Chapter Four

Shortly before two o'clock, Warden Thurmer headed back to the school to pick up Blue. He was already running later than he would have liked due to a meeting that ran longer than anyone had wanted, seeing that it was Christmas Eve. Though there were always grumbles among the guards about working over the holidays — an unavoidable necessity, since the prison could not be left unattended — a system combining volunteers and a rotating schedule kept anyone from feeling as if they were being singled out for onerous duty, over and over again. The warden himself would be there until five, his normal quitting time, an effort he always made so that it didn't look as if he was getting special consideration. He planned to spend the evening with his wife and three kids, following their usual Christmas Eve traditions; he had even given thought to bringing Blue home with him, so that for once in his young life, the little alien boy could experience the feeling of being with a family at an especially happy time of year.

Unfortunately, he had had to table the notion at least for this year, when his in-laws called the night before with the "delightful" news that they would be joining them tomorrow. Thurmer didn't hate his wife's parents, but they and his kids knew nothing about Blue. The children, he knew, would not have had any problem accepting Blue. They were good kids (unlike the Scott boy and all the other brats at Blue's school), and as the warden's youngest son had been born with a serious spinal defect that left him with a deformed neck and shoulder and a partially crippled leg, all three youngsters were unusually kind toward anyone who was handicapped or somehow looked different.

It was his in-laws who were the problem. So long as Blue remained a local "urban legend," it was possible to keep him safe, to persuade the press and the civil authorities to keep proof of his existence from going national. But his in-laws were from New Jersey, and both were major league gossip-mongers, always looking for the next juicy story to spread along the entire eastern seaboard. After one look at Blue, they would tell so many people outside Metro City about the prison's obviously alien resident, there would soon be no way for anyone to protect Blue from the media and the scientists. Maybe next year, Thurmer could take the boy home for Christmas. He at least had a present for Blue waiting back at the prison, an assortment of sketch books and pens and pencils and markers and basic drafting supplies that he knew would delight the creative little boy, along with the contributions of homemade cookies and candy some of the more soft-hearted guards had brought for him.

The snow that had started shortly before noon was coming down more thickly now as the temperatures had dropped and the wind had shifted to blow in off the lake, bringing with it the inevitable lake-effect snow. Mildly annoyed by the delay, Thurmer wasted a few more minutes scraping and brushing the stuff off his car. By the time he got on the road, he could see that the bus was back and already parked in front of the school. Cars and vans were coming and going, picking up the children as they left the bus amid a lot of excited chattering and calls of "Merry Christmas!" He suspected that Blue would be the last one off, as unpopular kids usually got stuck in the back of the bus. So he waited, listening to music on the car's radio until the crowd had thinned.

When he climbed out, only the Scotts' limo, the teacher's van, and a couple of cars remained. As Thurmer walked toward it, Wayne and Ms Driscoll emerged from the bus, along with four other children. The various parents came to meet them, but of Blue, there was no sign.

The warden frowned, smelling trouble. He didn't immediately presume that Blue had caused it, but he suspected that his young ward was reluctant to get off the bus because something unpleasant had happened. He peered into the windows, expecting to see the red cap or the blue head somewhere inside, but the only occupant he could spot was the bus driver.

Still frowning, he strode up to where the Scotts were holding court, basking in the excessive thanks and praise of the teacher and the remaining parents. "Where's Blue?" he asked bluntly, getting right to the point.

Ms Driscoll wrinkled her nose in disgustingly cheerful distaste. "Gone," she said in an offhand manner. "And good riddance to the little troublemaker!"

Even though he had seen some bad attitudes in his line of work, Thurber found the teacher's appalling. "What do you mean, gone? Are you saying Blue got lost, and you just left him behind?"

Ms Driscoll's expression became even more dismissive. "No, I mean the little monster ran away, and none too soon, I might add! Why, he endangered the entire class by opening the rear emergency door while the bus was moving at high speed, and he tried to push one of the students off, right in the middle of traffic, and after she was trying to be nice to him!"

The warden didn't believe it. "Not Blue," he declared, sure of it. "He may get upset and raise his voice from time to time, and some of his little projects may make a mess when they get out of hand, but he would never deliberately try to hurt anyone, not like that. Are you sure you have your facts right?"

