City of Ruins (7 page)

And since lingo-spots are designed to tap
into the neural network of the wearer, everyone with lingo-spot
material could in theory become connected to each other, via the
plasmechanical material.

And then what if all of Earth Orange becomes
a single unchecked living entity, if this Saurian mutation is
allowed to continue here under such fervid mammalian conditions?
Imagine an entire planet able to move back and forth through time,
or acting as a giant lingo-spot for all its inhabitants.

Would the results be wonderful? Or
terrifyingly destabilizing for the rest of the universe? Could such
a hypothesis come to pass?

Kngaa,
a voice whispers to me. The
Saurian word for “yes.”

But no one is speaking.

What is my lingo-spot translating for me
now?

Perhaps my own intuition? Or are my thoughts
no longer my own?

Have they already become part of something
larger? Am I likewise undergoing a change here on Earth Orange?
Something akin to Melonokus’ jail-time observation that “great
shifts can happen in small places — in the confines of an eggshell,
or a room where they try to lock away new ideas.”

So many hypotheses to test.

“Hey! You’re not supposed to move around in
there!”

“I seek only to test a hypothesis!” I say as
I hop toward one of the trees fused with remnants of the
time-vessel.

“I said don’t move! This is a restricted
perimeter.”

“But you were the ones who escorted me
here.”

“Stay where we can see you!” He flips open
his visor, so he can in fact see me better. “Those are dangerous
remains!”

“A good time to meet!” I tell him; it’s the
guard who originally sat with me outside my cage, and watched his
Comnet entertainments. No wonder he fidgets like a new-hatch.

I try to hop away again, but with the
restraints, it’s hard, and I fall toward the remains of the ship,
which, over time, have fused with the trees.

“I’m authorized to stun you!” It’s not much
of a warning, since he fires as he says it, hitting the very limb
where I was so recently jabbersticked by the warrior Crow’s
Eye.

I am knocked against the trees, and fall
down, and appear to have little options for avoiding the next
shot.

“I mean it!”

I try to turn away, and in a welcome bit of
merrikus
, the beam hits the hard metal of my restraints,
fusing them and ricocheting up toward a branch.

Where it severs apart the limb.

“You’re ruining the remains! The evidence!
The project!” the guardian shrieks, and I wonder what sort of
project the guardians and generals of Eli’s planet might have in
mind if they were able to not only understand the idea of a “prime
nexus,” but to harness one for their own ends?

And what would that mean if the entire planet
does become an active prime nexus? Could it be controlled? And who
would do the controlling?

“Stop!” My guardian is full of fear, unable
to separate me from the movie Saurians that he’s watched for
countless hours.

But then I ask myself a question: What would
a slaversaur do?

Might he try and find a
gerk
-drive
under such extremely difficult conditions? The very
gerk
-drive that allows the Saurian ship to move through
dimensions and through time itself?

Perhaps I can get them to regenerate whatever
remains of the
gerk
-drive, by forcing them to aim their
energy weapons at the heart of the ship?

I roll away toward the time-vessel, but I
don’t want to get too close, as I am unwilling to be absorbed by
it, the way the nearby foliage has been absorbed.

What would the slaversaur do to make the
guard fire?

Bite something, I imagine. I chomp down on a
tree branch embedded in the ship’s material. I growl and shake my
head convincingly.

The guard then obligingly fires at me. I move
just enough to allow the beam to penetrate the plasmechanical core
of the ship’s remains behind me.

And a small bit of dormant
gerk
-drive
material is energized. Another branch cracks, and the remaining
ship’s material starts puls—

Before I can finish the thought I see the
long colors of the Fifth Dimension, very briefly, then find myself
in a small dark space, having been transported, I hope, to another
prime nexus, where things will be made clearer to me.

I seem to be surrounded by a plumbing
structure, however, and the restraints are still clasped to my
limbs.

But then a door swings open, and I see the
face of my friend Eli.

“Clyne! What —?” He looks around, making sure
we’re not noticed.

“How did you get in the bathroom?”

Chapter Five

Eli: Surprise Party

February 2020 C.E.

