“The time agency knows about Jordan,” Jonah interrupted.
It was on the tip of Jordan’s tongue to say, No, wait. I thought Gary and Hodge were the ones who rescued me from the 1930s. Jonah was just the one who took me to my parents in that whole mix-up with the different dimensions. Doesn’t Mr. Rathbone know about Gary and Hodge rescuing me? Or is he just trying to psych me out, like Deep Voice did?
“Jonah didn’t do anything wrong,” Jordan began. “He—”
Before he could say anything else, Katherine dug her elbow into Jordan’s side, and Jordan remembered that he and Katherine were supposed to let Jonah do all the talking.
This wasn’t the right place for Jordan to ask all his questions about the different dimensions.
Mr. Rathbone tilted his head a bit more.
He saw Katherine trying to shut me up, Jordan realized. Oh, no—what if he decides to interrogate all three of us in separate cubicles?
Jordan resisted the urge to inch back to the left, to hide behind Jonah again.
But Mr. Rathbone didn’t even seem to be looking at them now. His eyes were focused on what seemed to be empty air right above his desk, where a computer screen might sit in a twenty-first-century office.
Could he have a computer screen that he can see from that side, but we can’t see at all? Jordan wondered. He thought he’d seen something like that in a science-fiction movie. It seemed possible.
“Interesting,” Mr. Rathbone murmured. “Fascinating . . .”
He’s trying to get us to ask, “What’s interesting? What’s fascinating?” Jordan thought. Isn’t he?
Jordan sneaked a glance at Katherine. She had her lips pressed firmly together. If Katherine could stay silent, so could Jordan.
After a moment Mr. Rathbone looked back at the three kids.
“I’ll confess, the nineteen thirties exhaust even my capacity for compassion,” he said. “So much human misery compressed into one short decade. Worldwide economic collapse, the Japanese invasion of China, the rise of the Nazis in Germany, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the start of world war . . . and, oh, lest we forget, that poor little Lindbergh baby . . .”
“I know I was never the Lindbergh baby,” Jonah said in a tight voice. “I know Gary and Hodge were planning to use me as a fake.”
Mr. Rathbone lifted an eyebrow again.
“I never endorsed such a deception,” he said. He pushed back from his desk. “In truth, Gary and Hodge exhaust me as well. They exhaust my patience, and there is always the danger that their . . . tactics . . . could exhaust the goodwill the public has toward Interchronological Rescue. The time agency has become pricklier than ever—perhaps it would be best for Interchronological Rescue if Gary and Hodge were never found. We could arrange such a lovely ceremony honoring their memories. Now, that would be good PR. We could invite all the children who are here only because of Gary and Hodge’s skill at time extraction. . . . Happy children always stifle any possible criticisms. . . . It’s so petty to ask nitpicky questions in the face of a smiling toddler. . . .”
Jordan turned to stare at Jonah. If Mr. Rathbone didn’t even want Gary and Hodge back, then Jonah’s plan had completely bombed. Jonah, Katherine, and Jordan had given themselves up to an enemy—and they weren’t going to get anything in exchange.
Jonah’s face might as well have turned to stone.
“But we—we—” Jordan began, because didn’t somebody have to come up with a backup plan? He didn’t know what it should be, but wasn’t there something they could still offer?
Katherine slapped her hand over Jordan’s mouth so fast he didn’t even see her move.
“Shut. Up,” she hissed through gritted teeth.
Mr. Rathbone started laughing.
“Ah, I can see who didn’t want another brother,” he said. “Don’t worry, Katherine. I’m sure he’ll grow on you. Or perhaps he’ll just grow up eventually, and you can be done with him. Though of course Interchronological Rescue doesn’t ever mention that ultimate way out of having inconvenient children in any of our advertising. . . .”
“Katherine has always had me as her brother!” Jordan tried to say, just to show this horrible man that he didn’t know everything. But Katherine’s hand was pressed so tightly against Jordan’s mouth that it just sounded like he was grunting.
