For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun (28 page)

13

Petrus drove through the night, only stopping once for gas and a quick visit for both of us to the restroom. Yes, even people with superpowers have to pee. Still being a complete juvenile, I had a vision of facing off with Sol only to have to ask for a potty break, which made me crack a little smile that unfortunately Petrus noticed.

“Is something funny?” he asked. I just shook my head. “You know, John, there are a lot of things we could teach you. That
I
could teach you. You’ll see.”

“So I’ve heard, but since I got in this car, the only thing you tried to do is push my mind while I was asleep.”

Petrus shrugged. “It’s true. And I suppose I owe you an apology for that.” That was the last he had to say on the subject, which I don’t think counts as actually making the apology. “You have said you can make people do as you wish with your mind.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And can you move objects?”

“Yes, of course,” I lied.

He gave me a quick look, which made me think he saw right through my lie.
Well, I can. Sometimes. By accident
.

“Tell me how you knew my name. Who told you? Was it Bobby? Did he speak to you about me, or about any of us?”

“Not by name, no.”

“Hmm. Then Sol mentioned me?” Petrus sounded a little too eager, like a puppy seeking its master’s attention.

So, of course, I toyed with him. “Oh, definitely not.”

He hid it well, but I think he was a little crestfallen by my response.
Take that
, I thought.

“Then how?”

“You really need to know so bad?” I asked.

“John, I think very soon you and I will come to an agreement, a resolution of our viewpoints, so to speak. My question is merely curiosity. If you join the fold, we all work together, learn from each other. If you do not…” He turned up one empty palm.

“You told me,” I said.

“
I
told you?” Petrus asked. “How so?”

I admit I completely and utterly lied, trying to upset him. He’d tried to push my mind, and I wasn’t about to forget it. Despite his talk of my ‘joining the fold,’ we weren’t on the same team, and nothing would change that. So, I lied.

“When you walked up, your mind revealed your name to me.” It sounded like a lie coming out, mostly because I knew it wasn’t true. Of course, the truth — that it came to me in a dream — didn’t sound terribly plausible either.

Petrus considered what I said, trying to make sense of it. Which was probably hard to do since it wasn’t a sensible statement in the first place. “Like, what?” he finally said. “Like picking up a radio broadcast? Or like I was speaking only to you?” I didn’t answer, but he seemed to ponder my silence, like he was working out a complex math problem. “Interesting. Perhaps it is a bit like the sound you call the beacon?” As he drove on, his brow was furrowed and the fingers of his right hand twitched on the steering wheel. This went on for some time until at last he stopped with a little
huh
, like he had come to a conclusion that satisfied his curiosity. The rising sun was just beginning to color the sky pink and orange to my right, between the passing trees.

Petrus’s foot eased off the accelerator as we approached an intersection. “Well, I think we are finally here,” he said, a broad smile breaking across his face. As he slowed to pull onto a small side road, I sat upright, tension stiffening me into rigid iron when only moments before I’d been slouched and lazy.

“He’s here? Sol?” I asked, sounding more scared than I had hoped.

“Oh, yes. Very close now.” Petrus kept smiling. He was enjoying it all, my nervousness, my fear.

Another turn had us on a one-lane road, dense trees lining both sides. I sat quietly, straining my vision forward, hoping to see
him
before he saw
me
. As if that would help at all. No doubt Petrus had already alerted Sol to our arrival.

Still, the beacon was absent. I didn’t sense him in any direction, and certainly couldn’t tell that we were any closer than before. I could still feel Petrus’s odd beacon, like a low musical note, if I tuned myself to listen. But the strong beacon I had followed, Sol’s beacon, was nowhere to be found.

Petrus pulled the car to a stop in a small parking lot with a wooden sign at the far end, so I grabbed my backpack and got out. Without ceremony, Petrus headed toward the sign. As we approached, I read the words carved into it: WIDOW FALLS TRAIL.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“This,” Petrus said, “is where we need to go.” He proceeded to the trail, which led down into the woods. The sun had yet to reach us on its slow rise, so Petrus was quickly engulfed in the gloom beneath the trees. I followed with haste, so I wouldn’t lose sight of him. I was in foreign waters, and even Petrus’s back was an oddly familiar, comforting sight.

We walked down the twisting path, Petrus seeming to know the way by heart while I had to keep a sharp eye out for rocks and roots. Here and there I slid on some unseen bit of gravel or a patch of wet leaves as we descended.

Through switchback after switchback, we went deeper. I could hear the distant hiss and bubble of a river, the even more distant low bass rumble of a waterfall.

I reached out with all of my senses, trying to figure out where Sol was, willing myself to see or hear or even smell something to help me. There was Petrus’s beacon, and it was slowly blending, changing into a musical chord that seemed familiar, but Sol’s clear, strong beacon remained silent.

