Chapter 1
Meanwhile, Bella Freestone stepped into the gas station mini- mart, marched past the wire stand with the penny-saver paper and the billboard with the flyers about roofing work and pit bull puppies to the perimeter of the store to collect beverages for herself and her unwilling assistant, then to the center aisles to snag a few plastic bags of processed food with which to refuel herself.(But not the kid: Low blood sugar makes one weak and easily led, a lesson learned obliquely from years of watching Dr. Sheena Lypotrope.) With her tanning-booth-brown arms full of artificial sustenance, she made for the register, where a pack of sweaty farmworkers ahead of her at the service deli was ordering its afternoon rations of chicken strips, corndogs, and barbecue burritos.
While this crew provisioned itself, Bella read the label of the drink bottles and smirked. (“No Artificial Flavors.” She remembered that field trip to Level V.) By the time that the agricultural trenchermen in front of her had collected their mid-day grease bombs and were moving on, Bella found herself actually fretting about the kid in the trunk. But any worries evaporated after she remembered that only dogs and little children were at risk in an overheated car.
From the other side of the glassed-over countertop collage of scratch-off lottery tickets, the tattooed saleslady greeted her. “How y’doin’ today, hon?”
Bella dumped down her load, slid her sunglasses up into her metallic blond ’do, and rummaged through her purse. “Say,” she said, starting up her skit, “I’m just passing through—”She found her debit card.“—and I’m trying to look up a friend of mine?” She swiped her card instead of sticking it into the chip reader, smiled an apology, and brushed her hair from her eyes. “His last name’s Fairfax?” The card reader was asking about PIN numbers and cash back. “His place is called Orphis?”
“Sorry, hon,” commiserated the counter-lady.“How ’bout a scratch-off?”
Bella was chalking up another defeat when her smartphone chimed. With one hand tapping on the card reader, the other pushed her phone against her shell-like ears and treated the lady behind the counter to half of a conversation.
“Yes, Sheena…Sorry: Dr. Lypotrope… Orphis. Yes, Orphis. Fairfax. Orphis. I heard you the first time, Sheena. Sorry: Dr. Lypotrope… All right.” (Bella sneaked a sly peek at the lady behind the counter, hoping to see in her face that she knew all about the arcane secrets of Orphis and that quack Phineas Fairfax. No such luck.)“Hey, come on. You know—Yes, yes, I know we’re still paying off the liposuction. Yeah, and if I stopped eating that wouldn’t be a problem. Yes, I bet you can arrange that. Uh-huh. You know, all this time I’m jabbering—No, no, there’s no one else here.” Bella gave another glance to the lady behind the scratch-offs, whose face was one of patience-at-its-end. “All right. Bye. OK. OK. All right—”The conversation became terminally one-sided.
The woman behind the counter asked, “Sheila Microscope hung up on you?”
Sliding her phone back into her purse, Bella gave a sheepish smile, tore her receipt from its feeder, and headed for the door with her junk food, while reminding herself that she still had the laser-like focus to get this job done.
And laser-like focus is a grand thing, except when it fails to notice that all this time, behind you in line, has been standing a fellow in the white lab coat, a fellow with a dignified and detached (should we say scientific?) air, who has quickly, carefully, and quietly stepped from the queue, past the rack of Confederate flag ballcaps and cannabis-leaf bandanas, on past the wall of shame with the pictures of the shoplifters, and with his head turned to avoid being caught on security camera, has opened the glass doors with just a nudge of his shoulder so as not to leave fingerprints and is now on the move across the parking lot.
Still in utero, as it were, and breathing overheated air, Bobby Lumbar was ready to chew open a jug of motor oil to survive a few minutes longer, when, through the carapace of his prison cell, he thought that he heard…three knocks.
Seizing the moment—symbolically, of course, since he was still swaddled like an overgrown papoose—Bobby Lumbar with his foot started up a percussion like something from one of his grandmother’s shamanic journeying CDs, but played at high speed.
The back hatch then unlatched and a crack of light split open the darkness, like a Precambrian dawn shining over Gondwanaland. A figure, humanoid and bipedal, was blotting out the morning in May, but Bobby Lumbar felt his masculine hands lifting him up.
Bobby then felt himself chucked on to a marginally more comfortable faux leather seat, heard the passenger door by his head slam shut loudly, the driver’s door open, the soft sounds of a body sliding into the driver’s seat, and the engine revving to life. He was on the move again.
From his new vantage, Bobby made out the back of a man’s head, a very fine specimen, its hair thick, coppery, and well-trimmed and through his gag, he mumbled some thanks to the cavalry.
In a voice made of pipe tobacco, venison, a swallow of Bourbon, and wind-fall apples, the driver asked, “How are you doing, son?”
Bobby answered, “Oo-ah-oo?”
The driver did not answer.
Bobby repeated the experiment.“Oo-ah-oo?”
He received the same results.
Bobby was about to try a different tack (like screaming for help, as if that would do any good), when the driver said, “My name is Phineas Fairfax. And I’m taking you to Orphis.”
Marching back to her great white fortress on wheels, Bella hummed away under the weight of so much liquid refreshment. The blue drink, she knew, would keep the captive in line, since she had sighted mid-way down its Gettysburg Address of ingredients Yellow 75 (marketed by MAXIFAX under the trade name Illusia®). This little gem was documented as causing aphasia and stupor in 0.06% of subjects during initial testing. Bella could only hope.
On arriving at her mutant sugar cube, Bella pulled open the back with a loud, “Soo-eee!”...only to stand in a mute and paralyzed shock as she dropped drinks and they rolled about her feet.
The trunk was empty.
The kid was gone.
Bella wanted to blink in disbelief, but opted not to. (Her new eyelids had not run through their warranty.) Instead, with agitated fingertips, she immediately skimmed through her contacts in her handheld for any friendly entities within a ten-mile radius.
Bella exhaled with relief as two names materialized on the screen: Baba and Martie.Since they had all matriculated from the same “finishing school” (their little name for Level IV at MAXIFAX), they were duty-bound to help out of an old pal—or so she hoped.
After quickly sending out a desperate, Lost my man, Bella forcefully reinserted herself into the front seat, seat-belted herself in with violent determination, and—ignoring a notification from Dr. Sheena Lypotrope, who wished for further words with her—raced on to find this town of Merryweather where they lived.
