“Negative, sir! I was informed of his clearance by the canine officer.”
Abel and Zebulon turned to Chip again. The dog crouched on his belly now, watching them with pricked ears.
“A canine officer,” Abel said.
“Like a canine colleague,” Zebulon murmured. “Or a partner.” His eyes took on an ominous gleam. “Good work apprehending these two, Lieutenant. We’ll take it from here. Abel, not another word from anybody till we get these two in the packet.”
The soldier blocked their way.
“Do I have to remind you, sir,” the soldier said icily, “that you need a directive signed by the Special Prosecution Team to arrest a Central government official? I’ve radioed Central about the irregularity of this event. No one moves till we get an answer.”
Abel rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of—” Zebulon stopped him.
“Lieutenant, you—you what?” Zebulon said. “You say you’ve radioed Central?”
“And they’ve radioed back,” the soldier announced with satisfaction. “Switching to send/receive video mode.”
The gray-faced bot’s brass buttons and row of bright parade ribbons dissolved into shiny blackness. In the middle of his chest, a dark square appeared. It flickered, and Martin realized with a jolt that it was a television.
A man’s face peered out from the television screen, a large, florid face like a honey-baked ham. Fleshy eyelids pouched protectively around the man’s brown eyes, almost closing them, and two small, neat ears tilted away from the massive forehead like the cropped ears of a Great Dane. The man’s head met his body without the intervention of a neck: a black suit coat sloped out almost immediately below the little ears, and the Windsor knot of a red silk necktie sheltered beneath his formidable chin. A white headline banner at the bottom of the screen carried his title: SECRETARY OF STATE.
“What’s going on here?” the Secretary demanded.
“Oh, crap!” muttered Zebulon.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“What’s this about?” the Secretary of State said again. “Agents. Still got your hair. Young agents. X, Y, or Z batch, I’d say.”
“Sir, I’m Agent Zebulon,” Zebulon declared, stepping in front of Martin. “My junior partner here is Agent Abel.”
Martin peeked around Zebulon’s pinstripe back in time to see the Secretary’s tiny eyes narrow shrewdly. “The A batch is productive already, eh?”
Zebulon coughed. “More or less.”
“What’s going on? An alert came through that a Central official was where he didn’t belong. It’s a good thing I wasn’t asleep.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I never sleep, Agent Zebulon.”
“Yes, sir. I’d heard that, sir. I’m very sorry you were disturbed. Actually, that report came to you in error. The military bot appears to have malfunctioned.”
The soldier providing the video feed couldn’t appear in his own defense, but he bristled and protested. “Negative, sir! My internal diagnostics indicate that I am one hundred percent mission ready. I can dump the codes to any handheld you wish.”
“Thank you, thank you, soldier,” the Secretary told him smoothly. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“The lieutenant appears to believe,” Zebulon said, “that a teenage boy is on the payroll at Central. But we’ll take care of it, sir. We’ll make sure his circuit board gets the maintenance it needs.”
The Secretary of State’s tone sharpened with interest. “Who’s that?”
“Who’s what, sir? The soldier? He’s Lieutenant Bravo-Bravo-Romeo-Tango.”
“Not him, Agent! The boy. Get out of my way.” Zebulon moved aside with reluctance, and the face on the television screen drank Martin in. “A Wonder Baby. By Jove, you’ve got one!”
“No, sir, I’m afraid not. This is a regular older-model boy.”
“Aren’t you at the Wonder Baby school? Or did Lieutenant Tango get that wrong too?”
Zebulon answered, after just a hint of a hesitation, “No, sir, he was right about that.”
The Secretary of State looked baffled. “Where the devil did that boy come from, then?”
“Well, we went to retrieve him from his suburb, sir . . .”
“Negative!” barked the soldier. “I apprehended him right here in this room.”
Impatience clouded the Secretary’s expression, and a dent formed in the middle of his forehead. “Agent, answer me! Did you bring that boy here or not?”
“We intended to, sir. But there was—ah—interference. We intended to interrogate him just now, but that’s when the soldier malfunctioned.”
