by Thomas Locke
“Tirian is my oldest friend. I love him like a brother. And he can be the most exasperating, judgmental . . .”
“Bullheaded,” Sean offered. “Totally blind.”
“A royal pain,” Dillon said.
“Just plain nasty,” Sean agreed.
Josef pulled at his beard, doing his best to hide a smile. “I should mention that what is said inside tutorials is never discussed beyond this portal.”
“Works for me,” Dillon said.
“Now then, as to the next step. Counselor Tatyana was most explicit in her instructions. You may not under any circumstances return to your original transit point. You are to study and you are to learn. Nothing more. And yet I myself am facing a number of unanswered questions . . .”
Josef slipped back into his oversized chair. He stroked his beard in silence, one massive hand gathering it together, stroking down, tugging, again. It actually left Sean feeling calmer. He watched the giant and decided that here was a man who took them seriously. For the moment, it was great just not being put down.
Finally Josef continued, “As I said, a successful tutorial will force the student to delve beyond the boundaries of the comfortable. Normally that means the student must grow in unexpected directions. But in your case . . .”
They were content to sit and wait while the instructor dialogued with himself. Time was set aside, as were the worry and the unknown. Here was safety. Here was an ally.
Josef turned and planted his hands on the desk. “Very well. This is what I think. Let us make an agreement. Speak to one another without words a second time, and I in return will do two things. First, I will go against the orders of a Counselor. I will help you in solving this mystery. Because I too fear that Colonel Carver and his team are looking in the wrong direction.”
“That’s great,” Sean said.
Dillon corrected, “It’s great only if we can make it work.”
“But we will.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Dillon shot back. “Let me know when you work that out.”
Josef held up his hand. Wait. “But we must agree among ourselves that this will be our secret. We will do this thing, and we will move in the shadows. Because I for one do not wish to anger this particular Counselor. Already she views Tirian’s school with suspicion. If she suspects any wrongdoing on our part, she would shut us down in an instant. I tell you this because I want you to understand that I take a very great risk, even speaking of this in the confidentiality of the tutorial.”
“We understand,” Sean said. “We won’t say a word.”
“We really appreciate this,” Dillon added.
“You mentioned giving us a second thing if we talk without words.”
“When.” Dillon grinned at him. “It’s just a matter of time, right?”
“The second promise.” Josef leaned closer still. Suddenly he was not the gentle, caring professor. Gone were the smile and the shyness. In their place was a warrior’s implacable force. “Do this thing, and I will reveal to you the mysteries of higher combat.”
25
Josef did give them one boon immediately, which was an occasional extra day off. There were a number of the older students who were held to a less rigid schedule. They were given personal assignments that were often intended to lead into either their professional lives or higher training. Carey and her father adapted to their schedule and invited the twins to join them for dinners. Professor Havilland began these meals with a few questions about their work, but when they gave half-finished sentences that really didn’t say much at all, he let the matter drop.
Another two weeks passed, and their progress on the mind speech remained at ground zero. They basically stopped trying. Nothing they came up with made any difference. So the off days were spent lounging poolside, watching kids their age be, well, kids. All the things that framed the conversations that once were so vital had been stripped away. School, university applications, parents, jobs, girls, parties, cars . . . Sean and Dillon pretended to listen and kept their traps shut.
Carey’s job at the school had another three weeks to run, and there was a chance it would be extended through the rest of the summer. When she had a day off, she packed a lunch and took Dillon on long rides. The guy always returned wearing a smile that could only be described as goofy. Sean did not dislike those days. He did not resent his brother’s happiness. He did not feel angry at Carey for choosing his twin. But there were some hard times just the same, especially in the small hours when he was trapped alone on the balcony, without a thing to do but think of what he didn’t have.
Which was why, on one of those lonely afternoons when he saw the professor working over papers on the front patio, he wandered over. He brought a book he’d been trying to read for months, just in case he needed an excuse. But before he’d made it halfway down the walk, the professor had shifted his papers over to one side. “I must assume you’re Sean, since I would hate to think the wrong twin had slipped away with my daughter.”
“No, that would definitely be Dillon.”
“Come make yourself comfortable. Would you like a Coke?”
“Sure, thanks.” When the professor returned carrying two glasses, Sean said, “I was wondering if I could ask you something.”
“Of course. You know how I can tell you two apart? I say to myself, ‘Sean is the thinker. In ten years, he’s the one whose forehead will be creased from hours of concentration.’”
Sean sipped his drink and wondered if he’d also be the guy who was alone. “We need to check something out, and we don’t know how.” He had struggled to find some way to approach the impossible on the way over. “There’s a chance the blast that left us homeless wasn’t a gas pipe.”
If the professor saw anything odd in the admission, he did not show it. “Have you spoken with the police?”
“Sort of.”
“I take it they were not interested.”
