Dangerous Days of Daniel X

“And what do you think you’re doing, hovering over me like that?” I asked him.

“I practically tripped over you lying like a rotty corpse in the middle of the tunnel, you idiot. Leggo my hair now!”

I released my grip.

“Smart move, sucker,” the kid said, frowning and rubbing his scalp. “Nobody messes with Bem. Even the Outer Ones better watch their step with me.”

“Oh, I’m sure they do, Bem. They would never mess with the likes of you.”

I stood for a moment just gazing at the boy. I couldn’t believe I’d finally come into contact with one of my people!

“Quit staring,” he said. “You’re creeping me out.”

Okay, then, I thought. I guess all of us aren’t telepathic.

“Is your mom or dad around?” I asked the boy.

“Died on FirstStrike. It’s just me and Kulay now. Kulay’s my sister.”

“Where do you live?”

“In Undertown, of course. Where else? Where you been?”

“Will you show me?”

The feisty kid squinted at me and put up his fists. “Why should I?”

I concentrated and levitated Bem a foot or so off the ground.

“Okay, that’s a good reason,” he said, and started to walk. “Keep up!”

The tunnel we traveled through gradually began to widen. More tunnels branched to the right and left until finally we stepped into a massive chamber. One, I noticed, that was crowded with people.

My people.

Maybe I could find someone who knew my parents! I thought as I approached the crowd. Imagine if I had a family? Real aunts and uncles and cousins?

It didn’t take long for my hope to wither. Undertown wasn’t doing so hot. Every inch of the chamber was covered with crude wooden and cardboard shanties.

“Numbdown, git sum, git sum!” called a tough-looking kid around Bem’s age. He was waving dirty vials in my face as I passed. Numbdown must have been Alpar Nok’s answer to crack.

I smacked the drugs away from my face onto the concrete floor and crushed them under my sneaker.

“Common sense!” I said to the kid. “Git sum, git sum.”

Chapter 68

BEM AND KULAY’S HOME was a cavelike structure about the size of a toolshed, with a rusty drainpipe in the corner for a toilet. And, I think, a sink.

Kulay turned out to be four and was doing about as well as her “big” brother. She was pretty, but thin and bony, and one of her feet looked like it had been crushed recently and had healed wrong.

“Take me,” Kulay said to her brother as he opened the corrugated sheet of metal they used as a door. “Take me. Take me. Take me.”

She didn’t seem to notice that I was there, and I was curious about where it was that she wanted to go.

“I’m busy, Kulay,” Bem said, exasperated. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you see him? ”

I searched the pockets of my jumpsuit and came out with a crushed blueberry energy bar I’d managed to keep hidden from the horse-heads. I tore it open and gave them each half.

That seemed to win Bem over. I actually saw him drop his permanent scowl for a second as he chewed.

“Where does Kulay want to go?” I asked.

“It’s… the only good thing left in this crummy city, I guess. It’s… hard to describe. You have to see it. Do you want to? Anyway, she won’t stop bugging me until we go.”

“Take me, take me!” I said in response, and even Kulay grinned this time. Cute kid. I wondered if she was one of my cousins.

Chapter 69

I LIFTED KULAY, who weighed next to nothing, and followed Bem out the hole in a wall that served as a door. We walked to the outskirts of the ramshackle underground town and went through a busted gate into a narrow corridor.

We walked for maybe an hour through a labyrinth of corridors until we came to a set of metal stairs.

After climbing seven stories, Bem opened a door into a huge concrete room filled with silent, turbinelike machines.

Behind one of them was a circular door in a wide pipe with a spin valve opener.

“What are you doing?” I said as Bem went down on all fours, spun the valve, then pulled open the door.

“You’ll see,” Kulay said with a giggle as she crawled out of my arms and into the pipe. “Take me, take me!” she shouted.

Bem was right on her tail.

I shook my head, but I followed along.

Trap? I wondered.

I had trusted people before and look where it had gotten me. Phoebe Cook had turned out to be Ergent Seth. So who were these two kids?

I crawled right behind Bem, close enough to grab him if I had to. Well, I wriggled, if you want to get technical, since my shoulders just barely fit.

Suddenly I heard Kulay yell, “Wheeee!” and then there was a loud, wet splash.

“What the -?” But it was too late. The pipe tilted downward, and I was sliding, then free-falling.

I didn’t have time to scream before I belly-flopped into a humongous, double-Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool.

I came to the surface, gasping.

This was totally amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen.

All around me, shafts of light streamed in through cathedral-sized windows of translucent glass.

The unchlorinated water was the cleanest I’d ever drunk, let alone swum in. I suddenly felt like I could run a marathon.

I floated on my back as I looked up at the soaring dome of the ceiling. Intricately drawn on it was what looked like this world’s largest Renaissance painting.

In the center of the mural, kids ran and played games involving complex and very colorful kites. The detail was extraordinary, like nothing I had ever seen on Earth, even at the Louvre and the Met.

I shook my head. I could have stayed there for weeks and weeks. If this kind of craftsmanship was evident in public pools, I wondered, what did they display in the museums?

Kulay spit a spray of water at me before hopping out the side like a little seal.

“Come on,” she said, giggling. “Take me, take me!”

“What? Aren’t we here?” I asked.

“The pool? You haven’t seen anything yet,” Bem said. “The pool was just to clean ourselves up a bit.”

Chapter 70