by Tad Williams
"Hello there, Chrissy," he said. She hated the name, but she didn't make the face she usually did. She felt like running but that was silly. "Is your daddy home?"
She nodded. "He's in the garage."
He nodded, too. "Right you are. I'll just pop in and talk to him for a minute."
Christabel jumped up. She wasn't sure why, but she felt like she wanted to run ahead and warn her daddy that Ron was coming. Instead she walked a little way ahead of him alt the way across the lawn, then only ran the last couple of steps.
"Daddy! It's Captain Ron!"
Her father looked startled, and for a moment it was like the time when she pushed open the bathroom door and went in by accident when he was naked out of the shower, but he was only taking the seats out of the big van—when he was in a good mood he called it "the Vee-Hickle"—and setting them on the garage floor. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and there were black smears on his hands and arms.
"That's fine, honey," he said. He didn't smile.
"Sorry to interrupt your Saturday, Mike," said Captain Ron, stepping into the garage.
"No problem. You want a beer?"
Ron shook his head. "I've got Duncan working with me today and you just know he'd be mentioning it in some report somewhere. 'I noted an apparent smell of alcohol when Captain Parkins returned.' " He frowned. "Little prick." He suddenly noticed Christabel standing near the door. "Oops. Pardon my French."
"Why don't you run along and play, honey," her father told her.
Christabel went back onto the lawn, but she found herself slowing down when she was out of sight of the open garage door. Something was different than usual between her father and Captain Ron. She wanted to find out. Maybe it had something to do with why her mother was crying, why they were arguing every night.
Feeling very, very naughty, she quietly walked back and sat down on the path near the garage door where the men couldn't see her. She was still holding Baby Lollipop in her hands, so she made a little pile of dirt and sat him on top of it. He moved his fat little arms slowly back and forth, like he was losing his balance and about to fall.
". . . Tell you these things pop in and pop out," her daddy was saying, "but I'm telling you the sonsabitches are lying. I've already scraped all the skin off my knuckles on the damn bolts." It sounded almost like his normal cheerful weekend voice, but something was not quite right. It made Christabel squirm like she needed to go to the bathroom.
"Look, Mike," Captain Ron said, "I'll make this quick. I just found out about this little vacation you're taking. . . ."
"Just a few days," her father said quickly.
". . . And I have to say I'm not real pleased about it. In fact, I'll be honest with you, I'm pretty goddamned pissed off about it." For a moment as his voice got louder, Christabel got ready to run away, but then she realized he was only walking back and forth between the door end of the garage and where her daddy was. "I mean, now of all times? When we've got the Yak breathing fire about that damned old man? You're just going to cut out for a few days for a little family trip and dump it all on me? That suctions, Mike, and you know it."
Her father was quiet for a while. "I don't blame you for being upset," he said at last.
"Don't blame me? That's a lot of help! Man, I never thought you'd do something like this to me. And not even talk to me about it first! Shit." There was a clumpy, clanky sound as Captain Ron sat down on one of the trash cans.
Christabel was excited and scared and confused by the bad language and Ron's angriness, but most of all by this talk of a vacation. What vacation? Why hadn't her mommy or daddy said anything? She suddenly felt very frightened. Maybe her daddy was going to take her away somewhere. Maybe he and Mommy were going to do a Divorce after all.
"Look, Ron," her daddy said. "I'll tell you the truth." He waited for a moment. Christabel slid a little nearer to the garage door, quiet as she could be, "We've—we've had some bad news. A . . . a health problem."
"Huh? Health problem? You?"
"No, it's . . . it's Kaylene. We just found out." He sounded so strange as he talked that for a moment Christabel couldn't really understand what he was saying. "It's cancer."
"Oh, my God, Mike. Oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry! Is it bad?"
"It's one of the bad ones, yeah. Even with those whatchamacallits, the carcinophages, it's still not very good odds. But there's hope. There's always hope. Thing is, we just found out and she has to start treatment right away. I . . . we wanted to spend a little time away, with . . . with Christabel. Before everything started."
