Unfurl (3 page)

I’d tried the talking–in–your–head thing, but I couldn’t get it. Sir Walter never heard a single thing I said, so I’d given up and gone back to writing my thoughts using a yellow note–pad and pencil, like I’d done with Sam.

Okay,
I wrote.
Which one?

Sir Walter hummed under his breath (yeah, I could hear that in my head, too) and began moving ahead and to our right. We approached what looked like a crop of tall buildings, all smooshed in close to one another. The one Sir Walter wanted sat in the middle. It looked totally abandoned; the doors all sealed shut—some with wrought–iron gates to drive the point home.

Invisibly, we slipped inside.

Let us rise to the première étage,
said Sir Walter—the first floor, which in France is on the second floor for some weird reason. Like no one in France noticed they already had a floor
one
.

Sir Walter made us practice—well, he made
me
practice—walking up through the air to get to the second floor. He didn’t need any practice as he’d been doing this for centuries. Sam and I had only just learned it was possible. To be honest, it kind of freaked me out, looking down and seeing all that air beneath my feet. But I held off writing him about it. He’d already admitted he had a thing with heights, so it might have been a little cruel to carry on a conversation about how my stomach twisted all funny when I looked down. We wriggled our way up through the ceiling like we were made of vapor.

What does your sense of smell tell you?
asked Sir Walter.

Maybe he had me confused with Sam. She could smell anything she passed through.
Nothing.
I wrote back. Chalk that up as one more thing I’d have to work on.

I catch the odors of abandon
, said my friend.
The building has remained empty for some time, but the decay has not yet completed. Believe me, to lack the ability to detect scent: it can be a mercy.

I could believe that easy enough. Some of the places Mick and I lived right after Mom died totally reeked from leftover trash.

We cruised through each of the rooms on this level. Moving slowly, with our free hands extended, we zig–zagged along each floor, passing through the walls dividing the levels into apartment or office–size rooms. It was a bit like being in the world’s longest queue to ride an attraction at Disneyland. Only without the ride at the end.

I didn’t know what we were looking for, exactly, and I’m not clear Sir Walter did either. I just felt glad Geneses had picked the smallest, shortest building on the block, ‘cause this was pretty much the most boring thing I’d done in a really boring week.

There’s nothing here,
I wrote as we looped back and forth along the third floor.

Nothing yet
, agreed Sir Walter.

Unless you count moldy carpets
, I wrote.
Maybe he’s developing some super–germ to take over the world.

Sir Walter didn’t reply. Man, I was going out of my mind with boredom. After a tour of the fourth and final floor, he spoke again.

Perhaps we have arrived too early. This building is among the most recent of my cousin’s numerous acquisitions. We should have begun our investigations with a building he has controlled for a longer period of time
, said Sir Walter.

I can hardly wait
, I wrote back.

Truly?
said Sir Walter.
Myself, I find this most tedious.

I guess sarcasm didn’t translate so well on the written page.

He spoke again.
It is time to come solid and find some of the remarkable food which we promised to your sister.

After drifting back down through the floors, we exited and found a location blocked from view on all sides to ripple solid. Hunger ripped through my stomach as soon as my body solidified. A few streets over, Sir Walter bought five orders of hummus, pita bread, and falafel. Before leaving, he did one of his little bows except with his hand on his forehead saying, “
Salaam
,” to the owner instead of “
Au Revoir
.”

I begged a couple of bites off him before we rippled to travel back to the apartment. When we arrived at our apartment building, we passed through the front door and came solid in front of Mick. She didn’t even startle. She never does, she’s so used to me rippling around the house all the time. I can’t imagine what I’d have to do to spook my big sister, which is kind of a sad waste of the ability to rematerialize, if you ask me.

“Smells good,” she said, looking up from typing on a tablet computer.

Mick had been keeping up on various forums and chat sites covering news of the central valley in California. Sir Walter had given Mick the job when she demanded something
useful
to do.

“Wait ‘til you taste it,” I said, unfolding the top of the largest bag.

