Island of the Sun (10 page)

Isabela nodded, and after she'd gone, Dr. Powers came to Eleanor's room with his sons, and so did Luke
and Betty. They all crowded in, and Eleanor's mom shut the door.

“Is the G.E.T. here for us or for the Concentrator?” she asked.

“Maybe both,” Finn said.

“Could they have tracked us?” Dr. Powers asked, and turned to Luke. “Are you sure your plane was clean?”

“Positive,” Luke said.

“Maybe it's just for the Concentrator,” Eleanor said. If Skinner and the G.E.T. were aware of von Albrecht's work, they might have sent agents here looking for it.

“Or maybe,” Betty said, “
just
maybe they're here because the G.E.T. is an international energy company, and they've got business to conduct. Customers. Projects. Why does it have to be this conspiracy of yours? Who says they know a thing about us?”

Eleanor certainly hoped that was the case but didn't think it wise to take chances and assume they were safe. “I still think we should be careful, and not go anywhere near them.”

“I agree,” Dr. Powers said.

“I'm hungry,” Julian said. “Can we talk about this over dinner?”

Dr. Powers frowned but nodded. “Fine.”

They left the room and went back down the stairs
to the lobby. At the far end, a doorway led to a restaurant and bar, crowded and dimly lit by candle lanterns ensconced in the walls. Once they were inside, a server ushered them to a table.

“I want some more of that chicken,” Luke said, scanning the menu.

“What's ceviche?” Finn asked, reading his.

“Seafood marinated in lime or lemon juice,” Betty said. “It's good.”

Eleanor looked at her mom, who she knew hated seafood, but her mom seemed not to have heard Betty. Her eyes were fixed over Eleanor's shoulder, and when Eleanor glanced behind her, she saw why.

At a table just a few yards away, four men sat eating dinner, all of them wearing similar clothing: dark slacks, polo shirts, and jackets. They looked quite out of place in that restaurant, and not like tourists at all.

They had to be G.E.T.

E
LEANOR WHIPPED BACK AROUND AND STARED AT HER
menu, though she wasn't really reading it and certainly wasn't about to order anything now. Slowly, an awareness of the G.E.T. agents spread around their table, and everyone went quiet. The waitress came then and asked if they wanted something to drink.

No one answered her with anything but a blank stare.

After a moment she said, “You like Inca Kola?”

“Yes, fine,” Dr. Powers said.

The waitress frowned a little and moved away.

Once she was gone, Luke leaned into the middle of the table and whispered, “Now what?”

“We stay calm,” Eleanor's mom said. “They're just eating. If we don't draw attention to ourselves, maybe they won't even notice us.”

“I'd still like to know what they're doing here,” Dr. Powers said.

“We could ask them,” Betty said.

“What?” Dr. Powers said.

“Just walk up and announce yourself?” Eleanor's mom said.

Eleanor didn't think that would be a good idea. Even assuming the best-case scenario, that the G.E.T. here knew nothing about them, that might not last if they drew attention to themselves in some way.

“I wouldn't say who I am,” Betty said. “I could just say I'm a geologist and ask if they know of any work.”

The waitress returned then with a tray of bottles, the beverage inside them the color of gold, and placed one before each of them at the table. Then she was gone, and Julian went straight for his bottle.

“Mm,” he said. “That's good. Tastes like . . . cream soda? Bubble gum?”

Finn glared at him, mouth half open. “Seriously?”

“What?” Julian asked.

Finn's eyes went wide. “What do you mean what?” he whispered.

“Those guys aren't even looking over here,” Julian said.

“So?” Finn said. “They might—”

“Boys,” Dr. Powers said. “Now is not the time.”

Luke took a swig from his own bottle. “Bubble gum,” he said.

“What are we going to do?” Eleanor asked.

“What's wrong with my idea?” Betty asked. “You all go back up to the rooms before they've noticed us. Then I'll talk to them alone. See what I can find out. Either way, it's not helping our chances, sitting here in a group that probably resembles the latest G.E.T. all-points bulletin about us.”

