Hollow World Read online

  “Who’s there?” the vox said in the same British baritone as before.

  “Abernathy, it’s us, Pax-43246018 and Ellis Rogers.”

  “I’m not detecting your PICA, Pax-43246018, nor that of Ellis Rogers.”

  “Ellis Rogers never had one, and I cut mine out.”

  “How curious.”

  “We are being hunted by the same people who murdered Geo-24, and I’m attempting to move about invisibly, so I hope you haven’t notified anyone of our arrival.”

  “Whom would I notify? And may I inquire who Geo-24 is?”

  Pax glanced at Ellis with a concerned look and whispered, “I think they might have cleaned up more than just the blood.”

  Ellis listened to the snap and hiss of the hole back to Michigan, which Pax had left open. Ellis couldn’t help but think of it as “the getaway portal.” He had counted on the idea that voxes might be like servants back in the nineteenth century—thought of as little more than furniture and overlooked when cleaning up. So far he was disappointed.

  “If you’re not Geo-24’s sexton, whose sexton are you?” Pax asked.

  Neither had taken a step farther into the room. They stood right before the coffee table. Ellis noticed that even the little drop of blood that had marred the stone pyramid centerpiece was gone.

  “I have no client at this time.”

  “And you don’t recall who your client was previously?”

  “I’m not aware that I’ve ever had a client.”

  “It might still work,” Ellis told Pax, but the vox overheard.

  “What might?”

  Pax nodded. “We’d like you to contact another vox on our behalf, a vox that you used to be on friendly terms with.”

  “I don’t recall being on friendly or unfriendly terms with anyone.”

  “That’s because you’ve had your memory erased, but that doesn’t matter, because the other vox will remember you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not important that you understand. You merely need to set up communications between myself and another vox. That shouldn’t be a problem, right? It’s not like your client has forbidden you to assist strangers?”

  “As I mentioned, I don’t have a client.”

  “Wonderful. Then there’s nothing prohibiting you from helping us.”

  “Whom do you wish me to contact, and what do you wish me to inquire about?”

  “I want you to contact Pol-789’s vox. Inform the vox that you are Abernathy and that I am Geo-24 and that I would like to speak with it.”

  “I thought you said your name was Pax-43246018?”

  Pax glanced at Ellis and shrugged. “I misspoke.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes—I do that. It’s a quirk I have.”

  “I’m a sexton without a client, not a vox without a properly calibrated telencephalon.”

  Pax frowned. “Can you determine if I am Pax-43246018 or Geo-24?”

  “No.”

  “Then what difference does it make?”

  “Would you like me to make contact now?”

  “Yes—audio only, please.”

  “This is Vox Abernathy contacting you on behalf of Geo-24.”

  “Oh—Abernathy! How nice.” It was the pleasant-sounding lady’s voice Ellis had heard when they had entered Pol’s office. His heart, which was already beating faster than normal, began to trot as he felt a rush of success that made him grin.

  They were in.

  Ellis wondered if this was how hackers back in his day felt when they had broken into government computers. “Do you wish to speak to Pol-789?”

  Pax and Ellis both shook their heads.

  “No, that will not be necessary. Geo-24 would like to speak directly to you. Is that acceptable?”

  “Of course, of course!”

  “This is Geo-24,” Pax said.

  “How wonderful of you to call. Pol will be so thrilled you did. Let me—”

  “No—wait! It’s not that important—actually, it is a little embarrassing. You see, Pol provided me with some information, and I have misplaced it. I was hoping you could just send it to Abernathy. Would that be possible? I’d like to take care of this without involving Pol. You understand, I hope. As a geomancer, I’d prefer not to let it get out that I made a mistake and lost something important.”

  Pax stared nervously at Ellis, who crossed his fingers.

  “What information?” Pol’s vox asked. No suspicion, no tone at all, which concerned Ellis. The friendliness had faded, but this was a machine, and Ellis didn’t know if that was even something to look out for.

  “Everything you have on Ren.”

  Ellis looked at Pax, surprised. The plan had called for investigating what Pol had originally contacted Geo-24 about. There had been no mention of a Ren.

  “Ren? Is there a number designation?”

  “No, I don’t think so…just Ren.”

  “No, I—oh, wait—yes, here. I actually only have a port location associated with that name.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “North American Plate, Temperate Biome, Huronian Quadrant.”

  Pax mouthed to Ellis, That’s where we just were. “Could…ah…” Pax began pulling the Port-a-Call out. “Could you provide exact coords?”

  The vox responded with a series of numbers and letters that meant nothing to Ellis, but which Pax feverishly entered into the tiny device.

  “Thank you. Say goodbye, Abernathy.”

  “Thank you so much for your time,” Abernathy said.

  The link was severed, and Pax slumped into one of the white couches, staring at the portal device. “Okay, so we have a location, and it’s right back where everything started—back at the Ford Museum.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ellis said. “Who is this Ren? You mentioned the name before in Pol’s office—why?”

  “I get the impression this Ren is behind everything. The fake Pol and even the fake Geo-24 take their direction from Ren—no-number Ren—Ren Zero.” Pax picked up one of the little white throw pillows from the couch and hugged it. “I’ve never met a zero or an original anything…well, except for you. And I’ve never heard of a Ren before, and this one is on the grass.”

