“Alex?” Sam posed, looking right at him.
“They asked about Alex too. They were careful to say you hadn’t done anything wrong. They didn’t say the same thing about him. When the cops come back—”
“They said they were coming back?”
“Maybe. I think so. Strange that they didn’t write anything down, come to think of it.”
“Did they smell like motor oil, Dad?”
“How’d you know that, Sammie?” her father asked after a pause.
75
THE GENERAL
RAIFF DRESSED HIS WOUNDS as best he could. His head still felt like a hammer was pounding the inside of his skull and he didn’t dare risk taking any medications likely to dull more than the pain.
Because it was coming.
He didn’t know precisely where or when, or even what, exactly. Only, the very reason why he’d spent the last eighteen years of his life protecting a child who had no idea of his true being or heritage was about to be fulfilled. It was the sole explanation for the events of the past two days—Dancer’s house and the hospital first, then the attack of last night. The appearance of the Shadow that Dancer had called the ash man and the import of the quasi-apparition’s words the boy had managed to reconstruct.
“‘No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither, with modesty enough…,’” he said across the table, where a chessboard sat between him and the General.
Quoting Hamlet, specifically a scene where the doomed prince holds a skull in hand while musing on the inevitability of death. “Inevitability” being the key word because that described the war that mankind had no idea was coming.
“‘… and likelihood to lead it,’” Raiff completed. “What do you think of that, General?”
The General was actually a marble bust of whom Raiff believed to be Labienus, Julius Caesar’s most trusted commander and confidante. Now his one and only of the same distinction, salvaged like virtually all the furnishings in Raiff’s underground lair from trash heaps and Dumpsters. The General wasn’t much of a conversationalist, of course, which made him a fine companion and even better chess opponent since, of course, Raiff never lost.
“Checkmate,” he said, moving his knight in for the kill. “As inevitable as what’s coming. I don’t suppose you’ve got an idea of how to stop it. No, only Dancer knows that, the problem being he doesn’t know what he knows. But it’s got to be there. That’s why he’s here, why I’m here.”
Raiff stopped, as if waiting for a response. Some nights, when the light was right, he thought the statue’s lips moved. No sound emerged, though, as if its makers lacked the ability to string vocal cords from marble. But not being able to speak didn’t mean the General couldn’t listen.
Raiff reconfigured the pieces on the chessboard, starting a fresh game from scratch with the dueling armies neatly staged across from each other. “But here’s the real problem, General: What am I missing? These androids didn’t come from the other world, they came from this one. Built right here. Where? How? How many? You see what I’m getting at? Dancer’s the only hope to stop them and whatever groundwork they’re laying for the real invasion that’s coming. Except that suggests spaceships pouring out of the sky packed with troops and weapons prepared to wage war. But we know they won’t be coming that way, don’t we? We know they’ll be coming the same way I did when I brought Dancer through the wormhole.”
But the boy’s remaining Watchers hadn’t checked in since last night. Could be Marsh’s Trackers had got them. Or maybe more of the drones. Either party honing in on metabolic signals and waves, which explained why Raiff had long ago built his lair underground instead of above it.
And in the last place anyone would ever think to look.
“Your move, General,” Raiff resumed, when the marble bust made no response. “Oh, that’s right,” he said, correcting himself. “It’s mine.”
TEN
LABORATORY Z
Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.
—ELBERT HUBBARD
76
SAN RAMON
ALEX AND SAM STOPPED at an information desk inside the BART, short for Bay Area Rapid Transit, station a few blocks from the Buy Two store. A blue uniformed woman with milk chocolate skin smiled their way when she noticed them.
Alex leaned in toward her, but Sam shouldered him aside. “Let me this time.” Then, to the clerk, “This is going to sound crazy, but is there, like, a huge farm around here, something with livestock and cattle?”
“You mean like a ranch?”
“Yes, exactly!”
The woman stifled a laugh and shook her head. “Honey, there’s a ranch, all right, but you won’t find any horses or cows there.”