At first he thought the kitchen was empty. A wheezing sound told him otherwise.
His view was hindered the moment he stepped in front of the hurricane lamp mounted next to the door frame. The room became a frightening shadow play of his own silhouette. Scaring himself, but also knowing anyone waiting would realize where he was, Ellis felt his palms sweating again as he moved around the table, searching for the source of the wheezing. Three slow sidesteps later he found Yal seated against the lower cabinets, head slumped, chin to chest. Blood dribbled out of Yal’s mouth, soaking the white Amish shirt.
Movement behind him galloped his heart. Ellis turned, only to see Pax leading the geomancers in.
“It’s Yal,” Ellis said, and without knowing why, except that he felt more was needed, added, “Yal was a cook—the one who designed the minlatta we ate.”
With a face filled with dread and concern, Pax knelt down. “Still alive.” Pax touched Yal’s cheek, and the cook’s eyes slowly opened.
“We should get Yal to the ISP,” Geo-1 said. A portal popped open between the table and the iron stove. One of the geomancers went through. Soon after, three ISP associates rushed back out, carrying a stretcher device. Pax stayed with Yal until they sent the cook through the portal.
Ellis had other responsibilities, and searched the rooms. The Civil War funeral parlor was empty. The table and Warren’s chair were overturned. The main floor was clear, leaving him with the stairs. They creaked with Ellis’s weight. Great, he thought, nothing like announcing myself to the crazy at the top of the stairs with Warren’s hunting rifle.
He climbed with his back sliding up the wall, his arms out, aiming up the steps. His new heart was pumping hard, his stomach climbing its own set of steps up his throat. At the top of the stairs he found Hig, stabbed to death.
He entered Warren’s old bedroom and was carefully peering under the bed when Pax entered. “Pol and Dex are gone.”
“How do—”
“Yal,” Pax replied to the question he was about to ask. “Couldn’t talk, but I was able to see what happened.”
Pax sat on the bed, looking sick. Ellis put his pistol down and sat alongside, close enough that their shoulders touched.
“What did happen?” Ellis asked.
“Yal thinks Dex started it. Sabotaged Ren’s Port-a-Call, locking it—that’s why I had such trouble. I’ve been using POCs for centuries, and I had trouble figuring it out. Ren didn’t have a chance. If everything went according to plan, Ren would have died along with the rest of us. That would have left just those here on the farm—perfectly positioned to survive a holocaust—and whatever few survivors that might have escaped. Ren and Pol had both expected there would be some, but assumed they wouldn’t survive without the infrastructure of Hollow World. They had planned to hunt down and kill those who did, tracking them by their chips.”
“So Dex double-crossed Warren?”
“Hard to say. Yal doesn’t understand it, really. Maybe Dex and Pol were working together to take control, or they might have both been out for themselves, looking to double-cross the other. All Yal knows is that once it was revealed that Warren was dead, that his POC had been sabotaged, everyone started fighting.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Ellis said thoughtfully. “Warren got his wish. He wanted to toughen them up, teach them the value of conflict, the value of reaching for the top. They learned well. So, where are Pol and Dex?”
Pax’s head shook. “Yal doesn’t know—just saw portals open. Yal expected to die—would have, too, if we hadn’t come along.”
“Will Yal be all right?”
“Physically, but Yal’s having trouble understanding their deception. People from Hollow World aren’t used to such behavior—Yal never saw it coming.”
Ellis sighed. “You can never tell what a person is thinking.”
Pax looked at him with a sad face. “I can.”
By the time they returned downstairs, more ISP associates were on the scene and most of the geomancers were gone.
“So, will this be the end of it?” one of the ISP associates asked.
“Cha!” Pax greeted the physician with a warm hug. “You got here fast.”
“Went to the ISP after the evac was canceled. Figured there might be injuries. People being careless with their POCs because of the alarm. So I was there when the accident alert was triggered.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“A lot of people have missed you,” Cha said. “Rumor had it…Well, I’m glad to see the rumors were wrong.” Cha turned to Ellis. “I hear you got a complete organ rework. Staying out of the sun now, I hope.”
“Nice to see you again, Cha,” Ellis said. “I never got a chance to thank you.”
Cha shrugged his tattooed shoulders. “It’s what I do. Speaking of which, if you’ll excuse me.”
Cha left them to speak to others on the stairs.
Ellis and Pax walked down and out of the house, where more people had gathered and lights had been set up. Several people recognized Ellis and headed their way. Pax grabbed Ellis’s hand, and the two slipped into the shadows of the cornfield, then out into the village.
They came out on Main Street and walked along the old-fashioned lane in silence. Too many emotions. Too many ideas and memories. Ellis found it hard to think. He would need a month just to sort through everything himself and decompress. Peggy was dead; Warren was dead. He didn’t feel as much as he should, just a certain dullness, which meant the wave was likely on hold. The same had happened with Isley. He didn’t react right away. Some people do. For Ellis, shocks took a while to settle in. This was the calm before the storm.
He didn’t know what to do about Pax. He’d spent almost four decades with a woman, and the only thing he had in common with Peggy was sex. Could the opposite work? Were his feelings even real? Maybe he just thought he loved Pax because of all they had been through together. Plus, Pax could read his mind and tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. Couldn’t that be a huge part of why he felt so comfortable?
Ellis glanced over, realizing that Pax was likely eavesdropping on him at that very moment. He stopped Pax in front of Wrights’ cycle shop and shivered with the autumn wind.
“Is it awful?” he asked.
“Awful?”
“Hearing other people’s thoughts. Knowing what they really think about you, about each other, about all the little stupid things. You were just listening to me a moment ago, weren’t you?”
“A little.”
“I’m sorry if I—”
“Don’t be sorry. You shouldn’t be sorry about your thoughts. They’re who you are.”
“But it’s got to be awful, right? In all the science fiction books and movies, telepaths are usually driven insane because they can’t block out the constant thoughts of everyone around them.”
Pax looked at him dubiously. “Really?”
They were under the green-and-white-striped awning that shaded the picture window with the old-fashioned bicycle. Pax took a step and leaned against the lamppost near the curb before saying, “When you’re in public, you hear conversations, right? You can’t close your ears. You can’t not hear them. Does that mean you’re insane?”
“No, but I’m also not hearing everything,” Ellis countered. “Or is it like background noise? My wife used to have the TV on all the time for that very reason.” He looked at Pax, who looked so young. “Do you even know what a television is?”
“Of course I do. You had a big Sony projection screen that took up a lot of room. You used to flip-flop between getting a brand-new flat-panel model and a desire to just get rid of it altogether. Sometimes you felt that Peggy loved the television more than she loved you.”
Ellis raised his brows. “So you know—that’s good.”
“I also know it bothers you,” Pax said.
“That you hear every stray thought I have?”
Pax offered a nervous smile.
“Not in the slightest,” Ellis replied.
“Liar.”
“And I hate you, by the way,” he added.