Silverwood Page 5

  But Gabriel, like Helen, is a hacker, and his wife is an ex-agent like him. The family has kept in communication through a series of stolen, pirated, altered equipment and channels and the assistance of a widely-dispersed network of agents—people who ally themselves with the Silverwood clan and remember the days before the Council confiscated the portals and books. This connection, though tenuous and sporadic at best, has kept Gabriel sane.

  Gabriel looks straight into the screen. Time to find out what this Chairman is after, now that he’s resorted to threatening Gabriel’s family. He crosses his arms and leans in. “So, Mr. Magistrate Secretary Sir, what exactly is it that you are asking me to do?”

  “I want you to locate this Tromindox T-441, track it, and when it time travels, go with it. I want you to isolate it, and retrieve the portals and the book. And I want you to return it all to me personally.”

  Gabriel stares at the screen. This man has to be crazy. “What?”

  “You heard me,” the Chairman says. “Do you want to hear what you get in return?”

  Gabriel doesn’t say anything.

  The Chairman continues. “I’m glad you asked. In return for your efforts, I will ensure that you conclude your journey in the same time frame as your family. You shall also receive a portal tethering your family together—permanently. You will never be separated from them again.”

  “You must want these portals and this book awfully badly,” Gabriel says. “How do I know that you have any intention at all of doing your part? What assurance do I have of landing in the right time frame? That’s a tall order, isn’t it? Do you even have the capability to do that?”

  “Never mind how, I give you my word that you will be reunited with your family. I’m willing to give you something very important to you, in return for something very important to me. It’s truly that simple. I’m taking quite a risk here too, Mr. Silverwood. I have no idea if you’re going to get me the exact items I’m asking for. You don’t enjoy a glorious history; I don’t have to remind you. Just one example: you once removed a page from The Book of the Future that somehow has magically made it back into Tromindox hands. Do I have the full story on how that happened? I don’t. But I’m willing to set that aside, ‘Gabe.’ I’m willing to work with a man, an ex-agent, who’s been in and out of prison. Why? Because I believe you are the right person for the job.”

  And, I’ve got your family tied up in this, the Chairman thinks to himself. You can’t turn me down and you know it.

  “Now, Mr. Silverwood, do we have a deal? Because I don’t want to waste any more time on this conversation if we don’t.”

  “Fine, you have yourself a deal,” Gabriel says. As much as anyone can make a deal with a person like you. “I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes, won’t we?”

  “That’s good enough for me,” the Chairman says. “Someone will be along with materials for you shortly.”

  “What?” Gabriel asks.

  “You heard me. Expect some information. That’s all for now. Oh, and Mr. Silverwood—Gabe?” the Chairman says.

  Gabriel looks into the screen.

  “Mess this up, double cross me, and you will not see your family for a very, very long time. By which I mean to say, forever.”

  The Chairman turns the device off.

  While Gabriel Silverwood sits staring at the static left on his screen somewhere in the remote woods, the Chairman rides back down the shiny elevator.

  “Thank you Sally, again,” the Chairman says as he passes the reception desk and tosses the device—and the card he used to look up Mr. Silverwood—into the wastebasket.

  RECORDING

  Dear Dad:

  It’s me, Helen, again. It’s late, mom’s out, Henry’s asleep.

  I found a couple of pictures when we moved. One of them has you and me, and I’m three years old I think. I don’t remember it being taken, but I do remember bits and pieces from then. You were tall, and strong. I guess any three-year-old would think that about their dad, but you were. You had a long black ponytail, like I have now. I was holding on to it.

  I remember you laughing a lot. And mom laughing a lot. Just sounds of you laughing.

  The other picture shows you with Uncle Christopher, playing in your band. Mom says it’s a punk band. Christopher has a mohawk. You’re playing bass.

  Mom says that you’re an agent. I thought she meant a music agent, but she said no, just an agent. I guess that’s more than I know about her job, anyway.

