Martin rummaged through the box of cartridges as quietly as he could. “Okay, which to take? Speed Addiction, that’s a good one, with all the scooter crashes.” He set it in the charger. “And which one’s this? The label’s gone.” He flipped the power switch.
An eerie sight flickered into view on the cartridge screen. It was a ruined house bathed in twilight shades of velvet blue and charcoal gray. Martin felt the hair prickle on his arms.
“House-to-House Six,” he murmured. “That looks like the places we saw in the old suburb outside.” More tumbledown houses floated across the screen, stark black against a lurid sky. Red eyes blinked from the gap of a doorway. Martin hit the fire button.
“See, this isn’t the future, when we’re all mutants,” he whispered in excitement. “This is how it is right now! I bet these things are the stuff that’s haunting those abandoned suburbs, all those people the President killed when he built the domes. The guys who made this game must have been out there and seen them.”
His player stumbled, and the screen lit up with vomit green streaks. Three zombies in ragged jeans were attacking him with knives. He turned and fired just in time, then ran past their wriggling limbs.
“I didn’t recognize it because I was there in the daytime, and these pictures don’t show the bushes and stuff. Besides, I bet these things hide when it’s light outside. We were lucky we got out before night.”
A green skeleton glided into view. Martin fired, but it kept coming. “Grenade!” he said, hitting buttons, and the skeleton burst into a shower of fragments. “I bet the government ordered up these games to train commandos. I better study up on these things!”
The door clicked as it opened. Chip scrambled to his feet and barked. Mom and Dad stood in the doorway, mouths open and eyes wide.
CHAPTER THREE
The plasma lamp’s purple and green clouds drifted across his parents’ stunned faces. Martin dropped the cartridge with a clatter. He thought Mom and Dad looked just like zombies.
Then Mom wrapped her arms around him in a hug so tight it hurt.
Dad’s face was a collage of different emotions. “How— What—”
“Don’t ask, Walt,” Mom warned. “The walls have ears.” Then she hugged Martin again.
Martin looked away from Dad’s face.
“I’m hungry, Mom,” he said. “Got any good cereal in the house?”
A few minutes later, he was sitting at his old spot at the kitchen table. In the middle of the table was a doily, and on it Mom’s lazy Susan, which she’d made in plate-painting class: THE KITCHEN TABLE IS THE HEART OF THE HOME.
Mom took his chin in her hands and tilted his face toward the light. “Martin, your face,” she said softly. “What happened to you out there?”
“Sun,” Martin said, reaching for the milk and pouring it onto the cereal. “It burns you, but you peel and get a whole new set of skin. Browner, too. See?” He exhibited his arms.
“And you’re so dirty! How did you manage to get so dirty?”
“There’s a whole lot of dirt out there, Mom.”
Martin scooped up the jewel-colored nuggets in eight bites and dumped in another round. His parents sat down to watch him eat. He hadn’t seen them look at him like that since the day he’d beaten up Principal Thomasson’s boy.
“Son,” Dad said, “you’ve done a terrible thing. You’ve endangered your whole family.”
“My whole family’s not here,” Martin said. “I had to make sure Cassie was all right. And she is, Mom. She’s doing great.”
His parents’ faces blanched with shock again. Dad went back to talking in monosyllables. “How—Where—Did—” Martin was getting a little tired of it.
“I went to Cassie’s school, Mom,” he said. “I took her her bunny. I told her you hoped she was doing math, and she was, too. She told me this crazy stuff about quadratic thingies and tesla somethings; I didn’t get much out of it. But their school isn’t all that safe. In fact, I better not talk about it. You know, because of the walls.”
Mom dropped her face into her hands and started to cry. Dad looked confused and gloomy, and maybe a little guilty. Yeah, that’s right, Martin thought with satisfaction. You think about what you did. You think about how you sent your daughter away to die.
“Martin,” Dad said sternly, “your mother’s been through a lot. She doesn’t need you to break her heart with playground stories. We need you to tell us the truth.”
