A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (3 page)

“What’s an
ibrida
?” I ask. Byron chokes on his biscuit, trying his best to hide a double take.

“Where’d you hear that word?” he asks pointedly.

“At the hospital, when your goons decided to go all batshit crazy on me.”

Byron tries to smile casually. “That’s not really important at the moment,” he says, and it’s the first time I don’t buy the acting job. His eyes shift to the biscuit tin for a split second, before he looks back up at me. “I know you are somewhat aware of the history of the Almiri, Elvie, but let me explain it to you a little more fully, so that you’ll understand.” He nudges Thunder’s nose away from the biscuit tin. “We came to the Earth nearly five thousand years ago. Humans were one of six viable host species in the entire galaxy, and they were remarkable creatures. We sought to make them more remarkable. You are familiar, to some extent, with Greek mythology?”

“Sure,” I say, bracing myself for yet another history lesson. The Almiri seem to love them. “Zeus, Athena, all that crap.”

“Exactly,” Byron says. “Those were us.”

“Excuse me?” I say, eyebrows up. “Sorry, but not for one second do I believe that you guys are
gods
.”

“No, of course not,” Byron replies. “You misunderstood my meaning.” Beside him, Boatswain manages to sneak a biscuit from the tin unnoticed, but I decide to let this go unmentioned. “When we first arrived on Earth, we couldn’t blend in as we do now, so of course our appearance was strange to humans. They had stories of deities already in their society, and whenever anyone happened to spy one of us, they simply slotted us into those appointed roles. Burning bushes, talking
clouds, showers of gold, these were ways for them to describe what was beyond their understanding. Thunder, no. You
just
ate.” Thunder glares at Boatswain, who’s licking the crumbs stealthily off his doggy gums. “Soon,” Byron continues, oblivious, “we Almiri had our first children, and they appeared to be human. Their abilities, however, made them stand out.”

“Lemme guess,” I interject. I’m wondering when this is going to lead to a smidgen of information about my baby. About my dad and Ducky. About Cole. “Achilles, Hercules, Perseus . . .”

“They were the first Earthborn Almiri,” Byron confirms. “
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, to render with thy precepts less the sum of human wretchedness, and strengthen Man with his own mind.
” He’s doing that closed-eye thing again. Boatswain sneaks another cookie. I clear my throat, and Byron’s eyes fly open. “Where was I? Oh yes. Over time, successive generations appeared as human, and it became easier and easier to simply disappear into human society.”

“This is all fascinating, really,” I lie. “But can we skip along? You were explaining how my baby was going to bring about the apocalypse.”

Byron smiles again and starts pacing around the room. The dogs follow obediently at his heels, with the husky staying as far from the bear as possible. On the wall next to the oil painting of the dude in the headscarf is one of Boatswain, though the picture appears to be very, very old, and the pooch couldn’t be more than six. Byron considers it for a moment in silence, then turns back to me.

“Elvie, we have always been a very small, discreet society.
We took to heart the mistakes of our ancestors, and were careful to never endanger mankind with reckless propagation. Basically, we tried not to be dicks about it. And along the way, we’ve pushed the humans toward advances that would have taken eons for them to come up with on their own. I mean, take jazzercise.”

“My apocalypse baby,” I remind him.

“We need human females to breed, Elvie. We have no alternative. Without you there would be no Almiri. Human female, Almiri baby. That’s the way it’s always been. Then suddenly you come along, and young Mr. Archer . . . and somehow your child is not Almiri.”

“What do you mean she’s not an Almiri?” I say. “Sure, she’s an anomaly, I get that. But she’s Cole’s kid. I’m not some wanton slut-bag, if that’s what you’re imply—”

“The child is
not
Almiri,” Byron repeats. “The child—your child, Archer’s child—is somehow something else. An ‘anomaly,’ as you put it. But not a benign one. If left unchecked, this anomaly could be the end of the Almiri . . . and of humans, too.”

An icy ball is beginning to form in my stomach. “What are you going to do to my baby?” I ask slowly.

Byron examines me curiously, as if he’s honest-to-goodness confused, before realization breaks across his face. “Oh, poor child, what monsters we must seem right now! As I said, nothing that is happening is your fault, nor your child’s. We will not harm either of you, I promise.”