  Whenever I ask mom why you aren’t here, she says there are people who want to keep you and her apart. I asked her if that’s because somebody is jealous. She said no, it’s because ‘we have kids like you and your brother.’

  She didn’t explain what that means. Sure, every parent thinks their kids are special. Shoot, I remember Martha Samuels in the last town where we lived—wow. That girl could do no wrong. She would grab the other kids’ arms and dig her fingernails into them, and leave a row of red gashes that lasted for a whole week. She was evil. But nobody could say anything to her mom, no sir. Little Miss Martha was perfect. Nobody fully understood how special Martha was. How she struggled to put up with everyone because she was so much smarter and more talented than the other kids, and really she should have been at a special school if there was one that could challenge her, but as it was, she was stuck here with all the inferior kids. Not being challenged. So I guess her only alternative was to torment everyone while the grown-ups pretended it wasn’t happening. You know, because Martha was special.

  I think parents want to know their kids are going to make it in the world, that they have what it takes. Mom’s no different.

  That doesn’t explain why people would do something crazy like keep you and mom apart though. I still think somebody is jealous.

  That’s what Deanna Carson did at this other school I went to. She liked this guy Derek, actually she was pretty much obsessed with him—she even went so far as to say that she had the right to Derek because ‘Deanna and Derek’ just sounded better than, say, ‘Britta and Derek.’ The only problem was that Derek actually liked Britta. I don’t think the sounds of their names factored into it too much.

  Anyway, Deanna hatched this scheme to make it so that Britta and Derek never saw each other. How? By becoming Britta’s very best friend in the whole universe and monopolizing her time going to movies and taking all their classes together and just being in the way. I don’t think it worked. But that was the idea, keep them apart and maybe they’ll forget about each other, and then someday Derek will wake up and realize that yes, ‘Deanna and Derek’ really does sound better together, and why didn’t he realize that before, so of course they should get married.

  The thing is, if people really like each other, they are going to find a way to be together. That’s what I think.

  So, every day I look at the knife you sent, and every day I imagine it lighting up and you coming in the door. Sometimes in the middle of the night I can hear mom talking to you over a pirated communications channel, and then she comes in and lets us say hi before we go back to sleep. Your face is hard to see on that little screen with all the static, but you seem like you’re looking at us really hard, like you’re memorizing our faces. We do the same thing. And then you tell one of your awful jokes.

  And then we do the thing where we put our fingers on the screen and then wiggle them and say, ‘messed up jellyfish’—sometimes we get cut off before we can do it, but you should know I do it anyway.

  Dad, I feel like I know you really well, even if I haven’t seen you in person in a long time. Say hi to Uncle Christopher if you see him. Maybe at band practice.

  Bye Dad, hope we see you soon. We miss you.

  END RECORDING

  A young couple stumbles out the back door of a nightclub into a narrow alleyway that would look a whole lot worse in the daytime. Distant streetlights reveal a hint of the garbage strewn around, and the shadows mask the dilapidated state of the surrounding buildings. The doo
r itself sits in the mouth of a giant, cartoonlike face spray painted on the wall.

  Deafening music and red-orange light shoots out the door while it is open, bouncing off the alley walls, and muffles again as the door closes to just a crack. There is no knob on the outside of the door; someone has wedged in a piece of wood to hold it open.

  The couple starts out laughing and joking, leaning on each other—their shape is all skinny jeans and mohawks mixed with the glint of jewelry—but shortly their voices turn more argumentative. Maybe someone committed an offense, perhaps there’s a breakup in progress. Soon the young woman breaks away from her date, pries open the door, and storms back into the club. Loud music and lights again, muffled and dark again. The young man leans his back against the wall, his arms crossed in anger. He needs a minute to collect himself.

  A lone figure comes down the alley. Unusually tall, dressed in a dark coat, crushing garbage under its motorcycle boots. Lit from behind by the streetlights, it resembles a shadow that has come loose from the wall. The young man is too distracted with replaying the conversation of a few minutes ago in his head, trying to figure out what he said wrong, to notice that the figure has come within a few feet of him.

