“And Mongo, Majid, and Bella will sit on us,” I said loudly, to drown out my thoughts.
“Odoroku beki,” said Takahiro. “We’ll cope somehow.”
We were pretty cozy in the back. It had been crowded back here before Takahiro, me, Mongo, and Majid. I settled down—trying to be less heavy is not really very constructive—and Takahiro put his arms around me. Hix and a few of her friends redraped themselves around both of us. I was way more comfortable than I should have been. Briefly. Till Mongo ricocheted off one of the front headrests and ended up in my lap. Bella put her head over his back, and I could feel Jonesie whuffling in one of my ears. Oh well. At least Majid didn’t seem to be killing anyone. Yet. Casimir got in the front, and Jill last. I could see the bag of dog food through the gap in the headrests. Bags of dog food can’t laugh, can they?
Jill put her hand on the key and then sat back. “Er—where are we going?”
Good question. Suddenly I wasn’t comfortable at all.
Casimir turned around so he was looking out past us through the rear of the car—or would have been, if there hadn’t been a lot of hairy bodies in the way. “There,” said Casimir, pointing.
I looked at him. “What?”
He smiled at me. It was a better smile than it had been earlier, and I felt Taks’ arms tighten—just a little. “There are a few small things that my mother gave me,” Casimir said.
“That got through the border guards,” I said.
“Like sewing your money into the lining of your coat,” said Jill. “So maybe the robbers won’t notice.”
“Good attitude, manuke,” I said. “I wonder if it’s generally known that the Newworld border is as full of holes as this car is full of dog hair.” But Jill wasn’t listening to me; she was trying to pick up what Casimir knew. Our eyes met. I could see that she was succeeding. And then . . . I began to pull it too, or it to pull me. It was a bit like a loop of gruuaa tugging in their insubstantial way. Maybe that’s what it was. Jill nodded, turned to face the front again, and started the car. It roared to life as befitted a giant hairy thing with tusks.
“Oh!” I said as Jill backed the Mammoth around in a deliberate, star-pupil-driver-ed way that said she was every bit as frightened as I was. “My algebra book! It had better come with us—”
“I’m sitting on it,” said Takahiro.
I relaxed again (sort of). I supposed it really wasn’t going to let itself be left behind now. I reached down past Takahiro’s skinny butt and gave its spine a pat.
“How close are we going to be able to come?” said Jill conversationally a minute later, negotiating the main street, which was unusually empty—and there had been no soldiers on the corner of Jebali. We were the only car at the midtown stoplight, which never happens except in the middle of the night. Two cars passed in front of us—both of them loaded to the roof with suitcases and boxes. Leaving town. Heading north and west, which was where Mom and Ran would be going soon too. With a car full of suitcases and boxes.
The newsboard banners were empty. There were silverbugs everywhere I looked—clustered in dizzying little clumps on the overhead power lines, glinting on storefront windowsills, and scattered apparently at random on the sidewalks. And ironically every one of the big metal anti-cobey boxes had a crown or swirl of silverbugs. So much for you, I thought at them. They didn’t reply. Two days ago I wouldn’t have expected them to. Today . . . today it was probably just the throb of the armydar making me spacey. I was almost getting used to the armydar. This couldn’t be good.
My stomach felt funny. I hoped we didn’t drive over any silverbugs.
We went our solitary way across the intersection. “To wherever,” said Jill.
“I am not sure,” said Casimir at the same time I said, “Probably not very.”
Takahiro said, “Even if we could drive up to the front door, we don’t want to, do we? It’s not like we’re coming to the local lockup for official visiting hours.”
I was beginning to feel that hazy tug more strongly. The gruuaa, I thought, had stabilized their line on Val.
“There’s that falling-down army base a few miles out of town in more or less this direction,” said Jill. “Out at the edge of the barrens. Goat Creek. Maybe it’s not as falling down as it looks.”
