Timothy Zahn - A Coming Of Age

"This makes no sense at all," Tirrell growled, fatigue putting irritation into his voice. "Have we stumbled onto some hive's weekend outing or something?"

"Hive outings don't break up at five in the morning," Tonio pointed out. "And I haven't seen any of the adults that should have been with them, either."

"Right," Tirrell said, annoyed he hadn't thought of those points himself. "Well... have you seen anyone who looks like Lisa Duncan?"

"Uh-uh," the preteen said positively. "I've been watching for both her and Weylin and haven't seen either of them."

More kids were streaming upward now, and Tirrell looked at each carefully as they flew past. No Lisa or Weylin in this bunch, either. "This has got to be some kind of coincidence, Stan," Tonio shook his head. "Jarvis can't be mixed up with this many kids and preteens. Weylin must be somewhere else in the valley."

"Maybe," Tirrell said slowly. "On the other hand, he did offer us a group of kids to help search for Jarvis. I think it would be worthwhile to ease over there and see just where it is everyone's coming from."

"Okay." Tonio paused. "Wait a second; here comes another group."

More figures were indeed rising into the air... but as Tirrell watched them something cold began tracing a path up his spine. This was no loose-knit bunch of kids who had simply happened to leave at the same time. They were staying together, almost flying in formation, without a trace of chatter that Tirrell could hear. Staying just above treetop height, they shot swiftly past, heading northwest.

"Stan!" Tonio whispered. "There's an adult with them!"

"I saw him," Tirrell nodded. Buoyed up by two of the kids, his outfit some sort of woodsman's garb, the man had looked nothing at all like a prophet; but Tirrell had no doubt he was the Omega in Lisa's note. And he was most definitely not Matthew Jarvis. "Weylin's there too."

"Yeah. But I didn't see Lisa."

"Me neither." Tirrell looked back toward the mountain, the coldness on his backbone seeping into his stomach. "Let's get down there right away, Tonio. And the hell with secrecy—I've got a bad feeling that everyone who was supposed to leave has already done so."

Tonio understood. "Grack," he said, very softly, as he held out his hand.

A second later they were hurtling southward.

The huge tent set up at the mountain's base was impossible to miss—and probably the last thing Tirrell would have expected to find. "What is this place? Tonio whispered as they stood just inside the entrance, looking at the gaudy furnishings.

"The Prophet Omega's headquarters, I'd imagine, the detective whispered back, keeping a firm grip on his feelings. Even recognizing that the place had probably been deliberately designed to manipulate emotions, he couldn't help but feel a touch of awe. To an inexperienced kid, the effect must have been well-nigh overwhelming. No wonder Omega's suckered in such a large following, he thought grimly. What the hell is he doing with them, though? "Let's do a fast search," he said aloud to his righthand. "Don't disturb anything too noticeably, but check every place a preteen could be locked up."

The tent, though large, had only a few rooms, and it took them only a handful of minutes to go through it. "Now what?" Tonio asked when they were finished.

"I think," Tirrell said quietly, "we'd better start looking for a grave."

Tonio sighed. "You don't think he would have left her tied up somewhere outside?"

Tirrell shrugged. "Maybe, but tying kids up so that they can't get free isn't easy to do. You can't really gag them, for starters, and he almost certainly would have needed to keep her quiet. I'd bet my pension the kids who left first this morning weren't involved with Lisa or whatever else Omega's got cooking."

"Maybe that's why Omega's group left last, so that a couple of them could sit on Lisa and make sure she couldn't call for help until the others were gone."

Tirrell thought that over. Probably nothing but wishful thinking. If Lisa wasn't thoroughly on Omega's side, keeping her alive was more dangerous than profitable—but on the other hand there was no special reason to burst Tonio's hopes out of hand. At this point looking for a body, a freshly dug grave, or a prisoner would be essentially equivalent. "You might be right," he told the preteen. "Okay. We'll do a fast search, starting at the tent here and moving outward."

They spent the better part of an hour flying slowly through the trees, and while they located several other places Omega's kids apparently used in their activities, there was no clue anywhere as to Lisa's location or fate. For Tirrell, the hardest part of the search was watching Tonio's almost desperate optimism slowly ground down as their chances of finding her alive diminished. The righthand's reaction to what Jarvis might be doing with Colin had shown up the soft spot in Tonio's character, and his concern now for Lisa merely emphasized it. Just one more righthand, Tirrell predicted privately, who'll leave the force after his year and never come back.

"I guess you were right," Tonio admitted at last. "We're not going to find her, are we?"

"I don't think so," Tirrell shook his head. "Look, this isn't getting us anywhere. Why don't we figure out how to get back here again, and then get over to Plat City and put out an alarm on Omega. We can send a complete shakedown squad back here to... finish things. Okay?"

"Sure." Tonio nodded tiredly.

"And we're both in need of food and sleep, anyway." Shading his eyes, Tirrell peered upward. "Before we go, though, I'd like to take a quick look at that gash up there. It doesn't look like any kind of natural formation I've ever heard of, and if it's erosion it's an awfully strange pattern."

"Why bother with it now?" Tonio grumbled.

"Because it would be nice to know if the shakedown squad should keep on the lookout for a sudden rock slide," Tirrell explained, holding on tightly to his temper. Matching grouches with Tonio wouldn't do them any good. "It'll just take a minute, and then we'll be off."

Sighing, Tonio held out his hand.

But the gash turned out to be even more interesting than Tirrell had expected. "Holy hive fruit," Tonio said as they hovered at its entrance, his depression momentarily superseded by astonishment. "It's a cave."

"Sure looks like one," Tirrell agreed. "And man-made at that—that floor is far too level to have been formed naturally. Let's go in, take a look around."

Even with the sun now peeking over the eastern mountains, the angle of the cave was such that the deepest third was still in shadow. Tonio brought them down near the middle of the lighted part, and Tirrell immediately squatted down to examine the floor and the loose stones littering it.

"You suppose Omega's kids dug this?" Tonio asked, drifting to one side and gingerly touching the wall.

"Somebody's kids dug it," the detective said. "There aren't any marks a digging machine would have left, and even so it would've taken kids to get one this high up a mountain."

"Shh!" Tonio said abruptly. "I heard something!

Tirrell froze in place, listening. A faint sound—a voice?—came to his ears. Catching Tonio's eye, he pointed toward the darkened section, of the cave. The righthand nodded and flew to a spot on the wall just inside the shadow, where he'd have at least a little cover and yet be ready to help. Flicking on his flashlight, Tirrell started forward, moving carefully on the loose gravel underfoot as he tried to pick out the direction the sound had come from.

He needn't have bothered. The first pass with the light caught the white panties hanging across the pinkish stone, and seconds later he was close enough to see a narrow horizontal gap two meters above the floor. "Hello?" he called. "Who's there?"