“This is French?” she asked, grabbing a falafel.

Apparently she hadn’t been paying attention to what Sir Walter said about
food of the noble Mohammedans
.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” replied Sir Walter. He explained how, following the second World War, and again after Algerian independence, many North Africans had relocated to France where their children and grandchildren still struggled for recognition as full citizens.

After he finished, I asked if we could talk about the building.

“What building?” asked my sister.

Sir Walter frowned, which made his eyebrows bush into a serious uni–brow. “You are aware that I desired to use the first black book, the one Pfeffer stole, to convince certain personages that Helmann is not to be trusted?”

We nodded. He’d been real quiet about his activities the last ten days.

“I am afraid I did not succeed in that effort,” he said. “Geneses Corporation has been, in the last several years, quietly acquiring real estate properties across Europe.”

Sir Walter then rattled off a list of locations across France, Spain, Italy and North Africa. “In each of these places, Geneses has purchased property. They are, all of them, located within areas inhabited primarily by a population Jewish, Muslim, or Indian in composition.”

“Uh–oh,” whispered Mick.

I felt a sick knot in my stomach. “Knowing Helmann, he’s not buying up these buildings to hold bake sales for the locals.”

“Sales of baked goods?” Sir Walter looked confused.

“A charitable activity,” explained Mick. “As in, we all know Helmann feels anything but charitable towards the people groups you just mentioned.”

“
Precisement
,” said Sir Walter. “I had hoped to persuade officials in the government of France to look with a critical eye at these purchases, to perhaps raise an inquiry. I allowed certain officials to look inside a copy of the black book, so as to demonstrate that the origins, and therefore the aims, of Geneses deserved a closer look.”

Mickie rolled her eyes. “I could have told you that would crash and burn.” She shook her head. “No one’s going to object to Geneses buying buildings based on what Helmann did seventy years ago.” She sighed. “You guys are the history buffs. Think for a minute about Carnegie, Rockefeller, Margaret Sanger: they
all
supported the Eugenics movement. Would you expect the government to shut down their present day organizations for what they did in the last century? No one cares anymore.”

“Except you,” I said.

My sister gave me a sad half–smile.

Sir Walter nodded thoughtfully. “I should have consulted you,
Mademoiselle
. Your observation that ‘no one cares’ might then saved me a great deal of wasted effort.”

My sister’s smile grew a little bigger. She used to look just like that when Pfeffer praised her for a really good insight.

I turned to Sir Walter. “So obviously you’re worried about this real estate buying spree. What do you think he’s up to?”

“I know not.”

“Did you snoop around inside?” asked Mickie.

Sir Walter dabbed his lips with a small paper napkin from the food bags.

“The building was empty,” I said, popping a tenth, and sadly the last, falafel into my mouth. “There’s no telling what he wants it for.”

“Ugh, please, swallow before you speak!” said my sister. “It’s like you were raised in the wild by animals.”

“You rai
th
ed me,” I said, winking at her, my mouth still full.

Sir Walter finished his after–meal tidying. “I believe it is time for us to pay an investigational visit to one of Helmann’s European headquarters. Rome is quite lovely this time of year.”

Excerpted from the personal diary of Girard L’Inferne.

Circa 1987

I have, with much labor and consideration, devised an education which I believe will forestall or even eliminate the undesirable behaviors I now observe among the very best of my first children.

The traits I shall keep—the ability to deny the demands of the flesh, fearlessness in the face of danger, loyalty to me alone—to these shall be added the ability to act selflessly. In effect, to act for the good of another before acting for one’s personal good. I observe that this ability guided many of the great leaders of the past to victories denied their contemporaries. Caesar’s armies, intensely personally loyal to him, also fought for Rome. For Rome, that is, for her citizens who would never take up a sword, Caesar’s armies gladly laid down their lives when Caesar asked it of them.

Self–sacrifice, in acts great and small, I shall teach and reward. When this is added to loyalty and self–denial, I believe I shall at last possess the army I require. They will follow me as Caesar’s Romans followed him.

