Meg Hatfield was alone in our room, lying in bed, when Billy and Jeffrie came back.
Billy stumbled in the dark and leaned against Jeffrie. His shirt was untucked and his tie undone, and as soon as they got inside the room Billy collapsed onto my bed, laughing.
Billy Hinman was out of it on Woz.
“Hey, Cager. Cager, guess what? You’ll never believe what just happened, man. I feel so fucking good. Who knew this shit could make a guy feel so good?” Billy said. He kicked off his shoes.
Jeffrie pushed his hand away when Billy tried to unzip her dress. She said, “Don’t you think we need to tell them what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. What is going on, Jeff?” Billy asked.
“Cager’s not here. He’s gone,” Meg said.
The Woz that Mooney gave him was particularly potent, and Billy Hinman was very happy, very relaxed. He couldn’t remember much about the evening except for meeting Mooney, how they’d smoked crushed Woz tablets together and laughed about how everything that had been happening on the Tennessee was simply part of another episode of Rabbit & Robot, which meant Mooney was undoubtedly going to suffer some major humiliation at any moment.
People got a kick out of seeing Mooney humiliated.
But it was not a television program that we were stuck inside.
Billy Hinman said, “I think I’m finally starting to like this place.”
Billy took off his pants and shirt and pulled back the bedsheets before he realized what Meg had said to him.
“What do you mean, Cager’s gone? Wasn’t he just here when we came in?”
“He was very upset about something. He took off when we were down in the docking bay. That was a few hours ago,” Meg said.
“Huh?” Billy straightened up, wobbling, and turned on the lights. “Where’s Rowan? Cager gets like that sometimes. Rowan knows how to fix him up.”
Meg shook her head. “You’re high.”
Billy smiled and shrugged.
So Meg Hatfield told Billy and Jeffrie the story of what had happened in the arrivals hall after they left with Officer Dennis’s head.
Jeffrie sat on the bed next to Billy and listened. She loved hearing Meg tell stories. It made Jeffrie feel like she was sitting outside on a hot desert afternoon up on Missing Boy Mountain, which she missed very much. When Meg finished, Jeffrie asked her, again, if Cager and Rowan and the three cogs were all okay.
Billy Hinman shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck.
“That can’t be right,” he said. “I’ve known Rowan as long as Cager has. Rowan changed my fucking diapers when I was a baby. Rowan still gets Cager dressed. He feeds us, and drives us wherever we want to go.”
Meg said, “What do you want me to say? We saw what we saw. He’s a cog. A pretty slick one too, if you ask me. But what would you expect a Messer or a Hinman to own?”
“We don’t own Rowan,” Billy said.
Billy Hinman was very confused.
“Okay. Well, he’s a cog,” Meg said. “He was basically outside the ship—in outer space—with nothing, no suit, for at least three minutes. No living thing could survive something like that.”
Billy sighed and shook his head. “This is fucked up.”
“Why?” Meg asked.
“Because I hate cogs. I hate everything about them. But Rowan—he raised Cager and me. He was around us more than our parents ever were.”
Billy Hinman picked up his pants and dug through the pockets, looking for the Woz tablets Mooney had given him. He crushed two of them into powder on top of the dressing table using his belt buckle as a pestle.
And Jeffrie said, “Down on the lifeboat deck, the cogs are making new cogs, Meg. You stopped them from eating each other, but now they’re building new ones. That’s not good.”
“And they’re making rabbits and robots. And Mooneys.” Billy lay back on the bed and stretched his arms out over his head. “And Woz. It’s just like being in the show. And I saw these little blue worms. They’re everywhere.”
Meg sat up. She looked at Jeffrie, who was standing in the middle of the room, and at Billy, who was nearly passed out on the bed, and she thought about what it all meant, about what was bound to happen on the Tennessee.
And Billy murmured, “ ‘I placed a jar in Tennessee, and round it was upon a hill.’ They did this, you know, those blue fuckers.”
“I’m sorry I brought you here, Jeff,” Meg said. “I can’t stand this place.”
“It’s not so bad. I’m kind of getting used to it,” Billy said.
Jeffrie sat down on the bed beside Billy. She placed her hand flat on his chest. “I never liked it here. I want to go home. I don’t care how messed up things are back home. I want to get out of here.”
“So do I,” Meg said.
And Billy, half-asleep, slurred, “You will never, never, never get me in one of those lifeboats.”