IMPERFECT ORB Read online

  For now he simply grasped the glass carefully in his fingers and crossed the threshold of the hidden entrance into the caves. It wasn’t until the irregular ball was set loose into the darkness of the caves that the rain began to fall.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “So it’s agreed then? We’ll be partners?”

  “Of course.” Samantha said this in such a light way David couldn’t help but ask the question that had been gnawing at him from the moment she had made the proposal.

  “Why me?”

  “Well to begin with, you’re smart,” she gave him a broad smile.

  Even he had to roll his eyes at that one.

  “Your punc-tual,” she continued, emphasizing the first syllable heavily, “and you did this project last year,” she finished, adding this last part quickly.

  His eyes widened and once the shock cleared from his face a look of guilt settled in its place. Samantha was actually brighter than she seemed at first brush. She knew exactly what David’s series of animated facial expressions had meant.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” she shrieked, loosing her cool for but a moment then regaining it again.

  “I didn’t do the project last year,” David said innocently, but the warm blush on his cheeks and his inability to make eye contact gave away his guilt. Regardless, that was something she’d already figured out for herself.

  The bell rang and before Mr. Peters got in a relieved “class dismissed” the room had already thinned out considerably.

  “I can’t believe this,” Samantha was saying as she headed for the door. “How could you not have done a project during the school year? Everyone else did.”

  “Does it really matter? We have to do a new one now any — “ David was cleanly cut off. Samantha saw things in a different light.

  “Of course it matters! Did you really think I planned on doing that project at all? Wake up Ryan, this is summer school.” The two were now weaving through the semi-crowded halls, “Do you honestly think they’re expecting as much from us?”

  To offer an answer was tempting but David was given little in the way of time. Samantha plowed on.

  “If you had done a failing project during the school year we could have spruced it up a little and handed it in to get a passing mark — after all, we’re getting half as much time, maybe even less. Now we have to start from the beginning.”

  “Which is why,” he stated, “I propose we start tonight.”

  “I’m not even going to consider your proposal.”

  The two had reached the bank of doors that marked the main exit of the building to the outside. Samantha was bent over her bag searching for the sunglasses she had taken off about twenty minutes into the morning. It had been raining on and off ever since and the sun was lost behind a shroud of dark clouds that threatened more of the same but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Well do you have a failing project to hand in and get a passing mark?” David asked already knowing what the answer would be.

  She hadn’t handed in the final project either. He couldn’t deny that he found her hand-in-a-failing-project-and-get-a-passing-mark theory to be convincing. Too bad they seemed to be short one failing project.

  “That isn’t the matter at hand, but I’ll tell you what is — ”

  “We have to get to the library tonight, it’s the only night I have free for the rest of the week.”

  “Wow Ryan, I didn’t know you were such a happening guy, schedule filling up a week in advance and all that.” Samantha found her sunglasses and exited through one of the doors leading outside, walking as though she had somewhere really important to be, heedless as to whether or not David was following her. He was beginning to think that the conversation was over but when the two stepped into the damp air and Samantha didn’t see her boyfriend’s sports car waiting at the curve, a look of annoyance flashed across her face before being replaced by an overcompensating smile and sudden agreement to begin work on the project right away.

  “The way I see it,” David was explaining, “all we have to do is pick a topic, take a couple hours worth of notes, and type everything up real nice.”

  Below her sunglasses, two red half moons, both lying on their stomachs, parted to let out three small words: “I don’t type.”

  This was okay and David told her so. He knew a girl who’d type up the whole thing for less than twenty bucks — same day service. And if David couldn’t get hold of her, there was always his mother.

  “Where are you going?” she asked David as he departed from the route that would have taken them to the public library, instead turning right onto a street called Savana Drive.

  He turned her way to reply, “I’m going to call on this kid I know. No matter what subject we pick he’ll be able to help us.”

  At this Samantha seemed pleased and did a short jog to catch up with her science partner and new best friend.

  The detour onto Savana Drive sent a damp, cool breeze blowing into the faces of both David and Samantha. When thunder rumbled dully in the distance the two quickened their strides and were grateful to climb the wooden steps to the front porch of the Gregory household without having been rained on. David’s upbeat mood was tempered only by the small green car belonging to Mrs. Gregory which stood looking, as always, tired and kind of sagging, in the narrow driveway. The sight of the car lead David to wonder if Mike would even be allowed out in such uncertain weather. Mike’s mother was known for her melodrama and the leap from summer storm to typhoon was, in her mind, a logical one, no matter the hemisphere.

  With a tiny feeling of uncertainty David leaned forward and pressed the door bell. From inside, light musical chimes sang out in a way that could only be described as elegant. A moment later the wooden door was thrown open by a very tropical looking Mrs. Gregory. She was wearing a bright green, coconut printed sundress, made more sunny because of its stark contrast to the surrounding gloom.

  From May to August this slightly overweight woman — okay, slightly more than “slightly” — wore brightly coloured sundresses in a dizzying array of patterns and colours. From September to April she wore black or grey wool pants and a white or cream coloured blouse. That was all there was to it. She couldn’t care less if it happened to be thirty degrees celsius outside on a January day, she’d still be wearing wool pants and a white or cream coloured blouse.

