by Gregory Mone
“They’re from the Rift,” Kaya answered.
Gogol studied Lewis’s dad as if he were some sort of exotic zoo creature. “I didn’t realize they grew them that big in the Rift.”
“Naxos said you’d be able to help us get to Ridge City.”
The man clasped his hands on the stone surface of the desk. They were swollen and smeared with black grime. “There are many ways to Ridge City. The trains are easiest.”
“My friends here don’t want to attract too much attention.”
“Your friends from the Rift.”
“Right.”
“I may be able to help.” Gogol looked down at his hands, then up at Kaya. “I could rent you a vehicle and show you the way . . . for the right price.”
Kaya suggested a number. The man immediately laughed. His breath smelled like smoked fish, and Lewis swallowed a small eruption of vomit. He crossed his legs. This wasn’t the right time to ask for directions to a toilet.
She offered another figure.
“I cannot help you.”
Kaya removed the purse she’d gotten from Naxos and stacked a dozen gold coins on the desk. “This is all I have.”
Lewis’s dad snapped photos with his wristpad.
“That is not nearly enough to rent one of my vehicles.”
“That’s enough to buy one!” Kaya protested.
“Not for an uncharted trip to Ridge City,” Gogol replied. “A man like me could get into very, very serious trouble helping you take a trip like that. But you don’t have to pay with money. There are other ways.”
“Like what?”
“I’ll take the big one,” he said, pointing to Lewis’s dad.
“He wants to buy me? I’m not for sale, sir.”
“Not you. The device on your wrist.”
Now Lewis’s father shook his head. “I’m not giving him my wristpad. All my work is stored in here. My Atlantis journals. This is more valuable than you could possibly imagine—”
Hanna put her hands in her pockets, hiding her ring.
Gogol pointed to Lewis’s wrist. “What’s that one, then?”
The watch from Roberts. Lewis stared down at the face, the leather band, the tiny compass. When his stepdad had given it to him, Roberts had told him that the compass would make sure Lewis never lost his way. “It’s a watch,” he said. “It tells you the time of day.”
The man leaned over his desk and eyed the timepiece. “Yes, I’ve seen something like this before. Fetched a very high price. The rumor was that it wasn’t from Atlantis at all.” He tipped his head up toward the ceiling—or maybe the surface. He motioned to Kaya. “That, my girl, would be worth something.”
His dad draped his heavy, sweaty arm over Lewis’s shoulder. “It’s just an old watch,” he whispered. “I’ll find you another one.”
But it wasn’t just a watch. Lewis remembered when Roberts had given it to him, on his tenth birthday. At first he’d handed it right back. He didn’t want any gifts from his stepfather. He didn’t want a stepfather. The guy had ruined everything! Every last drop of hope that his parents would get back together had evaporated when his mother had married Roberts, the bald hero from the Coastal Patrol. The guy who was the opposite of his father in every possible way. Then they’d had Michael, and that had pretty much cemented the situation.
Sure, Lewis had wanted a watch. Desperately. But his own dad—his real dad, as he’d reminded Roberts—had already promised him one for his birthday. So he didn’t need that one. When he returned the gift, though, his mother was furious. But his stepfather had simply taken the watch, set it on his desk, and told Lewis it would be there waiting for him if he wanted to wear it one day. The guy was almost impossible to hate, and that day arrived sooner than Lewis had expected.
His dad didn’t just forget to give Lewis a watch.
He forgot his birthday entirely.
A week passed before Lewis snuck the timepiece off the bookshelf. From then on, he wore it every day, and Roberts never said a thing.
Suddenly, standing there in Gogol’s shop, Lewis felt weak. Defeated. The watch, the memory, the thought of his mother—it all sort of pulled him back home. Four miles up and who knew how many hundreds of miles away. He wished he could just blink and be transported back to his little room in his little house.
“Lewis? Son? What are you waiting for?”
Quietly, he unstrapped the watch and laid it on the counter. His chest instantly tightened. He wanted to be back with his mom and Roberts and his drippy-nosed, cheese-stinking brother. His father tried to hug him. Lewis shook off his arm and backed away.
