The Lost Cities

by Dale Peck

  “Father.”

  She opened her eyes. For a moment she forgot she was in the radio, so she couldn’t understand why the light was so dim.

  “So. You have come at last.”

  If Iacob answered his father, Susan didn’t hear, because when she sat up she heard an ominously loud rumbling. She froze.

  “The wooden box makes strange noises,” Karl Olafson said after a moment. Susan heard a tinge of fear in his voice, and was relieved. Hopefully he wouldn’t go prying off one of the side panels anytime soon.

  “The people from the water have trapped dangerous spirits inside,” Iacob answered his father. “The spirits are eager to get out and wreak their revenge on the first people they see.”

  Bluster added itself to the fear in Karl Olafson’s voice. “Let us hope they don’t get out then. You are closer to the box than I.” There was a pause, and then Karl Olafson said, “I sense that you have brought me something, my son.”

  What was this? Susan sat up as quietly as she could, feeling a twinge at the back of her head. I must’ve been knocked out, she thought. Cool. She blushed hotly in the shadow of the radio. “Cool” was never a word she would have said out loud.

  A sliver of light came through one side of the radio. Susan figured it was the tuning band between the two dials. The band was plastic, and transparent. She’d never noticed before, probably because the inside of the box was dark. But now she found that if she rested on her hands and knees she could put her eyes up to the slot and see out perfectly.

  As she leaned toward the band, she heard a clacking noise and felt something soft and small scramble out of her way. Marie-Antoinette! Susan reached a hand through the dark to try to touch the bird reassuringly; a determined peck drove her hand away. Susan almost chuckled. Captivity certainly hadn’t cowed Drift House’s disgruntled second bird.

  She leaned all the way into the slot now, and found herself looking at a shadowy space lit only by a pair of flickering torches and one large bonfire. It was a cave, Susan realized, narrow, but stretching back farther than she could see. The walls appeared to be wet-looking black earth, with creepy roots sticking out like something from a horror movie. The floor was earthen too, though here and there wide flat boulders poked from it, and these had been turned into stone tables covered with animal hides and wooden tools and clay jugs and things. Sitting on one of the smaller stones sat a thick hairy-faced man draped in something Susan assumed was a polar bear skin, although it was so dingy with dirt and smears of grease that it was less white than dark, dark gray. Standing before this man, with his back to her, was a thin boy she assumed was Iacob. At any rate he was barefoot in leather breeches, as she remembered him, but there was an eerily familiar shape hanging off his shoulders: Charles’s backpack.

  “CHARLES!”

  Susan’s voice boomed out into the empty space. She smacked her hand over her mouth, and even that tiny sound was amplified into a thunderclap.

  Iacob whirled around, the backpack half falling from his shoulders and tangling in his arms. It was funny to think of someone who didn’t know how to wear a backpack—but Susan was much more concerned with how Iacob had come to possess it in the first place. It seemed unlikely that Charles would have given it to him. Had Iacob taken it for some reason? And most important, how had Charles managed to join them in the fifteenth century?

  Meanwhile, Karl Olafson was looking at his son with a skeptical expression. “Spirits? It sounds more like a child to me. And a girl at that. Guards!”

  “Father, no!” Iacob whirled back to Karl Olafson. “It is not, uh, safe.”

  Karl Olafson ignored his son. He spoke to someone Susan couldn’t see. “Pry open the side of that box. I think we have a spy in our midst.”

  “Father, please! If the magic gets out—”

  The radio jerked to one side, and Susan fell against a wall. Fortunately she didn’t hit her head this time, but her hand came down hard on a squirming, feathery bundle.

  “SQUAWK!”

  Marie-Antoinette’s annoyed cry reverberated like a gunshot, and the box went still. Susan couldn’t see anything, but she could imagine Karl Olafson’s men jumping away from the strange sound.

  “Sire! The box! It’s haunted!”

  “Sire?” Susan thought she detected a note of sarcasm in Iacob’s voice. “Have you crowned yourself, Father?”

