“Nev!”
A small moaning mumble issued forth from beneath the covers. “What.”
“Nev! Wake up!”
“I doan wanna.”
Suddenly Nev’s covers were whipped away and he curled reflexively into a little ball, shivering with the cold. Nameh stood over him, clutching the blankets with an unusually stern look on his face. “Nev, get up.”
Nev rolled onto his back. “Why?”
“Just get up and I’ll tell you.”
The Michael Nesmith stubbornness that lingered deep within Nev’s narrow form surfaced—which for him was a relative rarity. “I am not doing anything until you tell me what’s going on! Where’s Mich?”
“She’s on a mission with the Femmes.”
Nev sat up, the cold forgotten. “What?”
“I saw her go in the Lair, and he didn’t come out. That was two hours ago. You know what that means, right?”
Nev grinned. “Mama Nez is out of town!”
Nameh dropped the blankets. “You got it! Get dressed—we’re not going to pass this up, right?”
Nev rolled onto his knees and grabbed blindly at the clothes strewn on the floor. “Of course not!” After a moment he stopped. “Wait a minute! What about Kreytok?”
Nameh shook his head, his blond locks swishing; since Mich had adopted him, he had allowed it to grow down to his shoulders. “He’s out doing some Klingon thing. He left Mich a note saying he’d be gone for two days. That was yesterday, so he won’t be back until tonight.”
Nev brushed his long raven hair out of his eyes. “In that case it’s time, my brother, that we go out and get into a little mischief.”
Nev and Nameh, whose ambition to become even bigger demolitionists than Carrie was slowly but surely gaining notoriety around the Library, crept down the hallway towards their target—the brightly glowing Pepsi machine.
They had emerged from the room that they shared—two doors down and across the hall from Mich’s room—dressed identically in black, creeping down the hall in a bad imitation of Mich’s catlike stalk.
“Why can’t we go after the Coke machine?” Nameh asked, his voice trembling a bit with the timidity that he was still trying to shed.
“Because,” Nev said with the weary patience of a parent explaining something for the hundredth time, “that’s MM’s purview. He wouldn’t like us horning in on his territory.”
Nameh shrugged. “What can he do to us? He’s just a scrawny Micky clone!”
Nev stopped and turned to face his twin. Even though Nameh was a Peter clone, the two of them were virtually inseparable, and their tendency to think and scheme alike made them twins in every sense of the word. “Yeah, but who’s his mistress?”
“Anissa. So?”
Nev sighed and closed his eyes—despite his occasional flashes of brilliance, sometimes Nameh could be unbelievably slow. “And who is Anissa? Think carefully on this one.”
“Anissa is Mich’s sis . . . and a lister.”
“What kind of lister?”
Nameh’s forehead creased as he pondered Nev’s query. “Well, let’s see. She wrote Saturday’s Child, that ‘other’ Serendipity, and . . . she’s a Femme.”
“Exactly. And not only that, but she’s a telekinetic Femme. And not only that, she’s Mich’s sis, so if MM goes runnin’ to Anissa, Mich will get wind of it, and then . . . ” He trailed off, knowing that he didn’t have to elaborate. “That’s why we’re goin’ to blow up the Pepsi machine. That way we get our exploding carbonation quota without havin’ to worry about MM cryin’ foul.”
Nameh smiled. “Oh, okay.”
They continued their creep towards their unsuspecting victim when a voice interrupted, making them both jump.
“Morning, lads! What’re you doing?” Krishna—Mich’s George Harrison clone—greeted them. He was sitting on one of the Library’s cushioned window seats, proudly displaying a perfect full lotus posture.
“Ssh!” Nev snapped. “We’re goin’ to go blow up the Pepsi machine. Want to join us?”
“No, that’s not my scene. I’ll meditate for you guys—give you some good vibes.” He closed his dark eyes and was quickly lost in concentration.
Nev shook his head and motioned for Nameh to follow him. They crept around the corner, the Pepsi machine bathing both of them in a ghostly blue light.
“There it is, Nameh. Our claim to fame. You have the M-80s?”
Nameh reached into his pocket and withdrew two small objects. They looked like bombs from a cartoon—round and black with small white fuses protruding from the top.
“Only two?” Nev wailed. “Man, we couldn’t blow up a chair with those two little things! Why didn’t you bring more?”
Nameh smiled cunningly. “Believe me, these are all we need. I went to see Higgs last week and he cooked up some chemical solution that quintuples the firepower of one M-80. I’m holding the equivalent of ten M-80s in my hand right now, so my dear Nev, I think we have enough.”
Nev smiled nastily and clapped Nameh on the shoulder. “My boy, you’re a genius.”
Nameh shook his head, his cheeks flushing slightly at his mentor’s compliment. “Not yet. But I’m learning.”
Nev took one of the explosives and approached the Pepsi machine cautiously, as if expecting it to leap out at him or beg him not to do it. He slipped it into the slot where the cans dropped, and Nameh wedged the other in the small space between the wall and the machine. He twisted a length of twine around both fuses and trailed it away from the machine and behind the nearest stack. Nev came to crouch behind him as he lit the end. They watched in rapt anticipation as the small flame wended its way to the unsuspecting monolith. As the fire neared the explosives, they ducked down, covering their heads with their arms.
Nothing happened.
Nev was about to raise his head when there came a deafening explosion that shook the floor beneath them. He threw himself protectively over Nameh as the bookshelf next to them fell, landing heavily on top of them. Books and papers scattered everywhere, along with plaster from the giant hole that the explosion had ripped in the wall and ceiling.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Nev groaned, trying to move the shelf. It didn’t budge.
Nameh crawled out from beneath him and heaved the splintered wood off his twin. Nev sat up, shaking the dust from his hair. “Thanks, man.”
Nameh smiled as he helped Nev up. “No problem.” He turned to survey their triumph. A twisted, unrecognizable hunk of metal stood where the six-foot machine had once dominated. Cans of Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Sprite lay strewn about, hissing and fizzing as their contents squirted out through the holes that the explosions had made.
“That was really groovy. They’ll be talking about this for a while.”
“Yeah,” Nev said, his hands on his hips. “We’ll go down in history for this.”
“NEVADA FIGHTER! NAMEH TORK!” a voice howled. They turned and spotted a lister standing just beyond the ruined bookshelf. No, not a lister.
Mich.
Nameh turned to Nev, his face turning pale under its coating of dust. “No, Nev, I think we’re gonna be history.”
On to Part Two
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