Willful Machines (36 page)

Dad rested his elbows on his knees and touched the tips of his fingers together. “Apparently he succeeded. The last thing I heard you say last night before the broadcast went dead was ‘I love you, Nico.' ”

He winced as he said the words “I love you.” I'll bet I did too. My stomach felt like a ball of tangled-up rubber bands. Probably I could claim I'd meant those words in the platonic, straight-guy sense. Probably Dad would jump at the chance to
take my explanation at face value. In other words, I still had plausible deniability. I straightened my glasses.

“We weren't just friends, Dad. We were in love.”

“I see,” he said, still staring at the linoleum.

“I'm gay.”

“I thought being gay involved two humans. I don't even know what that is.”

“Me neither, I guess.”

He clawed through his hair with both hands. “Look, why don't you just tell me where the accusations against Stroud come in?”

While I stared at the vertical crease between his eyebrows, I told him the rest of the story: how I got the watch, how I found out the truth about Nico, everything that happened since the Spider attack yesterday. When I got to the part where Dr. Singh told me she'd tried to help Charlotte escape, Dad cut a look at her that must've burned like acid. I kept going, explaining how I'd found out Stroud was the Prime Mover. Outside, the sun seemed to have fought its way clear of the clouds. Its light pressed against the tightly drawn curtains. When I finished, Dad rubbed his unshaven chin but didn't say anything more.

“So what do you know about the Not2B?” I asked.

“It's a weapon. An electromagnetic-pulse bomb. Like the one at the lab in Bethesda that killed Charlotte. Like the one inside the watch Stroud gave you. Only bigger.”

“How much bigger?”

“Big enough to destroy every electronic device on the planet.”

I took a slow breath. “And how do you know about it?”

“Stroud.” His eyes hadn't left the floor. “He put me in touch with an Inverness alum who'd gone into arms manufacturing.”

“The same person who made my watch.”

“I assume so.”

“When?”

“After the Statue of Liberty strike. Stroud told me he thought I should know about the Not2B as an option of last resort, in case Charlotte's attacks continued to escalate. He said it was the only way we'd ever be able to expunge Charlotte from the planet once and for all.”

“Not2B,” I repeated, turning over the word in my mouth.

“Evidently the name started as a bad joke,” Dad said.

I ran my fingers over the watch on my wrist, exploring its cool, smooth surfaces. “Stroud wanted you to use it. That must've been his plan. To keep raising the stakes with the attacks until you felt your only option was to detonate the bomb.”

Dad sat back in his chair. “But if Stroud had access to it, why couldn't he just set off the bomb himself? Wouldn't the end result be the same?”

“Because that would just cause chaos,” Dr. Singh rasped from her bed. “He wanted to engineer the collapse of modern civilization in an orderly fashion. With you poised to lead.
His
son-in-law,
his
man.”

Dad jumped up and paced around the room. “No way. I'm
not buying it. How can you even think this, Lee? You know how much that man's done for us. Do you have any proof?”

I went over the list in my head again. One overheard conversation. A page of Stroud's memoir, now consumed in the fire. I shook my head.

“So this is all wild conjecture.” He flung his hand in Dr. Singh's direction. “How do we know
she's
not the one behind the attacks? Can you answer that one for me? She could've just made up all this crap about Waring and Stroud to throw us off her trail.”

She gave me a dry “I told you so” smirk.

“I know it's not her, Dad.”

“This is insanity. Stroud's your grandfather, and you're saying he tried to kill you?”

“Maybe he felt like he had to. The same way he killed Grandpa Fisher.”

Dad whirled to face me. “Don't you dare bring that up. My father was his best friend. He was in an impossible situation. It killed him to lose George Fisher.”

“Dad, I'm not saying—”

I stopped. My fingers curled around the armrests of my plastic chair.

“You're not saying what?” Dad said.

My mouth had gone dry. My whole body tingled. I rose to my feet. “Why don't you call him, then? Call Stroud and ask him yourself.”

He pressed his lips tight together. “Fine. If that's how you want to play this.” He turned to his puck. “Place a call to Mrs. Case.”

The puck pivoted. A few seconds later, on the wall across from the bed, an image of Mrs. Case appeared, her bun still loose, her face streaked with tears. I almost didn't recognize the landscape behind her—first, because the sun had come out there just like it had here (undoubtedly a first at Inverness Prep), and second, because the school was now a smoldering ruin. “Hello, John,” Mrs. Case said. “How are you and Lee holding up?”

“All right, thanks. Is the headmaster nearby? May I speak with him?”

She instructed her puck to find Stroud. The device meandered into the midst of the ruins. The devastation scrolled across the hospital room wall: tumbled stones and charred, splintered beams, with here and there something recognizable emerging from the sooty debris. A glaring carved raven. A few pages of a library book, miraculously untouched. The slender silver leg of a Spider glinting in the sun.

The puck floated into the open again. The school's rear terrace appeared, still relatively intact. Stroud sat on a bench with his back to the stone wall, just a few feet from the spot where Nico had done his handstand four days earlier. He stared at his school, his suit rumpled and covered in soot but his spine ramrod straight. Something rested on his lap: the titanium thighbone. “Who's that?” he said when he noticed the puck.

“It's John, sir,” Dad answered. “John and Lee and Dr. Singh. We'd like to talk to you for a minute.”

“By all means. I'm just . . .” He stood and gestured at the devastation in front of him. “Would you look at this place? What a loss.”

“Yes, sir,” Dad said. “It's a great tragedy.”

“What's on your mind, John?”