Something came to me. An agitation.
Holly’s here? Down here?
I tried to imagine her wheelchair on the treacherous path, but couldn’t. The distinct sense that something was wrong grew inside me.
I’ve got to be very careful. And ready for anything.
This thought, rooted in my concentration on Holly, may be what saved my life.

Finally, we reached the bottom. The deep sound of water thundering down was near. Another short loop around a large fall of rocks and we came to the end: the waterfall itself.

Widow Falls was bigger than any falls I’d ever seen, maybe over 100 feet tall. It was an amazing sight, and given that we had climbed down in virtual darkness, not another soul was visible. We were alone.

Alone.

“So, where are they?” I asked, panting from the hike.

Petrus turned back to me. “It would be unwise of us to reveal everything all at once, would you not agree, John? Especially after the
incident
back at the capital, your little trickery?”

I shrugged, supposing he had a point. “Then, what? Where’s Sol? What now?”

“In time, John,” Petrus said. “For now, tell me what you know of Sol and the rest of us.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Only because we have time to pass, and this knowledge interests me.”

I still felt that keeping my cards close was the best plan, but mostly due to nerves, I spoke. “You’ve told me more about yourself than I ever knew before. But I know there are others. Bobby, of course. I know him very well. Or at least, I thought I did.” A grimace of anger overcame my face, but I paused to regain some degree of composure. “There’s a blond woman, too. And a redhead.”

Petrus’s eyes widened just the slightest amount, but I could tell that he was surprised. Maybe stunned. “Interesting. Go on.”

“I know you all train together, trying to get better at using your powers. I know that you’re…
connected
… now, almost like a network. And that Sol’s the leader.”

“Tell me what you know of
power
.”

“You all have it. Some of you are better with physical powers, some with mental—”

“No, not that power, John.
Power
. Authority. Hierarchy. Mankind’s ultimate process of deciding the survival of the fittest. Tell me what you know of that.”

I stood confused for a moment. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Exactly, John. You have
no idea
what I mean.” Petrus turned away, taking in a long breath, then spun back to begin his sermon. “Power is
all there is
, John. Every single human on Earth has some amount. The lowliest, the ones with the least power, are the newborn infants. What can they do? On their own, they would starve and die. They are completely dependent on the goodwill of other humans. And at the very, very top, there is a human who needs no one else, who can bend any person to his will, have anything, do anything, be anything. Do you know who that person is, John?”

“I can only assume you mean Sol.”

Petrus smirked. Not a smile, not a grimace. A smirk. “Perhaps. Sol is very, very powerful indeed. You, too, have great powers, as does Bobby, as do the others, and, humbly, even I.” He made a disingenuous little bow. “Sol tells us that we each have weaknesses, flaws. He tells us that
together
we can rule the world, a sort of
network
, as you say.” With one hand, Petrus made a series of little gestures, like putting pins on a map. His whole performance reminded me of Sol talking his head off back at General Tulloch Park. Clearly, Petrus had been taking notes. “As I told you, I once sought to be a professor of mathematics, so it should come as no surprise that I prefer to do my own analysis of situations. Solve my own problems. If for no other reason than to ‘check the math,’ as they say.”

“And what does your math tell you?”

“A wonderful question, John, and actually one that even Sol has never asked me.
My math
tells me that, although there
is
strength in numbers, a network is only as strong as its weakest link. Infiltrate the network at the weakest link, and it is
possible
that the network will fail.”

“Like a virus,” I said, mostly to myself.

“Correct, John.
That
is
what’s wrong with Sol’s idea.”

“So what’s the solution?”

“Well,” Petrus said, clearly enjoying the attention to his ideas. “I myself prefer a
closed system
.”

“What, you mean a single person with all the power?”

Petrus shook off the question, changing the subject. “Not quite. Do you know how Sol’s network works, John?”

“Like a radio, sort of. Or at least that’s how I think of it. But, hold on, when you say a
closed
system, what happens to the rest of us?”

He ignored my question. “Radio, yes. That’s a good analogy. Can you try to reach out for that signal, John? You know, like tuning in a radio station?”

“I haven’t felt Sol’s beacon for a while now.”

“No, not Sol’s. Mine. Just try.”

“But you didn’t answer my question. What about the rest of us?”

Petrus waved a hand. “Just try to find the radio station, the one that is me. In your head, John.”

I sighed, but decided to try. I didn’t trust Petrus enough to close my eyes around him again, although I was still tired from the long, mostly sleepless drive the night before. The sun was just beginning to dapple down through the leaves, and I tried.

I tried to tune the radio in my head.

By opening my mind to what was out there. Like opening all the windows and doors in a house, trying to catch a breeze on a hot day.

For a moment, just the tiniest moment, I felt something. Not the blaring beacon I’d felt before, but something like little lights in my mind. Some were very far away. One was right in front of me. I understood in some way that these were the radio towers — the people with power. The one in front of me, of course, was Petrus. I honed in on him, his radiating beacon.