“Probably? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Pax was in quite a state after seeing you last, and pistols don’t have safety features. They don’t have auto-locks that prevent damage to living tissue when placed against a person’s head, do they? And there aren’t any voxes on the surface to call for help. Thanks to you, the only means of locating Pax is floating somewhere near Neptune.” Vin’s lips quivered. “I haven’t seen or heard from Pax in over five weeks.”
“Listen, I just came here to see if Pax was back, to see if Pax was okay. I wanted to talk—wanted to say I was sorry. I would have come sooner, but I died. I just woke up a week ago. Pol said Pax wasn’t here and had me doing—” Ellis let his shoulders slump as a crushing weight settled. “It doesn’t matter. Have people searched for Pax?”
“Of course.” Vin was visibly crying. Tears slipped down from under the mask, leaving tracks that glistened in the light. No sound, though, just a quivering lip. “I mobilized every close friend Pax has—and that’s a big army. If Pax ever wanted to seize control of the planet, it wouldn’t be hard. But no—we’ve been looking for weeks and still nothing. I’m all but convinced Pax is lying in some out-of-the-way place on the surface with that gun of yours in a cold hand.”
“There’s no way at all to find Pax?”
“It’s a big planet. I just hope wherever Pax is, it’s raining. Pax loved the rain, you know?”
Chapter Twelve
The Time Is Now
Ellis had every intention of setting off on a quest to find Pax, but it took all of five minutes to realize that wasn’t practical. He had no idea where to begin looking. If Vin and Pol couldn’t find Pax after more than a month, what chance did he have? Ellis didn’t even own a Port-a-Call.
Leaves were just starting to turn yellow and the air was cooler than when Ellis had left, but little else at the farm had changed. All the shifting through time was disorienting, as if he were skimming through the book of his life. Ellis returned to the farm less out of desire and more out of a lack of anywhere else to go. Vin had been more than willing to open a portal to Greenfield Village, wanting Ellis to be gone just as much as Ellis wanted to leave. While Warren and the others would take him in, and had saved his life, Ellis wasn’t sold on the New America idea. He wasn’t convinced that Hollow World was so awful. He’d seen the beauty for himself, and his conversation with Sol had only deepened his appreciation. A world without constraints, fear, or pain—wasn’t that how most imagined heaven? And yet it did feel empty. Not because of its lack of challenge or individuality—he would still have plenty of that—but something else entirely. Both Warren’s New America and Hollow World remained bleak and meaningless to him for one simple and unexpected reason—they both lacked Pax.
Alva has a hot-chocolate pattern for you to try.
He remembered looking at the portal, seeing the dining room.
I could have gone. I could have walked through. How hard would that have been? Why didn’t I? I would have if I had known what it meant to Pax.
He remembered Pax’s face and the single desperate word…Please.
One more bad decision; one more death on his conscience.
Ellis paused at the end of Firestone Lane and stared down its length at the old farmhouse. For good or ill, this would be his home. Where else could he go?
The only one in the farmhouse was Yal, who, as always, was cooking.
Ellis didn’t have a watch—no way to tell the time except by the sun. Late afternoon, he guessed. Maybe five o’clock. Being autumn now, the days would be shorter, so maybe four o’clock? What was it, September? October? The stalks of corn in the field were brown. When did that happen in Michigan? Had the climate changed? He was annoyed with how his points of reference continually shifted. Just as he was settling in, he had skipped ahead again.
“Master Ellis Rogers.” Yal nodded, almost bowed, when Ellis entered to the scent of something baking—smelled like bread.
Pots boiled and chopped carrots and onions cascaded on the cutting board like splayed decks of cards. Yal was wearing an apron stained with handprints and held a towel in one hand, a butcher’s knife in the other.
“Master?” Ellis didn’t like the sound of the word, especially on an old-fashioned farm.
Yal nodded again. “Master Ren has decreed that the two of you should have a formal address as per your status in the community.”
“Our status? What’s our status?”
“As leaders, mentors, superiors.” Yal scooped up the carrots with the blade of the knife and slopped them into one of the bubbling pots.
“Masters? What’s wrong with elder, teacher, sir, or even sensei?”
“I think Master Ren felt master was more appropriate.”
“Yal!” Rob stomped along the porch, entering the kitchen covered in dirt and sweat, a wooden switch in hand. Rob raised the stick threateningly. “You lazy turd! Get your ass—” The former Ved Two halted, spotting Ellis. “Oh—” Rob quickly lowered the switch. “I didn’t know you were back, master.”
The honorific combined with the stick in Rob’s hand set off alarm bells.
“I was just coming by to whip some sense into Yal. Need to do that on occasion.”
What kind of place is Warren making?
“Why?” Ellis asked. “You can see Yal is working.” He pointed at the peeled potatoes, the chopped onions and carrots.
“That doesn’t matter.” Rob began to clap the stick into his palm. “It’s the pecking order. Ved One—ah, Bob—beats me, so I get to beat Yal.”
“And I’ll get to beat Mib, right?” Yal asked.
“Of course.”
Ellis couldn’t take his eyes off the stick as it slapped in Rob’s three-fingered hand. About as thick as his thumb, there was still bark on it, green and white patches where the branches had been trimmed off. There’s a pecking order to the world, Ricky the Dick had reminded him, and God put you at the bottom.
“But Yal isn’t doing anything wrong,” Ellis protested. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” Rob said. “This is survival of the fittest. We don’t want weak people here. Members of the Firestone Family need to be hard as rocks to stand the brutal days ahead. Yal is still the new recruit. Master Ren wants to toughen the young one up. Indoctrinate Yal to the way things are done here.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ellis asked.
“Ah—no, master.” Rob looked puzzled. “That’s right from Master Ren’s own mouth. He wants us all to be tough as he is. Fact is, I’m trying to help Yal here. Master Ren has decided that we’ll be divided into hes, shes, and its based on how we behave. Now that we’ll be living among real humans—once the women arrive—he wants to get us ready. Yal is on the list right now as a she.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Again that puzzled look. “Master Ren says women are inferior to men. Yal won’t want to be a woman, but will be unless I can shape his ass up.”
“Shape his ass up?”
“Yeah, Master Ren thinks Yal might be a little too light in the loafers.”
“Yal doesn’t even wear shoes.”
“It’s a figure of speech. It means—”
“I know what it means. It’s something Warren taught you, but apparently he skipped the lesson on sarcasm.”
Rob continued to stare at him, bewildered.
Ellis was angry. He was mad at Rob for blindly following orders, mad at Yal for gleefully accepting a beating with the promise that the cook could do the same to the next recruit. He was angry with Warren for creating such a vicious system. Mostly he was mad at himself. For that he had plenty of reasons.
“Where is old Master Ren, anyway?”
“In the village—Menlo Park, inside Edison’s workshop.”
“I think maybe I ought to have a talk with him.”
Ellis aimed for the door, but stopped short, reached out, and pulled the switch away from Rob. “Don’t go hitting anyone anymore.”