Atherton #3: The Dark Planet (No. 3) (3 page)

source. It looked like it might be a long way.

Edgar had come to where the sides of Atherton curved more

sharply toward the bottom. It would be tougher going from here

on out with a far greater chance of losing his grip. Still, Edgar

decided to go a little bit farther, because Samuel had been

partly right, too. Edgar
was
searching for something--he was

always searching--and he had a deep feeling that climbing

would bring him to something more. His heart told him that Dr.

Harding, the maker of Atherton and so much more, had left him

something else. He remembered the voice of Dr. Maximus

Harding:

I made you, Edgar. Just as I made Atherton.

Edgar held this thought firmly in his mind as he felt his aching

hands and forearms. Maybe he'd pushed hard enough on his

first attempt at scaling these new, unknown places.

I don't want them to worry,
Edgar reasoned to himself. He

touched the side of Atherton with what one might describe as

affection. "I won't be gone long," he said aloud. "You'll see me

again."

He started back toward the flat surface of Atherton, racing up

the side with alarming speed and skill. Edgar wanted to return

in the light of day so that he could see the surface and better

make his way to the very bottom. His fingers tingled with

excitement at the thought of spending an entire day exploring

this hidden world, a world only he could see.

This place is mine and mine alone,
he thought.

When Edgar came to where he thought he should see the rope

hanging and did not find it, he climbed faster. They had

discovered him missing. Edgar felt terrible that Isabel and

Samuel might think he'd fallen or been trapped below.

As he neared the top he glanced up and saw the silhouettes of

two small heads--but a moment later they were gone.

By the time he had finally pulled up his head and shoulders and

looked over the top edge of Atherton, Samuel and Isabel had

moved back by the rock, their arms folded over their chests. And

what was worse, the old, stooped figure of Dr. Kincaid stood

with them--and he did not appear the least bit happy.

Edgar scrambled the rest of the way back onto Atherton and

walked toward the three figures in the dark. "It's not as hard as I

thought it would be," he began, hoping to head off questions

before they started. "And I didn't go very far. Honestly--it was

easy."

"We were worried about you," said Isabel. "I mean
really

worried. How could you leave the rope like that?"

Edgar wanted them all to understand that he felt safer when he

was climbing than almost any other time. "You don't need to

worry about me. At least not when I'm hanging on to a rock

wall."

"Not very different from walking, right?" asked Samuel. He was

closer to the truth than he might have imagined. As he and

Isabel came toward Edgar they all smiled at one another at last.

That is, until they saw that Dr. Kincaid had turned away and

begun the journey back home without them. There was a grave

tone in his voice when he uttered the only words he would say

on the long walk.

"All of you come with me. I have something to show you."

CHAPTER 2THE DARK PLANET

There was a fire burning at the entrance to the cave Dr. Kincaid

lived in. Soft light drifted into the opening that led inside, but Dr.

Kincaid's closest companion was nowhere to be found.

"Where's Vincent?" asked Isabel. "He wouldn't just leave a fire

burning like that, would he?"

Dr. Kincaid ignored her question. The long walk in the middle of

the night had made the bottoms of his old feet ache. He

slumped heavily on a wooden bench and waved his walking

stick in the direction of a row of low, fat boulders on the other

side of the fire.

"Sit down--all of you."

Edgar, Samuel, and Isabel did as they were told, wondering just

how much trouble they were in.

"Vincent likes to scout at night," said Dr. Kincaid, returning to

Isabel's question now that the pressure was off his feet. "He's

been going out later and longer, but he'll return before dawn."

The old man breathed a deep sigh and looked at the glowing

embers. He laid the walking stick across his lap and tapped it

slowly. Lately he'd been carrying the walking stick everywhere

he went and, as far as Edgar could tell, Dr. Kincaid never let it

out of his sight. He seemed to have gone from merely old to

ancient in the space of a year. His hair was whiter than it had

once been. His big ears flopped more freely and his eyes

drooped heavily over a long nose. He was nearing the grave,

and what remained of him was in rapid decay.

But when Dr. Kincaid finally spoke, his voice sounded as crisp

and strong as it ever had in its nearly ninety years.

"I might have known you'd do something like this. I suppose I

should have expected it. But for some reason the idea of you

climbing off the edge of the world--I guess I tried to avoid

thinking about it."

Dr. Kincaid fumbled around in his mind for the right words. He

began pulling on one of his ears as he looked at Edgar.

"I thought your searching was over."

Edgar raised his eyes from the fire. When the two locked eyes,

Dr. Kincaid knew.

"But you haven't stopped searching, have you? You know we

haven't come to the very end just yet." The way Dr. Kincaid

spoke was almost spooky, like he was unearthing thoughts he

wasn't sure should be out in the open.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Isabel.

Edgar touched her hand and discovered she was trembling. In

the stillness before the fire Edgar ran the words over in his

mind.
You know we haven't come to the very end just yet.

"Tell us what you mean," Samuel said. "Where is the very

end?"

Dr. Kincaid thought about how he should answer. He always

struggled with communicating clearly.

"Far away, down there." Dr. Kincaid turned the bottom of his

walking stick toward the ground and tapped it twice on the dirt.

"The Dark Planet turns darker still."

Something about those words broke Edgar's heart.
The Dark

Planet turns darker still.
He was speaking of the place where

Dr. Harding had made not only Atherton, but made Edgar as

well. The planet far away in the distance that looked so grey

and bleak.

"Minute by minute, hour by hour, the Dark Planet is dying,"

continued Dr. Kincaid. "Somewhere in the backs of your minds

you all know this."

