MORTAL COILS (77 page)

57

Fiona
swallowed hard. The thought of eating anything made her want to throw up.
“What’s the catch?”

“Ah,
good, your mind is undiminished despite the recent blows.” Uncle Henry patted
her knee. Grandmother glowered at this display of affection, so he immediately
withdrew his hand. “Yes, there is a catch.”

Across
the room, Robert shifted, looking even more uncomfortable.

“Years
ago,” Lucia said, “pieces from a single apple fell into hands we never
intended.”

58

“So
we took steps to ensure they would be safe.” Uncle Henry reached up toward the
ceiling. “And we set them among the stars.”

“A
satellite receptacle,” Lucia explained. “Completely undetectable.”

“Alas,”
Henry said, “we failed to consider the vast amounts of man-made space junk.
Collisions eventually nudged our satellite out of orbit and back to earth.”

“So
it’s buried somewhere?” Eliot asked. “In some impact crater? And we have to
find it?”

“It
has already been found,” Henry told him. “We never bothered getting it back,
because they’ll never open it in a thousand years . . . and

57.
So-called Golden Apples appear in many mythologies. The Norse Aesir retained
their immortality by eating such fruit. The goddess of discord rolled one such
apple inscribed with FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL among Hera, Athena, and
Aphrodite—which ultimately precipitated the Trojan War. The Celts tell of such
an apple feeding a person for an entire year. A hypothesis among
mythohistorians is that the Golden Apples of legend were actually oranges (not
commonly introduced to Mediterranean regions until the eleventh century). In
many languages orange is etymologically equivalent to golden apple. Gods of the
First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 4: Core Myths (Part 1), 8th ed.
(Zypheron Press Ltd.).

58.
One little-known urban myth is that slivers of magical apple appeared in late
1960s and early ’70s, and that certain individuals ate the fruit and went on to
found record and computer corporations taking this fruit as their symbol. Many
dispute this legend, but others claim the two corporations’ meteoric rise,
power, and wealth was nothing less than “magical.” Gods of the First and
Twenty-first Century, Volume 6: Modern Myths, 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

they
have it in a very safe place: the Air Force Flight Test Center in Nevada.

59

“Air
force?” Fiona asked. “The United States air force?”

Uncle
Henry nodded.

“So
it’s going to be guarded,” Eliot said.

Henry
gave a careless wave and let out a sigh. “Oh, yes . . . vaults, guards, trained
dogs, perhaps even patrolling stealth helicopters.”

“So
this is your third heroic trial,” Lucia told them. “Enter the base, steal the
apple back . . . and eat part to save your life.”

“Or
get ourselves shot trying,” Fiona muttered.

“We
can do it,” Eliot told her in a whisper.

She
nodded to him.

She
didn’t believe in a million years they had a chance. This wasn’t one crazy guy
in a carnival . . . or even a talking crocodile. There would be hundreds of
guards with guns on a military base. There’d be electronic doo-dads and experts
trained to look for people like her and Eliot trying to sneak inside.

Or
was there perhaps a tiny chance?

She
could cut through anything: barbed-wire fences; cinder-block walls; or even,
she bet, a hardened-steel vault door. And was there anything Eliot couldn’t do
with his music?

Still,
Fiona didn’t buy Uncle Henry’s explanation about their leaving the apples there
because they were safe. She had a feeling they left them because even the
League couldn’t get to them.

Robert
stood straighter and took a step toward Fiona. “Let me—” He cleared his throat
and tried again. “Let me go for her. You’ve let others use champions.”

“No,”
Lucia said coldly, and glared at him.

Robert
halted dead in his tracks.

“I
like this one,” Grandmother said to Henry. “Brave, kind, but your Drivers do
seem to have a regrettable tendency for suicide by bravado.”

The
color drained from Robert’s face.

Henry
grinned at him as one might at a puppy trying to charge a fully grown bull
mastiff. “Thank you, Robert, but I’m afraid not. Proxy champions are only
allowed for League members, not potential League members.”

Robert
nodded and took a step back.

59.
Aka. Groom Lake, Paradise Ranch, or Area 51.—Editor.

“I
must go and deal with loose ends,” Grandmother said. “Children, I want you
ready to leave in thirty minutes.”

“Yes,
Grandmother,” Eliot and Fiona said together.

Fiona
bristled. They still followed her orders. She glared at Grandmother as she left
the room.

“We
could die and she’s not going to help us, is she?” Fiona said. “None of you
are.”

“There
are rules, my dear,” Uncle Henry said, and he glanced at Lucia. “And we all
follow them.”

Lucia
sighed. “You may give them a ride to the base’s perimeter,” she said without
looking his way. “Ask no more.”

Fiona
could understand Lucia and Uncle Henry . . . a little. The Council was out to
prove something about them using brutal traditions. But what was Grandmother’s
excuse for being so cold and callous?

“I
hate her,” Fiona said.

Cee
sidled next to her. “My darling, you must not say that.”