  “Nonsense!” Karl Olafson said. It was unclear to whom he spoke. “It is no more magical than a flute or a lyre. It makes noise because someone is playing it. In this instance, the person playing it is inside the box.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then:

  “Sire? What is a flute?”

  “Or a lyre?”

  “Yes, Father,” Iacob said. “What are these… musical instruments? And how have you heard of them?”

  “Don’t be coy, my son. The amulet is mine, and shall be yours upon my death—if you have indeed returned to be my heir. Do you have the book?”

  There was a brief pause, and then Iacob said, “I think you know the answer to that question already, Father.”

  As quietly as she could, Susan inched back to the tuner slot. Dimly, she could make out Marie-Antoinette motioning with her wing for Susan to remain still, but Susan had to see what was going on. Iacob was more or less in the same place, the backpack in his hands now, but Karl Olafson was standing. The polar bear robe had fallen off his left shoulder, exposing a kind of woven leather tunic that was a bit like armor, and the military aspect was enhanced by a large dagger that hung from a sheath draped across his chest. Father and son stared at each other with looks of determination on their faces.

  “They call me king,” Karl Olafson said in a level, slightly menacing tone of voice, “and they will call you prince, and one day king, as well—if you demonstrate your fealty.”

  “Fealty?” Iacob’s mouth had trouble with the word. “Flutes and lyres and… fealty? You know much more than you did the last time I saw you.”

  Karl Olafson put his hand to his chest and stroked something. Susan thought it was the cord holding up his dagger, but then she realized it was something beneath the tunic. The two halves of a string hanging from his neck disappeared beneath the leather. With a thrill of both horror and excitement, Susan realized it must be the Amulet of Babel!

  “I know more than you can imagine, my son.”

  Iacob brought the backpack closer to his chest. “Like the contents of a closed sack?”

  “Like the future, my son! I can show it to you as well. All you have to do is give me what’s in that bag.”

  Susan could see that Iacob’s hands were white knuckled from clutching Charles’s backpack so tightly, but his voice was firm and—mostly—level. He nodded now, in Susan’s direction. She caught her breath lest he expose her, and a sound like a snapped bowstring reverberated through the cave.

  “The box,” Iacob said.

  “It controls the strangers’ ship.” “It does more than that, my son.”

  “I do not care about those other things, Father. Without it, the strangers are trapped.”

  A smirk, barely visible through the thick beard, twisted the side of Karl Olafson’s mouth.

  “Without it, we are also trapped, my son.”

  Iacob opened his mouth, then closed it. He shook his head. “I do not understand, Father. You have Osterbygd’s boats and most of its weapons as well. And you have the amulet. How are you trapped?”

  “You know what I mean, Iacob. Our people have been having this discussion for generations. Greenland is vast, but there is still nothing there. No place to go, nowhere to live. It is a prison, and it is time we broke free.”

  “Free? To what, Father? Where? Iceland? Norway?”

  “There is no place on earth fit to deny us, and with the help of that box”—Karl Olafson pointed, and Susan involuntarily flinched—“we will soon be able to go wherever and whenever we choose.”

  Whenever? Did Karl Olafson know about the radio’s temporal powers?
But how?

  Iacob apparently had the same question.

  “When-ever?” he said, awkwardly repeating the word.

  “Yes, my son. Whenever.” Suddenly Karl Olafson reached a hand to his throat and pulled on a string that hung there. Susan almost expected a fanfare after all this time, but the gold pendant slipped into view without a sound. She was surprised—she thought it would be tiny, like the one Murray wore around his neck, but it was almost as big as a tea saucer, and thick too. Maybe it’s not what Mur—what Mario needs after all, she thought. Maybe we’ll be able to get home and he’ll be able to be a five-year-old again, and we won’t have to choose. Her brother’s lonely pleas to go home came back to her, and she prayed she was right.