“Okay, now, the truth,” Martin said. “You know, it’s funny you bring up the truth, because I know a guy who turned the truth into a trick. He was a scientist who lived in the laboratory where the Wonder Babies were made and that’s why he knew so much about them. He made some people think he was working for the recall, and then he took all the Wonder Babies away to his school before the recall people could get them.”
Dad looked away and fell silent.
Martin left Dad sitting at the table and followed his mom down the hall. She pulled pajamas out of the drawer and laid them on his bed for him as if he were four years old, straightening the sleeves and smoothing out the wrinkles with trembling hands. Martin scooped up the pajamas before she could turn them into a still life.
“You’d better take a shower,” she said. “All that dirt!” And she stared at him with wonder in her eyes. Martin closed the bathroom door on her before she could arrange his towels for him and make him feel even stranger than he already did.
Out in the hall again after the shower, he heard his parents in Cassie’s room. He waved for Chip to wait for him and tiptoed to Cassie’s door. Why? He didn’t know. Years of habit. Long years of sitting in the hall night after night and listening to his parents’ conversation.
Mom was tidying Cassie’s room even though it was already tidy, making little still lifes out of her dolls and games. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she said. “We’ve got our boy back. I feel as if I fell asleep and dreamt it.”
Dad was standing over her, watching. He shifted and cleared his throat.
“Tris, I know what you want me to say,” he muttered. “But we haven’t got him back.”
Mom whirled. Martin ducked out of sight just in time. “How can you say that?” she demanded. “Don’t you even care?”
“Of course I care.” Dad sounded sad. “I wish he were somewhere else, safe. But we can’t hide him in his room forever, and he can’t go out that door. Central knows he was out of the suburb. They asked me about him just last week.”
Mom made no sound.
“The minute they know he’s back, they’ll collect him,” Dad said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Not before I’m out of here, Martin thought as he tiptoed back to his room.
Seven o’clock the next morning found Martin lying in bed and listening to the national anthem. The swinging rhythm of the grandiose music was impossible to tune out. No birds sang. No wind blew past his face. And there would be no sunrise in here either, he reminded himself ruefully. Just daybreak at the flick of a switch.
Chip yawned and hopped to the floor. Martin sat up and rubbed his eyes. “How did we stand this place, Chip?” he muttered.
Martin wandered out to watch his parents vote on the keypad by the television. At seven thirty, the President appeared behind his podium, black suit impeccable and dark eyes as serious as ever. Martin felt himself straighten up, just as he had done in early childhood when he’d thought that the President was looking at him.
The President thanked his people for their assistance in choosing a new dress uniform for the military bots. Then his handsome face faded into a montage of waving flags. An ad for designer vegetables came on: Bring cauliflower to the party! Martin and his parents turned their attention to breakfast.
No one spoke. Dad didn’t look as if he’d slept. He propped his cheek against his hand and sipped his coffee out of a mug that said I † MORNINGS.
Just talk to me, Martin thought, watching Dad. I bet you won’t do it, you coward.
Mom w
as in a reverie by the sink, absentmindedly washing her mug. “He seems so sad these days,” she said at last.
“Who?” Dad asked.
“The President. He’s looked so tired these past few weeks. I think you upset him, voting for that flashy gold braid.”
Dad caught sight of what Martin was doing. “Onion squares for breakfast?”
Martin withdrew a handful of squares from the bag and placed them next to a pile of marshmallow cookies. “I had my cereal last night,” he pointed out.
Dad stared into his coffee cup while Martin crunched through the onion squares. I dare you to say it, Martin thought.
“Son, we’ve decided that you’d better stay home from school today. That burned skin doesn’t look like it’s healed up.”
“It’s fine,” Martin said. “Really.” And he settled back to enjoy the worried look that crossed Dad’s face.
“Tell you what,” Dad said. “I think Mom wanted you to help around the house. Wasn’t that right, Tris?”
“Oh, sure, then,” Martin said. “Anything for Mom.”
