The guard’s right hand closed around the rifle stock just behind the trigger guard.
“Look, Arth.” Bledsoe raised a hand innocently. “The kid was out there, says he’s sick, and wants his uncle. What would you do?”
The guard gave Winston one more long look, then straightened up with a groan, leaving only a small cloud of breath where his face had been. “I’m not taking the blame. I’m gonna call it in.”
Arth opened the guardhouse door, and Winston caught a glimpse of an ancient black rotary phone on a shelf supporting a wired handset big enough to club someone. As the guard reached for the phone, Winston lifted his backpack into his lap and slid a hand around within it. Too much stuff! He grabbed a handful of fabric and pulled out his tube socks.
“What are those?” Theo asked.
Seriously? No athletic socks in 1948 either?
He dropped the socks in his lap and dug through his shirts until he could feel under the Alpha Machine and found Little e’s wrist guard. Something, perhaps a T-shirt, seemed to be stuffed inside it.
Arth lifted the handset to his ear and cranked the dial.
Winston considered bringing out Little e and decided against it. They might interpret the device as a weapon, which, Winston supposed, it was. His fingers dug through the fabric and closed around the doughnut-sized chronojumper. He grabbed it with his left hand and continued rummaging with his right. In another second, he seized the chronoviewer.
“Wait,” said Theo, gazing down at Winston’s hands. “Those look like…” His head jerked up toward Winston, eyes wide with alarm.
Winston heard movement from the back seat. “What is it?” asked Bledsoe.
“Sir, I have Misters Tremaine and Bledsoe at the checkpoint,” said Arth. “They have a boy with them who’s requesting—”
Winston set the chronojumper within the chronoviewer, gripped the ring in his left hand, and shoved open the Dodge’s passenger door.
Theo tried to grab at Winston’s sleeve, but he slipped away, backpack open and dangling in his right hand. His tube socks lay scattered on the ground. Oh, well.
Arth emerged from the guardhouse, working to slide the rifle strap from his shoulder.
Winston saw the chrono controls in his lower-right vision. His first impulse was to lean on the time slider and jump as far from here as possible, but that’s not what Bernie had said.
Winston obeyed. The time readout changed from 4:18 AM to 3:55 AM.
Arth leveled his rifle at Winston. The Dodge shielded Winston from the chest down, but even a head shot wouldn’t be tough for a trained shooter at this distance.
“Hands above your head!” the guard shouted.
Winston slowly raised his right hand, the one holding the handle atop his backpack. He kept the Alpha Machine pieces low and out of sight of everyone except Theo. He nudged the slider again, moving the readout to 3:38 AM. Again. 3:20 AM.
Winston heard a click as Arth flicked off his rifle’s safety.
“Drop what you’re holding!” he shouted.
The chronojumper twisted and spun within the silver ring. He took a deep breath…held it…and nudged again.
2:43 AM. Close enough.
“Just let us talk to—” Theo started to say.
Winston suddenly darted to his right, as if trying to make a run for the protection of darkness. Perhaps they would all think he’d slipped away when they went searching for him. At the same time, he mentally gripped and released the chrono controls.
The world flashed white, like the burst of a camera strobe, then returned to darkness. The guardroom and its orange candlelight remained, as did the fence, dirt road, and that vast swath of stars filling the world above the rocky bluffs. The Dodge and its two passengers were gone.
Winston let out a long breath, which hung about him, pale and ghostly, in the cold silence. His tinnitus flared again, but quieter this time. It started with multiple notes and quickly dissipated like the steam of his breath as Bernie’s voice spoke in his head.
Looking closer, Winston did make out the top of a head leaning against the guardhouse’s inner corner, topped by a very thick woolen cap.
He tiptoed to the traffic gate, all too aware of each pebble that crunched under his soles. Rather than chance lifting the hinged gate, Winston crouched and duckwalked under it. Once clear, he rose into a crouch and gingerly stepped past the guardhouse. Winston saw through the window that the gently snoring Arth had his rifle propped between his leg and the wall.
He made it ten yards, then twenty.
A stone cracked under his weight, and to Winston it sounded like a pistol shot. He froze.
Winston kept walking, all his weight on the balls of his feet, careful to hold the Alpha Machine pieces and his pack close to his chest to keep them from reflecting any lamplight.
Bernie didn’t reply, and Winston moved as fast as he dared. Fifty yards, then maybe seventy.
He heard movement behind him. Something hard tapped on a window, likely the rifle barrel. Winston chanced a backward glance and saw Arth’s torso in the window, back arched and arms bent as he stretched. He was turned away from Winston.
A hundred yards.
At last, Winston allowed himself to step on his heels, much to his calves’ relief, and walk faster.
Winston didn’t know which part he should object to first.
Winston liked the sound of that.
Winston rolled his eyes in the darkness and strongly suspected that Bernie must have kids back home.
9
The Scorpion Ascent
By the time Winston reached the shattered boulders and strewn scree that formed a skirt about the bluff’s base, his teeth were chattering and he could no longer feel his fingers. Compounding the
problem, the scattered debris forced Winston to slow his pace and watch his steps, otherwise he was bound to turn an ankle. Converse sneakers might be great for school halls, but they were only a step up from flip-flops for hiking.
