Chapter 8
The tentative knock at his office door pulled Grimm from the nearly hypnotic task of grading
homework assignments. He looked up at the two people who stood in the doorway, both of
whom were the right age to be his students but neither were faces he'd seen staring at him in a
lecture hall. The younger, a black teenager with a full face and intelligent eyes, looked far more
nervous than a visit to a professor should warrant, unless she was one of those students who only
showed up to the first and last day of class. Behind her stood a white man, taller than the woman
by a few inches, older by a few years and obviously the moral support of the pair.
"Can I help you?" he asked, directing the question at the woman. He pasted an expression of
polite interest on his face in case he was supposed to know her. There were so many faces and
though he tried, he never could learn them all.
"Maybe," she replied, glancing down at her sneakers and then back up to him. "We wanted to
talk you about Sara." The name came out as a question. She licked her lips and opened her mouth
as if to say something more, then closed it.
"You are friends?" His eyebrows drew together as he tried to match their faces with any he might
have known. The woman did look familiar, but he couldn't figure out why. The more he looked
at her, the more he was certain she wasn't one of his students but that he did know her from
somewhere.
"We've met," she said.
"I'm Adam," the young man introduced. "And this is Lisa."
Grimm was just rising out of his chair when the young man spoke up; he sat down quickly and
appraised the two again. "Oh! . . . I -- she's mentioned you," he stammered after a second.
"Please, come in." He indicated the folding chair in front of his desk, eyes darting around the
small office as he looked for another available seat. There was none. He gave a shrug, raising his
hands in apology, and rose to his feet, successfully this time. If they were going to stand, then so
was he.
"She's mentioned us?" Lisa repeated, perplexed.
"Yesterday, in fact. She seemed worried about you. Are you okay? Of course you're okay. You're
here--" He realized he was babbling even as the words spilled from his lips. In one of her stranger
moments, Sara had called out two names. The fact that people bearing those names showed up at
his door a day later shouldn't mean anything. It was a coincidence, nothing more. But even as he
had the thought, he dismissed it as another rationalization that wasn't going to work. He knew his
daughter had been calling for the people who stood before him now. He also knew that if he
didn't rein in his tongue, they'd leave before he found out why they were here.
"Professor," Adam interrupted. "Sara's alive?"
"Of course she's alive," he answered.
The looks Lisa and Adam traded made it clear that they'd expected a different answer. "But . . we
thought . . . I mean . . . ." Lisa threw her hands up. "I give up," she said. "This doesn't make any
sense."
"Why would you think she's not alive?" he pressed. Even asking the question, he couldn't bring
himself to say 'dead'. Dead was too final; saying it might jinx it into happening. Sara wasn't dead
because he couldn't handle it if she left too.
They didn't have an answer. He could see it in their furrowed brows and down turned lips; in the
way the woman looked like she wanted to walk right out the door and never return, in the way
the man shoved his hands in his jean pockets because he'd become conscious of them hanging
helpless at his sides.
Then it occurred to him who they were talking about. Not Sara after all. But they wouldn't have
any reason to know that.
"Clara," he whispered. They had known something he didn't, and now he was sorry he'd wanted
to find out.
"What?"
"Sara . . . and Clara. They're twins."
"You gave them rhyming names?" Lisa asked in disbelief. "Isn't that a little . . . cliche?"
"Their names came from something I was studying for my dissertation," he answered without
apology. Centum/Satem. The name for a major division in the world's languages. Sharing those
names with his newborn daughters seemed like a way to intertwine his work and home lives a
little more; a professional in-joke as it were; and a kind of honorarium.
"That explains it," Adam interrupted, freeing a hand from his pocket to run it through his hair.
"It does?" Lisa asked at the same time as Grimm said, "Explains what?" They weren't talking
about the names.
"You were right," Adam told Lisa. "She couldn't have done it. And *she* didn't."
He saw Lisa's eyebrow quirk up and some of the confusion disappear from her eyes. Adam's
words either made sense to her or she was listening to an entirely different conversation. Possibly
both. Grimm rubbed a knuckle against the bridge of his nose. "Now could you please explain
your explanation?"
"It's kinda complicated," Lisa said.
"That much is obvious. Why don't we start with the reason you're here? You said --" And for the
second time since their arrival, his mind blanked and his words cut off as his eyes came to rest on
the manila folder that peeked at him from beneath a stack of research papers. With one hand, he
slid the folder from beneath the stack and opened its worn cover. At the top sat a photo copy
from the front page of the Virginia Post. Lisa's face stared out at him from a nest of slightly
smeared copy.
