrick’s stomach grumbled loudly. He covered it sheepishly.
“Are you hungry?” Haber asked with a scowl. “I’ve been programmed with several million recipes and the skill of thousands of master chefs, and we do have a functioning food slot in the laboratory. If you require it, I suppose I could be of service.”
Petrick cocked his head to the side, confused by the android’s grumpy offer mixed with boastful details.
“Uh, sure?” he answered. “I mean, Clarke and I could make something of our own . . .”
“No, no.” Haber shook his head and stepped back from the workbench. “You’d probably break something, and that wouldn’t do. Besides, an interlude would seem to be in order, to regroup,” he said. He sighed and shook his head. “I wish that your father were here. I’m not designed, per se, to be digging around in such things . . . but then if your father were here, we really wouldn’t be bothering with the silly message in the first place, would we?”
Petrick nodded. “There must be a way,” he said. “He wouldn’t have sent the message if he didn’t want us to access it.”
“Indeed,” Haber said. The assertion seemed to cheer him. “Well, then, let’s see to that breakfast, shall we?”
The android turned around and set off down one of the corridors lined with shelves and shrouds in a huff. Petrick could have been wrong, but he’d have sworn that Haber was enjoying himself.
16
THE SMELL of Haber’s veritable feast had drawn both Barry and Suzy out of their sleep in the side room in short order. They’d stretched their cramped limbs and joined Petrick and a jubilant Clarke on one of the workbenches that Haber had set up as a de facto meal table. A feast it most certainly was. There were piles of the familiar morning fruit, potatoes, and ellyks that tasted as if they’d come right out of Childer’s vegetable garden, plus mounds of mysterious steaming cooked foods that none of the children had ever seen or tasted before.
“What’s this?” called Barry to Haber, who had situated himself back at his workstation, continuing to study the message. Barry held up a crispy, wavy piece of cooked meat.
“Colloquially that’s known as a munchin’ strip,” Haber said. Barry cocked his head at the unfamiliar words. Haber shook his head and turned back to his workstation. “It’s an ancient food.”
“Well, it’s delicious!” Barry replied, putting the entire crunchy strip into his mouth. “In fact, it’s all delicious!” He washed it down with a long suck of fruit juice through a straw. The paper container it had come in gurgled and collapsed, empty.
Barry made a gleeful “aahhhh” sound and wiggled the carton to see if there was anything left inside. “These juice boxes are amazing,” he said. “Have you had some, Suzy? You just suck it out with one of these . . .” He looked over at Petrick, losing the word.
“Straws,” Petrick answered.
“Yeah, those.” Barry nodded. “Suzy, did you know that juice could come in boxes? Maybe this technology stuff isn’t so bad after all, huh?”
Suzy smiled back at him, mouth full of food.
“I’m glad you find the meal satisfactory,” said Haber.
Suzy pushed her plate back and patted her round belly. Petrick did the same, and they all grinned at each other. It was good to have such full bellies, which wasn’t something they were so accustomed to at Childer’s. The food there was measured out precisely for each person. It was simply a fact of life when your entire population grew their own food.
Petrick jumped off his stool and ambled over to Haber.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“No, and I won’t have any if I keep getting interrupted.”
“Any idea how long it will take?”
“A long time,” Haber replied, giving Petrick a shooing motion.
“But do you think you can do it?”
“Do what?” called Barry from the breakfast table.
“Find the rest of the message,” Petrick answered back. Barry never missed a beat, did he?
“There’s more?”
“Haber thinks we’re only seeing a fraction of it right now, so he’s figuring out how to get to the rest.”
“To be honest, young master,” Haber said, stopping what he was doing and leveling with Petrick, “I’m not sure I can decode the rest of the message. It may be beyond my abilities.”
“Okay,” Barry said after taking a large gulp of a new juice box. “What do we need it for anyway?”
“What do you mean, why do we need it?” Suzy said. “Didn’t you see the message last night?”