“They said it wasn’t any of our concern.”
“Do you think you and Dillon were a target?”
Sean answered as honestly as he could. “I can’t figure out why that might be the case.”
“If you were,” Professor Havilland persisted, “are Carey and I in danger?”
“We have been assured over and over that there’s absolutely no risk.”
The professor accepted that with a slow nod. “So what makes you think there might be a culprit?”
“Dillon saw something. But the . . . police don’t believe him. I didn’t see it. But I felt . . . I guess . . . a wrongness.” Sean waited for the standard adult dismissal, even offered the guy a way out. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Actually, it makes more sense than you will ever know.” He turned his chair so he could stretch out his long legs. “Feelings can be great spurs to change. I could name you any number of great discoveries made by thinkers who reached a point where something didn’t ‘feel’ right. My field is cultural anthropology, which is focused on the study of people in their societies. We look at how people interact. How over time they develop their civilization, their art, their music, their value systems, their family structures. For over a century, my field has been divided into two very distinct groups, or perspectives. One side says there are certain underlying values and principles that all human civilizations employ or contain. Or, in some cases, these same elements are willfully turned away from. They are called absolutes. And the anthropologists who adhere to this are called structuralists, or classicists.
“The second group is known as cultural relativists, and these days they’re in the majority. They insist that nothing about human civilization is absolute. All ideas and conceptions are valid only so far as one particular group or nation, and time frame, make them so.” He grinned over at Sean. “Guess how well these two get along.”
“Not at all.”
“Correct. So here you have two groups of people who have dedicated their lives to the study of human civilization, a
nd they look at the exact same evidence and come up with two completely different answers.”
“You’re saying that if it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.”
“It is always a distinct possibility.”
“So what questions should I be asking?”
“There are two possible avenues you should consider. Weakness is one, motive the other. Often they prove to be one and the same. An established leader has every reason to protect his or her work from the attacks of others, even when they suspect the new direction is correct. Do you think the police might have a reason to protect a sacred cow?”
“I don’t . . .” Sean felt a faint buzz gather force in his brain, like a tiny drill working its way inside, trying hard to plant an idea. “Maybe.”
“Power and money can be strong motivations.”
“This is definitely not money.”
Professor Havilland glanced over, and Sean feared he was going to ask how he could be so certain. But after a moment’s inspection all the professor said was, “Power then. If it is power, you need to search for the motive that binds the explosion to some greater issue. But be careful there. People in power tend to get very touchy when they feel their position is threatened.”
Sean waited until after dinner and they were getting ready for bed to relate his conversation to Dillon. His brother didn’t respond until they were in bed and the lights were out. “You think that was wise, talking with the prof?”
“I went over because I was bored. But now . . . Yeah, I think it might have been a good thing.”
“He’s one smart guy.”
“Tell me about it.” With the screen flattened against the wall, their beds were separated by the loft’s lone dresser that grew two nightstands like stubby arms. Moonlight streamed through the balcony doors and the skylight over the living area, casting the loft in a silver gleam. “What do you think?”
“You’re the sage. You tell me.”
“You’ve never called me that before.”
“It’s how Carey describes you.”
“The sage,” he said, feeling a warm glow.
“It fits. So?”
“I’ve come up with two questions we need to figure out. The first is, who or what was behind the Charger attack?” Sean crossed his arms behind his head, angling his gaze so he could study the silver pillar spilling down from the skylight. “But we can’t go straight at it. Everybody is doing their best to keep from talking about whatever those ladies really were.”
“There’s definitely some secret they figure we can’t handle,” Dillon agreed.
“So what we need to understand is how they do this.”
“Josef,” Dillon said. “Josef is the key.”
“Right, but to make that happen we’ve got to repeat the mind-speech. And I’m trying. Believe me.”
Dillon rolled so he could see his brother. “In the meantime we need to figure out why everybody is so scared of us asking this question.”
“If we can. Right.”
“So what’s question two?”
“What’s the link between the ladies in the Charger and the blast that leveled our house?”
Dillon agreed. “They’re too close together to be a coincidence.”
“If we can get a handle on that, maybe we can understand how Tirian was photocopied.”
“As if one of the guy wasn’t enough.”
26
The idea hit Sean hard as a midnight bullet. It threw him out of bed before he was fully aware of his movements. He couldn’t be bothered to use words to wake Dillon. This was not a time for arguments. As he walked past his brother’s bed he kicked the foot sticking over the edge.
He received a muffled, “What’s the big idea?”
Sean moved into the kitchen, poured two glasses of water, walked back, and handed one to Dillon. They both usually woke up parched as Sahara trekkers. “I just figured it out. Maybe.”
To his credit, Dillon didn’t waste time with stupid questions. He drank his water, dressed, and followed Sean down the stairs and into the night.
