The House of Power

by Patrick Carman

  Edgar waited until the Cleaner began to charge toward the sound of Vincent’s voice. Then he released the fig with a snap! and the weapon flew through the air, crashing into the Cleaner’s face and cracking off a jagged tooth.

  The Cleaner stopped cold and snapped its teeth in shock. Vincent was able to move in close and thrust his spear into the mouth of the stunned beast. It was one of the easier kills he could remember accomplishing in his many years of hunting in the Flatlands.

  Dr. Kincaid crept up and put an arm around each of his companions.

  “Well done!”

  Vincent grinned at Edgar, shaking his head. “It looks as though I may have found a hunting partner.”

  Dr. Kincaid was pleased. “We may make our destination yet!”

  “Luther,” said Edgar. The name felt strange, and he was quite sure it would be the last time he used it. “Where are we going?”

  “On a miraculous journey,” said Dr. Kincaid. “And I’m glad to have you and Vincent to protect me.”

  Vincent cut away a chunk of one of the Cleaners and handed it to Edgar. He did the same for Dr. Kincaid, then himself. The fresh Cleaner was sopping with slimy green goo that bubbled and squished around Edgar’s teeth as he ate.

  “Let me ask you again, Vincent,” said Dr. Kincaid. “Are we nearing the cliff or are we not? You’ve traveled this way many times, but I can’t quite get my bearing.”

  Vincent had a large bite of Cleaner in his mouth, and Edgar could see that he’d gotten a good deal of slime on his face. It glistened like black water in the fading light.

  “I’m afraid we have already passed into Tabletop,” said Vincent. He wiped one side of his face against his shoulder. “The cliffs are no more.”

  Edgar looked back into the Flatlands and realized the Cleaners he’d been fighting were lying dead in Tabletop. It was a stunning revelation. It had been one thing to imagine the Flatlands and Tabletop as one, but the reality felt like a blow to the head, leaving him dizzy with thoughts of the transforming world he lived in.

  He looked toward the grove and couldn’t see it, though he could imagine exactly where it would be somewhere off in the distance. A moment had come in Atherton when there were no more cliffs to be climbed, and Edgar said the only words that came to his mind.

  “The world is flat.”

  Dr. Kincaid gazed off into the darkened horizon, astounded by the changes before him.

  “Indeed it is.”

  Vincent seemed the least moved of the three, for he was completely unable to put anything in front of his obligation to protect Dr. Kincaid and Edgar on their journey. He had known the time would come when the cliffs would vanish and thought only of how complicated the work would be of shielding his two companions from harm.

  “We’re barely on the other side,” said Dr. Kincaid. He had moved off a few steps and was kneeling down. “Here. This is where the cliff used to be. I can hardly believe it’s gone.”

  His two companions knelt down with him and examined the place where a great wall of stone had once been.

  “This one is not so perfect as the last,” said Dr. Kincaid. “It is as I suspected.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Edgar.

  “What I know of the Highlands’ descent leads me to believe that it will have come down without leaving gaps of any significance. Look there.” Dr. Kincaid walked along the vein of rubble, pointing as he went. Edgar followed the line of his finger out into the depths of night and thought he saw the ground turn darker still.

  “That darkness you see is a crevice, a place where the two lands met without matching. There will be great chasms such as these all the way around the seam,” said Dr. Kincaid. “Some will be the size of your foot, others big enough to fall into. A great many of them will be deep and inescapable.”

  “I wonder if we could dispose of the Cleaners in some of the large breaks,” said Edgar. “Maybe we could find a way to push them in or herd them.”

  Vincent looked down the line, wondering how deep and wide some of the gaps might be.

  “Time will tell,” said Dr. Kincaid. He looked off toward the Highlands and grimaced as he thought of the long journey ahead, cursing his old feet for their unwillingness to go along without complaint.

  “We will do well to keep moving,” said Vincent. “The grove is still a good distance, and we must be clear of it by morning.”

