23

FUTURE RIVAL TO DOLLYWOOD

XAN DIDN’T LOOK very good. He had shadows under his eyes and wore a T-shirt with several bloodstains on it. It was torn at the collar and right sleeve. He looked worn out.

“Space fucked you up, big brother,” Phineas said as Xan approached.

“While you look better than ever,” Xan said with a wry smile.

Phineas jabbed his thumb toward Calliope. “But good news that she didn’t kill you yet, right?”

Xan frowned and glanced over at her; she was focused on something further away. “Do you know her?”

“I figured it out. You’re not the only smart one. She has that army look, and I knew someone was coming here for you.”

“So you knew she was here for me and you didn’t tell me?”

Phineas shrugged. “I wanted to see what would happen.”

Xan sat down on the huge couch, having to shift around to get fully onto the tall seat. “Do you want to tell me why you’re here?”

“In a second,” Phineas said, enjoying this. “First I want to talk about Grandma.”

“What about her?” Xan asked, frowning.

“Dead. She fell down the stairs.”

“Shit—” Xan said, eyes wide.

Phineas waved his hand so Xan would shut up. “I’m not done. Her dying isn’t the fun part. At first she had a stroke and I paid for in-home care. And then after she had a bunch of nurses quit on her, the agency wouldn’t send any more, so I had to leave a movie set and go out and take care of her. Do you remember that caring-for-old-people class we took in high school? Neither do I. I had to learn on the fly.

“She lost her mind when she had her stroke. Seemed to think I was you half the time. When she knew it was me, she was this foul demon. I was too fat, too stupid, I wasn’t a real man, and I wasn’t even her grandson, she said. She said Mom slept around and said you were her only grandson by blood, and I was a bastard.”

“Jesus. It’s like the opposite of us growing up,” Xan said, shaking his head. “She definitely never considered me worth anything when I lived there.” He touched his forearm.

“Why didn’t you tell me what she did to you?” Phineas asked, pointing to the scars on Xan’s arm. “The burns.”

Xan, startled, looked back at his arm. “It was a lot to put on you when you were twelve. And she liked you, so I figured she wouldn’t do the same to you.”

Phineas held his own forearm up, puckered scars running up and down.

Xan winced. “Shit. I’m so sorry. But man, why are you here? Now? I can’t imagine you spending all the money to come here to tell me she was dead.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said, but didn’t elaborate. “Anyway, she died last week. I’m postponing her memorial till you come home, since I figure the two of us will be the only ones there.”

“And we don’t even have to be there. We don’t owe her anything,” Xan said firmly.

“But you owe me,” Phineas said.

“I owe you?” Xan asked, his voice going soft. “I quit school to make money to send you to college, which you took to run after rap star dreams. I could have gotten my own degree if I’d known you were going to do that.”

“Yes, you owe me! You left me. You knew what she was, you knew about the drinking and the cigarettes and the abuse, and you just fucking left.”

“She coddled you every day of your life!” Xan said, frustrated. “She didn’t even blink when you came out. She paid for your T, she paid for your new clothes. She laughed at your crude jokes about fucking men being more fun when you were a man. She stood up for you at school. You know what she did for me? Blamed me for Mom and Dad’s death and burned me with cigarettes.

“I didn’t know she would turn on you. Besides, I couldn’t take you with me to college or to the army after I dropped out.”

Phineas shook his head violently. “Fuck, man, how long are you going to hold that over me? Want me to pay you back that college money you saved for me? How many thousands? Add on a few for interest? I can transfer the money when I get home. Then you can use it to send yourself to college.”

“The money isn’t the point. Even if I wanted to go back to school, I don’t know if I could. If I go back to Earth, there’s a long list of angry people who want to talk to me. I was sending the money so you could make something of yourself and get out of Pigeon Forge.”

“Well, I did that,” Phineas said. “I just didn’t do it the way you wanted me to. I can’t carry your dreams, man. If you want a college graduate in the family, you go back and finish your own degree.”

“I can’t argue about this again,” Xan said, ignoring the fact that he had brought up the subject. “Look, we can argue about Grandma later. Right now, I have to figure out what happened on that shuttle. I need to know why you’re here and what happened on the trip. Please.”

Phineas had never seen Xan look so tired. Space had aged him. Phineas almost felt sorry for him.

He sighed. “Fine. But I don’t know what happened on the shuttle. I took a few Valium to calm down for the flight. I fell asleep before we took off.”

“Where were you sitting?” Xan asked.

“Front row, aisle, on the left side. The old lady and her granddaughter were in the left aisle sitting near the window. Your assassin was on the window seat of my row. The rest, I don’t know. I didn’t really pay attention. I was more concerned with not looking out the windows.”

“And that’s it?”

“I woke up when they made the announcement that the station was going to touch our minds. It was—an experience.” He looked at his hands thoughtfully. “But she accepted me. Then someone yelled and then there was a crash and I don’t remember anything until I woke up here.”

“Anything else?” Xan asked. He looked frustrated, which Phineas found very funny.

“Nope,” Phineas said.

“All right, thanks,” Xan muttered, and made to slide off the couch.

“Wait, there is one more thing,” Phineas said, snapping his fingers as if he had just thought about it.

“I’m here to show you Grandma’s will. Seems you, the one who left, get everything. You get the land; you get the house; you get however much money she has squirreled away in the basement.”

Xan stared at him as if he’d been slapped.

“But since you can’t come home, yet,” Phineas continued, “I have to handle everything yet again. Managed everything about her life, and now I get to manage everything in her death, and walk away with nothing.

