Hard, but not impossible… especially for a kid who’d recently downloaded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Acoustical Engineering PhD curriculum into his cerebellum. I zoomed in my eyes on the glass of the floor-to-ceiling penthouse windows to the point at which I could see the vibrations caused by my enemies’ words. And from there, it was a simple matter of translating the vibrations back into sounds and…
“That poor, poor kitty cat. What is wrong with you two?!” asked Number 1, swiveling his head back and forth in his creepy rendition of a disapproving head shake. His voice carried a note of amusement, but Number 7 and Number 8’s obvious nervousness made it clear he wasn’t totally joking.
“I have told you before,” he said, his eyes flashing (only that’s not really the right word because it wasn’t light coming out of them—it was darkness). “And I’ll tell you again—there is only one creature I need you to hunt to extinction, and that’s Graff and Atrelda’s unfortunate leave-behind. Little whatever-his-name-is.”
“He calls himself Daniel,” replied Number 8, timidly.
“What day of the week is it?” said Number 1, rising up on his hind legs and glowering at her.
“Tuesday.”
“Then I want you to call him Thursday Night Soup.”
“But what if he time-travels back to Monday?” asked Number 7.
“I’ve seen to it that he can’t do any more of his time-travel tricks,” Number 1 said, annoyed. “Now do your job and hunt him down.”
“Yes, sensei,” said Number 7 and Number 8 in unison, bowing and backing away from him.
“And stop acting like humans!” screamed Number 1. “You two are taking this playacting too far. Between your tabloid antics and the way your so-called son’s been behaving lately, you’ll probably end up going native on me.”
“Of course, master,” said Number 7 and Number 8, like they shared voice. It was a little creepy how they did that, actually. Maybe it was a talent that came with being married a really long time…
“Listen to me!” Number 1 barked. “I cannot afford any more screw-ups. I’m having to spend enough time recruiting and training replacements for Numbers 6, 5, and 3 without worrying about two more openings to fill.”
“Don’t worry, master. We’re on schedule.”
“I need you to be more than on schedule. You need to be ahead of schedule,” said Number 1, straightening up to his full height and glaring down at the human-looking couple. “We’ve had an unfortunate setback,” he said. “A Pleionid has landed here on Earth.”
“A Pleionid?” asked Number 7.
I was familiar with the name. Pleionids were a species of legendary genius and unique telepathic abilities. Unfortunately, they were also complete pacifists and had offered next to no resistance when Outer One poachers had invaded their world. Theirs was one of those legendary extinctions, much like the dodo bird or the passenger pigeon here on Earth.
“But they’re extinct!!” blurted Number 8.
The impatient look Number 1 gave her was enough to remove any doubt. “I don’t care whether you kill it, or him, first—but by no means may you let them make contact with each other… unless it’s as ingredients in one of your meals. Do you understand me?”
Number 7 and Number 8’s ravenous, drooling expressions made it clear that there was no mission they’d have more willingly undertaken. For these two hunters of endangered species to receive a shot at one the most legendary of all interstellar creatures—
Number 1 backed in to the open elevator, his insect eyes now glowing red.
“Don’t even think of failing me.”
“Oh, no, master. We won’t!” they yelled as the polished stainless steel doors slid closed.
I gripped the railing of the window-cleaning gondola with both hands. My head was spinning. Number 1 here in Tokyo? The monster that had killed my parents and probably orchestrated the near genocide of my race?
Had I really just seen him with my own eyes? Had I really just overheard his plans?
Or was it all a trick? Had Number 7 and Number 8 known I’d be watching? Was it just a red herring to throw me off? Was I really supposed to believe there was a living Pleionid somewhere in this city? And what was that part about how Number 1 had seen to it that I could no longer time-travel? I’d never doubted myself this much before. I didn’t know what to believe…
But I didn’t have any more time to ponder it right then. The elevator doors opened again and disgorged a figure far less intimidating yet in some ways more disturbing than Number 1.
Chapter 17
I’D SEEN A lot of aliens in my day, but until that moment I’d never seen one wearing Adidas.
The boy who’d just entered the apartment of Number 7 and Number 8 looked to be about my age, with jet-black hair and piercing dark eyes, and wearing a tattered wool sweater and blue jeans. There was something deeply sad about him, like somebody close to him had died and he didn’t want to talk about it. He looked like a decent kid. Which was bizarre considering this was apparently Number 7 and Number 8’s son.
“Kildare, my boy,” said Number 7, turning away from his computer screen, which right then was filled with engineering schematics of some antennas located on the second-tallest structure in Tokyo, the famed Tokyo Tower. “You’ll never guess who was just here.”
“The Supernanny,” replied Kildare, “come to give you two some parenting pointers.”
“What is he talking about, Colin?” asked Number 8.
“As usual, Ellie,” said Number 7, “I have no idea.” He turned back to his son with a stern expression. “We were just called on by none other than The Prayer.”
A flicker of surprise crossed Kildare’s face, quickly masked by a shrug.
“Do you even know who that is?” Number 8 prodded, disgust creeping into her tone.