  It came to the blackest part of night, and the three figures made their way across Tabletop. It was a peaceful trek of quiet thinking for the three of them, each alone in his own thoughts of what the morning would bring.

  Vincent prepared his mind for a great many battles to come in which his skills would be desperately needed. Dr. Kincaid thought of the place they were going and the complicated challenges awaiting them there. Edgar wondered where Samuel and Isabel were and if he would ever find them. He wondered if he would ever climb again. He thought of the grove and the villages, the Highlands and Lord Phineus, the vast army of Cleaners that would invade his home and rip the trees from the ground.

  And yet Edgar was not afraid of the morning and what it would bring. He was no longer a lonely orphan who slept under trees in a fig grove. He had dared to visit every realm of Atherton, and what was more, he’d made friends wherever he’d gone. The sun would rise on a world of grand and perilous adventures at every turn, companions by his side, fighting a good fight to save things that mattered.

  What more could a boy hope for?

  While Edgar and his companions traveled across Tabletop, something began to happen that no one had expected. Not even Dr. Kincaid knew of its coming, for this was a secret known only to Dr. Harding. The first two people to notice it were Samuel and Isabel, who were hidden in the tall grass of the former Highlands, preparing to sneak into the House of Power.

  “Did you feel that?” asked Isabel.

  “What?”

  Isabel put her hand flat on the ground, but there was nothing.

  “I thought I felt something. It was different than before. Closer.”

  “I didn’t feel it,” said Samuel. “We should go now. It’s the darkest hour.”

  But Isabel felt compelled to go somewhere else first.

  “Come with me a moment, will you? There’s something I must be sure of.”

  She ran out of the tall grass, and Samuel followed until they came to the place where the Highlands had merged with Tabletop. In the darkness, Isabel came upon something hard against her knees and fell forward on her hands. She stood up, rubbing her shins and feeling confused.

  “You’re suddenly a lot taller than me,” said Samuel, his voice shaking and unsteady.

  There was a haunting noise in the air, barely discernible but constant. It was a familiar sound—too familiar.

  The two stood facing one another—Samuel in the Highlands and Isabel in Tabletop—and they found that Isabel was ever so slowly growing taller.

  The Highlands had begun to sink into the middle of Atherton.

  END OF ONE

  ATHERTON TWO REMAINS.

  EXPLORE SUPPLEMENTAL DATA FLOW FOR MORE ON DR. HARDING AND THE MAKING OF ATHERTON.

  SUPPLEMENTAL DATA FLOW OF

  DR. HARDING’S BRAIN

  Readers may refer to unlockdrhardingsbrain.com for drawings, audio files, video segments, and more information about the following topics.

  CLEANERS.

  DR. HARDING’S JOURNAL 47,

  LINE 6, NUMBER 22395

  Cleaners were originally developed by Dr. Harding in a lab environment after a long string of failed efforts to assemble a creature whose singular purpose was to sanitize the underside of Atherton (unlock Dr. Harding’s brain to better understand why this was important). Thousands of failed attempts at the cellular level were never fully developed. Early versions of the Cleaner concept included a mouth that was turned sideways, longer legs, and a much wider body. Early Cleaner prototypes and other material can be seen by unlocking number 22395.

  THE DARK PLANET.
>
  DR. HARDING’S JOURNAL 16,

  LINE 35, NUMBER 43682

  The Dark Planet is Earth in the year 2105. Pollution has turned the Dark Planet into a place where people stay within containments most of the time. The air is thick with smog and unbreathable for more than a few minutes without the aid of Disposable Compact Filtering units (DCFs). A view of the Dark Planet from space lacks the blues and greens it once exhibited. The oceans are dim, the forests are mostly dead, and the Dark Planet is filled with the sharp coldness of metal.