“There have been rumors for years that it isn’t,” said Takahiro. “Even that it’s completely in use. They’re just not saying for what. I’ve always wondered why—and who—runs the sheep out there, you know? The perimeter fence is from when it was a firing range and special-ops training and stuff, but the fence is still there. And so are a lot of sheep. So like now I’m wondering if they’re using them—like we’re using our guys here.” Mongo was doing one of his I-am-a-spineless-rubber-dog things and had twisted his own head around so he could lick Bella’s face as her head rested on his back. Of course there was a lot of face to Bella.
“Dad used to say that it was a conservation thing, the sheep,” I said. “Managing wild grassland or something.”
Takahiro snorted. “The only stuff that grows on the barrens is what can grow on the barrens. They don’t need sheep for that. And they had to import some kind of tough little feral sheep that could survive on what does grow there.”
Jill glanced in the rear view mirror at Takahiro. “The things you know.”
“I have the secret gizmohead insignia tattooed over my heart,” said Takahiro.
“Whatever,” I said. “This feels like the right direction.”
“Good,” said Casimir. “You feel it too.”
“It’s the gruuaa,” I said. There were a lot of them in the car with us. They seemed to be twisting themselves into a big, irregular, ever-so-slightly glowing net. I could both (kind of) see them draped all over everything in their usual raggedy globs and clusters of shadow, and also (kind of) see them as this big glowing network thing. It seemed to throb in time with the armydar, and with the flash of the streetlights over Mongo’s back. Light sometimes did strange dimensional things when it hit the dramatically black and white markings of a border collie. Such as the border collie in my lap at the moment. Flash. Flash.
“Perhaps, when this is over, you will teach me to speak to the gruuaa,” said Casimir.
I shook my head, but that made the flashing-network thing worse. “I can’t teach you anything,” I said. “I don’t know. It’s not really speaking.” Flash. Flash.
“But I like the idea there’s going to be an after,” said Jill.
The landscape changed as we got closer to the Old Barrens. The big lush trees put in by the town council disappeared and the tougher, scrubbier trees of the barrens took their place. The sourleaf grass that the sheep around the old army station had to live on began to show in clumps, especially in breaks in the paving. The farmland was all on the other side of town, toward Copperhill; this side there was only a polite strip of cultivated public land before it began disintegrating into the barrens. At first there were warehouses and big ugly slabs of grey industrial something or other and then they disappeared too. Now we were in the barrens for real. There were occasional sandpits and increasing stretches of scraggy, grey-green sourleaf grass, turning yellow for autumn, and looking kind of ominous in the twilight. We went click clack over the abandoned stretch of auxiliary railroad that had served the army base when Station had been a big town and the base had been open. Officially open.
Jill turned the local radio on. Even the usual burbling sounded subdued. There was still nothing to worry about, said the presenter, trying to sound chirpy and failing, but since the schools and many businesses had decided to close temporarily while the army finished securing the situation—
“Situation?” said Jill.
“Securing?” said Takahiro.
—much of the town had decided to take an unscheduled vacation.
“Vacation?” Jill, Takahiro, and I all said together.<
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But if any citizens had any concerns, there was an army presence at the high school, the local Watchguard offices, and city hall, and would be glad to answer any questions.
“Presence?” said Takahiro. “Concerns?”
“Well, at least they all seem to be busy elsewhere,” I said. The road was amazingly empty, except for silverbugs. There were way too many silverbugs. We saw one pickup truck with something like a lawn mower in the back and one closed van, which could have had anything at all in it. A small traveling plastic cobey model for educational purposes. Major Blow-it. Val. Probably not Val, since the gruuaa didn’t react.
Jill turned the radio off.
CHAPTER 12
WE’D BEEN ON THE ROAD ABOUT HALF AN HOUR when Jill pulled over onto a sandy, gravelly spot that looked like other cars had stopped there too, but why? I doubted there were enough people who tried to break into Goat Creek to need a parking space. She turned the car off and we sat there listening to the ting of cooling metal and the noises of dogs hoping this meant they were getting out of this jiggle factory soon. She said, “We need a plan.”
