The Rising(46)
“So they were jamming the signal or something.”
“More advanced science, really advanced, too advanced.”
“For us. Means it must come from somewhere else.”
“So we’re back to aliens again.”
“I didn’t think we ever left them.”
“Say they are aliens, Sam. What could they possibly want from me? What’s this thing the ash man thinks I have?”
“I haven’t got a clue,” Sam told him. “But the fact remains they knew a lot about you, an awful lot. And not just stuff you could pick up on the Internet, even though you’re famous.”
“I’m not famous.”
“How many autographs you sign after the last game?”
“None—I was on my way to the hospital, remember?”
“I meant the game before that, Alex.”
“I don’t remember. A few, a lot, I guess.”
“Because you’re famous.”
“Okay,” he shrugged, “whatever you say. But the ash man’s going to be back; I know he will.” Alex gazed toward the room’s wooden door, currently dead-bolted with an old-fashioned chain lock fastened into place as well. “And it doesn’t seem like locks are about to stop him.”
That thought made Alex think of his parents again. Had his mother really understood how sorry he was for throwing a fit over finding those brochures? Truth was, his grades did suck and washing out of college was a very real possibility unless he got his act in order. So maybe a fifth year wasn’t such a bad idea.
If only that was all he had to worry about.…
He felt the emptiness again in the pit of his stomach, something seeming to scratch at his insides. He squeezed Meng Po tighter, feeling the tiny statue’s ridges digging into his skin. Alex eased off and studied the impression it had made in his palm, watched it slowly fade away just like the life had faded from his mother’s eyes.
It was my fault.
Because the ash man and the others had come for him. And with that thought the pangs mixed between rage and grief returned, Alex left alternately trembling and squeezing Meng Po so hard he felt the wood seem to compress in his grasp. Then he felt Sam tightening an arm around his broad shoulders, resting her head against his chest.
“And me thinking you were just my tutor.…”
“I am. This is a lesson.”
“In what?”
“Psychology. The chapter on methods of reassurance and coping.”
“Funny,” he said, stroking her hair lightly, “I don’t remember signing up for that course.”
“Alex,” he heard Sam say.
“I’m busy. Doing my psych homework.”
He felt Sam ease her head off him. “What’s that?”
Alex looked down to see a thin rectangular object that had dropped atop the frayed bedcovers. It had a dull black finish and looked like a piece that had broken off something bigger. Taking it in hand, though, he realized it was a flash drive, the kind you could buy practically anywhere these days. Then he looked back at Meng Po still clutched in his hand and saw the hole in its bottom, revealing the secret slot where the flash drive had been hidden and slipped out of.
“You think…” Sam left her thought dangling, eyes rotating between Alex and the flash drive.
He held the flash drive in one hand, Meng Po in the other. “I think it’s why my mother wanted to make sure I took the statue with me. Because this may have the answers we’re looking for.”
SEVEN
MENG PO
The real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
—MARCEL PROUST
45
MESSAGE
RAIFF REACHED DANCER’S HOUSE in Millbrae three hours after receiving the message.
THE DANCER’S IN THE LIGHT
He’d been waiting for that message for eighteen years now, expecting it to come far sooner than it did. The fact that it hadn’t was testament to Dancer’s adoptive parents’ ability to keep the true nature of how he’d come into their lives secret from everyone, including Dancer himself. Dancer was the only hope, not just for the people of this world but also for the people back in Raiff’s.
Raiff parked amid a bevy of police vehicles, both vans and cars, squeezed everywhere on the cordoned-off scene in the shadow of gaping oak and pine trees. He busied himself with a review of what he’d long committed to memory about the town, how it had grown out of a country estate built in the 1860s by one Darius Ogden Mills. The estate combined “Mills” and the Scottish word “brae” to form the town’s name. Raiff recalled that Mills allowed local children to swim in three lakes situated on the estate and sell acacias to tourists passing through until his death, at which point his family began to sell off the land for development. The mansion itself remained standing until it burned down in 1954. The town was ethnically mixed, boasting a modest complement from the Asian community along with Hispanics and even immigrants hailing from the Philippines. All the bungalow-style homes on the street were quaint and roomy, if unremarkable, the Chins’ looking to be one of the smaller ones on the block.
Raiff reached under the driver’s seat of this week’s vehicle and plucked free a wooden cigar box he’d taped there. Inside were any number of identification badges and IDs. Originally he’d carried them in doubled-over cases that fit neatly in his pocket. Now he kept lanyards under his seat too, with which to dangle the badges from his neck. Times changed and Raiff changed with them.