Dragon Sword (14 page)

“
I don’t know — I’m bleeding,” A.J.
said. “I expect this is it.” He grabbed a handle and pulled it
down. The engine roared to life, knocking me backward.

And that was as far as we got
before the Navy patrols came roaring up on their way to the
bridge.

They made us put our hands in the
air. They didn’t know if we were aliens or Germans or what, but
they weren’t taking any chances.

It took a while to convince them we
weren’t any of those things. They brought us right into Fort Point
— an old brick fort that’s been here since the Civil War — which
they had just outfitted for their secret project.

That’s where I found out that Dan
the Oboe Man was under arrest — he couldn’t go through with blowing
up all his coworkers and wound up confessing to the Army guys. He
described the German agent he’d been told to meet up with at the
museum. Since he was supposed to be young, they thought at first it
might be me. So they took me in to where Dan was. He was already
sobbing, and as soon as he saw me, he sobbed a little harder, which
didn’t exactly put me in the clear right away.

But the main thing was, my mom was
there, too. She was in the room with Samuel Gravlox. I guess they
were telling them both about the threat to Project Split Second.
Apparently, part of Dan’s plan was to kidnap Mom at the de Young
and use her to get into this place.

“
This young man is not who you’re
looking for, Sergeant,” she said, coming up and putting her arm
around me.

“
Well, then who is he?” The
sergeant had been questioning me earlier, and sounded constantly
annoyed. Aides kept interrupting him with messages. They must have
been about the vessel, since he kept yelling about not being able
to be both
on
the bridge and
below
it at the same
time.

“
He’s…a boy I know from school. At
the hotel.” She still didn’t want to let anyone know I was her son.
She didn’t even give me one of her big, loud kisses. Her kisses are
corny, but I miss them.

So far A.J. and Charlie were
playing along, even though they both knew she was my
mother.

They took A.J. limping away to see
a doctor (“You did right, but I hope your family will be all right,
too,” he said to Dan as he left the room) and someone else was off
asking Charlie more questions.

Mom took me into another room,
saying she wanted to ask me some things, since she knew me. “We
want to get him out of here and back to his parents,” she
added.

“
I don’t know if he can go back,”
Gravlox said. “Think of everything he’s seen.”

Wouldn’t he be
surprised.

So now I’m in a small room with
Mom, with the radio playing, and she has to pretend she’s calming
me down before she asks a bunch of official questions. Someone is
supposed to come in and take notes. But now that I know she’s okay,
I want to get out to the bridge, to make sure they don’t hurt the
time-ship.

Instead of questions, Mom is giving
me what’s probably classified information: A few years ago, Gravlox
accidentally created a WOMPER-like reaction that tore a hole in
spacetime. It’s possible that the explosion that sent Mom back in
time fused with the one Gravlox created, sending WOMPERs back with
her…right into Gravlox’s lab in Berkeley. He was doing his own
early particle research, testing theories about relativity and how
nothing, really, is quite what it seems, and he created a mini-tear
between dimensions. The same way Thea’s mom did back in Alexandria
with her crystals and light splitting.

Gravlox successfully repeated the
experiment here, in the secrecy of the redesigned fort. This new
tear in spacetime hovers in the fort’s central courtyard area. “But
it seems to be grow- ing, Eli. They can’t control it, and they’re
not really sure what it is they have. They just know that stuff
keeps sporadically popping out of thin air. That’s how those white
antlers first showed up.

“
I try to do my own tests on the
side, with the limited equipment they have. Everyone’s scared, Eli.
Nobody knows where any of this is leading — atom bombs, time warps,
the war itself.”

“
But we know, Mom.” I hear thumps
and booms outside. I think they’re shooting at Clyne’s ship, and
I’m getting really antsy. “The good guys win the war, right? The
Nazis lose.” At least that’s one less thing she has to worry about,
or that we have to discuss.

“
We don’t know if that’s true
anymore, Eli, if that’s still the way it happens. Everything’s
different now. History isn’t the same.”

“
There’s a dinosaur up on the
Golden Gate Bridge!” It’s Gravlox, who’s just stuck his head into
the room. “Do you think he came through our time
portal?”

“
No!” I blurt out. “He came from
the flying time-ship up there. He’s just a kid who wants to finish
his schoolwork, but no one will leave him alone. I have to get out
and help him before he gets hurt.”

Gravlox blinks at me a moment.
Another series of booms come from overhead. Then he looks at my
mom. “Who did you say this young man was again,
Margarite?”

“
He’s my son, Samuel.”

These hundred-year-old rooms are
like little brick caves, cold and damp and dark, and ours becomes
so quiet that every sound outside is suddenly amplified. I’m
looking up at my mother. She always was pretty cool.

“
Well…did he just come through the
portal, like you did?” Mom just shakes her head.

“
But how — ?” His second question
never gets answered. The angry sergeant bursts in. “Hey, doc! You
know somebody name Eli?”

“
No,” Gravlox says. “Should
I?”

“
Got a call from upstairs that the
Martian lizard speaks English! And he’s askin’ for an

‘
Eli.’ Already got two soldiers
taken off the bridge to see a medic, thinkin’ they’re goin’ crazy.
I say we give the order to shoot and figure this all out
later.”

“
Don’t do that,” I tell him. “I’m
Eli.”

For the second time in five
minutes, the room goes completely silent.

Chapter
Seventeen

Eli: Midnight Clear

December 24, 1941 C.E.

A group of us rush out the center
gates of Fort Point, heading to the stairs built in the side of the
hill that leads up to the Golden Gate Bridge.

I stop and look up. If the
situation wasn’t so scary, it would be strangely beautiful: the
blue-white blaze of searchlights, the flashing red of dozens of
sirens, the deep orange of the bridge itself, with the time-ship —
I don’t know how else to put it —
dancing
around it all. The
ship is glowing, too, as if the craft itself were absorbing all
those lights and shining them back out, only with the colors mixed
differently.

