He smiled at me. It was a better smile than it had been earlier, and I felt Taks’ arms tighten—just a little. “There are a few small things that my mother gave me,” Casimir said.
“That got through the border guards,” I said.
“Like sewing your money into the lining of your coat,” said Jill. “So maybe the robbers won’t notice.”
“Good attitude, manuke,” I said. “I wonder if it’s generally known that the Newworld border is as full of holes as this car is full of dog hair.” But Jill wasn’t listening to me; she was trying to pick up what Casimir knew. Our eyes met. I could see that she was succeeding. And then . . . I began to pull it too, or it to pull me. It was a bit like a loop of gruuaa tugging in their insubstantial way. Maybe that’s what it was. Jill nodded, turned to face the front again, and started the car. It roared to life as befitted a giant hairy thing with tusks.
“Oh!” I said as Jill backed the Mammoth around in a deliberate, star-pupil-driver-ed way that said she was every bit as frightened as I was. “My algebra book! It had better come with us—”
“I’m sitting on it,” said Takahiro.
I relaxed again (sort of). I supposed it really wasn’t going to let itself be left behind now. I reached down past Takahiro’s skinny butt and gave its spine a pat.
“How close are we going to be able to come?” said Jill conversationally a minute later, negotiating the main street, which was unusually empty—and there had been no soldiers on the corner of Jebali. We were the only car at the midtown stoplight, which never happens except in the middle of the night. Two cars passed in front of us—both of them loaded to the roof with suitcases and boxes. Leaving town. Heading north and west, which was where Mom and Ran would be going soon too. With a car full of suitcases and boxes.
The newsboard banners were empty. There were silverbugs everywhere I looked—clustered in dizzying little clumps on the overhead power lines, glinting on storefront windowsills, and scattered apparently at random on the sidewalks. And ironically every one of the big metal anti-cobey boxes had a crown or swirl of silverbugs. So much for you, I thought at them. They didn’t reply. Two days ago I wouldn’t have expected them to. Today . . . today it was probably just the throb of the armydar making me spacey. I was almost getting used to the armydar. This couldn’t be good.
My stomach felt funny. I hoped we didn’t drive over any silverbugs.
We went our solitary way across the intersection. “To wherever,” said Jill.
“I am not sure,” said Casimir at the same time I said, “Probably not very.”
Takahiro said, “Even if we could drive up to the front door, we don’t want to, do we? It’s not like we’re coming to the local lockup for official visiting hours.”
I was beginning to feel that hazy tug more strongly. The gruuaa, I thought, had stabilized their line on Val.
“There’s that falling-down army base a few miles out of town in more or less this direction,” said Jill. “Out at the edge of the barrens. Goat Creek. Maybe it’s not as falling down as it looks.”
“There have been rumors for years that it isn’t,” said Takahiro. “Even that it’s completely in use. They’re just not saying for what. I’ve always wondered why—and who—runs the sheep out there, you know? The perimeter fence is from when it was a firing range and special-ops training and stuff, but the fence is still there. And so are a lot of sheep. So like now I’m wondering if they’re using them—like we’re using our guys here.” Mongo was doing one of his I-am-a-spineless-rubber-dog things and had twisted his own head around so he could lick Bella’s face as her head rested on his back. Of course there was a lot of face to Bella.
“Dad used to say that it was a conservation thing, the sheep,” I said. “Managing wild grassland or something.”
Takahiro snorted. “The only stuff that grows on the barrens is what can grow on the barrens. They don’t need sheep for that. And they had to import some kind of tough little feral sheep that could survive on what does grow there.”
Jill glanced in the rear view mirror at Takahiro. “The things you know.”
“I have the secret gizmohead insignia tattooed over my heart,” said Takahiro.
“Whatever,” I said. “This feels like the right direction.”
“Good,” said Casimir. “You feel it too.”
“It’s the gruuaa,” I said. There were a lot of them in the car with us. They seemed to be twisting themselves into a big, irregular, ever-so-slightly glowing net. I could both (kind of) see them draped all over everything in their usual raggedy globs and clusters of shadow, and also (kind of) see them as this big glowing network thing. It seemed to throb in time with the armydar, and with the flash of the streetlights over Mongo’s back. Light sometimes did strange dimensional things when it hit the dramatically black and white markings of a border collie. Such as the border collie in my lap at the moment. Flash. Flash.
“Perhaps, when this is over, you will teach me to speak to the gruuaa,” said Casimir.
I shook my head, but that made the flashing-network thing worse. “I can’t teach you anything,” I said. “I don’t know. It’s not really speaking.” Flash. Flash.
“But I like the idea there’s going to be an after,” said Jill.
The landscape changed as we got closer to the Old Barrens. The big lush trees put in by the town council disappeared and the tougher, scrubbier trees of the barrens took their place. The sourleaf grass that the sheep around the old army station had to live on began to show in clumps, especially in breaks in the paving. The farmland was all on the other side of town, toward Copperhill; this side there was only a polite strip of cultivated public land before it began disintegrating into the barrens. At first there were warehouses and big ugly slabs of grey industrial something or other and then they disappeared too. Now we were in the barrens for real. There were occasional sandpits and increasing stretches of scraggy, grey-green sourleaf grass, turning yellow for autumn, and looking kind of ominous in the twilight. We went click clack over the abandoned stretch of auxiliary railroad that had served the army base when Station had been a big town and the base had been open. Officially open.
Jill turned the local radio on. Even the usual burbling sounded subdued. There was still nothing to worry about, said the presenter, trying to sound chirpy and failing, but since the schools and many businesses had decided to close temporarily while the army finished securing the situation—
“Situation?” said Jill.
“Securing?” said Takahiro.
—much of the town had decided to take an unscheduled vacation.
“Vacation?” Jill, Takahiro, and I all said together.
But if any citizens had any concerns, there was an army presence at the high school, the local Watchguard offices, and city hall, and would be glad to answer any questions.
“Presence?” said Takahiro. “Concerns?”
“Well, at least they all seem to be busy elsewhere,” I said. The road was amazingly empty, except for silverbugs. There were way too many silverbugs. We saw one pickup truck with something like a lawn mower in the back and one closed van, which could have had anything at all in it. A small traveling plastic cobey model for educational purposes. Major Blow-it. Val. Probably not Val, since the gruuaa didn’t react.
Jill turned the radio off.
CHAPTER 12
WE’D BEEN ON THE ROAD ABOUT HALF AN HOUR when Jill pulled over onto a sandy, gravelly spot that looked like other cars had stopped there too, but why? I doubted there were enough people who tried to break into Goat Creek to need a parking space. She turned the car off and we sat there listening to the ting of cooling metal and the noises of dogs hoping this meant they were getting out of this jiggle factory soon. She said, “We need a plan.”