Island of the Sun

by Matthew J. Kirby

  She led them forward, and they walked for quite some distance down a very straight passage. The walls proceeded uniformly, with very few distinguishing features beyond the subtle grain of the stone, and soon the view was the same looking forward or back, which created the unnerving sensation that they weren’t moving at all. But the longer they walked, the more sure Eleanor became that the path would not lead them to a dead end. This tunnel had been made to take people someplace. She just wished she knew where.

  “So are we under the lake?” Finn asked.

  “I believe so,” Eleanor’s mom said. “I don’t know how this tunnel isn’t flooded.”

  “Inca ingenuity,” Betty said.

  They walked for an hour.

  Then another.

  And another.

  “I’m not claustrophobic,” Eleanor’s mom whispered. “But this could drive a person insane.”

  “That person could be me if we don’t get out of here soon,” Luke said.

  Eleanor couldn’t believe how long it was taking them, and she worried whether the batteries in their flashlights would last. The scuff of their steps and the sound of their breathing filled the tunnel until they were all she could hear. Her body felt each and every one of the miles they had walked. She was hungry, and tired, and thirsty. They stopped to rest occasionally, and that helped. In addition to the Sync, the pack Betty had grabbed off the boat held the few snacks they’d brought from the plane. Granola bars didn’t fill Eleanor up, but they gave her some strength, and sips from the water bottles gave her relief from her thirst. None of that helped her with the weakness from her connection to the Concentrator, although that seemed to be slowly fading.

  After they rounded the fourth hour, Eleanor thought her vision was deceiving her, because the straight tunnel appeared warped ahead. But she soon realized that it wasn’t her vision. The corridor was actually changing course, rising up at an angle. After the maddeningly hypnotic journey they’d just taken, Eleanor welcomed any deviation.

  The tunnel climbed by degrees for some distance, and then they came upon a stone door much like the one Eleanor had recognized at the Titikala. It even had the same release mechanism. But when Eleanor pulled the little rock from its notch, this door didn’t move on its own. Luke had to put his shoulder into it, but once he got it going, the stone rolled away with the same grinding sound.

  It was dark outside. They stepped out of the tunnel, and Eleanor sucked in a chestful of cold, fresh air. The plentiful stars and the slivered moon above them alloyed the white clouds into pewter.

  “I thought we’d never see the end of that,” Betty said. “I can’t even imagine what it took to build it.”

  Luke clapped Finn on the back. “Aliens, you think?”

  “No,” Finn said, and left it at that. Luke was obviously trying to lighten the mood, perhaps distract Finn from his father and brother’s situation, but it wasn’t working.

  “So where are we?” Eleanor’s mom asked, partly to herself.

  They stood on a rocky hillside at the base of an escarpment, and not too far below them was the lake. Off in the distance, the Isla del Sol was a thin black streak across the shimmering water.

  “Looks like we’re on the western shore of the lake,” Betty said.

  “That island’s gotta be twelve, maybe fifteen miles away,” Luke said.

  Eleanor marveled at the distance, too. They had traveled under Titicaca, using the ancient roads of the Inca. Or maybe the tunnels were even older than that. Perhaps there was something to Finn’s idea that even if the aliens hadn’t been directly involved, they had somehow inspired or influenced the people who lived around the Concentrators.

  “Now we just need to get back to Juliaca,” Eleanor’s mom said. “Get on the plane and get out of here.”

  “What if the G.E.T. found Consuelo?” Eleanor asked.

  “We never told Amaru about her,” Luke said. “The professor told him we’d been in Lima. Smart thinking on his part. Watkins and the G.E.T. know what Consuelo looks like, but if they’re actively looking for her, let’s hope it’s in the wrong place.”

  At the mention of Dr. Powers, Eleanor turned her attention to Finn. He stood apart from them, facing the water, his face slack, emotionless. She had felt a measure of what he was going through when they had decided not to pick up her uncle Jack. But this was different. The G.E.T. wasn’t holding her uncle Jack captive. Eleanor walked up beside Finn but kept a respectful space between them.

