Duplex Read online

  And I feel just fine about it.

  9

  Ryan led the way into the conference room, with Bizzy, head tipped downward, following behind. The only adult in the room had to be Dr. Withunga; the others must be the kids in GRUT, the ones with micropowers. The micropots. Aaron was not among them. Ryan asked about him.

  “He doesn’t usually come to the meetings,” Dr. Withunga explained. Only it wasn’t an explanation.

  “Why not?” asked Ryan.

  “He doesn’t think he has a micropower,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “Then how did he identify me?” asked Ryan. “I thought that was his micropower.”

  “He calls it a secondhand micropower,” said a teenage girl. “Like, it’s a powerful thing to build an airplane, and a powerful thing to fly one. But to see one in the sky and know what it is, that’s nothing. Says Aaron.”

  “And that’s all that needs to be said about someone who is not here,” said Dr. Withunga, sounding a little testy. “We have a new member. His name is Ryan Burke.”

  “Hello, Ryan,” said the others, in good twelve-step program form.

  “And this is—” Ryan began, but Dr. Withunga cut him off.

  “We all know Bizzy Horvat,” she said. “I see she’s pretending to be invisible today.”

  “How do you all know her?” asked Ryan.

  Nobody answered.

  “I’ve met with them before,” said Bizzy quietly.

  Ryan was irritated. That would have been useful information. But he didn’t pursue the point. “I don’t even know why I’m here,” he said.

  “Because you aren’t anywhere else,” said the same girl. “You have to be somewhere.”

  “So this is a very basic philosophy course?” asked Ryan.

  “Allow me to introduce Dahlia,” said Dr. Withunga.

  Dahlia smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.

  “I’m thrilled to make your acquaintance,” said Ryan, looking at her with dead eyes.

  And then he was yawning. A deep, long yawn, like a lion preening as it rises to its feet after a nap.

  “Stop it, Dahlia,” said Dr. Withunga. “We don’t use our micropowers against each other.”

  “As if you haven’t already determined whether he’s an innie or an outie,” said Dahlia.

  “She made me yawn?” asked Ryan.

  “I did not,” said Dahlia. “Not every yawn is mine.”

  “That one was,” said Dr. Withunga. “Don’t insult my intelligence. Dahlia makes people yawn, which partially incapacitates them.”

  “Good for you,” said Ryan mildly.

  “My own micropower is pathetic,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “Not,” said a boy.

  “She can tell whether your belly button is an innie or an outie,” said Dahlia. “And it is pathetic.”

  “She knows that information whether she can see you or not,” said the boy. “So you can’t sneak up on her, because she’s aware that a belly button is approaching her from behind.”

  Ryan could see that it might be useful, after all. It just sounded silly.

  “We all took a drive of up to an hour to get to this meeting, so what’s the big deal?” asked another girl, who looked old enough to be in college. “What can he do?”

  “According to Aaron,” said Dr. Withunga, “Ryan Burke does the exact right thing, very quickly and accurately.”

  “He hasn’t done anything right yet,” said the college girl.

  “In an emergency, Jannis. When someone he cares about is in dire need. He saved somebody from a bee sting recently. He saw the danger and took action that involved putting the bee in his own mouth,” said Dr. Withunga. She looked to Ryan for confirmation. He didn’t give any sign.

  “So he does the exact right thing for an idiot,” said Jannis.

  “What do you do?” asked Ryan.

  “I always know high E,” said Jannis. “That’s very useful when tuning a guitar.”

  “You know it, but can you produce that pitch?” asked Ryan.

  “Oh, now you’re testing us?” asked Jannis.

  “Yes,” said Ryan.

  “Enough,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “No ma’am,” said Ryan. “She says she can do something, but why should I believe it?”

  “I’ve never heard her do it,” said Dahlia.

  “How would we verify it if she did?” asked the boy.

  “Find a piano?” said Dahlia.

