Hamish X Goes to Providence Rhode Island (23 page)

Hamish X leaned forward. “And that is?”

“They have built a gateway to their own world,” the Professor said.

“Their own world? What do you mean? The Grey Agents are aliens?” Hamish X scoffed.

“Not exactly aliens, but they are not of this world.” The Professor lowered his voice to a whisper, as if mentioning the doings of the ODA was enough to invoke their presence. “For many years now, scientists have believed that the universe we know, our plane of existence, is just one of many. The creatures we know as the Grey Agents come from one of these other planes.”

“If that's true, how come we aren't visited by …
people
from other planes all the time?”

“A good question,” the Professor beamed. The conversation seemed to be having a salubrious
⁷⁵
effect on the sick
man. His voice became clearer and his speech more animated. “The planes are usually separate, co-existing in parallel. To break through from one plane to another requires enormous amounts of energy. The Grey Agents are only able to make stable gates of minute size for very short periods of time. They use them to possess their victims and create more Grey Agents. They take children on the cusp of adulthood and open a minuscule
⁷⁶
gate, allowing one of their number to come from the other plane and take over the poor child's body.”

“That's horrible. Horrible!” Hamish X was disgusted. “What happens to the mind of the child possessed? Is it gone? Destroyed? Or do they linger on inside their own bodies watching as the Grey Agents do their evil work?”

“I can't tell you that. No one can.”

Hamish X shook his head, filled with revulsion. “It's so vile. Still, the questions remain: Why did they make me? Why did they go to all this trouble?”

“Ah.” The Professor held up a finger. “Up until now, they haven't been able to make a stable gate of the size they'd need to launch a full-scale invasion of our world. They need a huge amount of power, and to regulate that power, they need a computer processor of immense sophistication.”

Hamish X opened his mouth to ask his question again but shut it with a snap as he realized he knew the answer. He was the processor. The Grey Agents needed his brain.

“You understand now, I see.”

Hamish X didn't know what to say. All this time he had believed he was a person like any other, like Mimi, like Parveen. But it had never been true. He was a machine, a tool, fashioned for an evil purpose by evil creatures. His life had never been his own. He took off his backpack and, opening it, pulled out the green leather book
Great Plumbers and Their Exploits
. He had carried it with him through all his adventures believing it to be the one link with his real mother, his true life. He ran a hand over the green leather surface and traced the gold lettering with his index finger.

“The book,” the Professor said softly.

“You wrote it.”

“Yes.” The Professor nodded. “It is a primer
⁷⁷
containing all the code needed to interface with the Mother artificial intelligence.”

“I used to read it all the time.”

“An impulse implanted in your brain. You were required to learn all the programming language. The
Great Plumbers
book seemed like a handy way to do it.”

Hamish looked down at the book in his hands. Meaningless. He tossed it onto the floor with a thud.

“And these?” Hamish X raised one booted foot.

“An interface. They connect you to the computer called Mother. But you must understand … there is more!” The Professor gripped the boy's hand.

Hamish X jerked his hand away. “What more can there be? I'm a robot! A machine! I'm just a
thing
!”

“A special machine. A brilliant and glorious machine. But what is any one of us but a machine made of blood and muscle and bone?” The Professor's eyes burned with intensity, his voice insistent. “They built you, it's true, but you are who you are because of what you have learned. You have become more than they imagined. All your adventures have made you more than a machine. You have a heart and a soul, and that is something they never intended.”

Hamish X went to the window and looked out over the desert. The sun was rising, casting a pink glow over the dunes. He gripped the stone sill of the window and fought back tears. He'd come all this way to learn he was not even a real person. What had King Liam said? He was a boy who became a puppet: the opposite of Pinocchio. He truly felt like a puppet.

Hamish X lowered his head into his hands, covering his face.

“Hamish X.” The voice of George cut through Hamish X's grief. “Hamish X.”

Hamish X raised his tear-streaked face.

“What is it?”

“You are needed outside.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I must insist.”

Hamish X stood up and kicked the stool away. The frail piece of furniture shattered against the stone wall. The
George raccoon stood in the doorway. It looked at the wreckage and then back at Hamish X.

“What is it, then?” Hamish X shouted.

“The ODA,” the George raccoon said mildly. “The Grey Agents.”

“What about them?”

“They're here.”

Ah yes. Things are really coming to a head now. Hamish X has learned about his past, and the Grey Agents arrive as if on cue. Parveen is on the run, playing cat and mouse with the ODA in their own backyard. Mimi is under sail in an Atlantean submarine bound for Providence. Will she arrive in time to save Parveen? What will Hamish X decide to do?

Well, I'm hardly going to tell you now before you read the rest of the book! That would be totally counterproductive and defeat the purpose of this exercise, which is to make you read the story. It's for your own good, so, please, no whining and no long faces.

This is the final part of the story. If you've been with me all along, well … good for you. You've shown the kind of dedication in a reader that I truly admire. Many people would have perhaps become distracted by something else, a television program perhaps, a raging fire threatening their home, or a wild animal lunging at their throat. But not you. I guess you're wise enough not to own a television, have the foresight not to live in a dry forested area, and are lucky enough not to be delicious to carnivores.

It's been a long road, but we are coming to the end of it. All the different paths taken by Mimi, Parveen, and Hamish X have ranged far and wide, but now all roads lead to Providence, Rhode Island, to the little house on Angell Street that is the Headquarters of the Orphan Disposal Agency.

Chapter 23

HAMISH X

“Here?” Hamish X couldn't believe it. “How is that possible?”

“It is highly improbable,” the George raccoon said. “But not impossible. I could calculate the odds for you, if you like.”