“Aren’t you worried that Gary and Hodge could make more trouble for Interchronological Rescue?” Jonah asked. “Wouldn’t you want them brought back to you, just so you know where they are and what they’re doing?”
Mr. Rathbone kept his poker-face calm expression.
“Oh, I’ve always got deniability,” he said. “There are resignation letters I could always release to the public—or perhaps I’d want to reveal that they’d been secretly fired years ago? I’d have to decide based on the situation. . . .”
Was Mr. Rathbone talking about going back in time and forcing Gary and Hodge to sign those resignation letters? Or did he already have them on file, just in case? Or was he talking about faking them?
Jordan wished he knew more about business, as well as time travel.
Katherine had let her hand slip from Jordan’s face just enough that Jordan saw his opening.
“I bet . . . I bet there’s something we could do for you,” he offered. Because otherwise, weren’t they only a second or two away from more of those invisible walls slamming down around them?
Mr. Rathbone smiled in a way that made Jordan dislike him even more.
“As a matter of fact, there is,” he said. “It’s something the three of you would be uniquely qualified to do.”
“There is?” Katherine repeated, sounding numb. “We are?”
Mr. Rathbone nodded, his eyes glinting.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I want you to go back and finish the job that Gary and Hodge botched the worst. The one that sent them down the path to total failure and oblivion.”
TWENTY-THREE
For a moment it felt like all three of the kids had been struck dumb. Then Jonah mumbled, “You really know how to sell a job.”
“Just letting you know what you’re getting into,” Mr. Rathbone said, his voice steady, almost light.
“Can you tell us what the job is?” Katherine asked in a small voice. When even cheerleader-boisterous Katherine was cowed, Jordan knew things were bad.
Mr. Rathbone was back to looking at the empty air above his desk.
“Let’s just say that the time agency was always wrong about the reason Gary and Hodge’s plane time-crashed where and when it did,” he said, his eyes focused away from any of the kids.
“You mean the plane I was on?” Jonah asked. “The time agency never thought there was a reason for when and where it landed. They always said it was random.”
Mr. Rathbone snorted. “You’d think, as much tax money as they eat up, the agency would hire a better class of investigators,” he said, shaking his head.
“So . . . the crash wasn’t random?” Katherine asked.
Mr. Rathbone palmed something in midair. Jordan had the feeling he’d just seen the futuristic version of a flash drive being ejected from a computer. Or maybe a new object being pulled out of a 3-D printer.
“All the details are contained in this Elucidator,” he said, holding out his hand. “But I can tell you—Gary and Hodge were supposed to rescue an important child that day. One who, alas, will stay endangered. Unless you help.”
Jonah took the Elucidator from Mr. Rathbone. It looked like nothing more than a watch battery.
“It’s so small,” Katherine objected. “What if we lose it?”
“It will adhere to Jonah’s skin during your trip,” Mr. Rathbone said. “And remember, it will look like some common item from the past when you get where you’re going. You’ll be fine.”
There was something suspicious about his smile, and Jordan shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. He wanted to whisper to Katherine, What if we’re making a huge mistake?
But of course he couldn’t do anything like that without Mr. Rathbone noticing.
“Who is this child?” Jonah asked, focusing on a detail that Jordan had already forgotten. “Why’s he so important? Why’s he in danger? What—”
Mr. Rathbone held up his hand.
“Now, now,” he said. “Can’t you see I’m a busy man? Get your explanations from the Elucidator. Bon voyage!”
He pressed something on his desk—maybe the invisible futuristic version of a computer mouse. And then Mr. Rathbone and his office disappeared.
“But—wait!” Katherine cried. “We—”
“Too late,” Jonah and Jordan said, practically speaking together.
They were already floating through time again, zipping off toward some unknown child in some unknown danger.