“Sure,” Barry said, nodding, “you mean the message that ended with Petrick’s dad asking for help?”
“Yes!” chimed both Petrick and Suzy at once.
“Right . . . ,” said Barry, grabbing another munchin’ strip and giving it a crunchy bite as he furrowed his brow. “So . . . he needs help. Go help him.”
“Barry,” protested Suzy, “we don’t know where his dad is!”
“Well, he does,” Barry calmly replied, pointing his strip at Haber and taking another sip of his juice. “He said last night he helped plan his trip.”
Suzy and Petrick turned and looked at Haber, who was frowning. Crunch, they thought, Haber did say that last night.
Haber was nodding slowly. “Yes,” he said. “And, yes, I did help your father plan the beginning of his journey to the Outer Rim, but I have no idea where his search took him from there.”
“But we could start there?” Petrick asked. “Try to pick his trail up?”
Haber sat thinking, frowning.
“Yeah,” said Barry, finally finishing his food and dropping down from his stool. He wiped his hands off on his shirt. “I mean, we walked all the way here last night, didn’t we? How far away can this ‘Outer Rim’ be? Take some snacks; we could be there before night.”
That was when Haber laughed. He reared back and laughed from deep within his chest. It was an entirely foreign and uncomfortable sound, as if it was something that he had not done in a very, very long time. Given the android’s disposition toward gloominess and skepticism, that was likely not far from the truth.
“Children,” he said, working some controls on the handheld device he’d used the night before, “I want you to take a look at something.”
He ushered them to the central dais, and the projectors surrounding it sprang back into life. In front of them, Haber brought up an image of a map, which they quickly recognized as containing the grounds of Childer’s Home for the Parentless.
“Hey,” exclaimed Suzy, “that’s home!”
And indeed it was, rendered in shades of transparent blue. They could see the Gathering Hall, the various dorms arou
nd the quad, the path that led up to their favorite corner field with the treasure shed and the wall.
Barry reached out to touch the projection, and again his hand slid through the images, leaving lines of blue burning heatlessly on his skin. Suzy laughed at the giant grin he was sporting. “This is just so neat,” he said. “Every time.”
“Now, if you’ll stop playing inside the projection,” Haber said, “I’ll show you why we’re looking at your backward little home.”
As the three children gathered together to watch, Haber turned a dial on his handheld controller and the projection zoomed out with an exhilarating whoosh. It was like they’d suddenly flown directly up into the sky, and below them now they could see the sprawling forest that lay beyond Childer’s. In one of the far corners of that sprawling forest was a tiny dot in the middle of a small open field. Haber gestured to the dot.
“That is us,” he said.
“No way!” exclaimed Barry. He squinted one eye and traced the distance that they must have traveled from Childer’s to the lab. “We went all that way?”
“Indeed,” said Haber, sounding infinitely unimpressed. “And this is the distance to the nearest Indacaran city port.”
The projected map zoomed out again with a giant whoosh that made the children’s stomachs drop with the illusion of height and speed. The dot and the field and Childer’s diminished to points barely visible as an area the size of the entire forest dominated the center of the map. A new section lit up far from their dot and the lab.
“Aaron’s Landing,” Haber said. “Four hundred kilometers to the southeast.”
“Whoa . . . ,” said Barry. “That’s a bit further . . .”
“But walkable, as you have suggested, Master Barry, given a few days’ time,” Haber said before dialing the controller again.
The projection whooshed again, but this time, it didn’t stop as it scaled out further and further. The city Haber had identified soon became a dot itself as the very ground of Indacar began to curve and a red line started to rise from the diminishing point. Within seconds they were beyond every horizon, and the full floating sphere of their planet was dwindling before them. The projection just kept going as Indacar shrank, the red line continuing to grow as they rushed past the other planets of their star system until only the star itself was visible. Soon, even the star was a small point of light with a red line emanating from it, and soon that red line was being joined in bunches by other red lines attached to pinpricks of light.
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