Shelter (62 page)

    "That's a good name," Roberta said, feeling sick. The boy's voice was completely flat. She couldn't imagine how it must have felt to him to watch his mother's betrayal, to go along with the charade. ''I'm sorry you couldn't keep her, Nicholas."

    "Daddy didn't used to sneeze at cats," Nicholas said quietly, pushing his empty juice glass randomly around the table. "Mommy said that sometimes people start sneezing when they get old. She said you can start sneezing anytime."

    Meredith had thought of everything, down to a cover story for why she hadn't known her husband was allergic to cats. The ache in Roberta's stomach deepened. Nicholas looked up at her and said, "Mommy said I can bring Miss Mittens to school sometime. For show-and-tell. Maybe tomorrow. Can I, Berta?"

    "Of course," Roberta said. Bring the cat to school to prove it exists, but don't let it live with you? Whether Nicholas was crazy or not, Meredith certainly was. "I'll look forward to meeting Miss Mittens, Fred, won't you?"

    "I certainly will," Fred said. ''I'd like to meet Miss Mittens very much, Nicholas. I like kittens."

    And so the next afternoon, Meredith came to school with a cardboard carrying case emitting indignant squeaks. Roberta arranged the children in a circle, and Meredith opened the box and lifted the kitten gently out by the scruff of the neck before setting it down on the carpet. "She's very little still," she told the other children, "and this is a new, scary place for her, so you have to be very still and wait for her to come to you before you try to pat her, okay?"

    Miss Mittens squeaked again and looked around the circle, ears flattened, but perked up when Meredith produced a ball of yarn from her pocket. "Here you go," she said, and tossed the ball gently to the kitten, who batted it energetically around the circle of children.

    All the children seemed entranced except Nicholas, who watched the kitten with an unsettling scowl. After Meredith and Miss Mittens left, Roberta gave the kids warm milk and settled them on their napmats. Fred dimmed the lights so the children could rest; usually Roberta used this time to clean up assorted messes or help Fred inventory supplies, but today she only wanted to lie down and close her eyes. She felt like she was trapped in a nightmare. She was being leaned on by the most powerful translated entity on the planet; it was worse than tangling with the Mafia.

    Well, fuck it. MacroCorp was in no position to fire her if she slacked off a little; Preston had said he'd protect her, wouldn't he? And she had the goods on him too. There had to be some way to prove his role in all this, if it came to that.

    So she pulled some oversize pillows into the booknook and sat there on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest. She was idly scanning the titles on the shelf—Suess, Silverstein, The Little Engine That Could, all the old classics—when she sensed movement in the dim light, and looked up to find Nicholas standing next to her.

    "I couldn't sleep," he whispered. "Can I sit with you?"

    "Sure," she whispered back. Nicholas sat next to her and snuggled into her side.

    "Fred?" Nicholas whispered. "Are you awake too?"

    A murmur emerged from the speaker above the bookshelf "Yes, Nicholas. I'm always awake."

    Nicholas looked grave. "I wish I could always be awake. Then I'd never have bad dreams."

    "Yes, Nicholas, that's true. But then you'd also never have good dreams."

    Nicholas sighed. "I guess. Berta, Fred, did you like Miss Mittens?"

    "She's very cute," Roberta whispered, although she felt ill.

    "Yes," Fred said softly, "she is. Nicholas, now that you can't keep Miss Mittens, do you think your mother will let you have another mouse?"

    Fred, Roberta thought, stop it. Stop it. What are you doing? You'll just upset him more!

    "No," Nicholas whispered.

    "Why not, Nicholas?"

    "Because I lied about the Hobbit."

    Doesn't wash, Roberta thought grimly. If lying's the issue, then why lie about getting a kitten? "Nicholas," Fred whispered, "why did you lie about the Hobbit?"

    "I can't tell you," Nicholas said. "It's a secret."

    "Well then," Fred said, "since I know you're good at keeping secrets, you could have a mouse all your own here, and it could be a secret from your mother."

    The last thing Fred was supposed to do was help kids plot against their parents. But Roberta had to go along with it; she didn't have any choice, not after last night. Was this on the record? What the hell was Fred doing? She knew she should say something to signal her acquiescence to the conspiracy, but she couldn't seem to make her mouth move.