Sean told him, “We’ve been going at this all wrong. We’re trying to think from one of us to the other.”
“Silly me,” Dillon retorted. The guy was alert enough to offer the day’s first quip. “All this time that’s what I figured we were working on. Thoughts.”
“So how hasn’t it worked? Because it’s not about thoughts at all.”
Crickets filled the silence. The moon was a small sliver almost directly overhead, the sky so clear they could see a faint silhouette of the dark side. The air was Carolina cool, the night windless. Somewhere far in the distance a dog barked. Otherwise the night was theirs.
Dillon said, “In a crazy way, that makes perfect sense.”
Hearing his brother speak those words got Sean so totally excited he shivered. “So we start from the energy.”
Dillon was nodding now. In tandem. “Focus on the force at gut level.”
“Build that up. Form a . . . I don’t know, a bubble or something.”
“Stick the thought inside.”
“And pass it to . . .” Sean stopped talking because Dillon was already on the move. His footsteps made a racing patter down the empty street.
Sean shivered again.
Dillon stopped beneath a streetlight a couple hundred yards away. And stood there with hands on hips. Waiting.
It should have come natural by now, forming a bundle of energy in his gut. Especially when he was so tense it felt like his entire body was ready to fold inward around the fist-like clenching. But Sean was so nervous it took forever. Finally he formed a new shield around himself, then pried out a segment. It helped to see it like an old-fashioned cartoon, the bubble taking shape just above his head. He couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say than, Can you hear me now? Like they were struggling against a failing cell phone signal.
Then he sent it scooting off to where his brother stood.
It seemed like the instant he made the invisible move, Dillon started dancing.
His brother went crazy. The touchdown dance in the state final was nothing compared to the ridiculous jig going on beneath the yellow streetlight.
Sean would have been embarrassed to have anyone see him just then, because all of a sudden he was laughing so hard he couldn’t stop the tears. And then the message came zinging back at him, and it all got worse.
Bro, we’ve just redefined spooky.
27
When they arrived at school the next morning, Josef was gone. The instructors wouldn’t say where he was, just that they needed to come back after school. So they put up with another day of the same-old. Which was an amazing way to look at transiting between planets. But still. All they saw of their destinations was another windowless room, each with a symbol of some sort planted on the wall. Their destination points, the symbols were called. A lot of the class time was given over to memorizing these symbols for various worlds. More was spent on the cultures they didn’t get a chance to see, and the laws governing the civilizations they had no contact with.
But that day held a difference. The school was filled with an undercurrent of tension, which Sean at first assumed was just him being excited over what Dillon had started calling spook-speak. But his brother caught him between classes and asked, “What’s going on around here?”
“No idea.”
“Maybe they’re finally getting ready to revolt, break down some walls, and take a good look around.”
“Either that or there’s a party we haven’t been invited to,” Sean replied.
Transit practice took up the entire middle of every day. Then it was back to the classroom for the final lecture. Sean was so whipped he fought constantly against a serious case of the nods. A half night lost to sleep, running around in the dark with his brother, shooting off thought bombs, then into class and all the transits . . . His eyelids had fifty-pound weights attached. He was close to dozing off when his brother messaged, I
ncoming at two o’clock.
Dillon was seated to his left. Sean turned and looked at him. Just too weary to fashion a decent thought. He mouthed the word, What?
Dillon pointed to Sean’s opposite side and shot back, The class hottie is checking you out.
There were several girls in their course who were standouts. But the one Sean found most striking was a younger version of Tatyana. Same white-blonde hair, same amazing eyes, same sharp features. Only on her the sternness was not imprinted. Most people probably found her imposing, for the girl normally walked in her very own isolation bubble. Sean thought she was amazing.
When he turned around, he found her staring. At him.
Sean didn’t have any trouble staying awake after that.
When class was done, he held back. She leaned across the desk separating them and asked, “Is class really so boring, Sean?”
He took a risk and responded in Serenese. “How do you know my name?”
She rewarded him with the first smile he had seen her give. Her features were not classically beautiful, they were too sharp, too intelligent, too intense. But the smile had a softening effect, almost like she had opened an unseen door and invited him in. “I know because I made it my business to know.”
In her mouth, Serenese came into its own, a song meant to be shared by good friends. Sean felt his heart flutter as he slipped into the next desk, closing the distance. “What’s going on around here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Everybody is so, I don’t know, intense.”
“Ah. The summer equinox is tomorrow.”
“So?”
“I will tell you if you ask me again, Sean. But I would prefer to . . .” She stopped as Dillon approached. “Yes?”
“Um . . . I need to take off.”
Sean didn’t look up. “Okay.”
“Weren’t we going to talk to Josef?”
“Not now.”
“Isn’t that more important?”
“No.”
“So . . . I’ll see you back at the place?”
“Sure.”