The Project

by Brian Falkner

  Tommy joined in, and they both kicked at the lower block. It, too, shifted, then fell, leaving a human-sized gap in the wall.

  Tommy was the first to squeeze through, but Luke was close behind him, with Ms. Sheck right on his heels.

  “What do we do now?” Tommy asked as they ran along the corridor in the direction Mueller had taken.

  “We have to stop him,” Ms. Sheck said, but didn’t offer any suggestions how.

  Soft music began to wash faintly at Luke’s ears. A woman’s voice humming, a childlike tune, perhaps a lullaby, familiar even though he had never heard it before. It grew louder and clearer as they neared the end of the corridor, and he recognized the voice. It was Gerda Mueller.

  They turned the corner into the next corridor and stopped.

  Gerda stood in front of them. Her head was tilted back, her eyes shut. She was lost in some other world, swaying from side to side.

  It might have been some small noise they made or a change in the air of the corridor, but she seemed to sense their presence and her eyes sprang open. Her right hand, which had dangled by her side, now came up in their direction. In it was the pistol. Her eyes focused on them, although she continued to hum, as though she didn’t realize she was doing it.

  Luke took a step forward and readied himself to spring. There was no other option. They couldn’t go back. Could he cover the distance in time? If he could weave a bit, throw off her aim, hopefully dodge the first shot and get to her before she could fire a second time … If not, then could he, would he, have the courage to throw himself on the gun and give the others time to get to her?

  Luke tensed, then relaxed as a warm hand touched him on the shoulder.

  “No, Luke,” Ms. Sheck said.

  She took a step toward Gerda, who instinctively retreated, but the gun did not waver.

  Then, to Luke’s surprise, Ms. Sheck began to sing. She joined in with Gerda’s tune, adding lyrics to the hummed melody.

  The words were in a language Luke didn’t understand, an ancient language, perhaps. But Ms. Sheck’s voice was low and soothing, filling the corridor, enveloping them in a warm musical blanket. Ms. Sheck advanced, one tentative footstep after another, her voice giving color to the dull rock walls of the tunnels.

  Luke waited for the shot, for the shudder as the bullet entered Ms. Sheck’s delicate frame, for the sudden rush of blood and the last choking gasps of his teacher’s life.

  Ms. Sheck took another step. Gerda raised the gun slightly higher. Aiming for the head, Luke thought.

  Only a yard or two away and still there was no shot. It was either the bravest or the stupidest thing Luke had ever seen in his life, or maybe Ms. Sheck had realized, like Luke, that if she didn’t do this, then the world as they knew it would be gone forever.

  Luke readied himself again to spring. When the gun fired, he would have only seconds to try to get to it before Gerda could fire a second time. Whatever happened to Ms. Sheck with that first shot, he had to ignore it, to ignore her, and focus only on getting to the gun.

  A single foot separated the two women, and Luke knew it was now or never. If Gerda was going to pull the trigger, it would have to be before Ms. Sheck got within range to grab the gun.

  He raised himself onto the balls of his feet.

  But Ms. Sheck did not grab for the pistol, and the pistol did not fire. Ms. Sheck simply moved past the outstretched gun and reached for Gerda.

  Gerda stood there trembling as Ms. Sheck put her arms around her and drew her close, one hand pulling Gerda’s head down onto her shoulder, as she might comfort a baby.

  Next to Luke, Tommy breathed out.

  Slowly, the gun lowered, and after a few moments, Luke took it from Gerda’s hand before it could slip to the ground. The song trailed off.

  Gerda was sobbing. Not huge, chest-wracking sobs, but rather a quiet, tired whimper. Still Ms. Sheck held her, and then abruptly Gerda broke away.

  Luke stood next to Ms. Sheck, holding the gun, and Tommy moved up beside them. Together they watched Gerda Mueller, locked in an embrace with an imaginary suitor, her head tilted nobly back, her hips swaying to music that was only in her head, waltzing away down the concrete tunnel of the bunker as if she were dancing through the great halls of Europe.

