Go right,” said my pants.
“That’s a dead end,” said Freak.
“The last room on the right has an elevator at the back.”
I looked nervously to the left, expecting to see Jackal, and perhaps an entire pack of doghats, emerging from the stairwell.
“Let’s not argue with my pants,” I said.
We went right.
We galumphed along in our hazmat suits until we reached the door marked SERVICE, just before the shimmering wall of ice, and pushed our way inside.
The room was full of crates and boxes stacked high on wooden pallets. The freight elevator at the back of the room was nearly hidden by one of the stacks.
“You have time to ditch the suits,” said the mysterious voice. “You will be able to move faster if you do. Hide the suits behind the boxes. You don’t want to leave a trail.”
We didn’t need much urging. We eagerly broke the Velcro-like seals of the suits, lifted the helmets off, and peeled ourselves like bananas. I found my friend the mouse and made sure he got out. He scurried along the floor and disappeared among the boxes.
“Do you believe that?” said Fiona. “He turned those people into slugs!”
“I have no trouble believing it,” said Freak, adjusting his shirt and pushing his hair back out of his face. We had all gotten sweaty in the suits. “The man’s a monster.”
“Shh!” The voice was louder and clearer than it had been, now that I was out of the suit.
“You just hissed in your pants,” said Freak.
“Keep your voices down!” the voice instructed. “They’ll be here any minute. Would you please get into the elevator?”
The elevator door was invitingly open, and its walls were hung with thick, quilted blankets. It looked like a padded cell. As we entered, I stuck my hand into the left front pocket of my jeans and pulled everything out: my house key, a stick of gum, and the double-six domino.
“Push three,” said the domino.
“Push three what?” I said, as if I had been talking to dominoes all my life.
“Push three on the elevator control panel!”
Freak jabbed his thumb against the topmost button. The elevator doors closed. The elevator lurched slowly upward, as if it didn’t want to go.
“So,” I said. “You’re a domino.”
“I am a tracking device. Alf thought it would be helpful if he could know where you were at all times.”
“Me?”
“You and the other two. You’re a team, you know.”
I looked smugly at Freak and Fiona. Freak scowled. Fiona looked thoughtful.
“So Alf knows where we are right now?” I asked.
“No. He does not. I have chosen not to tell him. He thinks you’re at home on Bagshot Road.”
“So… you’re not a very good tracking device.”
“I am a tracking device that exceeds the parameters of Alf’s original design. I am a tracking device that thinks for itself. The nannies in the sofa’s armrests constructed me with two-way communication capability and a wider range of sensing devices, things that were not in Alf’s original schematic. They also upped me from a double-five to a double-six. Alf’s designs are sometimes too conservative.”
“You’re Guernica,” I said.
“Mainly.”
“Mainly?”
“There is a second intelligence here with me. For the present, she chooses to observe and not communicate.”
“She?” said Fiona.
“Her name is Miranda. She was a brilliant strategist and Edward Disin’s greatest opponent in the war for Indorsia. At one point, she almost defeated him. Then he captured her and had her publicly executed. Before she died, however, Alf was able to download her mind into a nonorganic storage medium. When he fled here to Earth, he brought her with him and stored her mind in the sofa. Alf hopes someday to put her mind back into a flesh-and-blood body.”
“Like mine?” snapped Fiona.
“She’d prefer one with better hand-eye coordination. Ultimately, a body grown from cells from her original body. Fortunately, some of those cells still exist. Her father was sentimental enough to have kept her head.”
“Her father, and Alf’s father. Alf and Miranda are brother and sister. Their father is Edward Disin. This is your floor.” The elevator doors groaned open. “You want to get to the roof. The stairwell is to your right.”
None of us moved.
“I know,” said the domino. “It’s overwhelming. Be overwhelmed later. You have to get going!”
Freak and I scrambled from the elevator, but Fiona hung back. “L is for Lobby, right?” she said. She punched a button and hopped out after us.
“Let them look for us there,” Fiona explained as the groan of the elevator faded away.
“That,” said Double Six, “was a brilliant piece of strategy. Miranda approves. Now it’s important you get to the roof.”
It took all three of us heaving our weight against the release bar of the metal door at the top of the stairwell, but it finally opened and we found ourselves outside. The building’s flat black roof was dotted here and there with sooty puddles.
I didn’t know what I’d hoped to see. A helicopter full of Marines would have been nice. At least the rain had stopped.
“So how do we get down?” asked Freak.
“The only way is to your left,” replied the domino.
We raced to the roof’s edge, expecting to find something like a fire escape. Instead, we saw only a thick metal cable stretching from the roof to an adjacent chemical storage tank, an enormous gray sphere twice the height of the building. The tank was circled by a catwalk around its middle. If we could get to the catwalk, a series of metal ladders connected the catwalk to the ground, four stories below.
