The Green Glass Sea (28 page)

“And now that we've seen what it can do. My god, ” Terry Gordon said, her voice raised, sounding angry. “They can't use it. Not on civilians. Not on anyone, for that matter. I mean, maybe as a demonstration, but—”

“That's not realistic, Terry, ” said Dr. Teller in his Hungarian accent. “It's no longer an experiment to be demonstrated. It's a weapon, to end this terrible war once and for all. ”

“At what cost, Edward? At
what
cost? Look, Chicago's drafted a petition. If enough of us sign it, they'll have to listen, and—”

“Oh for crissakes, Terry—” Dewey heard Dr. Gordon say, and then there were footsteps and she ducked back into the bedroom.

The Gordons had been arguing a lot lately. But they'd both gone down to Santa Fe this afternoon, to get presents for Suze's birthday tomorrow, and the apartment was quiet. That was good, because she and Suze were working on a new project. They'd found a pile of cigar boxes behind the PX—men smoked a lot of cigars when they were celebrating—and they planned to glue them together to make what Suze called Shazam Theater.

They'd taken all the lids off, and Suze was in the kitchen covering the boxes, inside and out, with pages from snafued comics that they'd both read—ones that were ripped or had no covers. So far, it looked pretty nifty. Bright red and blue and yellow with lots of black-lined squares that made for a kind of random geometry. Suze had a good eye for that kind of thing.

Dewey's part was to make the insides move. She'd drilled holes through each box so she could attach gearboxes and cams that would make Batman kick and Wonder Woman's lasso spin round and round. One box was almost done. Suze had cut out Captain Marvel and Billy Batson and glued them to shirt cardboard, and Dewey had sandwiched a metal rod in between the two pieces. When she turned a crank on the top of the box, they spun around, Billy changing to Captain Marvel and back to Billy as fast as her eyes could follow.

She was having more trouble with Superman. She wanted him to fly from the painted street up to the top of a cardboard building, and had cut a hole in the back of the box for a lever. It was simple, and it worked—up, down, up, down—but she wasn't satisfied. With a gearbox and a cam, she could wind him up and he would fly on his own. That would be so much better.

Dewey looked through her supply cache—a former ammo box with a sturdy latch—but didn't find what she was hoping for. She went into the kitchen. It smelled like rubber cement.

“I'm almost done with this one, ” Suze said, pulling bits of sticky rubber off her fingertips. “One more and we can start to put stuff in them. ”

“They look good, ” Dewey said. “I'm working on Superman, but I need some more parts. I'm going down to the machine shop. ” She looked at the clock. “I'll be back by dinner. ”

Suze nodded and reached for the scissors.

Dewey was on her way back when the Tech siren sounded at 5:30, her pockets full of odd gears and shafts and mainsprings. She spun a tiny lazy-susan device in her hand, admiring the soft precise clickings of the ball bearings. It was perfect for Wonder Woman's lasso. Sergeant Morton, like many of the GIs on the Hill, wasn't very busy these days, and he'd spent almost two hours with her, listening to her ideas and making suggestions. He'd even drawn some sketches for her, construction diagrams, then helped her rummage through the shop's inventory to find the necessary parts.

As she climbed the steps to the Gordons' apartment, Dewey was thinking about how to rig up a battery so that Wonder Woman's lasso could spin at the flick of a switch. She climbed slowly, picturing the wiring. A few steps from the top, she heard Mrs. Gordon say, “Well, I guess you'll have to finish your project some other time. You can pack after supper. I want to get an early start, and there's some paperwork to sign before we can leave. ”

Dewey felt as if she'd been hit. She stopped, stock-still, and felt a prickle of icy sweat under her arms. After a moment she turned and walked slowly back down the stairs, to the shadows under the steps, and dropped bonelessly onto the edge of her wagon.

The Gordons were leaving? She'd been braced for that, ever since the gadget had worked. The duration was over, and the grown-ups had been talking about “after the war” for three weeks, at night, when they thought she was asleep. But Dewey hadn't been sleeping very well. Worrying about when it would happen and how long the army would let her stay on the Hill after the Gordons had gone. Not long, she guessed.

Dewey knew that no one, no place is forever. But it hurt that they hadn't told her, hadn't given her any warning at all. Tomorrow morning? Dewey thought about watching Suze pack up Captain Marvel and the cigar boxes and felt her eyes sting. That was too hard. She couldn't just sit on the porch in the morning and watch her drive away. She wasn't that brave.

Dr. Gordon yelled from the kitchen door. “Suze, will you get a move on? I want to get over there while they've still got steaks left. ”

Dewey stepped out from under the stairs and walked to the edge of the building, then turned and walked back, as if she were just returning from the machine shop.

“Oh, there you are, ” Mrs. Gordon said, coming down the stairs. “I wondered when you'd be back. ” She looked at the bag of parts Dewey carried. “We're going to the Lodge for supper. Go ahead and take your things upstairs. We'll wait. ”

Dewey's stomach knotted at the idea of eating. She looked down at the ground and scuffed her sneaker in the dirt, thinking fast. “Um, well, the machine shop was closing, and Carlos—Mr. Sandoval—said he'd show me how to make a reciprocating cam if I came over to his house. His wife's making enchiladas, and he invited me to eat with them. I just came back to get the Superman box, ” she lied.

