"So he's naive," Atticus grumbled.

"I've never seen a kid over the age of ten let me go this far. He's a complete babe in the woods. He let me do the fucking penlight in the eyes, Atty."

Atticus found himself thinking of the sturdy naked toddler he'd protected in the forest as a wolf. He tried to ignore it. Ukiah probably only looked younger because of the odd way they aged. "If he's like me, then he's perfect. He could be just pretending to get on your good side."

"Are you sure? Think about when he first woke up in the bathroom. That wasn't an act. It was like he's feral."

Yes, that was true. Even the Pack with their wolf taint didn't seem half as wild.

I left him in the woods— how long did it take for someone to find him?

CHAPTER TWELVE

Temple of New Reason Commune

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Ukiah woke with something warm and furry gently touching his cheek. He opened his eyes to find a yellow tabby kitten sitting beside him, patting at his face. Its eyes seemed oversize for its large head, and all its fur was puffed out in a wild, disorganized manner. It was a tiny scarecrow version of a cat.

"You're a lot nicer than what I'd expected to wake up to." Ukiah heaved himself up to a sitting position, which made the room spin.

Said room was ten foot square and made of cinder-block walls, a steel door, and no windows. Except for the bare foam pad he sat on, a plastic twin food-and-water dish for the kitten, and a yet unused litter box, the room was empty. Light came from single bare bulb. The air was stale, as if circulation was limited. "Yeah, this is more what I expected."

The kitten clambered over his bare knees, needle-sharp claws coming out sporadically as it needed more traction. Ukiah petted it absently, generating a steady rough-engine purr, as he searched for Pack presence.

" Rennie? Bear? Hellena?" he silently called, and then, truly desperate, " Atticus?"

But there was no one there to reach. He was utterly alone in this desolate corner of the world.

Things could be worse, he reminded himself. He was at least alive and not a prisoner of the Ontongard—only a cult of homicidal lunatics.

"In circumstances like this," he told the kitten, "you have to keep things in perspective."

The cult had stripped him out of his soaked clothes and dressed him only in a pair of dark flannel boxers. If his situation weren't so dire, he'd mourn the loss of his black tracking shirt and favorite blue jeans. Maybe the cultists were just washing his clothes. His body reported massive bruising and demanded food. Closing his eyes and shutting out the kitten's furry warmth, he could sense the pounding of the surf in ceaseless rhythm and the heaviness of air that he'd come to associate with Massachusetts. How far from the coast did you have to get to escape those effects?

The kitten, which had been licking his thumb, decided to chew on it instead with tiny sharp teeth.

"Ow, ow, ow, stop that!" Ukiah jerked back his hand and checked to see if he was bleeding. Even a small amount of his blood could transform the kitten to a hybrid of himself. "And we don't need that on top of everything, now, do we?"

Outside, footsteps came quietly up to the door. The walker was wearing something soft-soled, like tennis shoes. Ukiah breathed deep, expecting to catch the person's scent, but the stale air reminded him that the room was close to airtight; there wouldn't be advance warning by that means.

Thus he was mildly off balance when a slot at eye level on the door slid open, revealing Ice's steady gaze.

Did Ice know that Ukiah had been fighting with Core when he'd been killed? Did he blame Ukiah for his lover's death? Did he hate Ukiah?

"They say eyes are the windows of the soul," Ice whispered after several minutes of silent study, echoing Ru's comment. Knowingly? Unknowingly? Ice's eyes were the color of the winter sky, a blue paled nearly to white. If Ukiah was seeing Ice's soul, it was a cold and emotionless thing. "I'd been so busy looking at the lost fount, the spoiled plans, the fleeing time, and Core's desire that I missed you completely. If I had just looked,I'd have seen that you were not human, and avoided all this."

What was "this"? Ukiah was afraid to ask.

"The question is," Ice continued, "what exactly are you?"

Ice seemed to want an answer.

"I'm hungry," Ukiah said. "And I need to pee."

"We left you a litter box, water, and food."

"That?" Ukiah pointed to the kitten's food to clarify that they were referring to the same thing. Yes, Ice meant the cat food. "I'm not eating that."

"What, it's not good enough for you?"

"If I eat it, what would the kitten eat?"

"Schrцdinger Five? He's food too."

It took a moment for Ukiah to realize he meant the kitten. "I'm not eating him!"

"Perhaps if you get hungry enough, you will."

The view slot slid closed.

***

Ukiah used the litter box, and was surprised at how well it absorbed the smell of urine. Afterward, he distracted his empty stomach by playing with Schrцdinger. What was the point, he wondered, of kidnapping him if the cult only planned to starve him to death?

He'd been awake for approximately four hours when someone came furtively up to the door. Ukiah felt half-blind, unable to guess who was on the other side. The slot slid open, letting in a male's scent. The eyes looking in were dark brown; they glanced first to the kitten in Ukiah's lap and then rose to meet his gaze.

"Are you still hungry?" the man whispered.

"I'm starving," Ukiah said truthfully.

"Shhhhh." The man turned his head, showing that his hair was dark brown, straight, and cropped tight around his ears, making them seem too large for his head. The cultist looked down the hall for a minute, apparently trying to judge whether their conversation was being overheard. "I have something you can eat," he whispered once he was convinced that it was safe. He poked a candy bar in through the narrow slot and jiggled it.

The smell of chocolate pulled Ukiah across the room to snatch the candy bar quickly before the cultist could change his mind.

"Thank you," Ukiah mumbled out of habit around the warm, rich hit of complex carbohydrates. It was a stupid thing to say, he realized, considering the situation.

"I'm Mouse," the cultist whispered.

"Why are you giving this to me?"

"I wanted to ask you a question."

"What?" Ukiah asked, leery of answering any of their questions. He'd die before he gave up Kittanning or allowed the cult near his moms.

"Is Joachim Wolf correct in his theory of holon principles?"

Ukiah paused in chewing, confounded. "Hmmm?"

"Well, he points out that people living in a two-dimensional world would perceive a sphere passing through their plane of existence as a circle that grows larger and shrinks. And that if a number of cylinders were scattered onto their dimensions, they couldn't perceive that those lying on their sides—appearing as rods—were the same objects as those standing upright—thus seeming to be circles."

"Yeah," Ukiah said, meaning he understood.

"So if a four-dimensional creature intersected its hand into their plane," Mouse illustrated with his fingertips and the slot, "the two-dimensional inhabitants would see the fingers as separate beings and not as a unified whole."