Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder) (16 page)

Zeiss accompanied a reluctant Red back to the island without
letting her so much as shop or shower. They arrived at one in the morning.
Daniel met them on the flight deck.

“Welcome to Alcatraz,” she muttered
as she stormed past.

“She’s just pissed because they
wouldn’t let her fly,” explained the TA.

Daniel nodded. “She’s going to be
even angrier when she finds out the hot water’s turned off in her meta-pod over
the break.”

“Shall I push you back to your
quarters, sir?” suggested Zeiss.

“Coward.”

When they were in Daniel’s pod, Zeiss
spotted a black urn on the mantel. “Someone special?”

“Elias Fortune’s ashes. I promised
him he’d reach the artifact one day.”

“What’s that weird fabric it’s
sitting on?”

“Memistors: that’s a prototype
memory bank containing everything from the Library of Congress, fiction and
non-fiction.”

“Wow. You really do have cool
toys.”

Zeiss helped the man into pajamas
and then into bed. He wanted to say something confrontational but had to work
up to it. “Sir, I think there’s been some kind of mistake.”

“I had maintenance bring an extra
cot to make things more convenient; security is still sweeping your place for
nano-bugs and DNA evidence.”

“No, the bonus. I saw it when I paid
for my sister’s plane ticket online. It’s too much.”

“Nonsense. Your career is on hold,
and if I die, you’ll need to pay for bodyguards for the rest of your life so
the torturers don’t get you.”

“I guess when you put it like
that.”

“François left dinner for you and
Mira on the table.”

“Thanks. What do we do next?”

Daniel shrugged. “We enjoy
Christmas and plan next semester.”

“I don’t know how to find spies,
sir. Nothing has prepared me.”

“Conrad, did you ever rock climb?”

“A couple times.”

“My wife loves it. She says the
most important thing you learn is to trust yourself. Once you do that, anything
is possible. Good night.”

Zeiss ate his beef bourguignon and
then took the other foil-wrapped plate to Red’s pod. The moon was bright enough
to read by, making it easy to reach her pod door. He knocked and, after a
minute, she came to the door in a huge, white robe from the Four Seasons Hotel.
Her hair was clean and uncolored. “What?” she snapped.

“I brought you dinner if you want
it.”

She grabbed the plate and fork from
his hands and began to inhale the food, moaning whenever she took another
mouthful.

Zeiss cleared his throat. “Normally,
I’d leave you alone to devour your kill, but I can’t sleep until we finish our
conversation.”

“We have two weeks,” she whined.

“Just tell me this: what were you
infected with?”

Red stopped chewing and gestured
for him to lean in close. When he did, she whispered, “I’m the Index page.”

He stared. “Is that why you know so
much about the alien pages and the artifact?”

She put a finger to his lips. “Not
outside a secure room.”

“You’re probably the most important
person on the planet right now,” Zeiss said, flabbergasted. “You should be
sleeping in Professor Sorenson’s pod.”

“No, that would be too weird for a
lot of reasons.”

“But their place is shielded.”

She all but licked the plate clean
and handed it back to him. “I’ll show up for the meals.”

****

When Red wandered over at eleven
o’clock, the men had been up for four hours. She wore baggy pajama bottoms, her
aunt’s top, and goggles at maximum tint. “No air conditioning in my pod, really?”

“All unnecessary functions have
been suspended until people return,” Daniel explained.

“I took the liberty of sketching your
schedule for next semester,” Zeiss said, handing her a pad. “Risa and Herk
already filed theirs. I tried to plan it so that there are always two members
of the club in any class.”

“That’s so sweet. That way, if
Sojiro has trouble adapting, we can help him.” She signed it without
hesitation.

“Not for help, for safety. I don’t
want any more blanket parties. Until we catch whoever did this, none of us can
be alone. You have Minerals with Risa; I know you like gems. You take Exploring
Talents with Herk. You’ll interview a lot of people to see what page you want
to pick.”

“I don’t need to decide.”

“Nobody else knows that, Red. You have
to keep up your cover. It’ll give you a chance to ask odd questions that I
can’t in order to help us locate the enemy talents.”

“Wait, you put me with Herk so he
could be my protection?”