  “You know you really ought not to be out here at this late hour,” the figure says.

  The young man jumps then regains himself. “Yeah, whatever.” Who is this guy telling him what to do. The only people who go out back by themselves are the ones who want to be, by themselves.

  Before the young man can add anything—like a string of expletives—a needle-like protrusion shoots out from the figure’s forearm and directly into the young man’s abdomen.

  The young man freezes, stares straight ahead, and then looks his assailant in the face. It’s a pale face, the face of a Tromindox that has not fed in some time. The victim tries to push off from the wall, but the venom deadens his arms and legs. He slides downward into a sitting position. His skin turns black, his spiky hair becomes a mass of tentacles. Soon there is nothing left of him but a terrified pair of eyes in a puddle of writhing black.

  The Tromindox reels in its prey, like a glob of oil pulling in a wayward drop. Satisfied that it has the upper hand, the creature takes on a more humanlike form, turns and shuffles away. It is already buzzing with energy from all of these new thoughts.

  The door scrapes open again, the bright light temporarily blocked by a fat man in an undershirt heaving a huge bag of garbage into the trash bin. He takes a quick look up and down the alley, wipes his hands on his pants, and goes back in.

  Later, the young woman will come back out and see that her date has left. She will take this as a sign that they have broken up, and will not call him for a week. It won’t be until he has missed several days at work that someone will unlock his untouched apartment, see that no one has been there, and file a missing persons report.

  The school bell rings. Henry follows the flood of students out the front door and down the steps of the building. His backpack is wider than he is, weighed down with way too many books and a lot of papers mashed up in the bottom that have been there for months. His sketchbook remains in his hand, separate from the chaos in his bag. His shoes are both untied. His blond hair is stuffed under a baseball cap.

  He doesn’t see his mom waiting for him on the sidewalk since he’s not expecting her. Kate thought she would surprise him and pick him up, spend some time together. But then she has to chase him down on the sidewalk when he walks right by.

  “Hey, kid,” Kate says as she comes up alongside him.

  “Mom! You’re picking me up,” Henry says, his voice dropping.

  “I thought we could go get ice cream or something,” Kate says.

  “So you can tell me we’re moving again.”

  Kate stops walking. Henry keeps going. Henry is way ahead of this game. Kate doesn’t want it to be a game. She wants Henry to be happy. She wants it so badly it makes her ribs hurt.

  Henry stops, and turns around to face her. He doesn’t care who overhears them. “You know how I know when we’re gonna move, mom? Two things happen. One, I get like one friend. And two, you show up to pick me up at school.” He turns around and keeps walking.

  He doesn’t go far, though—only as far as a bench about half a block away where he slumps down and leans back on his backpack. He swings his legs and stares straight ahead. Still so young, Henry wants to feel safe. He’s a little kid. He just does a really good impression of a person much older than himself. But really, he’s a little kid.

  Kate sits down next to him. She stares ahead too. She has absolutely nothing useful to say right now.

  “Your dad… ”

  “Yeah, I know, my dad will probably meet us there. Right. He’s been supposed to meet up with us, oh, my whole life. Whatever, mom. I’m not a three-year-old any more. You can’t just wave something like ice cream in front of my face and make me forget that I hate my life.”

  Wow. Okay, this isn’t going well. Sometimes Kate gets angry, too, shouting about how she hates it, and she wants to quit, but she can’t, and so on. That approach doesn’t help at all. And by this point, at this stage in their lives, Kate honestly has no idea what to say that is going to make this situation any better. So she just sits there. Kids go by, their backpacks hanging off their bodies, yelling and running and pushing on each other. They are all different sizes, have different backgrounds, like different things—but they have one thing in common: They are going home.

  Kate knows that’s all Henry really wants—a home.

  The crowd of students thins out; a few stragglers get picked up or wait in groups. It gets quieter.