If she didn't, the teacher was doing an excellent job of hiding it. "Of course I'm sure! The entire class saw the whole thing! Why, if Wayne hadn't intervened, a little girl might have been killed!" At this, she flashed the Scotts a glowing smile of approval, to which Wayne reacted with his usual smugly enthusiastic pride. "Blue ran away to escape punishment — a justly earned punishment, I must say! He took off with that ridiculous fish of his before Wayne or I could stop him, and I wasn't about to put the other children in danger just to bring back a juvenile delinquent. You've been too lenient with him, Mr. Thurmer, and I was not about to spoil the day for the other children, delaying the trip they'd earned while I chased after one bad seed."

Thurmer's scowl was dark with anger. "That's part of your job," he reminded the woman. "I know you don't like Blue, and I know you didn't want him along on this trip, but no matter what he did, his welfare while under your supervision is your responsibility. If you think I won't mention this to the proper authorities, you're sadly mistaken." Oddly enough it was Wayne who seemed more chastised by his remarks than the teacher.

Ms Driscoll scowled right back. "Oh, of course, it's my responsibility to abandon more than a dozen children who are behaving themselves when one goes out of his way to cause trouble! It's just what I said: you're far too easy on him! Opening an emergency door on a moving vehicle is not an innocent childish prank! And trying push off another student...! Why, that's nothing short of attempted murder!"

"Then you should've called the police!" the warden snapped back, still unwilling to believe that what the angry woman was saying was the whole truth. "It wouldn't have been too hard for them to find a blue-skinned boy who's never been off on his own before! And you call yourself a 'gifted educator'...!"

Ms Driscoll was about to fire back a scathing reply when Lady Scott stepped between them, her hands fluttering as if trying to shoo away a pesky gnat. "Now, now, there's no need for such unpleasantry!" she exclaimed in an overly sweet voice well practiced in tones of condescension. "After all, it's Christmas Eve! I'm sure this is all nothing but a harmless misunderstanding. If this poor orphan boy is lost, I'm quite certain our City's Finest will be able to locate him in no time at all. Boys will be boys, and I'll wager the child simply wandered off in the museum and missed the bus. Why don't we just step inside the school for a moment and make a call to the curator? He's such a lovely man, a good friend of mine, and I'm sure we can have this whole thing settled in just a minute or two."

The teacher continued to seethe as the warden continued to scowl, but after a moment, Ms Driscoll made a show of conceding to Mrs. Scott's brilliant suggestion. "A splendid idea, Lady Scott," she fawned. "Of course, we can have this dealt with quickly, and no harm done." At the very least, she figured that eventually the police would find the blue alien, in trouble as usual, and the warden would have no further cause to complain — or to report her, since she'd be proven right. She strode off to the schoolhouse, Mrs. Scott following a few steps behind.

"Go sit in the car with your father, Wayne darling," the wealthy woman called with an airy gesture toward the limo, to which Mr. Scott had retreated when the yelling started. "I'll be along in just a minute."

"Yes, Mother," Wayne replied, though he didn't hurry to obey.

Thurmer began heading after the two women only to be stopped by the boy's hand on his arm. He couldn't have continued if he'd wanted, so strong was Wayne's grip. When the women had disappeared into the building and the other kids and their families had gone, he looked up at the warden with an uneasy expression.

"I don't like Blue," he told Thurmer quietly, hesitant to admit to such an unbecoming attitude. "He's weird and funny looking, and he never does things the way he should. But..." He paused, trying to get out the words he obviously didn't want to say. "It didn't happen the way Ms Driscoll said, Warden Thurmer," he finally managed to choke out. "Jenny Osgood was the one who opened the emergency door, not Blue. Everybody knew she was mad at him for being a snitch, and wanted to get even. She opened the door so she could throw his pet fish off the bridge. She almost fell out of the bus, but Blue grabbed her and pulled her back."

Thurmer was frankly astonished. "He saved her after she threw Minion off the bus?" Even he found that hard to believe.

Wayne shook his head. "No. The bus bounced around just when she opened the door, and that's when she almost fell out. I think Blue saved her only because she was holding his fish. But then she pushed him down and threw the fish out the door before he could get up. I would've helped!" he hurried to add, throwing back his shoulders in a display of heroism, his excessive emphasis saying quite the opposite of his words. "But the other kids were in the way. I had to climb out a window to fly around back and save them from being thrown off."

The warden began to see things more clearly. "So Blue didn't cause any trouble, did he?"

Wayne looked away, unwilling to meet the grown-up's keen eyes. "No, sir, not really. Jenny started it. He asked me to go after his fish and save it when she threw it away, but it had already fallen off the bridge. Ms Driscoll ordered us to get back to our seats, and she told me to close the door so the other kids wouldn't be in danger."

