A Coming Of Age

The boy jerked at her voice, and as he focused on her his eyes went wide and he scrambled up into a sitting position. "Who are you?" he asked fearfully.

Lisa swallowed her panic-fueled impatience and resisted the urge to teek him directly over to her. Instead, she forced a reassuring smile onto her face. "My name's Lisa," she said, using the soothing tone that had calmed so many nervous Fives back at the hive. "Don't be afraid—I won't hurt you. But I need your help. Would you go to the kitchen and get me a sharp knife, please? And hurry."

Colin's eyes were still troubled, but he nevertheless nodded and slid off the couch. Just outside the doorway he paused, looking into the study. "Matthew?" he asked, taking a step in that direction.

"No, Colin," Tirrell's voice came. "My name's Stanford. Matthew's been taken away by some bad men—please hurry and get that knife for Lisa so we can go after them."

Colin turned and ran, and a second later there was the clatter of a drawer's being wrenched open. He had barely reappeared in the doorway when Lisa, her patience finally breaking, teeked away the butcher knife he was carrying and brought it flashing across the room to her.

"Don't bother with your hands—just get free of the chair and get us all out of here," Tirrell called, a note of urgency creeping into his voice.

Lisa nodded, too absorbed in her control of the knife to remember he couldn't see the gesture. A few seconds later she was floating gingerly free of the chair, taking care that her tied hands didn't catch anywhere. Turning, she shot toward the doorway where Colin was still standing, an astonished look on his face. "Wow!" he breathed—and yelped as Lisa teeked him into the air in front of her. Barely pausing at the doorway, she snatched Tirrell, chair and all, and made for the cabin door. A second later they were out in the bright midday sunshine, whipping between the trees as Lisa ignored Colin's yelps of alarm and excitement in an attempt to get distance as quickly as possible. Finally, about a kilometer away, Tirrell pronounced them safe and Lisa brought them down with a deep sigh of relief.

She had the detective's ropes untied, and he was working on hers, when the cabin blew up with a roar behind them.

There was very little left when they returned cautiously to the small clearing. Obeying Tirrell's instructions, Lisa waited with Colin among the trees as the detective walked around the blackened rubble, stamping out small fires and stopping every so often to examine something on the ground.

"Nothing worth salvaging," he said when he returned. He seemed about to say something else but glanced at Colin and apparently changed his mind. "Lisa," he said instead, "go up to the top of this tree and see if you can spot anyone."

She was up and down in less than a minute. "No one," she told Tirrell. "I don't see Tonio and the police you said he was bringing, either."

"I wonder..." Putting a finger in his mouth, the detective gave a piercing whistle. "Tonio might have gone to ground instead of heading for help right away. If he did, that should bring him." Dropping down on one knee, he smiled at Colin. "Didn't get a chance to ask you before, Colin, but how are you doing?"

"Fine," the boy said with the grave politeness Lisa had often seen kids adopt in the presence of a hive authority.

"Have you been all right out here these past couple of months?"

"Uh-huh," the boy nodded enthusiastically. "It's the best vacation I ever took. Why did the bad men take Matthew away?"

"Well..." Tirrell scooped the boy up and got to his feet. "I'm sure we'll get him back real soon. Until then, how would you like to visit a real police station? Hm?"

"Okay, I guess," Colin shrugged. "I like the woods better."

"You'll be able to come back to the woods again sometime," the detective promised. "But for now we have to go."

"We going to take him back to Barona?" Lisa asked.

"No choice," Tirrell told her grimly. "We've got to raise the alarm and get on Martel's trail immediately, before he buries himself and Jarvis in some deep hole on the far side of the Tessellates."

"But won't a lot of righthands in the sky alert him?"

"Maybe, if he sees them. But we have to risk it. All we know for sure is that they left here traveling southeast, and that direction could have changed drastically after he rejoined the main group."

"Stan?"

The voice drifting down from the treetops made Lisa jump; but before she could locate its source Tirrell had whistled again, and with a crackle of conetree branches Tonio landed beside them.

"Boy, am I glad to see you," he exclaimed, giving the detective an unashamed hug. "I heard the explosion and was trying to sneak back to see what happened. I thought maybe you'd been blown to bits."

"Almost, but thanks to Lisa and Colin we got out before the timer ran down," Tirrell told him. "We can now add an attempted murder charge to Martel's list when we nail him. You didn't happen to check out the direction his gang was headed, did you?"

" 'Fraid not—I was afraid to poke my head more than half a meter off the ground." Tonio frowned as he glanced around. "Say, where's Jarvis? Didn't he get out with you?"

"No. The shoe, as they say, is on the other foot." Tirrell waved southeast. "He's now been kidnapped by Martel."

Tonio snorted. "Serves him right," he said; but to Lisa his voice lacked real conviction. "I suppose we've got to get him out, though."

"Yeah—and we're going to have to call in some help to find them."

"Maybe they just went back to the temple site," Lisa suggested.

Tirrell shook his head. "No. It's clear that most of his kids aren't in on this with him, and that makes the temple site too public a place to keep Jarvis. Besides, he left under the impression that Tonio was already on his way with reinforcements, so he wouldn't go anywhere that Tonio knew about. However—" He paused, a thoughtful frown begi

"You think he might go there?" Tonio asked.

"It's worth checking on. Lisa, we're going to need more of your help, I'm afraid. We're going to fly over to Plat City and drop Colin off at the police station there. Then we'll get some detailed maps of the region and I'll want you to show us exactly where the dump site is. With luck, Tonio and I may be able to find Martel's refinery on our own and determine whether or not he's there."

"What if he is?" Lisa objected. "He'll probably have kids on guard, and if he catches you, you'll be in the same situation we just got out of."

Strangely enough, Tirrell smiled. "Not really," he said. "I think I know how to even the odds a little. Let's get going—we can talk more on the way."