Six (23 page)

Parker's head snapped around, and he caught a glimpse of Michael and Emma just before they ducked back into the corridor.

“Michael!” called Parker. “Come back.”

It was a few seconds before Michael and Emma reemerged, both looking sheepish.

“It's okay,”
mouthed Parker.

*  *  *  *  *  *

“Let's start with your names,” said Solomon. “I'm guessing that you're Parker, and you must be the lovely Emma.”

Emma smiled and nodded.

“How do you know . . .” Parker stopped as he realized his father must have told him.

“You can lip-read?” asked Solomon.

Emma nodded.

“Do I need to speak slower?”

Emma shook her head. She didn't seem as nervous from the sight of Solomon as Parker would have expected.

“And you are?” asked Solomon.

“Michael,” whispered Michael. “I'm just a friend.”

Solomon glanced up at the clock on the wall. “We have an hour before they come to take my lunch away. Can you stay an hour? Is there anyone waiting for you?”

“No,” replied Parker. “We're here on our own. We can stay.”

“Good, because there's a lot I have to tell you.”

“How do you know my dad, Mr. Gladstone?” asked Parker.

“Okay. That's a good enough place to start. And call me Solomon, please. I taught your father and mother when they were at university.”

“Our mum?”

“Yes. Brilliant scientist. Your dad, too . . . but your mother was something else. Quite a team.”

“Do you know that she . . .”

Solomon tensed his jaw. “Yes. I know.”

Solomon turned to look out the window. He didn't speak for a while, and Parker, Emma, and Michael—not knowing what else to do—sat in silence and waited. When Solomon finally turned back, Parker saw that his eyes were moist.

“I'm so sorry,” said Solomon. “It must have been so hard for you both.”

“It's okay now. . . . Thank you,” said Parker, feeling slightly awkward. “When was the last time you saw them?”

“I saw your mother three years ago”—he took a deep breath before continuing—“just before her accident.”

“And Dad?”

Solomon's lips pursed into a tight sad smile. “Last week.”

“Last week? But,” said Parker,
“how?”

“You're not the first to find out that it's not that hard to get in here. I gave him the codes and he'd come visit me between checks.”

“But if you know the codes, why don't you just leave?” asked Michael.

Solomon pointed to himself. “I can't exactly go about unnoticed these days. I have everything I want . . . want . . . want . . . want . . . Alberta!”

Solomon slapped his head, and Michael leapt up off the sofa. He was stopped from running only by Parker reaching up and grabbing his T-shirt to pull him back.

“It's okay,” whispered Parker. “It's a stutter thing.”

Michael looked no less horrified, but he allowed Parker to pull him back down to the sofa.

“Sorry, did I scare you?”

Michael shook his head, still too terrified to speak.

“It takes a bit of getting used to,” said Solomon. He laughed. “I even scare myself sometimes. Now, where was I?”

“You were telling us why you don't just leave.”

“Ah yes. I have everything I need here.”

“But are you actually—”

“Mad?”

Parker nodded.

“Depends on your definition of
mad
, I suppose. But, technically, no.”

“So why are you here?”

“Not by choice—at least, not originally. I said a few things some people didn't like, and I was given two options. This was the better of the two.”

Parker could guess what the other was.

Emma tapped Parker's shoulder.
“Has he always looked like that?”
she signed.

Parker grimaced but realized he had no choice but to translate. Also, he did actually want to know, himself. “She wants to know why you . . . um . . . look like you do? Were you born like that?”

Solomon chuckled. “No. I had an . . . Well, actually—it's a long story. It will make sense after I explain everything. I'll start with SIX. But first, I need to say something. I'm afraid what I'm going to tell you is going to upset you.”

Parker drew a sharp breath. “Is he dead?”

“No! No, sorry—I didn't mean that. He's not dead. I don't know that for a fact, of course, but I'm almost certain he isn't.”

Parker and Emma both sighed in relief.

