Chapter 6
Now, you might think that I was just being silly, worrying about a little thing like getting Lily to go to sleep. I mean, just sing her a lullaby or something, right? But the fact of the matter was, it wasn't that simple, and it might make a life-or-death difference to her.
See, we had captured Lily once before and had held her for a number of days. During that period, Shelley and I had spent a good deal of time talking with her, getting her to describe just what she was capable of. JB Swift was right; she was "self-documenting" ad nauseum, with one exception -- there appeared to be no way to tell her to sleep. And she would not go to sleep on her own.
Sleep was apparently as important to the attack doll as to anyone else. By the time she escaped from us, she had been awake for . . . eh, I forget exactly how long, but I know it was over a hundred hours. In that time, she had become slower to respond to commands, she was starting to walk into walls, and she had begun reporting that she was close to "system collapse." I don't think any of us wanted to find out just what that meant. So yeah, I really did need to find out from JB Swift how to get her to go to sleep.
I considered my options as I stood there beside Lily in the dark. Option one: I could teleport out from here alone to find him. It was probably the simplest solution, since the teleporter coordinates should still be set after everyone cleared out. I hated to leave Lily here by herself, though. She might be captured, or worse, if I couldn't make it back for some reason, she would remain where she was until she died of starvation or dehydration.
Option two: Go after JB Swift and take her with me. Nuh-uh. Bad idea. From what the little red hedgehog had said, the whole point of this elaborate escape-with-Lily business was to ensure that she would not fall into Enclave's hands. Bringing her out to the battle site would negate all that.
Which left me with option three: Use the teleporter to take Lily somewhere safe, then ask Wizzit to 'port me to the battle site. I didn't like it, but it seemed like my only reasonable choice.
So we stood there quietly, waiting and listening. Someone rattled the doorknob once, but no one made any serious attempt to enter our room. I heard the countdown go all the way down to zero, and at the same time there were some shouts as (I presumed) JB Swift zipped over to the teleporter and vanished in a flash of light. Someone must have restarted the teleporter almost immediately afterward, because again we heard the countdown. And again. And again. I must have heard that damn voice count down to zero six or seven times before things finally got quiet.
I'm not a naturally cautious guy; blundering into trouble and figuring out how to get myself out again is more my style. Still, having been a Prime for three years now, I have had a certain amount of caution pounded into my head. My first instinct, after the noise died down, was to rush over to the teleporter and get the heck out of Dodge, but I forced myself instead to count slowly to five hundred, listening all the while.
I opened the door and peeked out. The place was a mess. JB Swift's rampage must have been at least partly designed to smash up as much equipment as he could, maybe to prevent it from falling into Enclave's hands. I couldn't see an unbroken device or component anywhere. The pen and pad of paper that JB Swift had written his note on were lying on the floor a couple of feet away from me, and I picked them up. I spent a few minutes poking around after that, and then I told Lily to come out.
I had decided that the next order of business was to see how she was doing. "Lily," I said, "self-report."
Lily straightened and clasped her hands behind her back. "I am uninjured. I am not ill. I do not need to perform any bodily eliminations. I have been awake for ten hours, ten minutes. I last ate four hours, sixteen minutes ago. I last drank two hours, thirteen minutes ago. Overall status: I am fine."
I nodded. She should be good for the rest of the night, if it came to that. "Lily, follow me."
"Following . . ."
You know, as often as I had heard her murmur that type of acknowledgement to JB Swift, I never before realized how reassuring it was. She had heard me, she understood, and she was obeying instructions; pretty cool. Together, we walked into the teleporter room. The console was displaying a set of coordinates, which I assumed pointed to where JB Swift had sent himself; I carefully wrote them down for future reference. Now for the next problem: where to stash Lily while I hunted for JB Swift.
