Then everything went dark. Noyze didn't know if she was still falling or if she was alive or dead. She could hear nothing, less sound than when she was deaf, just blankness.

  And then - light. And - water? Noyze thrashed, went under, kicked back to the surface, spluttered. She rubbed her eyes, blinked to get them working.

  She was alone. Alone in a sea or a lake of lukewarm copper-colored water. And she was afraid.

  "Hello!" she shouted. "Anybody? Dr. Cohen!"

  Noyze used her hands as paddles and turned a full circle in the water. Halfway through, she found footing, a place where the water was suddenly only waist high, and she moved to the higher ground. Here she could better, see strange trees up on a small island about a mile away, sort of like palm trees, but hyperkinetic, shivering and swaying like they were nervous. They made Noyze nervous.

  "Hello!" she shouted again and heard her voice waver. A new sensation, one she hadn't quite gotten used to, hearing her own voice. Being the only voice in this alien swamp ...

  And then she was sucked under, the blackness came again, the absence of everything, the presence of nothing, and then ...

  Noyze was flat out on the concrete ground. There was a roof over her head. And lights. Fluorescent lights.

  "Where are we?" Noyze said, not knowing if this time anyone would answer. She crawled to her feet, teetered, caught her balance. She was not alone.

  Around her the Children communicated Wildly, gathered in small groups, then split off. Noyze saw the Muse say, "A dangerous malfunction ... no time to waste!" She saw Five Holy Lakes reply angrily, "This involves one of the humans!"

  A groan. Dr. Cohen. She grabbed Noyze's outstretched hand and struggled to her feet. "I think we're inside a stadium. I don't know."

  Noyze watched the members of the Quorum gather. She saw them looking hard at her and Dr. Cohen.

  Noyze felt a bead of sweat trickle down her back. "Whatever just happened," she whispered, "it means something bad for us."

  CHAPTER 11

  TIME TO HEAD FOR THE OVAL OFFICE.

  Yago was back.

  He pressed his hands together and they felt solid enough. Good sign. He swallowed hard, blinked. Everything felt in good working order. In fact, he'd need to find a bathroom soon.

  Which was possible, he thought, given the fact that he'd come to in the White House. The White House, where Yago had spent the last years of his life on Earth.

  He'd been exhausted, falling, floating, crying, then BOOM! He was standing in a long, marble-tiled hallway he recognized from when he used to Rollerblade up and down on those nights when he couldn't sleep.

  Yago surveyed his surroundings. His parents seemed nowhere to be found. Let them stay disappeared, Yago thought.

  Finally,he'd superseded them. Yago had had no use for his parents back on Earth and they'd had no use for him. At least once they'd realized what - who - he was. Then even the pretense of concern had fallen away.

  Yago continued his solitary tour of the pseudo White House. It was both as he remembered it and as he imagined it. It was an amalgam of truth and fiction, reality and fantasy, Mother's interpretation of his hopes and fears. Yago was both awed and embarrassed. This last was an emotion he was not at all used to feeling.

  It was seeing the portraits of himself that lined the halls, photos taken by the major fashion photographers of the early twenty-first century, even some by Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber, old but famous. It was embarrassing, Mother knowing how badly he'd wanted to be a model. He'd never told anyone his secret desire.

  And now anyone could see photos of Yago, tall, golden-skinned, and muscular, in silly poses. Silly fears and grandiose dreams. They were meant to be secret.

  Still, there was no doubt about it. The White House made an excellent base of power.

  Yago walked on and opened the next door he came to. He was impressed. Mother had recreated this room with remarkable accuracy. The East Room, where his mother and her Cabinet had hosted large parties and receptions. Yago grinned.

  Yago closed the door and moved on. Next up, the State Dining Room, where President Castleman had presided at formal dinners for visiting heads of state. This room was barely recognizable, like a stylized sketch.

  Once, when his family had been in the White House for about nine months, Yago had tried to sneak inside during the dessert course of a dinner being held in honor of the French prime minister. He'd paid off one of the waiters, taken his uniform, and picked up a serving of crème caramel. The plan was to overturn the sticky dessert on the lap of the prime minister's wife. Just for kicks.

  He hadn't made it far. At the door of the State Dining Room he'd been discovered by one of the Secret Service men and none too gently removed to his room.

  All he'd really seen of the Dining Room that night had been a slanting glimpse through a rapidly closing door. That's what he saw now, a mix of his imperfect general memory and the slice of memory from the night of the failed prank. Yago wasn't into art like that Miss Blake, but he'd seen paintings by Picasso and that's what the room looked like to him. Everything all jagged and broken into pieces, but somehow making a whole he could recognize.

  Yago walked on, stopped at a window in the hall, and looked out. He experienced a brief flicker of nostalgia. Washington, D.C. It had been Yago's town - he'd owned it in some way, been the crown prince. He'd ...

  "Wait a minute," he said aloud.

  What he saw from the window was impossible. Nothing was where it should be. Nothing was in scale. The Washington Monument, that tall needle-like structure, appeared now to be at least twice its normal height. Right next to it, where it shouldn't be, was the Lincoln Memorial, and it was lit as if it were night. Yago blinked. It was night, but only around the memorial, not anywhere else. The Washington Monument stood in the full light of day.

