Early Byrd

she said from behind the smile that reminded me so much of Mom's. Or at least it had until she'd kicked Uncle Rapput in the shattered arm. "We'll cook you up some oatmeal and flapjacks with real maple syrup once we get to the cabin. And that's just for breakfast. Fat boys, you'll soon be! Tell me, do you guys like poutine?"

  "Mr. Li is probably getting pretty hungry by now," I pointed out. "Thirsty, too. And someone should at least offer water to U—To Rapput."

  "They'll be just fine as they are," Sam, the American, assured us. "The longer they go without, the easier they'll be to handle." His eyes narrowed. "I know you probably think these two care about you, But they don't. It was a lie, I'm afraid. A huge lie, just like this whole Treaty business is a lie. We won every battle, so how could we have lost the war?" He looked at Li as if expecting to be contradicted, but he said nothing. Neither did Tim or I—there didn't seem to be any point.

  Sam frowned then turned to the Canadian man who seemed to be in charge of it all. Currently he was busy driving the boat. "Hey, Yukon! You mind if I start debriefing the boys now? The sooner we get started, the sooner it's done and over with."

  He shrugged. "Suits me, I guess. Be sure to take notes."

  "Right," Linda agreed, pulling out a smartphone.

  Then Sam began asking us questions, one after another. They started out simple, but right from the beginning I didn't see why we ought to make things any easier for them. Who were we? Robert Herman and Timothy Scott Smith, I heard emerge from my lips before Tim had a chance to contradict me. Where were we from? Boise. How had we become hostages? Because our Dad was a stinking collaborator!

  "A lawyer from Chicago," Tim added, his eyes glittering with pleasure as he embroidered our story even further. After all, Dad always said the only people Americans despised more than congressmen were big-city lawyers. "He works for the mayor. We never saw him once after the divorce. He doesn't care about us at all, I don't think. Just his secretary that he married. That's why he let them have us as hostages." Tim loved tall tales for their own sake, and I was rather fond of them myself. I'd told a slightly different story to Linda earlier, yes. But this new one was so good she seemed to have forgotten it entirely.

  "That entire city is a nest of collaborators!" Linda hissed, striking the boat's rail in rage. "A blight on humanity!" Meanwhile Tim beamed at me, and I pressed my knee against his, the gesture invisible through the blanket we'd been given to share. It was our secret way of saying "good job!" to each other. So long as we told them what they wanted to hear, they'd unquestioningly accept it as the gospel truth. Adults usually did, after all, especially the stupid ones. And as for these particular adults . . . If they'd known how to "think things all the way through," as Mom had worked so long and hard to teach us to do, they'd not have been who and what they were to begin with.

  "We know who the fleabag is," Sam continued. "We've already convicted the bastard as a war criminal in absentia, and I expect that once we have proper arrangements in place we'll be carrying out the judge's sentence."

  "Sentence?" I asked.

  "Death by hanging. It's slow for their kind—their necks don't break." He sighed. "Though I guess we'll have to nurse him a little first. No point hanging an unconscious man." Then he pointed at Mr. Li. "Now, who is he? And what's his part in all this?"

  I gulped, but this time Tim was quicker. "He knows Dad through Chicago University. He's some kind of sick-ologist or something. Supposedly he's along just to make sure we get on the ship, but his real job was to learn everything he could about the Gonther Clan along the way." My brother twisted his face up like he was thinking extra-hard. "You might even call him a spy, kind of. On our side."

  "Hrrrmph!" Sam declared, scowling. He didn't want to believe it, yet we'd already spoken so much self-evident truth that he had difficulty branding us liars. Then he turned to Li. "You'd put human kids on an alien ship, Mr. sick-ologist? Leave them alone to be taken off to god-knows-where and have who-knows-what done to them?"

  "Someone had to do the job regardless," he countered. "So why not an expert observer?" Then he shrugged. "I picked up what I could. Who knows when it may be of use? We have to learn what we can when we can. No opportunity can be lost if we're to emerge victorious."

  Sam frowned again. "All right. I almost shot you out of hand. But now I can see where at least you deserve a fair trial. Which you'll get, though it'll be awhile."

  "Thank you," Li replied, perfectly sincere as far as we boys could tell. "Am I allowed to ask under whose jurisdiction I'm to be tried?"