“The thing is, I'm going to help you as much as I can. I promise. But I don't know if I'm going to be able to help you get to your father.”

“It's okay,” said Parker. “You don't have to come with us. Wherever he is, we'll get there. We just need to know where to go.”

“I'm afraid it's not that easy. But if there's any way at all that I can get him back to you, I'll do everything I can to make it happen.”

Parker nodded. “Thank you.”

“And now—SIX.” Solomon paused, as if searching for the right words. “I suppose there's no easy way to say this. SIX—the place your father told you about—is the name of a planet.”

Michael gave a loud sigh. “Here we go again.”

Parker, though equally disappointed, turned and glowered at Michael. “Let him speak.”

“Again?” asked Solomon. “You've heard this before?”

“Yes,” said Parker. “We read it on a Web site.”

“
Really?
What did you read?”

Michael butted in. “That SIX is a planet. That all the money is going there instead of here, and that's why there's no money for anything. That it's a place where the rich are going to escape to when Earth is finished.”

Solomon sat up straight and shook his head in surprise. “You already know it all?”

“Well, it's obviously not true,” said Michael.

“Actually—hard as it might be to believe—it is all very true.”

Michael groaned. “Oh, come on! A planet? In what galaxy, exactly?”

“Michael!”
exclaimed Parker.

“This galaxy—the Milky Way. In the constellation Libra, about twenty-two light years away from Earth.”

“Hmm. And you get to it
how
?” Michael no longer looked terrified, just irritated.

“Ah. If you liked that, Michael,” said Solomon smiling, “you're going to
love
this. You get there by teleportation.”

“Of course,” said Michael. “And how does that work? Oh wait—I think I know this already! You stand in a blue light and say, ‘Beam me up,' and then you're eating moon cheese with apes.”

Solomon looked thoroughly amused. Parker, however, was not finding it so funny.

“Michael, stop!”

Solomon laughed. “It's okay. Really. It is quite a lot to take in. And the answer, Michael, is not a blue light. The method of teleportation devised by Avecto”—he looked at Parker and Emma—“the company your dad works for—is called avection. It works by analyzing matter as it breaks it down—”

“Not possible,” interrupted Michael.

“And then rebuilding it exactly on the other end.”

“Can't happen.”

“The process is almost instantaneous.”

“Impossible.”

“Improbable,”
corrected Solomon, “but most certainly not impossible.”

“And how do you know this?” asked Michael.

“Because I've been teleported myself.”

Michael rubbed his chin and nodded. “Interesting,” he said. “And—just out of curiosity—if you can do this, then why exactly haven't you teleported yourself out of here?”

“Well, it's not that simple.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “It
is
that simple. You haven't done it, because it's not true.”

“Michael!”

Parker grabbed Michael's arm and dragged him up and over to the corridor.

“What are you doing?”

“The guy is a nut case, Parker! Out of his mind. A complete lunatic! Did you hear what he was saying?”

“I don't care, Michael! I need to hear this out. Even if it's not true . . .”

“Which it's not.”

“I still need to hear it! Don't you understand that?”

Michael shook his head. “What's the point?”

“The point is—I haven't got a choice. If you don't want to hear it, just leave! Okay?”

Michael thought about this for a moment. He grimaced, then sighed. “Fine, but don't expect me to believe it.”

“You don't have to. Just let me listen.”

The two boys made their way back to the sofa.

“Sorry,” said Michael as he sat down.

Solomon smiled. “It's fine. A questioning mind is nothing to apologize for. Would it help if I explained how it works?”

Michael hesitated, and Parker nudged him with his elbow.

“Yeah. Okay. Why not?”

“I'll do that then. But first—if you'll humor me for just a moment—let's assume what I'm telling you is true so I can finish explaining to Parker and Emma what I know about what's happened to their father. After that, I'll go through the technicalities and you can ask as many questions as you like.”

All three of them nodded.

