Pandemonium (17 page)

Nell was startled to see a small square sink around her little hand and then pop out, swinging open. Inside the depression was a little knob. Sasha reached in and turned the knob, pushing in a door that swung inward.

Inside was an invisible room.

Nell wouldn’t have thought it was a room at all except for the bed in the middle of the floor. The entire chamber was carved into a vast, flawless extrusion of crystal.

A little over ten feet wide and thirty-five feet long, the crystal box extended into the Pandemonium sea, twenty feet beneath its surface. Sasha had thrown a lavender rug on the crystal floor before the bed, but otherwise the floor and walls were decorated only by churning and darting undersea creatures.

Ivan rocketed into the room first, and Sasha followed. They both ran across the transparent floor fearlessly and jumped onto the bed. “Come on, Nell!”

“OK.” Nell stepped into the room as a drift of pink hydras and blue squids darted under her feet.

“This’ll be
your
room now,” Sasha said. “I hope you like sausage. These are really for her, Ivan! Sorry. At least until I can get you some better food. Oh, and here’s some carrots I got from Dennis. One for Ivan, such a good dog!”

Ivan snapped his jaws over the extended carrot like a tiger shark.

“There’s actually a bathroom, too, over here,” Sasha said. “You just go plop down a hole into the water and you can watch the beasties eat it! I’ll bring you more toilet paper. They eat the toilet paper, too.”

Nell sat on the bed, looking up at the silhouettes of alien creatures locomoting through the water above. She had to close her eyes and process it for a moment. “Your father doesn’t know about this place?”

“No! There’s lots of things he doesn’t know about.”

“Doesn’t he care where you are? Where you sleep?”

“He’s busy all the time. I haven’t stayed with him very much. Only the last two months, actually. And when I was a baby, but I don’t even remember that! He’s so guilty, he lets me do whatever I want.”

“I see.… Well, what’s going on, Sasha?”

“You really want me to tell you?”

“Yes!”

“Well. There were two nice scientists named Mike and Nancy, like you and Geoffrey. They were here before you got here. They were my friends. The thing is, I can see everything that’s happening from Papa’s desk. You know, on the monitors. When he’s not there, of course. When he was in the lab, where Geoffrey is now…” Sasha frowned suddenly as instant tears filled her eyes. She pressed her lips together, trying to hold in some sudden grief. “I saw what happened,” Sasha whispered. “They went into the room where the beasties are. They were going to look at something. I saw them through the window as they went in. And something bit them. And Papa told them…” Sasha bowed her head. She was silent for a moment. “He told the guards to shut the door!” she shouted. “He didn’t let them out!”

Nell stroked her head.

“I don’t trust Papa since then!”

“I see. Where is Geoffrey? Do you know?”

“He’s in the lab, too, now!”

“Where is the lab?”

“On the other side of the city, where Mike and Nancy were. I don’t want you to go there, Nell!”

“But your papa said Geoffrey will be back in a little while now.”

“No. I don’t think so! Papa’s guards won’t let him go. I saw them pointing guns at the other scientists there!”

Nell gazed into the alien sea all around her. “Then what can we do?”

8:18 A.M.

“Come on, Doctor.” Dimitri cranked open a door in the wall opposite the viewing chamber. “Let me show you our quarters, since we’ll all be staying here for a while.”

Geoffrey followed Dimitri through the hatch into a long room with boarded windows and two rows of beds.

“Choose any bed. Fresh linens are stacked over there. We have a bathroom with running water and plenty of canned food. This part of the hospital was meant to be a delivery and recovery room, but it is our dormitory now.”

Geoffrey dropped onto the nearest bed, holding his head in his hands.

“If it’s any consolation,” Dimitri whispered. “I think they can’t find your wife.”

MARCH 19

9:33 A.M. PACIFIC TIME

As the government jet zoomed down the runway across Groom Lake, Hender waved good-bye at the silver dome below. He cupped his eye as he gripped his armrests with three other hands, and one of his fingers accidentally pushed the button that reclined his seat.

He exclaimed musically in a rising scale as the plane lifted off the airstrip.

“Get that!”

Cynthea Leeds whispered to Zero Monroe, who was capturing the moment on film. “Are you getting that?”