Captain Ron just kept saying he was sorry, but Christabel couldn't even listen any more. She was cold all over, as though she had just fallen off a bridge into the darkest, deepest, most freezing water she could imagine. Mommy was sick. Mommy had cancer, that terrible pinchy black word. That was why she was crying!
Christabel started crying, too. It was so much worse than she had even imagined. She got up and stared at the ground, her eyes so full of tears that little Baby Lollipop was just bubbles of color. She stamped him into the dirt, then ran into the house.
She had her face pushed into her mother's lap, crying so hard she couldn't answer any of Mommy's questions, when she heard Daddy stomp in from the garage and say, "Jesus, that was horrible. I just had to tell Ron the most awful, awful. . . ." He stopped. "Christabel, what's going on? I thought you were outside playing."
"She just came in here sobbing," Mommy said. "I can't get any sense out of her at all."
"I don't want you to die!" Christabel shrieked. She pushed her face into her mother's stomach and wrapped her arms around her mother's thin waist.
"Christabel, sweetie, you're mashing me," her mother said. "What are you talking about?
"Oh, God," said Daddy. "Did you . . . Christabel, were you listening to that? Oh, honey, were you listening to Daddy and Uncle Ron?"
Christabel was hiccuping now and it was hard to talk. "Don't d–die, Mo–Mommy!"
"What's going on here?"
She suddenly felt her daddy's strong hands curl under her arms. He pulled her away from her mother, although it was not easy, and lifted her up in the air. She didn't want to look at him, but he pulled her close with one arm, holding her against his chest, then took her chin with the other and lifted her face toward his.
"Christabel," he said. "Look at me. Your mommy's not sick. I made that up."
"She . . . she's not?"
"No." He shook his head. "It's not true. She's fine. I'm fine, you're fine. Nobody has cancer."
"Cancer!" Her mommy sounded really frightened. "For the love of . . . what's going on, Mike?"
"Oh, God, I had to tell a lie to Ron. It was bad enough, doing that to him. . . ." He put his other arm around Christabel and pulled her close to his chest. She was still crying. Everything was wrong, it was wrong, everything was crazy and wrong. "Christabel, stop crying. Your mommy's not sick, but there are some important things we have to talk about." He patted her on the back. He still sounded funny, like something was squeezing him around the neck. "Looks like we need to have a little family meeting," he said.
In Cho-Cho's dream he was back on the beautiful island in the secret part of the net, the place with the sand and palm trees, but he was there with his father, who was telling him not to believe any of it—that the blue ocean and white sands were just a trick, that the rich gringo bastards just wanted to trap them like bichos and kill them.
Even as he said it, Cho-Cho's father was stuck to the sandy beach like flypaper. It was pulling him farther down, but all the time he kept yanking on Cho-Cho's arm, saying "Don't believe them, don't believe them," even though he was going to pull Cho-Cho down into the sticky sand with him.
Struggling, trying to scream with a throat that didn't work, Cho-Cho realized that the old man, Sellars, was the one who was pulling on his arm. He wasn't on the beach, he was back in that tunnel, and El Viejo was trying to wake him up.
"Cho-Cho, it's all right. Wake up, please."
Cho-Cho pulled away, wanting only to go back to sleep, but the funny-looking old man kept tugging at him.
"What the hell is this?" said a new voice.
Without thinking, Cho-Cho snatched his homemade knife from the rolled coat he used as a pillow. He scrabbled to the far side of the tunnel and put the wall at his back, then raised the shank of sharpened metal scrap before him, pointing it at the stranger.
"Come near me, I cut you!"
The man was wearing normal clothes, not a uniform, but Cho-Cho knew a cop when he saw one and this was definitely a cop—but there was something else familiar about him, too.
"You didn't say anything about there being anyone else, Sellars," the man said, staring at Cho-Cho with hard eyes. "What's going on?"
"I admit that I forgot to mention my friend here, Major Sorensen," Sellars said, "but I assure you he is involved. He must be a part of any plan."