“They were your neighbors, over in Morganville, right?” Mrs. Gordon asked.

Dewey nodded.

“Well, all right, ” she said. “Phil and I are going to a party tonight, but I left a paper sack on your bed so you can pack. ”

There it was, bald and cold. And Mrs. Gordon was smiling? She'd always been so nice. Dewey stared at her in disbelief.

“Oh, that's right, you don't know, ” she said. “Well, we've decided to—”

“Terry, we have to get going, ” Dr. Gordon interrupted, tapping his watch. “I don't want to be last in line and get shoe leather. ” He started walking in the direction of the Lodge.

Mrs. Gordon raised her hands in a what-can-you-do? gesture and started to follow him. “Suze will explain when you get back, won't you sweetie?” she said over her shoulder.

Suze nodded vigorously. “Yeah, we're finally—”

“Susan!” Dr. Gordon yelled. Suze looked at Dewey, shrugged, and ran to catch up.

Dewey wanted to run after them, ask them why. But that would only make it harder. She climbed the stairs as if her feet were made of lead and went back to the bedroom. Sure enough, a paper sack lay on the end of her bed. Even old Mrs. Kovack wouldn't have been that rude.

Her eyes blurred with tears, Dewey opened the sack and added a pair of pants, a clean shirt, two tightly rolled balls of socks. She carefully tucked the wooden box with Papa's things into a fold of the pants, then took Einstein the duck and
The Boy Mechanic
off the shelf over her bed, and put them on top. She kneeled down and reached under her bed. The Erector set was too heavy to carry. She'd have to come back for it later. After. She took the cigar box that held the special parts, her best finds, and wrapped it closed with a rubber band.

Dewey rolled the sack closed and picked it up, staring at the other, rumpled bed. Suze Gordon hadn't wanted her to come here. Dewey knew that. But she'd thought, in the last few months, that they'd gotten to be—Dewey shook her head. People don't change. Not really. Suze was going back to her old life, and that was all that mattered to her now. Dewey pulled the dark stone with the silver lettering out of her pocket and looked at it for a long moment. Then she tossed it onto the center of Suze's pillow.

“Shazam yourself,
Truck,
” she said, and left the Gordons' apartment.

INTO THE WOODS

AFTER DINNER , SUZE
left her parents at the Lodge, talking with a bunch of people who were all going to the same party. Her mother had told her to pack as soon as she got home, but since she'd be twelve tomorrow, she could decide things like that for herself. Besides, she wanted to get the last cigar box covered before they left in the morning.

She worked for an hour and put the box aside to dry before stacking it with the others. She tossed one of the cut-up comics into the trash, its tattered pages flapping, then fished it out again. That was a pretty good picture of Clark Kent. She cut him out, got an idea, and leafed through the rest of the pages in search of an image of Superman the same size. She had to look through six more comics before she found what she was looking for, but it was perfect. She could hardly wait to tell Dewey.

Why wait? It was 8:30, not quite dark. Maybe she'd go over to Morganville and walk Dewey back. It was too good an idea to keep to herself for long, and Dewey could talk about machine parts for hours.

The road was mostly shadows, just enough light to see where she was walking, a few stars winking overhead in the deepening blue. She passed a group of boys, bats and mitts slung over their shoulders, heading home from the baseball field. She nodded to Jack and Tom. Tom nodded back.

Suze had only been to Morganville a couple of times, including the visit to the Kerrigans' house a year ago. She didn't really remember which one it had been, and all the barracks-like duplexes looked exactly alike. But Dewey's neighbors' door had been surrounded with cactus plants in clay pots. That ought to be easy enough to spot. She walked up and down two rows of houses before she found it. In her memory, there had been a lot more pots, but she shrugged and knocked on the glass window of the back door.

A tall blond man in khakis and an open cotton shirt answered. “Can I help you, kid?”

“Mr. Sandoval?”

“Nope, ” he said. “Ken Johnson. ”

“Oh. Sorry, ” Suze said. “I guess I got the wrong house. ” She looked around at the identical buildings.

“Nope, ” the man said again. “Right house. But it's mine now. ” He gestured at a row of open cartons just inside the doorway. “The Sandovals moved back to Albuquerque last week. If you need a forwarding address, the housing office may have one. ”

“No, that's okay, ” Suze said. “Thanks. ” She turned away and shook her head. Dewey had said Mr. Sandoval had invited her to dinner. Enchiladas. Had Dewey lied? Dewey never lied. Suze wasn't sure she even knew
how
to lie. But she sure hadn't had dinner with the Sandovals.

Suze kicked a pebble across the rutted dirt in frustration. Everyone was acting strange these days. She hadn't seen much of her parents in months, and now that they were home, they just argued with each other. Mostly at night, after she'd gone to bed. But the walls were thin. They talked about the gadget and the war, and her mother's voice was often loud and angry.

But Daddy sounded excited again, the way he used to be in Berkeley when he could still talk about his lab and his lumps of metal melting and snapping. A lot of what he was saying was nuts, though—building rockets and sending men to the moon. Science fiction stuff. Maybe he had worked
too
hard?

Suze hoped they'd both be in a good mood in the car tomorrow. It was going to be a long trip. But Mom had said there would be a surprise too, for her birthday and—a
surprise
. Suze snapped her fingers. That had to be it. Dewey was off somewhere making a surprise present for her birthday.