The Academy: Book 2 (45 page)

             
“You and me both. What are you thinking about?”

             
Asa answered immediately, “Conway. And about what Adam Trotter said about the Multiplier-thing that they found out behind the mountains. I’ve been thinking about where it could have come from, and wondering what Conway thinks about it.”

             
“Would Conway know about it?” Jen asked.

             
Asa shrugged, and then turned up the heat on his camouflage suit, which he was still wearing. He glanced uncomfortably at the suicide pill still situated on his shoulder and wondered if any Academy students had to use it in the Task. “Do you think that the Multipliers are going to attack the Academy?”

             
“That’s a good question. I’d say yes, but I have no guess as to when. In that meeting with Volkner, Robert King seemed pretty stern about the Hive thing; I think that he’s worried about it.”

             
“I do too,” Asa said. “And I bet that he’s especially worried after what Adam Trotter told us. Why would a Multiplier that produces less Salvaserum be on the backside of the Academy’s mountains?” Asa felt frustration growing inside of him. He wanted to go and talk to Conway, he was sure that Conway would have information he needed, but was reluctant to make the trip and risk being rejected. He was very tired.

             
“And where did they come from?” Jen said, her eyebrows raised. “You think your dad has something to do with it?”

             
“My dad’s dead.”

             
“Okay,
had
something to do with it?”

             
Asa considered. He knew so little of his father’s demeanor. In his dwelling, he had spent hours looking at the polaroid of Edmund Palmer, pondering what it would be like to be so smart. “I don’t know much about my father,” Asa said. “But Conway seems to believe that my dad was spending all of his time at the Academy. If he created this odd kind of Multiplier in the Academy, I think that Robert King would know about it.”

             
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jen said. “Your dad could have been sneaky, like me? Could it be possible that he was working on something outside of the Academy and no one knew about it?”

             
“I guess,” he said. “But what does that mean? Where does that leave us? We know far too little.” He picked up another stone and hurled it across the lake, skipping it further than the first.

             
Jen took Asa’s hand. “Let’s go talk to Conway.”

             
“Conway won’t tell me anything.”

             
Jen smiled. “What have you got to lose, your pride? We’re at a dead end. Unless you’ve got a better idea, I think that we should talk to Conway.”

             
Asa sighed. “Give me your hands.”

             
“You’re frustrated,” she observed.

             
“Yes, but I think that you’re right.” His wings shot out beside him and he began to carry them to Conway’s cabin, flying above the arctic jungle of Fishie Mountain.

              The wind chill made it feel much colder than it was, but the temperature was at a high for the calendar year at just over forty degrees Fahrenheit. As Asa and Jen walked up the pebbled path to the front door of Conway’s cabin, they heard the trickle of cold water falling from the snow packed roof to the ground below. The front door was flanked with two small gardens, each overflowing with genetically engineered plants that thrived in the winter. The petals were strikingly colorful against the white snow and the brown cabin; green-silver leaves and vines running up the rain gutter on the side of the house and circling the windows; blood-red roses with firm petals; flowers purples, blues, oranges, greens, and yellows; the flawlessness of these colors seemed out of place in reality, like they belonged in a dream.

             
Asa knocked heavily on the wooden door. His face was red and he was mildly anxious, anticipating an argument with Conway. The knock echoed softly back to them and then they heard a menacing growl.

             
“Ozzie! Hush now, child. Who is it?” They heard Mama’s voice from inside.

             
“It’s Asa. Asa Palmer. And I have a friend with me.”

             
“Back up now, Ozzie.” The door swung open to reveal Mama, wrinkles, and hypopigmentation covering her face. She had coarse looking bruises across her arms, her neck—the kind that you get from being on a blood thinner. Her nails, kept short for playing piano, were painted a gray-blue color that mimicked her glaucoma-clouded eyes that stared behind Asa and Jen and did not see. “Oh, honey! Get in here, it’s good to see you.”

             
As Asa passed over the doorway she wrapped her fingers around his arm and pulled him towards her, placing a kiss on his cheek with her lips, leaving a large lipstick stain. She wore a shawl tied around her neck and smelled strongly of perfumes and lotions.

             
“And your friend,” Mama said. “She breaths like a female, am I right?”

             
Jen looked puzzled at Asa. “Yes,” she said.

             
“I’m blind, honey,” Mama said, “and when you don’t have your vision, you have to find other patterns to recognize things with. It comes with its advantages. You’re from Toronto. Am I right?”

             
“I lived in Toronto until I was ten. How’d you know?”

             
Mama smiled. “I can hear it. I can hear textures in sounds as well as you can see textures in a wall. Voices from Toronto have a certain feel to them. That doesn’t make sense to you, I don’t think, but it does to me. Come in, honey. I want to touch your face. I want to see what you look like.”

             
Jen walked through the threshold and Mama ran her winkled hands up her arms, past her shoulders. She slid them over Jen’s neck and then began to feel over her face.

             
“Why are you smiling?” Mama asked, smiling herself, revealing a gummy mouth with a tongue that seemed too big.

             
“It tickles.”

             
“She’s pretty when she smiles,” Mama said. “You’re beautiful, darling. Gorgeous hair texture. Your face is entirely symmetrical. You’re healthy, darling. You have full lips,” Mama said, removing her hands. “Go sit by the fire, your ears are cold.”