The man glared at Cho-Cho. "But there isn't room in there! I didn't plan on another person, even a child." He shrugged and turned his back on Cho-Cho, who was astonished. Was it a trick? Cho-Cho looked at Sellars, trying to figure out why the old man had sold him out.
"I'll tell him everything," Cho-Cho said out loud to the old man. "Everything about you and that little much'ita stealin' food for you, and all that. Little Christy whassername, Bell."
The big police man turned back around. "Christabel? What about Christabel?"
Cho-Cho suddenly realized why the man was familiar. "Claro que si, you her papa, huh? You in on this?" Maybe this explained some of the weirdness—maybe the little girl's daddy was playing some money game on his bosses, and Sellars was helping him. There had to be some explanation for all this. People like Sorensen didn't just come down into stinking places like this for no reason—you could see it on his face how much he hated the smell, the damp walls.
"Except for Cho-Cho here," Sellars said calmly, "I have explained everything to you truthfully, Major Sorensen. The boy is here because he sneaked onto the base, and because if I had turned him out, he would have been sure to mention it to you and your associates when he was finally caught."
"Jesus," said the man sourly. "Jee-zus. Okay. I'll think of something. For now, we better get moving. I'll just put him in the front seat with me until we get to our place."
"I ain't going nowhere." Cho-Cho was beginning to think this was just an excuse to take him quietly. Men like this Sorensen guy were the kind who vacuumed up street kids and disappeared them. Cho-Cho'd seen guys like this before, white and clean-looking, but hard and nasty, too, when no one was watching.
"My dear Señor Izabal, we have no choice," Sellars told him. "This place is not safe for us any longer. Do not fear—I am going, too. Major Sorensen is going to protect us."
"Major Sorensen," the white guy cop said, scowling, "is beginning to think that a court-martial and firing squad might be a less painful alternative."
It took them a couple of hours to clean everything up. The little girl's father didn't want them to leave anything behind.
"But surely we are only slowing ourselves down," El Viejo said, but mildly, the same way he talked to Cho-Cho.
"Look, if someone finds this place and sees someone has been living here, they'll go over every square inch with a particulator. They'll find stuff from you, but they'll find stuff from my daughter and now me, too. Forget what I said before—I may be committing career suicide, but I'd prefer it wasn't the other kind as well." The man named Sorensen took apart the old man's wheelchair and put the pieces into bags, which he hauled up out of the tunnel two at a time. Next he took a folding shovel and went off to dig a hole in the grass a long way from the concrete building that hid the tunnel entrance. When it was done, he came back and took away the chemical toilet to empty it into the hole.
When the toilet and the little stove and the old man's other stuff were all loaded into the van outside, he made Cho-Cho and Sellars lie down between the back seats so they would be hidden. At first the man tried to get Cho-Cho to give up the homemade knife, but Cho-Cho wasn't taking that credit, and at last he gave up and let him keep it.
"If we stop, don't make a noise," Sorensen said as he pulled a blanket over them. "I don't care what happens, don't you even breathe."
Cho-Cho was still not sure he trusted any of this, but the old man wasn't kicking about it, so he decided to go along. The van only drove for a little while. When it stopped and the blanket was pulled away, they were in somebody's garage.
"Mike?" A woman was standing in the doorway, wearing one of those night-time robes like the ladies on the netshows. "You were gone so long—I was worried." She sounded more like she was about to scream, but she was trying hard. "Is everything all right?"
"It took a while to get the place cleaned up," he grunted. "Oh, and we have an additional guest." He took Cho-Cho by the arm, a strong grip but not too rough, and hoisted him out of the van. Cho-Cho shook him off. "Sellars here forgot to mention that he had company."
"Oh, dear." The woman stared at Cho-Cho. "What are we going to do with him?"
"Mess with me, I'll six you, ma'cita." Cho-Cho gave her his best cold stare.
"There isn't room for him in the compartment, so he'll have to ride with us." The man shook his head. "I guess if anyone asks, we'll have to say he's Christabel's cousin or something."
"Not looking like that, he wouldn't be." She frowned, but it wasn't the angry kind. Cho-Cho couldn't figure out what any of this was about. "You'd better come with me, young man."