The vessel swings under the bridge,
then over it, then tips a little to
whoosh
through the two
towers. Is it showing off, or searching for something?

“
Why are we holding our fire, sir?”
one of the soldiers nervously asks the sergeant.

“
The brass are already on the phone
to Washington, Private. It’s out of our hands, and I don’t like it.
I say we blast the thing before it goes into the city.”

“
Maybe the ship just wants to
protect —” and the sergeant is already glaring at me before I
finish the sentence —“the dinosaur up there.” “You know, I’m not
completely convinced you’re as innocent as you make out, kid.”
Kid
again.

A couple more soldiers fall in to
our group. Another one passes us, heading down to the fort,
pointing to something wrong with his rifle or the buttons on his
overcoat. “Probably just scared,” the sergeant mutters. “Who cares
if it’s a spaceship? An enemy’s an enemy.”

We trudge up the steps, get waved
past all the barricades, and I finally see my Saurian
friend.

Clyne is surrounded by soldiers.
He’s alone in the center of a circle of guns, all pointed right at
him. His arms are raised and he’s slowly turning around, looking at
all the weapons, and maybe — can this be right? —
shaking.

“
Earth Orange hello!
Kkt!
Don’t shoot! Homework’s not turned in yet!” He’s trying to look at
each one of them in the eye. Maybe he figures that way they won’t
be so scared, or so likely to shoot.

Gravlox turns to the sergeant. “The
space-being asked for Eli, and Eli’s here. Shouldn’t we try to use
him first?”

Grudgingly, I’m allowed to walk up
and “attempt to communicate with the scaly invader,” as the
sergeant puts it. “But if he makes a move, we’re gonna tell you to
hit the deck, and we’re gonna open fire, whether Washington likes
it or not.”

I fight the urge to stick up my
arms again, with all the weapons around, and concentrate on keeping
my hands in my pockets as I walk down the roadway. Now it’s just me
and Clyne alone in the middle of all that firepower.

I notice that the time-ship has
stopped doing loop-de-loops and has pulled up, hovering alongside
the bridge.

Without the explosions, I can hear
music. One of these old, funky olive-green Army cars must have a
radio on. Christmas music. Tinkly, in the distance. “It Came upon a
Midnight Clear.”

“
Many heartfelt
k-k-kh!
greetings, Eli,” Clyne says in what I can only describe as a
dinosaur whisper, which has a lot more breath behind it than any
whisper I could come up with. “Being an outlaw here is
sk-tkt!
somewhat nerve-sparking. Plus all the many
projectile weapons.”

“
Are you okay, Clyne? How have you
been?”

“
Basically well. Caught in nets,
kept solitary in a zoo
pp-pp-kk!
and watching the high, sad
cost of war readiness in large caves. Much
tng-ga!
material
for class report. Enough for two full academic terms, really. And
you, friend?”

“
I found my mom and met Joe
DiMaggio, but it’s not working out like I thought. It’s getting
hard to remember that some people just live their lives in straight
lines. You know, from beginning to end.”

“
Impossible! Time doesn’t move in a
line like that.”

“
Don’t get any closer, kid! Hold it
right there!” the sergeant shouts at me through a
bullhorn.

It is a pretty bad time for me and
Clyne to be discussing physics. I have to get my friend out of this
jam. “You’ve got to come with me, Clyne. Slowly. Before they really
hurt you.”

“
But, Eli, we have come to
k-k-k-kt!
rescue you.”

I’m suddenly aware that “Midnight
Clear” is still playing, but it seems to be going on for a
ridiculously long time, and I realize I’m not listening to a radio
at all. It’s the ship.

The ship is humming.

“‘
We?’ Who’s with you, Clyne? It’s
not —” The humming changes in tone, and an opening appears in the
craft. Thea slowly sticks her head out.

Half the guns swerve around to aim
at her. “HOLD YOUR FIRE!” the sergeant screams.

He comes running up to me, a pistol
in his hand aimed right at Clyne. “What is going on here, and why
are these people invading the United States!? Who is that
girl?”

“
Sir…sir…it’s not what you
think.”

“
These…these
individuals
will either agree to be taken into custody and turn their ship over
or we commence firing. Aiming to kill.”

“
Sir, I just don’t think firing
these kinds of weapons will work. Not on the ship.”

I can’t tell if he looks terrified
or more enraged. “Is that a
threat
?”

“
Eli?” It’s Mom. She’s come up with
Gravlox. “What’s happening? Who is that girl?”

Thea is becoming quite popular.
“She’s…her name is Thea. She’s from Earth.”

“
You know her?” the sergeant
demands.

“
Yeah.”

“
How?”

“
Is it because…from when you
were…?” Mom leaves the question unfinished, mainly so the sergeant
won’t pick up on the missing time-traveling part, but Gravlox must
get it, because he’s slowly nodding.

“
Yeah,” I say, “before I found
you.” I point to my two friends. “They want to take me
home.”

Mom looks over at Thea again, who
waves at us — very carefully. “She looks nice.”

“
Mom!”

I don’t even think before I say it.
Gravlox already knows Margarite’s my mother — it’s the sergeant’s
wide eyes I’m worried about now.

“
I think,” the sergeant hisses
through clenched teeth, “somebody owes me a big explanation.
Especially when Washington gets on the phone in the next few
minutes to chew my butt out for not blasting that ship to
bits!”

“
You don’t need to blast them,” I
tell him. “You just need…you just need to let them go. And me, too.
And her.” I point to my mom.

“
What!?” My mom and the sergeant
speak in unison. But it’s Mom who pulls me aside.

“
Eli! What are you
doing?”