He silently handed the page to her.
She accepted it; her mouth forming an "oh" as she registered what she held. Her teleporting act
hadn't gone unnoticed, had in fact been caught on video by some proud father with a child in the
talent show and a camcorder. That tape had earned Lisa coverage on the local news, and then an
above-the-fold article in the local paper.
"Clara disappeared into thin air too," he informed them, all the hurt and worry he'd felt over the
past few months welling to the surface. "I didn't see it, but Sara did. She told me about it. I . . .
didn't believe her then. Do you know where she is?"
Adam seemed to be studying the books lining the wall nearest him as he answered, "We do."
"We do?" Lisa echoed.
"At least," the young man clarified, "we know what happened to her?"
"We do?" Lisa repeated. She looked hard at Adam, her gaze unwavering as she directed her next
words back to Grimm. "He might. In fact, he probably does. But I have no idea what he's talking
about, just for the record."
He was about to respond, although he wasn't sure what would come out of his mouth, when a
movement in the hallway caught his attention. Holding up his hand in a "wait a minute" gesture,
he stepped around his desk and across the office that really wasn't big enough for all the people
now in it.
Sure enough, hovering in the doorway across the hall and a few feet down was their topic of
conversation. In silence the two youths joined him and watched as Sara took tentative steps
forward and back, as if being compelled to the office but drawn away, like an iron filing between
two magnets.
"Is that her?" Lisa whispered near his ear.
He nodded sadly, trying not to see his daughter as Lisa and Adam must be seeing her. It was
strange, but it made sense too, that in the months of his studies, of the apologies, he'd grown used
to the silent teenager who would dance her way in and out of his thoughts. He could talk to her,
and even though he wanted nothing more than to hear a real answer, there was an incredible
freedom in knowing he didn't have to be on guard against injuring feelings or revealing more of
the self than polite.
Grimm wondered at what point he'd become . . . comfortable with how things now stood even as
he railed against them with his every action.
"I don't know how she does that," Grimm said, speaking more to himself than to Lisa and Adam.
"She's barely capable of functioning on a day to day basis. Yet, somehow, she manages to get out
of the house, without the housekeeper noticing, walk all the way across campus, and then up five
flights of stairs to find me."
"This happens a lot?" Adam asked. There was something odd in his voice that Grimm didn't
know how to place.
"Fourth time. No one ever sees her either. I have to wonder that she doesn't freeze to death."
Sara didn't look cold; she didn't look like someone who'd walked half a mile in the winter
without benefit of jacket, gloves or hat. All she was wearing was her usual sweatsuit, this one a
faded yellow with the school's name appliqued down the right leg in green. On her feet was a pair
of socks so worn that her big toes poked out.
She minced closer to the crowd in the doorway, her gaze not seeming to register them. She
stopped in front of her father, politely waiting for him to clear the doorway so she could enter the
office. Or, so it would appear to anyone not aware of her current state.
"Hi, Sara," Adam said. The gentleness in his tone belied the tension in the room.
Not surprisingly, she didn't answer. She did turn towards her father as if waiting for him to
explain.
"So there's two of them?" Lisa asked. "I just want to get this straight."
"There's two of them," Adam confirmed. "Sara is right here. Clara, your sister," he said, his voice
low, directed at the silent twin. "Teleported. She is -- or was -- like Lisa and I: a Tomorrow
Person."
Grimm released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding; haven't been holding. A
metaphorical breath released as the question 'why' finally got an answer. Two words. Two
simple, common words that together meant so much more than a sum of their parts. They were
Tomorrow People. And for all the information those two words didn't convey, they made perfect
sense.
It didn't matter that Grimm wasn't supposed to believe in teleporting, hadn't believed in it up until
that very second. The proof had been provided months before with Clara's disappearance. Seeing
the face from the newspaper article on a real person who stood right next to him, hearing the
young man's somber words, unseeing and careless of anyone's acceptance -- those were all he
needed to get beyond his intrinsic disbelief, to accept the proof for what it was. Questions
pounded his brain, but they were questions to seek more information, not to pass judgement.
"Like you," Adam finished.
Sara pivoted, now facing Lisa. The vacant eyes stared at the elder girl, her face expressionless.
Was she the one seeking proof?