Even in the near darkness, Jordan saw Jonah clench his fingers against the palm of his hand, clutching the Elucidator as tightly as he could. Jordan didn’t even want to think about the danger Mr. Rathbone was sending them into, or the kid they were supposed to rescue.
Maybe he didn’t have to.
“We have an Elucidator that works now!” Jordan crowed. “We can go anywhere we want! We can rescue Mom and Dad from Second! We can make them the right age! We can go home!”
Jonah and Katherine just looked at Jordan. What was wrong with them, that they weren’t excited too?
“No way he would have given us anything but a parental-controls Elucidator, right?” Katherine muttered to Jonah.
“Huh?” Jordan said. “What do you mean, ‘parental-controls Elucidator’?”
As they flipped and floated through time, Jonah began cautiously poking at the object in his hand.
“It says ‘destination locked,’ ” Jonah said. “So, yeah, I’d say this is like 1918 all over again.”
“What? We’re going to 1918?” Jordan asked. His voice squeaked. He had some vague sense that there might have been a war going on then. Not the Civil War—wasn’t that in the eighteen hundreds? But maybe World War I. Or something like that.
“No, we’re not going to 1918,” Katherine said. “I don’t think. It’s just, the Elucidator Mr. Rathbone gave us is probably the same kind we had back then. It was like one of those cell phones people buy for little kids, where they can’t call anyone but their parents.”
“We can call Mom and Dad?” Jordan asked.
He was already starting to lean toward Jonah’s hand when Katherine gave him a shove.
“I didn’t say it was one of those parental-control cell phones,” she said. “I just said it was like that. It’ll probably only do a couple things—things Mr. Rathbone wants.”
“Oh,” Jordan said.
So the Elucidator in Jonah’s hand wasn’t that much different from the two broken or fake ones Jordan had lost moments earlier.
Jonah hates Second that much, that he thinks this is a better arrangement? Jordan wondered.
“But we’ll hide somewhere when we land,” Jonah said. “We’ll figure out where we are and what’s going on, and, I don’t know, maybe we can alert the time agency somehow. Maybe we can—”
He broke off then, because they hit the part of the trip where everything intensified and Jordan felt like his body was being ripped apart.
When that ended, and Jordan began struggling back to awareness, he found himself lying flat on his back on what seemed to be frozen ground. Tufts of grass tickled the back of his neck, but they seemed brittle with cold.
“Wish . . . someone had told me . . . to wear a sweatshirt this morning,” Jordan said, rubbing his arms where his T-shirt sleeves ended.
Katherine had on a pink-and-purple-striped sweater, and Jonah at least had a long-sleeved shirt under his old-fashioned sweater vest. But they were shivering too.
“Jonah, we are not going to able to sit out here thinking and thinking and thinking and figuring out how to outsmart the Elucidator,” Katherine said, sitting up. “We’re going to have to find somewhere indoors to—ah!”
Something loomed just above her head. Reflexively, Jordan reached out to grab her arm and pull her down again—to safety. But Katherine was a step ahead of him; she had already thrown herself flat against the ground. A deafening sound roared overhead, so bone-jarringly close that Jordan squeezed his eyes shut in fear.
“What . . . was . . . that?” Katherine screamed as soon as the roar diminished ever so slightly.
Jordan could barely get his eyes to focus. But he could see that Jonah had rolled over onto his stomach and was staring off after the source of the noise.
“Airplane,” Jonah moaned. “Oh, no, not again. Do all Elucidators hate me? At least we’re not right on the runway this time.”
“We’re at an airport?” Katherine asked, daring to lift her head again. “Oh, no. What year is it? What day? If today’s the day, how much time do we have left?”
“What are you talking about?” Jordan demanded.
“If Mr. Rathbone sent us back to the day Gary and Hodge crash-landed the plane, we can’t be here when the plane arrives,” Katherine said. “Having Jonah duplicated in time—or, I guess, you either, Jordan—that would ruin everything.” She reached toward Jonah’s hand, as if she planned to grab the round, silvery Elucidator. More of it showed now—maybe it had grown, to look like a battery from an older watch. “Just to be safe, you two should go somewhere else. But I could stay.”