“It was inevitable,” the Professor said, raising himself up on one spindly elbow. “The mercenaries are in their employ. Perhaps the report went out that I am here and they've come to finish me off. If that's the case, you must go before they know you are with me, before they know I've told you everything.”

Hamish X laughed bitterly. “Everything? You didn't tell me everything. You didn't tell me what to do now that I know I'm less than a real person. I'm a computer processor.”

“No! No! No!” the Professor cried. “Never think that. That isn't what I was telling you at all. Hamish X, that is what they planned for you, but you have become bigger than that, far greater than they ever imagined. You have to understand.”

“HAMISH X!” The voice of Mr. Candy rolled in through the windows, magnified to enormous volume. “HAMISH X. WE KNOW YOU ARE HERE. COME OUT. WE WISH TO TALK TO YOU.”

Hamish X went to the door.

“Hamish X!” the Professor called. Hamish X turned and glared at the old, ruined man. Professor Magnus Ballantyne-Stewart pointed a bony finger at Hamish X. “Remember. You are more than they think you are. You have a heart. They never dreamed that would happen.”

Hamish X's face was expressionless. He shook his head and walked out the door with the George raccoon at his heels.

Out on the wall, the Bedouins had gathered and were looking out over the desert. Ranged along the top of the hill, about a kilometre away, were massive tracked vehicles, squatting in the rising sun like steel elephants. Long guns sprouted out of their tops, wide-mouthed and deadly, all of them trained on the wall of El Arak. Grey Agents stood in the open hatches of the vehicles, ready to call for a bombardment if necessary. Looking at the guns, Hamish X had no doubt that defence of the fortress would end in El Arak as a smoking heap of rubble and the Bedouins utterly destroyed.

Hamish X walked to the edge of the wall and hopped up on the parapet. He lowered a hand, grasped George, and lifted the raccoon up beside him. The desert was silent save for the wind and the low rumble of the idling vehicles, waiting for the attack order.

As he watched, two specks detached themselves from the enemy line and rose on plumes of blue flame. The specks grew larger as they sped across the intervening distance, until Hamish X could clearly make out Mr. Candy and Mr. Sweet jetting across the desert towards the wall where he waited. He didn't have to use his enhanced vision to see that the Grey Agents each held a struggling captive in their long bony gloves.

Maggie and Thomas were trying to be brave, but clearly they were terrified. The ground was a hundred metres below and the fall would be fatal should the Grey Agents choose to let go. They had fought pirates, but the Grey Agents were villains on another order of magnitude, something their childhoods of love and family had never prepared them to experience.

Hamish X waited until the Grey Agents came to a stop, hovering a few metres away in the gathering daylight, before he spoke.

“It's me you want. Let them go.”

“What? Right now?” asked Mr. Candy.

“If you insist.” Mr. Sweet shrugged.

Both Grey Agents loosened their grip slightly on the captives. Maggie and Thomas screamed, but the Grey Agents didn't let them drop. They tightened their grip once more.

“You see, we've developed a sense of humour.” Mr. Candy grinned, showing his yellow teeth.

“And what a fine sense of humour it is,” Hamish X sneered. “You should take that show on the road. What do you do for an encore? Pull the wings off flies?”

“That sounds very diverting,” Mr. Sweet said. “We must try that sometime.”

“However, today we are here to end this ridiculous chase you've led us on.” Mr. Candy took over. “We've waited long enough. Time for you to fulfill the function for which you were created.”

“What if I refuse?” Hamish X asked.

“The thought had occurred to us,” Mr. Sweet said. He held Thomas up a little higher. “Fortunately, we found ourselves some insurance hiding in the dunes not far away.”

“Don't listen to him, Hamish X,” Maggie cried. Mr. Candy clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. She promptly sunk her teeth into that hand.

Mr. Candy looked down at her, a puzzled expression on his face, apparently feeling no pain whatsoever. “Annoying child.”

“Come with us and we'll let these two go free,” Mr. Sweet offered.

Hamish X shook his head. “Not good enough. All these people are to be left alone.” He swept his arms wide to take in the Bedouins along the wall. “This is their land and their home. You leave here and never come back.”

The Grey Agents exchanged a glance. “Never is a long time, Hamish X,” Mr. Candy began.

“Without me, how will you open the gate?”

The Grey Agents froze. “Who told you about the gate?” Mr. Sweet demanded.

“I did!” Everyone looked to the tower doorway where Professor Ballantyne-Stewart leaned against the door frame. The effort it had taken to make his way down the stairs from his bed must have been enormous. He stood, bathed in sweat, the bedsheet wrapped around him damp and clinging. “Hamish X! Remember what I said. You are more than they ever planned you would be. You are more than a machine …”

His impassioned speech was cut off abruptly by the discharge of Mr. Candy's pistol. In the silence after the shot, time seemed to slow down to a crawl. Hamish X watched in horror as a bloom of red blossomed on the sheet covering the Professor's bony chest. The man looked down at the wound in disbelief, then his eyes rolled back and he crumpled in a small heap against the door frame.

“NOOOOOO!” Hamish X screamed. He turned and glared at the Grey Agents hovering in air. Mr. Candy held a smoking pistol in one hand.

“Regrettable. He had a brilliant mind, but he became dangerous. I'd heard he was in the vicinity,” Mr. Candy said without emotion.

“Indeed,” agreed Mr. Sweet. “Nice to tie up a loose end.”

Hamish X gritted his teeth. Hatred welled up in him so pure and bright that it blasted away all other considerations. All he wanted was to destroy. His boots flared to life, blazing like twin blue stars. He tensed, crouching like a tiger on the parapet, his golden eyes narrowed to slits, as he gathered himself for a lunge.