Gogol handled the timepiece carefully, marveling at the tiny gears inside. “I’ll take it,” he said, sweeping up the coins with one of his grimy hands, “and the gold.”
“That’s not fair!” Kaya said. “I didn’t say—”
“The gold is for the rental,” he replied. “But I’m sure these friends of yours attracted some attention on your way here. Nothing in Edgeland goes unnoticed. There will be questions about you four. The watch means I don’t give anyone the answers.”
Gogol waved them around the counter and through a crowded back room into what looked like a repair shop. Six different vehicles were spread around the space. They were oval-shaped, not quite like hovercars or the old-fashioned autos Lewis had seen pictures of in books. Not a single one had a roof; they reminded Lewis more of metal life rafts than advanced vehicles. One of them had its hood pulled off. Another was missing its windshield. And they were all dented and rusting.
The rust. The dents. For the first time since the wave, Lewis thought of poor Chet. There was no way the old hover-car had survived that tsunami. Good old Chet. He meant well. Told decent jokes, too, for a machine.
“Do any of these things even work?” Kaya asked.
The merchant whistled a series of short, choppy notes. Inside one of the junkers, a motor began to whirr and spin. The vehicle shook, then rose shakily off the ground, but it soared no higher than an inch or two before crashing back down. Gogol frowned. “That was running beautifully just a few days ago.”
“Great,” Kaya said. “This place is a real junkyard.”
“Heaven is a junkyard,” Hanna said, standing with her hands on her hips. “Can I look around?”
Gogol shrugged. “Go ahead. You break it, you buy it.”
“Most of this stuff is already broken,” Kaya noted.
“That is completely untrue,” Gogol replied. The merchant picked up a deadly trumpet and fired at the wall. Nothing happened. “Well, maybe it’s slightly true.”
Hanna held out her hand. Gogol passed her the broken trumpet. She turned it over and over, inspecting it from every angle. “I’m not even going to bother asking you how this works, because no one around here seems to know anything about your technology, other than what it does.”
“Ah, but I know how to fix it!” Gogol replied.
Hanna brightened. “You do? Show me.”
Great. She was making friends with a crooked Atlantean mechanic.
Kaya, meanwhile, was focused on Lewis. “Why are you dancing?” she asked.
Was he dancing? Not really.
His father recognized his shuffle. “He has to go . . . you know.”
Gogol whistled again, a string of longer notes this time.
A door swung open, and Lewis hurried inside.
His dad and Kaya were still inspecting the vehicles when he returned. Gogol was showing Hanna how to repair the trumpet.
“All that gold for one of these?” Kaya asked, standing over one of the junkers.
“It certainly doesn’t seem equitable,” Lewis’s dad added.
“These are fine machines!” Gogol protested. “Resilient, too, and beautifully built.”
He gently kicked one.
The vehicle’s door fell off and clattered to the rocky floor.
“Pristine,” Hanna quipped.
“Are they cars?” Lewis asked. “Or boats?”
“Both,” Hanna said. She was sitting on the floor, fiddling with the busted trumpet. “Whoa,” she added, pointing to a pile of discarded machinery and equipment in the corner. “What’s all that?”
“Trash,” Gogol said.
Rusting and dented hunks of metal were mixed in with grimy, oil-smeared parts. Hanna knelt before the scraps and picked through them. To Lewis, it looked like an alien spaceship had puked up its insides, but Hanna marveled at every gadget and component and broken part. Lewis’s father stood beside her, pointing his wristpad and taking photos. With his other hand, he scratched his neck where Naxos had shot him with the tracker.
Hanna grabbed a cube with wires dangling out the back. “What’s this?”
“That connects the car to the soundscape so you can listen to music or stories,” Kaya explained. “When it’s working.”
“So it’s like a radio,” Hanna said. “Can I take it?”
“I suppose I could sell you a few—”
“She can take all the junk she wants for all the gold I just gave you,” Kaya snapped.
“Fine,” Gogol grumbled.
Hanna asked for Kaya’s backpack, and the girl from Atlantis tossed the half-filled bag across the room. Hanna held up some kind of metal rod in one hand and a cloth case in another. “Sweet! A tool kit!”