  They said nothing as they watched seventy years of golden dreams turn to dust and slip through her fingers.

  29. THE CHAMBER

  The long corridors were lit only by overhead bulkhead lights that cast a dim malevolence over them as they hurried through the bunker.

  At one point, they came to a dead end and backtracked to a side tunnel with a brick archway. It was narrower than the others, and more and more Luke felt the walls pressing in around him. He could visualize the tons of earth that were above his head, held up by only the concrete roof.

  The tunnel seemed to narrow as they went. Their footsteps echoed off the walls, and Luke was certain that Mueller would hear them coming, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Luke had the lead, followed by Ms. Sheck, with Tommy at the rear. They came to another dead end and doubled back. There were many passages leading off the main tunnel, with arrows and words in German handwritten on the walls in faded and chipped white paint.

  He couldn’t read the signs but was confident that Tommy would say something if any of the signs said “To the Time Machine.”

  They glanced in a few of the rooms as they passed them. One was obviously set up as Mueller’s office, with a computer and a laser printer.

  Luke stopped abruptly alongside a small metal door, oval in shape, like a pressure door on a submarine. They had passed it a few minutes ago, and he’d thought nothing of it. But this time something about it seemed odd.

  “There are no markings on this door,” he said. “All the other doors and tunnels have signs saying where they lead. But this one doesn’t.”

  A long metal pole made a handle in the center of the door.

  He grabbed it and tried to lift it, but it was too heavy.

  Ms. Sheck and Tommy lent their weight, and the handle lifted, one inch, then another, and the door gasped and shuddered open a fraction.

  Luke put his shoulder to it and forced it back against the wall.

  Behind it, a staircase led down into gathering darkness. It was lit with the same bulkhead lights as the passageways.

  The walls here were not the same gray concrete and brick of the tunnels but were cut out of the rock itself.

  They were heading deep into the heart of the mountain.

  A handrail ran down the left side of the massive staircase, bolted onto the rock wall, and Luke kept a hand on it for safety as he jumped down two or three steps at a time. In places moisture seeped through the rock ceiling, staining the concrete steps below a dirty greenish color.

  Luke was out of breath by the time they reached the bottom, despite the fact that they were running downhill.

  Another oval door at the foot of the staircase opened into a massive, cavelike hollow. He wasn’t sure whether it was a natural cavern in the rock or whether the Nazis had dug it out by hand. Then his attention was drawn to the huge structure in front of them: a wall of gray metal, blanketed with rust.

  “Do you have anything metal on you?” Tommy asked.

  Luke held up the pistol. “Why?”

  “I think it has a magnetic shield,” Tommy said. “I wondered if we’d find something like this. A wall of iron that shields the magnets inside.”

  Luke put down the gun and checked his pockets. They had taken his cell phone away. He still had his watch on, so he put it on the ground by the stairs behind him. He saw Ms. Sheck do the same.

  “What are we going to do when we get in there?” she asked.

  By now he had a semi-formed plan in his mind, with no real idea if it would work.

  “You two distract them, attack them. Do whatever it takes. Buy me some time,” Luke said. “Leonardo was very precise about the position of the magnets. Benfer put it all in the
book. I’m pretty sure that by adjusting the position, you change the ‘bend’ in the river of time. While you guys keep them busy, I’m going to try and adjust the magnets. Throw it off a little. Just a few years will do—after the war is finished.”

  “Send ’em back to the time of the dinosaurs,” Tommy said grimly.

  “Do whatever you can,” Ms. Sheck said.

  A narrow opening was cut into the wall, on a diagonal. They slid through, one by one, into the cave.

  Immediately, Luke could hear voices, speaking in German, although he could not see Mueller or the others.

  Inside the cave, the fine hairs on his arms and legs lifted, and even his scalp felt strange, as though his head were underwater. His ears thrummed.

  Ms. Sheck and Tommy came up close on either side of him and they all stared.