  Clop, clop, clop ... Yago shot a glance to the left. Horses? Yeah, and some kind of antique carriage, like from that old movie Gone With the Wind. And ... why couldn't he get used to this place? The street on which the horse and carriage rode, the man and woman in the carriage, the horse, the old lampposts, everything was in sepia tone, like the old photographs and tintypes and whatnot Yago had seen when his teacher had dragged the class to the National Gallery and the Smithsonian.

  Civil War stuff. Yago didn't like history, but it had pursued him all his life.

  He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, where the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument had been was something new. Yago squinted and could make out a sign over what looked like a store of some sort. Yes, Maryland Avenue Dry Goods. But there was no dry goods store on Maryland Avenue, and what were dry goods, anyway?

  And then he noticed the colors. Not the gray and yellow of the nineteenth-century stuff, but a clearer black and white. Everything seemed more distinct and gentler. The men in largeshouldered, double-breasted suits and hats set at a jaunty angle. The women in hats, too, and short gloves and dresses that came to just below the knee. High heels. Way better than those Civil War clothes.

  This was not Yago's time. What he saw out the window was World War II stuff, the early forties, he thought. Yeah, there went a group of navy sailors. And, bizarrely, there was a tank rolling slowly down the middle of the street, turret gun swinging lazily from side to side.

  The compression, the distortions ... The city Yago had remembered and that Mother had recreated was like one of those totally useless maps printed on diner place mats. Maps that highlighted local attractions but gave no information about distance or scale. Maps that had nothing to do with reality.

  How would Yago find his way in this D.C.? He fought down a surge of panic, leaned his forehead against the cool pane of window glass. When he stood back, the scene before him had changed again. Clouds of pink ...

  At least the cherry blossoms were in bloom. He'd had no use for winter in D.C. Too gray and dreary. He would make his capital city perpetually warm and bright, always spring or summer.

  Yago turned from the window. Enough hanging around. Time to head for the Oval Office. The command center. Time for President Yago Castleman to take control.

  CHAPTER 12

  "WE'RE KILLING HER WITHOUT EVEN TRYING."

  Billy had lost his grip on Mother back in the diner, but somehow he was still in touch with her. At least, he thought he was.

  He still couldn't trust his thoughts or his feelings or his instincts. Not even his memories, which might actually belong to someone else.

  Billy was different. He'd accepted that fact so many years ago, long before the Mayflower and the five hundred years of tortuous waking slumber. Long before he'd slowed way, way down, then suddenly speeded up until he was back in sync with normal people.

  Sort of.

  Was that why the baby hated him so much, Billy wondered, because he was different? But that made no sense. The baby was different, too.

  Anyway, right now Billy was more concerned with Mother than with the baby.

  Billy looked at Kubrick and his father. Alberto seemed to be asleep, curled up on the hard floor. Kubrick paced.

  Billy would talk to Mo'Steel. He was always full of receptive energy.

  "I'm still connected;' he said. "I think I might have formed a sort of nonphysical interface with Mother."

  Mo'Steel looked interested, so Billy went on.

  "It's like I can hear - not with my ears, you know - some faint echo of her thoughts or emotions. She does have thoughts and emotions, even though she's a computer. I can't explain that but I know it's true."

  "What else?" Mo'Steel asked.

  "Well, every time I hear something, it's like I have to back away." Billy looked at Alberto and Kubrick. Now they were both sitting on the floor, close enough to a pit to be safe from any of the laser projections. Kubrick was silent and brooding. Alberto was awake and mumbling. "Look at what she did to Alberto," he said quietly. "I don't want to be overwhelmed by her," Billy said with emphasis. "I want to help her. But she's so enormous."

  "You did okay back at the diner, 'migo," Mo'Steel said. "Pretty impressive."

  Billy felt embarrassed by the compliment. "I was able to resist her probing for a while. But ultimately I couldn't hold her in check. Still, it's like I can't stop hearing a faint, reverberating echo .... "

  Billy looked at Mo'Steel and smiled ruefully. "Maybe I'm just hearing my own heartbeat. Maybe I'm imagining everything."

  Mo'Steel shook his head. "I don't think so, kid. I believe you've got something going on with Mother. So, what's happening with her now?"

  "I sensed it before," Billy said, "but now it's clearer." He heard the tension in his own voice. And the exhaustion. "All the new data really are overwhelming her. She was already deranged by boredom and tedium and time. But she'd achieved a sort of stasis."

  "She'd made the best of a bad deal."

  Billy nodded. "Then she found us and the Children attacked the ship. They've been away so

  long, they're new to Mother now. So much change, all at once. I ... "

  "What, Billy?"

  "We're catalysts for Mother's deterioration," he said sadly. "We're killing her, Mo'Steel. We're killing her without even trying."

  CHAPTER 13

  "DON'T EVER STAND ON MY FACE AGAIN."

  Yago sat in the high-backed leather chair and allowed himself a grin. Those Secret Service guys in the hall had addressed him as Mr. President. Yeah, that title sat real well with him.

