The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (12 page)

Chapter 72

I CAN DIE NOW,
I thought, as we headed back into Undertown three hours later. The afternoon I’d just spent was worth getting gut-shot, I decided. Worth getting duped by Seth.

Not only was hanging with Chordata and the other elephants the coolest thing I’d ever done, it was pretty much the coolest thing anybody has ever done.

I would have gladly lived there like a wild elephant boy if Chordata hadn’t politely said it was time for the younger elephants to nap, and told me to come back tomorrow.

I was brought out of my reverie as an elderly woman standing on the porch of the shanty we were walking by suddenly leaned out and clutched my arm.

“You’re not from around here!” she said.
“Who are you? Where do you hail from, boy?”

When I turned around, Bem and Kulay were running full speed down the alley.

“There was a rumor that an alien person escaped from Ergent Seth’s starship,” she said. “He sent you, didn’t he? Now he’s sending spies, is that it?”

“I’m not a spy,” I said.

“Like you wouldn’t lie to me if you were.”

I yanked back my arm, trying to break her steely grip. Suddenly she slapped me across the face.

Which was crazy, because the hand that she wasn’t clutching me with never moved from the porch railing.

The old lady had smacked me with her mind, I realized.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

Her head jerked as I mentally slapped her back. I felt a little bad, but I had to. I needed to get out of there in a hurry.

I was half a dozen steps down the alley where Bem and Kulay had run when I found myself stuck in place.

I couldn’t move.

Chapter 73

THE OLD LADY came hobbling quickly down off the porch and caught up with me. I could feel energy crackling off her, holding me still. A terrible light filled her ancient blue eyes.

Great, out of all the beaten-down citizenry, I had to tick off the one that had powers.

“Bem and Kulay—front and center,” the old woman called out.

The two kids came out from behind a stack of pipes and approached the woman meekly.

“Yes, Doctor,” they said in unison.

“Who is this odd, renegade person?” she said. “Where did you meet him?”

“Deep in the northern tunnel, Doctor,” Bem said. “He said his name is Daniel.”

I unfroze suddenly as the dreadful light faded from the old woman’s eyes.

I did a double take as she burst into the most incredible girlish laughter. It was quite charming, actually, as if she were both eighty-four and fifteen at the same time.

“Bem and Kulay, you may go,” the old doctor woman said, suddenly friendly. “My, my, my. Daniel, is it? You’re a real curiosity, aren’t you? I was beginning to wonder if any more of your type existed in our poor, poor world. A curious young man. Come from afar, by your looks. And the way you speak. I knew a curious boy like you once upon an age. A boy very much like you. His name was . . . Let me try to remember. Oh, yes. Graff.”

Graff!
I thought.
You have got to be kidding me!
That six degrees of separation thing even worked in space! Graff had been my father’s name!

“Graff? You knew a boy called Graff?” I blurted. “That was my father’s name, and he was from your world.”

Could it be the same person?
I thought.
No. No way.
But the old woman seemed to read my mind. Her wrinkled face appeared to instantly lose twenty years, and she broke into the loveliest smile.

“I knew I sensed something curious and good about you,
son of Graff,
” she said, putting a warm, soft palm on my forehead. “Thank you. You’ve helped me remember . . . the way it used to be.”

Chapter 74

SO MANY EMOTIONS and questions rose in me at once. Finally I had a real connection to my family.

To who I was.

To what I was put in the universe to do.

And then the most excruciating pain exploded in my stomach! And with it came a fresh flow of blood. I collapsed, bleeding like a stuck pig.

“What happened to you?” she said. “Your stomach? Tell me, before you pass out.”

“I was shot,” I said between clenched teeth.

“With what? Be precise.”

“A 24/24 Opus Magnum.”

She pulled up my shirt for a peek. I couldn’t stop her if I tried.

“Must have used a delayed frag round,” she said, frowning at the blood and my wound. “Tiny charge inside the bullet. Can be activated at a later date. Even by remote control.

“The bad news is that basically you have a bomb inside your stomach. If we don’t get it out of you before the charge goes off, it will send shrapnel through all your vital organs, including your heart.”

“Beautiful,” I groaned. “Okay, you got my attention. What’s the good news?”

“It has to heat up first. We have a few minutes. Let’s do this.”

My eyes bugged as the tiny old woman put her hands under my legs and neck, lifted me up effortlessly, and carried me into her house.

“Let’s do
what?
” I asked.

The front room was piled floor to ceiling with beautifully bound books. In the back room, she swept everything off a cluttered work desk, then laid me down flat.

“We need to operate,” she said. “Now. Don’t give me any lip. I don’t want to hear a word.”