The boy had looked ready to fire a sarcastic retort but thought better of it. Instead, he turned and headed toward the kitchen.
“I thought not. He’s Number 1, my dear, ignorant child. On The List.” No response from Kiladare. “And there’s something else you should know,” continued his mother.
Kildare paused as he reached the kitchen door.
“There’s a Pleionid here in Tokyo.”
The boy spun around, a look approaching panic on his face.
“What!? They’re extinct!”
“All but one. One that came here to interfere with our plans.”
“But aren’t they pacifists?”
“That may be, but we think it’s intending to pass on information that our nonpacifist enemies might use,” explained his mother.
“All of that is immaterial,” Number 7 jumped in. “The fact is that the hunt for the last Pleionid will be the stuff of legend, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for any hunter.”
“In fact,” said Number 8, “your father and I have been talking, and, since your sixteenth colony cycle is approaching, we think you should be hunt leader on this one.”
“What a glorious first kill it could be for you!” said Number 7. “Much like my own, when I caught and killed the last Reticulated Shandlerite on Guldbrekker 11.”
It looked to me like all the blood had drained from Kildare’s face. “Sure, Dad. Say, I just remembered…” He hesitated, turning back to the private elevator. “I left some equipment at school. I have to go.”
“Kildare! We’ve already talked about your forgetting things all of the time. We are not a family—much less a species—that forgets things.”
“But I have to go get it or I won’t be able to finish my science project.”
“And then what?” asked his father. “I know we asked you to blend in and learn their ways; but this interest of yours in school—it’s unseemly, Kildare.”
“I can’t blend in if I fail out.”
“Well,” said Number 8, looking quite human in her motherly disapproval, “make sure you’re back in time for dinner. The hunt starts in two days, and you’ll need extra rest so you?
??ll be ready.”
“Your first hunt! Ah, that’ll get you past this school bug!” said Number 7, rubbing his hands together and leaning back in his computer chair.
Kildare grimaced and disappeared into the elevator.
“This will be just the thing to get him back on track,” declared Number 7. “There’s no way he’ll be able to deny his heritage after tasting the thrill of the hunt.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Number 8. “Should we put up some fail-safes so he doesn’t get hurt?”
“No, let him prove himself. If he doesn’t rise to the challenge…”
“Of course, you’re right, dear,” said Number 8, coming up behind her husband and rubbing his shoulders. “We can always make another.”
As Number 7 stood and began returning her affections, I quickly turned off my “hearing” and looked away from their window. Not only am I really not into watching aliens smooch, but I didn’t have much time to figure out where their son was going. He was definitely up to something.
Fortunately, one thing faster than high-speed elevators is instantaneous teleportation. Of course, you have to know exactly where it is you’re teleporting to or you can find yourself lodged in a solid object, with some pretty unpleasant results. But by now, I’d made a thorough study of the GC building’s layout and knew exactly where the penthouse elevator stopped. In the blink of an eye, I disguised myself as a security guard and teleported myself to the lobby.
Only problem was, when the elevator doors opened up, Kildare wasn’t there.
Chapter 18
I PULLED DOWN the brim of my security cap and stepped into the empty express elevator. There was no sign of Kildare, but the panel made it pretty clear where he’d gone. The lobby and the penthouse each had a button, but there was another button to select. It was labeled with the Japanese character for “service,” and, based on its position in the panel, it seemed to be the floor directly below the penthouse. I hit the button.
The elevator rose quickly—so quickly my ears popped—and opened into a space quite different than the one occupied by Number 7 and Number 8. No polished obsidian floors or exotic furnishings here. This was a filthy, fluorescently lit, windowless room filled with all kinds of Dumpsters, washers and dryers, cleaning supplies, and a very tired-looking, stooped old woman in a crisp white cleaning uniform. She immediately put down her mop and bowed at me as I stepped out of the elevator.
“Did you see a kid come through here?” I asked in Japanese.
“No, sir,” she replied.
I could tell she was lying. Maybe the kid had threatened her? Maybe his parents had?
Just then, a large chute dropped down from the ceiling, and a load of dirty pots and revolting soup bones rained into the middle of the floor. The old woman picked up her mop.
“You have to clean this entire place yourself?”
“Whenever the masters are home, yes, of course,” she said, moving toward the fresh mountain of filth.
My heart went out to her. Getting this place passably clean would have taken a team of professional cleaners a week… or an Alpar Nokian cleaning robot approximately ten minutes.
I quickly materialized one of the compact white machines I’d known from my childhood.
“How did you—?”
“Make a cleaning machine out of thin air?”
She nodded.
“I’m not going to tell you so that you have plausible deniability, okay?”
“What?”
“Somebody comes in here and asks you where that machine came from, and you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know.’ Right?”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, bowing to me over and over again as the white machine zipped around the room obliterating every piece of trash it encountered.
“Can you please tell me where that kid went? I promise I’m not here to hurt him.”
She looked me in the eyes. “Well, if you promise not to harm him…. Sometimes he goes through there.”
She was pointing at a metal grate—an air vent—in the wall. Judging by the worn hinges, it had been opened and closed many times.
“He’s a nice boy,” she said. “Not at all like his parents.”