DECENT SOURDOUGH

·
SAM
·

I was cold as snow and immobilized.

And someone was rippling while holding on to me
. My eyes flew wide as I saw Christian—across the room—move from invisibility to solidity, launching himself at me and my assailant.

Before I could call out Christian’s name, I’d vanished in the stranger’s arms. I could feel motion. My other senses hovered just beyond my reach, which was slightly terrifying. Maybe this was a side–effect of whatever drug I’d been injected with. But I felt certain I moved. And that meant it could be very dangerous for me to try rippling solid.

I thought of how I’d seen Christian come solid in my room. How he’d failed to reach me in time. But was he following me somehow? Could I find this out?

I hesitated to write out a message to Christian. I didn’t know if he’d “see” it, and I feared my abductor might. In fact, my experience of “hearing” Sir Walter, and lately Christian, in my mind had made me wonder if most ripplers except me and Will took this type of communication for granted.

Fearful that the person kidnapping me could access my mind, I visualized a number–line, and started counting: one, two, three … I could keep this up all day. Or until we solidified and I discovered who’d taken me and why.

Before we stopped, I reached the eleven–thousands. I felt myself thrown roughly onto something. A couch. Hard. Slippery. Cold. The room was dark, but I felt the sensation of my flesh returning.

Then a bright light came on, and my eyes attempted to compensate; they couldn’t dilate properly, and the light made them ache. With agonizing effort, I succeeded in closing my eyes. I tried speaking, but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. I’d been drugged with something that kept me mostly immobile. But excepting movement, my regular senses had returned with my solid form.

“Welcome,” said a pleasant voice from behind me.

I couldn’t turn my neck to get a good look at the man who’d spoken.

“Ah, how impolite of me,” said the man’s voice.

I recognized that voice.

Hans.

Hearing him circling in front of me, I forced my eyes open.

“Hmm, the relaxant seems to be affecting your speech. Inconvenient, that. I must ask Fritz if something can be done to target the drug’s effects more quickly away from the vocal chords and mouth.” He jotted a quick note on a pad and replaced it inside his jacket. Elegantly dressed, hair an unnatural blond, eyes piercing blue—he looked just as I remembered him from last fall.

I might be paralyzed, but seeing him again made my skin crawl.

“So, I am imagining your first question, had you the use of your tongue, would be something along the lines of what it is that I wish with you, yes?” His eyebrows raised a centimeter. “Try blinking once for ‘yes.’”

Apparently it didn’t occur to him that I might wish to answer in the negative. I refused to blink.

He looked annoyed, but it passed quickly, his face returning to a smooth and calm mask. “Very well, my dear,” he said. “Let’s give you a few minutes to recover, shall we?” And with that he exited the room.

My face wanted to frown in anger. My legs wanted to jump up and off the couch so that I could bang my fists upon the closed door. But I was stuck immobile on a white couch in a white–painted room with an impossibly clean white floor.

Well, I wasn’t exactly stuck. Hans apparently didn’t know I could ripple. My mouth tried to smile, even though the muscles wouldn’t respond correctly. I calmed myself sufficiently and imagined Will’s arms around me.

Nothing.

I imagined the clear–flowing stream of Illilouette Creek.

Still nothing.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t calm enough to ripple. I was laughably calm considering my circumstances—locked away in an unknown location by a known enemy. Whatever Hans had shot inside me, it prevented rippling.

But why hadn’t Christian prevented my kidnapping? The one and only reason I’d agreed to allow Christian to spend every night in my room, every day by my side, was that
he
was my back–up plan in case I needed to escape and couldn’t ripple to safety on my own.

So where was he and why hadn’t he prevented Operation Sam–Snatch?

“Christian?” I spoke his name aloud. Then immediately I began second–guessing the wisdom of calling his name out loud. What if the room was bugged? Besides, if Christian had managed to follow along, wouldn’t he have grabbed me and taken me back home by now? The truth ran along my spine like an icy finger: I was alone.