"So when did Blue 'run away'?"

"When I told him I wouldn't — er, couldn't go after his fish. It didn't matter, anyway!" the superboy added in his own defense. "It was a pretty high bridge, and the fish probably got smashed and killed when it hit the ground!"

Oh, yes, Thurmer was definitely getting the real picture. "And you said that to Blue? That his friend got smashed and killed?"

Wayne was definitely uncomfortable now. "Why not? It was true! But he wouldn't believe me, so he jumped off the bus to go after the fish himself. I was gonna go after him, but Ms Driscoll told me to get back inside and close the door right away. I had to think of the other kids, keeping them safe."

Now, the warden was aghast. "Was the bus moving when he jumped?" Wayne nodded. "How fast?"

The boy squirmed. "P-pretty fast. But he wasn't hurt, honest! Blue can move real fast when he wants to, and I saw him get away from the cars and stand up by the side of the road. He wasn't hurt." He repeated it in an effort to convince himself.

Thurmer suspected young Scott was right. He knew from his own experience that Blue was amazingly quick and nimble, and surprisingly sturdy despite his slender appearance. Still, if Wayne was telling the truth, that Blue had run off trying to save Minion after such a fall, there were worse hurts his littlest "inmate" would be suffering if he found his fishy companion badly injured, or dead.

Quickly, he changed his mind about going after the two women and started to make his own plans, which involved official channels unavailable to them. "Do you know where you were when Blue jumped off the bus?" Even as he asked the question, he recognized the irony of the situation, which Blue had innocently predicted the day before.

Wayne both nodded and shrugged. "On the crosstown freeway, going into the city. I don't know exactly where, but it was on the really high part of the bridge."

Well, that at least narrowed it down to a five mile span of highway — and all the streets and alleys and buildings beneath and around it. This was not going to be easy. The warden sighed. "You really should've gone after him, Mr. Scott."

The boy winced. "I suppose — but really, Blue is an awful troublemaker! He's just plain bad, sir. Everyone says so!"

Thurmer shook his head, sadly. "Son, I know what everyone says. They all say that you're going to grow up to be a hero, too. That's quite a lot for anyone to live up to, even you."

"But I will be a hero!" Wayne declared, puffing out his chest in pride.

"Maybe you will," the warden allowed. "Some people do grow up to be all the good things everyone expects them to be. But I've seen a lot more of this world than you have, young man, and in my line of work, you find out that the saddest truth of all is that if enough people keep telling them so, some folks will live down to what everyone expects of them, because they're never given a real chance to show who they really are, inside."

Wayne blinked, completely baffled. "H-huh?"

Thurmer smiled crookedly. "Just remember what I said," he recommended. "Some day, you might understand." With that, he turned and hurried back to his car and its two-way radio, wanting to implement his own plan for locating Blue before the biased teacher and the society matron could botch the job completely and make matters worse.

A befuddled Wayne Scott watched him go, a tall figure that was quickly obscured behind the curtains of thickly falling snow. He did remember the warden's words, but it would be another thirty years before he finally began to truly understand them.

Three hours later, the sun had gone down, the snow was still falling, and the searchers Thurmer had called upon to locate Blue came up empty handed. He had called the police from the radio unit in his car as he'd headed back to the prison, just in case the women took it into their heads to alert the authorities. He didn't want Mrs. Scott's snooty blatherings and Ms Driscoll's bigoted ravings to get so much as a chance to reach the ears of greedy parasites who wouldn't think twice about going after Blue to turn him over to the crackpots who were offering big money for proof of extraterrestrial life. Even if they ultimately decided that Blue was just an ordinary human freak, the poor child would go through hell before the circus ended, and the slim hope he had of a reasonably happy life would be destroyed. Someday, the blue alien would have to face such people on his own, but Thurmer was determined to make sure that day didn't come until the boy was at least a young man and able to defend himself.

Instead, he called up the best of the men the state had to track down escaped prisoners, ones already aware of Blue's existence and sympathetic with Thurmer's desire to protect him. After making the calls to set things in motion, the warden phoned his wife and told her he would be late. She wasn't happy about it, but at least she understood that it was his responsibility to remain until the lost boy had been found.