  “But how do you know about Ren?”

  “Fake Pol said it.”

  “No.” Ellis shook his head. “Fake Pol never mentioned Ren. You were the first one to say that name.”

  “I must have heard it someplace else then.”

  “Where?”

  Pax sighed. “Ellis Rogers, do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then can you just believe me when I tell you that I have it on good authority that someone named Ren is behind the murders and not question me further on how I know?”

  Ellis didn’t have to think. He trusted Pax. He trusted Pax more than he’d ever trusted anyone. Pax was the first person he’d known who—more than once—had proved themselves capable of thinking of Ellis first. His mother had always taken more than she gave, feeling that granting him life had been more than enough for her part. Peggy had given all her love to Isley, holding back nothing for him. Pax had asked for little, given much, and demonstrated a willingness to die for him—and they had just met. Still, he couldn’t help feeling hurt at the discovery of a wall between them. Pax was keeping a secret.

  “I suppose,” Ellis replied. “But don’t you trust me? I sort of thought we—I mean, I thought we were becoming close, you know? After all, you let me cut you open with a deer-gutting knife.” He smiled.

  Pax was looking at the pillow and breathing heavily. “Isn’t there any secret you’d prefer not to share with me? At least not yet?”

  The image of Isley hanging from the garage rafters flashed through his mind, and he nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “If it helps,” Pax said gently, “I’ve never spoken to anyone of it before. But if I were ever to tell anyone, it would be you, Ellis Rogers. I don’t think you would ju
dge me like others might. So maybe one day you can tell me your secret, and I’ll tell you mine.”

  Ellis nodded but didn’t think he could ever tell Pax about Isley. There was simply no way Pax could begin to understand. “So, are we going to find this Ren?”

  “I am,” Pax said firmly, almost defiantly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means it’s my responsibility. The point of being an arbitrator is to keep the peace. I can’t let murderers continue killing.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re the one they want. It would be pretty stupid to take you with me.” Pax put down the pillow and stood up. “This is dangerous, Ellis Rogers. It’s not your place. Are you an arbitrator?”

  “I’m an engineer, but let me ask you this…do you have a gun?”

  “Of course not.” Pax glanced at his hip, that familiar expression of horror darting across Pax’s face.

  “Do you think anyone besides me has one?”

  “No.”

  Ellis smiled. “Then in this society that practically makes me Superman.”

  “Superman?”

  “A fictitious hero with supernatural powers—pretty much invincible.”

  “Pretty much?”

  “Never mind. I’m too old and sick to be on the run.”

  Pax’s eyes softened. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Superman, remember?” He thumped his chest.

  Pax didn’t look pleased. Maybe the humor wasn’t translating.

  “Let’s go together. Like it or not, we’re a team now. Good cop, bad cop.”

  Pax nodded. “You’re very strange, Ellis Rogers.” Pax smiled and then added, “I like that. Let me contact Cha. Someone else ought to know about a conspiracy that’s reached into the office of the Chief Councilor just in case we disappear into the grass.”

  “Are you sure you can trust Cha?”

  Pax smiled. “I’m an arbitrator. Believe me…I’m a very good judge of people.”

  Entering Greenfield Village for the second time in a week, Ellis possessed an entirely new outlook. What he had seen as the forgotten remnants of humanity, he now viewed as a museum within a museum. The Henry Ford Museum used to house artifacts from America’s first two hundred years, but as he and Pax walked through the quaint gravel lanes, Ellis understood that the site itself had become an artifact worth preserving. The garbage bins that dotted Main Street, complete with plastic bag liners, were no longer trash receptacles but roped-off antiques. So were the ticket booth, ATM, public phone, and restrooms with their archaic symbols for men and women. What was a preservation of the past became part of the exhibit as museums themselves became the history.

  Around noon they ported to the front gate and walked the sidewalk-lined streets with drooping bluebell lamps and Civil War-era architecture. No one stopped or greeted them. No one was there at all.

  “Volunteers help maintain the museum,” Pax mentioned as they walked through empty streets. “And I’ve heard a few have actually begun living here full-time, history students, professors, and such, but this place was never all that popular.”

  “I imagine the murder won’t help attendance.”

  “No—I doubt it would.”

  Ellis thought of Hollywood backlots—it was too well kept to be a ghost town. All the lawns were trimmed, the gravel smooth. Occasionally they would pass a buggy or a buckboard parked on the side of the road. After several days in Hollow World, being in Greenfield Village brought a flood of familiarity. Ellis fit among the curbs, pavement, shutters, and fences. He understood the windows and the sewers. A plastic garbage bag fluttered in the wind where it was held in place by a large rubber band—an old friend waving. Even the way his shoes slapped the pavement spoke of home, of cars, plastic bottles, and cellphones. Ellis was time traveling again, the sensation of tripping through eras becoming disorienting. He felt as if he’d woken up in the cozy comfort of his own epoch, the sights and sounds so much easier to accept than the idea of interdimensional doors spilling into the lithosphere where disembodied voices made convenience-store-quality coffee from gravel. After only a few minutes he might have begun to question whether any of it was true if not for the person walking beside him with cocked bowler, pin-striped pants, and silver vest.

