Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (30 page)

There was a sensation of weightlessness, and then Oma's hand jerked from his own, and then his left foot kicked into the ground (or, rather, the gravel bed seemed to kick into his foot), and he realized—as he tumbled like a rudely thrown rag doll—that he'd forgotten to tuck and roll.

Elbow, hip, right knee, left elbow, left side of his face all felt the full fury of the sloping gravel rail bed, and then he was lying on his back and all was still and he listened as the train continued to trundle past, and then away.

“You both okay?” said Skwurl's voice from somewhere close by in the darkness.

“I can't believe we just
did
that,” said Oma, panting slightly. It was too dark to see but Patrick sensed a smile in her voice.

“I think I'm okay,” said Patrick. His tailbone was killing him, and his elbow. And the side of his face. But he was pretty sure he hadn't broken anything.

“Good,” said Skwurl. “Now let's go show you what the Deacons are all about.”

There were some low lights along the magnetic tracks and he barely could make out the girls' receding forms. He scrambled to his feet and followed them up a series of metal rungs in the wall, through another manhole, and up into a forest clearing.

“Shouldn't be too bad a walk from here,” said Skwurl. “But let's get cracking—we don't want to be strolling around in broad daylight. Quick, put the access lid back and let's get to the trees.”

A noise like a foghorn boomed through the darkness and off to the east the sky glowed orange.

“Was that an alarm?! Were we spotted?!” asked Patrick.

“No,
that's
what we're going to see,” said Skwurl. “Now, come on.” She took off toward the woods.

“Oh,” said Patrick, and dropped his eyes as the glow turned pink and drained out of the sky. It was pretty dark now—he could just make out where the light-colored grass stopped and could see the gray, spidery silhouettes of trees against the star-pricked sky—but Skwurl's camouflage was already as hard to discern as a drop of ink in a pot of coffee.

“Hey, where'd she go?!” said Patrick to Oma. “I can't see jack.”

“You can't?” asked Oma.

“No, seriously, it's
dark
out here.”

“It's not so bad. Maybe it's your little Earthish eyes? Come this way,” she said.

“What way?” he replied.

“Here,” she said, actually taking his hand.

“Shh!” Skwurl scolded through their earpieces. “They do use microphones sometimes, too. So, if you make
enough
noise … wait—you're having trouble seeing? I forgot to have you engage your night vision!”

“Night vision?” asked Patrick.

“Well
that
might help,” said Oma.

“Behind your head you'll feel a little bump on your suit hood, just at the base of your skull. Press it.”

Patrick did as he was told and his vision exploded with green light. Now he could see all kinds of detail—the texture of the seamless asphalt, the spiky roadside grass, the young scraggly clumps of bushes toward the tree line and, just a few paces in front of him, Oma shaking her fabric-covered head in wonder. She turned and waved at him.

“See better now?” asked Skwurl.

Patrick and Oma both nodded. They could both now see her standing at the tree line.

“Sorry about that,” said Skwurl. “How on Ith did you manage to stay with me coming out of the tunnel?! Let's all try to stay close, okay? Much easier to coordinate if I don't have to keep stopping to wait for you to catch up, okay?”

“Coordinate what?” asked Patrick.

“Umm, coordinate not getting caught,” said Skwurl.

“And sent to a collar camp,” added Oma.

“Or simply killed,” said Skwurl.

“What?” said Patrick.

“You heard me—the Deacons won't be asking to play checkers if they catch us at this point.”

“But what about the Tenets—they aren't supposed to harm anybody, right?”

“What, you don't have any two-faced liars on Earth?” asked Oma.

Patrick found himself wondering if Oma would get along with Lucie. Lucie was always saying presidents and everybody else in government were a bunch of lying murderers for letting wars happen and stuff like that.

“Now,” said Skwurl, “let's go—it's not far from here but we want to get there before the sun comes up.”

She turned and—despite her talk on staying close—sprinted into the trees. Oma obediently ran to catch up but Patrick undertook a more leisurely jog. He was enjoying his new super-vision. It was kind of like what Neil had in his high-tech FPS soldier games although the virtual-reality aspect of it was about ten times better.

He especially couldn't help marveling at the brilliant green sky. Some of the stars were brighter than streetlights, and the Milky Way was like a solid ribbon of radioactive waste in the sky.

“Patrick, get to the tree line, quick!” said Skwurl's voice in his ear.

“Huh?” he said, looking back down just in time to see Oma disappear into the forest.

“Hurry!”

Patrick heard a distant rumbling and picked up his pace. The roar grew louder and light began to lick at the tops of the leafless trees ahead of him—and rapidly began to drain downward.

He broke into a sprint and—deciding it was more important to be able to breathe than to see his surroundings in high definition—pulled down the smothering hood of his Morphsuit. It was like running through surf the way the grass and weeds slowed his steps and tugged at his feet—only it was worse than that because beaches were at least sandy and generally not littered with ankle-twisting rocks. And the closer he got to the trees, the longer the grass became, and soon he was stumbling into bushes that had to be gone around or—as they became more and more dense—plowed through.

