Wood Sprites(73)

“Wǒ kàn bù dào!” The little girl cried again in Mandarin. This time Louise was certain that she was complaining that she couldn’t see the statue.

A tall boy ghosted out of the shadows, gently shushing her. His quiet command was easy to translate. “Not so loud, Lai Yee Zhao.”

The little girl eyed the boy with almost the same awe as being leveled at Jin Wong. “Yamabushi zhànshì, wǒ xiǎng kàn tā!”

Louise parsed through the sentence several times, trying to translate it and failing. She wasn’t sure what “Yamabushi” meant, although “zhànshì” seemed to indicate it was a type of warrior. The last part seemed to be a complaint again that she couldn’t see the statue.

The boy scooped Lai Yee up so she could sit on his shoulder. She gazed in wide-eyed wonder and then pointed at the statue of Jin Wong.

“Is he dead?” the little girl asked, her voice still loud.

Yamabushi shushed her again. “We don’t know. He went away.”

“Why did he leave?” Lai Yee whispered loudly.

The other children half turned to hear the answer.

The tall boy gazed at the starship captain for a moment before answering sadly, “To find another world for us to live on.”

“Elfhome?” the little girl asked.

And all the children shushed her.

Lai Yee was right: the first set of colonists had opened the door to another world. Ironically, Elfhome wasn’t light years distant, but just an odd sidestep into another universe from any point on Earth. The distance to Alpha Centauri made all information on the colony four years out of date. Was that the reason the boy claimed that they didn’t know if Jin Wong was alive or dead? He’d been middle aged when he left Earth; surely life as a colonist could not be easy for a man nearly seventy.

And what of Esme? How had she fared in the eighteen years? The bios all indicated that she was still alive, but they could be wrong. Something could have happened to the colony, and Earth wouldn’t know for years.

Jillian and Aunt Kitty were moving on to the next display, forcing Louise to guide Tesla into his next mapping position. Once Tesla was lined up, Louise pretended to study the model of the Alpha Centauri star system. As if to make up for the lack of movement in the first display, this one had the two stars whizzing through their complex dance with their various planets orbiting them. A red digital clock counted backwards, marking the time before the first reports about the Minghe Hao’s safe arrival would reach the Earth. Alpha Centauri was 4.37 light years away; there remained four hundred and six days and a handful of hours before the fate of the ship could be known.

But there had been radio messages from the earlier ships. At least, Louise thought there had been. Why would the boy say that they didn’t know if Jin Wong was alive or not?

“Those poor people.” Aunt Kitty nodded at the crew photo of the Minghe Hao. “No one noticed when they left. No one will notice if and when they arrive. I don’t know why they keep sending out those ships. Even the first one—there was a ton of fanfare—and then Pittsburgh vanished—and everyone just forgot about the Chinese. It wasn’t until the Chinese started to flip the power on and off like a toddler with a light switch that anyone realized that the gate had anything to do with Pittsburgh blinking in and out of existence.”

And Elfhome had continued to steal the limelight since then. Despite their wealth of information on Earth’s mirror planet, the twins had known virtually nothing about the space mission that triggered its discovery until they learned of their own odd connection to it.

“The crews wanted to go.” Jillian led the way past the group photo of the Zhenghe Hao to stare at the crew of the Dahe Hao. Esme Shenske stood front and center as the captain. She looked so determined and fierce, like she was going to war. “They walked away from family and friends and ever coming back. I don’t think they cared a rat’s ass if anyone noticed or not.”

The tall boy glanced over as if he fully understood Jillian’s comment.

Louise looked down out of habit and nudged Jillian before she realized that she didn’t really know if he understood or what he thought. The twins were at the museum to plan a robbery to save their baby siblings. Until a month ago, they didn’t even know the names of the spaceships or any of their crew. Surely there was little common ground between her and this boy that worshiped before Jin Wong, even if her genetic donor was a spaceship captain in her own right.

Louise looked back up at Esme. Don’t care a rat’s ass if anyone noticed or not. That’s how she had to be. Fierce and determined. They were going to war. Everyone better stay out of their way.