The Rising(75)

“‘… 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.”

*

Bishop Ranch, it turned out, was a sprawling office park that ranked among Northern California’s most prestigious business locations. On the woman’s advice, they’d taken BART to the Dublin/Pheasanton station, where buses were conveniently available to take them the rest of the way to San Ramon in Contra Costa County, where Bishop Ranch was located.

“You can see it now.” Alex pointed out the bus’s window. “Over there on the right.”

Sam followed his finger to the massive interconnected complex of buildings that reminded her somehow of the Pentagon, trying to picture things as they were the day of the fire eighteen years earlier when Laboratory Z had burned to the ground.

Situated in a tree-laden valley dominated by rolling hills and the same oaks, elms, and spruce that grew like weeds over the entire Bay Area, the city of San Ramon sat in the shadow of Mount Diablo to the northeast. A curious mix of urban sprawl enclosed by untouched land that passed as wilderness ruled by grasslands and tree orchards. The dryness of fall had turned the vast planes of grasses a goldenrod shade that made for pleasant viewing outside the window of their BART car in the trek there. They’d had the car virtually to themselves, Sunday marking the return of casual drivers along what is less than affectionately known as “the Maze.”

“I can’t believe your parents grow weed,” Alex said to make conversation, when Sam’s gaze lingered out the window a little too long.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it just seems strange.”

“No, strange was when they tried to pay the mortgage with a trunk full of homemade jams and jellies.”

“A trunk full of jams and jellies? That sounds crazy.” Alex smiled.

“Based on the past couple days, I don’t even know what qualifies as crazy anymore.”

“If I hadn’t been born on another planet, I’d wonder if maybe we weren’t switched at birth,” Alex said. “What with your parents likely preferring a football player and mine wishing they had a kid who actually was good in school.”

The smile slipped from his face at that.