Dragon Sword (2 page)

There’s a woman near the entrance
dressed like a large elf, or Santa’s helper. She’s passing out
small gifts from a big red bag. She doesn’t seem fazed by the
air-raid sirens at all. She smiles and thrusts one of the objects
into my hand. It’s a small mirror. Around the frame, there’s
writing: “You are reflected in your friends, family, and times!” it
exclaims. “
One Man’s Family
on NBC Radio.”

Radio! That was like the audio part
of a vid-screen, without any pictures. I bet those poles are for
voice recording and they’re doing a show in there. I
think.

I want to ask Mom, but she points
to her ears — it’s still too loud to talk — and motions toward a
door. It opens to a staircase.

It’s cold in the stairwell. After a
few flights, I huff out another question. I’m full of them. But you
would be, too, if you hadn’t seen your own mom in five years. Or
even two. “Doesn’t the elevator work here?”

“
Too crowded,” she says. “We’re
going up to my room.” We’re speaking to each other the way my
friend Andy and I used to, when we’d keep the background music to a
Barnstormers game turned up: Our conversations would be normal,
except that we were nearly shouting at each other, in a casual
way.

“
What about the sirens?” No one
else seems terribly worried, but I’ve read about World War II. It
was a horrible time almost every- where, and I don’t remember if
San Francisco was ever bombed or not.

“
It’s just a drill. They announced
it on the radio.”

Like fire drills at school. You
know ahead of time they’re coming. I always wondered if that
destroyed the whole point of practicing — you’re not really
responding like you’re supposed to, like you would if it were the
real thing.

We stop climbing when we get to the
fifth floor, then walk down a carpeted hallway to room 532. She
stops. There’s a wrapped present with her name on it in front of
the door. She looks at it, shakes her head, and quickly picks it
up, then takes out a key. It really is a key, not a card, and she
uses it to open the door.

As suddenly as they began, the
sirens stop.

“
Home for the holidays,” Mom says,
motioning for me to go in.

I step inside. Her room is small
but not too messy — there’s a bed in one corner, a desk, and a
little kitchen area. But I don’t know how she cooks anything.
There’s no oven, and no microwave fiberwrap to heat up
food.

There’s no Comnet screen anywhere,
either; no rain alarms to warn about sudden storms, no bug sirens
for stray bacteria and viruses — it’s like the old West.

It is the old West.

“
Wow, Mom. So what do you do up
here? Do you have one of those televisions?”

“
No.” She smiles and shakes her
head. “I listen to the radio. I read and draw.”

I show her the mirror. “Radio? You
mean audio, right? Is that what they were doing downstairs? But
don’t you have a Comnet —”

“
It’s that thing over there.” She
points to a large, curved wooden cabinet with a kind of grill in
front of it.

She turns it on. Nothing
happens.

“
It takes a minute to warm up.” She
takes off her coat, scarf, and mittens. I’m just wearing an
overshirt and jeans. Mom was right: I’m cold, in spite of the Fifth
Dimension sweats.

“
Did you say you draw?” She never
drew before. I guess she really is here all alone.

“
I’ve had time to learn some new
things.” And then she looks at me. Long and hard. Even more
intensely than the way she looked at me down on the street. It’s a
look that I probably wouldn’t understand if I were still a little
kid.

It’s not just an “I’m your mom and
I’ve missed you” look but something more. Not even one of those
“God, how you’ve changed” looks that you get from other relatives.
It’s both of those, and something else. I don’t know if I can
describe it. I said it was intense, but there’s also
that…
regret
is the word that adults would use. Like you want
to take back something that you did, but you can’t. Like she might
not get another chance to stare at me that way again.

Except she will. Because I came
here to bring her back to her home-time. Where she
belongs.

“
Because it’s never an interruption
when it comes to America’s safety!”

I jump. A man has just started
speaking in the back of the room.

“
That,” Mom says, “is the
radio.”

“
So hurrah for the sirens and
drills! And now, as the Fairmont’s own Samuel Gravlox Orchestra
plays our show’s ‘Destiny Waltz’ theme, we return you to the
elegant, wind-swept Sea Cliff area of San Francisco, for more
heart-rending, day-to-day adventures of the Barbour clan in this
holiday broadcast of …
One Man’s Family
!”

“
That’s what they were doing
downstairs,” she tells me. “They’re broadcasting live from the
hotel.
One Man’s Family
. It’s a huge hit. They’re doing
shows from all over the city this week. They’re tying it in to
selling war bonds.”

“
Wow. …So those big metal things
were the microphones? For digitizing their voices?”

“
Well, they don’t digitize, but
yes, those were microphones.”

“
So what are war bonds? And who’s
‘der Fuehrer’?”

“
Oh, Eli, honey.” That’s not what
she wants to talk about. “Who sent you here? I know your father
wouldn’t do it.”

“
No one sent me… It was my idea,
and I came myself. I can move through time on my own.” I point to
the Seals cap on my head. “With this.”

“
With a baseball cap?”

“
Dad says it all has to do with
particles. With those WOMPERs. Those Wide Orbiting Mass Particle
—”

“
Mass
less
. Wide Orbital
Massless Particle Reverser. That’s okay. I could never have
remembered the whole thing either when I was . . .” Her eyes widen
a little. “How old are you now? How long have I been gone, for
you?”

“
I’m twelve now, Mom.” Now it’s my
turn to feel sad.

“
Twelve. Well I guess I owe you a
couple of happy birthdays.”

I don’t know what to tell her. I
don’t know if I’m supposed to say that it’s all right, that it’s
not her fault. Or maybe she needs to tell me something. Neither of
us speaks right away.