Medics had cleaned the blood from his face and fixed his split lip with medical glue. I wondered for a second if he'd had the Spiders inflict his injuries or if he'd just done it himself—maybe with that bone he held in his hands now.

Meanwhile, Dad hadn't stopped pacing the room. “Lee's gotten this crazy idea in his head, sir. I'd like you to put his mind to rest. He's claiming
you're
the one who plotted the Charlotte attacks. He says you've been trying to manipulate me into launching some kind of electronic apocalypse.”

Stroud didn't blink. “I have, have I?”

“With the help of Paul Waring, who apparently didn't die. I almost forgot that part.”

He chuckled. “I see. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint. I think young Lee's just a little shaken up.”

Dad turned to me, full of manic energy. “There, you see, Lee? What do you have to say to that?”

But I didn't even look at Dad. To Stroud, I said, “Maybe it's time you told us about George Fisher.”

My grandfather's grin faltered. “What about him?”

“I thought we were talking about Charlotte,” Dad said. “What is this, Lee?”

My eyes didn't budge from the projection of Stroud on the wall. “Sir, I was just remembering something you said at Mom's funeral. That you'd lost the only two people you ever loved. Dad thought you were talking about your daughter and your wife. But you weren't, were you? You were talking about the same two people whose photos are on the mantel in your office. Your daughter and George Fisher.”

The smile had left Stroud's face now. “What are you driving at?”

“I know you're behind this,” I said, “no matter what you say. I know you're the Prime Mover. But for a while I couldn't figure out why you'd bothered to make Nico. Why you'd want me to fall in love with him and then kill him. But now I think I get it. You saw the security footage of me kissing Jeremy freshman year, and you decided you'd help me become a man, just like you've always talked about. A man like you.”

His eyes narrowed. His craggy face twitched. He didn't say a word. Like a Marine in a terrorist interrogation room again.

“You loved George Fisher, but not as a friend. You loved him the same way I love Nico.”

He lunged forward and pointed the thighbone into the puck's camera, his arm shaking, his whole body shaking. “That's a disgusting insinuation! I spent nine years in a room with him, and I never once touched him until the day I snapped his neck!”

“Of course not. Because you're not gay, right? You're the Prime Mover. Nothing controls you.”

“Lee, stop this,” Dad said. “You're not making any sense.”

“And then when you hatched this insane plan to destroy modern civilization,” I continued, “you decided you'd take the opportunity to put me to the test. After all, I'm a disgrace to the family. Depressed. Suicidal. Homosexual.”

“Those words are cop-outs,” Stroud spat. “You're just weak willed.”

“Exactly. So you made me fall in love with a machine, and ordered the machine to betray me, and gave me a way to destroy the machine to save my own life. Then you waited to see if I'd have the strength to kill the thing I loved, like you did. Because that's what life is, right? Losing things? Adversity can either destroy you or make you stronger. Isn't that your motto?” I took a step forward. “Congratulations, sir. I'm still here.”

Dad's eyes darted back and forth between Stroud and me. “Sir,” he said, his voice weakening. “Tell him this isn't true.”

Stroud hugged the thighbone to his chest. His eyes drifted away from me back to the ruins of Inverness. He stepped onto the bench and surveyed the damage.

“There's a SWAT team on its way to seventeen Hardscrabble Road right now, sir,” I said. “It's all over.”

He sat down on the wall, his feet resting on the bench. Little by little, his spine sagged forward, folding over the thighbone he still clutched in his arms, like his vertebrae were crumbling
one by one. “Just look at this place,” he repeated. “What a loss.”

Dad staggered a few steps, as if the floor underneath him had tilted sideways. “I don't understand, sir,” he stammered.

But Stroud didn't answer. Instead, his eyes closed. His body went limp. A wind combed his short white hair forward. The background behind his head changed. In place of the sky and the far shore of the lake, white sprays of water appeared all around him. At first I couldn't tell what was happening, but then I understood. He'd pitched himself backward over the terrace wall, and the puck had followed him down the face of the cliff. That moment of falling seemed to last forever. But the whole time I watched him plummet toward the lake, my heart didn't try to punch out of my chest. My tie didn't seem to tighten around my neck. My breath stayed as steady as a slowly swinging pendulum. Then, right before impact, the puck peeled away and glided off across the surface of the water, which sparkled in the sunshine.

N
one of us moved or spoke for a long minute. Dad's face had gone blank, like he'd fallen into one of his trances. His puck still projected an image of glinting water on the wall across from us. The shifting bluish light playing over Dad's loose features made it look like he'd plunged to the bottom of the lake along with Stroud.

“Dad?”

He snatched his puck out of the air, the projection disappeared, and the room went dark. “I don't understand,” he repeated in a thin voice. “Any of this. Who that man was.” He nodded at the empty wall across from him. Then he looked at me. “Who you are.”

“I know, Dad.”

A knock sounded at the door. Trumbull stuck his head in. “Sorry to bother you, sir.” Then, to me, “The SWAT team's at the house on Hardscrabble Road. The place is empty. No Paul Waring. No robotics equipment. Not even any furniture. I thought you should know.”

I traded a look with Dr. Singh. Just like she'd predicted.

“Trumbull, wait,” Dad said. “Something just happened at the school. Something terrible.”

“Sir?”

“We should send help.” He started for the door. Stopped. Cast one more baffled glance over his shoulder at me. Then he went out. The room was quiet, aside from the tapping of Dr. Singh's fingers.

“Give him time,” she said. “His world just turned upside down.”

I rubbed my neck. All of a sudden, I felt exhausted. My body ached in a thousand different places. “He was always on my case for not going out and doing stuff at school. I guess he can't complain about
that
anymore. I sure as hell did something.”