We had a meeting in my backyard that night after supper. I had taken two adult-strength aspirin, and my shoulders felt better. We sat around a small, circular table with Double Six balanced upright in the table’s center. Stevie Shuck’s cat, Mucus, kept weaving in and out of our legs.
My aunt was home, watching us from the kitchen window as she washed some dishes. Seeing her there made me feel good. I knew where she was. I knew she was safe. As soon as I walked in, I’d hugged her. I’d given her the camera with the pictures of the portal and asked if she’d get the film developed for me. She had promised she would do it the following day, and I hugged her a second time, just because.
“Double Six?” I said. “Hello?”
Double Six had not spoken since our escape from Rodmore. I’d tried to have a conversation with it several times, but it hadn’t responded. I was afraid it was broken.
“Guernica? Are you there?” I persisted. “We have some questions we want to ask.”
“Then perhaps you should get yourselves a Magic Eight Ball,” Double Six said, sounding put out. “I am not a toy to be played with.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have made yourself in the shape of a domino,” suggested Freak. “Are you mad at us for some reason?”
“I am attempting to resume my original mission. Tracking you and observing you. The original parameters of the mission did not involve two-way communication.”
“Maybe we could talk to Miranda instead,” Fiona said eagerly.
“It upsets Miranda to talk to the living. It makes her long for a flesh-and-blood body. She only spoke to you today because you were in danger.”
“Would she talk to us again if we went out and played in traffic?” I asked, gesturing toward the road. A car went by with a couple of kids from school in the backseat. Fiona made a halfhearted attempt to hide her face behind her hand, then thought better of it and gave the faintest of shrugs.
“I think it best if you concentrate on helping Alf set up the house for the crayon auction,” said Double Six. “That is our best chance of luring Edward Disin into the open. More questions at this point will only confuse the issue.”
“Were you in River’s pocket when he and I were in the laundry chute?” Fiona demanded.
The domino was silent, but I nodded to Fiona. I had kept the domino on me ever since Alf had told me it was a good-luck piece.
“So Alf knew we were there,” said Fiona.
“Alf knows only those things I choose to tell him,” said Double Six. “He was unaware you were listening.”
“What about Miranda?”
“She knew you were there.”
“So she was speaking for our benefit? She might have said things that weren’t true, just because she knew we were listening?” Fiona picked up the domino and held it in front of her face. “Is Miranda planning to take over my body so she can live again or what?”
“Miranda briefly entertained the notion,” Double Six admitted. “It was originally Alf’s idea. He’s upset with himself that he ever thought of it.”
“Is he? Really?” said Fiona sarcastically. “How can we trust him?”
“Guernica doesn’t even trust him,” added Freak. “Why should we?”
“Because when Alf wrestles with his conscience, his conscience usually wins,” said Double Six. “Few people are entirely good, just as few are entirely evil. This is what sometimes makes choosing sides so difficult. At some point, you will have to trust somebody. It is important that you use your own judgment. Guernica, if I may refer to myself in the third person, trusts Alf. It’s just that his agenda and mine are not always the same.”
Fiona tossed the domino back on the table. She didn’t look convinced.
Mucus jumped up on my lap, as if Fiona had just thrown a cat toy. I scratched him behind the ears and dropped him back on the ground.
After a moment, Double Six said, “I will answer one question from each of you. If you are having problems deciding who you can trust, perhaps some honest answers will help.”
“Assuming they’re honest,” said Freak.
“You have my word that they will be.”
I started thinking about what my one question would be. I had so many, it would be difficult to choose. Freak had no such problem. He immediately said, “Why didn’t Alf just tell us all about Indorsia and the portal and the whole enslavement-of-mankind thing to begin with?”
“Would you have believed him?”
Freak blinked. “No.”
“Having seen what you saw today, do you believe it?”
“After what we’ve seen today,” admitted Freak, “it would be hard not to.”
Fiona and I nodded.
“Alf would never have sent you into Hellsboro,” Double Six continued. “Miranda and I, however, understood you would never be convinced unless you saw things for yourselves.”
“You didn’t send us there,” said Freak.
“No. But I could have stopped you before you ever left Bagshot Road, simply by informing Alf. He has too much concern for your safety. He feels the less you know, the safer you’ll be. When you see him tomorrow, please do not reveal what happened today. He would know I fudged the domino’s telemetry. He would start to question my decisions, and that would only serve to put him in a weaker position with regard to his fight with his father.”
“How long ago did Alf and his father come here from Indorsia?” Freak asked.
“That is a second question.”
“Actually, it’s part B of my first question,” explained Freak.
Double Six was silent for a moment. Then it said, “Alf arrived in August of 1952. The portal opened in a mine shaft forty feet below the surface of the earth, under what is now Rodmore Chemical. His father followed a few hours later, thinking he was at the head of a small army.”