  “We’ll get them back,” she said.

  He kept his eyes forward. “I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eleanor said.

  “Not your fault. I should’ve been with them.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?” He looked at her, his emotions still too hidden for her to read. “It’s true.” Then he turned his back on the lake and walked toward the others.

  Eleanor’s mom had pulled the Sync from the pack. “No cell signal,” she said. “But I’ve got GPS. It looks like we’re not too far from a main road. It’s late, but maybe we can pick up a ride there.”

  She led the way, and about a mile later they reached the road and followed it in the general direction of Puno. The landscape around them was starting to feel familiar, with its fields of grain, white as snow in the moonlight, and the low-swelling mountains on the horizon. Distant lights marked farms and homesteads, and they even saw the occasional pair of headlights, but no vehicles approached them for several miles.

  When they did finally cross paths with a car, it turned out to be a truck with a tall, wooden, crate-like bed. The driver, an old man with graying hair and a face that had borne a lifetime of wind and sun, looked very confused, and even a little irritated, after Luke flagged him down and tried to ask for a ride in broken Spanish. But apparently, he was heading to Puno, and Eleanor heard the word alpaca. She had no idea how they must’ve appeared to him, walking down a road out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, and she expected him to just drive off.

  But instead he nodded with a frown and said, “Yah, yah,” and thumbed them toward the rear of the truck.

  “Gracias,” Luke attempted, and they went around to the back of the bed.

  The driver got out of the cab and met them there, where he lifted a couple of thick metal pins and lowered the back of the box. The vehicle was obviously used for transporting livestock, and even though there weren’t any animals in it at the moment, the evidence of them was. It smelled of fur, and of the hay that lined it, and of the manure that hadn’t quite been cleaned out.

  “Gracias,” Luke said again, not quite as enthusiastically, and they all climbed into the box.

  The driver raised the back and shoved the pins back into place, effectively trapping them inside. Only then did Eleanor feel unnerved. The man could now take them anywhere he pleased, and she suppressed the paranoid thought that he was somehow working for the G.E.T. and Watkins.

  The truck emitted a resigned kind of let’s-do-this growl and lurched ahead, and everyone in the bed stumbled and reached for something to hold on to at the same time. The smell of old engine exhaust mixed with the animal aroma unpleasantly, though every now and then a clean breeze would find its way through the slats in the box.

  It was a bumpy, long ride, and after the hours and miles they’d just walked, everyone soon settled down as best they could to rest. Eleanor ended up sitting in the straw, her back against the rough side of the truck, watching the road in slices and growing very tired. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw Amaru—the fear in his eyes and the blood on his chest—and she thought about his family. Eleanor hadn’t made Amaru the promise he had wanted. She had made him a different promise, and she intended to keep it, but deep inside she feared she couldn’t, and that made her guilt and grief over Amaru’s death even worse.

  “You were right,” Eleanor’s mom whispered.

  Eleanor glanced in her direction and found her mom looking at her as though she’d been doi
ng so for a long time. “About what?” Eleanor asked.

  “What you said about Amaru. I would do the same for you. And more.”

  They’d been thinking about the same thing, a rare moment of connection, and Eleanor felt suddenly glad, and grateful, at the same time that she still felt guilty, and sad, and scared, a mosaic of emotion that made an unsettling picture.

  “His son’s name is Lucio,” Eleanor said. “He’s two years and four months old.”

  Her mom nodded and smiled. “Lucio.”

  Nothing more was said, and the moment of connection between them passed away gently on its own. Dawn came, and soon a lattice of sunlight crisscrossed the interior of the truck bed. Not long after that, the truck came to a stop, the engine still running, and Eleanor watched as the driver walked down her side of the bed to the rear of the vehicle, pulled the pins, and lowered the back wall.