In makes perfect sense to Clyne that he
suddenly appeared in the transported, rebuilt bathroom of my mom’s
old hotel room, and the first thing he does, after greeting me, is
insist we look for Thea.

“Find Thea? Clyne — they have alarms going
off, everything’s locked down. How
did
you get in here? How
did you get in here in…handcuffs? Clawcuffs. And yeah, we can’t go
looking for anybody until we get you…what did you just call it?
‘Unfettered’? Which I guess means getting you out of those
things.”

“You are right, amigo Eli. But though I made
it through Dimension Five with these
snkkk!
impediments, I
will only hinder your own escape
thwkkk!
It is better if I
stay here and perhaps try and find another small fold in
time-space.”

“‘
Amigo?’
”

“It is a word I picked up watching a
pantomime about Gwangis — Saurians, lost in Mexico.”

“We’ve got to get you out of those irons,
Clyne.”

“No. I am afraid I am stuck, and would only
slow you down.”

“Sit down and let’s get those shackles
off.”

Crrrk!

Too late. The hotel door — the jail-room
door, whatever it is now — is opening. Somebody already knows
Clyne’s in here, and they’re coming to lock us up somewhere even
deeper and darker.

It’s hard to get a break when you’re tangled
up in time.

“Son, are you in here?”

Son?
But that’s not my dad. Who else
calls me —

“Son?”

It’s A.J.

Andrew Jackson Williams. The preacher. The
motel owner. The guy giving the sermon on the beach when we landed
back here in 2020. He was with his — what’s the word the adults
like to use? —
flock
.

Or, rather, a
new
flock. But how did
he
get
here? The last time I saw him, it was the 1940s, and
World War II, and he was some kind of chaplain in the Army.

Somehow, he’s tangled in time, too.

“We’ve got to hurry.” Another voice — there’s
someone with him.

Mr. Howe!

That’s one thing about growing up — you start
to learn there’s always a bigger surprise behind the first one.

He looks raggedy, unshaven, his eyes kind of
crazy — like A.J.’s. Or like Arlington Howard’s, his long-ago
ancestor who worked for Thomas Jefferson.

“We’ve got to hurry. Come
on
!” Mr.
Howe is waving us on.

“A surprising time to meet!” Clyne says.

“I don’t believe we officially
have
met,” A.J. tells him. Then he looks him up and down. “You’re not a
hell demon, are you?”

“No. An outlaw. I was merely trying to
complete a science project,” Clyne says. “But landed on this world
ftttt!
instead.”

“Trust me, anyone who really knows what’s
going on these days is bound to be outside the law. At least a
little. And you—” A.J. winks at me, “—it’s good to see you again,
son.”

“But how did —”

It’s the same question I had for Clyne. Even
though I’m a time traveler, everyone else seems to be getting
around a lot more easily than me, lately.

“Now!” Mr. Howe interrupts, waving us on.

“Mr. Howe.” I point to the irons around
Clyne’s arms and legs.

“Boy, they really want the two of you to stay
put.” Mr. Howe bends over and looks behind Clyne’s knees, like a
doctor.

“I was afraid of that.”

“What?” I ask.

“It’s the time-release model.”

“What does that mean?”

“Almost impossible to pre-empt, until the
time sequence unlocks it. Sheila didn’t want him going anywhere for
a while.”

“Sheila?” I ask.

“You call her Thirty,” Mr. Howe says. “We’ll
have to leave him here. We’ll just have to find your other friend
and get out.”

“I won’t leave Clyne! He just got here!” I
decide it’s my turn to ask Mr. Howe some questions. “And why are
you helping me get out? You’re one of the people always keeping me
in!”

Just then, there’s a loud
click!
, and
the shackles fall off of Clyne’s body, and clatter to the
floor.

We all look at the cuffs, and then at each
other. Clyne looks at the three of us.

“Perhaps the time-fold
thkkkt!
changed
the settings.”

Mr. Howe shakes his head. “No wonder I always
thought the two of you were dangerous. Let’s go.”

We leave the room — my mom’s old room at the
Fairmont. It’s become part of the government’s collection now, like
my family and friends.