Zero opened one eye at her. “Yes, darlin’,” he said dryly.

Cynthea and her chief cameraman, Zero, who was now her business partner and boyfriend, met while documenting their journey to Henders Island. They were here at the invitation of Hender, who was unaware of how lucrative an exclusive he had given them. All that mattered to Hender was that he was surrounded by humans he knew. Now, as he was about to “fly” to an island called “England” to meet more humans than he could ever imagine, he was even more grateful to have the company of humans he knew.

Hender watched the plane’s shadow shrink over the scoured desert mountains below. “I hope we don’t drop!” he shouted. Hender’s fur bristled with effervescent colors as he looked out the window.

Andy laughed. “It’s OK, Hender. This is normal,” he reassured him. “Humans do this all the time.”

“Humans are crazy.”

The first time Hender flew in a plane was inside the cargo hold of a military aircraft from Pearl Harbor directly to Nevada. None of the sels had understood what was happening during that flight, since there had been no windows. It was terrifying, but it would have probably been more terrifying if they had known they were soaring through the air.

As the G-V now pierced a cloud under the stratosphere, the windows turned white and Hender looked around from his seat at Andy and Cynthea, whose seats were in front of his.

Andy smiled back at him. “It’s OK, Hender. This is normal, too.”

“So cool!” Hender said. “Can I watch a movie?”

“Absolutely,” Andy said. “And I’m sure we can make popcorn, too.”

“Good!”

“Push the buttons on the arm of your chair.” Andy showed him.

Hender pulled up a menu on the screen above him that showed movie selections. “Ooh,
Jurassic Park
!”

Andy reclined his chair and stretched back. “Well, Hender’s happy,” he remarked to Cynthea, who sat beside him.

“He’ll knock ’em dead,” Cynthea said. “Can you imagine what this must be like for him?”

“I think so,” Andy said. “Maybe a little.”

“Maybe that’s why they like you so much,” Cynthea said.

Andy was rankled by Cynthea’s probing. “Maybe so!”

Zero pointed the camera back at them and Cynthea winked, which Zero always hated. “I’m not here, honey, remember?”

She winked again. “I know!”

Hender flipped through the new
SkyMall
magazine. He used the in-flight phone and his credit card information to order a few more things. Then he watched two movies simultaneously—
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
and, on his MacBook, a Buster Keaton movie.

He couldn’t understand what humans meant by “black-and-white” movies. Hender saw lots of colors in them. He loved Buster Keaton movies because he thought, at first, that Buster Keaton was Zero Monroe. When Hender found out Buster Keaton had died decades ago at the age of seventy-one, he was shocked by the news. That such a young creature could reach legendary status amazed him. That he could die so young and still leave such a legacy astounded him. That so wonderful a creature could perish so soon troubled him. That his spirit could still live on on television amazed him. What brief and yet immortal animals were his human friends.

Hender pondered the differences between humans and sels as he looked at Zero with one eye and Buster Keaton with the other. Humans lived such a short time, and there were such a staggering number of them, that sometimes they could look quite similar to one another, he realized. He marveled at how many humans there were, and how much each of them did in so very little time. Hender waved with five hands at Zero, who videoed him from his seat.

“Hi, Hender,” Zero said. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

“OK, Zero!” He waved at Cynthea instead.

Cynthea laughed. “Hello, Hender!”

12:31 P.M. ZULU TIME

After the long flight, they deplaned directly into a waiting motorcade of armored limousines.

Hundreds had gathered behind rope lines to wave, yell, and clap as cameras flashed. Hender, Andy, and Cynthea moved past quickly, as Zero filmed them, when Hender stood high on his two bottom legs and stretched them almost their full five-foot height as he looked out over the crowd and clapped four hands above the people. A great shock went through the crowd, and they answered with a wild cheer.

Hender descended and climbed ahead of the others into a hulking Rolls-Royce Phantom, which left ahead of a thirty-five-car motorcade that moved together off Heathrow’s tarmac like a black millipede.

Hender looked out the window at miles of roads, bridges, and buildings of every variety in every direction as far as his eyes could see.