“Intended. Intended! I don’t care what you intended. Don’t you even know his name?”
Zebulon paused and smoothed his pinstripe sleeves, doubtless looking for inspiration on his cuffs. Abel shifted from foot to foot and then blurted into the silence, “Sir, the soldier shouldn’t have bothered you. This kid is nobody important. Nothing for you to worry about.”
The Secretary’s broad face turned red. “Ah! Thank you, young sprat, for your kind thoughts on my behalf. So I don’t need to worry?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you like to know how I got to be three times your age? By worrying when I didn’t need to worry. Would you like to know how many assassination plots I’ve survived? Twenty-seven. One of them involved poisoned socks.”
“Um . . . yes, sir.”
“And would you like to know how many agents I’ve had to execute for involvement in those plots? Thirty-eight agents, Agent. Two agents from the L batch, eight agents from the O batch, six agents from the Q batch (the names those men had!), four agents from the S batch, ten agents from the V batch, one W, six Xs, and one Y. Did you by any chance know the man from the Y batch, Agent?”
Abel gulped. “Yorick. Yes, sir. I remember him.”
“Go on remembering him,” the Secretary advised. “It’ll keep you out of trouble. And now, both of you, get out of the way.”
The agents moved back. Martin jumped. The Secretary was staring right at him. His gaze made Principal Thomasson’s stare seem soppily sentimental.
“Young man! Do you by any chance have a name?”
“Yes . . . um . . . sir.”
Martin paused. The Secretary’s eyes skewered him. Chip cowered a few feet away, belly to the floor. The two agents watched him contemptuously out of the corners of their eyes: It’s not us on the hot seat anymore.
“My name, sir.” He licked his lips. “It’s Martin, sir. Martin . . . um . . . Glass.”
The fat eyelids opened wide. “You’re the boy who escaped from a collector!”
Martin licked his lips again. “Yes, sir. I guess you could say that.”
The Secretary’s stare turned elsewhere.
“Agent Zebulon, Agent Abel, you are relieved of your interrogation duties. I’m coming to take care of this in person. Lieutenant, stand watch over this young man and detain him safely. Don’t let anyone but me or my personal security detail come within five feet of him. You have your orders. I’m on my way.”
The television on the soldier’s chest flickered out. Like stars, the brass buttons returned one by one to their royal blue field.
Agent Zebulon continued to stand, deadpan, for a slow count of ten. Then his fist shot out and clipped Abel’s ear.
“You idiot!” he yelled. “You freaking disgrace to your DNA! I can’t believe I have to share your genes, you stupid pissant.”
Abel clutched his ear. “Ow!”
The soldier bot stiff-armed both agents out of the way. “Please step back from my detainee. If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat, sir,” he said to Martin. “We have a long wait before us.”
Abel and Zebulon sank down onto a nearby bench and brooded, their empty hands open on their gray pinstripe knees. “The Secretary doesn’t know about the bot,” Abel murmured. “What do you say we—”
“Chip, get over here,” Martin called sharply.
“Abel, shut your mou
th! Seriously, do you have a death wish?”
Chip scuttled to Martin’s side and put his head on Martin’s knee. The agents watched him with identical disgusted looks and fell to brooding again.
Abel stirred. “Well, we could—”
“Shut up.”
“I know, but we could just—”
“Shut up!”
Martin noted the exchange with grim satisfaction.
“So, your walls have ears too, huh?” he said. “Even you guys. What about eyeballs? Do your walls have those?”
Abel cracked his knuckles. “Don’t get smart. We’re the eyeballs on your walls, kid.”
“Well, not now, you’re not,” Martin said. “What did you losers do with my little sister?”
Zebulon propped his elbows on his knees and sank his chin onto his folded hands. “Where are your parents, kid?” he countered. “We’re only asking because we care.”
That shot hit home. Martin’s throat tightened at the thought of Mom. “Leave me alone,” he muttered.
“Hey, look, Abel, trouble,” Zebulon said, nudging his partner’s foot with his. “What is it, bad food? Broken leg? Poison ivy? I bet we could help Mom and Dad, couldn’t we?”
