Seeker (22 page)

“It seems like everything is dangerous.”

Maggie smiled. “For you, yes.”

“I have already chosen, Maggie,” John told her. “I promised her”—he nodded to the photographs—“and I promise them.” His voice sounded different in his own ears, as though he had aged over the past few minutes.

“Very good, John. Now you must listen to me about your grandfather.” She took one of his hands in her own, forcing him to look up at her. “He cared about your mother; he needed her. Now she’s gone, just as your father is gone. You’re all he has left. He’s a weak man, and he wants to keep you safe.”

“I promised I would start my training—”

“You will. We’ll convince Gavin. In time. For now, let him be happy having you close. His position, this home, they protect you while you’re young. I had reasons for bringing your mother to this family.” She gestured to the photographs still spread across the bed, then put her hands on either side of John’s face, bringing their heads close together. “John, your grandfather thinks he is strong, but he’s not. So we won’t burden him with our secret plans. Do you understand? We will make them in private.”

John nodded solemnly. He understood. “Our plans are secret,” he said.

“In the meantime, I will ask him to bring instructors to
Traveler
, to teach you to fight. Would you like that?”

John nodded again, his eyes straying to the images of death lying on the quilt next to him. It would be good to know how to protect himself.

Maggie leaned close again and whispered, “And there’s one more secret. You love your grandfather, and he loves you. But if that ever changes, we have a way to control him …”

“The boy wishes to apologize to you, sir.”

John stood outside the door to his grandfather’s rooms, holding a large box full of his mother’s belongings. Maggie stood behind him. When Gavin smiled and stepped aside to let him enter, John felt her squeeze his shoulder. Then he walked into the room on his own.

“I’m sorry I cursed at you, Grandfather,” he whispered. “I understand I shouldn’t be looking at my mother’s things all the time.”

“That’s all right, John,” Gavin said, taking a seat on the small sofa by the fireplace. John climbed up beside him, leaving the box of Catherine’s things on the floor by their feet.

Gavin put a hand on his grandson’s head and cleared his throat in the way he often did, making a strange scratching sound. “Your mother has given so much to me, John. I want you to remember her.” He was looking down at John, his face kind. “But when you stare at her belongings all day, I worry. You don’t—you don’t have to do the things she did. Dangerous things. She restored our fortunes. It’s done. We can survive without risking you.”

John looked up at the old man and nodded, as though he agreed. “I understand,” he whispered.

Gavin pulled him close, and they sat for a while, peacefully looking at the fire. But soon the boy’s eyes strayed to the open box on the floor. A picture of his mother and himself was visible at the top. In the image, they were sitting together on the floor of her bedroom on
Traveler
, and her arms were around John. Her eyes were looking at him now from within the photograph, and he could feel tears starting again at the back of his throat.

He got down from the couch and pushed the box toward his grandfather.

“You take these, please, Grandfather.”

Gavin peered into the box, picking up the picture on top and studying Catherine’s other belongings.

“You should keep them, John. It’s only a few things.”

“No,” the boy whispered. “You’re right. I shouldn’t look at them so much. I don’t want to be sad and angry all the time.”

“Wouldn’t you like to keep the photograph with you, at least?” he asked.

“Maybe when I’m bigger. Now I can remember her inside.” He touched a hand to his chest. “Like you do with my father.”

“Yes, like I do with your father,” Gavin murmured. He did not keep pictures of his dead son Archie around. Archie, who had died before he could marry Catherine, before John was born. Gavin said pictures of his son made it too hard to carry on with life. John understood that now. He too must carry on with his life—and it was going to be a dangerous one, a life that would require his full attention.

Gavin shut the box, hiding the photograph of Catherine from view. But John felt she was still with him, her older sister was still with him, all those who had been tortured and killed were still with him. He had them inside himself.

“In the beginning, there was the hum of the universe.”

Shinobu and Quin sat cross-legged on the floor of the practice barn. Alistair had dragged in the old blackboard. He was standing in front of it, looking as much like a teacher as it was possible for a large Scottish warrior to look. He had made a good start by wearing glasses beneath his messy and very red hair. He was, however, also wearing a tight, sleeveless exercise shirt that left bare his enormous arms. Beneath the shirt he had on his teaching trousers, which made an appearance every now and then. They’d been carefully pressed with a crease down the front of each leg, but the effect was ruined somewhat by the fact that Alistair was barefoot.

The big man repeated himself: “In the beginning, there was the hum of the universe.” He looked at his two students. “What does that mean?”

Shinobu’s hand went up.

“Yes, lad?”

“The vibration of all things,” said Shinobu.

Quin put her hand up.

“Yes, lass?”

“All matter in the universe vibrates,” Quin said. “Atoms, electrons, even smaller things.”

