City of Ruins (23 page)

“But mostly you had no idea who else was in
there with you. Until one day, somebody came in a flying saucer and
busted somebody out. I heard the noise outside, and in the
commotion, I helped some of the people and creatures in there
escape. With me.

“We formed a circus. My circus. We kept a low
profile, in small-out-of-the-way places, makin’ our own way through
the world, until suddenly, out of the blue, Rolf was back—like he’d
just popped back out of the sky, or something.

“He was able to have me tracked down. And
blackmailed me. Said he’d send everyone in my circus — even me —
back to that zoo-prison we were in, at least if I didn’t
cooperate.”

“ ‘Cooperate?’ ”

“I’d go find things he wanted or needed while
he pretended to be a retired old man working as a gardener. I guess
being scared like that, looking over my shoulder all the time, made
me pretty mean.” He sighed, like he was trying to let a few years
worth of bad air out of his body. “I think by staying here, I won’t
have to look over my shoulder so much. That’s one of the reasons I
went into the desert. I
was
looking for my grandfather, in a
way. I wanted to make sure he was really gone this time.”

I didn’t tell him that with my cap in Rolf’s
possession, no one can really be sure where Rolf might pop up next
or what he might try to do.

“Hey, when you get back,” Rocket continued,
“will you try and round up Strong Bess and the bat and Silver Eye?
I’m not sure if they’d know what to do out there on their own.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, not really
knowing if I ever
would
get back, or, if I did, whether
there was anything at all I could do about finding the missing half
of his carnival. It’s the way grownups talk to kids half the time,
saying “I will” when you can’t be sure of anything, pretending the
world makes sense when it really doesn’t at all.

And as of today, James, the Bearded Boy, said
he wanted to stay, too. He and Naftali have found a common bond,
like brothers. Orphan brothers, with only each other to rely
on.

“It’ll be hard for you, James, when Thea
goes,” I told him. “You won’t have her to translate for you.”

“But I’ll have someone who knows what it’s
like to be me,” he said, talking about Naftali. “And anyway, I’m
not even a James.”

“You’re not?”

“I used to look up profiles of kids on the
Comnet, in libraries, sometimes. James Rodney was this guy out in
Illinois someplace — about five feet tall, blond hair, blue eyes,
played a lot of sports like soccer, golf, even water polo. He had
lots of friends. I read about him on the Comsite his family made
when they were having some kind of family reunion. I thought: I
could be like him. Or maybe, I
wanted
to be like him. To
have that same kind of life he had. So I started to call myself
James.”

Thinking of what Rocket and James had told
me, I realized that some of the things A.J. said about Jerusalem
were still true. People were still coming here looking for
something, hoping, maybe, they could leave something else behind
and walk away feeling better, or luckier, or just less worried.

That’s what all of us wanted, too, even those
of us who came here pretty much by accident.

Early this morning, the woman who grabbed at
Thea and called her “Gehanna-marked” gave the Bearded Boy a
haircut, though all she had to use was a broken piece of sword,
scavenged from the temple ruins. Now he just looks like he’s going
to the tea party, never mind Halloween.

Except, in this case, it’s a rock-throwing
party with Naftali. It’s late afternoon, and they’re throwing
strikes at the outline of the soldier on the temple wall.

Occasionally, they yell, “Barnstormer!” when
they’re throwing. I’ve been able to teach them a couple things
about baseball and about having a little fun, no matter what.

“I think things are about to get a little
gerk-skzzy
!” Clyne announces, watching the plasmechanic goo
start to…percolate, on the flat white rock where it’s been these
last three days.

“Hold this, please,” A.J. says to Huldah,
handing her the mirror. She’s come to watch us leave.

“Just to be clear,” she says, “the power to
perform miracles belongs only to God.”

“Well, it’ll be a miracle if this really
works,” I say, thinking that even if we land anywhere — or anytime—
near home, we’ll still have to figure where Rolf went and how to
get him back and whether we’ll need to come back for the other
refugees from the Odd-Lots Carnival that we’re leaving here in
Jerusalem’s ruins.

