The Boy Who Knew Everything (28 page)

“He was eleven and his celebration was a week away when I was told that he was going to have to leave—that they were going to take him to the outside world. I swore I would never let him go. I kicked up such a fuss Max himself returned. He was angry with me and told me that I was ungrateful, that Peter was his child too and he could do with him what he wanted.

“He would listen to nothing I said. I was so angry I did to him the very worst thing I could think of—the thing that no Xanthian has ever done before: I used my ability with ill intent. It wasn't an offered memory—I took it. Without his permission, I saw everything.”

The old woman who had once been a beautiful young woman named Starr shuddered. Her thin lips curled back from her two pointy teeth and her tongue darted out and licked them. Her eyes shifted back and forth as she remembered.

“In his mind I saw how he fed upon the pain and misery of others. And oh, how much pain he had caused. How relentless he had been. The Outsiders were powerless against him. He was so clever, so devious, and they were so unaware. I saw how he had taken his children before from Xanthia, and how those children had great gifts that he would manipulate: how he used those children as instruments of his terrible will. That is the very thing that he had planned for my Peter.

“He knew that I had seen what he was. ‘I will tell everyone,' I said. ‘It is time you stopped this and our peoples were together again.'

“Max went wild and said the Outsiders and the Chosen Ones would never be together—he would make sure of that. I ran from him and hid with Peter. Sure enough he found us in a cave and he gave me a choice: either Peter would spend the rest of his life suffering, or I would. Of course, I chose myself. Then he had Joseff the stone maker turn the memories that I had stolen into these rocks. He locked me down here with them and you are the first I have seen since that time. When the day comes that I stop moving the stones Peter will be put to death. He is a good boy, my Peter.”

“But—” Conrad hated to interrupt the story but he was on the edge of his seat and couldn't wait a moment longer. “What about Peter? What happened to him?”

“Max would have erased his memory and left him to fend for himself among the Outsiders.”

“Are you sure?”

“He did that with all his other children. It is certain Peter would have been the same. When he grew older Max would have used him to do his work.”

Conrad stood up and walked away. On the White House rooftop his father had said his name was Peter.
My mother was so beautiful and she sacrificed everything for me
, his father had said. The truth was snapping into place in quick motions inside his head.

“Conrad?” Piper whispered, interrupting his thoughts.

Conrad looked up to see that Piper was right in front of him, her face full of concern. He filled his lungs with the damp black air and shook his head. “Peter is my father.”

Piper didn't understand him. “What?”

“My father told me his name was Peter. Remember J. was investigating my father and said that he was abandoned in the desert? Her Peter and my father are the same person.”

“But … that means she's your grandmother!”

Conrad nodded, looking at Starr, who was slumped over and shaking. Suddenly he put his head in his hands.

“Are you okay?” Piper waited for him to recover.

“If she's my grandmother, then Max is my grandfather, and … he knows that. Max knows who I am.”

“Wow,” was all Piper could say, and the moment lingered while Conrad processed this.

“I'm gonna have to say it,” Piper sighed finally. “Your family has some serious issues. I think you're going to need therapy or something.”

“I think you're right,” Conrad agreed.

“What are you going to do now?”

Conrad was watching Starr, who had grumbled herself to her feet and was hobbling back toward the rocks. “We have to help her.”

As she was struggling to pick up a memory rock, Conrad approached her and tried to take the weight of the rock away.

“Leave me be,” she snapped. “I have told you everything and now you must go.”

She snatched the memory rock and Piper could see that it was a very heavy memory indeed.

“Please”—Conrad attempted to help her—“you don't need to do that anymore.”

“No!”
She hobbled away. “Let me be.”

“We can help you,” Piper called after her.

“Help yourselves. I have made my choice. Now you must make yours.”

“Maybe,” Conrad began with the utmost care, following next to her, “something happened. Peter was hurt and it's possible that he's no longer alive.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head harshly. “Peter is alive. I know this.”

“But how can you know?” Piper asked with equal sensitivity.

The old woman dumped the rock and took a moment to gather her strength again before rummaging in her rags to pull out a necklace that had been hanging from her scrawny neck. Conrad instantly recognized it from the painting. Just like his father's bloodstone, there was a heartbeat in the center of it, opening and contracting to a steady beat.

The old woman looked at the light and reassured herself. “This sits against my own heart so that I know. See? He is alive. If he were dead it would not beat.”

“But…” Conrad reached out to touch the pulsing red stone. “Where is he?”

“Fool. Max has him. He's hiding him from me in the cave at the top of the mountain. The same cave where I tried to hide him.”

Conrad's eyes went wide. “How do you know?”

She snorted. “Because Max likes to gloat. He likes the fact that I tried to hide him there and now he's hiding him there from me. Irony is what he calls it.” She reached for another rock and turned her back on them. “He wants you to find him but he will not let you take him, foolish boy. Don't even try.”

Conrad heard the old woman's words but disregarded their meaning because he was already running to find the cave, and Piper was flying behind him.

 

CHAPTER

41

By the time he stood overlooking the Colorado River, Max's blood was jumping with anticipation.

There was a silence around the river. The usual chatter of birds and frogs brought Max back to quieter times that he had known and remembered with nostalgia.

The world, Max had come to realize, was no longer as fun as it used to be. There was too much organization, too much peace, education, justice, and far too many medical advances. People no longer dwelled in superstition and ignorance, but relied on rational thinking, research, and science. Everything was examined and connected; kids tweeted and Twittered and took pictures that they posted on a Facebook. Everyone was looking at everyone else and nothing was hidden. And it was just the beginning, of that Max was certain. There were advances just around the corner that would eradicate war, and not long after that there would be a true global village based on peace and equality.