             
Asa and Jen took a seat on the couch while Mama made them tea. Though Asa had been here before, there were still so many eccentric decorations that he hadn’t yet noticed. He thought it would take days to take stock of them all. There were lamps situated sporadically around the living room, covered in green, yellow, purple, blue, and orange shawls; these splashed colors that mixed on the floor, ceiling, and walls. From the floor, the massive polar bear, Ozzie, watched them with his black eyes; his paws were the size of large baseball gloves. There was an old, rusty bathtub full of dog food situated on the back wall, with some of the kibbles scattered on the floor. Ozzie looked far from underfed, his heavy belly spreading out on the rug beneath him. The fireplace was cut into the wall next to the small kitchen area, and was bordered with black stone inlaid with red, glossy, triangular jewels that were arranged in such a way as to make serpents running up and down the sides of the fire. There was the constant tick from the hundreds of cuckoo clocks that lined the back walls. Asa now saw that there was an oil painting mixed in with the ornamentation of Conway and Edmund Palmer, Asa’s father, standing arm in arm on a mountaintop.

             
There was a hallway in the back leading off of the main room; one of the doors led down to the basement that held a reinforced jail cell and doubled as Conway’s exercise room.

             
“Is Conway home?” Asa asked.

             
“He’ll be home later,” Mama said as she sat two cups of steaming tea on the wide stump that served as a coffee table in front of the couch. Sometimes Mama moved so well within her own home that it was easy to forget she was blind. She sat down in an old quilt-upholstered chair and blew the steam out of her teacup.

             
“You two made it through the Task,” Mama observed. “Congratulations. Conway was worried about you, Asa.”

             
“His hologram came and let me know that my teammate has returned another team’s KEE,” Asa said, and he shuddered, thinking of the implications; some of his fellow Academy students had been shocked to death by the placement.

             
“You sound tense, Asa. Is it just because of the Task, or is there something more?” Mama said, slurping her tea and staring without seeing in the direction of her piano.

             
“I’m not tense.” Asa said.

             
Mama addressed Jen: “Tell me why he’s tense, dear.”

             
Jen looked at Asa cautiously and considered. Asa gave her a warning look, but she still spoke. “He’s afraid that Multipliers are going to attack the Academy.”

             
Asa expected Mama to choke on her tea at such an obtuse and seemingly unwarranted speculation, but she nodded slowly, sipping. “Tell me why, Mr. Palmer. Why do you fear this?”

             
Asa took a deep breath, trying to gather his thoughts. Seven o’clock came with a parade of chimes and bells from all of the clocks on the wall. One of the doors on a massive cuckoo clock opened up and two wooden lumberjacks sitting at a wooden table shot out on a platform. The figurines lifted tiny glass mugs, toasted, drained a foamy yellow liquid made to look like beer, and then the whole procession was drawn back into the clock. When it was quiet, Mama was sniffing her tea and waiting patiently for Asa to answer.

             
“A lot of things. Before we start, I want you to know that I told Jen about the contract my father made with the Academy and Alfatrex. I told her about the crows; I told her everything. I think that Conway might be upset about that, if he finds out.”

             
Mama shrugged. “He couldn’t have expected you not to talk about it. I bet those secrets have been burning through you; you’ve been carrying them like Jesus carried his own cross. You needed someone to share the burden with, and Conway’s made it clear that he’s not that person. He wouldn’t talk to you. I don’t blame you for your decision to reach out to find others.”

             
Asa nodded, and did not talk for a long time. A lump of fear was building up in his throat. He waited for it to subside; he didn’t want to cry again today.

             
“There’s been many things that have happened—odd things—none of them prove that there’s going to be a Multiplier attack on the Academy, but…”

             
“You feel it,” Mama interrupted.

             
“Yeah, exactly. They kind of add up. I want to start from the beginning of this semester…” And so, talking fast, the information flowed out of him. The clocks struck 7:30 and he was still talking. Talking about his fears was like opening up an abscess with a scalpel; every time Mama nodded it felt as though more of the infection had seeped out.

             
He began by explaining about the Multipliers that he and Jen had found on the back of Mount Two—Joney, Michael, and Edna. They were dirty, uncivilized people. “And there were all these monkeys—Davids, I guess—tied up and hanging dead. Their throats were slit. It was so disturbing. And they were wearing clothes, just like a human would.” He explained that these Multipliers had mentioned Conway, and seemed scared of him. He detailed his trip with Jen up to Robert King’s office and explained what they had learned about the Hive, and of Volkner’s condition. Even though he spoke for a long time, he had to give the reduced version; there was so much to tell. He didn’t include things like how Robert King had the picture of Edmund Palmer and Francine Black beside the desk, or how Robert King had injected himself with a drug that made his pupils and mannerisms mirror Asa’s roommate, Teddy. He did, however, remember how Robert King had asked questions, insinuating he was toying with the idea of viewing himself as a deity. “And then,” Asa went on, “there was what happened in the Task,” and he told Mama all he could recall about what Adam Trotter had said. He retold the accounts of the strange Multiplier that had been found on the backside of the Academy’s mountains, and ended by saying that Adam Trotter had been struck dead by artificial lightening. “I don’t think that the Academy would have used the lightening to kill him if what he had been saying wasn’t true.”