Stinky started coughing then—he'd gotten a mouthful of water, so I had to duck under and grab him and pull him up. It wasn't really anything, but he started crying anyway, so I picked him up and carried him as far as I could across the hot sand. Dad met us halfway and took Stinky from me. "What did you do to him?" he asked accusingly.

"I didn't do anything!" I protested. "Don't yell at me. He did it himself. He was fooling around and got water up his nose. I pulled him out."

"I'll deal with you later," Dad said, turning his attention instead to Stinky's tears.

"Yeah, right. Tell me again how you're trying to reach out to me too." I grabbed a towel and my shorts and stalked up the beach after Weird. "Hey, Douglas—wait up!"

It was my use of his real name that made him stop. He glowered, but he waited for me. "What do you want, Chigger?"

"Nothing."

We walked in silence for a bit, while I tried to figure out what to say. Occasionally, Douglas stopped to pick up seashells. He'd look at them for a bit, then hand them to me. They were little gray things that looked like cornucopias. "Periwinkles," he said. "They always spiral out the same way. Clockwise. How do you think the periwinkle knows which way to turn?"

I shrugged. "Who cares?"

"I dunno. It's just—how come periwinkles are so stupid but they always know which way to turn, and human beings are so smart and we hardly ever know?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Douglas." I tossed the shells away.

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does. I'm part of this family too."

"It's not your business—"

"Now you're acting like Dad," I said. Doug gave me the sidewise glower, so I blurted, "Well, just because Dad's acting like an asshole doesn't mean you have to."

Douglas shook his head.

"Well what's going on?"

"Never mind."

"Tell me—"

"It's kinda personal, okay?"

"So?"

He gave me the look. The one when somebody says something too stupid to reply to.

"So?" I repeated, pretending I hadn't seen it. "Who else do you have to talk to?"

"It's not anything I want to talk about."

"It's about UCLA, isn't it?"

"Partly," he admitted. And then after another moment, he said, "I got approved for a conditional scholarship. Dad won't sign, but he doesn't have to. I'm almost eighteen, but—" He stopped himself. "You don't know what's going on, do you? Between Mom and Dad, I mean."

"They hate each other. What's to understand?"

"Mom thinks Dad is crazy. She went to court last month to have his visitation rights terminated. Dad counter-sued. He had some big New York lawyer on his side, so he won. Now he gets us four weeks a year instead of two. But Mom still thinks he's going to try something."

"Like what?"

"Like not bringing us back. Or something stupid like that."

"Dad isn't that crazy. Where would he take us?"

"Well ... think about it, Chig. What's he been talking about?"

I thought about it. It didn't take much thinking. "Oh," I said, a sinking feeling in my gut.

"Uh-huh," said Weird.

We walked for a while, neither of us speaking, just pushing forward through the sand, while I sorted stuff out in my head.

Finally, I said, "So if Dad isn't trying to kidnap us, then Mom is schizo-paranoid. And if he is, then she's right and he's crazy. But either way, we lose—because either way we've inherited the genes of a crazy parent."

Douglas half-smiled, that funny expression he gets when somebody says something scientifically.

"So, how do you know all this?" I asked.

"Mom told me. She told me not to tell you. She said you'd side with Dad."

"Mom obviously doesn't know me as well as she thinks. I'm not on either of their sides." And then I realized what else Douglas had said. "You didn't keep your promise."

"It's our family too. I'm tired of all this back-and-forth stuff and nobody ever listening. Aren't you?"

I stared at my older brother as if I'd never seen him before. I couldn't remember him ever being so ... so adult. Finally, I said,

"Thanks, Doug." And I meant it. After another minute, I asked, "But what were you and Dad arguing about?"

"My scholarship. Dad doesn't want me to take it. He doesn't like the conditions."

"What conditions?"

Doug shook his head with a sad smile. "It's kinda personal."

"It's one of those rechanneling scholarships, isn't it?"

"You know something, Charles? You're too smart for your own good."

"I knew it."

"You don't know the half of it."

"Well, you can't do that. You won't be you anymore."

"Yes, I will—" He looked like he wanted to say more, but suddenly, Dad was honking the car horn at us. He'd finally calmed down Stinky and put him in the front seat, and the two of them had motored half a kilometer up the road to catch up to us. Douglas nudged me and we headed across the hot sand to meet them.

It was all too much. I didn't know what to think anymore.

After that, we got back on the Intercontinental Expressway. It was Doug's turn to drive, and he immediately pushed the speed up to 160 klicks, until Dad told him to back off a bit. Doug eased back to 150 and Dad began muttering again about estimated time of arrival and beanstalk schedules and stuff like that.

We skipped staying in a motel that night, while the two of them took turns driving and sleeping all the way down to Puerto Vallarta, where Dad turned in the car and we got on board the SuperTrain Express, which would take us south through Central America and straight to Beanstalk City at speeds up to 360 klicks—225 mph. Dad said we'd be in Beanstalk City in less than thirty hours.

Stinky and I slept through Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Dad woke us up at 7A.M. so we could see the Panama Canal as we raced over it, but it was no big deal. The Colorado River is wider. The canal was just a straight-walled cut through flat green fields, filled with a motionless line of dirty freighters and smaller private boats, all waiting their turn at the next lock.

We spent most of the day gliding south through Colombia. The highway and the train tracks raced each other, swirling back and forth across the mountain slopes in great sweeping loops, hardly ever losing sight of each other. I was glad we hadn't driven the whole way. It would have taken a week or longer. We'd have killed each other.

Late in the day, the train began rising up the western slopes of the Andes and there were some places where the view was spectacular. By now, the beanstalk was a visible presence day and night. We could see it sometimes out our windows when the train went around a curve, but the best view was from the seats in the upstairs observation domes. The beanstalk sliced straight up into the bright blue sky almost from the very edge of the horizon. You'd think it would keep going until it was directly overhead, but it didn't. It disappeared about 11:00 high. Dad said it had something to do with angles and perspective and atmospheric haze. When we got closer, it would reach more toward zenith.

The SuperTrain was a lot wider than the old-fashioned kind—as wide as an airplane, but roomier, and the cars were all two-level. There was even a restaurant car with real waiters. We spent most of our time in the lounge car where there were terminals and even a theater at one end. Stinky wanted to play World Stomper, so Weird had to help him at the terminal. Dad and I went to the other end of the car and plopped down in the only available seats. I stared out the window and he ordered a drink from the table.

There was a fat man in a shiny suit sitting next to Dad; he was arguing across the table with a dark-haired woman. They both looked like Mexicans, but they could just as well have been Texans too. Sometimes it's hard to tell. They were both wearing fancy clothes and expensive-looking jewelry, so I figured they were Internationals, people with world-passports and no countries of their own.