Turnabout Read online

  I saw old women, middle-aged women, young women—a few of them totally hot—and even some girls, but no men. I should have been overjoyed to be without male competition, but somehow it really creeped me out.

  The woman chasing me grabbed me from behind and said something as she tried to drag me backwards. Two women walking nearby stopped and pointed at me. “Keesai!” they shouted. That made other passersby stop and stare in my direction. A crowd gathered swiftly.

  I didn’t know what to do so I just stood there.

  And then two women in identical black outfits pushed their way through the crowd. They both wore a silver hawk emblem on their right shoulders, so I figured they must be cops or soldiers.

  The taller one said something to me that sounded like a question and ended in the word keesai.

  I shook my head. “Sorry. I’m not from around here.”

  She pulled a gun from her belt. At least I guessed it was a gun, although it didn’t look like any weapon I had ever seen. She said a few words in an authoritative tone, and all the bystanders stepped back a pace, even the one who had grabbed me.

  It looked like I was getting busted just for being male, and so I lost it. “Fuck this!” I shouted, and then I ran, shoving an old lady out of my way as I tried to cut through the crowd.

  I got about four steps and then something hit my back, and I could barely move my feet. A few seconds later the old lady I had shoved tackled me, and I went down like a quarterback who had held on to the ball too long. My head hit the pavement, and when I came to, I was trussed up in a sort of straitjacket and being carried by the straps. I tried wriggling, but my legs seemed paralyzed. Four women in black were carrying me toward a silver hovercar. When we got close, I could feel the tremendous rush of air that held it a foot or so off the ground. Someone opened the hovercar door, and the four women slung me inside like a bag of mulch.

  I spent the next half an hour face down on the back seat, wishing to God that I had been born right-handed. I had no clue where we were going, but having been tied up like a dangerous mental patient wasn’t a good sign. In my head, I just kept asking why this was happening to me. It occurred to me that if I had wished myself home when I was in the driver’s ed car, I might well have gone there. I tried wishing to be home. I closed my eyes and thought about Mom, and Lorrie, and Sancho, but when I opened them, nothing happened—no melting, no mist, no meadow, just the same light gray seat and darker gray door.

  Finally the women soldiers hauled me out and half dragged me up some steps. They took the straitjacket off. I could stand okay now that whatever it was the woman on the street had fired at me had worn off.

  I found myself walking along in what appeared to be a public hall in front of a line of women in black uniforms. They all had the same silver hawk emblem and they all wore sidearms, so I figured it was a group of cops or a group of soldiers. A few more of them walked in front of me. Their boots clicked on the marble floors, and everyone we met moved out of their way.

  They might have taken the straitjacket off, but it was still clear I was a prisoner. Whenever I tried to lag behind, one of the storm troopers behind me would give me a shove to walk faster. When I tried to veer left or right a little, another trooper would nudge me back in line.

  Finally we came to a tall doorway where two women with red sashes over their black uniforms stood like they were on guard. We had to stop while one of the storm troopers held out something that looked vaguely like an old-style PDA or a Blackberry. The guard checked it and passed us on with only a nod and a curious glance at me.

  We went through the doorway and came out in a long windowless room with a large oval table. Several people sat at one end, four women and one man.

  I studied the guy first, since he was the first man I had seen. He looked about Mr. Walters’ age. He had gray streaks in his brown hair, and a receding hairline made even more noticeable by the weird way he had trimmed his sideburns into points. He wore a knee-length robe over his other clothes, and his eyes bored into me like I was his long-lost son.

  “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he said, his tone eager.

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  He let out a sigh. “I had hoped.” He had a German accent—not old-war-movie German, but softer. He got to his feet and came closer, looking me over again. “American?”

  “Yeah,” I said, glancing around the room.

  The women were watching us. The woman in the chair nearest his seemed about his age, or maybe a tad younger. She wore her black hair pulled back from her face in a single braid. They all looked vaguely Middle Eastern or maybe South American—brown or black hair and dark eyes.

  “So where am I?” I said.

  “Makoro—another version of the Earth.” He gave me a suspicious once-over glance. “You seem very calm. Most men are more disoriented when they first make the Turn.”

  “It wasn’t my first time.” I decided against mentioning Mr. Walters’ hot wife until I knew more about where I was. “I’d seen it before, but only for a few seconds.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Really?” He glanced at my waist and smiled. “Yes, I see you still have your belt.” His voice sounded suddenly eager. “Do you mean you can Turn at will?”

  I shook my head. “Not that, no. The first time I Turned through Makoro while I was wishing myself home, so I ended up at my house. This time I thought I was going to die, and all I thought about was getting away.”

  His face fell. Before he could ask more questions, the woman with the braid broke in with a few curt sentences.

  The man blinked and gave me an odd look, part pity and part disgust. “They want to know how old you are.”

  “What?” I tried to figure out what I should say. Why did my age matter so much that their first question was how old was I? Should I tell the truth? Lying could cause problems. For one thing, I’d have to remember my answer. For another, I looked my age. They might not believe me if I said I was radically older or younger. Besides, I didn’t know which would be best to say. “Sixteen.”