“We’d love to,” Abel said solemnly. “We live to serve.”
“You don’t serve my parents,” Martin snapped. “You were gonna arrest them in the middle of the night!”
Zebulon’s expression didn’t change, but Abel drew back, bewildered. “How did he know that? Is it because of his— Ow!” Zebulon had snapped his finger against Abel’s temple.
“You came here to get help,” Zebulon decided after a pause. “Mom, or Dad? Mom?”
Martin hunched his shoulders. “Don’t talk about my mom.”
“Mom, then. What happened? You can tell us.”
“You losers know what happened! You shut up about my mom!”
“We know, huh? Interesting.” Zebulon studied Martin keenly. “Mom’s in trouble, and we’re supposed to know about it. Now, see, Abel, that’s what we call a clue.”
Martin bit his lip. “Just shut up,” he whispered.
“Oh, you think we’re not playing nice?” Zebulon said. “Just wait till the Secretary of State gets here. You think it’s some kind of prize to get the most powerful man in the nation out of bed? Think again.”
“Yeah, squirt,” Abel said. “Zebulon and I just arrest people. The Secretary of State makes an example out of them.”
Martin bent his head and petted Chip. I’m not scared, he told himself. I’ve faced down a collector before. But he remembered how scary that had been, and he knew he was kidding himself.
“But that’s not as bad as the interrogation,” Zebulon pointed out. “The Secretary of State has the twelve Ursulas.”
“That’s right.” Abel’s voice was low. “The Ursulas. They look like women.”
“Like big tall women,” Zebulon said. “Like big tall scary women. But they’re not.”
Martin thought about Dad in his best suit, waiting to face Truth in the Mayor’s packet car. Dad’s eyes had been black with terror.
“The twelve Ursulas. Every one of them knows how to kill. In fact, that’s about all they know how to do. The Secretary of State once had them kill a gorilla on a bet. You know what a gorilla is, right?”
“A hairy monster,” Martin muttered. “House-to-House Number Five.”
“The Ursulas killed him with their bare hands.”
“Bare hands,” Abel echoed, nodding. “They say the Ursulas can rip the heart out of your chest and hold it up in front of you, and you can watch it beat before you die.”
Martin pushed Chip’s head from his lap and jumped to his feet.
“Okay, seriously, are you guys part of a comedy show, or what?” he said. “Because you guys would be a riot on television.”
The soldier bot laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Sir, please don’t get excited.”
Zebulon grinned. “If you don’t believe us,” he said, “ask Bravo-Bravo-Romeo here. Bravo, Romeo! Bravo! Come on, Abel, you moron, we might as well go write our report.”
The two agents strolled out of the room. “That’s Bravo-Bravo-Romeo-Tango,” the soldier called after them.
Lieutenant Tango brought Martin a blanket from his knapsack. “I believe you’ll need this to rest properly,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”
“I’m kinda hungry,” Martin muttered. “Do they have cookers here? Or could you bring me something from the cafeteria fridge?”
“The refrigerators are empty, and I’m afraid the cookers are nonstandard.”
“Oh . . . well, some water, then,” Martin suggested.
“The faucets aren’t operating.”
In the end, the soldier brought Martin his mostly empty water bottle and a squashed energy bar.
Martin lay on his blanket on the floor tiles, blinking at the big lights overhead. His spirits were so low that he could barely think straight. He didn’t know what to do. The thought of the smooth, sly Secretary headed his way made the pit of his stomach hurt, and the idea of Mom and Dad waiting for him to bring help made him miserable. As for the school, he couldn’t even think about it. Cassie was only six years old. And now . . .
Cassie’s supposed to be here, he thought. I left her right here in this room. The prototypes were supposed to take care of her. I trusted them, and they let me down. But Cassie trusted me. And I let something bad happen to my little sister.
He fell into a fitful sleep, and he dreamt.