It’s not even a place I can say goodbye to.
And if growing up is learning how to say goodbye to people and
places and things, how will I ever grow up if there’s no one around
to say goodbye to? How can I measure the growing-up part of my life
if Thirty and the others have taken all the measuring sticks?

“This way. Now.” Mr. Howe is waving us
outside the door. I can see the scaffolding holding up the walls of
the hotel, all the unfinished wood, the bright lights. It’s like
being backstage, like the hotel room was just some kind of set.

“Wait.” I stop. “You said we were going to
get Thea.”

There’s a trench next to the platform where
the room has been reconstructed, with train tracks on the bottom.
The cold strips of metal seem to add to the feeling of dampness,
though you can barely see them in the dark. That doesn’t slow down
Mr. Howe, who’s climbing down toward them on a ladder. He pauses on
the rungs.

“We haven’t forgotten your friend, Eli. But
Andrew Jackson Williams has helped me
see,
” he said. “Helped
me understand how urgent the situation is.”

“What situation?”

“A man in a shirt like that” — A.J. points at
the House of David jerse, which I’d forgotten I was wearing—
“should know that all things eventually get revealed in
time
.”

“Yes, which we don’t have a lot of.” Mr. Howe
continues climbing down to the bottom, but he also keeps talking.
“I’d always thought I was on the side of the good guys. Until I
realized that maybe the good guys have lost their way. Watch your
step. There still might be electricity coming through some of these
old BART tracks.”

“Isn’t that too dangerous?” I ask.

“We are living in a time, son,” A.J. says,
“when everything is dangerous. But let’s keep the odds in our favor
by being as careful as we can.”

Mr. Howe pulls out a small flashlight and
appears to be looking for something along the wall, something
besides the old pipes and the dripping water. “Here.” It’s a door.
He hands the light to A.J., and pushes against a handle that
doesn’t budge.

“It’s supposed to open right up! These were
emergency exits from the old BART tunnels, in case of quakes. We
need to use it for a short cut.”

“A shortcut where? Why are you rescuing us
like this?”

“We’re not rescuing you, son,” A.J. tells me
in a friendly way. “Good as it is to see you again. We have come
here to solve the
time problem
.”

Wait a minute. “Isn’t that the name of
something you wrote a long time ago? A book? He told me about it!”
I point to Mr. Howe, who looks a little embarrassed.

“There seemed to be a lot of firsthand
knowledge about the effects of time travel in there,” he says to
A.J. “We all wondered how you came across the information.”

“I told you. I was a government employee for
a very long time,” A.J. says.

“We never could find your records,” Mr. Howe
says.

“No, I expect not.” And then A.J. turns to
me. “As near as I can tell about this future, nobody reads books
anymore, Son.”

“I think Mr. Howe was all upset about
it.”

There’s another
bang!
against the
door, and Mr. Howe starts rubbing his arm. “This thing won’t
budge.”
I can see his face, lined by the shadows from his tiny
light.

“Mr. Howe has had an epiphany, son. That’s
why he’s here. He wants to make amends.”

“What’s an epiphany?”

“Ee-pih-phany!” Clyne says, sounding it out.
“Nice mammal sounds. Reminds me of words like
mustard
. And
taco
.”

“An epiphany,” A.J. tells me, “is when you
suddenly realize many things, profound things, even, all at
once.”

“We can’t just stay here.” Mr. Howe hits the
door again; it still doesn’t move. “Damn. Farther down the tunnel
then. Hurry.”

“Wait. If you seek to open portals,” Clyne
says, “perhaps I can be
snkkt
useful.” Mr. Howe and A.J.
look at each other in the dark.

“Hold on,” I ask both of them at once, “Even
if Clyne gets it open, and we find Thea, where can we go after
that? There’s slow pox everywhere. That’s what the alarm is, right?
All the
wheenk-wheenk-wheenk.
The whole place is locked
down. How can we really escape?”

“You mean that
tink-tink-tink
noise?”
Mr. Howe says.

“
Whit-whit-whit!
” Clyne chirps. “Sound
waves tympanically resonating separately for everyone! Brain-wave
security so sound is always unique and cannot be faked by
others!”