Beaming, Hanna continued to pick through the pile. Kaya, meanwhile, was still surveying the vehicles. She walked from one to the next, studying the cabins, kneeling and peering at the underside of each one. The more time she took, though, the more she looked like someone who was trying to appear as if she knew what she was doing but actually had no clue. Finally, she rested her hand on the hood of a low, wide cruiser. “We’ll take this one.”
“Sorry, that’s not working,” Gogol said. He pointed to a rusted junker in the corner. “That will be perfect for you.”
The vehicle had two wide rows of seats, both facing forward. There was a windshield but no roof, and one of the side panels was crumpled like aluminum foil. How did a vehicle even get that dented? Lewis pictured dozens of gnomes wielding tiny hammers, striking the metal gleefully. They’d be singing, too. Fun, cheerful songs about the joys of destroying machines with their little weapons.
First we bang the doors.
Then we dent the hood.
Next we cut the wires.
Like all gnomes should!
They’d probably eat cupcakes, too. After the singing.
Lewis’s dad gently backhanded him. “Are you with us?” he whispered.
“Yep.”
He would not mention the gnomes and their song. Ever.
To anyone.
Hanna stood with the bag full of tools and scrap parts hanging from her shoulder. “That doesn’t even look like it’ll start.”
“Does it have gravity drive?” Kaya asked.
“Gravity drive?” the professor asked. “What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Hanna said.
“Yes, it does, but I wouldn’t count on it working for very long. Especially given the size of this one,” Gogol said, pointing to Lewis’s dad. “At your weight, she’ll run out of boost in a few minutes. Don’t worry, though. You’re not going to want to drift into Ridge City, anyway. Not unless you want these people to get noticed. The waterways will be best. She floats beautifully. She’s the safest one I’ve got and faster than you think.”
“We’ll take it,” Kaya announced. “You’ll give us directions to Ridge City?”
Gogol nodded. “Of course. No problem. You wouldn’t want to get lost in these tunnels.”
As Kaya and Hanna jumped into the front seat, Gogol moved to one of the large garage-like doors in the cave wall. He whistled a tune he hadn’t used yet. The metal door rolled up, revealing an underground river rushing past on the other side.
Lewis’s dad started whispering into his wristpad. “They control machines by whistling,” he said quietly. “New chapter idea: Atlantis as a sonic society. Everything is controlled by sound. Must explore further.”
The water smelled like an old, wet shoe. Lewis lifted his shirt to cover his nose and mouth. But the stinking rag he’d peeled off the dockmaster nearly made him hurl. He pulled it down again and breathed deep. The river air was like a fresh mountain breeze compared to the odor-infused shirt.
His father winced slightly and itched his neck again.
The cruiser’s engine purred. Not the roar of an old-fashioned engine or the buzz of a battery-powered hovercar, exactly. The sound was smoother, an almost pleasing hum. As Gogol watched, Kaya took the controls, her hands lying flat on two tablets. Suddenly the car was floating on a layer of air.
“Amazing,” Lewis’s dad said.
Hanna leaned over the side and stared down at the ground. Lewis’s dad was on his hands and knees, sweeping his arm beneath the vehicle as if he expected to hit some invisible structure. Again, he spoke into his wristpad. “They’ve conquered gravity. Gravity! Absolutely incredible. Not to mention that it supports my theory about how they make the waves.” He stopped and eyed Gogol. The man’s face was pure confusion. “Another possible new chapter on Atlantean gravity technology.”
“Are you sure you’re from the Rift?” Gogol asked.
“How about those directions?” Kaya pressed.
He nodded and grabbed a tablet. “Yes. Right.”
A loud ding sounded. The two Atlanteans eyed the door to the front room.
“What was that?” Hanna asked.
“Probably just a customer,” Gogol said. “They’ll wait.”
Sitting in the driver’s seat, Kaya motioned to the tablet. “Directions.”
The door to the front room shook as someone tried to push it open from the other side. Gogol reached for the weapon at his waist. “My customers don’t try to break through my doors. Are you expecting anyone?”