    Fortunately, Zillinth spared her the need. "Hey!" the little girl said, standing suddenly in front of them with a frown on her face. "Hey, what are you guys whispering about? Is Fred telling a story? Can I hear it too?"

    Roberta shook herself out of her daze. If Zillinth was here, Fred couldn't do anything too sneaky, because there'd be another witness. Thank you, Goddess. "Of course you can, Zillinth, but you have to whisper the way we're doing, so you won't wake up the other children."

    "Okay," Zillinth whispered, and plunked herself down on Roberta's free side. "What's the story about, Fred?"

    "The story's about a little boy who can't have any pets because they make his mommy and daddy sneeze, so he has a make-believe mouse."

    Zillinth nodded. "I had a make-believe horse once. My mommy used to feed it make-believe apples and sugar cubes."

    "Well, Zillinth, this little boy can't even let his parents know about the make-believe mouse, because mice make them sneeze so badly that they'd sneeze even if the mouse was make-believe. "

    Zillinth giggled. "What's its name? My horse's name was Trot."

    "I don't know, Zillinth. We hadn't gotten that far in the story. Nicholas, why don't you pick a name for the make-believe mouse?"

    "Monster," Nicholas said promptly. "Its name is Monster Mouse."

    "Mighty Monster Mouse," Zillinth suggested.

    "No. Just Monster Mouse. The boy wants to feed the make-believe mouse to the make-believe monsters, because they like mice."

    "You and your monsters! You already told this story, Nicholas!"

    "Shhhhhh," Roberta said. "Not so loud, Zillinth."

    "I never heard the end of that other story," Fred said. "I want to find out what happens."

    Zillinth sniffed. "The boy feeds the make-believe mouse to the makebelieve monsters and then they have make-believe dessert, the end."

    "No," Nicholas said. "That's not how it goes. It's my story, Zillinth!"

    "Speak softly," Fred said. "The other children are still sleeping. Nicholas, how does it go?"

    "The monsters tell the boy they don't want a make-believe mouse. They want a real mouse. If they don't get a real mouse, then they'll have to be real. But Monster Mouse doesn't want to be real, because he doesn't want to be eaten. So the boy and Monster Mouse have to try to fool the monsters into thinking Monster Mouse is real."

    "But then he'd get eaten," Zillinth objected.

    "But he wouldn't really get eaten, because he wouldn't be real. He'd still just be make-believe. He'djust be pretending to be real."

    "I don't get it," Zillinth said.

    "That's because the story isn't finished yet," Fred said. "Nicholas, how do the boy and Monster Mouse fool the monsters?"

    "I don't know, Fred."

    "Will you tell us on Monday? Naptime is over now."

    ''I'll tell you when I find out. I don't know if I'll know on Monday."

    "That's all right," Fred said. "Sometimes, the best stories take a very long time to tell."

    Twenty-Four

    IT took a week of nap times for the boy and his mouse to figure out how to fool the monsters. Fred and Nicholas conferred about the problem every day, with Roberta listening; for the first two days, Zillinth joined them, but she soon grew bored with how slowly this strange story was progressing, and went back to whispering herself to sleep on her napmat; telling herself her own stories, presumably, although Roberta never found out what they were.

    They began by consulting other stories. The first day, Fred retold Nicholas the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, the toy rabbit who became real by being loved. "Nicholas, if the boy loves his imaginary mouse very, very much, that would make it real to the monsters, wouldn't it?"

    "No," Nicholas said. "Monsters don't care if you love something. They just want it to have fur and blood so they can eat it. That's what real means to them."

    "You could buy fake fur at the store," Zillinth said. "And cut it into a

    mouse shape and put ketchup on it. Then it would be real."

    "The monsters would know, Zillinth. They don't like ketchup."

    "You could prick your finger and rub it over the fake fur, then."

    Roberta, bemused, looked down at the tranquil little girl, who'd never revealed a penchant for self-mutilation before. "I don't think that's a good idea, honey."

    "Neither do I," Fred said. "It's not good to prick your own finger, Zillinth. It hurts, and you could get an infection, and that would hurt worse."

    "Hmmmph," Zillinth said. "It's just a story."

    "Right," Roberta said, although she was starting to wonder. "But we want it to be a happy story. No infections."

