“Mark, you might be able to track down Kasey and get that other map,” she said. “Once we find Mom.” If we find Mom, she thought.
Mark shook his head. But there was a hesitation to his shake.
“You could also check out a map of the future. Last time you were there, didn’t you just look at old maps? There might be something useful on a map of the future.”
Mark didn’t shake his head this time.
Smoke rose from the swamp in lazy furls, and for a moment they might even have believed it was just patches of fog hanging low in the hollow—until they got out of the Jag and the smell hit them, and they knew that the swamp still burned. Farley bounced around in exhilaration, convinced that he was finally going for his walk.
A large “closed” sign hung on the entrance to the boardwalk trail that circled the swamp. A man in a beret stood smoking a cigarette by the interpretive sign that told visitors about the swamp flora and fauna. He turned when he heard the crunch of gravel in the parking lot behind him.
“Funny,” Ian said. “I had those cards for years, puzzling about what those numbers meant. So I give them to you, hoping that you’re smarter than I am, and you figure it out on the same day as me.” Ian tossed his cigarette and ground it into the gravel with his heel. Abbey shuddered.
“Where are Frank and Francis?” Abbey said.
“Trying to take care of some business.”
“What made you finally figure it out?”
“When Selena, Nate, and Damian went after Sylvain’s house. There were always rumors of another set of stones. Seeing the second set of docks on our hike a few weeks ago confirmed it for me. We all figured that if anyone knew where the other set of stones was, it would be Sylvain. But nobody guessed that he’d built his house on top of them. Anyway, once Selena moved in on Sylvain’s house today, I finally clued in that those numbers on the card were coordinates, and that I should head to the swamp.” He blew a puff of air through his nose. “Slow learner I guess.”
“Where’s our father?” Abbey said. Caleb had already wandered away and was checking the stability of the first section of boardwalk.
Ian blinked and then shook his head. “I don’t know.” It occurred to Abbey that they really didn’t know Ian. That it could in fact be the two Franks who had their dad.
“Does Selena have him? The wind shifted, and the stink of smoke and swamp mud hit Abbey’s face.
“I don’t know. It’s possible that she’s interrogating him. But I don’t know for sure.”
“Interrogating him? Why?”
Ian shrugged. “I told you about the files that contain information about the stones, how they work, everything—information that’s extremely valuable to a lot of people. Someone has those files. Except nobody knows who, or where. Ford denies having them, and we’ve all searched his office and condo, and realistically, he’s such a bumbler that I believe him. Sylvain acts like he does have them, and he’s had years to vault things up with fingerprint pad entries and stone walls, but he denies it too. Your parents and Francis are the other leading suspects to have the files—or at least the leading suspects to know who does.”
“We have to find him. What if they hurt him?”
Ian shook his head, and his fingers played against the remaining two cigarettes in his pocket. “Selena and your dad…” Ian paused. “They go way back. She wouldn’t hurt him.” Ian paused again and gave a rather delicate and strange cough. “He may in fact be helping her. I think we need to find these other stones.”
Abbey was about to splutter that her father would never help Selena, when Caleb interrupted. “Who’s the Energy for these stones?” Caleb said.
“I don’t know for sure, but…” Ian extended his arm with a finger outstretched to a small yellow house that sat across the road from the swamp parking lot. “That’s my childhood home. I’m just guessing, but I think it might be me.”
Abbey looked at him doubtfully. “Why didn’t you use these stones as a kid then?”
“Because I didn’t know these stones were here. The ones on Coventry Hill have always been the ones that everyone uses. Even Sylvain, despite obviously having his own set. I think it’s because they drop you closer to transportation to the city center, or the city centers in the future. These ones are out of town, and who knows what conditions are like on the other end of these stones in the future. We could end up in the middle of the swamp or desert. And there are gravity issues associated with going out of town in at least one of the futures.”
Abbey examined Ian. He was speaking too quickly and with too much animation, even for Ian. There was something he wasn’t telling them. Or he was simply telling them things that were untrue.