“Juice?” offered Daniel.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Apple-cherry mix. I got it just
for you.”

“A little.”

Zeiss continued, “This January, you
wanted to train for the tournament, so I put you in Independent Study at the
dojo with Sojiro. Yoga won’t keep the bullies away.”

“That boy needs major help with
self-defense,” she agreed. “Good call. Schedule Lou with me on my practice
flights and that just leaves one class to be determined later.”

Daniel said, “I was thinking of Auckland for the flights.”

“That would raise suspicion. He’s a
medic, for God’s sake. He’d be useless in a cockpit,” she complained. “Wait. Is
this to make sure I don’t have any more imbalance episodes?”

“No,” said Zeiss a little too
quickly.

“Maybe,” admitted Daniel.

“The last class should be one of
the five core earth sciences,” the TA coached. “You need those before you start
the space courses.”

“Not your quantum strangeness
seminar?”

“Professor Horvath canceled it so I
could devote more time to the search. I only had three students anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why the pajamas, lazy bones?” joked
her uncle.

“The laundry room is shut down.”

“Oops. Sorry. Usually it’s just us
and the island’s crew. Go through there and borrow some of Trina’s things if
you need to. She’ll be back with your friend tonight. What are you planning to
do in the meantime?”

“Clean my room,” said the girl on
the way by. “Sonrisa gets so uptight about that.”

“Imagine,” Daniel chuckled. “How
about you, Conrad?”

“I need to find a Bat Cave. My office isn’t secure enough for the search work.”

“I know just the place,” said the
billionaire.

“Hey!” shouted Red from the
bathroom. “You’ve been holding out.”

“The hot tub?” asked Daniel.

“He needs that for physical
therapy,” explained Zeiss, shuffling data on his pad.

The professor whispered. “Actually,
that one’s mainly for sex. Hoohah.”

The girl came out of the room, holding
a bottle of Mountain Dew. “And this contraband behind the door under the tub?”

“Uh, I can explain,” said Daniel.

The girl unscrewed the bottle,
causing it to hiss. “I get half or I tell Trina.”

“So you’re the source of the
smuggling?” asked Zeiss. “I wasted days tracking that.”

“I always reassigned you when you
got close,” countered the billionaire. “The whole public-health campaign is a
sham; it’s all to keep me from my vices. She won’t let me have fast food
burritos anymore, either.”

“She wants you around as long as
possible,” said the girl, stealing a swig of the warm pop. “Ugh, like battery
acid laced with sugar.”

“Yeah,” he replied with pleasure.
“Hand it over. We have an icemaker she uses for wheat-germ smoothies. Yuck!
Could you get me a glass of ice, Z?”

“Get your own, junkie,” Zeiss said
with a laugh. “If she catches us, I’m the one who’ll get in trouble. I thought
you were going to show me a high-security room.”

“Good idea, we can hide the rest of
the stash there. Keep the warm one, blackmailer.”

Red piled her clothes in a heap
outside the bathroom door, with the remaining soda bottles on top. Zeiss could
hear the water churning. “I’m going to soak till I prune. God, I missed this,”
she shouted.

Daniel led him to the lowest, most
secure room on the island. When his assistant pushed him inside the library
elevator, the professor said, “Swipe your card and say ‘Nemo.’”

“Like Jules Verne?”

“Actually like the kids’ movie. I
had to watch it a lot, and it sort of stuck.”

Once the door opened onto the
secret sublevel, the two went down a metal hall to an observation bubble that
was half Plexiglas. As Zeiss marveled, Daniel explained, “Independent power
source, independent computers, and stereo sound.”

“And it’s a submersible?” the TA
said, pointing to a control panel.

“No, those are backup navigation
and helm for the island.”

“Wow.”

“And a mini-refrigerator for
these,” Daniel said, stowing the contraband drinks.

“I’ll need a safe and a
whiteboard.”

“Use the walls in the hall. They’re
magnetic and erasable. I learned that one from Jez.”

“Wow.”

“There’s tape and colored string in
the green file cabinet for making physical models. You can get live security
feeds on that monitor. That’s the zoom control and here’s the print button.”

“I guess you’ve thought of
everything,” Zeiss said, the magnitude of his task sinking in. “Are we really
going to able to do this for years?”