Operate? Here?! I could see the dust flakes in the air. Not to mention that I was lying in what smelled like spilled coffee, and maybe bacon grease.

“How close is a hospital?” I moaned.

“No time,” she said, tapping a finger to her forehead, as if trying to remember something. She turned and took a vial of gross-looking brown liquid from a nearby cabinet. She handed it to me.

“What are you waiting for? Drink it!” she screamed.

Then she smacked it away as I put it to my lips.

“Wait!
Not that!
The light in here is so bad. This one, I think,” she said, handing me a new vial. More nasty brown liquid. Maybe motor oil?

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t argue! Don’t worry, I used to be a surgeon. But I don’t remember a darn thing now. Well, maybe you should worry a little.” She cackled as she opened a drawer. I saw hits of light—off metal.

As I forced down the foul potion, she placed a worn leather packet onto the desk beside me, then opened it up. “This could work,” she muttered. “Worth a chance.”

Hey, wait a second!
I thought, gaping at the trowel, pruning shears, spading fork, and hand plow that were inside the pack.

“You’re going to operate on me . . . with gardening tools?”

“Aren’t we picky? Pull up your shirt!” was the last thing I heard before I passed out.

Chapter 75

I WOKE to the gurgle of running water.

The old woman was washing something at a sink in the corner of the room.
Is she doing the dishes?
I thought woozily.

Then I remembered what had happened to me, and wished I hadn’t.

I glanced down at my stomach, which was covered with newspaper. Besides the gardening gear on the worktable, I made out a screwdriver and a needle and thread.

A screwdriver? Come on!
I thought, quickly looking away, trying to convince myself not to blow chunks.

The tools were all splattered with blood. My blood.

“Well, what do you know?” my elderly home surgeon said. She was wiping her hands on a blood-splattered apron as she came over. “I can’t believe it. You’re actually alive.”

I realized that the room smelled like smoke. The curtains were singed, and there were broken picture frames and chunks taken out of the plaster in one wall.

“What happened?” I said. “The smoke?”

“I managed to get the bullet out of you, but it blew up right when I was trying to toss it out the window. Piece of shrapnel hit my leg. Thank fortune, it was the wooden one. How are you feeling?”

I looked down at the blood-soaked newspapers wrapped around my stomach. Besides the occasional teeth-clenching throb of agony, I actually felt a little better. Clearer in the head somehow. Being alive is fun like that.

“Like a million bucks,” I groaned. “Thank you, um . . . I didn’t catch your name, Doctor.”

“No doctor. Just Blaleen.”

“Thank you, eh, Blaleen,” I said. “For saving my life. For . . . whatever you did here.”

“Ah, don’t mention it,” she said, glancing at her wrist. “Wait a second. You haven’t seen my watch, have you? I was wearing it a . . .”

An expression of horror crossed her face. She turned suddenly and stared at my stomach. “Oh, dear me.”

“No,” I cried. “Please, no.”

She giggled. “Of course not. Just a little surgeon humor.”

But enough joking around, Daniel,
she said, talking to me mind to mind now.
You need rest. You almost died on the operating table.

You recognized me before, didn’t you?
I thought back at her.
What do you know about me?

I know many things,
Blaleen communicated.
I know you were given a human name, because you and your parents were heading to Earth.

And I know practically nothing, Blaleen. I have so many questions. Who are you? Who are you, really?

A dear friend,
she replied, and held a medicine cup to my lips.
Down the hatch now, Daniel.

I felt extremely tired. I glanced at the broken pictures that had fallen off the wall. My eyelids grew heavier. In one newspaper picture, a smiling young man was holding a trophy. GRAFF WINS ALL-CITY! read the headline.

Graff?! My father? My father as a young man? Why would the old woman have a picture of my—

“You’re my grandmother?” I whispered in a voice I reserved for first sightings of the Grand Canyon and such.

“That’s right, Daniel, son of Graff,” she said, and smiled down on me. “I am your grandmama.”

And then I did what I’d been doing far too often lately.

I passed out.

Chapter 76

WHEN I WOKE from my dreams of being chased through Kansas, Oklahoma, and parts of Texas by The Prayer, I almost went into shock for a second time. I’d been moved to an actual bed! With sheets that were—pinch me—clean! That even smelled nice.

I was lying there, soaking up the whole antiseptic, laundry-detergent-commercial vibe, when I sensed there was someone in the room with me.

I slowly leaned over the edge of the bed. And blinked. The cutest little brown-haired girl was sitting on the floor cross-legged. She was staring up at me.

“Hello,” I said.

