Revealed (33 page)

No time agent was anywhere in sight.

Lindbergh put baby Gary and baby Hodge down on the ground.

“Um, they
are
just babies,” Jonah said. “Maybe you shouldn't—”

“They'll be fine down there,” Lindbergh said abruptly. “This is better than they deserve.”

He pulled something out of his suit coat pocket—why was Lindbergh carrying around an electric razor?

Oh—that's what the Elucidator's using as a disguise now
, Jonah realized as Lindbergh pressed the side of the razor and a tiny screen appeared on its surface.

“I
was
trying to figure out a way to outsmart Mr. Gary
and Mr. Hodge even before you showed up,” Lindbergh said, as if he needed to defend his own reputation. “When they gave me that first, very limited Elucidator, I tried to disassemble and re-assemble it. See?”

On the screen Jonah saw a flight-suited Lindbergh floating through Older Time, peering intently at something in his hands.

“I did get it to do a few seemingly useless tricks—like providing a change of clothes, which I hid from Mr. Gary and Mr. Hodge, just in case,” Lindbergh said. The scene on the screen shifted, showing Lindbergh alone at the bottom of the airport stairwell, where he was stuffing a 1930s suit into a modern-era pilot's rollerbag. “I wasn't sure what would come in handy. But I think I mostly just messed up that Elucidator's commands. Especially concerning the aging and un-aging.”

Jonah gaped at Lindbergh.

“So you weren't trying to make my parents and JB and Angela teenagers again on purpose?” Jonah asked.

“What?” Lindbergh asked blankly.

Jonah decided to leave that issue for later.

“But after I gave you the really good Elucidator—and you zapped me away—what did you do then?” he asked.

“Well, first I changed clothes so I wouldn't stand out in that pilots' uniform,” Lindbergh said, sounding proud he'd
thought of that. “Since pilots are so rare and unusal . . .”

Jonah decided not to tell him that wasn't so much the case in the twenty-first century.

“And then I went to your century and found an independent DNA test as you suggested,” Lindbergh said.

On the screen Lindbergh appeared in what seemed to be some sort of sterile white-tiled medical lab. Nobody else was around. Lindbergh swiped something out of a cabinet and instantly vanished.

“I remembered that I had seen one of your hairs on the chair in your family's home, so I went back and took that,” Lindbergh continued explaining. “I wanted to make sure I was running the test with independent samples.”

“That was smart,” Jonah said grudgingly.

On the screen Lindbergh showed up in the Skidmores' living room in the same brown suit and fedora he was wearing right this minute. Jonah was hit with such an ache of homesickness that it took him a moment to put everything together.

“But—I saw you then!” he exclaimed. “That was just a moment before you kidnapped Katherine! I knew you were there!”

Jonah just hadn't realized that the first time he'd seen Lindbergh in the twenty-first century had occurred, for Lindbergh,
after
his disappearance with Katherine.

“Sometimes you do need to pay more attention to the little details around you,” Lindbergh said, with a bit of sternness. He held the razor Elucidator up admiringly. “This little device saved me again and again from taking some subtle action that would end up having terrible repercussions.”

“It didn't drive you crazy demanding that you ask it precise questions?” Jonah asked.

“Uh, no,” Lindbergh said, looking slightly puzzled. “I always did ask it precise questions. Didn't you?”

Jonah decided not to answer that.

Lindbergh dropped the razor Elucidator in Jonah's hand.

“So that's everything, I guess,” he said. “You can take it from here?”

Jonah gaped at Lindbergh.

“You're willing to just walk away from time travel?” Jonah asked, so stunned that he almost dropped the razor Elucidator down to the ground. “Or were you thinking that I get the Elucidator and you get that plane? That's not going to work. Because, see, even though they're not here now, there are time agents who enforce—”

“Of course not,” Lindbergh interrupted. “Perhaps it
was
cheating a bit, but I saw the life that's ahead of me without time travel. My wife and I are going to have five more
children. I'm going to travel the world, even more than I already have. I'm going to be a bestselling author and an ace pilot during—what is it that they'll end up calling it? World War Two? There will be things I say and do publicly and privately that others will judge me for, but since when have I concerned myself with the judgment of others?”