“May God grant you safe passage, wherever
you’re going now,” Huldah says.

“Thank you, Huldah,” Thea tells her.

“You’re welcome. And perhaps you will find a
way to pass along any blessings you may have received here. And
take some of this.” Huldah hands Thea what looks like a
wineskin.

“It’s healing water, from the
wadi
.
You never know when you might need some.”

As the sun begins to set again, a lot of
people are standing around their campfire. There are even more
fires now; every morning, before setting up the mirror with Clyne,
to reflect light on the plasmechanical goo, A.J.’d set up a new
cooking fire, to make sure the sparks never went out.

“Always got to give something back,” he told
me, blowing on some embers.

Over the last couple of days, people have
grown to accept us, even if they’re not overly fond of us.

And just as it looks like we might have to
spend one more night here, Clyne jumps up. “Heating to critical
snggg!
mass!” he says. “We must get in proximate contact
with the brewing dimensional
flnnng!
rift!”

The plasmechanical goo has been on top of
another small pile of rocks — another altar, really — made by A.J.,
though this one is a short walk from the temple ruins. The mirror
has been propped in another small pile of stones a few feet away,
with each of us moving it during the day.

Now as the sun fades, A.J. takes the mirror
and hands it to James, who is part of the crowd that’s gathered
around us again — though this time they’re here to watch, not to
throw rocks.

“Keep this thing aimed right there at all
that sauce on those stones,” A.J. says, and then he runs over to
hold hands with me and Clyne. Well, hold claws with Clyne. A little
bit of the goo is so hot, it pops off the rock, like oil from a
skillet, and burns my skin a little. But I don’t move.

My other arm is around Thea’s waist. She’s
warm and my fingers fit kinda neatly where her body curves in—which
is sort of corny, but I want to keep her close. I can’t keep losing
everyone.

“Here’s hoping we get home,” I say.

But where is that exactly, for each of us? Or
even for me?

“Speaking of
snkkkt!
homes,” Clyne
says, his eyes widening. “ I almost forgot! This is for you. I
found it in
your
home. The one near Wolf House.”

He takes a crumpled envelope out of one of
the chrono-suit pockets on his back leg, and hands it to me. It has
my name on it:
ELI
. It’s an old-fashioned
letter, like when they used to write Comnet messages on paper. But
I don’t have time to open it.

I stuff it into one of my pockets, and put my
arm back around Thea as quickly as I can.

There is a loud hum, then a roar and a rush
of color and motion like a hard wind has sucked me in. But I know
the name of this storm.

We’re in the Fifth Dimension.

And then, just as suddenly, we’re not.

Chapter Twenty

Eli: Moonglow

2020 C.E.

Dear Eli—

Weird, huh? This is how our grandparents would get
in touch with their friends, writing on a piece of paper like this,
and waiting forever for the message to get through. I never thought
I’d have to do it with you. But all my Comnet messages to you keep
bouncing back.

What have you been doing since you moved
away?...

How do you explain time travel to somebody
who hasn’t done it? Or wouldn’t believe it. Even an old friend who
was practically like your brother.

Andy and I grew up together in New Jersey.
Discovered Barnstormers together. And I haven’t seen him since I
moved west with my dad.

His family was on a trip to California when
he left this message here. In spite of all the quarantines, they
were able to get passes to move around. Probably because his mom is
a doctor.

I wrote to your new street address, because I knew
we were coming to California, and I thought it’d be cool to see
you…

But by the time he got here, I was gone —
probably several centuries away. My dad wasn’t here either. The
Moonglow was abandoned.

It’s not abandoned anymore.

Thea and I have been living here since we
returned, along with Dad. The government had to shut down the labs
in the BART tunnels, after all the accidents there, especially the
ones caused by Mr. Howe and A.J. So Dad has been able to come back
to the Moonglow to do his experiments, in his own way, on his own
terms.