“It’s
true.”

Cee’s
lips quivered as she whispered, “Others have make sacrifices and done dreadful
things. You are not the only one who’s had to cut herself.” Cecilia’s eyes were
teary. “You may never fully understand your grandmother, but you must trust
that she is doing the right thing for you. Always.”

Fiona
nodded. She would never trust Grandmother. She couldn’t. Not after fifteen
years of lies. But she wasn’t about to argue with poor doddering and loving
Cee.

Besides,
Fiona was busy processing what Cee had just told her: Grandmother had cut
herself, too.

What
had she severed? Her sense of humor? Her pity?

“You
should tell them about the others,” Robert said to Uncle Henry. “They’re close.
One of them was with Eliot when I picked him up.”

Lucia
took a step toward Robert. “Go fetch the car, Driver, while you still can.”

Robert
gulped and whispered, “Yes, ma’am.” He spared an anxious glance at Fiona and
hurried from the room.

“What
‘others’?” Fiona asked. “The other family?”

At
this Aunt Lucia’s eyes widened.

“Who
was with you?” Fiona asked Eliot.

Eliot
features bunched together. “It was Louis. Robert might be right. Louis, I
think, is with the other family.”

Fiona
laughed, even though this hurt her stomach. “No way. Louis the bum? Dirty,
psychotic, pizza-stealing Louis?”

“Hush,
child,” Uncle Henry said, shaking his head. “Even if that is true . . . you
must not speak that way of your father.”

61

SAND
AND FOG

Eliot,
Fiona, and Uncle Henry rode in the back of his limousine. Robert had driven
them down the California coast and across the Mojave Desert.

Eliot
had wanted to ask Uncle Henry about Louis back in the hospital room, but Aunt
Lucia had spoken to Henry first—in rapid-fire Italian. Eliot didn’t understand
Italian, but he got the gist of it: there would be no more talk of that side of
the family.

How
utterly typical.

Once
more they were keeping the one thing he most wanted to know from him and Fiona.
As if their knowing about their father and his family might somehow hurt them .
. . when they were about to face death for the third time this week.

He
stared out the window. The lights of Las Vegas glimmered in the distance. It
looked like a carnival, and that thought caused a shudder to run down his back.
It had been less than a day since he and Fiona had been trapped in the flaming
scrapyard, since he had rescued Amanda Lane, and Fiona had killed Mr.
Millhouse.

Had
that only been last night? He felt like a different person.

The
thrumming power from the Maybach’s fuel-injected cylinders relaxed to a purr.
“Slowing down a bit, sir,” Robert announced from the driver’s compartment.
“We’re close to the base, and I’m not sure what their radar will pick up.”

“Quite
right,” Uncle Henry replied. He looked distracted for a moment, then said,
“Where was I?”

“You
were telling us about the base’s security,” Fiona replied.

Eliot’s
sister sat unusually straight. She was pale and looked weak, but her eyes
burned with determination.

“Let
me start from the beginning.” Uncle Henry swirled the contents of his highball
glass: ice and some pungent liquor whose fumes made Eliot’s nose crinkle.
“First, there are patrols along the perimeter. Guards will have night-vision
gear. Computer-controlled motion and thermal sensors will be the next obstacle
to overcome. They are located on base and monitor via telescopic imaging—very
difficult to get around.”

Eliot
wondered if Uncle Henry spoke from firsthand experience. He seemed to know an
awful lot about this.

“If
you are detected,” Uncle Henry continued, “it will trigger a massive response:
all-terrain vehicles, and if necessary, aerial reconnaissance.”

“Can
we stow away on a truck?” Eliot suggested.

Uncle
Henry flashed a pitying look at him. “They check each vehicle by weight. The
more secure areas, which you need to get into, use X-ray machines. There are
trained dogs as well, who are harder to fool than machines.”

“Assuming
we somehow can get onto the base,” Fiona said, “what’s there?”

Uncle
Henry casually waved his hand. “A few high fences. Some sections are mined.
There are security cameras. And, oh, there will be an organized
tactical-response team to deal with intruders . . . they will shoot to kill.”

Eliot
felt a momentary spike of panic, but it faded. He recognized the potential
lethality of these obstacles, but oddly such things no longer paralyzed him
with fear.

Recklessness
and bravado stirred within his soul—feelings that would a few days ago only
have existed in his fantasies. Now they seemed real.

“Where
are the apples?” Eliot asked.

“How
silly of me. Of course, the most important detail.” Uncle Henry looked at his
drink, then set it aside. “Building 211. It appears as any other office
building, but is actually a camouflaged long-term-storage vault.”

He
reached into his pocket and unfolded a tiny blueprint. Etched upon it was a
picture of what looked like a Fabergé egg with intricate jewel-like electronics
and cuneiform captions.

“The
satellite vessel,” he explained.

Fiona
pointed to the thick outer shell. “What’s it made out of?”

“The
outside is a ceramic alloy impervious to man-made laser, bomb, or edge.”