“No, Katherine, because after the babies come off that plane, no time traveler can get in or out for thirteen years, remember?” Jonah said, pulling his hand and the Elucidator to the side. “And you’re going to be born next December, so you would be duplicated in time then too. . . . And, oh yeah, you were here with me anyway, in one of the dimensions, as a baby. . . .”
Jordan let their words flow over him. He didn’t really understand the worries about people being duplicated in time or anything about Gary and Hodge’s airplane—was it supposed to be the one he arrived on, or the one Jonah arrived on? How weird would that be, to see himself or Jonah as a baby? But he could tell that Jonah and Katherine were really, really freaked out.
Both of them were staring down at the Elucidator now.
“This is the day the plane crash-landed,” Jonah moaned. “But I can’t get the Elucidator to tell us how much time we have left. . . .”
“What if Mr. Rathbone was trying to get time to split again?” Katherine asked. “What if he’s just tricking us?”
Jordan had had enough of their agonizing.
“How about we just grab whatever kid we’re supposed to grab and get out of here?” he asked.
“Do you see any kid anywhere around here?” Jonah demanded. “Any kid who looks endangered and in need of saving?”
Jordan started to say no. His eyes still weren’t working great. It was like coming out of the eye doctor’s after his pupils had been dilated. Even the weak wintry sunshine that seemed to be coming from far, far overhead—and perhaps through several clouds—felt too bright to him. But then he saw a hint of movement off to the right.
“Is that a kid?” he asked, pointing. “Or maybe a group of kids?”
A dark shape was moving off in the distance, in a sort of gully or ditch or ravine—an area where the ground sloped downward, anyway. Jordan squinted and managed to make out a fence and a forbidding-looking sign. It was too far away to read, but Jordan had the feeling it said something like KEEP OUT or DANGER! DO NOT PASS!
A dark figure broke off from the other shadowy shapes and began scaling the fence.
“That looks dangerous,” Katherine murmured. She was staring off in the same direction as Jordan, and squinting every bit as hard.
Jonah pressed his fists against his face.
“I thought we’d bought ourselves some time,” he said. “I thought we’d have time to figure things out. . . .”
“Elucidator, can you take us to a time hollow nearby?” Katherine asked.
A glowing red NO appeared by Jonah’s hand. This Elucidator really was as frus
trating as the other two.
“We have to do something,” Jordan moaned, his voice squeaking with panic. “What if that kid dies right in front of us?”
The dark figure was at the top of the fence now, high above the ground. He—or possibly she—was at a point where the chain-link and metal bars were replaced by rows of barbed wire jutting out at an angle. The climber slowed down and reached carefully, clearly trying to avoid the barbs. Jordan found himself holding his breath as the dark figure flipped one leg over the top line of barbed wire. The climber held on with just one hand. The flimsy wire whipped back and forth, tugged downward by the weight of the climber.
And then the wire snapped, and the climber plummeted out of sight.
TWENTY-FOUR
A chorus of voices rose from the dark figures near the fence. Jordan was too shocked and too far away to tell if the name they were screaming was “Kevin!” or “Kyle!” or “Keith!” It was something that started with a K sound. But what happened next was that the figures started screaming, “We’ve got to get out of here!” And “What if they find out we were with him?”
The figures scattered.
“They’re just running away?” Katherine asked, sounding as stunned as Jordan felt. “They’re not going to try to help him?”
“We should go get help at the airport,” Jordan said, trying to pull himself up into a standing position. He wanted to run for the airport—that would be the right thing to do. But he wasn’t sure his legs worked yet.
Jonah glanced up at the sky as if trying to gauge how much time they had left.
“Let’s go see if he’s still alive,” Jonah said grimly. “He may not be able to wait for help from the airport.”
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