  “I’ve heard her,” said Dr. Withunga, “and I’ve verified it with a pitch pipe and a church organ.” She said it with finality. “Can we stop the competitive challenges and move ahead?”

  “What are we moving toward?” asked Ryan. “What’s the point of meeting? I don’t need Dahlia to teach me how to yawn. I’m not tuning a guitar. What do you do?” Ryan asked the boy.

  “I know where the spiders are,” he answered. “I’m Mitch. Please don’t step on spiders around me. I can feel their pain. I know when they die, and I know whether it was deliberate arachnicide or not.”

  “Do you like spiders?” asked Ryan.

  “I don’t keep them as pets or take them for walks through the neighborhood,” said Mitch. “But I care about them and their well-being. And before you ask, there are nine spiders in this room, but eight of them are very small—just little red dots on the wall.”

  “Thanks for the information. If I ever need to yawn or get a spider census or find out if my navel pokes out or in, I know where to come.” Ryan rose to his feet. “This isn’t a club I want to join.”

  To his surprise, Bizzy spoke quietly. “I do,” she said.

  “Your mother denied us permission to talk with you,” said Dr. Withunga. “I’m not supposed to allow you to attend a meeting.”

  “I gave myself permission to be here,” said Bizzy, still speaking very softly.

  “You’re a minor,” said Dr. Withunga. “I have to respect the rights of your parent—”

  Bizzy interrupted her. “When she triggers me to have one of these pretty-fits, she has no further rights.”

  “Pretty-fit?” asked Mitch.

  Bizzy lifted her face and looked at him full on. Mitch gasped audibly and recoiled a little as if he had been slapped. But he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Even the girls in the room were riveted.

  “She triggered me this morning as I was leaving the house. She did it on purpose, as a punishment, knowing that it would make it impossible for me to function at school.”

  Nobody said anything. They all understood why she wouldn’t be able to function. Nobody around her would be able to function.

  Ryan realized that yes, he saw her beauty, but it didn’t actually increase his feelings toward her. His devotion to her, his love for her, wasn’t about beauty. It was about knowing her. Talking with her. So the beauty was just an extra. Like a wardrobe item.

  Except that it left him gasping just like everybody else. If he didn’t already know her, this face she was wearing today would instantly convince him that she was so far out of his league that he would never approach her.

  That was when Aaron Withunga showed up. Door opened, there he was. He stood there, holding the door open, staring at Bizzy.

  “Please come in and sit down, Aaron,” said Dr. Withunga. “You’re defeating the air-conditioning in this room.”

  Aaron deliberately closed his eyes, then turned his head away from Bizzy and made a show of blindly groping for his seat. His limp made it seem especially random, until Dahlia said, “Aaron, if you use this as an excuse to pretend to accidentally grope me or anybody else, you will yawn continually for the rest of your miserable life.”

  “With that in the room, you imagine that you are somehow irresistible to cripples?” Aaron took a seat against the wall, not with the others.

 
Dr. Withunga turned to Bizzy, squinting a little, as if the sight dazzled her eyes. “Bizzy, could you, um, put that away?” asked Dr. Withunga.

  “Ordinarily I can switch it off at will,” said Bizzy. “But when my mother the witch triggers me, I’m stuck like this for at least a day, usually longer.” But then she looked downward, ducked her head, put a hand up to half-conceal her face. It helped.

  “Can somebody explain,” said Ryan, “what the point of a meeting like this is supposed to be?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Withunga. “Jannis, will you do the honors?”

  “Why me?” said Jannis. “I’m not the expert here.”

  “None of us is,” said Dr. Withunga. “Why do we meet?”

  “We’re pretty sure,” said Jannis, “that being around other micropots increases our power. We get stronger effects. Mitch can notice spiders that are farther away. Dahlia can make you yawn so wide you not only cry, you also wet your pants.”

  Bizzy gave a low chuckle. “That’s serious yawning,” she said softly.

  “So if there’s ever a urine shortage,” said Ryan, “you all get together and Dahlia presses the urine out of you with a yawn.”