  In the history of the Dark Planet there were three waves of advancement. The first was agricultural, in which mankind settled into distinct places and managed to grow crops and create herds of animals for consumption and use. The second wave was the most dangerous, and set the Dark Planet on its eventual path to ruin. This was the wave of industrial machines, which made life easier for mankind. The third wave saw the rise of information technology and thinking machines, allowing mankind to create habitats and food sources in ways that hadn’t been thought of before, ways that did untold harm to the Dark Planet. In time, the three waves of advancement overwhelmed the Dark Planet’s natural resources, and it could not recover. By 2085 its former beauty was lost forever. For more information about the Dark Planet, unlock number 43682.

  MAD SCIENTISTS.

  DR. HARDING’S JOURNAL 154,

  LINE 18, NUMBER 37782

  Dr. Harding follows in the footsteps of another literary mad scientist, Dr. Frankenstein. The two have many things in common, and Dr. Harding carried around an old paperback copy of the famous Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein wher ever he went. He was obsessed with its portrayal of a scientist gone mad with the idea of reanimation. Of particular interest to Dr. Harding was the struggle Dr. Frankenstein faced once he knew how to bring a dead person back to life. Did knowing how to do it mean he should do it? The consequences for carrying out his insane plan were devastating in the case of Dr. Frankenstein, and Dr. Harding wondered if the same would be true if he made Atherton. Unlock Dr. Harding’s brain for more on the two scientists.

  GRAVITY, ORBIT, AND DISCONNECT.

  DR. HARDING’S JOURNAL 267,

  PARTIAL DATA, FILE LOST

  Gravity: It was necessary for the round bottom of Atherton to weigh an enormous amount. With out a heavy bottom, people would either float in the air or weigh almost nothing. Part of the bottom half of Atherton is filled with water, but some of the bottom is made of a living organic material with a mass similar to that of solid lead. If you were to visit Atherton and stand on any of the three levels, you would feel somewhat lighter than you do now. A 100-pound person from the Dark Planet weighs 81 pounds on Atherton.

  Orbit: Atherton orbits the Dark Planet in such a way that a day and night on Atherton is generally the same length as a day and night on the Dark Planet. In addition, Atherton is always facing away from the Dark Planet so that those living on Atherton never see the place from which they originated. The closer an object’s orbit to the Dark Planet, the less time it takes to make one trip around, and the faster it must go. Atherton orbits the Dark Planet exactly 22,300 miles away in the thermosphere. Unlock Dr. Harding’s brain to see Atherton orbiting the Dark Planet.

  Disconnect: There was a time when communication and boarding of Atherton from those on the Dark Planet was possible, but Dr. Harding severed contact, and there is currently no way to reestablish a connection. There are some on the Dark Planet who believe they will eventually find a way to make contact with Atherton again.

  BIRDS, BUGS, AND ANIMALS.

  DR. HARDING’S JOURNAL 82,

  LINE 7, NUMBER 29430

  Dr. Harding had a strong dislike for the enormous array of species on the Dark Planet. He blamed pollution, mass consumption, overpopulation, and a host of other problems on what he termed “mass variety,” and while he was not in favor of destroying vast species of animals, he was determined not to have the same problem arise on Atherton. Birds and flying bugs of any kind were of particular concern, due in part to Dr. Harding’s desire to maintain biological purity on all of Atherton’s levels, but also because he had a terrible case of ornithophobia (the fear of birds) and simply could not bring himself to put flying creatures on Atherton. There are, however, bugs that do not fly on Atherton.

  Dr. Harding was very fond of rabbits and sheep, and for a time he tried to create genetic versions of these animals with even greater usefulness. After a period of failed experimentation, he settled on the animals as they were. There is also the secret matter of the creatures that reside in Mead’s Hollow.

  Dr. Harding added horses primarily as beasts of burden. He did not intend them to be used as weapons of war, although war was a topic that upset him and was not discussed, so it could be that he gave some thought to the matter.

  THE FIG TREE.

  DR. HARDING’S JOURNAL 304,

  LINE 92, NUMBER 15943

  Agro science was a passion for Dr. Harding. He combined countless varieties of trees and plants in an effort to create something new and useful. The fig tree was at once his most beloved invention and his greatest failure. He wanted desperately to create a food source that was easy to maintain, caused minimal or no dam age to the environment, and was almost entirely edible or useful. He succeeded on all of these counts but was later devastated to find that the tree he had created was poisonous after the third year.

