"But everybody will be looking for us—"
Dad pointed to the now-blank wall. "They're looking for the people in that picture. They won't be looking for us the way we look now, will they?"
Weird went thoughtful at that. Then he started frowning. Then he looked at Dad with that faraway squint he gets when he sees something that no one else has seen yet. "How much of this did you plan in advance, Dad?"
Dad looked embarrassed. "What do you mean, Douglas?"
"We drove across the border and we didn't buy our train tickets until Mazatlan, and you paid cash. You only bought tickets as far as Acapulco. It was only after we were on the train that you upgraded them to Beanstalk City. You didn't want Mom to be able to find us by your credit card purchases, did you?"
Dad scratched his ear while he tried to figure out some polite way to say it. He couldn't. "Yes, you're right, Douglas. I didn't want your mother to know where we were going."
"And the reservations at Terminus? You knew we could catch an earlier car up to One-Hour too?"
"I didn't plan the hurricane—" he started to say.
"No, you didn't. That one was lucky. But wasn't it convenient that there was an empty first-class cabin on the 11:00 car? Wasn't it also convenient that we checked in at the reservation desk just in time to catch it? And wasn't it also convenient that you kept looking at your watch all over One-Hour? Did you make this reservation in another name so it would be waiting for us? You did it first class too, didn't you? So they'd be less likely to give it away."
"You're very observant, Douglas. You'd make a good detective." Dad sighed and admitted it. "I wanted you to have the chance. That's all. The chance your Mom didn't want you to have. I asked her—I said I wanted you to come with me up the Line, and then I'd send you all back home again. She said no. She was sure that I was going to try to steal you. But all I wanted was to give you one great memory of your Dad, and the trip I always promised you. And then she threatened to go to court and I realized just how angry she was and that she was going to try to hurt me any way she could. Even if it meant hurting you too. That's when I started thinking that if jumping off the planet was a chance for me to have a better life than is possible on Earth, well, then maybe it might be a chance for you kids too. But I promise you, Douglas, I won't take you anywhere against your will. I just want to spend some time with you before I go. Is that too much to ask?"
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" I asked.
"If I had, would you have believed me? Would you have come?"
I thought about that. He was right. I wouldn't have believed him. Would I have come? That was a harder question. Not believing him, I don't know what I would have done. In reply, I shrugged.
Stinky had been silent the whole time. I wasn't sure how much of this he understood, but he'd been listening carefully and suddenly he piped up, "Aren't we going home? I wanna go home!"
Dad and Douglas and I exchanged looks. Dad scooped up Stinky and held him on his lap. "Hey, kiddo. You're going to go home real soon, if that's what you want. But Daddy's going away for a long
time, and I wanted us to have some time together before I say goodbye, that's all."
"Where are you going?"
"Very far away. So far away that you can't even imagine it."
"Why?" demanded Stinky. "Don't you love us anymore?"
"I love you more than anything, sweetheart."
"Can't you take us with?"
"Well, that's what we're talking about now. Whether or not you want to go."
"But I don't want to go. I want to go home."
"Okay. You can do that, if that's what you want."
"But I want you to come too."
"I can't do that."
"But why are you going away?"
"Because it's something I have to do."
The frustration on Bobby's face was evident. He began to cry. "But why ... ? It isn't fair!"
"I'm not sure I understand it all either, kiddo. This is just the way it is." Dad hugged Bobby close, probably because he didn't have anything else to say.
Douglas gave Dad a weird look then—one of those looks that got him his nickname. He shook his head over some personal annoyance that maybe only the two of them understood and headed for the door.
"Where are you going, Doug?"
"Nowhere. Out."
Yeah. Like where could he go? And then he was gone anyway.
I wanted to follow him, but I felt I should stay with Dad for a bit. There was something else going on that I still didn't understand. Whatever it was, Douglas hadn't said, so I felt just like Bobby: it wasn't fair and I didn't know why.
MORE UP
At first, dad was a little worried about Doug leaving the cabin. He was afraid that someone might recognize him from the pictures—or any of us—but we'd cut off all our hair and Dad and Douglas were wearing their space hats and Stinky and I were both buzz-cut, so we didn't look very much like the pictures on TV anymore. And then we also realized that it was unlikely that anyone else on this elevator car had even seen that same broadcast. Doug had been watching an El Paso news feed. All the other news was talking about Hurricane Charles and the damage it was doing all across Ecuador. Nobody was going to be looking for us; they were all too busy with much more serious problems.
And even if somebody did recognize us, what could they do? We hadn't broken any laws. And even if we had, who was going to arrest us? The elevator attendants? We couldn't run away anyway.
Of course, once we got to Geostationary, they could have the police waiting for us, but Dad didn't think that was likely. Geostationary wasn't signatory to the SuperNational Treaty and there wasn't any extradition from space. This was because the Loonies weren't willing to agree to it and Geostationary usually sided with Luna more than Earth. According to Weird, anyway.
But there were private security agents available for hire at Geostationary, and if Mom really wanted to make trouble for us, she could hire a couple of those guys to meet us. But what could they do? Could they force us to go back to Earth? Dad wasn't sure what might happen in that case.
Just to be safe, Dad said I should probably stay in the cabin anyway. So I glowered and sulked and tried on different angry faces. And then I got bored. And when I get bored, I get nasty. And when I get nasty, I get disgusting. Just to see how disgusting I can be.
It didn't take long. Dad got so disgusted watching me fart and belch and flick my boogers at the TV screen that he finally said, "Okay, Charles. You win. I can't stand it anymore." He muttered something about teaching hygiene to chimpanzees. Then he said I could go out and walk around again, but only if I promised to keep out of trouble.
It was probably the boogers that did it. Boogers always work. Adults can't stand boogers. They can't even stand the word "booger." Booger booger booger. I didn't even like it when Stinky flicked his boogers, so it was probably a lot worse for Dad when I did it. But it worked.
I went down to the bottom of the car and up to the top, with stops everywhere in-between, looking for a place where something interesting—anything—was happening.
Nothing was happening. Nothing. And more nothing on top of that. The only thing to do was wander around—which I was already pretty good at. Mom called it my "restless lion" prowl. She said all I needed was a dead antelope leg to drag around. Ha ha. That's a grownup joke, only funny to grownups, annoying to those carrying the burden of genetic progress. But at least there was more room to drag my antelope haunch in the whole elevator car than there was in the cabin. Up and down and all around. The only thing weird was that I didn't see Weird anywhere, but I wasn't really looking for him anyway, so I didn't think about it. He'd probably found a terminal somewhere and was redesigning someone's government or something.