Timelock

by David Klass

  She tugs gently on his beard, bringing his face down to hers. “One kiss.”

  My dad whispers that he loves her and kisses her softly on the lips.

  “Enough,” she whispers, breaking away. “More than this I can’t bear.”

  He straightens up, looking sadder than he did when we first found him tied up in the Dark Army’s torture cell.

  “Jair,” she gasps, and then corrects herself. “Jack.”

  I step over to her. “You finally got my name right.”

  She smiles back at me. “Can you forget your anger long enough to accept a mother’s blessing?”

  “Under the circumstances, I guess so.”

  Her arms come behind my head and draw me down, and she kisses me softly on the center of the forehead. “Even if you can’t forgive, try to understand,” she whispers.

  “I will,” I hear myself promise her. “And you try to get better. I’ve already lost one mother.”

  She looks up at me and nods, and then she releases me.

  My right hand is wet with her blood. The sight of my mother’s blood makes me stagger back, onto the red sled, which is now resting on the cave’s floor. The room seems like it’s swirling around. My father puts a hand on my back, bracing me. Gisco is on the sled, too.

  No, wait, the sight of Mom’s blood didn’t make me faint. The cave chamber really is swirling!

  Or perhaps we’re the ones spinning, as the red sled revolves faster and faster.

  I see images in the cave chamber. The faces of the ninja priests.

  My mother’s eyes watching me.

  Trying to hold on to me as long as they can.

  And then her eyes release me and the images from the gloomy cave chamber are overwhelmed as I am propelled at incredible speed through a tunnel of blinding light.

  PART FOUR

  44

  The trip back through time is as painful as when I came hurtling forward a thousand years, except that on this return voyage I sort of know what to expect.

  I am sucked into the black hole of the event horizon, and feel myself being torn apart. But if I can stand it a minute more, just a few seconds more, I will be through it . . .

  I scream, and I have a sense that Gisco and my father are near me and are also screaming. No one could endure this level of agony and keep any self-control. It feels like I’m being scrambled alive in a giant eggbeater.

  And then I’m bursting past a golden membrane into a cottony haze. And the good news is that this time I’m pretty sure I won’t find myself alone, in a sandstorm, in an unknown future world.

  This time I’ll rematerialize on my safe old earth with Kidah and Gisco and my father.

  Particles. A quanta snowstorm. The dandruff of space-time. I’m sailing through it, head over heels.

  This isn’t the scorching, salty sand that I landed in when I journeyed into the far future.

  It’s cool and soft. Like sinking back onto a giant bed in an air-conditioned hotel room.

  I lie there for a few minutes, recovering my senses.

  It’s more than cool. It’s cold. Freezing!

  And the bed isn’t soft. It’s a rock-hard slab. Also, I sense that it’s moving!

  Floating!

  I turn my head to where the white slab ends and see glistening blue water.

  I get to my knees and see that I’m on a vast ice floe, surrounded by a polar sea. There’s no sign of any other pieces of drift ice, and no solid land.

  I turn back to the iceberg and look around.

  My father lies on his back about twenty feet away, unmoving. I crawl in his direction.

  Beyond him, I see a rotund shape stirring—it looks like a beach ball that someone left outside for the winter. A great head and snout are slowly raised above the ice, and they rotate in my direction. So we made it, old friend.

  Yes, I tell Gisco, but my dad’s not moving.

  The dog struggles to his feet and hurries over to my father, and I do the same. We stand together for a second, looking down at that prematurely old, pain-lined face.

  I feel a stab of guilt, just as I did when my mom was bleeding in the cave. Suppose he died during the trip through time, and my last words to him were in anger.

  My father groans and clutches his chest. He opens one eye and looks up at us. His lips move. “Where’s Kidah?” he gasps weakly.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him. “There must have been a screwup. We’re all by ourselves, on an ice floe.”

  “Dark Army interference,” Dad gasps, trying to sit up and then sinking back down. “Must have knocked us off our trajectory. Kidah will locate us soon.” He lets out a sigh and his eyes close again.

