Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (36 page)

The preparations,
the preparations!
he berated himself. He willed his toes to relax—

And then another bang-rip, and a new spear of daylight pierced the van's interior. Terrified, he said the words aloud,

“Four: Do not struggle—let your impulses run free.”

But, he wondered, what if his impulse was to get up and clamber out the front door of the van and try to run away? Or to scream his head off in fear? Oh-God-oh-God-please-hurry-please-hurry!

“Hold fast to your mantra.”

And hold fast he did, figuring to himself that if “Song of the Stuntman” had worked the last time—

All right

All set

All fright

No net

He heard another hole get punched through the van. And then a sharp, keening noise, as if a sleigh bell's ring had been caught midpeal and stretched out forever.

And then everything went green.

 

CHAPTER 63

Fool Me Once

The orange dot disappeared from the map, but not in a good way. The three agents had failed to locate the rabbit. The enemy combatant had taken advantage of a loophole in the lamentably imprecise local data infrastructure and tricked the agents into looking in altogether the wrong place—there had been nothing inside the Danbury Public Library but useless books and clueless civilians.

It was fine. The clever beast could have another fruitless, meaningless day on the planet. It was nearly time to thin the novitiates' ranks again anyhow, and there would be no significant staffing deficits to bridge, even after culling three more.

Was it inconvenient and annoying? Yes, definitely. But, was it worrying? Not at all.

The entire situation was so clearly a desperate Hail Mary by his enemies. And, again, so very many precautions, plans, and redundant systems had been put in place. He'd anticipated setbacks far, far larger than this.

He was not going to waste another moment thinking about it. A squad of five agents would go out tomorrow, and seven the day after that, and, if necessary …

It would
all
be resolved, and soon.

But, the situation in France? Now
that
was a surprise.

The Griffin boy—the one who had been randomly transubbed by the arriving Anarchist, the rabbit, in the first place—had
come back to Earth
?

And then he had
intentionally transubbed back to Ith
?

It seemed inconceivable, but Victor Pierre had gotten positive visual ID and the database had confirmed his vocal identity on the intercepted calls.

But why? Why would random, unintentional boy X from Earth, inadvertently sent to Ith in the first place, have come back to his home world and then—after less than a single dunt—transubstantiated right back?

Two things were clear. First, the boy was receiving help from those idiotic Commonplacers. There was no way he'd figured out how to get back by himself, and certainly Rex's own people hadn't been behind it.

Second, it was clear that his enemies were
investing heavily
in this Griffin boy. Transcense was one of the hardest-to-come-by substances in the whole universe and he knew it wasn't any easier for them to acquire than it was for him. The fact that they had chosen to blow not one but two entire quantities on the child was, to say the least, unprecedented.

He reviewed Patrick Griffin's records again. It was very, very strange. There was absolutely
nothing
to suggest he was special in
any
way. Not off-the-charts on his tests, no signs of leadership, no unusual skills … and yet here this had happened?

Well, maybe one other thing was clear: the Commonplacers had served their purpose on Ith. They'd been a good foil, a valuable common enemy to keep the populace in line. But now they were starting to do things as unexpected as
this
, their time had come to an end. It was time to remove them—and this Griffin boy they'd adopted—from the equation.

He'd attend to it himself. It would be nice to be back on Ith for a while—to see firsthand how his vision was progressing.

And his presence here wasn't necessary. The plans were set, the processes in motion. Earth's purge would soon be initiated, and the boring, painstaking cleanup under way. He'd simply rewrite himself into the history afterward, just as he'd done before on Ith.

“Prepare the transubstantiation chamber,” he said to the air and then, with something of a smile, “and hold my messages.”

 

CHAPTER 64

Wakey Wakey

This time it was the force of the sun on his face that woke Patrick. They were clenched shut, but still its brightness seared his eyes. He put his hand to his brow like a visor as he picked up his head and tentatively cracked his eyes open.

He was in a meadow, or a stretch of prairie. What looked like a derelict gas station was maybe a hundred yards distant. The slanted stumps of telephone poles indicated where a road once had been.

He guessed the transubstantiation had worked. He guessed he was safe. He guessed he was back on Ith.

A bird—a robin—landed near his feet. Its eyes were huge.

“Yep,” he said to himself. “Ith.”

It felt good, being here. And, yes, it did feel real. But, even if he was wrong—even if his overactive brain was momentarily fooling him into believing all this—he had at least, at last, figured out something more important.