"Nothing," Officer Davis, who had been put in charge of coordinating the reports as they came in, told the warden when he'd collected all available information. "They found the carrier my wife made for Minion on the guard rail along the stretch of interstate that the Scott boy mentioned, but Blue wasn't there — which is good, since it means he wasn't hurt when he jumped out into traffic. They did find the spot where Blue slid down an embankment to reach the lower streets, and they were able to trace him to the area under the point where Minion would've fallen. Walker said they found some broken pieces of glass that could've been the fish globe in the driveway of a trucking firm that handles shipments for some specialty grocers and caterers, but no evidence of Minion or any other critter, not even a few scales. After that..." He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "It's like Blue fell off the face of the Earth. Not a trace of him."

The warden snorted derisively. "Which I'm sure would suit that idiot teacher and her pompous society friend just fine." He tried to keep his anger with the two full-of-themselves women down to a simmer, distracting himself by scanning the map of the industrial district spread out atop his desk. He peered at the myriad notations that had been added to it during past search efforts. "That area's full of warehouses and truck loading pads and small factories, isn't it?"

Davis nodded, getting his real point. "Half of which are up for sale or abandoned, right now. Plenty of places for a cold and scared little kid to hide, especially if he's upset about losing his friend."

Thurmer cocked one dark eyebrow. "You think Minion was killed?"

"I don't know how he could've survived," Davis admitted, albeit reluctantly. "I know that the ball he's in is tough — nobody's ever figured out exactly what it's made of — but that drop is over a hundred feet. Even if the ball didn't shatter, the poor little guy could've been crushed against the inside from the impact. Nat Smith in forensics was pretty sure the water in it couldn't've provided enough of a cushion, might've even done more harm than good. If the fall didn't kill him outright, he thinks Minion would've been badly hurt."

"That's what Smith said about the way Blue's pod landed, too, and yet he and Minion came through a rough landing without a scratch," Thurmer pointed out. "It had better safety padding, true, but I have a feeling there's more to these materials we can't identify than meets the eye. Blue keeps saying his parents told him Minion was there to protect him, and I'd think they'd want to protect their son's protector with something better than plain glass or even Lexan. I wouldn't write off Minion just yet. Have the teams quit for the night?"

"All but one," Davis replied. "We kept them out as long as we could, what with the holiday and the whole thing being off the record. Schreiber's team volunteered to keep at it until midnight, if the weather doesn't get worse. He and his partner are Jewish, and they said they could both use the overtime more than an extra night off. The police chief said he'd have a squad car make a pass through that neighborhood every hour for the rest of the night, but until Blue comes out on his own or Christmas is over, they can't promise anything more."

"At least it's something," the warden said with a heavy sigh. He looked at his brightly wrapped gift for the boy and the cookie tins and small containers of sweets from the guards. He wondered if Blue would ever get a chance to see them. The warehouse district was usually a quiet part of town, especially on holidays, but Thurmer also knew that when it was at its most deserted, some of the kids from the rougher gangs would hang out there, trying to avoid the police. They had been known to do some nasty things to people who accidentally came across them. Adult men and older boys they would beat up; women and girls and young boys...

He shook his head, hard, trying to dispel the gruesome image. "God, I hope Blue comes out of this okay," he breathed, as much an honest prayer as a wish. "That poor little guy just never catches a break."

Davis' chuckle was not really one of humor, having had similar thoughts. "Getting soft, eh, Ralph?"

Thurmer's answering smile was watery, but genuine. "Always have been with kids, and you know it, Steve. Blue is one hell of a smart boy, and I'd hate to see him used as the lab rat for a bunch of science experiments just because bigots like Carolyn Driscoll can't get it through their pea brains that different doesn't mean bad. I've seen too many products of her kind of 'progressive thinking' end up here as lifers because some prejudiced bully slapped 'em with an incorrigible label when they were young and never let up. Blue's such a sweet little kid, it'd break my heart to see him wind up in reform school, or worse. I can't imagine anything more disappointing than to see him go wrong because a bunch of so-called do-gooders pushed him into standing up for himself, in a bad way. Most of the people who end up behind bars started out as abused kids who were angry with the families and the systems that let 'em down."

David unhappily agreed. "Yeah, getting pushed around by a spoiled rich kid with superpowers and a hero complex can't be a good place to start off life. And if Minion winds up hurt, or worse, because that Scott brat was more concerned with showing off for the teacher than in helping someone who actually needed him... Well, I can't see that ending anywhere good."

"My thoughts exactly. Whatever happens, we'll just have to try and make the best of it — and hope that in time, Blue does, too."

"I'll keep praying for that," Davis vowed, and meant it.

TBC...