Dad went off to shower and get ready for his workday. Martin couldn’t wait for him to leave. Then he and Mom could start packing. When Dad came home for lunch, they’d be gone.
That’s right! the television assured him. We’ve got the shoes, the workout shorts, the wrist weights, the pedometer, the heart computer, the wicking tank top, and the neoprene water bottle! Walk yourself fit! Walk yourself slim! Start walking today for the low, low price of one hundred and ninety-nine dollars.
“Come on, Chip,” Martin said. “Let’s check to see if our House-to-House cartridges are charged.”
But Martin’s game cartridges troubled him with their simulation of the abandoned suburb outside, and the view inside his tiny room began to depress him. He threw himself on his rug to stare at the low ceiling and close walls. I’m stuck in a box, he thought. Hurry up, Dad, leave!
Chip lay down next to Martin and poked his nose into Martin’s face. His bushy tail thumped against the carpet.
“I can’t wait to get out of here,” Martin told him. “I know what’s on television—I mean, not exactly, but almost. I know what everybody’s doing. It’s so boring here. It’s not like anything’s ever new.”
Martin heard Dad’s scooter start up outside. But at that same instant, a glimmer above his desk attracted his attention. “Hold on,” he breathed. “That’s new.”
An inch-long gelatinous blob, light blue to match his wallpaper, glided along the wall above his desk lamp. It looked like a cross between a grub and a centipede; its fringe of hairlike legs pulsated smoothly. As he leaned in close, it paused briefly to deposit a white dot that gleamed like a tiny eye.
“Oh, no way!” Martin whispered.
He snatched his sneaker from the floor and brought it down hard. The thing dropped onto his desk, squirmed to right itself, and went rippling on its way. Martin smacked it with his sneaker, then raised the shoe to smack it again. But now the desk was empty.
He turned his sneaker over. The thing was hiding in his shoe treads, distributed in thick blue lines among the waffle weaves. As he watched, the lines quivered slightly. Then they popped together with a sound like a snapped piece of bubble gum and bounced into the oval shape once more.
Martin shook it onto the desk. His heart was pounding. “Chip, what do we do?”
Chip sniffed at the rubbery form. Then he hid it with a tan paw. After a few seconds, down from his paw sifted a powder of finely ground glass spangled with a few bright metal bits.
Martin scraped the white dot off the wall and dropped it into the trash can. It was sticky. He had to flick it with a thumbnail to get it off his fingers. He found another couple of dots and removed them with difficulty. The remaining dots he couldn’t budge.
“Eyeballs,” he said while Chip sat in the middle of the floor and studied the fixed dots with interest. “My walls have eyeballs. Again! Well, they’re not gonna watch us for long.”
He found Mom at the kitchen table peeling an orange. “We’ve gotta talk,” he said. “About the outside.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Martin. The walls.”
“I know. And they aren’t just listening. They’re watching, too. But it doesn’t matter. Tell me anything you want. I heard what Dad said. I’ve gotta leave.”
Mom didn’t speak. She studied her sections of orange as if they contained a secret code, a little dent forming between her brows. She carefully fitted the sections together, but the minute she moved her hand, they fell apart.
“It’s not just because of the walls,” Martin said. “Or because I hate Dad, or school, or anything like that. It’s amazing out there, Mom. Amazing! You’ve gotta see it. I came back here to get you.”
She glanced up at him with a quizzical smile. “You did?”
“You hate it here,” he said. “You’ll love it outside. You’ve gotta come with me!”
“I wish I could, dear,” she sighed. But lurking in her eyes was a question: I couldn’t—could I?
Martin pounced on that hint of uncertainty.
“The sun comes up like a painting, Mom, like a big gorgeous red ball, and it’s got clouds around it, all pink and goldy. And the wind blows all the time, hard and soft, and cold sometimes, like it’s alive. And there’s birds, they sing, and they fly all around you, like—like birds. They come in all colors, sometimes all on one bird. I mean, if you held them and painted them, even if they’d stay still, it’d take you all day to get them right. And trees! Like giant broccoli, kinda—well, more serious than that, I dunno—and they rustle and move like they’re happy to see you.”