Such giant, permanent spaces these short-lived humans created for themselves
, he thought. The secret of human progress was that they teamed up and worked together with common cause over generations. It excited and terrified him, for it reminded him of disk-ants or drill-worms that worked together to build hives many times their size—unlike sels, who lived long, solitary lives.

Blinking cars charged in front of and behind them as they snaked through the city named London. The motorcade sped over precleared roads, which were all lined with crowds of waving people, some of them thrusting curious signs at them along the way.

The streets were like the corridors inside the jungle of Henders Island, with lampposts and power lines substituting for the trees and vines. Unlike the tunnels at home, however, traffic here moved in both directions sometimes, he noticed.

Hender’s probing hands bumped a button, rolling down the tinted window. A certain percentage of those lining the street for a glimpse of him fainted as he stretched out and waved back.

“Hender, let’s roll that back up, OK?” Andy said urgently.

“Yes, Andy. Sorry!”

“No problem. Most humans are nice. But there are some wackos, too.”

“Oh, yes. I understand.”

1:41 P.M.

Amidst an electrical storm of camera flashes from banks of paparazzi twenty paces to either side of the hotel entrance, Hender, Andy, and Cynthea charged from the limousine with Zero filming the moment.

An entourage of Secret Service, MI5 agents, diplomatic ministers, and attachés—who had already disgorged from the motorcade—surrounded them in a flying wedge as they entered the Dorchester Hotel.

Hender took video shots with his phone, uploading the clips to his YouTube and Flickr accounts and putting links on his Facebook page and Twitter feed simultaneously. As soon as they got Internet access, Hender had taken advantage of every way to contact the greatest number of humans possible, and they had responded.

Hender, Andy, and Cynthea went directly to an elevator that took them to one of two floors that had been reserved. They were quickly shown to their connecting suites, which were secret and decided by a coin toss moments before their arrival for security purposes. Andy and Cynthea were scheduled for fittings at 2:35
P.M.
for a tuxedo and a formal gown. At 4
P.M.
they were to attend a series of press meetings in a heavily guarded still-to-be-determined suite somewhere inside the hotel.

Cynthea, Zero, Andy, and Hender entered Hender’s suite and were dazzled beyond their wildest expectations. Hender cartwheeled onto the blue bed and, as he bounced under its flowing canopy, he shouted, “Beautiful!”

“Wow,” Cynthea agreed.

“I’ll have to travel with you more often, Hender,” Andy agreed, too.

Silk wallpaper and brocaded window dressings out of a magazine or a painting appointed the opulent suite. The adjoining room, they soon found, was even more lavish, decorated red and orange with flowing curtains of gold. “OK, this is our room,” Cynthea said to Zero. “Andy, you’ll have to take the suite on the other side. Sorry! Hender, do you mind if we shut the door so Zero and I can have some privacy?”

“Just knock if you need something, OK?” Zero said.

“Don’t worry, Zero. I saw porno on the Internet. I was going to ask if I could shut the door.” Hender smiled wide at him. “OK?”

Andy laughed. “I’ll be across the hall in the Imperial Suite, Hender.”

“OK, Andy! Sweet dreams!”

They all said good night, and Hender closed his door.

3:59 P.M.

Sitting behind a table in the press suite, Hender, Andy, and Cynthea faced journalists from newspapers, magazines, television networks, and webzines from around the world. They had each been cleared by heavy screening and given five minutes to ask him questions.

Hender was ably backed up by Andy and Cynthea, who were seated at his side as the feed from the press conference was broadcast around the world. Commentators remarked that not since man had landed on the moon had such a global sensation monopolized all human communications in such a simultaneous event. Hender treated it as practice for the event scheduled for tonight: a formal gala in his honor at the London Natural History Museum.

There might never have been a more desirable party to attend in London. Hender was told that
everyone
would be there.

8:47 P.M.

Hender took a long shower with six showerheads in his amazing bathroom. He was able to blast the water pressure to get between the tendrils of his fur, which, after drying off with his four blow-dryers, left him refreshed and agreeable for the night’s festivities as his skin breathed freely again, enriching his blood with oxygen. Without their symbiants, a thorough shower was the only way sels could exfoliate.