Wood Sprites (47 page)

“What we need are mice,” Jillian
thud-thunked
the baseball against the floor and vanity instead of helping Louise. “A whole bunch of mice. A herd? A flock? Whatever they call a lot of mice.”

“Huh?” Louise wasn’t sure she had heard her twin correctly. It was proving harder than she thought to raid Ming’s many bank accounts. Most of his liquid capital was well hidden in offshore accounts. She had to track all large transfers of cash and then determine who actually owned the destination company. Once she found the accounts, however, it was fairly simple to trigger another transfer to one of theirs. She bounced the money between shell companies, like a pea under a set of cups, and then dropped it into one of their super-secret accounts.

“A mischief of mice,” Nikola answered Jillian’s question, head cocked in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s so cool.” Jillian laughed evilly. “And utterly perfect. Then what we need is a mischief of mice. Robotic mice. Exploding robotic mice. A couple hundred of them. Maybe several thousand.”

Louise sighed out her anger. Dovetail and the others had already finished moving all the furniture into Lain’s old bedroom. Luckily the chaos that they were creating had distracted Anna along with the elves. Louise could feel that they were running out of time. Still, she couldn’t insist on Jillian focusing on looting Ming’s finances because it would make her twin more aware of their danger. Even now, Jillian was barely coping with their situation; they’d been playing WWII prisoner of war for two days now. Louise comforted herself with the knowledge that Jillian probably was making important progress in their actual escape. Hopefully. “Mice? What are you talking about?”

“Getting across the border on the next Shutdown. There’s a pedestrian-only gate between the North Side and the North Hills. Only Pittsburgh residents can use it to visit Earth; they’re given a bracelet that allows them to quickly cross back through the gate later without the hassle of checking visa paperwork.” Jillian put aside the baseball and glove to pull up a map on her tablet. “See, Pittsburghers park in this lot here, walk through this gate, and they’re on this dead-end street. They can walk down to this corner and catch a bus that only runs during Shutdown that loops from this bus stop to these local malls. The setup only works because none of the roads on either side actually connects to the four highways that link Pittsburgh to Earth. The normal traffic jams that happen at Shutdown don’t affect this area.”

If they could get to one of the North Hills malls, then they could take the bus to the gate. It was easy to see why April had ignored the option; the parking lot was in the middle of nowhere. Still, they could conceivably walk to Orville’s. “Why the mice?”

“We need something to distract the guards,” Jillian said. “It probably should be something small enough that they don’t call for reinforcements, but unwieldy enough that they can’t easily deal with it. Even a dozen people would be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mice.”

“Why do they have to be robotic? Real mice would work just as well.”

“Real mice would probably just run and hide. Robotic mice could be programmed to ‘play’ and thus actively seek out humans and attempt to be chased.”

“And exploding?”

“Well—they don’t all have to explode. Just in case the EIA decided to ignore them, one or two should be able to blow up.”

It had the benefit that no one had probably tried it before; thus the EIA probably had no standard protocol for a mischief of exploding robotic mice. The biggest problem with the plan, however, was sheer lack of time.

“Where are we going to get that many robotic mice in twenty-six days? And have them modified to explode?”

“It’s a work in progress.” Jillian
thud-thunked
the baseball and caught it in her glove. “Maybe they could just have tasers.”

Louise had her doubts about the entire plan, but she kept them to herself. Jillian was starting to sound like herself; there was no reason to poke holes in her plan.

* * *

They ate at the dinner table alone—if “alone” meant they had an army of servants watching their every move. Said servants could not be coaxed into giving up any useful information on where Ming and Anna were beyond “not currently home.” Was Ming even on the planet? Yves had been at the mansion to take the call about the explosion. So far, though, they had not met him face-to-face. Where was Yves? Was he personally going to oversee dealing with the disaster? Or was he in some computer center, chasing down bank transactions? According to Louise’s last check, they had stolen over nine hundred million dollars from the secret elves. Getting caught now would be very, very bad.

Unlike the breakfast they’d eaten “alone” with Anna, the menu hadn’t been altered.

The “meat” was something that Louise chose to pretend was small lobsters. (They looked more like insects than crustaceans.) She also pretended to eat it by breaking it into tiny little bits with her fork and knife. No wonder Esme had stashed so much freeze-dried food in the secret room; she must have known that they would be in danger of starving to death on the elves’ weird diet. Louise comforted herself with knowing that they could have lukewarm mac and cheese back in their room later.

Jillian had taken the baseball and peaked cap with her. She spent the meal arranging accidents with the ball. Louise was glad for the little acts of courage and rebellion, but she could feel Celine slipping toward breaking. They were speeding toward a vast array of possibilities, none of them leading to happy endings. Louise kicked Jillian before Celine could start down any of the paths. Jillian gave Louise an innocent look but stopped.

* * *

Nine hundred million dollars bought a lot of robotic mice. The twins could download modified schematics straight to the Indonesian manufacturer that used a mixture of high-end 3D printers and cheap hand laborers to create the “toys.” While the factory could quickly mass-produce a limited run of robotic rodents, US Customs, however, took a dim view of all things that went boom. While there probably were ways around import laws, the red tape would delay shipments to Monroeville.

So they went with mice armed with tasers. They needed a working prototype prior to the start of production. Luckily they had ordered lots of exotic printing supplies while working on the museum heist and Aunt Kitty had dutifully packed it. The design work seemed to help keep Jillian distracted from her grief; the ball and glove sat idle until she sent the job to their 3D printer. Louise had created a pattern for the mouse “skin” and started to deconstruct the rabbit fur muffs that Anna had gotten with the winter coats that she insisted on buying for them. (
Really, it was the middle of July! What was Anna thinking? Hopefully nothing to do with a mischief of mice . . .
)

Nine hundred million dollars also rented a warehouse in Monroeville and hired on a small staff that believed they worked for a Belizean importing company. They would take delivery of the mice and whatever else the twins needed for crossing the Pittsburgh border.

