Triptych

Back - Part V

Oh.

Oh.

Mark narrowed his eyes at Evvie but said nothing. Evvie wrenched her mind back onto the conversation. "'Those things'," she repeated. "I just don't get it, I guess. I mean, the Specialists and everything, I understand that. But not the...not the assassinations. If they wanted to take over the planet or, or something like that, then why kill only the Specialists? We gave them our trust, opened our arms to them, and they...now they're doing this." She didn't have to explain what this meant, they both knew.

"I dunno," Mark said. "That don't seem right. Like Basil said." Mark pronounced it Bay-zil. "Why go to all that trouble? Especially if they knew that the Institute could follow them. They had to have known Basil had a Flasher doohickey. 'Less they don't know that it won't work?"

"I know," Evvie agreed.

"Like me pushin' that tractor into a pond and then hollerin' to people to come see. It don't do anything in the end but get you in trouble."

"I thought you said the McKinnion boys did that," Evvie said suspiciously. "And that they framed you."

Mark shifted in his jeans, which suddenly seemed to be too tight. He turned his head to stare at the baby monitor on the bedside table. "Hear that? Gonna go check on Gwennie," he said, and bolted out of the room.

The only sounds coming over the little speaker were Gwennie's soft, even breaths.

*   *   *

SLEEP WAS coming to no one tonight.

Evvie gave Mark a head start and some thinking room, then went back downstairs to fetch another bottle. Gwennie would be waking soon, hungry and soiled. Gwen was on her knees on the floor of the sub-basement, talking in low murmurs with Basil, handing him a tool occasionally. Basil made little head jerks, grunts of understanding, but his eyes never left the device in his hands. A little tip of a moist pink tongue poked out of the corner of his lips.

Evvie went over to the fridge, pulled out the bottle she had prepared before dinner, set it in the little pot of water they left on the stove for the purpose of heating it.

There was the rustling sound of clothing and the padding of socked feet across the kitchen floor. "Why aren't you asleep?" Gwen asked from over Evvie's shoulder.

Evvie felt a smile wanting to tug at her lips. "Why aren't you?" "Nightmares," Gwen admitted straightforwardly, and something hitched at the back of her throat. "Want to talk about it?" Evvie asked.

"Not particularly." Evvie heard rather than saw Gwen lean back against the counter across the kitchen from her. "You know, I've always wondered why you never planted anything in the dead patch above the strawberries."

Evvie chuckled. "I won't be able to rotor-till there without breaking the tines."

"But the grass will never grow back. High foreign metal content, maybe?" Evvie heard her snort, partially a laugh, partially hysteria. "In advance, I apologize for the stupid lie about the Europe scholarship. I should have thought of something better. You knew the whole time. I must have sounded like an idiot."

"I already forgive you," Evvie said. She was not surprised to realize that she meant it.

"And...and the fight too. The...the last thing you said to me was, 'I have something to tell you — ', but I hung up. I cancelled my cell, moved away. And all you wanted to do was warn me about this." Gwen made another strange sound, gestured up at the house, at Evvie, at this. "I suddenly have so much more sympathy for Marty McFly."