Fervor (28 page)

Sarah nodded as he spoke, not meeting his gaze. There was almost a haunted look to her eyes.

“
We have a chip,”
she insisted.
“And it’s spreading.”

At first he thought she was talking about Elliot’s hover, but with some prodding at her through the connection, he soon realized that she was not. She would not elaborate further, however. Sam tried various tactics to cheer her up, including offering her his latest find, but nothing seemed to work. It was so unlike Sarah. Then he came up with an idea.

“
Will you come with me and Elliot finding tomorrow? You’ve been cooped up in this house for years. You must have enjoyed getting out today. How about we try that again? It will help you get your mind off things, not to mention who knows where we will be going. It’ll be an adventure, the kind that should be shared by special friends,”
Sam said with a smile. Sarah’s expression softened a little and she responded with a half-smile of her own.

“
Sure, Sam. Maybe that would be best. I can’t fix what I can’t access. Maybe if I just leave it alone for a little while...”

That was as much as Sam could hope for, and it was getting late. Leaving Nathan in the kitchen in his mirthful state, they both wandered off to bed.

Finding

When Sam came out of his room the next morning, he watched Nathan bound around the house with a level of enthusiasm that the young man had not displayed since Elliot had arrived. The last time that the Finder had seen him with this kind of energy, he had still been the size of a large boy. Now there was no denying that Nathan was an adult.

It had been a few days since they had started their rapid growth, and from all appearances, it was finally coming to an end. The pain and irritation was subsiding, they were all noticeably taller, and the Bigs had lost anything childish to their look. If anyone outside of their house-family had caught a glimpse of Sarah or Sam, they would have just assumed that they were Bigs. But if anyone spotted Nathan or Francis, the change would have been undeniable and their reaction would be unpredictable.

As Nathan rushed past Sam, breakfast in hand, Sam noticed a problem that he had not paid any attention to before. Sarah and Sam had been borrowing some of the Bigs clothing, which fit comfortably, but the Bigs had been forced to continue to wear their own clothing, since Elliot had not been able to get into the hover to offer any spare garb that he had brought along. Nathan’s looser fitting tunics and pants were just barely sufficient to accommodate Francis, fitting snugly on the average-sized man. Nathan on the other hand was wearing odd-fitting items that Sarah had cut and re-sewn. She was a Fixer, but this was more a case of fabrication rather than repair, and in this respect, the petite girl was not as skilled. As a result, the Watcher looked like a patch-work quilt of neutral tones and varying textures. And then there was the issue of footwear.

Cobbling larger boots from smaller ones was not a feasible option without the proper equipment, and Nathan had resorted to slicing open his boots towards the toe and taping over the ends with heavy duty work tape where his feet protruded. It was definitely only a temporary solution, and Nathan had been forced to carry the tape with him, replenishing what had been applied to his footwear en route, as it occasionally failed him. Sam offered to keep an eye out, in case any of the minders or teachers had left something behind that would prove to be a better fit.

Nathan gave Sam an exhilarated smile, without actually looking at him. He opened the front door.
“I think I’ve convinced Fiona to finally join us for supper tonight,”
he remarked happily.
“We’ll be all together, like a real family again. She knows all about the hover. She’s anxious to see it fixed so that we can leave here. She’s really excited.”

Sarah had been accommodating Fiona’s wishes to avoid the others and had been bringing the young woman her meals in her room. She did not need to join them for supper. If she had agreed to do so, it suggested that she was finally coming to terms with her transformation and was willing, perhaps, to adjust to it.

His feet barely touching the stairs, Nathan skipped down the front steps and loped joyfully off on his circuit. Sam closed the door behind him and turned back to see Francis standing there wearing a perplexed expression. Before Sam could say anything, he shrugged and made for the kitchen from which Sarah and Elliot were emerging.

“
Time to do some finding, Sam,”
the technician stated, gesturing towards the door with paper in hand.

Sarah did not look ready to go anywhere. Sam frowned.

“
I thought you were coming with us?”

She glanced back towards the kitchen before answering.

“
I helped Elliot write up the list. You don’t really need me with you, and I don’t want to get in the way.”

There was a nervous tremor to her thoughts. Sam could tell that she was anxious again, and still yearning to fix something that she felt was beyond her reach.

“
You can’t say that for sure. Who knows what I’ll find, and what state I’ll find it in. We could very well need your help. Besides, you agreed to come with us last night. You agreed that there isn’t much that you can do here right now. You know how important getting this hover fixed is to us. Please, Sarah,”
Sam thought plaintively.

“
I...”
she began, hesitating as some internal struggle ensued. She clenched her eyes shut, and then moments later seemed to give in.
“Alright, give me a couple of seconds.”

The petite girl dashed over to her room and disappeared from view. Elliot watched her go with a hint of interest as Sam took the paper from him and scanned the list written upon it.

“
What’s bothering her?” the large man asked the Finder.