  His eyes started to smile, like he was relieved, but he stopped himself and instead he just said one unfamiliar word.

  The women didn’t look nearly as pleased. She asked another question.

  “When is your birthday?” the guy said.

  Something made me nervous. I would actually turn seventeen in March, but I just had a feeling that the younger I was, the better off I was. “I just had it two weeks ago.”

  After he translated my fake birthday information, the women started to talk to each other and pretty soon it turned into an argument. I could tell because they kept talking louder and louder.

  “What are they saying?” I asked the guy.

  “They’re quarreling over who gets to foster you.” He jerked his head toward the woman with the braid. “The Ocan Garun wants it to be an Omdur household because she’s in that clan.”

  I digested this. I wished desperately that I had pressed Mr. Walters for more information, but he hadn’t wanted to talk about his wife or the life he had Turned away from. Still, I was pretty sure he had said his wife was an Ocan Garun. “What’s your name?”

  “Max Omdur Schwartzenthaler. What’s yours?”

  “Jason Miller.” I waved a hand around the room. “Where am I? In what city, I mean?”

  “It’s called Egume.”

  So I wasn’t in the same city Mr. Walters had been in. Dodomah, he had called it. It still didn’t feel safe to mention what he had told me.

  The Ocan Garun turned her head and asked another curt question. Max answered her at length, and it seemed to me his answer included names. I was pretty sure I heard him say Joshua, Hobart, Matt, and David, along with some other stuff I couldn’t follow at all. The Ocan Garun looked pleased and turned back to the table.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “She wanted to know who else in Egume could speak your language.”

  I wondered how many guys from the real world were in this
city. But more than anything I wondered what would happen to me now. “So what does it mean to foster someone?”

  He shrugged. “It means they’ll have custody of you until you’re seventeen and old enough to marry into a household. They have to feed you and clothe you and keep you safe.”

  The final task sounded ominous. “Safe from what?”

  Max grinned, but he didn’t looked amused. “Safe from other households.”

  Now that sounded weird. How could a household be a danger? “What constitutes a household?”

  He hesitated before he answered. “A basic household is five to ten women, and all their children, plus a husband if they can get one. But when the daughters grow up, sometimes they form a second generation household with everyone in the same house.”

  I wanted to ask a lot of questions but the Ocan Garun had run out of patience. She stood up and said something that sounded like an edict. The other women sat, grim and stone faced, but none of them said a word.

  “Looks like it’s decided,” Max said.

  I really wished I spoke the language.

  THE second hovercraft-car had smoked windows, but as I was sitting up, I could see out pretty well. They hadn’t let Max come with me, although it had seemed to me he had wanted to. Instead two cop-soldiers rode in the back of the hovercar, one on either side of me.

  After a few minutes we left the skyscrapers and spires behind and came out in an area that reminded me of a Middle Eastern city—two- and three-story houses that edged the streets, with no yards or park space between the houses, and a sort of tall minaret for each house, each one with a colorful banner flying from its tip. All the windows were tall but narrow, and the ones on the lower levels had bars on them. The streets rambled like they had been laid out by someone who was drunk, with hardly a straight line in sight.

  It was just getting dark when the hover-car pulled into an arched gateway and paused while the gate opened. The gate reminded me of Monica’s grandfather’s mansion, but instead of coming out into open space we drove through a long archway. The hovercar waited while another gate opened, and finally we arrived in a courtyard enclosed by the house itself. The second floor had a sort of balcony all around it, overlooking the flagstone and grass courtyard. It reminded me of a Roman villa or maybe a Mexican hacienda. Even in the twilight I could see the bright red and orange flowers blooming in the flower beds. The ground floor rooms had doors and windows that opened onto the courtyard, and unlike the windows that faced the street, these were large and mostly open; light from them shone onto the grass and flagstones.

  My guards opened the door for me just as a group of people came out from the shadow of a doorway into the lights of the courtyard. Most of them were female—gray-haired women, middle-aged women, and several girls. A few of the girls were my age, and a few looked older, maybe twentyish. There were two boys who looked eight or nine, and several school-age girls. I counted heads—seven middle-aged and older women, three young women, three girls about my age, and six younger girls, for a total of nineteen females. At the back of the group I finally saw a man.

  He wore a loose shirt, trousers, and sort of knee-length vest trimmed in blue and green. He was taller than anyone else, but not by much, and his hair and his well-trimmed moustache had gone salt and pepper.

  The older of the gray-haired women started talking to the guards who had brought me. The other females all stood and waited while the man stepped forward, but the two boys pressed their way toward me until the man waved them back.

  “Welcome to our home,” he said to me, a trace of a drawl in his speech. After a second he held out his hand, like shaking hands was habit he had forgotten. “My name is Hobart Omdur Anderson.”

  The women and the boys watched as I shook his hand. The girls were kind of cute, especially one auburn-haired girl who smiled at me.

  “Jason Miller,” I said as I let go of his hand. “Where are you from?”

  “Fort Stockton, Texas.” He said the words without any sadness or nostalgia, like Texas was just up the road. “How about you?”

  “Bethesda, Maryland.”

