Chapter 37
Life was good, but when you got right down to it we were still on the run. We knew there was no question of a fight—if Jewel found us, we would die.
After departing the hospital with Airy and bidding a tearful farewell to Keegan, we found Dr. Martinez in Denver, where we had been set to make a public appearance at a bookstore. We snuck in, well-disguised, and caught Mom backstage.
"Oh, hi, Max," she said. "I didn't expect you to show up. Are you all right?"
"Never been better, Mom," I said cheerfully. "We can't stay, but I can give a few words."
"Anything helps," she said. "Can I see Airy?"
"Right here," I said, lifting the canopy of the stroller.
"I always knew," Jeb said. I jumped out of my skin. I hadn't noticed him against the wall there. "I knew that whenever motherhood came, you'd be ready."
I nodded to him. "Sure."
I got out there with my bullhorn. Though my ad-libs occasionally got me in trouble, I had something rather decent prepared, perhaps a rapport with the audience.
"In the history of Planet Earth, there have been a number of mass extinctions," I said. "Everyone knows that. But in the past, these mass extinctions have been of a natural external cause—do we want to go down in history as the generation who actually caused our own mass extinction? That would pretty much suck. Hey, you. Did you ever see The Future Is Wild?"
The person I had singled out looked a bit nervous. "Um, no. What's that?"
"It was on the CBC," I explained. "It's cool. It's like Walking With Dinosaurs, except it's about the future."
"I never saw Walking With Dinosaurs either," the guy admitted.
"Really?" I said. "Wow, you must have had a deprived childhood."
"Uh, I don't think so."
"No, you did. Believe me, I know. This is coming from a girl who made up her own name and knows for a fact how to catch and eat an armadillo."
"What are you saying?" the dude demanded.
"Well, I'm just saying, we want The Future Is Wild to come into reality peacefully. You know? If the planet is surrounded by toxic vapors, it'll be pretty difficult for life to ever come back, you know what I'm saying?"
"Oh, what are the odds of that, really?" a different dude asked.
"Pretty good, actually," I said. "At this rate? Yeah, it's gonna happen. We gotta change the rate, is what we gotta do. And, uh, why is there a tiny hole burning through the roof of the—oh, shit."
There was an explosion. Lots of lasers. Lots of blades. It's really a blur. Jewel's people worked efficiently. Almost as much as Jewel himself did.
"My associate, Dr. Dwyer, asked real nice-like that you not be killed," Jewel said cheerfully. "I like Brigid. I expect big things from her, so I'm going through with her request. You, red-shirt. Take them all. The baby too."