  Rest, Your Highness. We’ll be perfectly safe here till he finds us, Gisco contributes optimistically. Would you like me to get some water to wet your lips? Ice floes are an excellent source of fresh water. The learned hound waits for a reaction from my father, and explains: The salt is filtered naturally by brine rejection and leaches out the bottom, so the meltwater on top is drinkable . . .

  My dad’s eyes flutter, and he looks like he’s going to sleep. But he opens his mouth and whispers weakly, “We’re not as safe as you think.”

  Uh-oh. I’ve learned not to underestimate my father. I look around but don’t see anyone or anything dangerous.

  Gisco has a superb nose for sniffing out danger. He inhales deeply and also comes up empty. What threatens us, Your Highness? he asks warily.

  My father raises one hand above the ice and points.

  The ice gleams in the sunlight, so it’s hard to see. Gisco and I squint in the direction of his finger. The floe we’re on must be five miles wide, but in the far distance I can just make out a small white dot moving toward us. Whatever it is, it matches its surroundings so perfectly that it looks like a tiny snowball has broken off the ice floe and is rolling in our direction.

  No, not rolling, bounding. Gisco, I ask, what is it?

  The big dog sniffs again and does not look happy. It’s a peculiar and not particularly appetizing scent that I’ve never smelled before, but if I had to take a wild guess I’d say it’s a large specimen of male polar bear.

  How large? I ask. It looks tiny.

  That’s because it matches its surroundings so perfectly. Gisco is looking around to see if there’s anywhere to retreat, but we’re at the edge of the ice floe. They’re the biggest land predators in the world—twice the size of Siberian tigers.

  This is not good news. I glance at my father to see if he will be able to help us. He’s lying flat on his back, eyes closed, barely breathing. We’re going to have to fight this battle ourselves. Do they eat humans? I ask the knowledgeable mutt.

  Polar bears are apex predators—they eat anything they can kill, Gisco informs me haplessly. Seals, fish, musk ox, walruses—and, of course, dogs and humans. They’re especially dangerous when they’ve been marooned on drift ice with little food.

  What do you suggest we do? I ask him.

  Kill it before it eats us, Gisco advises, his eyes on the bear which has bounded close enough to us so that I can see its hulking shoulders, its flowing cream-colored coat, and its tree-trunk-thick legs capped with enormous paws.

  I telepathically switch on the blade of my sapphire scimitar. I also dip a hand into my pocket and take out my last remaining Big Popper bomb.

  Gisco drags my father behind me. Good, Jack. Chop it down or blow it up. I would fight with you, but it’s my sacred duty to keep watch over the King. So go to it! That albino bruin is no match for the beacon of hope!

  The bear stops twenty feet from us and sniffs the air, as if enjoying the aroma of its first good meal in weeks.

  I step forward to meet it, moving in the circling sidestep that Eko taught me on the Outer Banks. I’m scared, but at the same time it’s kind of thrilling to be walking out like David against Goliath, a lone warrior carrying all the hopes of his people, versus a giant.

  The bear rears up on its hind legs. It must weigh more tha
n a thousand pounds and when it stands upright it’s more than twelve feet tall. It has a much longer neck than I would have imagined, which it extends to give it an even more towering presence. When it waves its forelegs at me I can see long, razor-sharp claws poking out of its snowshoe-size paws. Eager to display all its weapons, it growls and shows me a mouthful of long, sharp teeth.

  I stop circling forward and back up a step. It’s truly a colossal beast, fighting in its own element. One swipe of a giant, clawed paw will kill me. Perhaps I should give up on my samurai ambitions and just blow this beast to smithereens.

  I telepathically switch on the Big Popper bomb and draw back my hand to hurl it. It will explode in five seconds. I take careful aim. Four. Three . . .

  Suddenly, my right hand is seized from behind in an iron grip. My fingers are pried open and the bomb is ripped out. Two seconds left . . .

  I spin around and see my father, on his knees, holding my bomb.

  There’s one second remaining!

  45

  Dad hurls the bomb out over the water. It explodes with a tremendous BANG, creating a small tsunami that washes over the iceberg, wetting us to our ankles.