“Good. Where were we? Ahh, yes. So avection is a type of teleportation. It was invented about thirty years ago by a man called Warren Bowveld—”

“That's the name of my dad's boss!” interrupted Parker.

“Without the number. Your dad's boss is Warren Bowveld III, son of Warren Bowveld Junior and grandson of Warren Bowveld Senior. But that's where the similarity between the three men ends. Senior was a brilliant man of science; Junior, a man of numbers; and Warren Bowveld III . . . Well, I'm not sure anybody's worked out where that man's talents lie yet.”

“Which one discovered SIX?” asked Parker.

“That would be Senior,” replied Solomon. “Having discovered how to teleport, he began to send cameras out into space. A couple of years later, they found SIX.”

“Why SIX?”
signed Emma.

“SIX is the first perfect number in mathematics. Do you know what a perfect number is?”

“I do,” said Parker. “It's a number that is the sum of its divisors. One plus two plus three equals six.”

Solomon looked taken aback. “How old did you say you were?”

“Twelve.”

Solomon smiled. “I suppose I shouldn't be surprised—you are your mother's son, after all.”

Parker felt himself turn red.

“SIX,” continued Solomon, “is the only planet that has been found—to date—that can support human life. Apart from Earth, of course. For this to happen, a huge number of things have to be true—air, water, a solar system like ours, for example. The list is very long, and the chances of finding a planet that ticks all the boxes are miniscule. That's why, when this planet was discovered, they named it after the first perfect number—because all the numbers aligned perfectly.”

“Do people live there now?”
asked Emma. Parker translated.

“Some—not many though. It's still very much under construction. For a long time after SIX was discovered, it was used just for research. Senior, you see, had no interest in making any money from his work, but his son, Junior, did not feel the same way. When his father died, Junior decided to make SIX into a luxury destination. Paradise for those who could afford it. He gathered together a group of very wealthy investors and set to work. Five years ago Junior died, and his son—your father's boss—took over.”

Solomon stopped.

“I need a cup of coffee,” he said. “Anyone?”

They all shook their heads.

“Good,” said Solomon. He stood up slowly. “I've only got one mug.”

He tightened the belt of his dressing gown and shuffled over to the small kitchen area in the corner of the room. Parker noticed that his gray ankles were visible between the gap of his red pajamas and open-backed brown slippers. He had been so distracted by everything that Solomon was telling them, this was the first time since sitting down that he had been reminded of Solomon's strange appearance. It also reminded him of where they were. He looked up at the clock and realized that time was passing quickly.

“How is my dad involved in all of this?” asked Parker.

“Your father,” said Solomon as he dipped his spoon into the coffee jar, “was employed by Avecto to solve a very big problem for the company.”

The kettle
bing
ed, and Solomon was silent again as he finished making his coffee. He walked back over with the steaming white mug and took his seat again.

“Avection works perfectly the first time around. If someone is teleported, it will rebuild them on the other side
exactly
as they left, down to the holes in the socks they're wearing. That's why there are people up there working on building SIX . . . SIX . . . SIX . . .”

Parker steeled himself for what was coming.

“SIX . . . SIX . . . Alberta!”

Solomon sighed. “I apologize; it really is exhausting. The people there now, however, can't ever come back—at least not for the moment. Because avection—on humans—is an extremely complicated procedure. A body can be rebuilt once, but try it again and imperfections start to show up.”

“What do you mean?” asked Parker.

“It's a bit like a digital image. Every time you distort a picture on the computer—say by rotating it, or making it small then big again, the file loses some of its detail. The more you repeat the process, the less detail the image retains.”

“Interpolation,” said Michael.

“
Exactly
. Very good, Michael,” said Solomon, clearly impressed. “Avection has the same problem. It's fine for inanimate objects or small living things—you could teleport a car back and forth many times over before you'd ever see a difference—but humans are rather more complicated. There is so much information, as you can imagine, that while it's perfect the first time, the second time is generally disastrous. In fact, with one exception, nobody has ever survived a second teleportation.”