  The metal wall behind them extended up and over the ceiling of the cave and around each side. In front of them was a huge structure, built from a charcoal-colored substance. It was as big as a house and made of a strange combination of curves and angles, as if someone had taken a giant cube and a giant sphere and melded them together.

  Beside him Tommy breathed, “The Vitruvian Man.”

  Leonardo’s drawings had been of a sphere and a cube. That sphere and cube now lay in front of them, constructed in intricate detail from rare-earth magnets. This was his chamber. His time machine.

  A wooden framework surrounded the chamber. Wooden struts reached down to each odd angle and surface. The struts were calibrated with finely detailed markings, and each had a rope and wedge system for making adjustments.

  “This is it,” Luke said. “I guess if we mess with those adjustable struts, they could end up anywhere.”

  On a small table next to the chamber sat a book, and he didn’t need to see the cover to know that it was Leonardo’s River. The blueprint and the user manual for the chamber.

  Luke started toward the structure, and at that moment Mueller strode around the corner of the chamber in his menacing black SS uniform.

  Luke flattened himself behind another corner of the chamber.

  Mueller stooped and ducked under a low rectangular opening in the side of the structure.

  He was too late!

  Luke launched himself at the rope and wooden strut nearest him. He dug into the rope with his fingernails, hoping to upset the calibration and send them to the wrong place or time. But it was tightly knotted, and before he could make any headway at all, he saw Jumbo and Mumbo dip through the same opening as Mueller.

  Into the chamber.

  Into the past.

  30. NO TIME

  Luke dropped the ropes instantly.

  “We gotta follow them,” he said, peering into the hole that was the entrance to the chamber. His ears fizzed, being so close to the device, but he could see nothing inside but blackness.

  “No, we should go and get help,” Ms. Sheck said.

  “Go where?” Luke asked. “We’re deep underground in a bunker system somewhere in the mountains of Bavaria. Even if we found our way out and got to the authorities—and if they believed us—then it would still take days for them to organize some kind of action, and even then what would they do? What could they do? There’s no time. We have to go now!”

  “Then I will go,” she said. “You boys go for help.”

  “No,” Luke said. “No, we should all go.”

  “You’re too young,” Ms. Sheck said. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Tommy said, picking at his fingernails. “I’m the only one who can speak German. You wouldn’t last a minute in 1940s Germany. It has to be me who goes.”

  Ms. Sheck opened her mouth, then shut it again. There was no arguing with that.

  “I’m coming with you,” Luke said.

  “But you don’t speak German!”

  “I’ll pretend to be mute, or Polish or something,” Luke said. “You can’t go chasing after Mueller alone.”

  “You could pretend to be a moron.” Tommy attempted a grin. “You’re good at that.”

  Luke smiled. “Whatever, bro.”

  Ms. Sheck gave them each a hug. Most of the other guys at school would have been jealous, Luke thought, but somehow it didn’t seem like such a big deal after all they’d been through together.

  Luke led the way toward the small opening, his hair frizzing up on end; even his nostrils flared with the intensity of the rare-earth magnets that surrounded them.

  “Stop!” a voice commanded, and he looked back to see Gerda Mueller advancing into the cave. “Stop!” she said again.

  She had been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy, and the paths of tears stained the powder on her cheeks.

  “You can’t stop us,” Luke said. “We have to do this.”

  Gerda shook her head. “Nazi Germany, in 1944, is at war. You will not last a day without proper papers. And Berchtesgaden at the end of the war was a secure zone. Even the German public was not allowed to enter.”

  “Then help us,” Ms. Sheck said.

  Gerda looked away. “Now you are asking too much.”

  “Are we?” Luke asked. “Is it too much to ask that we stop Adolf Hitler from killing millions of innocent people?”

  “Hitler was a great man,” Gerda said.

  “Hitler was a madman,” Tommy said.

  “He could have been a great man,” Gerda said. “He should have been a great man.”

