Kingdom Keepers III(113)

“The doctors will run tests. We shall see what we see.”

“Our children—their holograms—are trapped inside the parks somewhere.”

“And you actually believe that nonsense,” Mrs. Philby replied, “which means this conversation is over.”

“If we work together,” Mrs. Whitman said, “maybe we can figure out where they’ve gone. Maybe we can find them and bring them back.”

“Listen to you!”

“The Overtakers have kidnapped Wayne. I…Finn…your son was here at my house. We…there was a cryptogram, a kind of mathematical—”

“I know what a cryptogram is!” Mrs. Philby said. “Will you listen to yourself, Mrs. Whitman? Will you listen to what you are saying?”

“I know it sounds—”

“Ridiculous? Absurd? Impossible? Yes, it does! And you? You’re delusional if you believe such…such garbage.” Mrs. Philby was breathing heavily into the phone. “What do you mean, he was at your house?”

“After school. He and our Finn and another of the—Willa…listen, I know how far-fetched all of it sounds. We’ve been asked to endure so much. But my point is: if there is some truth to what they say about what happened to Donnie Maybeck that time, about where they go at night, about Wayne and this…this war they seem to be fighting—”

“Would you just listen to yourself?”

“But if there is,” Mrs. Whitman persisted. “If there should be—”

“But there isn’t. How could there be?”

Mrs. Whitman felt a tremendous headache coming on. She gripped her head with her free hand and tried to be objective about what she was saying. She knew that if she were the one on the receiving end of her own argument she’d think the other person a nutcase.

“I don’t know,” she muttered.

“When the doctors render their opinion,” Mrs. Philby said, “I will contact you and the other parents.”

“Kind of you.”

“It’s the least I can do. Should I call this number?”

Mrs. Whitman gave her her mobile number instead.

“Are you…going out?” Mrs. Philby asked, as if Mrs. Whitman would be committing the ultimate bad-parent crime by leaving her comatose son in his present state.

“My husband will be here with Finn,” Mrs. Whitman said. “I…that is…Donnie’s aunt and I—”

“The artist?”

“The same. Yes. Donnie let slip something about Epcot.” She hesitated, knowing the scorn she faced for bringing up the subject. “We can’t just sit by and do nothing, you see?”

“But…you can’t possibly believe any of what they tell us!”

“Actually…well…that is…yes. I’m afraid I do.”





41


PHILBY KNEW HE HAD IT in him. He stood behind the control room that overlooked the expansive but empty amphitheater facing the Fantasmic! stage and walked through the wall, thinking this must be how Harry Potter felt when entering Platform 93/4 for the Hogwarts Express. Philby had always considered that to be purely fictional, impossible—and yet here he was, doing it. He stepped through and found himself alongside gunmetal gray shelves holding a dozen flashing computer slaves. He was standing to the left of, and looking over the shoulder of, a man wearing a Disney ball cap and a dark blue sweatshirt. The man’s full attention was on the show onstage, and it was a good thing too, for his angle of view allowed Philby to spot his own reflection in the control room’s slanted windows; if the man looked slightly to his own left he would have seen the boy spying on him. Philby stepped behind an open locker door, screening himself, so that he could peer through the crack between the door and the cabinet. He studied the man’s every move—where he looked, how he controlled the array of knobs and buttons on the board and various boxes in front of him as well as off to his side. Philby quickly identified the lighting and sound boards. Everything was computerized: the show’s effects were brought together on a single computer screen that tracked by hundredths of seconds and started and stopped each particular function, from the opening and closing of a trapdoor to a light changing color. Everything was synchronized with the music. The show played out on a large flat-screen display that showed dozens of different rows of categories: five for music; six for live sound; fifteen for lights; six for pyrotechnics; plus a dozen other stage events.

The man wore a headset through which he communicated with the rest of the crew, keeping one eye on the display, the other on the stage below.