Grimm cleared his throat. "So, where is Clara now? Shouldn't she have come back? Or is she not
allowed . . . to come back?" He tried to swallow back the rising bile. After all those months of
wondering and blaming, he finally got an answer. Its messengers seemed like friendly, mature
young adults. What weren't they telling him?
"That's a long story," Adam said. "I'm afraid the ending isn't a happy one."
Grimm suspected he already knew how this story ended, but he had to ask anyway. "Will you tell
me . . . ?" He had to ask, but he still couldn't say it.
Lisa pursed her lips. "But, it's not over. Right, Adam? Isn't there still something . . . ?" She
paused, leaned out into the hallway and looked both directions. Grimm knew what she was
seeing: the rows of closed doors and dark rooms. The only sounds he'd heard in the building for
hours were Lisa and Adam's arrival, then Sara's arrival. Seemingly satisfied, she continued, "The
Ship isn't done yet."
"The ship?" Grimm asked. "What ship?"
"You'll see," Adam responded. He sounded proud, like it was something he'd built himself. "It's
where we're going now. Sara," he said, looking at her again. "Are you ready?"
Sara minced back and forth a few steps, her gaze not leaving Lisa.
"I know," Lisa responded at length, "There won't be any touching." She extended one of her own
hands out towards the teen, palm out. "You don't have to touch, just do what I'm doing."
"It's okay," Adam added in reassurance, extending his own palm in Sara's direction.
Behind him, Grimm could feel the movement as Lisa and Adam shifted in their stances. A glance
over his shoulder confirmed that the two had copied their strange action with their other hands,
palms almost touching. He looked back to see Sara's stiffened arms raising, for all the world like
a puppet on strings, until they matched the gestures.
"Put your hand on my shoulder, Professor," Adam said, without turning his attention from Sara.
"And shut your eyes."
Grimm complied, sensing that now wasn't the time to have his curiosity satisfied. Sensing further
that it was about to be satisfied beyond his wildest dreams.
Nothing happened for long seconds except the buildup of some kind of charge in the air; a charge
that raised all the hairs on his arms and made the back of his neck tingle. He fought the urge to
open his eyes; the direction wouldn't have been given if it weren't important.
He barely heard Sara whisper, "I can hear the ocean," then the back of his eyelids turned pink, the
hairs on his arms and head took a sudden jump, and he felt the charge rip through his body, from
the inside out.
The tentative knock at his office door pulled Grimm from the nearly hypnotic task of grading
homework assignments. He looked up at the two people who stood in the doorway, both of
whom were the right age to be his students but neither were faces he'd seen staring at him in a
lecture hall. The younger, a black teenager with a full face and intelligent eyes, looked far more
nervous than a visit to a professor should warrant, unless she was one of those students who only
showed up to the first and last day of class. Behind her stood a white man, taller than the woman
by a few inches, older by a few years and obviously the moral support of the pair.
"Can I help you?" he asked, directing the question at the woman. He pasted an expression of
polite interest on his face in case he was supposed to know her. There were so many faces and
though he tried, he never could learn them all.
"Maybe," she replied, glancing down at her sneakers and then back up to him. "We wanted to
talk you about Sara." The name came out as a question. She licked her lips and opened her mouth
as if to say something more, then closed it.
"You are friends?" His eyebrows drew together as he tried to match their faces with any he might
have known. The woman did look familiar, but he couldn't figure out why. The more he looked
at her, the more he was certain she wasn't one of his students but that he did know her from
somewhere.
"We've met," she said.
"I'm Adam," the young man introduced. "And this is Lisa."
Grimm was just rising out of his chair when the young man spoke up; he sat down quickly and
appraised the two again. "Oh! . . . I -- she's mentioned you," he stammered after a second.
"Please, come in." He indicated the folding chair in front of his desk, eyes darting around the
small office as he looked for another available seat. There was none. He gave a shrug, raising his
hands in apology, and rose to his feet, successfully this time. If they were going to stand, then so
was he.
"She's mentioned us?" Lisa repeated, perplexed.
"Yesterday, in fact. She seemed worried about you. Are you okay? Of course you're okay. You're
here--" He realized he was babbling even as the words spilled from his lips. In one of her stranger
moments, Sara had called out two names. The fact that people bearing those names showed up at
his door a day later shouldn't mean anything. It was a coincidence, nothing more. But even as he
had the thought, he dismissed it as another rationalization that wasn't going to work. He knew his
daughter had been calling for the people who stood before him now. He also knew that if he
didn't rein in his tongue, they'd leave before he found out why they were here.
"Professor," Adam interrupted. "Sara's alive?"
