A Crack in the Sky (6 page)

Eli stood up from the chair now, eyeing the doorway at the far end of the room. Spider wasn’t making any sense. He was scaring him. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Grandfather isn’t hatching any plot. He doesn’t share any special information. All we do is watch his music box and play checkers.”

Spider’s expression went dark. All of a sudden he grabbed Eli by the collar, and Eli found himself nose to nose with him. “Don’t play games with me, little cousin. I just want to know where your loyalties lie. If you’d let me, I believe I could prove very … 
helpful
to you. Or not.” He glowered at him. “You don’t want to cross me.”

Eli was too startled to respond. Loyalties? What on earth was Spider talking about? “But you don’t understand,” he said at last, trying to keep his voice level. “I’m telling the truth. Grandfather doesn’t talk about any secrets or the company or anything like that. I have nothing to share with you.”

For a long moment Spider stayed quiet. “Your attitude disappoints me,” he said, his voice eerily calm once more. He let go and made a show of smoothing out Eli’s collar again. “You should know that my father is already concerned about you. The family is at a loss about where to place you in the organization. What InfiniCorp needs are leaders and innovators, not children who sit apart from everyone else and daydream about foolish old stories that mean nothing to anyone anymore.” He leaned in and prodded him in the chest with one of his long, skinny fingers. “All I can say is, you’d better watch your step.”

Eli’s stomach was in his throat. From the main ballroom the sounds of celebrating could still be heard. He wanted to get away from his strange cousin. He took a deep breath, and then he ducked around him and ran.

Spider didn’t move. He didn’t even try to stop him. He narrowed his eyes at Eli without saying another word.

*   *   *

Something extraordinary happened between Eli and Marilyn one evening later that week. It was just after dinner, and they were in the living room with Sebastian, who was having an argument with his instruction robot, a sleek, blue HumanForm named Dr. Avila. Sebastian had recently dreamed up a new business idea: InfiniCorp could sell security systems to Outsiders. He’d even worked out a mock business plan.

“But why shouldn’t we?” he was asking. “There’s an untapped market out there. Even criminals need to protect their stuff from other criminals. As long as they have something of value to trade with us, why not do it?”

Soothing music filled the room. Dr. Avila was programmed with a simulated personality and, unlike ancient Dr. Toffler, designed with a gender—female. At that moment her expression was peaceful as she balanced on one of her plastic legs while holding the other above her head with her chassis forward and her arms outstretched. She was following along with a CloudNet stream called
Yoga for Droids
.

“It’s an intriguing notion, Sebastian,” she said, holding her pose, “but impractical and potentially dangerous. You can’t trust Outsiders to act like civilized consumers.”

Eli was on the sofa, pretending to review his lesson, while Marilyn lay at his feet, watching him. All day long Eli had been feeling a weird sensation in his head. At first it had been only a distant, intermittent hum, almost like a mosquito buzzing around his ears. But now it was getting louder.

“How do we know unless we try?” Sebastian asked. “Isn’t Grandfather always saying the company is looking for innovative ideas?”

Dr. Avila raised one of her synthetic eyebrows. “I doubt doing business with savages is what he had in mind.”

All of a sudden the buzzing became so insistent that Eli had difficulty thinking. He sat up and held his hands to his ears. He wasn’t sure what was happening to him.

Too involved in his conversation to be aware of anything else, Sebastian didn’t notice. “I’m serious. If I could get permission to go Outside for just a few minutes, if I could only get close enough to some desert rats to try to talk to them, I bet I could prove my idea could work.”

Eli could barely hear past the static. When Dr. Avila answered, her voice sounded as if it were being transmitted over a distant radio signal. “You’d never get authorization to leave the dome for something so frivolous.” And then, after a pause, “Sebastian, what’s wrong with your brother?”

A moment later Eli became aware that he must have fainted. He was lying across the sofa and Sebastian was leaning over him, staring into his eyes. “Whoa, that was spooky, Eli. What’s the matter with you?”

“I … don’t know.” He rubbed his temples. The buzzing was gone, but he was still light-headed. “I just felt … strange, that’s all.”

“I think he’s all right,” Sebastian said to Dr. Avila. “Probably just catching a cold or something.”

The blue robot was standing behind him, watching over his shoulder, her tranquillity disturbed. “Perhaps …,” she said. “I suppose we ought to instruct the cooking droid to prepare him something healthy. In the meantime, you’d better help him to his room.”

Minutes later Eli sat up in his bed, sipping a bowl of
macrobiotic soup. The cooking droid had insisted on making him the greenish liquid even though Eli felt sure that whatever was happening, it wasn’t a viral infection. Something had changed—he could feel it, like an unfamiliar channel in his brain.

He was still working on the soup, stirring it around more than actually drinking it, when he heard a voice.

Eli …
, it said, an urgent whisper.
Eli …
It was deep and gravelly but clear. Still, at first he thought he’d imagined it. But then he heard it again.

Over here, Eli …

He sat up straighter. He set the bowl down.

It was the strangest thing. The voice sounded as if it were coming from inside his own head.

Marilyn hopped onto the bed. Settling near his feet, she licked her paws and watched him with what looked like curiosity. He studied her. Was it possible?

No, it couldn’t be. Surely not.

But he climbed out of the covers and put his face close to hers. He gazed deep into her eyes. She blinked.

And that’s when he knew.

Eli, dear
, said the strange voice in his brain,
would you mind opening your door to let me out? I have to pee
.

He gaped at her. Somehow, she’d tapped a channel into his mind.

Marilyn was talking to him.

3
ruins

It was the strangest, most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. He had no idea
why
it worked, but it didn’t take Eli long before he learned more about
how
it worked. He was the only one she seemed able to communicate with in this way. What was more, the channel seemed to go in both directions. Within a few days he and Marilyn were conversing like it was the most normal thing in the world.