  Everyone inside rose, and stretched, and winced, then hobbled out of the truck onto the street. Betty tried to offer the driver some money, but he waved both hands before him and wouldn’t accept it. Luke helped him raise the back of the truck and secure it, after which they shook hands and the driver got back into his cab and drove away in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

  “We need to find water and food,” Eleanor’s mom said. “Then hire a cab back to Juliaca.”

  Luke’s gaze darted up and down the street. “What we need is to be careful.”

  “But no one will be looking for us here,” Eleanor said. “Watkins will probably just be getting back to the island now. It’ll be hours before he discovers how we escaped, if he even finds out at all.”

  “Might be,” Luke said. “But if there’s anything I’ve learned by now, it’s that the G.E.T. has eyes everywhere. We can’t afford to take any chances.”

  So they wandered the backstreets of Puno, watchful for anyone who might be following them, until they found a bakery. They bought some pastries and breads, along with several bottles of water, and moments later, every drop and crumb was gone, and Eleanor felt much better. The cabs were a little harder to come by, but they eventually managed to hire a van similar to the one in which Amaru had driven them, and they were back on the road.

  Eleanor recognized some of the landmarks they passed on their way back to Juliaca, including the university at the edge of town. The van took them right to the airport, and as soon as it came into view, Eleanor’s body tensed up. They still didn’t know if Consuelo had been discovered, and if she had, Eleanor had no idea what they would do next.

  Luke seemed even more on edge. He got out before the cab had even come to a full stop and marched toward the tarmac. Betty paid the cabdriver, and they all hurried after Luke, walk-running as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves. Eleanor leaned ahead as they approached the place they had left their plane, craning to see around the corner of a hangar.

  And there she was. Parked right where they had left her.

  “Oh, thank God,” Eleanor’s mom whispered.

  Luke beat them to the plane and looked her over, circling all the way around and crossing under her belly.

  “I don’t think she’s been tampered with,” he said. “But it’s not like we have time or equipment to do another sweep for trackers. We need to move and hope for the best.”

  “Then let’s get going, shall we?” Betty said.

  So they boarded the plane and took their places. It was hard not to notice the two empty seats, the ones Dr. Powers and Julian usually claimed. Eleanor glanced back at Finn and caught him staring at the vacancies. When he noticed her watching him, he snapped his attention away and directed it out his window.

  Luke roused Consuelo, radioed the flight tower for clearance to take off, and she labored along the tarmac into position on the runway. Eleanor watched the airfield and the terminal, searching for G.E.T. agents or police cars in a way that was becoming a familiar routine. How many times would they have to take off under threat or with the fear that at the last moment they would be caught?

  But moments later, they were in the air, and Eleanor breathed a slight sigh of relief. If Watkins did know where their plane was, he hadn’t found out about their escape in time to stop them. But as they climbed higher into the sky, leaving Lake Titicaca and its Island of the Sun farther behind, the small measure of triumph she had felt in no way compared to the loss.

  They had left Dr. Powers and Julian in the hands of the G.E.T..

  Eleanor couldn’t believe it had really happened; it felt as if it was a decision someone else had made, one she’d read about in a book. But it was she who had decided to leave them behind. They all had.

  “Mom?” she whispered, hoping Finn couldn’t hear her.

  “Hmm?”

  “What if we missed something?”

  “What do you mean, sweetie?”

  “What if there actually was something we could have done to rescue Dr. Powers and Julian?”

  Her mom didn’t answer for several moments. “Self-reflection is a good thing,” she said. “Second-guessing is not.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Self-reflection is about the future. Doing better next time. Second-guessing is stuck in the past. Beating yourself up over things you can’t change.”

  That made sense but didn’t really do anything to make Eleanor feel better about the fact that Dr. Powers and Julian were now prisoners. She wondered where they were, what was happening to them. Were they in a jail cell? Were they frightened? Were they waiting—hoping—for rescue, not knowing they’d been abandoned?