  “Good afternoon Mrs. Gregory. Would we be able to speak to Mike for a moment?” David said this in his most polite and cheerful manner.

  From Mrs. Gregory he received only her usual skeptical look. She handed one to Samantha as well, but, grudgingly, agreed to call her son. “But he can only talk for a minute,” she warned, “he has a terrible case of the flu.”

  David wasn’t surprised to find out that what Michael had was a slight cold which, his friend insisted, was already getting better. So taking all this into consideration David went ahead and asked Mike if he’d be at all interested in accompanying them to the library.

  In response Mike glanced back into the house uncertainly.

  “Well,” Mike began. His lips continued working but nothing more came out. He glanced nervously at Samantha whose impatience was more felt than seen since she was still wearing the over-sized dark glasses. “Well,” he started again, “I suppose that would be alright.”

  “Great!” David offered a genuine smile, “We can really use the help.”

  “Ma,” Mike called out behind him, into the house, “I’m going to the library with my friends.”

  “What? What!” Within a moment Mrs. Gregory appeared in the hallway leading to the front door. Within another she was on the front porch, her plump little form domineering over all of them by sheer width, if not by height. “You can’t go out in this weather,” she protested in the whining voice that reminded David of Mike, “you’re ill.”

  “Ma, I’m fine. My cold cleared up ages ago.”

  “But Michael, it’s raining.”

>   This wasn’t exactly true. The rain had currently ceased, but all four on the porch knew it would return. For a moment there was nothing but silence amongst the group. The ball was in Mike’s court. David and Samantha knew better than to interfere. David reached for Samantha’s elbow, getting ready to make excuses and apologies and direct them both back the way they had come with as much grace as could be salvaged from the situation. That’s when Mike surprised him.

  “It is not raining! Besides, this is important!” There was a peculiar firmness in Mike’s voice; and a little bit of venom, too. David had never heard Mike take that tone before. He suspected no one had. That voice said that he was going and if anybody tried to stop him, there would be trouble. Everybody on the porch, including the usually unfazable Mrs. Gregory shrunk away from Mike, just a little. Now it was Mike’s turn to tower over them all. Not in height nor breadth, but by sheer venomous will.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Gregory finally said into the long, charged silence that had followed Mike’s protestation. Her tone was curious more than anything else, but David felt he had picked up the slightest waver in her voice which could have been either fear or hurt but was most likely a combination of the two.

  Within that small moment when Michael had insisted on going, David had seen something non-specific spring onto his features. For that short period of time he had appeared bold… and frightening. He also remembered the absurd way lightning had silently lit up their surroundings. The electrical flash had come only seconds after Mike declared the storm over. David had expected Mike to flinch or, at the very least, blush and look embarrassed at the contradiction. That would have been Mike’s usual pattern of behaviour. But he had done none of those things, and if seeing him stand up to his mother was scary, whatever it was that flickered in his eyes had been even worse.

  Of course, David silently retorted, he couldn’t have seen what he thought he had. A person’s eyes appeared to change colour all the time, that was true. But what else had been there? That was a question he couldn’t answer. Whatever it was it was something he had never noticed in Mike’s eyes before and it had come and gone too quickly for him to take proper note of it.

  David glanced over at Mike who was now walking on his left. His tightly curled red hair looked a lot different than its usual. Normally Mike tried to comb it flat by putting goop of all consistencies — everything from water to gel — into it, but today it was free of all chemicals and twisted and jerked in the presence of a light wind. Reluctantly David lowered his eyes to meet Mike’s. Mike’s pale face lit up with a bright blush and, in response, David told his friend no, there was nothing wrong with his face. Mike’s blush deepened yet further. That’s when it happened.

  Without so much as a warning rain started to fall from the sky in such a torrent, it caught Samantha off guard and she was nearly thrown off her feet. David grabbed hold of each person on either side of him and broke out in a run. His longer, athletic legs were no match for either of the two pairs running alongside his, no matter how much he held back, and by the time they reached the entrance to the library he was, literally, dragging them behind him.

  “We made it,” David said, looking and sounding like the most collected of them all, which wasn’t saying much. There just weren’t that many degrees of drenched.

  “I should be with my boyfriend,” Samantha declared mournfully. For a moment she looked as though she were really about to cry. Turning to face Michael she continued, “Do you want to know how many girls would kill just to have a date with him? I can’t give you an exact number but I can tell you it’s a lot.”

  Mike didn’t say anything, he only smiled.

  David thought that if Mike kept that up they’d both be hearing Samantha’s life story and future dreams.

  “Come on guys, let’s just do this and get it over with,” David said, trying to keep them on track.

  “This is the only free night he has this week and we basically want to get the rough work done before the library closes,” Samantha put in.

  Mike kept smiling.

  “So, do you type?” Samantha asked, for some reason intent on pestering Mike.

  Mike shrugged and to David that was understandable. Mike was uncertain whether he could type or not but David was willing to bet it was one of those things he just knew how to do.