“Let’s go,” Caleb called from the boardwalk. “This part of the boardwalk is mostly intact. We can make it partway around before we reach the totally burned sections.” Ian gave her a hopeful smile, and she found herself wanting to believe him, and wanting to believe in him.
They set out in single file along the boardwalk, Farley’s nails clicking on the wood. Abbey could feel the heat of the swamp’s rising steam on her face, and she had to undo her winter coat. The smell of rotting and burning swamp mud surrounded her, and the trees in this part of the swamp were blackened, gnarled sticks. A few sections of boardwalk had burned away, and they had to leap across open water and mud. Despite the desolation and damage, birds still twittered in trees and darted in and among skiffs of unburned grass and cattails. And as always, when near a set of stones, Abbey could feel a faint throbbing pull, drawing her in, calling to her.
After about ten minutes, the boardwalk ended in a charred remnant. Mudflats with pools of murky water lay before them for at least fifty meters before the boardwalk resumed.
“Now what?” said Abbey, as Caleb gingerly set one foot into the mud. “Caleb, don’t! It could be hot. You could break through to one of the fires still burning underground.”
“But look!” Caleb said, extending a finger.
There ahead of them, tucked behind a thin row of unburned trees about twenty meters away, was a Madrona, arching up into the air. It probably wouldn’t normally have been visible from the boardwalk, but the fire had ravaged enough of the underbrush and trees in between that it could now be seen.
“We can’t get there, though.” Even as she said this, Caleb was trying to pick his way through the mud toward the Madrona. He was already a meter away from the boardwalk, up to his ankles in peaty black soil.
“It’s warm, but it’s not hot,” he said. Then he took a step forward and plunged up to his knee in mud. “Ahhh! It’s hot here!” he screamed. He tried to pull his foot back, but he was stuck; the mud rose higher around his leg with an alarming blurp, and steam rose from the hole.
Ian grabbed Abbey’s hand. “Stand on the edge of the boardwalk,” he ordered. She did, and he stepped carefully into the muck, his free hand extended to Caleb. Caleb grasped it, and Abbey and Ian both pulled. But Caleb remained firmly stuck, howling in pain.
“Mark, help!” Abbey demanded.
Mark looked at her quizzically, then offered his hand. With Mark’s added weight and strength, Caleb practically flew out of the mud, landing on his hands and knees next to the boardwalk. Thankfully he didn’t sink again.
“Get back on the boardwalk!” Abbey knelt to help haul Caleb back up. He offered her a muddy palm.
“Ugh, even without the fire, this would be impossible,” Caleb said. “That mud holds like quicksand…” He paused, staring at something under the boardwalk. “Hang on. There’s a ladder under here.”
“What?”
“Two ladders in fact,” Caleb said, reaching under the wooden boardwalk. He paused for a second. “We can use them to get to the Madrona! If we lay them out flat on the mud, we won’t sink.”
A ladder. Maybe the drawing wasn’t of a quill ladder. Maybe it was just a regular ladder, and nothing was equilateral after all.
Ian and Caleb hau
led the twelve-meter ladders out from underneath the boardwalk and laid the first one down in the mud. Abbey opened her mouth several times to object. To suggest that they go home. But she couldn’t quite get the words out. Or didn’t really want to. Velocity. The first derivative of displacement. Change in position per unit of time. A body in motion does stay in motion.
Caleb inched his way out on the first ladder. It sank immediately, the deep green-grey mud blurping up over the silver rungs in an almost predatory manner. He quickly leapt off the ladder and grabbed the end before it could sink further.
He tried again, this time sticking to the outside edges of the ladder—with the same result, except this time he sank up to his shins and he and Ian had to do some fancy hooking maneuver with the second ladder to extract the first one.
“It’s no use,” Caleb said with a scowl, his arms, legs, and face now streaked with mud. “Maybe we can come at the tree from the other side.”