“
No, Eli. I couldn’t have said it
at twelve, either. Of course, WOMPERs weren’t even discovered until
I was in college.” She says it like she’s trying to tease me. The
way she used to. I guess we’ll talk about the missed birthdays
later.

“
Dad says I’m like one big WOMPER
charge myself — when the cap comes in direct contact with me. It’s
shielded now, but when it touches me, we fuse together to become
like a giant positron —”

“
Shooting backward in time,” Mom
says. She doesn’t seem overjoyed by any of this. “How did that
happen?”

“
Another accident.” Which I helped
cause by reaching for the cap when it popped into Dad’s time sphere
in the first place. But I don’t think I’ll mention that just
yet.

“
And where is your father
now?”

“
Back home. Waiting for
us.”

She sighs and sits down in a big
antique chair. Though I guess here it’s not an antique yet. “How is
he?”

“
He misses you.”

She doesn’t reply. “Come look,” she
says. She takes some sheets of paper out of a drawer and lays them
on the table. “These are my drawings.”

I gasp. They’re me.
Me.

Except
older
. Like in high
school or something. Sitting in a chair. Waving. And playing
baseball in Herronton Woods, back near Princeton.

“
Since I couldn’t see you growing
up, I tried to imagine it,” she tells me. “I would try to picture
it in my head, then draw it. So I could keep connected to you
somehow. So I wouldn’t lose you completely. That’s how I learned to
draw. That’s why.”

“
You’re not going to lose me, Mom.
I’m here.”

“
I’m glad you haven’t grown quite
as much as I thought.”

“
We don’t live in New Jersey
anymore, though. We moved.”

There’s so much she doesn’t know
about me and Dad now.

“
You moved?”

“
To California.”

“
Where? Here? San
Francisco?”

“
Close by.”

“
Well, sit down and tell me all
about it. We’ll spend Christmas Eve together. That will make me
happy.” She gives me another smile, and this one seems full out,
with nothing else behind it. “We can make warm
Ovaltine!”

“
The chocolate stuff?”

“
It’s real big back here. Kids like
it. The company makes decoder badges and other things for prizes.
The boys pretend they’re Captain Midnight. That’s the big radio
show Ovaltine sponsors.”

“
Captain Midnight and Danger Boy,”
I say, trying it out. Sometimes it feels like I’ve fallen into a
comic book, except that people I love and care about are in real
danger.

“
Who’s Danger Boy?” Mom
asks.

“
I’m still trying to figure it
out,” I tell her. I don’t mention it’s a code name that Mr. Howe
thought up for my DARPA files. Then, thinking about comics and
chocolate sparks another question: “You get a lot of kid
visitors?”

“
I’m a teacher, too, Eli. There’s a
school in the hotel for the families who live here.” She takes out
a glass jar of milk from her tiny wooden-looking refrigerator. I
wonder how they made electric appliances out of wood.

“
Mom, we don’t have to spend
Christmas Eve by ourselves. We can go back right now. To 2019,
where you belong. It’s still fall. You can get ready for Christmas
all over again, with Dad and me.”

The smile that was sneaking back on
her face when she was talking about the hot chocolate is gone now.
“Eli, it isn’t that simple.”

“
Why not? As long as you’re holding
on to me when I put on the cap —”

She shakes her head.

What possible reason could she have
for not wanting to come home?

I don’t even want to know. Except I
have to. Before I get the chance to ask, there’s a frantic knocking
at the door.

Chapter Two

Eli: Samuel Gravlox

December 24, 1941 C.E.

It’s the man with the bushy white
hair from downstairs, the one leading the band.

“
Samuel!” Mom seems surprised to
see him. “You’re supposed to be downstairs.”

Samuel ... Samuel Gravlox! The name
on the radio. ... That was the band my mom played in…

…
in 1937. She played flute in the
Samuel Gravlox Orchestra. Dad and I saw it in an old newspaper that
was spit out of the time sphere, right around when the cap showed
up. That’s how we knew she was back here. I wonder if she was ever
on the radio, too.

“
We have serious trouble tonight.
There is a report that the project —” He stops when he sees me.
“Who’s this?” It’s not a friendly question.

The radio fills the brief silence.
“Now, the closing theme to
One Man’s Family
, ‘Destiny’s
Dream,’ led by guest conductor Elliot Stubin.”

“
How did he get in here?” Gravlox
demands. From his tone of voice, it seems like he’s already decided
not to like me.

“
He’s…” Now Mom gives me her
we’re-gonna-keep-a-secret look. I guess knowing all the looks on
your family’s faces is like having a decoder badge, too.

“
He’s one of the students in the
school here,” Mom explains. “His parents are…caught in a blizzard,
and…their train is delayed. He’s staying with me.” I notice she
kind of casually moves her coat over the drawings of me on the
table.

“
Christmas Eve is a terrible time
to go around getting involved with strangers. At least, this
particular Christmas Eve.”

“
He’s not a stranger,
Samuel.”

“
Well, you’d better be sure. They
sent a spy.”

“
What? Who?”

“
The Nazis, of course. It’s no
secret they’d love to know what we’re up to.” He keeps staring at
me. “Apparently it’s a young spy. Where did you say you’re from?”
He switches so suddenly to addressing me that it catches me off
guard.

Which might be what he wants. “I…I
didn’t.”

“
What’s your name, young
man?”

“
Eli Sa, sir.” I guess me and Mom
have to pretend we’re not related.

“
So, Eli, where’d you get such
funny clothes?”

“
Samuel!”

Mom is getting mad at him, but he’s
not listening. Not to us. He’s turned toward the radio. A look of
pain crosses his face.

“
That damn Stubin! He doesn’t know
what to do with a baton! Listen to how mushy that passage is! The
notes are all running together like molasses! If keeping that
orchestra in line were my only job, I’d be going crazy. Well, come
on, get your coat.”