In the past, I had memorized a few sets of "safe" coordinates -- places I could send myself to if I were ever stuck in, say, an Enclave base and needed to teleport out in a hurry. Mentally going over the list, I immediately ruled out my parents' house; there was no sense in letting anything Enclave-related anywhere near them. Some of the other places were not suitable for a non-shielded human to spend any length of time in. In the end, I settled for one of the prettiest spots I had ever seen -- the Santa Elena reserve near Monteverde, in the central highlands of Costa Rica. I keyed in the coordinates and went to stand inside the teleport circle as the voice began counting down. "Lily," I said, "come stand next to me."
"Coming . . ."
Santa Elena is what's known as a cloud forest, which is to say that it's an expanse of trees located at a relatively high altitude where the humidity is always near one hundred percent. Basically, it's a forest that is always wrapped in a cloud, hence the name. The landscape at Santa Elena is lush and green and cool and misty and slightly mysterious and spooky -- a very pretty place indeed; I'd even call it 'enchanting'. The spot pinpointed by the coordinates Wizzit had given me was far from any hiking trails or human habitation. If I left Lily here, it was virtually certain she would remain undisturbed for hours.
"Wizzit?" I called out after we materialized. "Are you out there?"
"And where else would I be?" his voice responded, sounding much too loud in the stillness of the forest. "I see you have returned with Lily, but what in the world are you doing in Costa Rica?"
"It's, uh, kind of a long story . . ."
"I have time."
Sighing, I explained to him what had gone on in JB Swift's secret lair. "I think he teleported out to these coordinates," I concluded. I tore the top sheet off the pad of paper and held in front of me so that it would be visible to Wizzit's sensors in my belt.
"Hmm," Wizzit said, and then he didn't say anything else.
"So, can you send me there?" I asked impatiently after several seconds had gone past.
"I could," he replied calmly, "but then I most likely couldn't bring you back again."
I frowned, absently crumpling the paper and shoving it in my pocket. That was what he had said about the place Lily had wanted to take me. "Are you saying that he teleported himself to another secret lair?"
"Not at all. I know precisely where he is, and it's not at the spot indicated by those coordinates. Where did you get them, by the way?"
"They were on the teleporter that I used to bring Lily and me here."
"I see. And was JB Swift the last person to use the teleporter before you?"
"Well . . . no. A whole lot of Enclave monsters showed up, and after JB Swift teleported himself out, a bunch of them used the teleporter as well. I guess I just assumed that they all went out after him."
"Fascinating." Wizzit's voice is hard to read sometimes, and I couldn't really tell whether he was being sarcastic or not.
"So, can you send me to where he is?" I demanded. I swear, sometimes getting a response from Wizzit is like pulling teeth.
"Certainly. I just began ringing the monster alarm for that location, as a matter of fact; he and several other monsters are there holding what you Earthlings might call a 'pow-wow'. But you have no weapons, and the rest of the team should be out there within a few minutes. Do you really want to go?"
"I have to," I told him. "They're going to kill him!"
"And that would be a bad thing . . . how, exactly?"
"Maybe it wouldn't," I re
plied, trying to rein in my impatience, "but there's something I need to ask him, and it would be easier to get an answer while he's still breathing."
"Would this question have anything to do with the lovely young lotus blossom standing beside you?"
"It has everything to do with her. He gave Lily to me just now, but he didn't tell me how to put her to sleep."
"Ah." Now, Wizzit's not stupid, even if he can be awfully uncooperative at times. He was as aware as any of us of the problems we had had with Lily before, and he is quicker at putting two and two together than nearly any human I know. "Whenever you're ready then . . ."
"Give me about five seconds." I handed Lily the pad and paper I had been carrying, then instructed her to sit and wait for me at the base of a large nearby tree. "Okay, go ahead," I said to Wizzit.
"Do you want to activate first?" he inquired politely.
"Oh! Uh, yeah, I guess I do," I replied sheepishly. "Prime Blue, activate!" Instantly, I was surrounded by an obscuring blue mist, and then I felt Wizzit teleport me.