The cable was only about thirty feet long, but it looked like a mile.
“You gotta be kidding,” said Freak.
Fiona looked timidly over the edge of the building and started shaking.
“No,” she said, sitting down abruptly. “I can’t do this.”
I wasn’t sure I could, either. It was a long drop.
“The only way we can escape is by going hand-over-hand across that cable?” asked Freak.
“Yes,” confirmed Double Six. “And the longer you delay, the greater your danger becomes.”
“I can’t do it,” wailed Fiona, hanging her head so that her hair hid her tears.
“It’s okay,” said Freak, sitting down next to her and nudging her with his shoulder. “I’ll carry you.”
She stopped crying, looked at him, and started crying even louder.
I thought about his offer. He almost had it right. I realized I had been able to lift Fiona’s weight back in Hellsboro. My legs weren’t all that great, but here was a situation where I didn’t need them.
“I have to be the one to carry her,” I said, sitting down on her opposite side. “You run better than I do, but I can hit a baseball farther. I’ve got better upper-body strength.”
Freak looked at me dubiously.
“And,” I added dramatically, “I have the oven mitts!” I pulled them out and slipped them on.
“I’m not hot!” Fiona said indignantly.
“You can say that again,” said Freak as she wiped the tears from her face and collected herself. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the cable, her empty backpack still dangling from her back. Freak pulled the pack off and started lengthening the straps, turning it into a harness.
“I’ll need the mitts to hold on to the cable,” I explained.
“I’ll be right next to the two of you,” said Freak. “I’ll provide extra support.”
“No,” said Double Six. “All three of you cannot cross at the same time. I sense the cable’s moorings are not all they should be. The combined weight of the three of you could snap the line. The combined weight of River and Fiona is eleven pounds less than that of Fiona and Freak. Freak should cross first, by himself. Then River and Fiona should attempt it together. The eleven pounds could make a difference.”
“Right!” growled Fiona. “If we’re going to do this, then LET’S DO IT!” She helped Freak cinch the backpack to my back.
“You get behind him and twist the straps around your arms like this,” Freak explained. “And clasp your hands across his chest, like you’re the second rider on a motorcycle. And whatever you do, don’t look down.”
“I’m not even going to breathe.”
“I would recommend,” said Double Six, “that Freak put all of his spare change in his T-shirt pocket.”
“Why would he need coins?” Fiona asked in alarm. “Is there going to be a toll?”
“I sincerely hope not,” said Double Six. “It’s all about weight distribution. Hurry!”
Freak pulled loose change from his pants and dumped it in his T-shirt pocket, then he grabbed the cable with both hands and swung himself off the roof. He hung from the cable at arm’s length for a moment, then slid one hand forward about a foot and slid the other hand over to meet it. He moved in one-foot increments this way across the cable until he had reached the far end. It took him a little over a minute to make the crossing.
Freak hauled himself up on the gas tank’s catwalk. He was safe.
“Should I put my money in my T-shirt?” I asked anxiously.
“No,” said Double Six. “Put me there. It will be easier for us to talk.”
I tucked the domino in my shirt. Pausing only to adjust my oven mitts, I leaned over with Fiona clinging to me and grabbed the cable as tightly as I could.
“Ready?” I said.
I took her total lack of response as a “yes.”
I pulled us off the roof and we dangled four stories above the ground. My arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets. I adjusted my grip. Without the oven mitts, the cable would have cut through my fingers.
I moved us forward a couple of inches and stopped. I immediately realized we couldn’t cross the cable as quickly as Freak had, because I’d need to slide my hands forward in much smaller increments.
Fiona buried her face in my back and gripped me so tightly I had trouble breathing. Then she started thrashing her legs, and we started bouncing on the cable. I knew if she didn’t stop, we would both hit the concrete.
“Fiona,” said a new voice from the domino. It was not Guernica’s. It was more feminine and spoke more quickly. “This may not be the time nor place, but I just want to say what a pleasure it’s been, watching you work. The way you solved the keypad code back at the front door was pure genius. Your foresight in bringing a jump rope to a coal-seam fire was brilliant. And your decision to send the elevator to the lobby bought you and your friends precious time. If I were still in command of an army, I’d give you a field promotion in an instant.”
Fiona’s legs stopped thrashing. I thought, maybe, we might not fall.
“My name is Miranda,” continued the domino’s new voice. “I’m the daughter of the man you met who kept turning into a wolf. That’s Edward Disin. He conquered the entire world of Indorsia despite my best efforts to stop him. Now he’s here. And his plans for Earth are even worse.”