It’s a little bit hard getting used to being
around him again, after being on my own, kinda, for, well, for
thousands of years, in a way.

But he tries to really listen to me now, and
I’m getting used to listening to him again. DARPA has to listen to
Dad now, too, because things are still going wrong all over.

One of those things is that Clyne and A.J.
are lost. The brief dimensional rift Clyne talked about separated
us in the Fifth Dimension.

Maybe Clyne’s Saurian body reacts differently
to direct time travel; he might really need his ship to keep from
landing weeks and miles from where he intended to be. Or maybe he
had some leftover plasmechanical goo in his pocket, that affected
his calculations. And who knows? Maybe A.J. still had part of his
lucky Reach baseball in his clothes, too. In any case, neither of
them was with Thea and me when we landed.

After we rest up, I expect I’ll have to go
looking for them.

There seems to be plenty to do. Time is still
spinning out of control. A lot of the Bibles where the old stories
were changed, where A.J. showed up — have all been gathered up and
hidden.

Though Thirty came by the other day to
announce they’d found a previously undiscovered Book of Huldah in
some caves outside Jerusalem.

She also said there were a bunch of
Shakespeare plays being produced in small theaters around the
United States and up in Canada — plays that no one had ever heard
of before. Or at least, half the people who went had never heard of
them, and the other half insisted they’d known about the plays all
their lives.

There was even a sonnet about a wolf who
reads love poems to people. Thirty showed it to me before she was
called back to Washington.

“You can’t just keep leaving people scattered
around history like this,” she told me. “You — or somebody — is
going to have to go back to get them.”

I’m not the only one “scattering” them, but
Thirty doesn’t want to think about that. And anyway, I don’t know
how she’ll be able to use Danger Boy to go after people if I don’t
have my cap. I was lucky just to get back here.

There is some good news, though: We analyzed
the water that Thea brought back from Huldah’s pool — though only a
few drops survived the journey. But that was enough. They’re
finding out that some kind of algae grew in that pool, and it
coated minerals in the water in such a way that the body could
absorb them easier. Things like magnesium and zinc, according to
what Thirty was saying.

I don’t get it all, but apparently, that
could help your nervous system while the slow pox was attacking —
your body could still send regular messages to itself and keep
functioning and not get overwhelmed by the fake nerve-system
signals created by the virus.

But that particular kind of algae seems to be
extinct, too, so the DARPA people may try to duplicate it in one of
their labs, make a kind of vitamin thing for people who catch the
kind of slow pox Thea had. The “unauthorized” kind.

Maybe DARPA can do something useful, or at
least something that doesn’t have to remain a big fat secret and
can actually help people.

The DARPA people are studying Thea here, too.
Because there’s also something in her blood that let her react to
the minerals and stuff in the water, that allowed her body to heal,
the way some people have certain kinds of antibodies, or the way my
body lets me time travel, with the cap. It may help speed the
healing or make the recovery more complete, helping them fight a
disease that wasn’t supposed to still be around.

I have some projects of my own, too. Right
now, with the information A.J. gave me, dad’s trying to find out
more about Porject Split Second and what really happened to my mom
back in the ’60s. If we can pinpoint her again and Dad can finally
learn to control, and direct, what happens with his time spheres,
maybe we can bring her home at last — get to her before Rolf does —
and be a family again.

But for now, it’s just Dad and Thea and me in
the Moonglow. Though Thirty made sure there are still guards
outside, to control who gets in — and probably who gets out.

So when Andy comes back with his family, I’ll
tell them to let him in.

According to the Comnet message I got, I
think they’ll be here within the hour. His parents were still
touring the West, and they were planning on coming back this
way.

Plus, it’s official business, since his mom
is working on slow pox.

I’ve been checking up on Bible stories, too,
since we’ve been back, and Jeremiah was right. Jerusalem — Israel —
was eventually rebuilt. The temple, everything. But then it was
destroyed again. And built back. And then invaded again, and fought
over, round and round.