  Karl Olafson’s voice broke into her thoughts. “The amulet has given me terrific visions, my son! It has shown me how to open a hole into the future! A hole we can step through as though it were a doorway, and through which we can bring back the most remarkable objects! Firearms that can propel bullets through the air a thousand times faster than a spear or an arrow, airships capable of carrying hundreds of warriors at heights and speeds no bird could ever reach, and computers that can outthink a thousand men. And so much more, from medicines to weapons to power sources. With them we can dominate the whole of the new world! Not just the islands of Greenland and Vinland, but the vastness of the two continents that lie to the west of them!”

  Although the translation ability of objects associated with the Sea of Time was generally unnoticeable, there were times when it produced odd effects. Susan understood everything Karl Olafson had just said (and was terrified by it as well), but Iacob, who shared a language with his father, only stared at him in incomprehension—but his terror was just as palpable as Susan’s.

  “You speak of madness, Father!” “How can you accuse me of madness, when you have just journeyed five hundred miles over the open water in a manor house with no visible means of propulsion? You know I speak the truth.”

  “It is not the truth of your words that frightens me, Father. It is your intention. You wish to upset the natural order.”

  “Iacob.” Karl Olafson shook his head in a disappointed manner. “My son. The world is full of things we Greenlanders are too ignorant to understand. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or can’t be claimed by someone strong enough to grab them. I tell you we can go to the future, and we can bring back weapons that will allow us to conquer the whole of this world, compared to which Greenland is as a postage stamp on a letter.”

  Again, Karl Olafson’s words, so clear to Susan, left his son confused. “Post-age stamp? Letter?”

  Karl Olafson brought the pendant to his lips and kissed it. “The words, Iacob! The words I have heard and the things I have seen thanks to the Amulet of Babel! My head is full to bursting with all of it!”

  “I think it has burst, Father. I thought you were open to reason, but that pendant has taken you past human negotiation.”

  “Enough! I grow tired of your insolence and disloyalty. Give me the book, so that I can rejoin the amulet to its berth and open the temporal jetty.” And Karl Olafson took one hand from the necklace and placed it on the hilt of his knife.

  “Neither your words nor your weapons will get this book from me, Father. Not until you return the box to the strangers’ ship.”

  “You are brave, my son, but foolish. Do not think the bond of blood will keep me from spilling yours.”

  Karl Olafson took a step toward Iacob, who jumped back and grabbed one of the torches so quickly it was obvious he had planned his move. Way to go! Susan thought, but she was still terrified for him. Karl Olafson had his knife, after all, and there were the two guards she couldn’t see, presumably armed as well. She was desperate to help in some way, but trapped in the radio all she could do was cross the fingers of both hands for luck.

  But Iacob didn’t waver. “Stay back, Father, or I’ll destroy it, and all your plans with it.”

  Karl Olafson paused. Then, smiling grimly, he pulled his knife from its sheath almost casually. “It is not necessary for you to die, my son. Give me the bag, and everything will be forgiven.”

  Like all the Greenlanders’ tools, Karl Olafson’s knife was worn and small, more hilt than blade. But what was left was sharp and wickedly curved, like the claw of a lion, and looked more than long enough to slit the throat of a thirteen-year-old boy.

  Iacob took another step backward and pressed himself against the wall of the cave. “I will do it, Father!”

  Do it, Susan thought. Just do it!

  Karl Olafson continued to advance on his son. He held the knife in front of him, as if showing a toy to a child.

  “Look, my son, at what we have been reduced to. These little slivers of steel, when there are mountains of iron—and silver and gold and precious jewels—awaiting us. Would you deny your fellow countrymen the chance to live in comfort? With food to fill their bellies and medicine to heal their illnesses, and light, so they do not have to skulk in murky caves like the men of a thousand years ago? Do you really find our poverty so ennobling?”

  “You use the word ‘comfort,’ Father, but what you mean is ‘conquest.’ You speak of food and medicine for our people, but it seems to me we can have none of these things for ourselves unless we take them from someone else. Light, Father?” Iacob waved his torch, causing it to sputter and smoke. “You don’t want light. You want fire, to burn away everything you see!”

  Karl Olafson snorted derisively. “This sounds like the nonsense you have learned from talking to the Qaanaaq.”

