Martians Abroad

  I had decided to go ahead and try it, just to see what happened, when I noticed that the doorman wasn’t there. I hesitated by the wall near the elevators, because instead of the doorman, George was standing near the front door next to a broad-shouldered man in a long coat, someone I’d never seen before. His arms were crossed, squeezed tight, and he glowered. The doorman was nowhere in sight.

  Maybe Stanton had set guards to make sure I didn’t escape. Maybe George was one of the guards, but if that were the case, George would have looked happier. And I couldn’t imagine him agreeing to miss the evening’s field trip. It was all very confusing. The man had a comm piece in his ear and watched out the glass by the front door. Then he nodded.

  Another man in a long coat came in through the door, took hold of George’s shoulder, and the two men sandwiched him between them as they rushed out the front door. The second long-coated man held something low against George’s back. Shock gun? Ballistic pistol?

  Otherwise, they just looked like three people walking out into the night. Nobody would look at them twice. Maybe they were his bodyguards.

  No, they weren’t.

  I ran to the front desk and started tapping at the concierge screen. Help, where was the help button? Or the security button? I couldn’t find anything relevant; all the buttons were about choosing a room and getting food delivered.

  I went back to the front desk help screen, opened an audio search box, and said, “I’d like to report some suspicious activity. A kidnapping, I think.”

  Words appeared on the screen: “Describe the suspicious activity.”

  “I told you, a kidnapping, two men dragged out one of the students. They didn’t look like they belonged.”

  More words: “Situation described does not match known parameters.”

  Of course this sort of thing wasn’t normal and didn’t happen every day, but shouldn’t there be some kind of category for “not normal”? I growled at the screen, and it showed me an error message with a request to please repeat my statement. This was stupid.

  I pulled out my handheld and pinged Charles. His handheld probably wasn’t even on. He didn’t answer, but I sent a message: “Something’s happened to George.”

  As proof of how worried I really was, I tried Stanton next. I had to look up her code, because I hadn’t thought I’d ever want to call her for anything. Again, no answer. They were at the theater, they wouldn’t be getting calls. I could leave a million messages and it wouldn’t do any good, because this was happening right now.

  Nobody was around; the lobby was empty.

  I tried the front desk screen again. “How do I activate the fire alarm?”

  The screen replied: “Is there a fire at your location?”

  “Yes!”

  A klaxon rang out, loud and throbbing, rattling my bones and filling the whole building. Well, that ought to get someone’s attention. Nozzles popped out of the ceiling, spraying fire-retardant foam. A white mist filled the air and covered the floor, the front desk, the furniture.

  I crouched by the desk, but that didn’t keep me from getting soaked. Small price, right?

  The lobby filled with people pretty quick after that. Guests from other tour groups looking startled and half asleep at the same time, people in hotel-staff uniforms, and a bunch of people in security uniforms came in through the front door. Half of them ducked back into hallways and offices when the foam sprayed them. A couple of people screamed, maybe on general principle. A bunch of people asked where the fire was, and nobody knew, which started a round of annoyed grumbling. Well, at least I’d gotten someone’s attention. But this was going to get interesting.

  “Who started the alarm?” a guy in a security uniform called from the front door. He scanned the room, saw me, frowned even harder than he was already.

  I raised my hand and pulled myself up, leaning on the desk to keep from sliding on the foam now covering the floor. “Me,” I said redundantly.

  The sprayers turned off, so at least foam stopped raining down. I wiped a layer of it from my face and looked up at the guy. He put his hands on his hips.

  “Our infrared alert system didn’t spot any fire,” he said. “Where’s the fire?”

  “There isn’t a fire,” I said, and before he could start yelling added, “But there wasn’t an option to report a kidnapping.”

  His brows lifted. “A kidnapping?”

  “Yeah. I came into the lobby and saw these two big guys, bodyguard types, drag George Lou Montes outside, but I don’t think they were supposed to be here, and George was supposed to be with the field trip—”

  “Who are you?” the security guy asked.

  Deep breath, stay calm. “My name is Polly Newton, I’m with the group of students visiting from Galileo Academy. One of the other students was taken away against his will. Kidnapped. I saw it. I’m trying to report it. I swear, you guys are all up about security until something bad actually happens!”

  “Wait, kid, say that again but slowly this time.”

  I enunciated as clearly as I possibly could. “I’m Polly Newton, I’m with a group of students from Galileo Academy, and one of the other students has been kidnapped—”

  The guy shook his head, still obviously confused. “Polly Newton. Where are you from?”

  “I told you, the Galileo Academy—”

  “I mean, you’re not from Earth, are you?”

  I stared. It was my accent. He couldn’t understand my accent. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Distraction arrived, and we all turned to look when Stanton walked into the lobby, followed by the rest of the Galileo group. The students clogged up behind her, because she stopped cold right inside the doorway, staring at the chaos. Her gaze went to me, and she didn’t seem surprised to find me in the middle of it all. The security guy sighed as if relieved that someone else in a uniform who appeared to have some authority had arrived to explain things.