But there was no slowing down now. The light on the trees ahead was already at the lowest branches—and growing brighter—and the roar had become so deafening he barely could hear Skwurl's shrill voice. “Lie down on the ground when you get to the trees, and stay still!”

“Patrick!” came Oma's terrified voice. “Do what she says!”

He burst through another thorny tangle of shrubs. His skin-suit might be wonderful at many things, but protecting his skin from prickers was not one of them. He would have cried out in pain if he'd had the breath to do so.

He tripped over a root and fell, brush flaying his face, hands splaying out across the mud, a fist-sized rock punching painfully into his chest.

“Unnh,” he managed as he let go of what air remained in his lungs.

“Patrick!?” came Oma's hushed voice.

“I—”

“Line-of-sight in nine quints!” said Skwurl. “Stay where you are, stay absolutely still!”

Patrick flattened his cheek to the cool moist ground and watched as the world grew brighter than if there had been a dozen suns in the sky.

 

CHAPTER 49

Hanging on the Line

Having long since finished the Saki book (which was wonderful but far too short) he'd taken from the old man's house, BunBun entered some of its lines into
The Book of Commonplace
's “suggested entry” queue, and then proceeded to do his reading. Every day he read from
The Commonplace
—the central document of their movement, the so-far assembled total of the three worlds' wit and wisdom—and just because he was on this crazy mission didn't mean he was going to break the habit.

He snorted as he came across a quote by somebody named Martha Washington:

I'VE LEARNED FROM EXPERIENCE THAT THE GREATER PART OF OUR HAPPINESS OR MISERY DEPENDS ON OUR DISPOSITIONS AND NOT ON OUR CIRCUMSTANCES.

“Clearly,” he muttered to himself, “Martha Washington was never sent on a crazy mission to an entire other sense-world and made to hide all by herself for almost two straight days without a shred of entertainment.”

After making sure the little children had been safely returned (he observed the tearful reunion with Mrs. Tondorf-Schnittman from the clandestine safety of the woods), he'd had absolutely nothing to do but sit. He'd now made it through two entire nights without losing his sanity but he still had probably another half day of doing absolutely nothing before he was supposed to proceed on his mission to ring Earth's alarm bells. My-Chale had been very explicit about this. He'd told BunBun there was a good chance he would receive a message on his binky, and needed him to stay near his arrival point. After that,
then
he was clear to go play Paul Revere and put his life in
real
jeopardy.

For now, he supposed, at least he was safe. He'd deployed a decoy program (a digital ghost of his binky that leapt from cell phone tower to cell phone tower making Ith-protocol transmissions) to throw Rex's killers off his trail.

So far, it seemed, so good. Perhaps they really believed he'd headed east into the region the “Google Map” called “Connecticut.” By now his transcense trail had entirely decomposed so they'd be relying on standard electronic surveillance only. And doubtless they wouldn't assume he'd have stayed put, spending the night behind the steering wheel of a golf cart parked inside a country-club storage shed, less than a quarter mile from where he'd first arrived, just … sitting.

It was a good thing the Minder had given him a fluffy tail.

 

CHAPTER 50

Proving Ground

Patrick stayed motionless—except for his furiously beating heart—for a couple minutes as the aircraft's roar faded.

“You can get up,” said Skwurl. “They've moved on.”

Patrick rolled over and pulled his night-vision hood back over his face. Oma had run out of the woods and was now reaching down to help him up.

“And this evening's lesson,” she said, “is…”

“Stay close?” said Patrick as he took her hand.

“Think you two can remember that?” asked Skwurl's voice.

Patrick brushed at the leaves and mud all over his skin-suit. “Were they looking for us?”

“Probably not for
us
in particular,” said Skwurl. “They would have been a bit more persistent in that case. No, I don't think they expect we could have gotten so far so quickly—hopefully our decoys will have them looking in other directions. But that was definitely an
active
patrol. I'm guessing either we or some deer triggered a motion detector, or were spotted in a low-res sat scan.

“Anyhow,” she continued, “we've lost at least a deuce now—we need to get going if we're going to get there by sunrise.”

Still not having any idea where “there” was, Patrick and Oma followed Skwurl up a steep forested slope to a level patch of ground. The woods stretched out ahead of them and, beyond, through the leafless, mossy oaks and maples, there was a glow—maybe the first traces of morning light—bleeding up into the sky.

“What's that smell?” Patrick panted—there was something like burning rubber on the breeze. And then there was a low rumbling.

“And that noise?” asked Oma.

“You'll see soon enough,” said Skwurl.

“What the—?” said Patrick.

They had entered a grassy clearing. A large, red-roofed, dilapidated, tan brick building stood to one side. It was unlike any of the sleek modern buildings he'd so far seen here on Ith. It was really much more Earth-like—blocky, old-fashioned, the patterned bricks around its vaulted windows generally looking like they had been laid by hand, not machine. It reminded Patrick of the convent above the reservoir where the Griffins sometimes ice-skated in the winter.

“What is this place? It looks pretty old,” said Patrick.

“I think it was part of a college or something,” said Skwurl.

“Wait,” said Patrick. “Didn't they say it was fifty years ago that Rex arrived and this whole world was living in the Stone Age—”