“He should have sent a scouting party through the portal before he came through.”
“He was in the grip of Compulsive Completist Disorder. His judgment was impaired. That was the whole point of inflicting him with CCD.”
“How old is Alf?” asked Fiona, and immediately put both her hands on her mouth and went all wide-eyed. “No! Wait! That wasn’t my question!”
“Yes, it was,” decided Double Six. “Alf is one hundred eighty-one. His father is two hundred ten.”
“She asked their ages, not their weights,” said Freak.
“Alf is one hundred eighty-one years old. His father is two hundred ten,” responded Double Six. “Because of their mastery of the biological sciences, the Indorsian ruling class—the Royals—can live for as long as eight hundred years, although the final six weeks are almost always spent in a nursing home. This is why the Royals look upon twelve-year-olds as mere toddlers, and why Edward Disin may be lulled into a false sense of security by your presence at Underhill House. He won’t even see you as things with minds of their own, and this may give Alf the advantage he needs. From here on in, whenever you go to Underhill House, make yourselves as conspicuous as possible. No more hiding under the trees. The time for that has passed. I believe the final question is River’s.”
I wanted to know so many things. I wanted to know if the damage done to the world’s population by cell phones and food additives was permanent. I wanted to know if getting Edward Disin arrested would really be enough to stop him. I wanted to know why only fifteen of Indorsia’s sixteen continents had been colonized.
“Did the doghat known as Shepherd kill my parents?” I asked.
Double Six was silent for a moment. “From the records I have been able to access, I believe the answer is yes,” it finally said. “Shepherd was overzealous. He realized your parents were too smart to work for Rodmore Chemical without discovering the company had a hidden agenda, and they were too righteous not to do something about it once they figured it out. Shepherd acted on his own. Edward Disin already had his eye on your parents as possible recruits for his inner circle. He was furious when their car went over the cliff.”
“They never would have joined him,” I said.
“I did not know them. But based upon my acquaintanceship with you, I will agree. No, they never would have.”
“This guy has to be stopped,” declared Freak. “I want him to pay for my sister, and your parents, and Fiona’s twin, and all the people who used to be our neighbors!”
“And your dad,” said Fiona gently.
“Yeah,” said Freak, “he should pay for that, too.”
“I spent some time recently in a stuffy hazmat suit in close proximity to a mouse,” Double Six announced somewhat unexpectedly. “At one point that mouse even used me as a stepping stone as it climbed up River’s body on its way to say hello to River’s head.”
The three of us stared at Double Six.
“Does this have a point?” said Freak.
“I suspect a bit of mouse-scent still lingers on me. I mention this as a possible explanation for what I am ninety-nine percent sure is about to hap—”
Double Six never finished. Mucus jumped up on the table, caught the domino in his jaws, and sailed off in the direction of the rhododendrons. Freak knocked over his chair as he jumped up in pursuit. Fiona and I scrambled after him.
Mucus shot like a furry comet across Freak’s front yard and veered into his driveway. As we rounded the corner of the house, we could see something rustling along the edge of the big blue tarpaulin that covered the backyard firewood stack. Freak raced to the stack and started pulling the tarp from it. Puddles of rainwater on the tarp’s surface flew off in a fine spray.
Freak had the tarp half off the woodpile and was searching the erratically stacked wood for a hidden cat when Freak’s father suddenly stood up from a lawn chair on the far side of the pile. Water was trickling down his face. His eyes looked like they were about to bug out of his head. He pointed a beer can at Freak and shouted, “Whaddya think you’re doin’?”
Freak barely gave him a glance. “Looking for Mucus!” he said.
Freak’s father moved faster than the cat had. He came around the woodpile with his hand raised like he might strike Freak, but he tripped over a log and went sprawling. He lurched to his knees and struck out at the air in front of him.
“Don’t you ever talk to me that way again!” he bellowed, slurring most of the words.
Fiona and I stepped forward, standing protectively on either side of Freak, making sure his father could see his son had friends.
“This doesn’t concern you,” he growled. I half expected his snout to elongate and his teeth to grow. I wanted to explain to him that Mucus was the name of his neighbor’s cat, and that Freak wasn’t being disrespectful. I started to speak, but Freak caught my eye and shook his head.
I kept my mouth shut, but Fiona didn’t. She blurted, “He didn’t do anything!”
Freak’s father ignored her. He staggered to his feet, waved at the wood his son had scattered, and said, “You can stack this back up later. Now get in the house!”
Freak bolted in through the back door. Mr. Nesterii looked at us and sniffed. “You two should go home now,” he said, following his son into the house and slamming the door behind him.
The noise spooked Mucus, who emerged from the woodpile, still with Double Six in his mouth. The cat scooted under the fence and headed into Hellsboro.