The very thought of it made Max shiver—there was no fun in peace.

Now, the Dark Ages had been a party. In the Dark Ages man was scattered and ignorant—helpless against the elements and one another. No one communicated, no one knew what was going on from one village to the next, empowering Max to roam freely and find, or create when necessary, adventure as he saw fit. If only those sweet Dark Ages could return again.…

The water purifier crackled, bursts of electrical sparks popping out and pulling Max's thoughts back to the task at hand. He wielded the purifier like a magic wand, feeling its motion through the air. Slipping his free hand into his pocket, Max removed a small orange worm that he thumbed onto the wood of the purifier. Upon contact, the worm dug into the grain of the wood, burrowing inside like the hungry parasite it was. When it had disappeared from sight the purifier shivered and shook and the blue light grew dim, flickering out. A moment later an orange glow erupted inside the wand and it emitted a high whistle, like that of a siren.

Wouldn't Conrad be surprised when Max showed him this! Of course, Conrad had no experience with the Antipode worm. Time was when the worm could be found on every continent on the globe causing havoc of every delicious nature. But as always happened, the Outsiders got wigged out and hunted down the Antipodes until they had eradicated every single last one of them. The fact that the worm was the cause of death and destruction anywhere and everywhere that it was found probably had something to do with the Outsiders' violent feelings toward it and its eventual extinction. Outsiders hated death and destruction and thus hated the worm.

Fortunately Max had the foresight to save a few of them for his own personal use. What the Outsiders didn't understand was that the worm wasn't destructive, but brilliant, not to mention the fact that the little wriggler had a great sense of humor. The creature naturally and organically played the “opposite” game, and what could be more fun than that? Children liked the opposite game—the opposite of “up” is “down”; “in” for “out”; “hard” for “soft.” The worm played the same game on a grand scale and in the most creative ways. If you were a kind, helpful person and the worm got into you it would turn you into a killer. The worm would turn a hot fire into ice, a fish into a bird, and now, thanks to Max's foresight, the worm had turned the purifier from something that could transform sand into clean drinking water into a machine that changed cleaning drinking water into sand. Ha!

It was all so fabulous and amazing that the only thing that saddened Max was that no one else was around to witness his genius. He wanted credit where credit was due; he wanted to be appreciated and admired, and more than anything he wanted a round of applause.

At the edge of the river Max hesitated only a moment before wading in up to his waist. The water was cold and ran around him quickly. Fish darted away from his feet and a water snake retreated to the reeds.

He didn't want to rush things: he wanted the moment to linger. Max held the wand up in his arms and turned around slowly, taking in the delicate balance of nature.

The water was pure and sparkling: basic but essential. It was easy to take water for granted until you didn't have it anymore. Max remembered the time he was stuck in a settlers' outpost surrounded on all sides by bloodthirsty natives—he couldn't really remember which natives; frankly, after a while they all sort of blended. Anyway, it was okay fun: unexpected things were popping up, skirmishes and attacks followed by counterattacks and the usual man-trying-to-survive-against-a-ruthless-environment sort of scenario. It was on the point of becoming ho-hum when the clean water ran out and suddenly things amped up to a whole new fun-level. The settlers started fighting among themselves over what was left of the water. Desperation was so deliciously dramatic—Max had never felt so young or so vibrant.

Then there was that time on the Viking ship when Sventlek the Red had poisoned the water and the crew went blinking mad and burned the ship from underneath themselves and drowned like rats. What a riot!

It had only occurred to Max recently that since the world was so globalized, the only way to really achieve the fun-charge he was looking for was to “encourage” global problems. And nothing said global catastrophe like a good old-school water shortage. The Colorado River would be first but others would follow: the Yangtze, the Nile, the Danube. Then Max would sit back and just watch the fun, soaking in all that delicious hysteria.

With Conrad's intelligence at his disposal Max was back in business again; water shortages would be only the beginning. Maybe it could be a one-two punch: first the water, and then he'd get Conrad to engineer a really bad virus. The Black Plague was a great thing when it happened; Max remembered those days well and fondly.

Yes sir, with genius on your side the possibilities are endless.

Max turned around and around in the water and when the anticipation overtook him he tapped the top of the water with the wand like an orchestra conductor. Upon contact the cold water instantly turned to sand. The effect rippled outward as more water came into contact with the wand and a wave of sand began to travel up and down the river.

Max was now buried up to his waist in golden granules. A two-foot-long trout came thrusting upward out of the sand in confusion, gasping and flailing. Max watched it wiggling in panic and then placed his hand lovingly on top of its head as it flipped and flopped, its gills opening and shutting more and more slowly.

Max listened to the frogs chirping at a hysterical pitch and the birds going frenzied. In the distance a black bear began howling. He could feel his energy rising and his body growing younger by the second.

And then Max gave himself, because no one else would, a long, loud round of applause.

“Hooray for Max,” he cheered like he was a fan in the stands. “Max is amazing! What an achievement!”

He continued to clap for quite a while because, frankly, this was the sort of thing that deserved a long round of applause. Finally he stopped and bowed. It felt good. Not as good as if someone else had been there, but still it was better than nothing.

Max would have lingered longer but he'd given Conrad ample time to figure things out in Xanthia and it was time for him to get back. He didn't want to miss out on a drop of that drama.

Yes
. Max sighed happily.
The world is my oyster and life is good!

 

CHAPTER

42

Conrad took the steps two at a time. He was panting from the effort and sweat beaded his face and chest. Piper had to fly to keep up with him. Neither of them bothered with the torches as the thing they most feared was no longer below them but above them.

“Wait up!”

“There's no time.” Conrad was panting. “We have to get to my father before Max gets back!”