He and Cassie were at the park together, and he was following her up the tall ladder at the slide to make sure she didn’t fall. He was scolding her about it, telling her she was a baby for making him do it, but she was smiling anyway. All that mattered was that her big brother was there for her. It didn’t matter how much he complained.
And then she was slipping down the big yellow slide, her little hands poised over the high slide rails to slow herself down if she went too fast. She was laughing out loud, and her tight golden ringlets bobbed around her head. She landed on her feet in a spray of gravel and yelled for him to follow her. “Come on, come on!” she called, bouncing up and down in her white sneakers. “I want to go again.”
We aren’t really at the park, he thought. Cassie’s not really here. He knew it because of the misery that filled him.
“Martin’s scared,” she sang. “Scared of the slide. Come on!” Her eyes were blue, the turquoise blue of a clear sunny sky, a little piece of sky inside the suburb.
This is just a memory, Martin thought, from a couple of months ago, when she lost her first tooth. I’m about to go down the slide, and she’s too close to it, and my foot kicks her, and her loose tooth flies out. And I think she’s gonna cry and run home and tell Mom, but she’s so happy about the tooth that she doesn’t.
As he thought these things, they happened just the way he remembered them. He loosed his hands, and he flew down the long fiberglass slide. He saw the uncertainty in Cassie’s big blue eyes just before his foot connected with her. He saw her spin around and hit the gravel, and he braced himself for the tears. But her gap-toothed smile was radiant as she got to her knees and held the pearly little tooth in the air.
“I’ve got one for the tooth fairy! I’ve got one!”
Martin sat straight up on his bedroll and opened his eyes. “Chip!” he cried. “Wake up! They haven’t got them!”
Chip scrambled to his feet while Martin hugged his knees to his chest and thought about what he had heard. You got one, the Secretary had said when he thought Martin was a Wonder Baby. But nobody would say that about the thousandth kid they caught, or be as excited as the Secretary had looked, either. You got one, meaning the first one, just like Cassie’s tooth. The Wonder Babies had gotten away.
The joy Martin felt left him breathless. Cassie was safe. The gas masks and evacuation drills had worked.
Ears pricked, Chip was nosing him in the face, trying to figure out what he was talking about. But th
e walls had ears, and so did the military bot. Martin jumped to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Lieutenant Tango asked. “You can’t leave. I have to detain you.”
Martin stopped to think. What were the Secretary’s exact words? Exact words mattered to a bot.
Don’t let anyone but me or my personal security detail come within five feet of him.
“You’re too close to me,” Martin said. “The Secretary says only his security guys can get this close. Move back.”
Lieutenant Tango shook his head, but he took a step back. “You still have to stay here.”
“Or you’ll—what? Shoot me?” Martin said. He started walking backward away from the soldier, holding his hands out wide. “You can’t shoot me, the Secretary said I have to be safe. Hey, stay back, five feet away.”
The bot’s blank face managed to convey helpless confusion. “But I have to detain you!”
“Tell you what,” Martin suggested, reaching out to guide himself through the doorway, “detain me while I walk.”
Lieutenant Tango halted abruptly. Chip skidded to a stop and barked. Martin turned around and looked up. A long way up.
A broad face was looking down at him. “You need to come with us,” it said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Twelve women walked into the cafeteria and fanned out in a half circle around Martin. They were copies of one another; or rather, they were one woman, multiplied twelve times. They—or she—stood seven feet tall and were bulky to match, so that Martin felt like a preschooler beside them. They—the shes—wore navy blue military jumpsuits, a style of clothing that seemed like somebody’s idea of a cruel joke, emphasizing just how out of shape they were. Their figures were the sort euphemistically described as pear-shaped, with a cellulite jiggle around the thighs.
The faces of the twelve women—one face multiplied twelve times—were the kind Martin saw with his mom at school meetings and immediately forgot. Their hair was cut into a particularly unfashionable pageboy, mostly blond with half an inch of brown roots. Their eyes were small and patient and half-buried in wrinkles, and their cheeks drooped into their jaws and pulled their cupid’s-bow mouths into sad little lines. Martin wasn’t sure they could smile even if they wanted to.
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