  “Newton?” she inquired, glancing distastefully at the sticky floor as she picked her way over to us.

  “Is this one yours?” security guy said.

  “What’s happened?”

  “She activated the fire-alert system under false pretenses,” he said.

  “It was the only way I could get anyone’s attention! Didn’t you see my message?”

  “You were supposed to stay in your room,” Stanton said.

  “But if I’d done that, no one would have seen George getting kidnapped!”

  “And why do you think George has been kidnapped?”

  “He’s not here, is he?” I pointed to the milling herd of students that George should have been a part of. “So where is he?”

  “Nonsense, he was at the theater with the rest of us…” She studied her charges, pointing at each one as she counted, then counted again. No George, just like I’d been saying.

  “Can’t you check the video footage?” I asked, getting desperate. The hotel lobby was probably ruined, soaking wet and stinking of soapy chemicals.

  “Officer,” Stanton said to the security guy, “is the building clear? There’s no danger here?”

  “We’re checking it out now, but I’m pretty sure there’s no fire.”

  “Fine. Everyone, go to your rooms and stay there. Newton—you wait right here.” She waved everyone else to the lifts. Elzabeth and some of the others scrunched up their faces and made disgusted noises about the gunk getting all over their nice shoes.

  Charles lingered. While Stanton was talking to security, he sidled up to me. I avoided meeting his gaze.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Somebody kidnapped George,” I muttered.

  “For real?” he said. He didn’t seem shocked our doubtful—just confirming.

  “Totally for real! There’s got to be security footage of it!”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “The Terran Liberation Front? I don’t know! It was just two guys in coats with comm pieces hooked into their ears! They might
have had a gun.” I looked at him, narrowing my gaze. “Were you expecting something to happen?”

  Not even a flinch. “Calm down. We’ll figure it out.”

  Stanton loomed over us. “Charles, you can go now.”

  “May I stay with my sister? I might be able to help her explain what happened.” He blinked up at her, making his eyes look very round and sad.

  I huffed. “I can explain what happened, I’ve been trying to explain—”

  He shoved me with his elbow to get me to shut up.

  This wasn’t worth it. George wasn’t worth it. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. At least I wished I had. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have stayed in my room. I should have stayed on Mars.

  Stanton let Charles stay, and the security guy made us all go to an office in the back of the lobby. One of the hotel staff was there, along with a wall full of video screens where multiple images of the lobby, from several points of view, played out. Finally. I sat back, arms crossed, and waited to be vindicated.

  The hotel person fast-forwarded through the various videos until the time stamps read a half hour before I called the alarm.

  Charles leaned forward to study the one screen that looked across to the door. About twenty minutes before I pulled the alarm—maybe fifteen before I’d walked into the lobby—George came in from outside, accompanied by the man in the overcoat. The man held tight to his arm and leaned forward to mutter something into his ear. George scowled and crossed his arms. I searched the overcoated man’s hands—and yes, he was holding something that looked like a weapon.

  “There, do you see it?” I said, jumping up and pointing. Charles grabbed me and pulled me back to my chair.

  The scene played out to the moment when I stepped out of the elevator and saw them. The second man walked in, and they dragged George out.

  “That doesn’t seem right,” Stanton said.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

  The other two officials played with the video until the faces of the two men, and the shock guns in their hands, were visible.

  “Do you recognize these men at all?” the security guy said to the three of us, and we shook our heads. “Do you have any idea who might want to take the boy?”

  Stanton said, in a tone that expressed disgust that they didn’t already know this, “George Lou Montes’s father is on the cabinet of the South American Alliance. Other cabinet members have been receiving blackmail demands from crime syndicates in the region. Perhaps one of them thought George would make an easy target. I’d start there.”

  So, Earth: not quite the perfect place everyone made it out to be.

  “If that’s the case,” the officer said, “we should be getting a ransom notice. We’ll monitor incoming messages here at the hotel. We’ll have to notify the boy’s family—”

  Stanton said, “Surely it would be better to find the boy first, before unduly worrying his family.” She folded her hands together and gripped tightly. Her smile was strained. This sure wasn’t going to reflect well on the school, was it? Made me suddenly wish, again, that I hadn’t reported it, because how bad would that have looked, George being gone for hours and no one noticing? And did I really want George back? Well, too late now.

  The security officer frowned. “I’ll get these images to security. They’ll be able to initiate a search. We’ll find him quickly, don’t worry. But we’re contacting his family. Why don’t you all go back to your rooms and get some rest.”

  Both the security office and the hotel staffers were looking pretty ashen. Yeah, a lot of people’s reputations were on the line with this one.

  Stanton repeated the order. “You two get back to your rooms. You’ve done all you can here. More, really.” The statement was an accusation.

  “I had to do something, I wasn’t going to just stand there,” I argued.

  “I suppose you expect some sort of medal?” she said.

  “I don’t expect anything,” I muttered.

  “Good. Because you’re still restricted to your room. Stay there this time.”