  Sam blinked. "Don't you know by now?"

  He shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir. Should I?"

  "I'm a Regional Vice President of the Rocky Mountain Free State." He nodded at Yukon. "He's our Senior Vice-President."

  Tim and I looked at each other, but the name didn't ring a bell for either of us.

  "Ah!" Li replied, looking suitably impressed even though I was fairly certain he'd never heard of them either. Then he looked down again. "You're right. I should've guessed."

  "Damn straight!" Sam declared. "We're the biggest, most powerful legitimate government on the continent!"

  "'Legitimate' meaning non-collaborationist, of course" Linda explained. "Someday soon we'll be running it all! And then you'll see the fleabags running in terror, by god!"

  "By god!" Yukon echoed from his seat at the helm. Apparently he could hear a lot better than he'd let on. "But for now . . . Linda, cover the prisoners, and Sam, go tend to the bow line. Our last stop is just around the next bend."

  14

  The cabin didn't look like much—wasn't much, actually, until you realized only a small part was above ground. From the outside, it was just another trapper's shack with a half-collapsed roof and a set of beat-up solar panels tracking the sun. But the visible part was only a sort of vestibule, which also served as a combination guard post and kitchen. Two armed men sat there, and they didn't smile at us. Down below there was a long series of tunnels—we never saw the ends, so I don't have any idea how far back into the hill they went. Maybe it was an abandoned gold mine.

  The upper shafts were dry and relatively clean, insofar as anything with a dirt floor can be clean. While there was always a dank chill in the air, at least our hosts had provided Tim and me with our own room, complete with bunk beds and heavy quilts.

  "I get the upper!" Tim declared the second we were ushered in; he beat me to it largely because the lower bed was made up with a comforter identical to the one I'd left behind in Montana, with cartoon race cars all over it. I guess the sight sort of threw me; so much had happened in so little time!

  "I'm afraid we don't have TV way out here," Sam said from the door as we explored our new domain. "Nor much in the way of video games or even inside plumbing, though I've requested some handheld thingies for you to play with. Right now all we’ve got are a few magazines, and most of them, ah . . . aren’t suitable for the young. So it's going to be pretty boring for a while. Beats being taken hostage though, right?"

  "Oh, yeah!" Tim agreed, and I matched his big smile with my own. "Thank you so much for rescuing us, sir."

  He smiled back and stood taller. "Linda's going to whip us up some breakfast, as promised. But the truth of the matter is that we've got quite a bit to do before we're settled in right and proper, and neither of you two has had much chance to rest. So . . . how about a nice nap first? That's one good thing about being underground—you can make it be nighttime whenever you like."

  We smiled back. "All right," I was the one who answered this time. "But wake us up for the flapjacks!"

  "Sure thing!" Sam promised. Then he was gone, leaving the room illuminated by a single LED. It wasn't very bright.

  "I'm so tired!" Tim said, louder than he really needed to. Just like he did when he wanted to mislead Mom and Dad about something they didn't need to know about. He nodded at the magazines—there was a pen lying right next to them. How convenient!

  "Me too!" I agreed, also too loudly and thus s
econding the motion that we should definitely try and get away with something.

  "Let's hit the hay, then."

  We stripped down to our underwear and settled in under the comforters. It was nice and warm and soft there, and for a moment I almost fell asleep for real. Then, as expected, a ballpoint with a slip of slick magazine paper stuck under its clip fell from the bed above mine and onto my pillow. It was just barely light enough to read the thing. "Got to move fast," it read. "Li, Rapput getting weaker."

  I nodded and turned the paper over. "Five of them," I countered. "Two guards, Sam, Yukon, Linda." Then I folded it all back together and, making use of the darkness along the wall-side of the bed, passed the package upward into my brother's waiting hand.

  "Five is too many," he agreed. "Have to separate them. I don't see any other way. Do you?"

  "No other way," I agreed. Then a sick sensation washed over me. "We're going to have to kill them, I think. Just like deer, or coyotes. Dead forever. Don't want to.”

  "Yeah," my brother agreed, this time on a new, larger sheet. The other was too scribbled-up by now. "Dad always told us we might have to kill people someday if we joined the army or the police or something. And that it was okay so long as we were for-sure certain there was no other way. Because some things are even worse than killing,"

  "This is kinda like the army," I wrote back.