"Of course she's alive," he answered.
The looks Lisa and Adam traded made it clear that they'd expected a different answer. "But . . we
thought . . . I mean . . . ." Lisa threw her hands up. "I give up," she said. "This doesn't make any
sense."
"Why would you think she's not alive?" he pressed. Even asking the question, he couldn't bring
himself to say 'dead'. Dead was too final; saying it might jinx it into happening. Sara wasn't dead
because he couldn't handle it if she left too.
They didn't have an answer. He could see it in their furrowed brows and down turned lips; in the
way the woman looked like she wanted to walk right out the door and never return, in the way
the man shoved his hands in his jean pockets because he'd become conscious of them hanging
helpless at his sides.
Then it occurred to him who they were talking about. Not Sara after all. But they wouldn't have
any reason to know that.
"Clara," he whispered. They had known something he didn't, and now he was sorry he'd wanted
to find out.
"What?"
"Sara . . . and Clara. They're twins."
"You gave them rhyming names?" Lisa asked in disbelief. "Isn't that a little . . . cliche?"
"Their names came from something I was studying for my dissertation," he answered without
apology. Centum/Satem. The name for a major division in the world's languages. Sharing those
names with his newborn daughters seemed like a way to intertwine his work and home lives a
little more; a professional in-joke as it were; and a kind of honorarium.
"That explains it," Adam interrupted, freeing a hand from his pocket to run it through his hair.
"It does?" Lisa asked at the same time as Grimm said, "Explains what?" They weren't talking
about the names.
"You were right," Adam told Lisa. "She couldn't have done it. And *she* didn't."
He saw Lisa's eyebrow quirk up and some of the confusion disappear from her eyes. Adam's
words either made sense to her or she was listening to an entirely different conversation. Possibly
both. Grimm rubbed a knuckle against the bridge of his nose. "Now could you please explain
your explanation?"
"It's kinda complicated," Lisa said.
"That much is obvious. Why don't we start with the reason you're here? You said --" And for the
second time since their arrival, his mind blanked and his words cut off as his eyes came to rest on
the manila folder that peeked at him from beneath a stack of research papers. With one hand, he
slid the folder from beneath the stack and opened its worn cover. At the top sat a photo copy
from the front page of the Virginia Post. Lisa's face stared out at him from a nest of slightly
smeared copy.
He silently handed the page to her.
She accepted it; her mouth forming an "oh" as she registered what she held. Her teleporting act
hadn't gone unnoticed, had in fact been caught on video by some proud father with a child in the
talent show and a camcorder. That tape had earned Lisa coverage on the local news, and then an
above-the-fold article in the local paper.
"Clara disappeared into thin air too," he informed them, all the hurt and worry he'd felt over the
past few months welling to the surface. "I didn't see it, but Sara did. She told me about it. I . . .
didn't believe her then. Do you know where she is?"
Adam seemed to be studying the books lining the wall nearest him as he answered, "We do."
"We do?" Lisa echoed.
"At least," the young man clarified, "we know what happened to her?"
"We do?" Lisa repeated. She looked hard at Adam, her gaze unwavering as she directed her next
words back to Grimm. "He might. In fact, he probably does. But I have no idea what he's talking
about, just for the record."
He was about to respond, although he wasn't sure what would come out of his mouth, when a
movement in the hallway caught his attention. Holding up his hand in a "wait a minute" gesture,
he stepped around his desk and across the office that really wasn't big enough for all the people
now in it.
Sure enough, hovering in the doorway across the hall and a few feet down was their topic of
conversation. In silence the two youths joined him and watched as Sara took tentative steps
forward and back, as if being compelled to the office but drawn away, like an iron filing between
two magnets.
"Is that her?" Lisa whispered near his ear.
He nodded sadly, trying not to see his daughter as Lisa and Adam must be seeing her. It was
strange, but it made sense too, that in the months of his studies, of the apologies, he'd grown used
to the silent teenager who would dance her way in and out of his thoughts. He could talk to her,
and even though he wanted nothing more than to hear a real answer, there was an incredible
freedom in knowing he didn't have to be on guard against injuring feelings or revealing more of
the self than polite.
Grimm wondered at what point he'd become . . . comfortable with how things now stood even as
he railed against them with his every action.
"I don't know how she does that," Grimm said, speaking more to himself than to Lisa and Adam.
"She's barely capable of functioning on a day to day basis. Yet, somehow, she manages to get out
of the house, without the housekeeper noticing, walk all the way across campus, and then up five
flights of stairs to find me."