Ian shook his head. “It’s all swamp through there. This is the only place with a boardwalk.”
Abbey turned away and stared out over the open water of the swamp that lay to their right. Water striders skated over the surface, unperturbed by the warmth. An odd bush sticking out of the mud within arm’s reach, just off the boardwalk, caught her eye. It had been burned, but not badly, the tips of a few of the straight, leafless branches charred and black. It’s like a bouquet of quills, she thought. Without thinking, she grasped one and pulled it. It came loose easily, as if it had merely been poked into the mud. It had a broad metal hook on the bottom, the same size as the rail of the ladder. Abbey stared at it. This was not the branch of a shrub. This was a human-made object.
Suddenly it all clicked. “We need to use these,” she exclaimed. “This metal end locks on to the side of the ladder. The quill end will stick out laterally to displace our weight more. Like the outrigger of a canoe, or the legs of a water strider.”
It was Caleb who got it first, and snatched the quill out of her hand. It snapped on to the side of the ladder perfectly and held in place.
One by one, they hooked half the quills onto the first ladder and laid it back down in the mud. Then Caleb again made his way out on the ladder. It remained solid, resting on top of the mud flats and pots. Buoyant.
“It’s a quill ladder,” Abbey murmured.
“It looks more like a long water bug,” Caleb declared with a grin. “Put the quills on the other ladder and pass me the end.”
Carefully, they spaced themselves out on the first ladder and then passed the second ladder along. Caleb set the base of the second ladder at the end of the first, and with Ian walking it forward, they stood it up on end, then let it fall forward, extending the “bridge.” Then, one by one, they crossed, trying to walk on the edges and rungs, to not sink into the steaming mud below them, the quills displacing their weight and keeping them afloat. Farley was a bit confused at first, but after several forays into the hot sludge—and growls at Ian’s rat, who had poked his head out to survey the proceedings—he managed to navigate the rungs quite effectively.
At last everyone safely made it across, and they gathered around the Madrona, which rested on solid ground. Sure enough, a set of stones trailed off into the swamp on the other side of the tree, pulsing with energy.
“I need to go first,” Caleb said. “It’s my future that we need to go to.”
“Just remember,” Abbey called, “gravity is lower in that future. Don’t leap into the air and end up in the swamp.”
Caleb gave her a little salute, stepped onto the stones, and vanished. Ian followed, then Mark. Abbey took a deep breath. They were so sure that this different set of stones would take them to where they wanted to go—but what if they didn’t? What if this set thrust them into a different future, or a different world? Or what if they hit on one of the exceptions to the time periods flowing along interlinked and ended up in Caleb’s original future?
Abbey’s phone barked.
< Twin paradox > the text from her dad read. Relief washed over her. He was okay. Then a second text appeared.
< I have to take care of something. I may not be home for a while. Please tell me you are okay and at home. >
Abbey stared at the text. The others would be waiting for her. What was he taking care of?
< We are ok. I love you. >
She hit send.
Then she stepped on the stones.
She felt the familiar whoosh and movement, and seconds later she decelerated. She was pushed off the stones to find Caleb and Ian gaping at a flat expanse of dried, cracked mud, bordered by brown grass. Apparently she needn’t have worried about anyone falling in the swamp. The trees had receded, and only the Madrona remained, growing up out of the mud, but its leaves hung limp and many of them were covered in black speckles. Big black patches occupied the trunk. Abbey almost had to look away.
“What’s wrong with the Madrona?” she whispered.
Ian shook his head. “Maybe the fire caused long-term damage to the soil. We better push on. If the state of that tree is any indication, this portal might not be open for long.”
They made their way across the caked mud. Abbey did feel lighter, and took a few experimental jumps. She flew higher into the air than she would have at home, but the landing, as she had expected, was soft, and there didn’t seem to be any risk of injury. She could see the others doing the same. She couldn’t figure out why anyone would be worried about people getting injured from walking on the dirt.