“Dammit, Xan, you don’t know what I gave up to take care of her. One week I’m starring in a movie; the next week I’m learning how to lift the elderly from a video on YouTube. Now I’m a caretaker of my master’s plantation. The entire story of our family has gone full circle.”

“You can’t blame the will on me,” Xan said coldly. “I have no control over who she leaves her shit to. That’s on her, not me.”

“You benefit from it!” Phineas said. “Of course I can blame you! I don’t have anyone else left!”

Xan shook his head, then rubbed his face as if trying to wash off the reality of the situation. “How did she die?”

“She fell down the stairs,” Phineas said without going into detail. “Broke her neck.”

“I told her she would fall over that rug one day,” Xan muttered.

“You know, after her stroke, she wanted you. But you had just been abducted or whatever weird shit happened to you. She didn’t believe that you were really gone into space. I didn’t know what to tell her since I didn’t know anything beyond that.”

“I didn’t have much choice there, man. I didn’t ask for them to pick me up,” Xan said. “Once I got here, I couldn’t communicate with Earth. I would have told you.” He paused, looking regretful. “Any idea why she wrote you out of the will?”

“Oh yeah, she claims Mom fucked around and my dad was someone from Gatlinburg,” Phineas said, the rage making his face burn. “She said I’m not even a blood relative.”

“Christ. You know that’s not true, Phineas! I remember Mom being pregnant. They had a gender reveal party—yeah, I know, tacky—and Dad kept saying Mom got to name me, so he wanted to name you Philomena after his aunt. They were happy. I can’t believe Grandma didn’t even leave you any money.”

“It’s not about the money,” Phineas said, balling his fists. “I’m fine on that front. But that story we heard every Thanksgiving, about Grandma taking two centuries’ worth of records and deeds and carrying them to the State Assembly to argue—”

“For our family’s right to the plantation that our ancestors built,” Xan interrupted. “I remember.”

“And you don’t know why I would want part of that? You think that a million-dollar house in Beverly Hills would mean more to me than our family’s legacy?”

“Fine, we can split the land, will that make you happy?” Xan asked, throwing his hands out wide.

“Oh, no, that won’t do,” Phineas said. He pulled the paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “Grandma reasons that if you and I split it in half, that’s two pieces, then we have kids and split that land between all of them, then they have kids, and so on. Three generations later, the plantation is seventy little plots. She fought for the right to reclaim what our family earned. It must always be passed down as one plot of land.”

Phineas fingered the memory stick in his jacket pocket and realized how close Xan had come to finding it when he was wearing the coat. He still hadn’t decided whether to give it to him.

“We don’t have kids, unless there’s something you’re not telling me. So who inherits if you die today?” Phineas asked.

“If I die, all my shit goes to you, of course,” Xan said. “We’re all we have left. Then you can will it to whoever you want, give it to charity, build a rival to Dollywood—I don’t care. I can’t argue when I’m dead.”

“You don’t think I’ll have kids, do you?” Phineas asked.

Xan made an exasperated noise. “That’s not what I said! Do you have a partner to settle down with? Have you looked for a surrogate or put your name into adoption agencies? Young, single rap stars building a career don’t typically go looking for babies to adopt.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I won’t in the future.”

Xan took a long breath. “So you managed a seat on the first shuttle here just to yell at me that Grandma liked me more all along?”

“Pretty much.”

Xan was good at catching Phineas in a lie. “With your fear of heights. With Grandma newly dead. You’re not here for any other reason?”

“No,” Phineas said.

“Phin, you know I can tell—wait a second,” Xan said, tilting his head like a dog, listening hard.

“What?” Phineas asked.

“Shh,” Xan said, and got on his knees so he could lean over the back of the couch to listen near the metal wall of the station.

Phineas concentrated. There it was. It sounded like someone had put a very small hole in a thick balloon across the room. A high-pitched whistling sound.

Then the sound was eclipsed entirely by an alarm, a klaxon that rang through the room and caused everyone to clap their hands over their ears.

Xan jumped off the sofa, looking panicked.

The pretty young woman with the mangled hand from the shuttle—Lovely?—ran up to them.

“Hey, you’re Xan, right?” she shouted at Xan.

“We can get introduced after we get out of here,” Xan shouted back. “Where’s Mallory?”

“She ran downstairs to talk to the doctors.”

Mallory appeared at the top of the stairs, eyes wide and panicked. She ran over to Xan. They leaned in close to talk, but stopped when a voice blared over a loudspeaker. “All sentients, please exit all exterior rooms in the station and find a safe place in an interior room. All exterior walls are considered in danger of breach. Please do what you can to avoid all exterior halls with blinking lights; they are also at risk if a breach happens.”

Xan shook his head at Mallory, and she shouted something. Phineas got the sense that she’d be shouting at his brother even if there weren’t feedback-worthy noise around.

Mallory ran off again, down the stairs.

Phineas slid off the sofa. “What was that all about?” he asked, raising his voice only slightly. The years performing made him able to summon volume with little effort.

“She’s got a hunch about the case. We’re about to die in a vacuum, but she wants to investigate something,” Xan shouted, exasperated.

“Well, is she investigating somewhere safer than here?”

Xan looked like he was thinking, frowning as he hurried the humans toward the staircase. “It’s safe for now. I think we’ll be okay if we follow her.” He glanced at Phineas. “We can finish this later.”

He took off at a run, presumably to get to the front of the pack to lead them to safety.

“Running, fuck that,” Phineas said to Lovely, who was watching Xan go.

“Where is he taking us?” she shouted as they approached the stairs.

“No idea, but he says somewhere safe,” Phineas said. He stepped back to let Lovely descend the stairs first.

She pulled up suddenly, looking around in a panic. “Hang on. Where the hell is my grandmother?”