"That sounds terrible," said Isabel.

Dr. Kincaid felt like a failure as he thought about his past. "In a

way, this is completely my fault."

"What's your fault, Dr. Kincaid?" asked Samuel.

Dr. Kincaid seemed on the verge of revealing a dreadful

mistake he couldn't quite bring himself to confess. "I convinced

everyone I could control him, even after he became more and

more secretive," said Dr. Kincaid.

"You mean Dr. Harding," said Edgar.

"I still thought I could trust him, even after he made you."

This stung Edgar somewhere deep inside. The thought of being

made was always confusing for Edgar, because he had no idea

what having been made by a mad scientist meant.
How
had he

been made? What was he, really, if not a normal child of normal

parents?

Sensing he'd said something that might hurt the boy, Dr.

Kincaid tried to be clearer.

"Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, Edgar. Once you were

here, I was very happy he'd made you, but that doesn't change

the fact that he knew it was wrong. He was encouraged to make

a great many things. But making human beings was strictly

forbidden. It was a line we were never supposed to cross."

Dr. Kincaid smiled then, thinking of something he could say that

might encourage the boy.

"You were the only one, did you know that? He never made

anyone else."

"You hid me, didn't you?" asked Edgar.

"Yes, we hid you," said Dr. Kincaid. "The commander couldn't

know.
No one
could know. The whole project would have been

in jeopardy. We had to keep you a secret. And that proved very

difficult. There was so much work to do, and Dr. Harding had no

idea how to raise a child. He was always, in so many ways, a

child himself. He wanted you, so he made you, but he didn't

think about what it would mean, how it could compromise every

thing. So I helped him take care of you."

Isabel and Samuel looked at Edgar. They couldn't believe what

they were hearing. It all sounded so unimaginable: a boy not

born but made, like Atherton had been made.

"There were some very close calls near the end. Dr. Harding

was--well, he was having a lot of problems keeping track of

every thing. He became angry at times. His behavior could be

hard to predict. At some point he decided he wanted to show

you to the world. You were his greatest creation, greater by far

than even Atherton--that's what he used to say."

"I agree," said Isabel.

"Me, too," said Samuel.

"And Atherton was the perfect place to hide me," said Edgar.

"From anyone who might find out. Even from my own father."

"Dr. Harding was not your father," said Dr. Kincaid. "He was

your maker. There's a big difference."

"It doesn't seem different to me," said Edgar, wanting more than

anything to be normal like everyone else.

"I'm sorry, Edgar, but you're wrong about that. I don't want to

scare you or hurt you, but you must understand--I brought you to

Atherton and hid you from Dr. Harding precisely
because
you

were made. Dr. Harding never would have hurt you, but Dr.

Harding was of very limited power on the Dark Planet."

"But he was the greatest scientist who ever lived!" said Isabel.

"He must have had power to burn."

Dr. Kincaid looked at Isabel with a sort of sad smile. "Being

smart doesn't make you powerful, young lady," he said.

"Ambition and greed, those will make you powerful. And there

were plenty of both at Station Seven."

"What's Station Seven?" asked Edgar.

"So many questions," said Dr. Kincaid. He held up his walking

stick as if to say enough was enough and he would talk about

what he pleased whether they liked it or not.

"Dr. Harding crossed a line that was not to be crossed when he

made you. There were people I couldn't protect you from,

people who would have had other plans for you if they'd found

out. So you see, it does matter that you were made in a special

sort of way. It matters very much."

"I still don't see why it makes any difference. So what if I don't

have a mother? I had a father." Edgar pointed to a wicked

scrape on his arm he'd gotten while climbing. "I bleed just like

everyone else. I've got skin and bones and a brain. Who cares

how I got here?"

Dr. Kincaid's mind was scrambled with conflicting ideas. The

next part was very hard for him to say, but the truth was the truth

and the boy was old enough to know for himself.

"Sometimes a maker
unmakes.
Things are taken apart and

examined, remade, changed, tinkered with.
Resurrected.
It's

what scientists do, Edgar. And there were plenty of scientists at

Station Seven who would have done just that if they'd

discovered you."

Edgar was appalled. And that word--"resurrected"--what did that

mean? Had he died and come back to life, is that what it

meant? Had he been broken down into pieces and put back

together again? It couldn't really be true. "I don't want to talk

about this anymore," said Edgar.

Dr. Kincaid quickly changed course.

"We couldn't reveal your existence, Edgar. Atherton was

assumed by many--most, actually--to be a catastrophic waste of

time and resources. There was great excitement at first. Isn't

there always at the start of something new and promising? But

after decades of work and trillions of dollars with no end in

sight, nearly everyone stopped believing. The Dark Planet was

dying and the satellite world of Atherton was nothing but a

fantastic idea that would never amount to anything useful."

Dr. Kincaid's shoulders slumped noticeably, as if the weight of

tremendous pressures Edgar knew nothing about had settled

over him all at once.

"But I never stopped believing in the power of Dr. Harding and

the making of Atherton," said Dr. Kincaid. "Even after all the

mistakes--and there have been many, to be sure--a hope still

remains."

Dr. Kincaid grew more animated as he came to the heart of the

matter. "I am sure of one thing."

With a groan he stood and edged closer to the fire. His watery

eyes sparkled in the light of the flames. "There is a way to

discover the true reason why Dr. Harding made Atherton. And

for you, Edgar, to find out all you could ever want to know about

your maker. Your
father,
if that's what you choose to believe."

"Tell us! Tell us what you know!" said Isabel.