Mom’s eyes were alight. She said, “So birds are real?” And Martin knew that his granny had told her secrets once before.
“Birds are everywhere. Thousands. And that’s just the start! There’s bugs, all colors, running around in the grass, and the grass grows long and waves around in the wind, and there’s cactus, with prickles all over it like a hairbrush—I don’t know what they’re for—and rabbits and ponds and thunderstorms and the moon—oh, the moon!—and you’d never believe the stars.”
He fell silent, overwhelmed by his own inadequacy to describe it. Maybe if he had worked harder in school, he’d know the right things to say.
But Mom’s eyes were shining. “It would be worth it just to see if it’s all true,” she said. “Even if I don’t live another day.”
The door slammed, and Dad trudged in. He opened the fridge and pulled out a beer.
Dad again? It can’t be, Martin thought. He just left! Now he’ll ruin everything.
“Walt, I’ve decided,” Mom said in a rush. “I’m going outside with Martin, and I’m going to paint birds.”
“Really?” Dad said. “Then we’d better hurry. They’re coming to get us. We have an hour—maybe two at the most.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Who’s coming?” Mom asked.
Martin said, “Wait! But you don’t want—I mean, aren’t you gonna stay here?”
Dad answered the question that made more sense.
“Agents are on their way,” he said. “Not one, but two! And I suppose you’ve noticed we’re in the middle of our own miniinspection. We’ve got those damn crawlers all over the house.”
“Walt!”
“This is your fault, son,” Dad said. “Your fault, Martin Revere Glass. They sent word ahead that they want to discuss my son. Agents want to discuss my son! Do you know what agents do? They make you glad when you get to your game show, that’s what agents do!”
Mom made a movement with her hands. “Walt, don’t!”
Martin jumped up from the table. Where was his knapsack? That’s right, in his bedroom. “Okay, let’s go.”
Mom pushed the chairs in and fixed the fruit bowl with nervous fingers. “I’ve got to get my paints,” she said. “Martin, what else do we bring?”
“Oh, wow, we’ll need more water,” Martin said, thinking about it. “We can use emp
ty soda bottles. And energy bars. They taste nasty, but they’re the best thing to have.”
“Hold on a minute,” Dad said. “Can we live out there or not?”
“Well, sure,” Martin said. “It’s great out there. Birds and trees . . .”
Dad’s eyes didn’t light up as Mom’s had done.
“If we can live out there, then why are we bringing food?”
“Oh! It’s just—well, kinda like a shortcut. I mean, there’s food and all. There’s rabbits—oh, and there’s fish. Dad, you’ll wanna bring your fishing stuff.”
“Fishing?” Dad’s face looked a little less grim. “That’s good. I’ll get the tackle box.”
“And a sheet. And a blanket, too. And—Oh, crap! Toilet paper! Mom, you’re gonna want lots of that.”
Chaos reigned for the next hour. Mom tore through the piles in the garage to find all her paints and a tote to put them in. Dad checked his tackle and crammed supplies into Martin’s spare school backpack. Martin raided the pantry for energy bars and stowed a pair of Everlite batteries for Chip.
“Just five more minutes,” Mom said when they were done. “Martin, go through the fridge and toss everything down the garbage chute. I won’t have my neighbors see this house in a mess.”
“I can’t. I gotta load the water,” Martin said. He was slinging roped pairs of bottles across Chip’s back.
Dad’s watch began to buzz, and he seemed to shrink a little. “That’s it,” he said. “We’re out of time.”
Mom came running from the bedroom when she heard him and put an arm around his waist. “Walt, I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s my silly vanity, not wanting to leave our house a mess.”
“Hey, whoa, wait a minute,” Martin interrupted. “So they’re here. It’s not like they’re here.”
“Forget it,” Dad said. “The agents just pulled into the loading bay. And they probably brought a collector bot, too.”