How far back can you remember?
he asked her silently one evening, studying her on his bedroom floor with his chin in his hands. He was trying to find out if the chip enhanced her ability to recall things.
Do you remember when you were a newborn pup? Do you remember the operation?

She stretched and yawned.
No, but I remember soon after the operation
, she said.
At least, I remember something of what happened. But if you don’t mind, darling, I’d rather not think about it. Very unpleasant memories
.

Eli didn’t push her, but over time he was able to piece
together the few snippets she occasionally did reveal. Marilyn remembered that the operation had happened in a bright room lined with clear plastic. She’d woken up groggy, her head throbbing like it might split open. It was her earliest memory. Soon she realized something was moving on the other side of the room. Gradually her thoughts cleared, and over the next few hours she’d watched, horrified, as five other mongoose pups, her littermates, were taken from their cages one at a time and brought to another table where their heads were sliced open. Marilyn now realized she’d been the first. Of the six of them, only three had survived the operating table, and two weeks later Marilyn was the only one still alive.

It had been a profoundly upsetting time.

After that, she was kept in a special cage where electronic instruments recorded her every move. There were electrodes taped to her head. Men and women wrapped in brown cloth watched her through the mesh. She never saw their faces. Red-eyed droids with needles and sensory probes took hundreds of measurements every day. Her heart rate. Her brain waves. Her bodily functions, too numerous to imagine. The humans performed experiments on her too. There were daily injections, flashing lights, and complicated mazes she was forced to navigate. When she wasn’t being poked, measured, or injected, she felt desperate and alone in her cramped cage.

Then one day she was taken from that place. Marilyn remembered shaking with fear, but her captors had been kind. They fed her, played with her, and even let her wander around in a large room with a sand floor. It was the first taste of freedom she’d ever known. The very next morning, though, she was packed into another cage and given an injection that put
her to sleep. When she awoke she found herself in the care of a wrinkled old human with very little hair.

The experience had been terrifying, but in the end it turned out all right. This, of course, was because the wrinkled old human had been Grandfather.

And he had given her to Eli.

One afternoon a tremendous boom shook the sky. To Eli it sounded a lot like a thunderclap, only closer. It turned out to be a bomb. The CloudNet reported that somebody had sabotaged the air filter on the northwest perimeter and that the likely culprit was a criminal organization called the Fog.

Eli had heard of Fog attacks before. Foggers, the shadowy outlaws whose sole purpose was to destroy freedom by sabotaging the company, were a great mystery. Nobody seemed to know much about them except that they were twisted people who hated InfiniCorp. Every few weeks or so they tried to cause disruption, but rarely with such dramatic results. Today there were nearly thirty dead, a big deal. Grandfather declared a general state of emergency.

When Sebastian came to Eli and suggested they use the confusion to sneak Outside and check out the damage, Eli was only half-surprised. To all appearances his brother wasn’t one to break the rules, but Eli knew better than anyone that Sebastian wasn’t as tight as he appeared. He wasn’t above straying from the straight and narrow on occasion; he was just better at getting away with it than Eli. With his recent fixation on marketing to Outsiders, Eli should have guessed he would be more than a little curious about what was happening out there.

Besides, as Sebastian pointed out, neither he nor Eli had ever seen a real dead person.

The brothers decided to use back roads to lessen their chances of being seen. Not that anyone was likely to recognize Eli. Hardly anyone ever did. But lots of people knew Sebastian’s face. They didn’t get far down the street, though, before Marilyn ran up behind them, nipping at Sebastian’s heels.

“Hey, get it off me!” he shouted. “Eli, what’s going on? What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with this! It wasn’t my idea!”

“Well, the mongoose can’t come! What if it gets lost or something? Or stolen? Grandfather would totally shut down! Order it home.”

Eli turned. “Marilyn, what do you think you’re doing?”

What does it look like I’m doing? I’m coming with you
.

“But you can’t,” he said, still getting used to the idea that he was trying to reason with a mongoose. “Sebastian’s right—it’s too risky. You have to turn around and go back.”

She sat down and scratched absently at her ear.
I want to see Outside
.

“What’s going on, Eli? Did it answer? Why isn’t it going away? It’s supposed to do what you tell it.”

Eli sighed. He’d explained to Sebastian that he could communicate with Marilyn, but Sebastian didn’t get how it worked. He seemed to think of her as something between a pet and a machine, as if the chip couldn’t possibly make her capable of anything more than rudimentary communication—something only slightly more interesting than a well-trained dog or a furry robot. Eli had tried to tell him she was a real person just like anybody else, but he refused to believe it.

And Marilyn didn’t seem to care what anyone thought.

“I already told you,” he said. “I can’t
make
her go home. She wants to come.”

Sebastian glared. “You gotta be kidding me. What’s the point of a chipped animal if you can’t figure out how to control it? When are you going to learn to be the boss?” He shook his head. “Pitiful.”

He made a sudden move as if to lunge at Marilyn, but she scooted away. Settling on the pavement just out of reach, she straightened to her full height and swayed from side to side as if readying for a fight. She narrowed her orange eyes at Sebastian and hissed.

“Stupid Frankenrat!” Sebastian said under his breath. And then, “All right, but she better stay out of sight!”

This wouldn’t be an issue, Eli knew. If there was one thing Marilyn was good at, it was hiding. So the three of them wove through the streets behind Douglas Avenue to the far edge of the dome, running as quickly as they could. It was more than two miles away. When they reached the gate there was still a great deal of confusion, as Sebastian had predicted, and the three of them blended into the chaos. Within moments they were able to slip past the monitors without anybody stopping them.