The man took Eddie to the director’s office, knocked, and pushed the door open to reveal a utilitarian desk and file cabinets. Nothing mahogany, no leather-bound volumes. No bronze ducks. There was a framed photo of a spectacular space explosion on one wall. The director was sitting behind his desk, tapping his fingers. Eddie’s escort motioned him in, and shut the door behind him as he left.
“Eddie.” It was his old man’s voice.
Eddie stiffened, but then managed the turn casually. It wasn’t possible for the old man to be there—and it sure as hell wasn’t fair.
“Eddie,” Director Smithson said, “have a seat.”
The old man was standing. Eddie wasn’t sitting while he was standing. Rule Number One.
“What are you doing here?”
The old man smiled. He had one less tooth than the last time Eddie saw him, but he was still big as a bear. The guy’s chest was huge, his T-shirt pulled tight over hard muscle. He had a couple of days’ worth of stubble on his chin, as if his inside was so full of sharpness that it poked right out of him.
“I heard you were here. I’m concerned about your safety.”
Eddie snorted softly.
“Um, your father tells me he didn’t sign your release.”
Please don’t get it out.
Director Smithson pulled the paper from a folder on his desk. “Our understanding was that your grandmother has legal custody of you.”
“She does.”
“I didn’t sign that,” the old man said.
“We weren’t aware there was any kind of issue,” Director Smithson said, his hands tilting open in apology. The head of the Interworlds Agency, apologizing to the old man. Unbelievable. The universe is infinite, so everything happens somewhere—but not this.
“What are you going to do with him, anyway? I mean, you testing drugs on him or anything?”
“No,” Smithson said. “Of course not.” He blinked at him, then looked between them. He’d picked up on the dynamic.
There was a question Eddie was dying to ask, but he couldn’t say it here—too humiliating. The old man knew it, too. So Eddie said, “Have a safe trip,” and turned his back on him. Dangerous, but Eddie had good hearing and he was watching Smithson’s eyes. If the old man moved at him, he’d see it there.
The old man adjusted to the situation, though, you had to give him that. He figured out how to humiliate Eddie. He answered the unasked question.
“Some guy on death row confessed in order to stall his execution. They had to give me a new trial, and part of the evidence in my case had gotten lost.” Eddie turned back and his old man grinned. The missing tooth was on the right side of his mouth. He’d gotten popped by a southpaw. “I’m now an innocent man.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a guilty man who got out on a technicality.”
The old man stared at him for a moment, his gaze full of broken dishes and shouting in the night. He was supposed to seem smaller, the way your elementary school does when you drive by years later. He still looked big. But Eddie had seven years’ growth that was new to him. The old man stuck his hand out to Smithson.
“Lemme see that form.”
Smithson half stood to hand it to him, his chair scraping unnaturally loud. The old man took the paper and Smithson hung suspended for a moment, his butt in the air, then slowly sank back into his seat, as though even gravity knew to move slowly around the old man.
He looked the form over. It was more than the standard release—it specified that Eddie might encounter serious injury or death on this or any other Earth, or in transit between. Eddie wasn’t worried about him seeing that, and he wasn’t all that worried about the signature, either. He could do it pretty well. What worried him was the date.
The old man’s eyes went over the page, slowly. He was going for careful father, but he didn’t have a lot of experience with that, and was projecting illiterate con. “If he gets hurt doing any of this,” he said, waving the paper vaguely, “it’s gonna cost me. Hospitals aren’t cheap.”
He’d missed the date. Eddie should have been relieved, but a fireball of fury grew in his gut. He shouldn’t have missed it. Asshole.
“Oh,” Smithson said, relieved because he didn’t understand anything. “He’s covered by NASA. We do take safety precautions, but if he got hurt, we’d take care of it.”
The old man reached an arm back and scratched his neck, his elbow pointing at the ceiling. “Still. I could encounter expenses,” he said.
The room was quiet for a minute. Interworlds Agency Director Stanford Smithson, PhD, sat in his neatly pressed shirt, processing that statement. The old man was more alien to his world than if he’d been a tentacled Martian.
“You want … money?”
“I’m starting over, see? And I had assumed me and my son would be going into business together.”
Yeah. There’s a lot of money in bar fights.
“Seems like if you withhold my son’s labor from me, I should be compensated for that loss.” He shrugged.
“Eddie,” Smithson said. “When do you turn eighteen?”
“February.” It occurred to him that he should have said “next week.” The old man might not have remembered.
“Huh.” Smithson looked up at the old man. “Mr. Toivonen, are you aware that your son has won entry into an extremely prestigious training program that will lead to multiple job offers within the astrophysics and space industry? Eddie’s future is set.”
“That’s good,” he said. “You did good. I’m proud of that.” He held Eddie’s eye. He meant it—Eddie had made him proud. Eddie didn’t begin to know how to process that. “But if he did so good, if he’s such an asset,” he said to Smithson, “then I should be compensated.”
“There’s really no way to do that,” Smithson said. “But you can rest assured that he’s being taken care of. It’s one thing off your mind.”
“See, that doesn’t really work,” the old man said. “If I don’t have a little nest egg, I’m gonna have to pull him out so that we can work together.”
“You would do that?” Smithson said. “You’d withdraw him?”
The old man shrugged, rippling his yard-hard muscles. “No choice, really.”
Smithson stood. “Mr. Toivonen, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Don’t come back until you have legal custody.”
The old man’s eyebrows lowered and he worked his jaw side to side. Smithson didn’t flinch. Another guy might have moved to stand beside the director, to show some solidarity. Eddie took a step toward the door. Smithson saw it—and Eddie figured that now the director thought he was a coward. But the old man saw the step, too. He knew what Eddie was doing—separating, so he couldn’t take them both down in one motion. So if he had to, Eddie could come at him from behind.
The blood rushed in Eddie’s ears, and a vein ticked in Smithson’s neck, and then the old man smiled and said, “Getting custody’s not gonna be that hard.” And he turned and left the office, leaving the door open behind him.
Smithson stood for a moment, then took a deep breath and turned, smiling wanly.
“I’m so sorry,” Eddie whispered. “God, I’m so sorry.”
The director said something, but Eddie was out of there, walking as long as he could, and then he was running.