What
mattered
was caring. If you cared, then when a decision had to be made, you made it—you made sure to
do
something. If you didn't care, you wouldn't. It was that simple. If you don't care about something, you might as well be dreaming it. It might as well not exist.

Like, deciding
not
to stay on Earth just now—what had made up his mind had been his caring about his family. Even the chance that staying there would have caused them harm had made the decision clear. There had simply been no choice but to come back to Ith. What would have been the alternative? Getting killed in the back of a van in order (hopefully) to wake up and prove to himself it was just a dream?

It was like what My-Chale had said. This was the way it worked: you gave a crap, and you were awake to the situation around you. Or you didn't give a crap, and you slept—or at least sleep-walked—through it.

So here he was back on Ith away from his family and having no idea when or even if he'd ever see them again. But at least he had heard his mom's and dad's voices, and at least had seen a picture of the Twins. They were okay. And he was sure Neil and Carly and Eva and Lucie were fine. That was something, for sure.

And didn't he care about Oma and all the others he'd met in the past two days—the poor people in collars and endangered griffins and giants and even Kempton and the big-eyed kids in the school? And therefore wasn't the only thing now to be aware of—to be awake to—the fact that he
might
be able to do something to help them all?

Whether or not it was a dream, he either cared—and showed it by what he did—or he didn't.

That was the answer. You cared about others—
you gave them credit for being as real as you were
—or you didn't. That was all you could hope to know.

He sneezed just then, the sickly sweet stink of transcense smoke all over him.

Which reminded him that My-Chale and Oma had given him instructions to—what was it? He might at last be certain he was awake, but it sure was a very groggy and tired awake. And the sun was so awfully bright. He racked his brain. On Earth he was supposed to call Uncle Andrew and his parents. When he got back to Ith, assuming he came back to Ith, they'd said to—

The binky buzzed in his pants pocket. He pulled it out and saw Oma's face in its screen.

“Remember, My-Chale told you to call the moment you got back,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said. “I think I'm a little disoriented from all this, umm, traveling.”

“Kind of like you just woke up, huh?” she said. He couldn't see it very well but he could hear the smile in her voice, and it felt brighter than the sun on his face.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have had the good fortune to have made a career in the book industry for—at the time of my writing this—nearly eleven years. If you ever have the chance to join this ancient, mostly impecunious guild, I heartily recommend doing so. People in the book industry are—with a few exceptions we won't dwell upon here—among the best people on Earth. They are well read. They are articulate. They are funny. They are wise. They are generous. They are self-effacing. In fact, they are SO self-effacing that they have pretty much effaced themselves from the public eye and to this day rarely draw credit to themselves, as is done in movies, plays, musical recordings, or video games. There tends to be but one name associated with a book, the author's. And most of us go a long time (often forever) believing that one person—the author—has done the vast majority of the work. I don't mean to be obnoxious in breaking with this genteel vision, but since I'm an author who's labored behind the curtain and knows that every book in the modern era is a result of at least dozens of people and sometimes thousands of hours—and for what it's worth buried here in the hindquarters of this manuscript—I'd like to give a Hollywood-style credit-roll to the very many people who took this author's compulsive labors and made them into the hopefully readable book you now possess.

Director
(editor) Connie Hsu

Producer
(finding of editor, publishing house, legal counsel) Cindy Eagan

Executive Producers
(our judicious financiers) Jonathan Yaged, Simon Boughton, and the Macmillan Finance Team

Cinematography
Jake Parker and Elizabeth Clark

Strategic Adviser
Bart Rust

Title Inspirer
Anneka Rust

Script Advisers
Allison Devlin, Steve Westrum, John Cote, Bill Robinson, Lexi Preiser, Lauren Wohl, Pat Strachan, Maya Packard, Linda Jamison, Fiona Brown, Martha Stillman Otis

Unit Directors
Emily Feinberg and Kate Jacobs

Distribution
The Mighty Macmillan Sales Force and Your Dedicated, Discriminating Local Bookseller

Location Scouting
(finder of exciting places for this book to go) Liz Fithian and the Roaring Brook Publicity Team

Sound Engineers
The Macmillan Audio Team

International & Licensing
Holly Hunnicutt

Set Design & Production
Jill Freshney, Karla Reganold, and Production Teams

Birthday-Sharer with Mr. Griffin
Dick Van Zile

Mr. Rust's Hair, Wardrobe, Makeup, & Emotional State
Ruth Rust

Productivity Adviser to Mr. Rust
James Patterson

Caterers
Sean Ford, Victoria Stapleton, Craig Young

Special Interpreters for Mr. Rust
Jonathan Lyons, Sean Fodera