  He shook his head. “Never been in Maryland. Never been farther north than Amarillo.” He glanced around at the house, or maybe it was the city he was thinking of. “It’s fall now, but the climate is mild all year round. You’ll like it.”

  I swallowed, suddenly homesick. “How long have you been here?”

  His expression stayed serene. “Twenty-four years, next month.”

  It rocked me to think he had been here longer than I had been alive. I swallowed again. If I wasn’t careful, I would cry right in front of all these women. “Did you ever try to go back?”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners as he looked around the courtyard again, a glint of stark humor in his eye. “Kind of hard to do. The one thing I never had to put up with here was any kind of danger.”

  I smelled the sweet fragrance of the red and orange flowers, and then I looked straight up at the pearly gray minaret silhouetted against the charcoal sky where a few stars were already out. The flag was missing from the tip, but a red light on the top blinked like a radio tower. I felt a little like I was in a military base. Short of a tornado or a missile strike, I was sheltered from harm.

  “Come and meet my family,” Hobart said, holding one arm out toward the eldest of the women, who had finished talking to the guards. “This is my senior wife Adeola Omdur Hamad, my other wives, and my children.”

  The gray-haired woman nodded like she understood she was being introduced. She looked older than Hobart by several years, maybe pushing sixty, while he might be forty-five or fifty at most. The other gray-haired woman was about Hobart’s age, and the other five wives looked fortyish.

  Hobart rattled off everyone’s name and their relationships, but I didn’t pay attention except to note that the women’s last names sometimes varied but everyone’s middle name seemed to be Omdur. And of course, I did notice the three girls my age. The redhead’s name was Teleza, and like all the other females who were way younger than Hobart, she was his daughter. I wasn’t entirely clear which wife was her mother except I was pretty sure it wasn’t Adeola, as the senior wife didn’t seem to have any children. I thought Teleza was the prettiest girl, but that might have been because she smiled the most.

  Teleza’s two closest sisters were Panya, who was five months younger, and Ulu, two months older. Hobart must have been busy that year. Panya had night-black hair, thick and straight, and dark eyes, while Ulu’s shoulder-length hair was wavy and honey-brown. The girls didn’t look a whole lot alike, which I guess came from having different mothers—although Panya and Ulu’s mothers were sisters, as were Adeola and two of the other wives.

  “And these are my sons,” Hobart finished off, indicating the two boys with a brief gesture. I noticed they wore their hair the same way as his—really short, but trimmed to a point in front of their ears, even though they were too young for sideburns. “Kafele is nine,” Hobart said with pride, “and Gyasi is eight.”

  “Now ya’ll have met everyone,” he added, the drawl growing more noticeable the longer he talked. “Let’s go inside and have something to eat.”

  My stomach growled, but I didn’t like the idea of going into the house. Somehow the outside seemed safer.

  Adeola said something, and Hobart looked me up and down.

  “Adeola says you look tired.” He gave me a sympathetic grin. “Would you rather just have a tray in your room instead?”

  It sounded better. I was hungry, but I was also freaked out, and I didn’t want to sit down and eat with a bunch of strangers, no matter that three of them were very pretty girls. “Yeah, I would. Thanks.”

  Hobart said something brief, and Adeola took it from there.

  She rattled off some orders. The two youngest women disappeared into the house, and the two boys tugged on my hands.

  “Kafele and Gyasi will show you to your room,” Hobart said. “I’ll come along to translate.” />
  We trooped along, the only four males in the place. The boys chattered away in their own language as they led the way through the courtyard and toward a doorway.

  Hobart grinned when I asked him what they were saying. “Gyasi is explaining that you’ll be staying in his bedroom, but he doesn’t mind giving it up to room with Kafele because he was lonely after he moved out of the nursery. Kafele is asking if you like to play games and do you fence.”

  “Fence?” It took me a second to make the word into a verb that didn’t involve stolen goods. “You mean like with swords?”

  Hobart’s grin widened. “Of course with swords. Do you know any other way to fence?”

  It surprised the heck out of me to think these people practiced what I thought of as an archaic sport. “I don’t even know anyone who fences.”

  Hobart’s eyes gleamed like he was amused. “It wasn’t big in Texas, either. But it’s popular here, along with a form of martial arts called jin-weh. They’re both good exercise, and it never hurts to have a clue how to defend yourself.”

  That comment surprised me even more. “You said you’d never been in any danger here.”

  “I haven’t.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “The threat isn’t death but kidnapping. You need to get used to the idea that you’re a valuable commodity.”

  Now that weirded me out. A valuable commodity—like gold or diamonds. I looked around as Hobart opened a heavy steel door, and I stepped inside. I saw a short corridor with four doors, two on each side, and a stairway that led up to the second floor. All the inside doors were made of steel, too.

  It looked like I was getting locked into a vault with the other treasures.

  THE small room that had been Gyasi’s was simply furnished—a comfortable bed, a night table, a tall chest of drawers, a lamp, and bars on the windows. That first night I went to bed in my clothes because I was afraid to take them off. I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling and missing my mom and my sister and wishing I had been holding my iPod in the car so I could at least listen to some music.