  The bear stops advancing, puzzled by the loud noise.

  “Why did you do that?” I ask my father. “That was my last bomb. Now I’ll have to fight it with the scimitar.”

  He looks back at me and shakes his head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t have the right to kill it.”

  “Doesn’t the fact that it wants to eat us give us that right?” I ask.

  “Not in the least,” he says, and struggles to his feet.

  But, Sire, Gisco chimes in respectfully, while I couldn’t agree with you more that our lives are valueless in and of themselves when weighed against the pristine beauty of nature and its marvelous predators . . . Gisco pauses to cast a fearful glance at the bear. Surely since we carry all the hopes of Dann and the future world with us, we have a moral imperative to survive at all costs, even if it means in this one tragic instance slaying this boreal eating machine before it ingests us.

  “Absolutely not, faithful servant,” my father tells Gisco, taking a step toward the bear. “That is the self-serving logic that led mankind and the earth to ruin. Behold the wisdom of Dann: We are part of a magnificent web of life greater than ourselves. We do not have the right to unravel a single thread of that fabric, or we greatly risk destroying the entire magical tapestry.”

  My father and the bear are now only ten feet apart. I grip the handle of my scimitar and step out a few paces behind my dad. I’m willing to trust the wisdom of Dann to a point, but if eat-or-be-eaten time comes, I’m planning to fall back on Darwin and survival-of-the-fittest logic.

  The bear rears up again and snarls at us. Seen this close, it looks like a white Godzilla of thick fur and prodigious muscles, with scythe-like claws and more than forty gleaming teeth.

  Dad takes another step and marvels softly: “What beauty! I have waited my whole life to see such a thing!”

  The bear takes a leisurely swipe at him. Dad stumbles back, barely avoiding the blow.

  My father stops retreating and stands still, looking up at the bear. He raises his arms, as if reaching out to the enormous beast, and peers directly up into the bear’s black eyes.

  The bear looks down at him and growls again, but it’s a different sort of growl—less ferocious and more inquisitive. Then it slowly lowers itself to four legs and sits, watching us carefully.

  My father steps even closer to it.

  I’ve seen Eko communicate with animals and fish, so I know it can be done. But she mostly seemed to pal around with friendly pink dolphins and wise old sea turtles. This ferocious bear is a hungry apex carnivore, and I could tell it intended to kill us. It’s pretty impressive to watch my dad walk toward it, step by fearless step, until he’s right in front of it.

  “It’s hungry and confused,” my father explains. “It was hunting seals, and tried to swim from one piece of drift ice to another. But the ice is melting because of rising water temperatures and there was no place to pull itself up and rest.”

  Dad reaches out and touches the bear’s white fur. The bear puts a big paw on his shoulder. For a moment, the King of Dann and this lone bear look at each other. “It swam for three days and nights,” my father continues. “When it was about to drown, it found this iceberg. And it’s been marooned here, wondering whether it should try to swim again, but fearing it would drown in the open ocean.”

  I try to imagine what it would be like to be as strong as this bear, able to swim hour after hour in freezing seas, but slowly weakening.

  Suddenly the great bear rears up and snarls, and for a minute I think it’s going to bite my father. But its head swivels around on its long neck, as it senses danger from another direction.

  It wheels around quickly and faces the waves.

  I follow its gaze and see a very strange-looking boat drawing near, with the Mysterious Kidah standing in the stern, waving at us.

  46

  The boat looks like it is made from driftwood that was lashed together and covered with stretched seal or walrus skins. A dozen short men—six to a side—paddle with long-loomed oars. They don’t seem to be stroking very hard, but the boat shoots through the water. I recall that on our trip upriver from the rain forest’s sacred valley, Kidah used his wizardry to still the current and speed us on our journey. Something tells me he’s using his unique powers to help these Eskimos propel this primitive craft over the choppy polar sea.