"This happens a lot?" Adam asked. There was something odd in his voice that Grimm didn't
know how to place.
"Fourth time. No one ever sees her either. I have to wonder that she doesn't freeze to death."
Sara didn't look cold; she didn't look like someone who'd walked half a mile in the winter
without benefit of jacket, gloves or hat. All she was wearing was her usual sweatsuit, this one a
faded yellow with the school's name appliqued down the right leg in green. On her feet was a pair
of socks so worn that her big toes poked out.
She minced closer to the crowd in the doorway, her gaze not seeming to register them. She
stopped in front of her father, politely waiting for him to clear the doorway so she could enter the
office. Or, so it would appear to anyone not aware of her current state.
"Hi, Sara," Adam said. The gentleness in his tone belied the tension in the room.
Not surprisingly, she didn't answer. She did turn towards her father as if waiting for him to
explain.
"So there's two of them?" Lisa asked. "I just want to get this straight."
"There's two of them," Adam confirmed. "Sara is right here. Clara, your sister," he said, his voice
low, directed at the silent twin. "Teleported. She is -- or was -- like Lisa and I: a Tomorrow
Person."
Grimm released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding; haven't been holding. A
metaphorical breath released as the question 'why' finally got an answer. Two words. Two
simple, common words that together meant so much more than a sum of their parts. They were
Tomorrow People. And for all the information those two words didn't convey, they made perfect
sense.
It didn't matter that Grimm wasn't supposed to believe in teleporting, hadn't believed in it up until
that very second. The proof had been provided months before with Clara's disappearance. Seeing
the face from the newspaper article on a real person who stood right next to him, hearing the
young man's somber words, unseeing and careless of anyone's acceptance -- those were all he
needed to get beyond his intrinsic disbelief, to accept the proof for what it was. Questions
pounded his brain, but they were questions to seek more information, not to pass judgement.
"Like you," Adam finished.
Sara pivoted, now facing Lisa. The vacant eyes stared at the elder girl, her face expressionless.
Was she the one seeking proof?
Grimm cleared his throat. "So, where is Clara now? Shouldn't she have come back? Or is she not
allowed . . . to come back?" He tried to swallow back the rising bile. After all those months of
wondering and blaming, he finally got an answer. Its messengers seemed like friendly, mature
young adults. What weren't they telling him?
"That's a long story," Adam said. "I'm afraid the ending isn't a happy one."
Grimm suspected he already knew how this story ended, but he had to ask anyway. "Will you tell
me . . . ?" He had to ask, but he still couldn't say it.
Lisa pursed her lips. "But, it's not over. Right, Adam? Isn't there still something . . . ?" She
paused, leaned out into the hallway and looked both directions. Grimm knew what she was
seeing: the rows of closed doors and dark rooms. The only sounds he'd heard in the building for
hours were Lisa and Adam's arrival, then Sara's arrival. Seemingly satisfied, she continued, "The
Ship isn't done yet."
"The ship?" Grimm asked. "What ship?"
"You'll see," Adam responded. He sounded proud, like it was something he'd built himself. "It's
where we're going now. Sara," he said, looking at her again. "Are you ready?"
Sara minced back and forth a few steps, her gaze not leaving Lisa.
"I know," Lisa responded at length, "There won't be any touching." She extended one of her own
hands out towards the teen, palm out. "You don't have to touch, just do what I'm doing."
"It's okay," Adam added in reassurance, extending his own palm in Sara's direction.
Behind him, Grimm could feel the movement as Lisa and Adam shifted in their stances. A glance
over his shoulder confirmed that the two had copied their strange action with their other hands,
palms almost touching. He looked back to see Sara's stiffened arms raising, for all the world like
a puppet on strings, until they matched the gestures.
"Put your hand on my shoulder, Professor," Adam said, without turning his attention from Sara.
"And shut your eyes."
Grimm complied, sensing that now wasn't the time to have his curiosity satisfied. Sensing further
that it was about to be satisfied beyond his wildest dreams.
Nothing happened for long seconds except the buildup of some kind of charge in the air; a charge
that raised all the hairs on his arms and made the back of his neck tingle. He fought the urge to
open his eyes; the direction wouldn't have been given if it weren't important.
He barely heard Sara whisper, "I can hear the ocean," then the back of his eyelids turned pink, the
hairs on his arms and head took a sudden jump, and he felt the charge rip through his body, from
the inside out.