As Winston scanned up the cliff, it seemed impossibly tall, as if he were faced with scaling a skyscraper that ended in the dead of space. This wasn’t a gym class rope climb. He had no tricks pulled off YouTube. He had missed death aboard the plane by seconds, narrowly missed death again from Bledsoe’s pistol, and now he was the only one left. Every single person he cared about was dead.
In that moment, staring up a harrowing climb as his body began to shiver, the past few hours caught up to him. He felt much as he had after the blimp hangar — utterly drained and hopeless. What good was continuing to run when everything kept getting stolen from him piece by piece?
After a pause, the alien said,
Bernie’s words rang hollow in Winston’s mind. He realized that he didn’t care whether he could make the climb or not. The problem was that he no longer wanted to. What was the point? Bledsoe hadn’t killed him, but the man had ripped out his heart.
Despondent as he was, Winston had to admit that sounded like a fine idea. Along the way, he’d paused to settle the chrono pieces in his pack and stretch out his sweat jacket sleeves so that the ends protruded from his coat sleeves and could serve as a poor excuse for mittens. He had both hoods up and cinched around his face. Still, his lips and nose felt frozen. His teeth were cold enough that they ached from the temperature change whenever he closed his mouth.
Winston hadn’t been jogging that fast, and his breathing slowed easily now that he was still. He did as Bernie asked, admiring how far the steam from each exhalation traveled before him.
Before he had even completed half a dozen breaths, Winston could tell that something was happening. He felt warmth in his cheeks, and his fingers tingled as sensation returned.
“Huh,” he muttered aloud. “How does this work?”
Winston converted the number to five miles. Of course, even aliens used metric.
He looked up the cliff face. From this angle, Winston could see that it wasn’t exactly vertical, nor was it some impossible face with sections that jutted out, which was good. He couldn’t imagine dangling from his hands, feet hanging free over a three hundred-foot drop. Rather, the face did have a slight slope, and the rock was jagged enough that he should be able to find occasional points where he could stand with his weight on his feet, especially if those chiseled-out handholds were conveniently placed.
Winston took a deep breath and began.
“I knew I should have participated more in those two weeks of weight training,” he mumbled as he lifted himself off the ground.
Winston saw the first handhold five feet above his head. His hands slid along the rough, jagged rock face, seeking anywhere his fingers could grip. For now, he was glad for the light flexibility of his Converse sneakers, but he suspected it wouldn’t be long until he was wishing for something with more ankle and arch support. Small pebbles and dust fell from under his hand, peppering his face. How did people do this for fun?
After a pause, Bernie replied,
Winston reached into the first handhold and gave it most of his weight so he could slide his left foot up and out to the side to test a spot for his next step.
Winston paused as he tested his next handhold.
Bernie paused before he answered,
Something in Bernie’s hesitation, combined with his surety about when and how Winston should move, caused a thought to strike Winston.
Winston grunted as he hauled himself up through another hold. He was now high enough to know not to look down.
Winston missed his grip, and his fingertips slid painfully off the crevice he’d tried to hold. On his next attempt, he made sure to test his hold more thoroughly.
That brought Winston up short, and he froze where he stood against the cliff.
“Holy crap!” Winston hissed aloud. “When were you gonna tell me about that?”
Winston eyed the handholds above him with deep distrust. He estimated that the one hiding a little houseguest was four niches away. There didn’t look to be many outcroppings or other crevice possibilities around it.
“Great. I’ll just ask it to make a store run and hope for the best.”
Another thought struck Winston as he secured his next toehold.
Winston thought it over.
Winston recognized that he had already fallen into trusting Bernie, even though he knew very little about him.
He did as the alien suggested, and as he approached each chiseled handhold, he moved with extreme caution.
Winston grimaced as the pang of memory bit at him. The future is slippery, he thought.
As he inched toward the suspected niche, Winston could feel the heat starting to fade from his hands and feet as weariness increasingly burned within his calves, shoulders, and arms. He sneaked a glance at the ground, then back up to the bluff’s top, and suspected he was just over halfway. As he’d feared, there were very few places he could find a grip within three or four feet of the cutout. He needed that handhold, and he couldn’t afford to stand there, clinging to the rock face, getting colder and weaker as he wondered what to do.
If he jammed his fingers into a crevice for leverage and used the two-inch lip under his right foot to stand on tiptoe, he could barely get his eyes level with the niche. In the darkness, illuminated only by starlight and the encroaching moon still hidden behind the bluff, even Winston’s keen eyes could barely discern anything but blackness within the small hole.
Then it moved. A quick motion, dark within dark. Was it imagination, or did Winston actually see two pinpricks of light glinting at him? His breath froze in his chest. All thought of exhaustion fled. His face was only a foot from the crevice, and if the creature attacked—
Winston tried to swallow past the tennis ball in his throat.
Winston didn’t dare to let go of his left-handed grip, and he didn’t trust his ability to fetch Little e out of his pack with only one hand while dangling on the side of a cliff. With Little e, he could blast the critter out of its hole…
As soon as the thought flitted through his mind, he imagined Shade scowling at him.
Winston Chase and the Omega Mesh Page 6