“So, then what? We’re free to go?”

He looks at me sadly. And maybe I’m just overreading his
superdramatic facial expressions, but I swear I see something there. Something that tells me it pains him, deeply and personally, to say what he’s about to. “The situation is not your fault, but it is still the situation at hand. I’m afraid we’re going to have to . . . contain the threat.”

I shift uneasily in my chair. “And here I thought the only threat was the Jin’Kai.”

Byron reaches for the tin again, then thinks better of it. Suddenly he seems to be avoiding my gaze. “Keeping you out of their hands is paramount as well. You and your child will be sent to a secure facility. For the time being. Until we can straighten this whole mess out.”

“What about Dad? Ducky?” I ask, rising to my feet. Drusilla rises as well, but this time I don’t back down. Being bear food is suddenly the
least
freaky thing I’m facing.

“We wouldn’t want to risk your father and friend falling into Jin’Kai hands either. So they will accompany you.” He’s trying to make this sound like some sort of temporary vacation or something, but I’m getting the strong vibe that wherever he’s sending us, it’s not going to be pleasant.

“So where is this Almiri Alcatraz you’re shipping me off to?” I ask. “Outer space again?”

“I think you’ve had enough adventures out there for a while, don’t you?” he says, jovial once more. “No, you’ll be stationed at a secret facility near Cape Crozier.”

It’s not a place on the planet most people would probably know. But I happen to have a deceased mother with a passion for travel and a detailed book of maps.

“
ANTARCTICA?
” I screech. What. Da. Fuh.

“The camp is home to a number of Almiri. A sort of . . . ‘time-out’ zone for brothers who have broken the Code.”

I drop my head so that my chin is practically digging into my chest, but my glower shoots directly into Byron’s pretty eyes.

“And you really think the safest place you could put me is in the middle of the frozen tundra with a whole bunch of superbuff aliens who
you already know can’t keep it in their pants
?” I ask in disbelief.

“Come now, Elvie.” Byron scrunches up his face and gives me a quick headshake, as if I have a filthy mind for even thinking what I’m thinking. He walks back over to his desk and hits a button on his intercom. A voice crackles in response.

“
Yes?
”

“We’re just about finished in here,” Byron replies. He takes his hand off the intercom.

“Elvie, I realize that right now I must seem like a terrible villain—well, let’s be honest—an asshole. I’m sure I can’t blame you for thinking as much. Hopefully, someday sooner than later, you will understand that I have no choice. For the time being, Cape Crozier is our only option, however imperfect.”

The main door slides open, and my new buddy Alan is on the other side. Byron leans in to me and whispers so that Alan can’t hear. “Just remember that I won’t stop trying to help you, dearheart.” I flinch at the sound of the pet name that I’ve only ever heard my father call me.

Just how much does this guy actually know about us, anyway?

“Are the preparations made?” Byron asks Alan.

Alan, already at attention in the doorway, stiffens at his commander’s voice. “Nearly, sir, another hour at most,” he says.

“Please lead Miss Nara to the holding area, until then,” Byron says. “And for God’s sake, get the girl some clothes.”

•  •  •

I walk down the long, sterile corridor with Alan beside me, my slippers sliding across the slick linoleum floor. The rooms along the corridor do not have normal doors. Rather, the doors are thick, heavy, and mechanized, like the kind you might find in a factory, or a cargo ship.

Or a prison.

“How long are you going to ‘hold’ me here before I get started on that all-expenses-paid trip to the Earth’s rectum?” I ask Alan.

“Not long, Miss,” Alan says, and I can’t tell if he’s being polite or condescending.

Each door has a small, circular window about the size of a dinner plate. As we pass by one such window, I think I catch a shadow standing at the door, peering out at me, but in a flash the shadow disappears.

“Hey, what’s that?” I wonder, pausing. I try to look inside, but whatever was just there has disappeared. Alan takes my arm and gives it a slight tug, and my feet slide away from the door.

“This way, Miss,” Alan says.

I pull against Alan’s grip to crane my neck and look inside. I make out a tall, willowy figure and a very familiar-looking long blond ponytail.

“But—”

“
This
way, now.”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that the Almiri were keeping my arch-nemesis, Britta McVicker, under lock and key.