“Maybe it’s Naxos,” Hanna suggested. “He said he’d try to meet us.”
Now Kaya pointed at Lewis’s dad. “Professor, your neck . . . why are you scratching it?”
“Just an odd itch—”
She gasped. “He tricked us.”
“What do you mean?” Lewis asked. “Who?”
“Naxos! The tracking device . . . that wasn’t for him. That was for the Erasers.”
Gogol’s face paled. “The Erasers are following you?”
Without waiting for confirmation, he dashed over to the low cruiser Kaya had picked out first. He tried to leap over the side, but his stomach got in his way, and he tumbled over the door and into the passenger seat. This would’ve been kind of funny, Lewis decided, if the guy hadn’t looked so terrified. Gogol shimmied into the driver’s seat and switched on the motor.
The motor that was supposed to be broken.
The vehicle quickly rose off the ground.
Sweat beaded on Gogol’s huge forehead.
“You said that wasn’t working!” Kaya shouted.
“You said they were from the Rift,” he replied.
And with a slight shrug, he steered the cruiser forward. Lewis jumped out of the way as Gogol sped through the opening, over the underground river, and away into the darkness.
“So much for directions,” Hanna noted.
Panicking, Kaya drummed her hand on the dashboard. “Get in, get in!”
Lewis climbed in first, and when his dad followed, the vehicle dropped to the floor.
The motor hummed louder and louder, but their cruiser wouldn’t lift off the ground.
“We’re too heavy!” Kaya shouted. “The gravity drive’s not strong enough. We need to get rid of some weight.”
Lewis tore off his sweaty headwrap and tossed it onto the ground. “How about that?”
“Are you serious?” Hanna asked.
“We need to move,” Kaya said.
Yes, he knew that. They all knew that. But how much weight could they ditch?
“We’re not separating,” Hanna insisted.
“We don’t have to,” Kaya sai
d. “If a few of us get out, we can push it forward into the river, then jump back in.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Lewis’s dad said.
Once he was on the ground, the cruiser immediately rose again.
His dad pushed. The cruiser floated forward through the opening.
The door to the front room shook.
Kaya was still slapping her hand against the dashboard. “Faster, faster!”
“It’s remarkably light and easy,” Lewis’s father said. “I imagine these vehicles require very little thrust.” He raised his wristpad to his mouth. “New note: Explore the dynamics of antigravity propulsion.”
He was adding to the journals now? Seriously?
The cruiser was finally over the river. “Hey, Professor,” Hanna said, “get in!”
But his dad held up his finger. One more note. He just needed to make one more note. He stood at the edge of the underground river with one hand on the side of the cruiser, talking into his wristpad, recording a few last details about the gravity drive. Lewis didn’t just want to toss the wristpad into the river. He wanted to smash it with a rock. No, a boulder. Or give it to those hammer-wielding gnomes and tell them to do their very worst. The water was rushing over his dad’s boots, and he was holding the wristpad close to his mouth, when the door to the front of the shop burst off its hinges and slammed to the stone floor.
A group of men and women holding deadly trumpets and frightening flutes raced out.
The Erasers had found them.
“Invaders!” one of the women shouted.
Another Eraser dashed across the room with his trumpet raised. His head was gleaming and bald and his wide Atlantean eyes were gray. A thick tangle of green hair hung from his chin, and his crooked teeth were black and brown. Lewis watched the muscles in his fingers tense as he aimed his trumpet at their cruiser.
The Eraser squeezed the trigger.
His dad was the only thing between them and the weapon.
A strange sort of cry roared out of him.
Then his dad fell forward, and Kaya pushed the throttle, rocketing the ship into the darkness.
11
Friends or Monsters
The tunnel branched and curved as the water rushed forward. The gravity drive had already died. The cruiser was just a raft now, and Kaya had bumped into the tunnel wall more than she would have liked. But she was finally getting the feel of the steering, and she turned at random each time the tunnel split, choosing left or right without really thinking. Directions? She’d worry about them later. When they had some distance between them and the Erasers. Now she just needed to watch and listen for signs that they were being followed.