  “If you don’t help us, Gerda, millions of people will die,” Ms. Sheck said. “This time it’s not up to Hitler. It’s not up to your brother, Erich. Right now, it’s on your shoulders. Could you really go dancing and partying knowing that you could have saved so many lives but did nothing?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Forget about her; forget about the papers,” Luke said. “We have to go now or we will lose them.”

  A small, tired voice seemed to come from somewhere deep inside Gerda. “Wait. We have a few minutes. I know where he is heading. And I can make you the right papers.”

  She turned and indicated with a glance that they should follow her.

  “Thank you, Gerda,” Ms. Sheck said.

  On the way up the staircase, Gerda said, “From Obersalzberg, Erich will commandeer a car and drive down to Berchtesgaden town, to the Bahnhof, the railway station. In those days, the train to Munich ran just twice a day, so he will wait there for the train. At Munich, he will change trains for Berlin. He is taking the plans directly to the Führer.”

  “Why 1944?” Luke asked. “Why not take the plans back to 1939 and give them to Hitler at the start of the war?”

  “We did not find the Vitruvian chamber until 1944,” she said. “If Erich was to appear, out of nowhere, talking about a project that was yet to exist, he would likely end up in a Gestapo interrogation cell instead of the Führer’s private office.”

  She held on tightly to the handrail as she walked, the stairs difficult for her. She continued. “The settings on the chamber are not so exact either. An inch could throw out your destination by years. Our accuracy is within a month at the best. Erich is aiming for September of 1944, which will still give our scientists time to build the bomb before the end of the war.”

  At the top of the stairs, she led them down a passageway to the office they had noticed earlier.

  From a folder in a drawer in the desk, she took blank identity cards emblazoned with the wolf’s hook. In another drawer were official-looking rubber stamps and an ink pad. A laser printer sat on the desk next to the computer, and a digital camera in the corner was connected to a photo printer on a table by the wall. Some old-style paper sat in a tray on the table.

  “I’m not good with computers,” Gerda said. “But if one of you boys can help, I will tell you what information you will need.”

  “You bet,” Tommy said, settling down behind the computer. He took a quick snap of Luke with the digital camera, and Luke left them to it. He went scouting around through the other offi
ces to see if there was anything they could use.

  He found his and Tommy’s backpacks and brought them back to the office. There was nothing he wanted from his own, but Tommy’s held all sorts of interesting devices.

  While Tommy and Gerda finished their IDs, Luke started skimming through Leonardo’s River. Not bothering to read the text, just flipping through the diagrams and the measurements.

  Tommy handed Luke an ID card. It looked odd. It was in German, for sure, but all the writing was backward, mirrored like the plans for the atomic bomb.

  There were also some ID papers and a travel permit, mirrored as well.

  Luke queried Tommy, but Tommy just shook his head.

  “Gerda says that is how they are supposed to be.” He shrugged. “Beats me.”

  Luke looked at it. He was now officially a Werewolf.

  Luke handed Tommy his backpack, and his friend’s eyes lit up. He dropped to one knee and began sorting through his bag of tricks.

  “Nothing metal,” Luke reminded him. “Or even with metal in it. It could be disastrous.”

  “I know,” he said. “But a lot of these things are made from aluminum, plastic, and glass. They’re spy gadgets, so they’re designed to get past metal detectors.”

  “What about zippers?” Luke asked, glancing quickly at Ms. Sheck. He did not want to take his jeans off in front of her.

  “They don’t set off metal detectors either,” Tommy said.

  “But you can’t wear jeans in 1940s Germany, or T-shirts. You’ll stand out a mile,” Ms. Sheck said.

  “In 1944 this was my nursery,” Gerda said, looking around at the walls. Her eyes seemed to fill with distant memories. “Erich’s room was next door. He was about your size. You should find what you need.”

  She spent a few minutes explaining how they should dress, then handed Luke an aluminum key, shiny and light, and said, “You will need reichsmarks. There is a safe in an office on the other side of the corridor.” She walked to the doorway and pointed it out to Luke. “You will find whatever you need in there.”