  “The Qaanaaq say that our kind are like termites in a house. We eat and eat and eat until everything is rotted away and the structure collapses on our heads.”

  Karl Olafson leveled the knife at his son. “I will give you one last chance, my son. The bag, or your blood.”

  Iacob hesitated for so long that Susan thought he might actually surrender. He stared at the blade in his father’s hand as if hypnotized. But then, finally, he blinked, and looked in his father’s eyes. “I am sorry. You leave me no choice.” And quickly, before Karl Olafson could stop him, he brought torch and bag together.

  The flammable nylon caught fire immediately, burning with a noxious orange flame. The sight was so captivating that it took several moments for Susan to realize that Karl Olafson had made no move to stop his son. Instead, he sheathed his knife, and his smile grew wider as he stared at the growing flames.

  Iacob’s eyes flickered between his father and the burning bag in his hand. His face was filled with confusion as he waited for an attack that didn’t come. When the bag grew too hot to hold, he dropped it to the floor, where it burned smokily. The smoke wafted across the floor in dense spirals, and when it drifted through the radio’s grille Susan had to bite her hand to keep from coughing. Marie-Antoinette, however, had no hand to bite, and her thin parrot cough blared out of the radio like a burst of gunfire. Susan heard the unseen men on either side of the radio moan in fear at the strange sound.

  If Karl Olafson heard, however, he gave no sign. He stood looking at his son with an expression of eerie patience. It seemed that once he’d freed the amulet from his shirt he couldn’t stop touching it, and both hands stroked it constantly, the way a young child will stroke the head of a sleeping kitten over and over again. Susan found herself wondering what would happen when the amulet woke up.

  Occasionally his eyes flickered to the burning bag, but he made no move to put it out. Soon enough Susan saw why: Charles’s backpack burned away, leaving the book Mario had given them uncovered—and unscathed. And then, squinting, Susan saw that there wasn’t one but two books. Something about this sent a thrill of fear up and down her spine, and she heard her sigh amplified into the room like the wail of an approaching tornado.

  Karl Olafson seemed to see the second book at the same time Susan did. He looked up at his son with an openmouthed expression, of wonder and triumph, and also, Susan thought, of madness.

  “Oh, my w
ayward son. You have brought your father so much more than you realize. Guards, seize him!”

  The two men seemed only too eager to get away from the moaning, shrieking box. They ran across the room and one of them grabbed the torch from Iacob’s hand and the other seized the boy by both arms and held him fast. Iacob, who seemed to have run out of ideas, didn’t struggle, but only stared at the unburned books on the ground.

  “What have I done?” he said. It seemed to Susan that his eyes glanced in her direction. “I’m sorry. I have played right into his hands.”

  Karl Olafson knelt before the smoldering books, but the flame was still too hot for him to touch them. “Talking to the ‘spirits’ inside the box, my son?” His laugh was short and rude.

  “You said the amulet allowed you to see things that had not yet come to pass. I see now it is true: you knew the fire wouldn’t harm your precious book.”

  Karl Olafson could hardly look away from the burning books. Again and again his hand danced toward them, only to retreat to the amulet when the flames licked at his fingers.

  “Yes, my son. I knew you would bring it to me, and I knew you would fail in your attempt to destroy it.”

  “And yet you seemed surprised by something. Could it be the fact that there were two books in the sack?”

  Karl Olafson failed to hide his consternation. He took a hand off the pendant long enough to wave his son’s words away.

  “It is nothing. The amulet only shows me those things that are important.”

  “Is that true, Father? Or could it be that the amulet only shows you what it needs to get you to do its bidding? You think you are using the amulet, Father. But what if it is using you?”

  Karl Olafson looked nervously at the two books. His hands held the amulet so tightly that Susan could see the cord biting into the skin of his neck. He made a visible effort to steel himself. “You will not frighten me out of opening the jetty, Iacob.”

  “Do you even know what the jetty is, Father? You speak of traveling to other lands, other times even, but how—”