Nobody said anything, but both Jill and Casimir turned around and looked at me. Taks’ arms tightened around my waist again, Hix many-footed up my chest and wrapped herself back around my neck—and Mongo started wagging his tail, till I grabbed it and held on. He looked at me reproachfully.
“It’s not a very good plan,” I said.
“Good would be too much to ask,” said Jill. “Although if I wreck this car I’d better have Arnie to show for it, or I’ll be in so much trouble I probably won’t see you again till I’m eighty.”
“I don’t think wrecking the Ma—the car is part of the plan,” I said. “Do you know how much farther to the gate?”
“Nearly two miles,” said Casimir at the same moment that Jill said, “Two miles, give or take,” and Takahiro said, “About two miles.”
“What?” I said. “Have you all been here or something?”
They were looking at each other. “No,” said Jill. “It’s the picking-up thing I do. More of it lately.”
“The wolf knows,” said Takahiro. “The rest of me just translates.”
“It is one of the little skills my mother sewed into the hem of my coat,” said Casimir.
“It’s a pity we couldn’t have spread all this talent around a little more,” I said. “Like one of you could rip chain-link fence apart with your bare hands and somebody else could hypnotize army guys into opening the doors and letting everyone go.”
“We’d still have a transportation problem,” said Jill, giving Dov’s butt a shove back through the gap between the seats. Dov’s entire butt didn’t anything like fit through that gap, but you could almost see the edges of the seat bowing under the strain. He shifted forward again, had nowhere to go, and collapsed on Bella. Bella sighed.
“And a winged chariot drawn by flying horses in your pocket,” I said.
“I’ll work on it,” said Jill.
“Okay,” I said. “Does anyone’s radar tell them when the army guys are going to start noticing our car?”
“No,” said Casimir. “But not yet. There is little to make an unremarkable car—”
“Unremarkable!” said Jill.
“Their scans will not care that it is large and full of animals,” amended Casimir. “They will not think it remarkable till it comes too close.”
“Okay,” said Jill. “Less far to walk.” She started the car again. “Keep talking,” she said over her shoulder.
“Don’t hit any sheep,” I said.
“That this road is being left to go to pieces is bogus,” said Takahiro. “There’ve been a lot of vehicles over it recently.”
“Wolf?” I said.
“Wolf,” he agreed.
“Do you always know this stuff?”
Takahiro hesitated. “I’m not sure. It’s not usually very relevant. Mostly I try to ignore it. It’s harder to ignore when I’ve been wolf lately.”
I was starting to feel seasick as the car jolted over the increasingly bumpy road past the perimeter fence—despite the fact that the armydar pressure dropped off abruptly and there were fewer silverbugs. Which told you something, although I wasn’t sure what. I should have felt better, not worse. But it wasn’t the road, it was the plan. It was bad enough that I was putting my human friends in danger. I was putting the critters in danger too, whose only crime had been a willingness to trust me and get in the car. But we were going to need the distraction—just as Taks had needed them for a different kind of distraction.
“It depends on if I have figured out how to talk to the gruuaa,” I said. “Or . . .” I pulled a little on the glowing network in my mind, and there was a kind of chirrup, as inaudible as the gruuaa were insubstantial, in reply.
“Okay,” said Jill. “Then what?”
I was watching the network. There was a shimmer, like Hix’s wiggle only more so—and it was getting stronger, or I was getting more able to pick it out. Something, like the way Whilp’s name had, drifted across my mind. The shimmer was Val, I guessed. Val surrounded by a lot of gruuaa. Now if only I knew what was left and right out here in the real world. “Hey, can you stop again? A minute,” I said, staring at the gruuaa web.
The Mammoth stopped. “What—” began Jill.
“Wait,” I said.
There was silence, except for a lot of breathing. The eleven of us weren’t breathing anything like together or to any kind of pattern, but as I stared at the invisible glowing web the breathing began to make sort of chords with the subtle pulse of the network. It was something like what the passing wash of streetlights did to a black and white border collie’s fur, which was creepily a little like the checkerboard of a mass of silverbugs.