  We retreated, and as soon as the lift doors closed, Charles started talking. “Something’s not right. Those two guys in the security vid, the kidnappers—they’re not acting right.”

  “How should they be acting?” I prompted.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that they’re not doing anything to disguise their identities? They came into the lobby and posed, almost as if they wanted the vid to see them clearly. They had to know the security footage would see them.”

  “But that would mean they want to get caught,” I said. He didn’t say anything to that, which meant I’d gotten it right. “But that’s messed up. Why would they do that?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? They may be trying to send a message to George’s family, or to the hotel, or to security, or to the rest of us. At any rate, it means George probably isn’t in real danger.”

  “Can we take that chance?”

  Charles went to his room, which he was sharing with Ethan, and I followed him.

  “What’s going on?” Ethan asked. “I heard something happened to George—”

  “Something weird’s going on,” I said. “We just have to figure out what.”

  “Shouldn’t city security be able to do that?” he said.

  “Yeah, but did we mention the weird part?”

  “Most of the city has vid coverage. We ought to be able to find something,” Charles explained, pulling his handheld out of his luggage. He sat on the bed and hunched over it, punching in commands. With his hacking skills he’d figure this out in no time.

  And we waited. If I tried to ask him what he was doing or how long it was going to take, he’d only get more inscrutable, so instead I asked, “How was the play?”

  “What?” He looked up, blinking.

  “The play that I didn’t get to see. How was it?”

  “It was okay,” Ethan said.

  Charles surprised me by looking thoughtful—pleased, even. “Not bad. It was vintage, first performed in the early days of the original theater district. About gangsters and a floating craps game. Everybody sang songs when they got emotional.”

  Had Charles actually enjoyed it? I thought theater would have been beneath him. “And what is a floating craps game?”

  “I think it’s a metaphor. Can we talk about that later?” He keyed in more commands and studied the handheld’s screen intently.

  I started thinking I should have just run after the bad guys rather than messed with the security nonsense. I bet I could have stopped them, or at least slowed them down. For whatever reason he’d been taken, George was probably long gone by now.

  A knock pounded on the door, and when Charles didn’t look up, Ethan went to answer. Ladhi, Angelyn, and Elzabeth pushed inside. Ladhi and Angelyn came to me, while Elzabeth stood apart; her eyes were red, like she’d been crying.

  “What happened?” Ladhi begged. “What did you do?”

  Elzabeth burst, “What happened to George? Is he okay?”

  I slumped over and sprawled on the bed next to Charles, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t want to have to explain it. It seemed so stupid now, and I just got more angry that I couldn’t do anything.

  “Polly—” Ladhi said again. They sat on either side of me and obviously wouldn’t leave me alone until I answered.

  “George got kidnapped. I tried to help. It went badly,” I said.

  “So you’re the one who triggered the fire alarm?” Angelyn asked. “Couldn’t you just call security?”

  “I tried,” I grumbled. “But the computer at the front desk wouldn’t let me talk to a real person and didn’t have a selection for ‘kidnapping’!” The room had suddenly gotten crowded. Elzabeth, pacing at a good fast clip, started crying again, and Angelyn tried to comfort her. I repeated, “And there’s something weird going on.”

  “Yeah, obviously,” Elzabeth said. “I honestly didn’t know one person could
cause so much trouble.”

  I shrugged, but the gesture didn’t mean much with me lying down. “One person with a drill can do enough damage to the hull of a space station.” That was me, it was like I had a diamond-tipped drill bit and didn’t even know it.

  “So what’s going to happen to George?” Ladhi said.

  “I’m almost certain the kidnapping was staged,” Charles said.

  “What?” everybody said. Everybody except me. Nothing Charles said surprised me, ever.

  Charles explained, never looking up from his handheld. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, George really was going to get kidnapped. I’m sure plenty of people could come up with reasons for it, not the least of which is that generating ransom money is probably his only real talent.”

  “Hey!” Elzabeth exclaimed, but Angelyn hushed her.

  “Manhattan Island is locked off, every single person who enters and leaves is recorded and tracked. Someone who wanted to kidnap anyone would have to recruit help from the staff already on the island, and they wouldn’t be able to easily get George off it. They’d have to plan to keep him here until … well, whatever it was they were planning to do with him happened. It’d be easier to just kill him outright than hold him for ransom.”

  Again, Elzabeth gasped a sob, and we all hushed her.

  “I’ve hacked into the port authority database,” Charles said. “They don’t show anyone entering the island in the last month matching the two kidnappers from the surveillance video. In fact, cross-referencing the security video with the island’s staff database … and there they are.”

  Elzabeth rushed to look over his shoulder at his handheld. “You found who did it? Really?”

  I crossed my arms. “If you could find that out just by hacking into the official database, the island’s security will have already figured it out for themselves.”

  “Exactly,” he said, smiling slyly. “They probably figured it out in a matter of minutes. But I’m guessing Stanton told them not to do anything about it.”

  “Then that would mean she was behind it,” I said, and Charles smiled. “But why?”

  “I’m still working on that.”