But no, I think. That wouldn’t make any sense.

We come to the final door along the corridor, and Alan slides a card over the side sensor. Immediately the locking mechanism springs to life and the door slides open. The inside of the room is even more drab than the one I woke up in. It’s gray, with nothing but a couch built into two sides of the wall. Like a karaoke room without the karaoke.

I step inside, and without another word, Alan closes the door behind me. My options are pretty much stand or sit, so after a few moments of pacing, I decide to sit.

I’m not sure how long I’m sitting there—five minutes? ten?—when I hear the door sensor beep and the locking mechanism disengage. The door slides open, and in steps Byron, carrying something in his arms.

“I thought you might want a little company,” he says. I look down at the bundle he’s balancing so delicately in the crook of his elbow.

He is cradling my baby.

The Goober is tiny and pink and wrinkly, cooing softly as Byron bobs her gently up and down.

“We’ve made arrangements for your journey,” he tells me as he nears with my daughter. “You’ll leave on the
Fountain
. It will only take a few hours to get to the continent, although from there I’m afraid you’ll have to travel by dogsled. Technology is great, but it can’t trump Mother Nature.
Still, it’s a relatively easy journey, at least to the base.”

But I’m hardly listening. In the instant he hands me the Goober, the whole world seems to drop away.

I am a mother.

This wrinkled pink raisin is my daughter.

She finally opens her eyes, and blinks up at me, and that’s when I start to cry. Huge, blubbering sobs. Worse than when Christian was killed off in season three of
Martian Law
.

Byron takes in the scene quietly. Almost as if he were ashamed. I can only hope.

“I never did ask,” he asks softly. “What are you going to name her?”

I rub my daughter’s left cheek, where, curiously, her constellation of freckles seems ten times lighter than the last time I saw her. “Olivia,” I say through my sobs. I hold her close, feeling the rise and fall of her perfect, tiny breaths. “After my mother. Her name is Olivia.”

Grown men—even ones who, like my father, have difficult jobs to which they wear a suit and tie every day, and know how to use big words like “hypnagogic” in a sentence, and have even, perhaps, raised children of their own—might be forgiven for breaking down and weeping at the sight of their brand-new grandbaby, cradled in a daughter’s arms. You might even
expect
that such an event would cause tears—giddiness, even. Perhaps the grandfather in question might go so far as to tuck his legs up underneath him in his chair and clap his hands together like a kindergartner who’s imbibed too much orange drink.

My father is currently doing all of these things. But it is not because of little baby Olivia. Oh, he likes her fine. He said she’s “adorable,” even, and “a miracle,” and he did spend a good amount of time cuddling with her when we first got on the mag rail.

But the thing that’s actually making my father squeal like a preteen who just got Hansel Wintergarden’s autograph is, in fact, our means of transport.

“You’d never even suspect how fast we were moving if you didn’t know it!” he gushes, pressing his nose against the window. “It’s smoother than the SleekTransit mag line, by far. Such a marvel of engineering. Wouldn’t you agree, Donald?”

Next to my father, Ducky has turned a shade of pea-soup green that is such an exact match to the train’s upholstery that I could have sworn the designers used his face as a color swatch. “Yeah,” he moans. “A marvel.” The Duck, clearly, was not built for high-speed travel.

Neither, apparently, is little Olivia, who is enjoying the ride about as much as having knitting needles crammed into her ears. She’s wailing a piercing wail, and doing the baby equivalent of the Electric Slide up and down my chest.

“I think we’re going to be docking with the space elevator soon,” my dad gushes on. “Oh, wait until you see it, Elvie. Did I already mention it’s a marvel? A
marvel
! And to call it the
Fountain
? Ha, let it not be said these Almiri gents lack for sense of humor.”

“I think you’re forgetting that this marvelous space elevator is taking us to a prison in Antarctica,” I mutter, bobbing Olivia in a futile attempt to get her to quiet down. Seriously, the girl might not be an Almiri like her father, but she sure has superhuman pipes.

Dad must be able to tell that I’m feeling especially low at the moment, because he puts a hand on my shoulder. I stifle
a tear that’s threatening to break loose from the corner of my eye and smile a tight smile at him. He smiles back, and I wait for his words of comforting fatherly wisdom that will get me through this whole ordeal.