  “Several lives have been saved,” said Dr. Withunga, “by people using their micropowers. So it’s better to listen and learn than to show off your clever skepticism.”

  Ryan clammed up.

  “We also help each other by scientifically testing each other’s powers. Their limitations and possibilities. We’ve done some sessions where we tested Dahlia’s range. She can yawn somebody up to about fifty yards away.”

  “Forty-one meters,” said Dahlia. “I try to live metrically.”

  “Beyond that,” Dr. Withunga continued, “her power drops off pretty quickly.”

  “It took a few sessions to get that information,” said Jannis.

  “There’s no way to test me,” said Ryan. “Because if what I do is really a micropower, I can’t fake it. Either there’s really an emergency affecting somebody I care about, or there isn’t.”

  “That’s a potential problem,” said Dr. Withunga. “But that’s why we meet. Because at some point, somebody might think of a way to measure your potential.”

  “But I don’t care about measuring it,” said Ryan, “because whatever I’ve done during a time like that turned out to be right, so it’s already working well enough.”

  “Confident, aren’t we,” murmured Jannis.

  “It’s only happened twice, so yes,” said Ryan. “Both those times, I just did stuff and it was right.”

  “So what if the third time you aren’t right?” asked Jannis.

  “Then it’s a pretty lousy little micropower, isn’t it?” said Ryan.

  Again a short laugh from Bizzy. And from Mitch, too. “He’s got a point,” said Mitch. “We’ve never actually tested any of our powers for basic lousiness.”

  “Yes we have,” said Dahlia. “All the time.”

  “No one knows your mental process during an episode, Ryan,” said Dr. Withunga. “But the next time it happens, it might be good to try to remember exactly what it felt like. And how quickly you figured out what to do, for instance. And whether you ‘know’ to take actions that you’ve never heard of before, like palming your bee into your mouth.”

  “It wasn’t my bee,” said Ryan.

  “It was mine,” said Bizzy softly. “He was saving me.”

  “Because you’re so beautiful,” said Mitch, only a little mockingly.

  “Because he’s my friend,” said Bizzy.

  Ryan nodded. In his own heart, he was far more than a friend. But “friend” would do for now.

  “So how often do you meet?” Ryan asked. “What sort of homework should I do?”

  “If you don’t have an emergency to solve, then you can’t do any homework, can you,” said Dr. Withunga. “But you can think back on how it was when you did it before. See if you can figure out how it works. What the rules are.”

  “It’s a game now?” asked Ryan.

  “There are always rules. Gravity. Inertia. All those natural laws are boundaries,” said Dr. Withunga. “We can use the boundaries to figure out just how far we can push things.”

  “I can make spiders dance like the Rockettes,” said Mitch.

  “Make them?” asked Jannis.

  “Entreat them to invade a room and scare the crap out of everybody,” said Mitch.

  “And they do whatever you ask,” said Ryan.

  “Not really,” Aaron said to Ryan, shaking his head. “Rockettes.”

  “So far, I got them to do everything I thought of that was possible. Can’t make a spider fly or swim.” Mitch grinned. “At least, not so far.”

  “So we meet,” said Ryan, “to strengthen our micropowers and then to demonstrate them and test them and find out the limits.”

  “And maybe stretch them to do more than we thought we could do,” said Dahlia. “I’ve done ride-alongs with police guys on patrol, and they found it a lot easier to subdue drunks who were yawning. Even though yawning is sometimes a trigger for vomiting.”

  “The whole group didn’t come?” asked Ryan.

  “Only so much room in a cop car,” said Dahlia. “All that mattered was we proved the point—we weaponized yawning.”

  “Sounds great, if you’re trying to help one side in a war,” said Ryan.

  “We’re not the Avengers or the X-Men,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “Not even the Justice League,” said Aaron.

  “But we’d like to find practical real-world uses for our micropowers,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “Some are easier to do that with than others,” said Jannis.

  “Sometimes one of us has saved lives,” said Mitch.