I nodded, popped the cover, and climbed down into the dark metal duct.
When I put my mind to it, I can make my nose more sensitive than a bloodhound’s. I’m talking the ability to detect parts per trillion. It’s a weird sensation, being able to smell things that strongly—and it can cause some serious nausea if you come across a bad odor like, you know, brussels sprouts—but it can be a huge help in cases like this where you’re climbing around a skyscraper’s branching ductwork in pitch dark.
I followed Kildare’s scent, which was definitely not human, to a small room that was clearly his lair. I knew it was his, because I’m pretty well acquainted with the living habits of my race—not of Alpar Nokians but Teenage Boyians.
The small custodian’s closet was dominated by a dangerous-looking mountain of clothing, shoes, and Snickers wrappers. To one side, a metal locker plastered with Linkin Park and other rock-band stickers had been turned on its side to support an Xbox 360 console, a flat-screen television, a broken remote control, and a pile of papers and school books.
I picked up one of the books and looked it over. It was a textbook with a close-up of a moth’s face on the cover. I managed to translate the Japanese characters to “Zoology: A Complete Survey.” “Kildare Gygax” was written inside the cover—both in Japanese characters and our more familiar Roman alphabet. Below that was the name and address of a local secondary school.
As I returned the book to the makeshift desk, I noticed that the overturned locker was completely blocking the only door to the room. Did that mean that Kildare came and left only through the vent?
I understood the need for privacy—especially with parents like his—but it seemed like it would be pretty inconvenient to forever be clambering around in those dark, cramped vents to get in and out of here.
And why were there two sleeping bags, not one? And why was one so much smaller than the other?
I quickly examined them. They’d each been slept in, and recently. The bigger one smelled exactly like the trail in the vents and must have been Kildare’s. But the little one—it could have been an infant’s sleeping bag, and it smelled like nothing I’d ever come across. I mean, I don’t even know what to compare it to. It was kind of sweet, but not like perfume and not like candy. It just smelled good somehow, if that makes any sense.
But there weren’t any other clues, at least that I could find. If the big bag was Kildare’s, whose was the little one? A little brother’s?
I didn’t have any idea what was going on. And what about Number 1? Had he just been checking in on Number 7 and Number 8, or was he here for something else? If he were to join forces with those two, the scales wouldn’t just tip the wrong way; they’d fall right off the counter.
A chill ran down my spine, and I spun around, but no one was there.
Strange. Usually when I have the feeling that I’m being watched, I’m right.
Chapter 19
THERE WAS ONLY one reasonable thing to do to ease my nerves: check in to a luxury hotel.
The Fujiya Hotel, a Western-style hotel dating to 1878, is down in Hakone, a mountain resort town south of Tokyo. Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Lennon, kings of England, and, of course, emperors of Japan—you name a celebrity or VIP from the past couple centuries, and if they visited Japan, chances are they stayed at the Fujiya.
You reach it by bullet train, not a bad hour-long hop out of Tokyo, and then take a switchback train up into the hot spring–studded mountains. It’s inviting and beautiful and classy and just the sort of spot where you can escape from the modern hubbub and luxuriate in true old-world opulence, replete with the most deluxe room service you’ve ever seen.
I placed my order as soon as I got to the room: “Yes, I’d like eight bowls of the Imp
erial consommé, two dozen orders of the assorted sashimi, seven gratin-of-shrimp with the sole Queen Elizabeth II, eight Chaliapin steaks—actually, better make that nine—and why don’t you throw in twenty orders of shrimp tempura. As for drinks, I’d like two pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice, four liters of Coke, two liters of Sprite, three liters of Pineapple Crush, and some of that fancy sparkling water—what’s it called—Pellegrino? Oh, and dessert. Do you have baked Alaska? Great, how many people does it serve? Yes, in that case, I’d like three of those too. Domo arigato.”
And then—so you don’t think I’m a glutton or anything—I placed another order, only this one happened entirely inside my own head. I materialized Dana, Willy, Joe, and Emma, as well as Mom, Dad, and Pork Chop (aka Brenda, my little sister).
There was a lot of hugging, high-fives, low-fives, jumping on the bed, and general jubilation. And when I told Joe what I’d ordered from room service, he just about went catatonic on me.
“This sure seems festive, Daniel,” said my mom. “What’s going on?”
“Attention, everybody,” I said, standing on the mahogany credenza and waving at Emma to turn down the sound on the Dance Dance Revolution game she and Pork Chop had begun to play on the room’s Wii console.
“As you know, we’re once again faced with what some might think is an insurmountable challenge. Not one, but two Listers are with us in Tokyo, and all signs suggest that they’re about to go critical. What you don’t know is that there may actually be three of them—they appear to have a son.”
“I’m really good with alien kids, you know,” said Joe. “Do you think they ever need a sitter?”
“And,” I continued, ignoring him, “if that weren’t enough, it appears that they might be getting some help from yet another Lister.”
“Another in the top ten?!” demanded Dana, putting down her iPhone and looking at me in disgust. “Which one?!”
“Umm,” I said, coughing out the answer. “Number 1.”