Eleanor's mom and Dr. Powers looked at each other as Luke drank more of his soda. Eleanor didn't like the idea of Betty going anywhere near the G.E.T. agents, but the woman had proven herself both capable and smart. If she were alone, perhaps she could learn something about what the agents were doing there. But it wasn't as if the G.E.T. would just tell her they were there for a piece of planet-sucking alien technology.

“You think they'll just tell you about the Concentrator?” Eleanor asked.

“Of course not,” Betty said. “But I'll know if whatever story they
do
tell me is the truth, or if they're lying to me for some reason.”

“She will,” Luke said. “Trust me, she always knows.”

“I suppose if we don't do something about it,” Eleanor's mom said, “we'll spend the rest of our time here wondering and looking over our shoulders.”

Eleanor knew she would be doing that anyway. But Dr. Powers nodded. “All right. The rest of us will go. Betty, you'll pay for the drinks?”

“Sure,” Betty said.

“Wait, we're not eating?” Julian asked.

No one answered him.

They rose quietly from the table and filed out of the restaurant, back through the lobby, and up the stairs to Eleanor's room, where they all waited for Betty to come up.

Eleanor threw herself into the baseball-glove sofa and sat there chewing on her thumbnail. She was not convinced this wasn't an incredibly stupid idea. The only reason Betty had been so eager was probably that she didn't believe there was a conspiracy. Maybe this was her attempt to prove that to everyone, or maybe just to herself.

Luke lounged next to Eleanor on the sofa, while her mom sat on the bed, hugging her knees. Julian leaned into a corner, sulking, and Finn eyed him angrily from the other side of the room. Eleanor still didn't understand what was going on there. A tangled knot
of sibling rivalry and envy, with both of them feeling like outsiders in different ways. Dr. Powers sat on the bed, staring at a blank wall, and Eleanor wondered if he was oblivious to what was going on between his sons, or if he chose to ignore it.

It often seemed that Eleanor's mom ignored her, or pretended not to notice the things she didn't want to deal with. There were so many things they used to argue about: Eleanor's grades, her reckless stunts, her lack of concern for what other people thought. Sometimes, Eleanor even wondered if her mom was glad to be away from home so much for work, in spite of what she said about it breaking her heart to leave Eleanor with Uncle Jack, because it meant she didn't have to deal with her daughter. Was it like that with Dr. Powers? Was it a parent thing? Or just hers?

“What happens if we can't find this Concentrator?” Dr. Powers asked.

Everyone dialed toward him.

“If we can't find it,” he said, “what do we do next? That would effectively end this whole enterprise, would it not?”

If they couldn't find the Concentrator here, did that mean there weren't Concentrators anywhere else? Eleanor had no idea. She only knew she had seen one of them, and they were the only way she could think
to stop the rogue planet. She also knew the rogue was still up there, connected to the earth. She could still feel the weight of its shadow.

“I believe that would necessitate a change in our strategy,” Dr. Powers said. “From offense to defense. Settle in for a long winter's nap.”

“The Preservation Protocol, Simon?” Eleanor's mom said. “You'd sign on with the G.E.T.? After what they did?”

Dr. Powers shook his head. “I didn't say that. But if we have absolutely no way to avert what's happening, to stop whatever it is the rogue planet is doing, we'll need another plan. And they might have the right idea, even if they're going about it in the wrong way.”

Eleanor didn't even want to consider that possibility. She couldn't accept that kind of world, one where some were saved and others left to freeze, a world without hope, existing only by grim resignation. That was giving up. And Eleanor refused to surrender.

“Let's just . . . ,” Eleanor's mom started. “Let's not go there until we have to.”

Luke crossed his legs and folded his arms. “Sounds like some of us are already there.”

“What about the humming?” Finn asked.

“What's that, son?” Dr. Powers asked.