“Aye. Correct, both.” Alistair uncrossed his massive arms, picked up a piece of chalk, and began to draw an atom. He pressed too hard and broke the chalk twice before he’d finished the diagram. Quin smiled.

“Don’t laugh at me, child,” he said good-naturedly. “You’ll make me feel small, won’t you? Now. What is a hum but a vibration? When something vibrates, it needs at least two dimensions, does it not? At least up and down and side to side. Do you agree?”

Quin and Shinobu nodded, impressed by the sheer quantity of words coming from Alistair, who usually said as little as possible. Perhaps this lesson was as exciting for him as it was for them—hence his efforts to look scholarly. He turned and drew a diagram of a two-dimensional wave vibration.

Quin caught Shinobu glancing at her. They’d both turned fourteen within the last month, and though they’d been learning to fight for years, Briac had only now given his approval for the two of them to begin this particular instruction with Alistair. It meant he believed they would make it to their oath. Briac believed they were good enough to be Seekers. She smiled at Shinobu, excited for them both.

Alistair cleared his throat. “If you can’t even concentrate on the lesson, Son, maybe you should tell her, eh?”

“What, sir?” Shinobu asked, startled. He looked away from Quin quickly.

As Quin watched, Shinobu’s cheeks flushed bright red, and he seemed to shrink in upon himself. She guessed that his father had mentally caught him daydreaming about one of the many girls he
knew down in Corrickmore. That would explain the absent way he’d been staring at her for the last few minutes—his mind had been wandering. He was so good-looking, it was no surprise those girls were after him. To give Shinobu time to recover, Quin raised her hand.

“How do you read minds, sir? And why can’t I?”

“How I read minds: not at all,” Alistair replied. “My son’s face had his thoughts written on it clear. No mind reading required.” He removed his glasses and carefully cleaned their rims with the hem of his tank top, giving his face a professorial expression as he did so. “Why can’t you read minds? The answer is, maybe you can.”

“I really can’t, sir.”

“Could be you
can
, girl, but there’s no telling if you
will
. It might happen of a sudden, at any point before you’re grown, when you’re training your mind as we are.” He put his glasses back on, and Quin realized there were no lenses in them—they were purely for show. “Once you’re an adult, you’ll know whether you can or not. I can’t. Your mother, Fiona, had it come upon her all at once when she was a girl. Overnight, she could read a mind like she was reading a book. But I think not so much anymore.”

“She still does, sir,” Quin offered. “Mostly when I’m thinking things I don’t want her to know.”

“Ah, of course. Now, if my son’s cheeks have stopped burning, we can continue the lesson. Tell me—could something vibrate in three dimensions?” They both quickly agreed that this was so. “How about four?”

Shinobu raised his hand.

“Ah, lad, you know this one. What is the fourth dimension?”

“Time, sir,” he answered. They had learned this before, of course, but its relevance was not yet clear.

“Correct. Master MacBain gets a lollipop after class. Which he is
welcome to share if he likes.” Here he glanced knowingly at Quin, and Shinobu looked uncomfortable again.

Alistair pushed on. He drew a three-dimensional cube on the blackboard, then a long arrow beneath it. “Time. Any vibration happens through time. But there is a very strange thing in the universe—”

“Stranger than a man wearing a tank top with dress trousers, sir?” Shinobu asked.

Quin stopped herself from smiling. Since Shinobu’s mother had died, Alistair had been both father and mother to him, and he gave Shinobu plenty of room to fool around. But whether Alistair would put up with it during a lesson was never certain.

Fortunately, Alistair smiled and gave a very large sigh. “Have you no respect? This is my formal tank top, isn’t it? Now, please. There is a strange thing in the universe. The vibrations of atoms and electrons and even smaller particles dinnae quite add up. There is something wrong with them, isn’t there? Until we understand that they are vibrating in more dimensions than those we see around us.”

Quin’s heart beat faster with anticipation. Alistair was going to tell them something important. She could feel it.

“There are the three dimensions we see, and the one we feel—time. But there are more. Curled up within the smallest vibrations of the universe, there are other dimensions. These slide through our own dimensions like movable, interlocking threads.”

He turned back to the chalkboard and drew something like threads woven together into a piece of fabric. “Aye, and time. Here, it moves like this.” He pointed to the long, straight arrow in his earlier diagram. “But there?” He shrugged. “Time might not be so simple. What if you could unfurl those hidden dimensions? What if you could open them up and step into them? What would they feel like? Where would they take you?”

Both students were silent for a bit, staring at Alistair and his simple drawing.

Finally Quin asked, “Can we really do that, sir?”

Alistair set down the chalk and crossed his huge arms over his chest. He smiled.

“That’s all for today.”

PART TWO

H
ONG
K
ONG

18 Months Later