Jonah stared down at the Elucidator in his hand—and at baby Gary and baby Hodge on the ground.

“What am I supposed to do with a razor Elucidator, two babies who used to be my worst enemies, and an airplane that—well, I guess it really is sort of an Elucidator too?” he asked.

“You forgot about the other thirty-five babies I brought you,” Lindbergh said. He pointed back toward the plane. “All the original babies are still on the plane.”

Except for me
, Jonah thought dazedly.

“But—” he began to protest.

Lindbergh clapped him on the shoulder.

“You seem like a smart fellow,” he said. “I'm sure you'll figure it out. Now if you'll excuse me . . . I did see that my wife is due to go into labor with our second son, Jon, in just a matter of hours.”

He turned to go.

“Are you going to talk to the reporters at the front
gate?” Jonah asked. “Are you going to tell them anything about—”

“Don't worry,” Lindbergh said, chuckling as he looked back. “I've gotten very good at answering their questions without telling them anything at all. And it's not as if they'd believe me anyhow. They'd claim I lost my sanity in my grief.”

And then he was truly walking away, leaving Jonah behind with the Elucidator and the plane and the babies.

“Wait,” Jonah said.

Lindbergh turned around once more.

“I'm sorry about your son,” Jonah said. “Your first one. I'm sorry you couldn't get him back.”

For a moment even decisive Charles Lindbergh seemed lost.

“I have now learned,” he began, “that even with time travel, some things just are. They can't be changed or undone or fixed. But people—people can heal. Even from events they believe are unendurable.”

And then Lindbergh walked away, toward the reporters and the future he already knew lay ahead of him.

Jonah turned back around to face the plane and the babies. On the ground the baby versions of Gary and Hodge were starting to squirm and whine. Baby Katherine was doing the same thing in his arms.

Jonah looked around quickly to make sure no one was close enough to see him.

“Um, Elucidator, any chance you could fix me up with three baby bottles, with the right kind of milk for four-month-olds?” Jonah asked. He wasn't actually sure how old Gary and Hodge were now, but he cared more about getting the right food for Katherine. “Maybe bottles that could be propped up without someone having to hold them?”

He was willing to feed the baby versions of Gary and Hodge, but he wasn't going to cuddle them in his arms.

The bottles instantly appeared in the mouths of Gary, Hodge, and Katherine. All three babies started drinking greedily.

Angela was right
, Jonah thought.
An Elucidator really does make getting food in a foreign time period much, much easier.

He wondered if the babies on the plane also needed food, but when he peeked in through one of the windows, all those babies still seemed to be asleep.

“Elucidator, can you put me in contact with Angela now?” he asked. “Or JB, if he's sane again, or Hadley—or, really, just about anybody else in the time agency?”

NO, the Elucidator in his hand flashed back at him. NOT YET.

“When will I be able to talk to them?” Jonah asked.

IT DEPENDS, the Elucidator said.

“On what?” Jonah asked.

ON WHAT YOU DO NEXT.

Oh, no pressure!
Jonah thought.

He looked down again at baby Katherine and baby Gary and baby Hodge, and at the airplane.

“You mean, it depends on what I do with the plane and the babies,” Jonah said.

EXACTLY, the Elucidator agreed.

Jonah sank down to the ground, cradling baby Katherine on his lap. She clumsily slapped her hands against the bottle, but it wasn't like she could actually hold it well on her own.

Jonah tilted the bottle up so the milk flowed a little faster.

Babies are so helpless
, he thought.
Dependent. Totally at the mercy of the people around them.

He glanced over at baby Gary and baby Hodge. Babies were defenseless, too. Jonah could punch and kick and even torture his enemies now, and there was nothing they could do about it.

But that seemed so horribly wrong that Jonah was disgusted with himself for thinking of it. Gary and Hodge were
babies
now. They'd been awful as adults; they'd been downright gleeful trying to ruin Jonah's life. But as babies
they were innocent. When they grew up again—if they grew up again—they might be terrible people once more or they might be good this time around.