“Ahhhhh!” she squealed. “It speaks!” She jumped up and ran out of the room as if she’d seen a ghost.

I sat up in the bed. I could move, apparently.
Amazing.

Then I even managed to stand without falling.
I was on a roll.

I heard some commotion as I stepped out of the room. Voices were coming from downstairs. And—
music?
Very lively and pretty. Like classical mixed up with rock and a little country and a bit of jazz.

I arrived at the top of some stairs and looked down. The lower level of the house, where my surgery had taken place, had been completely transformed. Not only was it cleaned up, but two dozen or so people were sitting, eating, talking, and laughing.

I stared at them, and at a table filled with delicious-smelling food.

Another song started to play. It was like a Mozart melody, only quicker and somehow warmer. Like maybe Bob Dylan had collaborated on it.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw that my grandmother, Blaleen, was at a kind of piano. Another ancient woman in a wheelchair was playing a small stringed instrument that looked and sounded just like a guqin, a type of ancient Chinese guitar. Seven or eight little kids running around a bunch of chairs scrambled for a seat as the glorious music suddenly stopped.

“Little ones, say hello to your great-cousin Daniel,” my grandmother said, standing as she spotted me. “Daniel X, to be precise. He doesn’t use a family name because he doesn’t have a family. Until
now,
that is.”

“There he is!” a pretty young woman cried as she ran up and embraced me. “By the stars, it’s true! I’m your cousin Lylah.”

For the next several minutes, people crowded around, shaking my hand, patting my back, and pinching my cheeks. Shocked eyes stared into mine and dazed smiles lit up faces. The old woman in the wheelchair rolled up to me. There were tears in her eyes as she pinched my cheek as well.

“It’s true,” she whispered happily to me. “Ya look just like your mom. Little of your dad. Lovely! Just lovely! You’re beautiful, Daniel. Tall, blond. Stunning!”

An amiable-looking, pudgy man was pinching my free cheek. “Daniel, Daniel. Pleasure to meetcha. I’m your uncle Kraffleprog. Your mom’s brother,” he said, pumping my hand. “I used to change your diaper.
I called you Stinkyboy.
”

Kraffleprog? I thought as I shook his hand. Now there’s a name you don’t hear that much anymore. My parents had taken some serious pity on me in the name department, I realized.

“I can’t remember the last time there was a party, can you?” said a bony, tired-looking woman standing beside Uncle Kraffleprog.

“First time in a while we had something to celebrate on this shattered rock,” my rotund uncle said, winking and pinching me some more. “Stinkyboy is back.”

Chapter 77

“COME, DANIEL. Take the place of honor at our table,” my grandmother said. “It’s a miracle you lived through my surgery.”

The meal, everything, was spectacular, really top of the line. Roast meats, incredibly intense vegetables, a kind of refreshing clear, sweet drink. Alparian apple juice, maybe. I could feel health and heat start to pulse in my veins.

“Grandma,” I said, smiling at Blaleen, “your place. It looks . . .”

“Reborn? Yes. Exactly how I feel,” she said, squeezing my arm. “Your homecoming defies chance. It has brought back the one thing we thought we would never have again. You know what this is, Daniel? Hope.”

Whoa!
What was I supposed to say to that?

“Tell me everything,” I said, changing the subject. “Who I am. Who the Alien Hunters are. What my parents were doing on Earth. Where —”

“Whoa, whoa! I’ll give you the short version, Daniel. Listen now.

“Many hundreds of years ago, our space probes discovered Earth. What amazed us was how similar our planets were, in temperature, atmosphere, bodies of water. It was discovered that the human heart was also similar to that of Alparians; physically, and in other ways as well. It was suggested that our races might have descended from a single ancestor.

“Unfortunately, we soon learned the Outer Ones had already discovered Earth and were working to colonize and take it over. My son, Graff, met and fell in love with your mother, Atrelda, when they were at university. They both had powers, Daniel, telepathy and transforming ability. They could, well, create things at will. It’s rare, but it happens here.”

“Did you tell him about his rating?” my uncle interrupted.

“You were tested, Daniel. Your powers are double those of your gifted parents
put together.
Graff and Atrelda were sent to Earth to help humans in any way they could. When we learned of their deaths at the hands of The Prayer, we were convinced you had perished as well.”

“So tell me—what happened to Alpar Nok? When did Seth destroy it?”

“Not destroyed. Just changed things superficially. But enough of that for now. The past is the past. This is the present. This gathering is for happiness and renewal and hope. Everyone, shall we?” my grandmother said. “We have a surprise for you.”

The plates were cleared away and the lights turned low.

“This,” said my uncle, “is not to be believed, young Stinkyboy!”