  “But he’s not here,” said Dahlia. “He lives in North Carolina, and it’s a three-hour drive for him to get up to Charlottesville.”

  “Unlike our superconvenient one- or two-hour drives,” said Aaron.

  “We only have a select few authorities in the regular world that we can work with,” said Dahlia. “Most of them would regard us as too ridiculous to take seriously.”

  To which Mitch added, gesturing toward Bizzy, “But none of them would think she’s ridiculous.”

  “None of them would be able to think straight, with her in the room,” said Aaron.

  “When she has her glamor,” said Dr. Withunga. “Since it’s come up, let’s talk about that.”

  “Let’s not,” said Bizzy.

  “When we’re first discussing someone’s micropower,” said Dr. Withunga, “we need to ascertain the rules. How it works, when it works, what parts are under control. A methodical approach. We can’t call it scientific, because every micropower is different.”

  “Let’s discuss Ryan’s micropower,” said Bizzy. “He’s actually interested.”

  “Not much to discuss,” said Ryan. “I’ve been trying to think it through. It’s only happened twice, and both times involved bees. So I don’t know if I have some ability related to bees, or if it’s about a sense of emergency that triggers it.”

  “What are we talking about here?” asked Jannis.

  “He gets really fast,” said Aaron. “And he seems to know exactly the right thing to do. No hesitation.”

  “Believe me, that’s not my usual pattern,” said Ryan. “I never know the right thing to do or say.”

  “Like regular people,” said Bizzy. “And you say the right thing a lot of the time.”

  “I’m not stupid or completely inept,” said Ryan. Then he thought of how tongue-tied he sometimes was around Bizzy. “Not usually, anyway. But the two times this thing kicked in, it had to do with a bee getting tangled in the hair of somebody I was responsible for.” Whereupon Ryan told them about the time he cut his sister’s hair and flicked the stinger off her neck, and the time
he pulled a living bee out of Bizzy’s hair and put it in his mouth.

  “Wow,” said Mitch. “How did that feel, a bee in your mouth?”

  “Pretty good,” said Ryan, “compared to having it sting me.”

  “Can’t believe it didn’t,” said Dahlia.

  “That’s why I wondered if I had some kind of a knack with bees,” said Ryan. “If that’s my micropower, it has pretty limited application. But I’ve never been able to, like, control bees. Or I would have made the bee leave Bizzy alone, instead of having to pull it out of her hair.”

  “Or you just haven’t found your ability to control bees yet,” said Dahlia. “It took me a while to figure out I could make people yawn without yawning myself.”

  “That’s right,” said Dr. Withunga. “It takes time and experimentation.”

  “If my micropower is only triggered by emergencies,” said Ryan, “then it’s hard to set up an experiment. I’m not interested in putting people into emergency situations to see if I can save them. Especially if it’s a non-bee emergency and I can’t actually help them.”

  “If you can go into your hyperspeed mode with other stuff,” said Mitch, “you’d make a great cop.”

  “A career I do not aspire to,” said Ryan.

  “Civilization needs cops,” said Mitch.

  “I agree,” said Ryan. “That doesn’t mean I want to be one.”

  “What do you plan to become?” asked Dr. Withunga.

  “A dad,” said Ryan. “And a husband.”

  “So, plenty of emergency work in those jobs,” said Dr. Withunga.

  “And plenty of ways to screw it up,” said Ryan.

  “You’re independently wealthy?” asked Jannis. “Or do you plan to marry a wealthy woman?”

  “I’ll have a job,” said Ryan. “When I learn a skill that’s more complicated and valuable than taking out the garbage and doing my own laundry.”

  “I think we’re getting personal without being productive,” said Dr. Withunga, to Ryan’s gratitude. “Ryan’s micropower seems to be such that he’ll simply have to be observant the next time he has an emergency. There are questions, though, that he can think about. For instance, does this micropower kick in only when somebody else needs your help, or can you do it to save yourself?”