He brandished the knife. Her eyes widened. "Ain't going nowhere, seen?"
She put her hand out, but slowly, like she was letting a mean dog sniff it. Somehow that made him feel much worse than the way she'd frowned at him. "Give that to me right now, please. You're not bringing that into our house."
"Please cooperate, Señor Izabal." Sellars had just lifted himself out onto the van's steps and he was breathing hard.
Cho-Cho stared at the woman. She didn't look like a real person to him at all—she was pretty and clean like someone on a commercial. What did these people want with him? He gripped the knife tighter, but her hand stayed out.
"Please give that to me," she said. "No one's going to hurt you here."
He looked from her to her big policeman-type husband, who wasn't saying anything, to Mister Sellars, who nodded, his strange yellow eyes very calm and peaceful. At last Cho-Cho reached out and set the knife down on a little bench near the door, next to a plastic box of nails and screws. He was putting it down because he wanted to—no one was going to take it from him.
"Good," said the woman. "Now follow me."
When the water had been turned off, the woman stood up. Cho-Cho had been too busy looking at all the strange things in the room—little kid toys and dried flowers and about nine hundred kinds of soap, most of which looked more like candy than anything else—to pay much attention, so when she said, "In you go," it took him a moment to figure out what she was talking about.
"In . . . in there?"
"Yes. You're certainly not going anywhere the way you are right now. You. . . ." She almost shuddered. "You are absolutely filthy. I'll deal with those clothes."
He stared at the warm water, the white towels hanging on the racks. "You want me to get in there."
She rolled her eyes. "Yes. Go on, hurry up—we don't have much time."
Cho-Cho reached up for the tab on his jacket, then paused. She was still standing there, her arms crossed on her chest. "What you doing?" he asked her. "You funny or something?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I ain't taking no clothes off with you in here!" he said angrily.
The little girl's mother sighed. "How old are you?"
He thought about it for a moment, wondering if there were some trick hidden in the question. "Ten," he said at last.
"And what's your name?"
"Cho-Cho." He said it so quietly she asked him again.
"All right," she said when he had r
epeated it. "I'll be outside, Cho-Cho. Don't drown. But throw those clothes outside as soon as you take them off. I promise I won't look." Just when the door was almost shut, she opened it again, just wide enough to say, "And use soap! I mean it!"
When the little girl's father came in about half an hour later, Cho-Cho was still angry about his clothes.
"You robbin' me," he said, close to tears. "I'm gonna get my knife back, then you sorry!"
The big man looked at him, then at the woman. "What's this about?"
"I threw those horrible clothes away, Mike. Honestly, they smelled like . . . I don't even want to talk about it. I let him keep his shoes."
Cho-Cho's choice had been either to go naked or to put on the clothes she gave him, so he was wearing a pair of the man's pants, rolled several times at the cuff, and held up with a belt. That wasn't so bad—with such baggy legs, he looked a little like a Goggleboy wearing 'chutes—but the shirt he was now clutching to his naked, damp chest was another story.
"I ain't wearing it."
"Look, son." The man kneeled down beside him. "Nobody's really happy about all this, but if you make a fuss and we get caught, we're all in trouble. Trouble as big as it gets. Do you understand? They'll put me in the brig and you in one of those children's institutions—and not the nice kind either. I bet you know what I'm talking about. So please just give us a break, will you?"
Cho-Cho held out the shirt, trembling. "This? 'Speck me to wear this mierda!"
The man looked at the picture of Princess Poonoonka, the pink fairy-otter, then turned to the woman. "Maybe you could find him something a little less . . . girly?"
"Oh, for goodness sake," said the woman, but went to go look.
The man astonished Cho-Cho then by smiling. "Don't you dare tell her," he said quietly, "but I have to agree with you, kid." He patted Cho-Cho on the shoulder and walked back down the hall to the garage, leaving the boy even more confused than he had been this whole, crazy night.
When her mother woke her up, it was still dark outside, although the sky was turning purple. "We're leaving on our trip, Christabel," she said. "You don't have to get dressed—you can sleep in the car."