  By a combination of paddling skill and magic, the boat glides very near the edge of the ice floe. “Come on,” Kidah shouts, waving for us to jump. Gisco leads the way, running over the ice and building up speed till he leaps like a ski jumper and comes down safely inside the boat. Not a bad jump for a rotund, stumpy-legged canine.

  I go next. It’s hard to build up speed slipping and sliding on the ice, but a breeze stirs up out of nowhere and blows at my back. I reach the edge of the iceberg and leap, and for a long moment I hang in the air, certain I’m going to come down in the freezing waves. Then I grasp the side of the boat, and a dozen strong hands help me in.

  “Welcome home, Jack,” Kidah says and gives me a big hug. “So how did the big father-son reunion go?”

  “Swell,” I say. “Mission accomplished. He’s here.”

  The wizard reads my face. “Sheesh, you gotta cut your old man a break. He was locked up longer than you’ve been shaving.” He studies my eyes a second more and then shrugs. “Anyway, you guys made it back just in the nick of time.”

  “In time for what?” I ask.

  For a moment Kidah’s usual optimism and good cheer slip. “Things are not good,” he mutters. “In fact they flat-out stink.” Then he regains his enthusiasm. “So we’ve got to start fighting back and find a way to turn things around. First, let’s get your dad on board.”

  “He’ll never be able to make the jump,” I caution the old sorcerer. “The trip back through time was hard for him. He can barely stand.”

  “He’s stronger than you know,” Kidah assures me. Then he breaks into a big smile. “Anyway, it looks like he’s found a friend.”

  I see that the polar bear is lying flat on the edge of the ice floe, and my father is climbing onto its back. The Eskimos gasp as the bear slides into the water and swims straight for our boat with my dad along for the ride.

  Two Eskimo men near me pick up rifles and take careful aim. If they shoot the bear, my dad will sink into the icy sea.

  Kidah whispers to the Eskimos in a chant-like language and they grudgingly put their guns back down. They don’t look pleased at the prospect of having an apex predator on board, but the old wizard seems to have won their trust, much as he immediately assumed a position of leadership with the lost tribe of the Amazon.

  Instead of shooting the bear, the Eskimos lower a fishing net. We all grab hold and brace ourselves as the bear clambers up the netti
ng. He looks at Kidah and the Eskimos and growls, but it’s not an “I’m going to attack you” growl—it’s a “We’re all in this together” growl. He finds a spot in the bow of the craft, sits down, and curls up.

  I notice that Kidah doesn’t call my father Your Highness or Sire or bow and scrape to him as many other Dannites do. Instead, he grins and hurries forward, shouting, “Simeon, you creaking bag of bones.”

  “Kidah,” my father calls back, “by the whiskers of Dann, you wrinkled sea horse!” and for a moment all threats to present and future worlds are forgotten as they embrace like long-separated boyhood friends.

  They finally pull apart, and Kidah gives my father a worried look. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “It’s nothing,” my father assures him. “Just travel fatigue. You’ve met my son?”

  “Of course,” Kidah says. “He got you out of that tower, I gather.”

  “On the day I was to be executed,” Dad says proudly. “It was a fine thing.”

  “Happy to be of service when needed,” I mutter.

  My father glances at me, and then his eyes move on to Gisco. “And you know this resourceful and faithful servant of Dann?”

  “We fought a battle together in the Amazon,” Kidah says, smiling at Gisco. “And of course I knew his father well. That rascal used to steal my lunch!”

  My father was not a thief, Gisco huffs telepathically. It was a matter of family philosophy. I don’t acknowledge ownership when it comes to food, and I’m sure my father didn’t, either. A good meal is the property of no man or beast. It belongs to the universal empty stomach. And since we’re on the subject, unless my nose is playing tricks on me there’s some dried fish and seal meat on this boat that would make a very welcome snack.

  A few minutes later I’m digging into a salmon steak while Gisco is munching on seal meat and the polar bear is ripping apart an entire reindeer leg. I notice that my dad doesn’t partake of the feast—something tells me the King of Dann is a strict vegetarian. He stands in the bow of the boat, talking to Kidah. I’m not sure what they’re discussing, but they both look worried.