  “I wish it were different,” her mom said. “But . . .” And here she brought her hand down before her as if laying it on a table. “We made the only choice we could with the information we had.”

  She sounded much more definite than Eleanor felt, almost practiced, but everything she’d said struck Eleanor as false reassurance. Like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince her daughter. Eleanor listened to the plane engines for a few moments, no clearer than she’d been before.

  “I just . . . ,” her mom started, but the strength went out of her voice. “I just hope they’re okay.”

  Now it was Eleanor’s turn to reassure. “Watkins said they hadn’t been hurt.”

  “I don’t trust him for a moment.”

  But Amaru had believed Watkins was an honorable man. Right now, Eleanor could only hope that was true.

  CHAPTER

  16

  VERY QUICKLY, DISCUSSION ON THE PLANE TURNED TO where they should go, and what they should do. Eleanor had successfully shut down two Concentrators, which emboldened her, and her thoughts on their plan were clear.

  “We go to Egypt,” she said. “We find the third Concentrator, and I shut it down. Then we go to the Himalayas.”

  Just a few weeks ago, the idea of going to Egypt, let alone the Arctic or Peru, would never have crossed her mind, but now she said it as if it were the most obvious choice they could make.

  The rest of the passengers on the plane didn’t seem as certain as Eleanor that their next move was to immediately go looking for a third Concentrator—Watkins was clearly onto their plan now, and he would anticipate this move—but they soon came to the shared conclusion that they didn’t really have a choice. If they were going to pursue their original mission, even without Dr. Powers and Julian, it was Egypt or the Himalayas, and Egypt sounded like the better choice of the two at the moment.

  The only other alternative was to abandon the mission altogether. No one brought up that idea directly, but as Eleanor glanced from face to face, she was pretty sure they were all thinking about it. Why wouldn’t they be?

  But the Freeze was still happening. The rogue planet was still up there. Two of the Concentrators were still feeding it. Nothing about their situation had changed, other than having achieved a few first successes and getting themselves branded as terrorists. To give up now was to give up on the human race, and none of them seemed prepared to do that just y
et.

  “As the chauffeur here,” Luke said from the cockpit, “I agree that Egypt is the better choice. The Himalayas are twelve thousand miles from here. Egypt is seven thousand, and generally on the way. I’ll still need to refuel twice to get there, which, by the way, will just about be the end of my petty cash. We need to fly north, then east. So where should we stop?”

  “Cuba?” Eleanor’s mom asked.

  “Too many eyes there,” Luke said. “With all the folks from Florida trying to move south, there are lots of bureaucratic hoops to jump through if we want to land in Cuba.”

  “Venezuela, then,” Betty said.

  “Too risky,” Eleanor’s mom said. “With their oil reserves, the G.E.T. has a huge presence there.”

  “What about Florida?” Eleanor asked.

  “Florida makes sense,” Luke said. “Miami. From there, Spain. Madrid or Barcelona. Then on to Egypt.”

  “My mom lives in Florida,” Finn said.

  His statement hung in the pressurized air of the cabin for several moments, unacknowledged, but taking up a lot of room.

  Eleanor’s mom cleared her throat. “I assume the G.E.T. are watching her very closely. In case you try to make contact with her.”

  “I know,” Finn said.

  “I’m afraid it would be too risky to try to—”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Finn interrupted.

  Eleanor wanted to reassure him somehow. “It’s the same reason we didn’t go to get my uncle Jack.”

  Finn nodded. “Sure. And once you’ve watched your dad and your brother get captured, and then abandoned them, not stopping to see your mom isn’t really a big deal.”

  That statement hit the air too, but much heavier.

  “Besides,” Finn added, “what would I say to her?”

  Eleanor had not thought about that, but the minute Finn posed the question, she saw what he meant. His mom would obviously want to know where Julian and Dr. Powers were, she’d want to know about everything that had happened, and Eleanor certainly wouldn’t be able to formulate a way to explain it all.