  The library was lit by soft yellow light and as David stepped forward into the building he found it was filled with that particularly hollow silence only libraries, when quiet, could provide. It wasn’t hard for the group to find a vacant table to work at. The place was virtually deserted. The only other visible occupants consisted of an old man sitting at a corner table bent over a newspaper, the librarian behind a long wooden desk facing the front door through which the group had entered and a woman with a bored look on her face flipping through the stacks of paperbacks on the Romance rack further down at the west end of the building. The group chose a large table along the east-facing wall.

  The east-facing wall was made up of red brick but otherwise broken up by slats of tall floor to ceiling windows arranged in a neat row, providing a source of much needed natural light for the old building. The table was one of several that were arranged perpendicular to the wall. Two of the tall windows framed it on either side and between the two windows was a glass display case highlighting bits of Ceedon’s Valley history from the town archives. The history currently on display consisted mostly of old newspaper clippings and a few other small items such as old pens and ink pots arranged aesthetically behind the glass case. That was one thing about small towns, David mused as he squeezed past the display cabinet to gain a seat. They loved their history.

  Only moments after the three sat down David queried the hardest part of the project. “What,” he wanted to know, “are we going to do our project on?”

  This was directed at Samantha but if she had heard what he had said she gave no indication. She seemed content to just sit there catching her breath and looking like a suitably miserable drowned rat.

  As it turned out Mike ended up asking what they had been told to do it on.

  “Any topic of current science.”

  Mike frowned. “Well, what were you guys planning to do?”

  Samantha’d begun polishing he sunglasses and she kept doing so.

  “Well,” David assumed the job as spokesperson for the both of them, “I was thinking of something nuclear. Nuclear power, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons; something along those lines.”

  Samantha stopped polishing in mid stroke, for only a moment, then resumed again. Without looking up she said, “if your goal is to turn into Spider-Man by the time this is all over, you can forget about it. He’s a cartoon; he doesn’t exist.”

  David blushed. That had not been at all what he was thinking but, man, wouldn’t that be great if…. He had to stay focused; the library would be closing soon. In his own defence, he said, “I know that. Spider-Man is the product of a failed genetic experiment, not radiation. You must be thinking of Hulk. The Hulk was created by radiation.”

  “I think Spider-Man was a product of forced genetic mutations brought on by radiation,” Mike couldn’t help but speak up, now that he had something sensible to talk about.

  Samantha rolled her eyes and cut the conversation short, “Ok Ryan, let’s just do nuclear energy.”

  “So,” he said now turning to Mike, “know anything about nuclear energy?”

  “Well,” Mike began as he always did, “not a great deal, but I can tell you…”

  The truth was Mike could tell them everything they needed to know and a whole lot they didn’t. He started at an almost understandable level, saying something about energy being released by either a fission or fusion reaction. Then he started to bring in numbers and without him even noticing, both David and Samantha had stopped taking notes.

  While he spoke Mike looked out one of the windows in the direction of the Drop. At first the look on his face was a sad one, but then a
smile pulled at the corners of his lips. All the while he was speaking of a man by the name of Fermi and transuranic elements. It wasn’t until Samantha cleared her throat impatiently that he looked again in their direction.

  “I think we’ve got enough now,” she said, going on to tell him about her Summer School Expectations Theory. When she was done they packed up their belongings and decided to get something to eat.

  Almost two hours later, on their way out of the local Pizza Parlour, loud, pulsing music could be heard coming from the direction of the camp sites. The rains seemed to have stopped for good and the late night parties, which always started early in resort towns like Ceedon’s Valley, had begun. To David’s surprise it was Mike who suggested that they go see what was going on. Having dried out and filled up on pizza there was no way David would have declined. Samantha couldn’t have been more pleased.

  “I just love parties,” she told Mike as she started moving to the music.

  At first Mike only smiled but so insistent was the charisma of Samantha and the pulsing of the beat that he too began to bob to the music. David joined the pair and all three allowed the driving beat to pull them, half walking, half dancing, towards the festivities.

  The mountainous terrain far off in the distance could have been the focal point of a postcard. The brilliant colours splashed across the sky by the setting sun made the mountains look even more magnificent. It was only after the sun had sunken beneath this hilly plain and the moon had taken its place above it, that the first tourist disappearance of the camping season took place.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In the darkest corner of the cave which occupied the furthest corner of the Drop, the creature stirred. Not with a will of its own — its own will had been supplanted many years before — but by the insistence of the magic which now kept it interned. A part of its reluctance stemmed from the glimmer of a distant knowledge that things had not always been thus. A hazy, non-distinct memory in the far reaches of the creature’s mind seemed to suggest that once he had been master of the crystal and the magic and the vessel into which the knowledge had so freely flowed. The creature was not sure at what point things had changed and he had become scarce more than a deformed shell for the magic’s will. Search as he might through what little remained of his own senses the creature could not find the point at which the tables had turned. He suspected one reason was that the turning had been insidious. It had happened while he was busy, distracted with the semblance of research. He suspected the other reason was that the magic simply just did not want him to know and, being the magic’s vassal now, he was only privy to what the magic wanted him to know.