A Crack in the Sky (37 page)

No, it couldn’t be.

He felt movement on his chest, as if something small had shifted its weight. But that didn’t mean anything. It could still be part of the dream. Probably was, in fact. And yet his pulse sped up. Gathering his remaining strength, he managed to fight his way just a little closer to the surface of consciousness. He opened his eyes. The sphere was dormant now, and there seemed to be a shape, a dark blur, not far from his face. He blinked a few times and soon he could make out a vague outline of something smallish and gray perched on his uniform. It
did
look
like her. The creature, whatever it was, was leaning over him, its whiskers twitching not far from his face.

Marilyn? Is that you?

Yes, my love. You had me worried. I thought I’d lost you
.

But Eli still wasn’t convinced. She pulled back, and when the light caught her, he could see her a little more clearly. She looked awful. Filthy. Emaciated. Her fur was tattered and patchy, and some of it appeared to have turned from gray to white, especially around her snout and around her eyes. There was also a nasty gash across the left side of her body, and one of her ears was ripped open.

His suspicions returned. This might still be a nightmare after all, a dream that something horrible had happened to Marilyn. Why not? If the sphere was dredging his psyche for one last way to send him into despair, there were few things left that could do it like this could. At the same time, though, this moment felt somehow different from the rest of the nightmare. For one thing, there was the buzz in his ears that he hadn’t experienced in any other part of the dream.

How do I know it’s really you?

She stood over him and leaned close. His scalp started to tingle, and he felt a sensation like a gentle caress in his brain. All at once the two of them were lying in his backyard again, and he could feel the cool, smooth plastic of the artificial grass at his neck and under the heels of his bare feet. From a distance came the sounds of activity: the hum of transport pods, the murmur of the crowds on Thayer Street. The Providence dome glimmered a radiant bluish green. As Marilyn chirped beside him, a flock of pelicans swooped across the sky. But it
lasted only a moment. In a blink the scene faded, and he was back in the chair again. He was looking deep into her eyes.

“It
is
you,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “You’re real. You’re here.…”

Foolish, exasperating child. Of course I’m here. Don’t you remember my promise?
She nuzzled her snout against his cheek.
I said I’d never leave you
.

23
revelations

The room shook with thunder. From Outside Eli could hear the wind shrieking and waves crashing against the dome. While he’d been lost in his dreams, the storm had grown much worse.

You have no idea how happy I am to see you
, he said silently, still amazed.
I’m so, so sorry, Marilyn. I should have listened
.

It’s all right, my love. I’m here now
.

But how?
His eyes fell on a small gap in the wall he hadn’t noticed before, and on freshly crumbled plaster on the floor near the far corner of the room. He realized this was how Marilyn must have gotten in. She must have squeezed through the space between the walls.
What on earth happened to you?

It’s a long story, my love. There isn’t time
.

He considered again her skinny, ragged body. The open gash across her side was puffy and caked in blood. It looked infected. “Tell me,” he said aloud. “I have to know.”

She eyed him.
Very well. But it’s quicker to show you
. Once
again Eli’s scalp tingled, and he realized she was downloading something to him. And suddenly there it was. As if it were right in front of him, he could see the black-winged Department of Loyalty pod and Marilyn chasing after it. He was there with her as she hid in the streets of Providence and barely escaped the dome. For weeks she’d trudged, exhausted, through the endless wilderness Outside, all the time following his signal. He felt her terror and hunger as she endured storms and fought in countless death struggles with other starving creatures of the wild, many of them mutants. She’d had to learn to fight and kill to survive. Finally she’d stumbled onto an InfiniCorp transport hub just west of New Washington and had managed to stow herself in the ovenlike baggage compartment of a southbound product-delivery transport and, after that, in the sewage piping of an ocean-bound supply vessel heading across the Gulf of Mexico to the tower. It was there, in a fight with a mutant rat, that her ear had been slashed open and she’d received the gash across her side.

All this she had endured for him.

He gazed at her now, with no idea what to say. He’d never felt more love for her than he did at that moment. But now that the download was finished, his brain felt like mush. Somehow it had sapped his energy even further—and, worse, he could feel how the effort of sending it had drained Marilyn’s strength even more than his own. Her head slumped and one of her eyelids hung lower than the other.

Marilyn? Are you okay?

I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. What’s important now is getting you out of here. The transports are on the lowest levels
.

Yes, I know, but there’s no way to get there. The place is locked
up like a fortress and crawling with Guardians. And besides, look at me. I’m stuck in this chair
.

Marilyn lifted her head.
I think there may be a few things I can do to help
. She fixed her gaze on the clamps around his wrists. Within seconds they started to heat up, until finally they clicked open. Then she did the same with the clamps around his legs and the bracket around his head.

“Thank you,” he whispered, impressed. It was a great relief not to feel the metal digging into his wrists anymore.

Come on! Let’s get going!

At that moment the wind rose in pitch and the tower creaked to one side. Here on a higher floor, the shift seemed even more noticeable to Eli than it had below, or perhaps it was just that the wind and waves were so much more powerful now. For an instant the sphere blinked brighter, but then the tower rocked upright again.

Let’s go!
Marilyn insisted.
We’re running out of time!

Eli was about to slide himself off the chair and stumble after her, but he hesitated. The growing storm was making him think once again of what Tabitha had said about Gustavo and the Greenhouse Recovery Project. For so long there had been so many questions burning inside him. He knew of only one person who would have all the answers, and Marilyn was right—time was indeed running out. If Eli was ever going to find out the truth, it had to be now.