“
Something about chips and cracks in windshields,” Sam replied evasively. “I think she’s worried that Fiona is not the only one who isn’t handling the transition well. This isn’t a new thing for Sarah, Elliot. She started behaving this way after Royce left – it’s just that it has gotten a little worse, that’s all. I think she just needs to get out of the house more. It’s making her a little stir-crazy.”

The technician looked a little relieved at this. “She started acting like this before I got here, and it has only gotten a little worse? That’s okay then. If you see any drastic changes in anyone, you’ll let me know, right? I wasn’t sure what effect the Languorite was going to have on all of you, and I don’t want any repetition of what happened with the Bigs’ parents. I was worried about Fiona at first until I had the chance to get in and talk to her. Her problems didn’t run that deep, and she let Sarah do what she could for her. At that point I was fairly certain that Fiona’s situation wasn’t all that serious. Some disabling insecurities and a bit of drama, but for the most part harmless. Not that I would expect there to be any show of trouble at this point if it hadn’t manifested yet.”

“
To be honest with you, I wouldn’t recognize anything like that in the others with all the chaos that has been going on around here,” Sam conceded. “Nathan is all tangled up in the directions that Francis has placed in his head, and Francis is upset with Fiona and the way that she has been treating him from the start. Not that he seems to be holding it against her, really. I think that if we can just get that hover repaired and get going, everything will sort itself out.”

This was when Sarah reappeared from her room, dressed and ready to go. Sam seized on the opportunity and, grabbing her by the hand before she had the chance to change her mind, he pulled her out of the house after him.

“
Come on, Elliot!” he called over his shoulder. “I think that I may have a lead on something!”

Sam followed his instincts with Sarah closely in tow, circling around first of all to the old hover where Fiona had once hidden the burly man’s messages. Elliot crouched by the abandoned vehicle and started stripping away anything that was potentially useful. Sam and Sarah sat back a short distance, watching him as he worked.

“
I won’t be able to get everything I need that’s salvageable from this. We will have to come back here after we have found some of those tools on our list. I need them in order to actually retrieve some of those items. I managed to gather a few all purpose tools from the house, but anything specific to working on the hovers, if they were left behind, would likely be found in the garages,”
the technician grunted as he leaned awkwardly around the edge of the hover.

“
No – none of the minders had any clue about maintaining or repairing the hovers,”
Sam corrected.
“If there’s any hope of finding those tools, we’ll have to go to one of the schools. It had been left up to the teachers to keep them in operational condition.”

“
What?”
Sarah said with a hint of fear. “
We’ll have to go through the spaces of at least three of the other house-families. What if they see us? And we won’t be able to follow you in. It’s against the Directives.”

Elliot paused and glanced over at her sternly.
“If you want me to repair that hover, I need those tools. I’ll be having to make enough compromises with regards to parts and materials. It will be impossible if you are expecting me to work empty-handed. We’ll have to take our chances with the other house-families, and I guess it’s time to test out the other functions of the Languorite…see if we can override those Directives. I’ll be back
.”

He clambered to his feet, and headed into the house.

“
You and I are okay,” Sam assured her, once they were alone. “Although they may start asking questions about why we have strayed from our designated space – we just have to make sure that they don’t see Elliot. We won’t be able to explain him away, no matter what story we come up with as to why you and I happen to be there. They’ll assume we’re Bigs, and we’ll have to run with that.”

Sam actually liked the idea of leaving the space that they had been practically imprisoned in for the last five years. He looked forward to the idea of having the opportunity to scavenge at a school. Sarah did not appear to be nearly as pleased with the idea.

Elliot returned a few moments later with the Languorite in hand.

“
Pray that I can make this work,” he murmured, pointing the device first at Sam. “I’m going to try to limit it to the compulsions from the Tellers, but I can’t make any guarantees. I certainly don’t want to strip you of your gifts right now. We still need them.”

There was painful flash of multi-coloured light, and Sam felt a slight tingle to his skin and a temporary fogging of his thoughts, but those were the only signs to suggest that it had worked. Elliot then repeated the process with Sarah. Once again, from all outward appearances, nothing had changed. The success of the technician’s efforts would be tested soon enough. He returned the Languorite to the house, and then set his sights on the old hover once again.

The pair observed Elliot’s tinkering in silence for a while, considering possible cover stories to offer other children if they happened to have any encounters, before Sam found himself lost in other thoughts. The talk of them passing themselves off as Bigs brought his focus around to the idea of the Littles versus the Bigs again, and the missing information that Elliot had denied him twice already. It niggled at him, like a fly buzzing about his head. He hoped that this was a sign that his gift had remained untouched, his curiosity burning in the pit of his stomach as fiercely as ever.

“
Why don’t you think that we’re ready, Elliot?”
he pushed very lightly at the technician.
“What is it about our parentage that you find disturbing? If it makes a difference as to how much you’ll tell us, Francis already suggested that we were somehow made to be what we are, even though Fiona tried to suggest that this wouldn’t have been possible. I think we deserve a straight answer.”