Chapter 21

When I went back home and retreated to my meditation room, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do next. It was like Pooh Bear, sitting on a log, pounding on his head and saying “Think! Think! Think!” All I could do was going over and over the things I’d already done.

I’d set up the kilns. I’d gotten Intel to make the k-chips. I’d made the solar panels. Now I’d gotten someone to make a fusion bottle. The next step was to – somehow – put a fusion reaction inside the bottle. But that couldn’t even happen because the damn bottle was so fragile it shattered when the wind blows.

So now somebody, somewhere was going to make a sturdier bottle.

MY GOAL WASN’T TO INVENT A NEW THING-A-MA-BOB IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS!!

[Lexi?]

Yes, Red?

[You have a boy genius working on that problem, right?]

Yeah, so?

[So why are you fussing over that part of things? Do you think you’re going to solve a difficult problem in physics?]

No. Not really. I can’t do that.

[Do what you CAN do, then.]

Which is what, exactly?

[You haven’t checked in on the new computers. You could always work on the Tommy Sussex project. You could set up the press conferences for the amazing thing that Chas HAS done. It really is revolutionary, you know. You could do something about the support structure Chas is going to need in that cave. Or, you could pay attention to your new husbands. Go get yourself boinked, as you like to put it.]

[But insisting that you are going to solve a theoretical physics problem isn’t going to accomplish anything.]

Red, do you think you should pitch this whole project of yours into the ashcan and start over with somebody else?

[No, not yet. You have made serious progress. So far, you’ve measurably changed history. Keep doing that ... And after all, it’s only been a few hours since the fusion bottle appeared. I’ve checked all the data available to me, and so far, I haven’t discovered a single case where Rome was built in a few hours.]

Right. Humor. I get it.

I decided I’d check in on the dogs. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I just needed a non-human point of view.

So, I went outside and watched Rock and Bear shooting some hoops. “Can I borrow you two for a couple of minutes?” I asked them.

“Yeah,” said Bear. “He’s beating me anyway.” And he laughed. The two of them covered up their six-packs with Road Runners t-shirts and followed me out to the dog enclosure.

The dogs looked up. Snow rose from her perch and flapped her great wings to gain some altitude. Then she flew over to hover over Doyobi, as she had before. He was just sitting in the shade of a mesquite tree.

“Why do you think she’s doing that?” I asked the boys.

I zoomed in on Doyobi, who was just wondering if I was going to play, or give him a suggestion. He was just paying attention to what I wanted. He didn’t even notice the great white owl, ten feet overhead.

“Is he sick, d’ya think?” suggested Bear.

“Maybe it’s not something he’s doing, but what he represents,” suggested Rock.

“Hmm ... So what’s he represent? Leader of the pack? Am I getting another attack soon?” I guessed. “Nah, they’re not gonna be in any shape to attack again.” I wondered about the professional killer. Was I sure the Stone didn’t contact him? ... Yeah, I was sure.

Why would she pick Doyobi for that?

Snow lowered her hover and Doyobi ducked down, like anybody would do under a helicopter lowering. The other dogs just backed away, and looked on.

She was kicking up a lot of dust. Suddenly she dropped down, picked up Doyobi with her great talons, lifted him up three feet, and let go of him. Doyobi was calm about the whole thing. Which I thought was very strange. He landed on the ground from his brief vertical jaunt, in a poof of dust.

Then Snow resumed her hover. I’d guess she was ten or fifteen feet up.

“That was really something,” said Bear. “I don’t think anybody could easily pick up that hundred and fifty pounds of Mountain Dog. Or that he’d just sit there, calmly and get dropped in the dust like there.”

I zeroed in on Doyobi again. He was like, ‘No big deal. Yeah, so what do you want to do now?’

I replayed the whole thing. She hovered. She lowered herself and kicked up a lot of dust. Then she lifted Doyobi in the air then dropped him. He landed with a thud. Kicked up more dust.

I stared at him for two minutes. The boys were just looking at me, like I’d heard from the great owl. Of course I didn’t – never could connect with either Snow or Hunter or even the little blue mouse in Washington.

Not directly. But this was a message.

You remember the cartoons where a light bulb appears over somebody’s head? It was like that. I ran over to Doyobi and hugged him around the neck.

“Extra steaks for all the dogs tonight!” I exclaimed to the boys. “Come on. Where’s Chas this time of night?”

“I expect he’s over at Nanta’s. It’s dinner time, ya know,” said Rock.

“We’re gonna invite ourselves over for supper, then,” I said.

Rock gave Bear one of his patented ‘here we go again’ looks, but trotted over to the SUV. He started up and drove the quarter of a mile to Uncle Fancy Hat’s and Nanta’s place.

We barged in. I almost took the door off the hinges. Fancy Hat had a spoonful of pudding half-way to his mouth. Chas dropped his spoon onto the plate, and Nanta was reaching over to pour some milk into Chas’s glass. She startled and spilled some on the table.

“Uh ... Hi,” said Bear.

“Yeah,” Rock said. “Lexi wanted to come over. Sorry to interrupt. Let me get a towel to clean that up.”

I stammered a greeting. “Right. Hi folks! Exciting-news-today-huh?” I was so excited that the word came out like one long string of sound.

Bear grabbed me by the shoulders. “Lexi?”

Chas said, “I guess so. I really don’t tell my folks about work much.”

“He-did-something-so-great-he’ll-probably-get-the-Nobel-prize,” I blathered on.