“Wait,” he said. “Before we go any further, I need you to do something for me first.”

She stared at him.
What are you talking about?

“Remember back at home when you pulled me through the CloudNet? Do you think you can do that again? The
spheres here won’t allow me to communicate beyond the tower, but I bet
you
can find a way. I need to talk to Grandfather.”

Eli, you don’t seem to appreciate the urgency of the situation. The system says the Guardians check on you every hour, and I don’t know when the last time was. They could be back any minute
.

“I’m safer here than if I’m caught wandering the hallways. And anyway, you don’t understand. This can’t wait. Grandfather is the only one who can really help.”

She appeared to study him as the rain rumbled overhead. When at last her voice echoed in his mind again, it was softer than before.
Grandfather isn’t well. You know that, don’t you?

He nodded. “All the more reason to reach him now. Wherever he is, I have to find him.”

She seemed to consider.
All right, my love. I’ll do my best
. She stepped toward him once more, hopped back onto his lap, and closed her eyes. After a few seconds she opened them again. A long moment passed. Staring into her face, Eli began to wonder if it was going to work. Maybe she couldn’t do it more than once. But soon he felt a tingling on his scalp. And then came the feeling he remembered from the first time, the faint fizzing sensation deep in his brain.

The sounds of the storm started to fade. He closed his eyes.

Eli was in the digital tunnel again. In his mind he and Marilyn were flying across a field of multicolored lights. She carried him down a long chain of interconnecting highways as countless electronic intersections whipped past. Every now and then
they would duck through doorways he hadn’t noticed, or they would turn onto side roads like steep, winding staircases. Eventually the lights faded and the feeling of motion slowed.

Now he found himself floating in a CloudNet sphere over a narrow hospital bed. The room had uneven, pinkish walls that glistened with moisture and seemed to expand and contract at regular intervals like enormous living air sacs. Eli realized he was inside some kind of medical apparatus, a giant artificial lung. In the bed below him, twisted amid the sheets, somebody was struggling to breathe. He’d been expecting to come to Grandfather, but this wasn’t him. The patient in the bed was too small and frail to be anyone but a child. Hairless and rail thin, his skin was yellow and withered and he had black circles around his eyes. He looked more like a corpse than a living being. Two robot nurses attended him. At that moment one of them was fussing with the plastic tubes that connected his arms and chest with the medical equipment behind his head. The noise of the storm had dropped away by then, and everything was quiet except for the hum of machinery and the rasp of strained breathing.

Marilyn, who is this? Why are we here?

She didn’t answer. Although Eli could sense her presence somewhere in the CloudNet, he could feel she wasn’t in the sphere with him but instead was lingering somewhere behind. It occurred to him that she was even more worn out than he’d realized and that in her weakened state, she must have carried him as far as she could until at last she’d had to send him ahead without her. He was on his own.

He gazed down again at the child in the bed, only this time
there was something about the face that caught his attention. It was something familiar about the shape of the ears and the way the nose slanted at the top. Eli realized he’d been wrong. The shriveled, ghoulish creature barely clinging to life below him wasn’t a child after all.

“Grandfather?” he whispered. “Is that you?”

The old man stirred. When he spoke, his voice was weak and raspy. “Eli? My fat lamb …” Then his body convulsed in a series of sharp, rumbly coughs. With each one the walls shuddered.

“I’m here,” he said. Even across the CloudNet, Eli felt a lump in his throat.

The robots looked up, but only for a moment. They seemed far more interested in Grandfather’s coughing fit than in Eli’s presence. After a quick glance at the sphere, their blue faces swiveled back to the patient. One of them adjusted a knob on a nearby machine and the coughing subsided.

“How on earth have you come to me here, child?” he murmured, his eyes still closed. Before Eli could respond, though, a faint smile seemed to form on his lips, and he answered his own question. “Oh … the mongoose, of course. They didn’t think to look for her until it was too late, did they? And they never found her.” His eyes opened just a crack. “Oh, he’s a brilliant man, my friend. A genius if ever there was one.”

For an instant Eli thought he saw a mischievous look flash across his face. Grandfather must be delirious, he thought. He was also smaller and frailer than Eli ever would have imagined. “What happened to you, Grandfather? Are you going to be all right?”

Almost undetectably he shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Medical technology can do only so much. It seems the particulates have finally gotten the better of my lungs. Still, I’ve been lucky to fend off the inevitable as long as I have. Raise me.”

These last words he directed to the nearer of the two robots. The back of the bed lifted until he was in a sitting position and looking into the sphere. It broke Eli’s heart to see him so withered and feeble.

“I’m glad you’re here, child. Now that I see you, I realize I’ve been holding on because I was waiting for this moment. I somehow knew you’d find a way to me.”

It was an odd thing to say, but Eli supposed his mind could have been failing him along with his body. He remembered that Grandfather had been sick the entire time since he was kidnapped from home. He wondered if he’d even known that Eli was gone. But it didn’t matter. Eli had come here for assistance and he was determined to ask for it.

“Oh, Grandfather,” he began, his voice already shaking, “I’m in terrible trouble and I need your help.” At last the whole story came tumbling out: how he was trapped in a reeducation tower run by Spider and the Department of Loyalty, how Spider was secretly using company employees as slave labor, how Mother and Father had been accused of working with the Foggers against the company, and how Eli himself had also been accused. The next part was especially difficult for him.