Or they might be totally disabled because of the strain of un-aging from adults back to babies again
, Jonah remembered.

Was that Lindbergh's fault? Or Jonah's? Or . . . nobody's? Jonah couldn't feel too guilty about what had already happened to Gary and Hodge. But what if Jonah did something with all the babies on the plane that also messed them up, just because he didn't know all the possible consequences?

Andrea
, he thought with a pang.
Chip, Gavin, Daniella, Alex, Emily, Brendan, Antonio . . .

He could picture each one of his friends. And he pictured each one of them with a crowd behind them of friends and relatives—everyone their lives had touched or could potentially touch, everyone whose lives could be ruined or repaired by Jonah's decisions.

What if what happened to the babies and the plane could ruin or fix time itself?

“I'm thirteen years old!” he said aloud. “I shouldn't have this much power! I don't know anything!”

In his arms baby Katherine startled. She stopped sucking on the bottle for a moment and stared up at him with large, worried eyes.

Then she giggled.

She'd laugh at me if she were here as her right age too
, Jonah thought.
She'd say, “Haven't you learned something from time travel?”

He had, actually. On his trips through time he'd seen again and again how often little, seemingly insignificant actions saved the day. He'd seen how tiny moments of helping one person had saved everyone.

Whatever I decide to do with an entire planeload of babies is never going to be tiny
, he thought.

But he did know tiny bits and pieces about time and life and the other big topics he'd discussed so many times with JB: fate and God, philosophy and religion . . . and what was the purpose of life, anyway?

God?
Jonah thought searchingly.
What should I do with this plane?

It wasn't like he expected to hear a booming voice from above, giving him directions. But he felt a little less paralyzed. He could hear other voices in his head, especially JB saying again and again,
We have to fix history. We have to repair the mistakes that Gary and Hodge made, kidnapping those kids from time. . . .

History had already been fixed for every single one of the thirty-five babies on the plane. Jonah didn't exactly know his own situation, but he'd seen how everyone else's
past lives had worked out when he'd watched the monitors back in the time cave.

So there'd be no reason for me to send any of them back to their original lives in history
, Jonah thought, and this was a huge relief.

He remembered Gary and Hodge sneering that Jonah's other time period, the twenty-first century, was history too, from their perspective. He remembered Gary saying,
It was never possible for time to survive with you or any of the other babies from that plane living in this time period.
He remembered Hodge saying,
Once that plane crash-landed in this time period, this time was doomed. It's always been doomed. You lived through thirteen years of it being doomed.

What if that
wasn't
a lie?

“Were Gary and Hodge telling me the truth about my time period being doomed by the time crash?” Jonah asked the Elucidator.

MAYBE, MAYBE NOT, the Elucidator flashed back. THAT DEPENDS ON YOU TOO.

Jonah resisted the urge to throw the Elucidator down to the ground and jump up and down on it, smashing it into bits. The fact that baby Katherine was still in his lap was probably the only thing that stopped him.

He took a deep breath and tried again.

“What should I do to save everyone?” he asked.

EVERYONE WHO EVER LIVED, YOU MEAN? the Elucidator asked, the words scrolling across the screen. YOU DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF POWER.

“You know what I mean,” Jonah said. “How can I save all the people I care about? And save time?”

JONAH, I'M JUST A MACHINE, the Elucidator said. I COULD NEVER BE PROGRAMMED TO BE AWARE OF EVERY VARIABLE. I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT TO DO.

So I'm supposed to know more than an Elucidator?
Jonah thought despairingly. But there was an echo to that thought, an answer:
No. I'm just supposed to care more.

He couldn't see a way clear to figuring out everything about the time streams Gary and Hodge had tangled together and split and reshaped and collapsed. But the Elucidator had said there was a possibility that the time crash hadn't—or wouldn't—ruin time. Without aging the babies on the plane forward—and maybe risking injuring them—he couldn't ask any of them what they wanted. But he knew what he would have wanted, if he'd still been one of them.