    Zillinth scowled. "The boy would get to wear a fancy Band-Aid. That would be happy."

    Fred said, "Band-Aids are for accidents, Zillinth. It makes me very sad when people hurt themselves on purpose."

    "Hmmmmmph! Even in stories?"

    "Even in stories."

    "Even to save mice?" Nicholas said, looking up at Fred's speaker.

    "Yes, even to save mice."

    "Well," Zillinth said crossly, "then you'd better tell another story, Fred. The rabbit didn't work."

    "I'Il tell you another story tomorrow, because naptime's over now."

    And the next day he told Zillinth and Nicholas and Roberta the story of Pinocchio, the puppet who became real by telling the truth and doing good deeds.

    "Hmmmmph," Zillinth said. "If Monster Mouse told the truth, he'd have to say he was just a make-believe mouse instead of a real one, and then the monsters still wouldn't want to eat him."

    "Zillinth's right," Nicholas said quietly.

    Zillinth, Roberta thought, was destined to become an attorney. A self-mutilating attorney. And she and Fred were the last people who should be posing as authorities on honesty. "Fred," Nicholas said, frowning, "it's not bad to lie to monsters, is it?"

    Fred paused for a few seconds, an unusually long time for him, and then said, "In many stories, it's not bad to lie to monsters if they're trying to hurt you. But in a lot of stories, you have to tell the monsters the truth, or they won't go away. In a lot of stories, the monsters just get more powerful if you lie to them. Because even if they say they want to eat mice, your fear and your lies are what they really eat. But if you tell them the truth, and you make friends with them, they won't hurt you."

    Roberta blinked. How in the name of Gaia could the kids possibly understand all that? But Zillinth nodded and said, "Beauty and the Beast. If you're nice to the monsters, they'll be nice to you."

    "Yes, Zillinth. Very good! What a good memory you have!"

    Nicholas squirmed. "But the boy's trying to be nice to the monsters. That's why he's trying to feed them! He wants to be nice to the monsters and to the mouse!"

    "What about good deeds?" Fred asked. "Good deeds are very powerful in every story I've ever heard, and in the world too. Nicholas, what if Monster Mouse offered to become real to feed the monsters, the way Pinocchio offered himself as firewood so Harlequin wouldn't have to burn instead?"

    Then he'll get slapped with a diagnosis of excessive altruism, Roberta thought grimly. No wonder Fred had never read Pinocchio to the rest of the children. It didn't fit the world they lived in.

    "That's dumb," said Zillinth, a true child of her culture. "I wouldn't have done that if I'd been Pinocchio! Fred, I thought you didn't like it when people hurt themselves."

    "You're right, Zillinth, I don't. But Pinocchio didn't really get hurt, did he?"

    "That's because Giovanni didn't burn him," Nicholas said. "Giovanni was nice, underneath. The monsters are bad."

    "Well then, Nicholas, tomorrow I'll tell you another story, but naptime's over for today."

    "I'm not coming back tomorrow," Zillinth said. "This is stupid."

    So on Wednesday, Fred told only Roberta and Nicholas the story of the Nutcracker, which Nicholas roundly rejected because the Nutcracker was only real in Clara's dream. On Thursday, Fred showed Roberta and Nicholas "Calvin' and Hobbes" comic strips on the booknook video monitor. Nicholas announced grumpily that the monsters in his story were smarter than Calvin, and would never be fooled into thinking a stuffed mouse was real.

    "What about Scheherazade?" Roberta said. "Who's that?" said Nicholas.

    "Ah," Fred said. "Yes, that's a very nice story. Will you tell us that story, Roberta?"

    So she did. She told Nicholas the story of the woman who saved her own life, night after night, by telling stories. "Maybe Monster Mouse and the boy could tell the monsters stories, Nicky, just like we're doing now."

    "No," Nicholas said, very quietly. "Too much make-believe. They don't like make-believe. They don't like stories. Make-believe is where the monsters live now, and if you feed them real mice they're happy for a little while, but otherwise they'll stop being make-believe. They'll leave make-believe and become real, so they can get food. And then they'll eat the world." He squinted up at the monitor and said, "Remember the Fred cookie I made, with the gun? That didn't even work, because the gun was make-believe too."

    Fred's voice, as always, was completely calm. "That's a very scary story, Nicholas."