“With all this money, we could just buy a small island and hire someone to be the babies’ mother,” Jillian pointed out. “It would simpler.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” Louise shivered slightly when she saw that the total was now over a billion dollars stolen and climbing slowly. How much more did they have to take until Ming was unable to act? Had they already crippled him and were now wasting valuable time? Or was this just the tip of the iceberg and leaving now would be too soon? Thoughts of staying and leaving both filled her with unease. Was she going to
know
when the time was right?

Jillian
thud-thunked
her baseball. “Just saying we could make it so no adults can tell us what to do.”

“Mary Poppins is not going to fly down out of the sky with her talking umbrella!” Although, in one dream, she had; but Louise was willing to bet that was a normal kind of dream and not a prophetic one. “If we hired someone, unless they’re complete idiots, they’re going to notice there’s no one taking care of us and that we have gobs of money. How long do you think it will take them to figure out that they could easily hurt us until we gave them everything?”

“We would hire nice people and do background checks.”

“Oh, grow up. The only people we could risk hiring are the type that wouldn’t call the police the moment they realized we were orphans living by ourselves. And someone like that would also be ones that steal us blind, first chance they got.”

“It always works out in the movies.” Jillian mumbled and
thud-thunked
her baseball again.

Louise opened her mouth to say, “Not in horror films,” but realized that Jillian had lifted up the WWII escapee persona like a shield to protect herself. Making Jillian see the truth would only hurt her now. They couldn’t afford, though, to chase after an impossible dream. “Babies need a real mother. Not a woman who had poverty or some disaster that forced her into giving birth to children she doesn’t want. They need someone like our mom. Someone that wants children. Someone that can love them completely. Someone that can be patient and strong and wise . . .”

“They’ll have us.”

Louise hunched against a scream of denial. She felt so close to crumbling. She couldn’t bear the idea of being responsible for four real babies, each one as hungry as Joy, and as inquisitive as Nikola. Four Joy/Nikolas all with poopy diapers? Louise couldn’t be their mother. The babies needed someone that wasn’t teetering on the edge. They deserved someone that didn’t feel so eggshell fragile that they were starting to wonder when, not if, they would break under the stress.

The twins needed to save the babies. It would destroy them both to lose the babies now. But be the babies’ parents? No, they couldn’t do that.

* * *

Louise woke up to a mischief of singing mice. Four of them stood on her pillow; one tapped her on the nose. When she opened her eyes, they began to sing in four-part harmony.

“Blue Moon,”
the four mice sang.
“You saw me standing alone. Without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.”

“Nikola?” Louise rubbed at her eyes, wondering if she were dreaming. When she’d fallen asleep, there had been only one naked mouse robot. She had been struggling to fit fur onto it. Her sewing skills weren’t matching up to the task of creating the form-fitting skin.

No, she was awake, and there were definitely four white-furred mice sitting on her pillow. They each had a tiny scarf of different colored fabric wrapped about their neck. The one with a blue muffler waved its hand, identifying itself as her baby brother while the other three clapped their tiny paws. It was very cute in a slightly creepy kind of way.

She sat up, careful not to knock them from the pillow. “How did you . . . ? There was only one . . . And it was naked.” She cautiously picked up Nikola mouse to peer closely at its skin. The rabbit fur had been perfectly joined together so she could barely see the seams.

The babies all started to talk at once.

“Joy fitted the skins,” Pink Scarf said.

“We printed more mice!” Red Gingham said.

“She used magic!” Green Velvet said.

“It was boring waiting to take turns!” Pink cried.

“They’re kind of cramped, even just for one,” Nikola squeaked. It was still Christopher Robin’s Welsh lilt but sonic high, thin, and fast.

“So we made one for each of us!” the girls chorused.

“Vroom! Vroom!” Pink cried. “We can run really fast!”

“And climb!” Green added.

“We can race!” Pink cried.

And the girls took off running in a lap around Tesla, making high-pitched motor noises. Tesla lay unearthly still. Louise had gotten used to the babies moving the dog’s body. It was even creepier to see the big robot sitting idle.

The mice finished their lap with Pink winning.

“Joy made us racing scarfs.” Nikola showed off his blue muffler. “Mine is Wind Clan blue!”

“Mine’s wonderful amazing pink!” Pink cried. “I want goggles, too! Just like Tinker and Oilcan!”

It took Louise a moment to recognize the nicknames of their sister and cousin. It also made Louise realize that she’d been thinking of all of the babies as Nikola Tesla when only one of them was a boy. The three girls still were unnamed.

“Have you thought about names?” Louise asked.

“I want to be Jawbreaker,” Red Gingham stated.

“Jawbreaker?” Louise echoed, mystified.

“It’s Joy’s favorite candy,” Jawbreaker explained.

“Maybe . . .” Louise hesitated in suggesting “Candy” as a name. It was one of those weak, sexist female names that always appalled her mother.
“Girls should have names that allow them to be Supreme Court judges if they wanted. Sissy and Candy would have an uphill battle just because of their names.”
Still, Candy had to be better than Jawbreaker . . . right?

“I want to be Chuck Norris,” Pink announced as Louise struggled on with the whole “strong name” issue.

“Chuck Norris is a boy,” Nikola pointed out.

“I can be a boy if I want to be,” Pink stated firmly and then turned to Louise. “You get to pick your gender, don’t you?”