  Pax had explained that the coordinates supplied by fake-Pol’s vox indicated the Firestone Farm in the northwest portion of the village. They both had felt it best to approach cautiously, so instead of using the Port-a-Call, they walked through the tree-shaded memory of the Industrial Age. He saw Pax focus on the old buildings, then glance at him with a curious look. Ellis could hear the unasked question, How did people ever live like this? He had felt the same way when watching the History Channel when it showed the ruins of Pompeii or ancient Egypt.

  They walked past the Wright Brothers’ cycle shop and Edison’s Menlo Park complex. Cutting through Liberty Craftworks, they went by the glass and pottery shops, the gristmill, and the printing office before reaching Firestone Lane. At the end of the dirt road stood a two-story red-brick building with a green-shingled roof, a welcoming porch, two chimneys, and a perfect white picket fence. It was an honest house, a solid place of early virtues and Yankee determination. The mid-nineteenth century boyhood home of tire magnate Harvey Firestone had originally been in Ohio, but Ford had it moved to his village in Dearborn. Painstakingly restored to its 1885 likeness, the Firestone estate wasn’t just a museum piece. It was a working farm and had been even when Ellis visited for his school trip well over two millennia prior. As they approached, they could see sheep, cows, and horses in the pastures that lined the road. They also saw people.

  Ellis spotted five. One off to their right was tossing hay with a pitchfork into the horses’ corral. Two more shooed cows from one pen to another, calling out “Mon boss! Mon boss!” A fourth opened the door to the house, focused on them, then retreated inside. The last sat on the porch at the end of the road. Creaking the boards beneath an old-fashioned rocker, the stocky man watched their approach. He was wearing an Amish-style straw hat and button shirt left open to the waist, revealing white chest hairs against deeply tanned skin. Black trousers were held up by suspenders. His bare feet thrust out toward them as he sipped on a glass of tea.

  “Well, if it ain’t Mr. Rogers. Wonderful day in the neighborhood to ya, old man.”

  Ellis stopped, staring in disbelief. The man’s hair was long and white, and he had a chest-length beard that made him look a bit like a cynical Santa Claus. But there was no doubt—the man kicking back on the porch was his old friend, Warren Eckard. Despite the I’ve-seen-the-face-of-God hair, and a few more wrinkles around the eyes, Warren looked great. The layer of fat that he had built up after high school was gone. The luxury package of a pregnant stomach, love handles, and pale-skinned man breasts had been replaced with the sportier look of defined muscles and a Caribbean-fisherman’s tan.

  “Warren?” was all Ellis could say.

  Pax halted beside Ellis, looking understandably confused.

  “Didn’t expect to see me again, did ya?” He laughed with a bemused smile. “Figured I’d be dust, right along with the rest of them, right? Almost, pal, almost. You’re the surprise. I expected you years ago. You just arrived, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Warren shook his head with the same disappointment he used to exhibit when seeing a woman past her prime wearing an outfit meant for a teenager. “Don’t make no sense, does it? I’ve been here three years.”

  “Who are you?” Pax asked.

  “Sorry,” Ellis replied. “Pax, this is Warren Eckard, an old friend. We grew up together.”

  “Met in high school. You know what that is—Pax, is it?”

  “An institution of education?”

  “Close—it’s a place where they kill dreams.”

  “Warren, how did you get here?”

  “You, buddy—you and your time-machine notes. Remember Brady’s? Ought to. It was only a fe
w days ago for you, right? I kept your time-machine blueprints—stuffed them in the glove box of my Buick that night. When you went missing, the cops had dogs and forensic types all over your place. Peggy couldn’t figure out if you had killed yourself or just took a powder. Your disappearance was a big deal. No one figured out what happened—no one but me. I knew it the minute I poked my head in your garage and saw all those cables and that poster—the old Mercury Seven. The one you had in your bedroom when we were in high school. I figured you either made it or died in the attempt, but either way you were gone and none of them was ever going to find you.”

  The door to the farmhouse opened again, and Ellis saw a face shadowed by the screen peeking out.

  “Hey, Yal,” Warren called over his shoulder. “Bring these nice folks some tea.” Warren drew in his feet to grant them passage. “C’mon up, have a seat out of the sun. Gets hot this time of day.”

  Ellis slipped off his backpack, climbed the weathered steps, and pulled over a wicker-backed rocker, feeling as if he’d just entered into an old-school western. Bring these nice folks some tea? It was as if Warren had become Gary Cooper. Ellis didn’t think Warren had ever tasted tea. For half a century he’d been a black-coffee-and-domestic-beer man, with the occasional shot of Jack or Jim when he could afford it.

  “Careful.” Warren pointed at Ellis’s chair. “That one doesn’t have a backstop on the runners. If you rock too far, you’ll go ass over shoulders—I know—I’ve done it.”

  Pax moved in under the shade of the porch, but didn’t sit. Instead, Pax stood rigidly to Ellis’s right.