  Finally, after a very long time sitting without saying anything, Henry slowly tips over until he is leaning on his mom’s arm. She gently lifts it up and over, hugging him close to her. He keeps tipping over until he is lying in her lap, awkwardly since he still has on his backpack. They stay this way for a while, silent.

  Eventually Kate says, quietly, “Well, can we at least get ice cream?”

  “Okay,” Henry says. He turns his head to look up at her and at the leaves of the trees above her. She pats him a few times, squeezes him, and they get up and continue down the sidewalk.

  A girl with olive skin, brown eyes, and a mass of wavy dark hair sits alone on the school steps. Her knees are folded up under her chin. She has been watching Henry through the railing, and her eyes stay fixed on him as he walks away. Once he is gone, she picks up her book bag and heads off in the opposite direction. In her hand is a gift, one of Henry’s drawing pencils.

  Kate and her son walk together side by side across the square of tile in the lobby of their apartment building and head up the stairs at the rear. They have not resolved anything really, just shared space—and ice cream—for a while. Henry will still be upset when they move. Kate will still have no choice but to uproot them. Their feet echo in the stairwell as they climb. At each landing an old, plate-glass window lets through a rectangle of smudgy light.

  A disturbance from above, and a young man comes rushing down the stairs toward them. He looks under thirty, long blond hair, a bit of beard, and piercing blue eyes. He is dressed in jeans and a black leather coat with heavy work boots. He stops short in the stairs when he sees Kate and Henry, and stares at them each in turn as if he recognizes them. He begins to speak, but stops. Instead he continues his rush downward, several steps at a time, to the landing below. Only then does he stop, and pull himself together enough to speak.

  He spins around and looks up. “Ma’am, if you please, are you Kate Silverwood?”

  Kate’s face freezes. “Who are you?” she demands.

  It’s a simple question, but the young man seems as if he doesn’t know how to answer. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, coin-like object. A portal. He holds it out in his palm so she can see it.

  Kate remains frozen in place. “Mom?” Henry says. His head swivels as he looks back and forth at his mom and the visitor.

  “Hold on
,” Kate says, holding up her index finger. She turns her head slowly as if she suspects they are being watched. She looks up then down, and at the window. Suddenly, she springs into action and runs up the stairs. Henry follows her, and when they reach the landing outside their apartment they can see that the door is ajar. The young man is left alone in the stairwell.

  “Helen? HELEN?” Kate bursts into the apartment. Nothing is out of place. The boxes are all still stacked, and the lawn furniture is still there, no sign of a break-in.

  “Well, that was awkward,” Helen says. She’s standing in front of the window opposite the door, looking down at the street.

  “Okay, what just happened?” Henry asks. He hates being the one who doesn’t get stuff explained to him.

  “Well, two things, actually,” Helen says. “First, I get home, and there’s this.” She holds up a piece of drawing paper. It is worn and crinkled, but has the distinctive holes in the top from Henry’s sketchbook. At some point the page came loose, and it must have slipped out when he was gathering his things for school. On it is the drawing of Helen sitting next to a Tromindox.

  “Where did this come from, Henry?” Helen asks. “When did you draw this? Do you even know what this is? This is really creepy Henry; it looks like you can see my dreams. I mean, I know I’ve told you about them, but this is an exact drawing of a Tromindox. You’ve never actually seen one. Have you? What is going on here?”

  “I can’t see your dreams, Helen,” Henry says. “Nobody can see other people’s dreams.”

  “Then, what is this?” Helen asks.

  “It’s real,” Henry answers.

  “No, no it isn’t, Henry,” Helen says. “This is a drawing of the dreams that I have all the time. Just like I described. Except it’s got too much detail. There’s no way that you know all this about what a Tromindox looks like. They are too weird looking. I mean, this is exact. Henry, if you can see people’s dreams, you need to say so. That’s kind of a major piece of information. You understand that, right?”