  Yago remembered that his mother's Secret Service people had called him an arrogant little boy. Yago burned when he thought of those smug idiots, Agents Horvath and Jackson, who'd let Jobs and 2Face and Mo'Steel get in his face back at Cape Canaveral, just before the Mayflower liftoff.

  "That was then," Yago reminded himself. "This is now." And this was definitely an improvement. This was the command center of the most important person on the face of the earth.

  No more Earth, buddy. Okay, but the pathetic remnants of the human race still needed a leader, and Yago had always known he'd make it to the top.

  Except he'd never figured on Mother being part of the equation. Yago's mood dropped as low as it had soared high. He owed Mother. He'd like to forget that but he couldn't. It kept coming back to him like greasy burps after a chili dinner. It kept coming back every time he thought of See-Through Man.

  Maybe, Yago thought, maybe Mother will cut me some slack, let me settle in a bit, relax, recoup some of my energy. Before she sends me off to do what I promised to do for her. Get rid of the Children. Yago had no idea at all how he was going to do that.

  Whatever he decided to do, Yago knew he was being watched.

  Mother could be anywhere. Or everywhere. Making sure he kept his promise.

  Maybe that idiot Mo'Steel was right after all. About making a deal with the devil.

  There was a knock on the door. Yago was about to yell "Come in," but caught himself. What was the protocol? Okay, this might be only a fantasy, even a nightmare, but it was all he had at the moment. And he was pretty sure the President of the U. S. of A. did not get up to open his own office door. And if anyone had the guts to walk right in without being told ...

  * * *

  Mo'Steel wasn't like Jobs, a thinker. But he wasn't stupid. Something was weird, he could feel it, and it wasn't Billy or Kubrick or even poor old Alberto.

  "Guys, check this out," he said. He paced while he talked. Had to keep moving. "It's a big coincidence, too big. The Blue Meanies are in exile for a seriously long time. Then right after we're captured they suddenly show up?"

  "Stuff just happens sometimes," Kubrick said. He sounded angry."You don't ask for it to happen, but it does."

  Mo'Steel nodded, excited. "Yeah, okay. So the Meanies have been trying to get back into the ship for years and just couldn't do it. Maybe the damage caused by Mother's taking the Mayflower into the ship finally made it doable. Accident, sort of."

  "Mother unwittingly allowed herself to be vulnerable. Or ... " Billy mused.

  "Or?" Kubrick pressed.

  "Or," Mo'Steel said, "there's another player in this game. Someone, or a whole group of someones, who arranged for us and the Meanies to arrive simultaneously. Someone wanting just a good time or something bigger down the line. I don't know."

  "The Shipwrights," Billy said.

  Mo'Steel shrugged. "Could be. Immediate and pretty woolly question, 'migos, is how to get back up to the surface with Jobs and all. I mean for real."

  A look of exhaustion crept over Billy's face. Kubrick showed nothing. Alberto's mouth was working crazily but nothing was coming out except the occasional grunt and a lot of drool.

  Mo'Steel suddenly felt exhausted, too. Was this going to be up to him? He wasn't a leader type. And who did he have to lead, anyway?

  Alberto, who was just gone in the head. Kubrick, on the edge with grief and self-revulsion and a big, free-floating anger. Billy was okay in some ways, but unreliable, too. Mo'Steel knew Billy was powerful. But did Billy know how to work his own controls?

  The worst part, Mo'Steel realized, was that figuring out how to get back to the surface meant a heck of a lot more than scaling a righteous mountain. It meant going up against a computer a thousand times more advanced than any computer Mo'Steel had known back on Earth. Wasn't his thing, technology.

  "Can't we, I don't know, mess up the circuitry somehow? Do something down here to ... " Kubrick looked around, green eyes narrowed. "The wires or something?"

  Mo'Steel laughed. "You're more hopeless than I am."

  "Maybe it's really simple," Kubrick said. "Maybe there's one central plug."

  "Uh, thanks for the suggestion," Mo'Steel said. "You see a big ole plug, you let me know."

  "I'm getting sick of this whole place!" Kubrick shouted. Mo'Steel knew Kubrick wanted to hit something. He wondered if it was going to be him again.

  "Why didn't Mother mess you up like she did to my father?" Kubrick demanded, glaring at Billy.

  "I think it's because my visions of reality are fluid," Billy said. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor. His tone was musing. "A normal mind, like your father's, is like - an eggshell. It's fairly rigid, so it's easily breakable. My mind has changed during those five hundred years when I was awake and alone, but the real difference was there from the beginning. My mind bends now."

  "It's not fair," Kubrick growled. "None of it is fair."

  Billy went on as if Kubrick hadn't spoken. "Your father," he said, "is an engineer. His mind was full of rules and measurements and standards. He wasn't prepared for Mother's sense of reality. He couldn't handle her seeing and knowing everything at once, inside and out, from all possible perspectives, past, present, and future." Billy smiled ruefully."Me, I lived a nightmare for five centuries. If you could call it living. Mother's madness can't shake me. I didn't know that at first, but I do now."

 

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