“One day at a time, kid.”

****

When Trina arrived, it was
Christmas Eve. Sojiro was with her, his arms bulging with paints, markers, and
other art supplies. She explained, “He sees everything in color now, so he
wants to redo his story that way.”

As they ate, Sojiro presented new
sketches to each of them. Wearing a flowered kimono, Red said, “They’re cruder,
more ragged, but
powerful
.”

“I can’t stop drawing,” the artist
confessed. “Our island is the raft that carries the remnant of our world.
Magenta is the seed of hope.”

“She has something tattooed on her
back?” asked the girl, looking at the new character drawing.

“The map to her inheritance. Data
sleeps in vaults of night, waiting for the pilot to wake it. But she needs to find
the person who can read the map,” said Sojiro.

“She looks so small,” Trina said,
sipping a glass of burgundy.

“If you want to add some color to our
island, we could commission you to do some murals,” Daniel said, examining the
sheer volume of paper he was decorating. They all knew that manic swings were a
common side-effect of Collective Unconscious.

Eventually Trina changed the
subject to something more mundane. “Now that you know our secrets, Mr. Zeiss, are
you going to share yours? What did your experiment show?”

“It’s what it didn’t show that’s
going to change our world—after I do the calculations, that is,” the TA
announced dramatically. “The space with the chlorophyll has no gravity
signature.”

Red dropped her fork. “It’s under
Einstein’s rubber sheet?”

“That’s my theory,” admitted the
TA.

Sojiro mused, “It hides its nature
from the stars and waits for the one key to open like a blossom.”

“Is he going to talk in poems for
the rest of his life?” asked Zeiss.

Red wiggled her hand. “It fades
sometimes. His brain is making new connections at a phenomenal rate, but it’s
still him.”

Daniel spoke to the artist.
“Sojiro, Fortune Multimedia has a small prosthetics team. They specialize in
nano-sculpting. When your swelling goes down, I want to buy you a new finger.”

Zeiss said, “I’m ashamed that I didn’t
get our hosts anything as a gift, but I did bring this from my safe.” He
removed a few bars of Swiss chocolate. Red dove for the nearest sweet. He
stood, easily holding it out of her reach. “This is for everyone. Daniel, do
you have eggs?”

“At the restaurant,” the professor
replied.

“Then I’ll make my famous chocolate
mousse. Red and Sojiro, you’re going to help.” The girl followed the chocolate
without complaint. “My mom says this is a great way to show off for a date.”

“We’ll meet you there in half an
hour,” said Trina, kissing her husband passionately.

“This time alone is his real
present,” Daniel confessed. “I told him I have a hard time working off extra
weight.”

“Like you get from soda,” she
asked, poking him in the belly.

“You spies make it impossible to
keep secrets,” he said, unbuttoning her blouse.

“Do you think they have any idea we
set them up?” Trina giggled.

Her husband shook his head. “Not a
clue. He can’t see past his duties, and she thinks he’s Sojiro’s boyfriend.”

“He cooks, he’s neat, keeps a
picture of his mother. I can see why she’d jump to that conclusion. It’ll all
work out. You picked a good one for her,” she said, slipping out of her skirt.
“Now let’s talk about what
you
like for a while.”

Daniel swept his eyes over every
inch of her body. “Oh-ho-ho, you
know
what I like.”

****

When the couple showed up, Daniel’s
hair was mussed and he wore a stupid grin.

“You missed all the fun,” announced
Red. “We just filled every cup in the place with delicious, fluffy pudding.”

“Mmm,” said Trina dreamily.

“It’ll have to chill for a while,”
warned Zeiss. “So we need some activity to keep her hands off the mousse until
it’s ready. I was thinking that we could show everyone the hidden fortress.”

“Great Kurosawa movie,” said Sojiro.

Daniel nodded. His wife pushed his wheelchair
to the elevator this time.

“The library?” complained Red.

When they got to the secret level,
the girl examined the controls and monitors. Sojiro went straight to the bubble
viewport. Zeiss said, “No one else comes down here or knows about it, even from
the club. Understand? I’m only telling you in case someone eliminates me. The
active file will be on this corner of the desk. I’ll keep a log of my
activities so you can track the enemy if I fail.”