In the stone room beneath the antenna, the Dirrillill glowed with blue light. Beside him stood his servant Jasper, surveying the teleporter booth.
Behind them, the remains of the party rotted on a picnic table.
The Dirrillill was wearing a personal force field. It fit him well, and only dragged a little on the floor.
The Dirrillill said, “So you understand your orders? You will go back to your world. You shall secure your house against those other creatures. I shall send through the necessary pieces and equipment for the teleporter enlargement after you’ve gone through. Easy as pie. So. Got it, ’sonny,’ ha ha?”
He stepped toward the teleporter booth.
Then a voice cried out, “Jasper . . .” It was his mother standing in the door.
The boy turned. He looked at her without interest.
“Yes,” said the Dirrillill. “You should kill her.”
“Jasper?” said Dolores Dash.
She looked through the glass of his helmet at his eyes.
They were the blue eyes she had always known. But there was something different about them.
They were hard. They were full of hate. They were glaring right at her. Mrs. Dash stepped backward in shock. She choked.
Inside Jasper’s head, things were very confused and angry. He thought this ridiculous woman standing before him was an imposter. He remembered with fury that she had tried to stop him from doing something he wanted to do. . . . She didn’t want him to meet his dad. Someone was whispering this to him, and it made sense somehow—made sense that he had to destroy her, the woman standing there—destroy her utterly. And yet he also somehow, somewhere, remembered who she was.
He raised his gun.
“Jasper?”
He aimed his gun.
“It’s me,” said Mrs. Dash.
He squinted and prepared to fire.
She said, “Love-beetle. It’s your mother. Remember the tire swing? The toasted cheese sandwiches? The volcano party? The afternoons spent coloring the periodic table while the rain spattered the windows in the house of the future?”
In a flat voice, the boy said, “Yes, yes, and yes, Mother. But I am controlled by a Dirrillill, and I have my orders.”
With that, Jasper Dash began shooting at his mom.I
I Busby Spence’s parents started yelling the moment they saw him wheeling his bicycle up the drive. Where had he been? and Did he go to that stupid science-fantasy show? and What had they told him? Busby yelled back at them that yes, he’d gone to the Spectacular, and it was the best thing he had ever seen.
“You didn’t spend your money, did you?” his father demanded. “I got your money. What did you spend?”
“I didn’t spend any money. I donated scrap.”
“Scrap.”
“Yeah. I donated scrap. Let me go!” He shook his arm free, and his father grabbed it again and squeezed hard.
“We were worried sick about you! We didn’t know where you went!”
“Now you know.”
“Don’t get fresh! Are you getting fresh?” Then they were arguing, both shouting into each other’s faces, with Busby kicking a chair leg, and with Busby’s dad demanding to know whether Busby had gone and borrowed money from Harmon’s fancy parents, because if he had, he’d never hear the end of it, and Busby said no, for the thousandth time, he hadn’t borrowed money from the Carmichaels, because there was a metal scrap donation drive, and Busby’s dad yanked his arm around and said, “Oh really? Then what? What did you donate?” and Busby told his father that, okay, okay, OKAY! he had donated that stupid statue! That dumb god of luck his father had sent from that stupid island.
He said, “You probably stole it off some dead person anyway. Some person you killed.”
At that, Busby Spence’s father released him.
Busby’s mother was crying on the back of the sofa.
Both of Busby’s parents just stared at him as he walked upstairs to his room.
He still felt sick, but he also felt proud. He walked a little taller. He wasn’t a little kid anymore, like when his dad had left to be in the Marines. They couldn’t boss him around anymore.
He didn’t feel so good when he got into bed. He just lay there.
Busby Spence’s house was silent through the night. No one talked to one another, but everyone was awake. The lights were out.
Spring rains fell on the mud and made the lake swell.