  UNLOCK THE SECRETS

  22302 – 13120 – 62133 – 44591

  42211 – 40013 – 44536 – 57432

  32441 – 44435 – 37432 – 37732

  44857 – 44500 – 91445

  29430 – 90254 – 99101 – 22395 – 22389 – 21900

  22346 – 23102 – 22333

  15943 – 15492 – 14999 – 15658 – 15822 – 15992

  24100 – 24131 – 37445 – 38124

  37782 – 36111 – 41474

  55128 – 60274

  43682 – 41888 – 32439

  WWW.DRHARDINGSBRAIN.COM

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost I need to thank my editor on this project, the incomparable Andrea Spooner. She had the skill and courage to give me a shovel and tell me where to dig, and knew when the time was right to take the spade from my hands and leave well enough alone. She got lost in Atherton as I did, and we came away together with a much better book than I could have written on my own.

  My hat is off to David Ford. It was an honor to be chosen by him and his talented staff at Little, Brown and Company.

  Thank you Sangeeta Mehta for patching me through, routing my stuff, and always sounding genuinely pleased to hear the distant voice of Eastern Washington.

  Many thanks to my agent, Peter Rubie, for leading me across a tightrope with precision and grace and not letting me fall off. You knew our course and never wavered, even in the presence of my colossal indecision.

  Thank you to the ever present (and never more appreciated) creative team in my hometown of Walla Walla, who helped make this project so much fun to work on (and gently reigned me in when I was good and lost somewhere deep in the woods): Squire Broel for inspired drawings and model building, Jeremy Gon zalez for film work, and Matt McKern for interactive content.

  Thanks to Corey Smith, a loyal friend and mentor, for believing in me at his own peril and never giving up; Remy Wilcox for a character trait inspiration that shall go unmentioned here; and Marcus Wilcox for lively scientific discussions over sandwiches and Cokes.

  Thank you, Skip Lee, for founding Agros, an organization that brings hope to thousands of people trapped in the cycle of poverty (and helps this one writer remain clear about what really matters). And three people I don’t know, but acknowledge for their ability to change my mind, make me think, and challenge me to stop taking and start giving back: Al Gore, Bono, and David James Duncan.

  In the end, there are no books without Karen. She makes everything possible.

  —P.C.

  DON’T MISS

  RIVERS OF FIRE

  the riveti
ng sequel to Patrick Carman’s

  THE HOUSE OF POWER.

  NOW AVAILABLE

  As the world collapses, a monstrous force rises. And underground, Edgar soon discovers, Atherton is even more sinister.

  TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW!

  CHAPTER

  1

  EDGAR RETURNS HOME

  It was the middle of the night when Edgar entered the fig grove alone. A heavy quiet filled the air, and he wondered if everyone was sleeping, unaware of the approaching danger. He touched the trunks of the trees as he went, and this helped him find his way through the darkness. Though he’d only been gone a few days, he had a deep feeling of having come home after a long time away.

  His first few steps into the grove reminded Edgar of what it had felt like to sneak home after a night of secret climbing. How long had it been since the Highlands were looming far above on a pillar of stone? He couldn’t remember for sure. And when was the last time he’d climbed, really climbed, high into the grey evening sky against a forbidden wall? He couldn’t remember that, either. Time seemed to have lost its meaning.

  “Don’t move another step!”

  Edgar froze. Someone dropped out of a tree directly in front of him. He had let himself drift aimlessly into a tangled web of thoughts and emotions, and now he’d been caught.

  There was hardly any light at all, only a dim whisper of dark grey, but Edgar could see a man carrying a club in one hand and a rock in the other. But it occurred to him that he knew the grove better than anyone and could make a quick escape if he wanted, especially at night.

  “Edgar?” asked the man. He bobbed up and down like a rabbit, trying to catch an angle of light in the trees as he sized up the boy before him.