. . . Um . . . Hix?
Then there was the worst rubbing-your-tummy-and-patting-the-top-of-your-head-at-the-same-time exercise that you can imagine—with your other arm (what other arm) you’re slaying a dragon with a rubber sword, and I think you’re probably juggling a hoop around one ankle. Or maybe there’s a pogo stick involved. I felt like a piece of origami paper being folded by clumsy hands. . . .
But for a moment something—something distracting and confusing—flickered into this world.
“Sugoi,” murmured Jill.
“Holy hot electricity,” said Takahiro.
“Yeah,” I said, and it all snapped off again . . . or slid back where it belonged. I was panting worse than any of the dogs. “Val is being held—somewhere—I think off to our right. I hope I’ll know better as we get closer. . . .” and I plucked at the web like a guitarist who’s lost her A string. Or her magic-loophead-other-world string. “But that disappearing thing the gruuaa do . . . it’s variable.”
“That was gruuaa, just now?” said Jill.
“Yes,” I said. “So the idea is that while the army guys are all falling out the front door to see what the giant glowing weirdness on their doorstep is, we’re, or some of us, are going to be having a look around the side where they’re holding Val. And maybe one of you will suddenly discover an ability to melt holes in the sides of buildings by pointing your finger.”
“That’s your plan,” said Jill.
“Yes.”
There was a pause. I listened to all the breathing.
“This is probably a good place to leave the car,” said Jill eventually. “It might even be here when we get back.”
I could have gone upstate with Mom and Ran. . . . But I knew I couldn’t. And the gruuaa would have prevented me if I’d tried. I held onto that thought, and tried not to think of the ten other people (two- and four-legged) that I’d dragged into my dangerous insanity. The feeling in my stomach was familiar. This was how I felt when I had been the last kid chosen for the volleyball team in seventh grade. Or when I’d seen that F on that pre-algebra exam.
We were so squashed up in the back that when Casimir opened our door Mongo and I spilled out. Takahiro unfolded himself behind me and stood up straight, like he never did at school, and sniffed the air. Sniffed the air. I turned back to the car. Bella was holding them in check, but looking at me hopefully. I groped for leads, and snapped them all on. I didn’t want to lose anybody, and things were only going to get more confusing from here. “Okay, you guys. Out.”
There was a brief furry river of brown and black and white, and then the dogs were weaving around me (while I tried to avoid being tied in a granny knot by leads) and Majid was standing a little distance away looking around in what was probably lone-conquering-hero mode. I didn’t think even the gruuaa would have much luck persuading him to be a member of a team.
“We can start off together,” I said. The other three humans took four dogs, leaving me with Bella and an off-lead Mongo. I retrieved my algebra book and my knapsack, as if Jill and I had just driven into the school parking lot for a long day of extreme boredom with occasional brief shocks of learning something. I had a flashlight in my knapsack because I was that kind of girl. Tonight it was going to be useful.
Everyone else had shouldered their own knapsacks. Jill and Casimir were getting something out of the trunk, and then I heard Jill locking the car. “Don’t want the dog food stolen,” she said.
They didn’t seem to be running the armydar at all out here, which gave me less excuse to be this confused and blurry-brained. If we did, by some miracle, get Val and Arnie away, they’d probably turn on something even worse. And then we’d need a regiment of grizzly bears to damp it out. Maybe we could just ask the bears to eat anyone who got too close.
The gruuaa network was showing me what I guessed was the layout of the army base. Jill had the car flashlight; the boys were following us, although I doubt Takahiro was paying much attention to my feeble little beam. I glanced up at him once, and he was looking up at the sky, and his eyes gleamed golden. Taks’ eyes are so dark brown they’re almost black. And while you could hear us humans and the dogs crunching through the undergrowth I swear Takahiro made no more noise than the gruuaa. I had no idea where Majid was.