There was no sign of the ladders, but it didn’t matter—the ground easily supported their weight. Abbey shielded her eyes from the white sun that cast the sky in an oddly paler blue. The barren state of the trees suggested that it was winter here, too, but the temperature was far warmer than it had been in the Coventry they had just left.
Out in the former parking lot, they could see the row of houses across the street, abandoned and in a state of serious decay. The old road was rutted with cracks and potholes. But they could see the causeway set into Coventry Hill in the distance, and the city with rounded underground houses beneath it.
“Looks like we’re in the right place,” Caleb said. Mark had already withdrawn a piece of paper from his satchel and was furiously sketching on it.
“So now what?” Abbey said. “Do we walk? It looks like a long way.”
Ian shook his head. “We used to have a pretty decent system of underground transport in my day. Not sure if it’ll still work, but it’s worth a shot.”
Aided by the light from Mark’s flashlight, Ian led them down a rickety set of stairs into the basement of the now decrepit yellow house that had been his childhood home. He stopped in front of an old door in the basement wall—it looked to Abbey like the door to a coal room or root cellar. Above the lock on the door was a small pentagon.
Ian withdrew his lighter, quickly disassembled it, then reassembled it into a key. He stuck it in the lock and turned.
After a few pulls, the door swung open on creaky hinges, revealing a damp-smelling tunnel leading into a deep blackness. Mark’s flashlight cast a faint white beam into the shadows.
“Um, not sure I see the advantage of going the underground route,” Caleb said. “Isn’t it the same distance? Won’t we just be sitting ducks if someone decides to follow us? Why don’t we just take the road?”
“Because,” Ian said, hustling into the tunnel, “it’s illegal to go off the paved roads, and none of us have jumpsuits.” He held his hand up in some sort of stop gesture. “Don’t even start. There’s some crazy rules in this future—one might want to have a look into who’s running the joint. But not right now. Anyway, we don’t need to call attention to ourselves, and this is our side’s tunnel. They have their own tunnels, and they don’t have the key to this one. We split the tunnels years ago, under the Convention of 1876. And as for the distance… I have this!”
He pulled a canvas tarp off of a golf-cart-sized trolley. “You never know when
you’re going to need transportation. We used to use this one just to go to town and get groceries when I was a kid. ”
Abbey scrunched up her eyebrows. “But how does it run?”
Ian pointed to a track that ran down the length of the tunnel. “It’s a cable system like the one in San Francisco. The cable is in the ground under the track—we just grip on and go. My dad installed it into the longer stretches of our tunnels. There’s a central engine room under the city that runs all the cables.”
“But why would it still be running?”
“I visited the engine room a month ago and made a few mechanical adjustments, including upgrading the energy source to modern technology. If you just flick that lever on the wall there, it should start the cable.”
“Didn’t you say the tunnels were rat-filled?” Abbey peered into the gloom.
“That was for the benefit of whoever that man was, and besides…” Ian winked. “I like rats.”
Caleb pulled the lever, and they all climbed in. The trolley, as promised, set off at a brisk pace down the tunnel, Mark’s flashlight illuminating the river rock walls.
They drove through the tunnel for almost an hour in a straight line. Mark had withdrawn a small compass from his satchel and made notations on a piece of paper in the dim half-light of the flashlight, which he had been requested to keep trained on the tunnel ahead. Salami and turkey cranberry sandwiches were retrieved from the backpack, and they all ate, including Farley and Digby, while Ian continued to drive.
When they came to another door, Ian stopped the trolley and they all alighted.
Ian pulled the lever to stop the cable, then unlocked the door that led from the tunnel. They emerged into a small, dimly lit, but finished basement with rows and rows of shelves filled with boxes and plastic containers. A pharmacy, Abbey decided. The basement was empty, but they could hear footsteps overhead.
“This is going to be the tricky part,” Ian murmured. “I’m not sure if the new owners are still part of the council. We should try to be as unobtrusive as possible, and we may need to make ourselves scarce, quickly.”
A Quill Ladder Page 28
