Toys

Chapter 37

Afew hours later, I was fully alert and back at the wheel. The personal attendant gasped excitedly as I made a sharp left turn and plunged the ZX headfirst into the lake that surrounded the island where my parents lived. Stabilizing fins shot out from the sides of the pod, and the drivetrain instantly disengaged from the wheels and connected to the rear water jets.

“Oooh, I’m so wet,” the attendant chirped seductively. This was a sports model after all, a boy’s toy.

I loved the car for its performance attributes, if nothing else. I’d already decided that if I survived long enough, I was going to find the guy I’d taken it from and buy it for real.

It glided along smoothly, skirting sunken logs and sending schools of bass and perch darting away. When I was a kid, I’d spent a lot of time up here on the lake with my dad, fishing for walleyed pike, lake trout, even eels, which can be surprisingly delicious when cooked up fresh after the catch.

I hadn’t seen my folks much since university-and then I’d become an Agent of Change and married Lizbeth. I loved and respected my parents, but, well, they weren’t the easiest people to be around.

I’d always known they were unusual, even odd. Before I was born, they’d invested in the biotech industry and done well. But they decided they wanted a simpler life, so they moved to this faraway, wild north country on the lake. Now they spent their time gardening and tinkering without much connection to society, and they seemed to like it that way. They saw Lizbeth, me, and the kids once a year, and that seemed enough for them, which was strange to me. My parents had always been warm and loving when I was a child.

The ZX shot up out of the water and onto a pebbly beach, then it snaked through a stretch of thick, tangled forest while tree limbs brushed its roof and windows.

It was late morning now, cloudy and warm, the leaves glistening with dew and the air thick with birdsong. The forest opened into a large clearing-and there was the sprawling, old-fashioned house where I’d grown up. Everything looked just the way I remembered it, cedar shingles and all. Even the smell of the pine trees was familiar.

Except that someone I didn’t recognize was up on a ladder, working on the roof. It was a woman who had her hair tucked under a painter’s cap. She must have been a human my parents had hired to do the chores, although I didn’t recall them mentioning it, or ever doing that before. They’d always taken care of the place themselves. Well, they weren’t getting any younger, were they? Nobody was.

“So you made it here on your own,” the menial worker called as I climbed out of the car. “I’m impressed. You’re more resourceful than I would have guessed.”

The timbre of her voice registered immediately in my brain, and it was like I’d been zapped with a Taser-the woman was the leader of the gang of skunks who had attacked Lizbeth and me, the one who got away.