Finn looked at Eleanor. “You heard a humming
before, right? Or felt it, or whatever? With the other Concentrator.”

That was true. The closer she'd gotten to it, the louder it had seemed, like standing under a charged, crackling power line. “Right,” she said, and then knew where he was going. She felt stupid for not thinking of it herself.

“Did you feel that back on the island?” Finn asked.

“I didn't,” she said, and didn't like what that meant. “But that doesn't mean it's not there. Maybe just that we weren't close enough.”

“So then we—what?” Dr. Powers asked. “Walk around and hope you ‘feel something'? Like some kind of human voltmeter?”

“Simon!” Eleanor's mom said.

“No offense intended, Sam,” Dr. Powers said. “I'm simply uncomfortable with how much of all this is . . . let's call it metaphysical.”

It was hard for Eleanor not to think that meant he was uncomfortable with
her
.

“Be that as it may,” Eleanor's mom said, “I won't tolerate another demeaning comment toward my daughter. I might not understand what's happening with her any more than you do, but I know she does not lie. And I also know that the only reason we were able to shut down the Concentrator in Alaska was because of her.”

Eleanor felt less alone hearing her mom defend her that way, and it removed some of the sting from their argument back on the plane.

Dr. Powers tipped his head. “My apologies, Eleanor. I truly meant nothing by it.”

“That's okay,” Eleanor said, because that was what she was supposed to say. But she wasn't sure that she meant it. “Tomorrow, when we go back to the island, I'll try to focus on feeling that humming.”

Dr. Powers seemed to be struggling with how to reply to that and ended up on a simple “Okay.”

The door opened, and everyone looked up as Betty walked into the room.

“Well,” she said, “they're staying at the hotel just down the street. The Copacabana Royal. And there is definitely something going on. They claim they're here exploring the area to possibly build a hydroelectric plant.”

“And you don't believe them?” Luke asked in mock surprise.

“Not a word,” Betty said. “They're hiding something. And it sounds like they're looking for something, too.”

That confirmed Eleanor's fears. “How do you know?” she asked.

“Because they're
diving
,” Betty said. “They say it's
for measuring water currents. But I don't buy it.”

“Diving?” Dr. Powers said. “Does that mean . . . could the Concentrator be underwater? Not connected with that Inca site at all?”

That gave Eleanor an idea. “Mom, can I see your Sync for a minute?”

Her mom handed it to her, and Eleanor opened a browser window, running a search for Lake Titicaca's geologic history. She found that its water levels had fluctuated greatly over the last few thousand years. Archaeologists had found several submerged temples and artifacts at the bottom of the lake, and there were even legends of a lost underwater city. It seemed possible that whenever the Concentrator had been planted, the lake had not been what it was now. That would also explain why Eleanor hadn't felt the humming when they were walking around the island. She shared all of this with the others.

“Of course,” her mom said. “I just assumed, what with von Albrecht's map, and then that legend . . .”

“I did as well,” Dr. Powers said. “But like you said, the chart isn't precise, and the island is relatively small. The Concentrator could be located offshore.”

Eleanor shut down the Sync. “I think we need to do what the G.E.T. agents are doing. I think we need to dive.”

“I can't see how
that
could possibly go wrong,” Luke said.

“You have any better ideas, Fournier?” Betty said.

“No, but— Wait, hold on,” Luke said. “Somehow we got turned around here. I'm supposed to be the believer, and you're the skeptic. You saying you believe them now?”

“I believe the G.E.T. is hiding something,” she said. “Something they've already shot at us over. And I want to know what it is.”

“Good,” Eleanor said. “Then it's settled. Amaru's company runs dive tours, right? Tomorrow, we'll just ask for one.”

“Diving is dangerous business,” Luke said.

“And besides, what then?” Julian looked at Eleanor. “Can you shut that thing down underwater?”

“I don't know.” Eleanor hadn't thought that far ahead.

“The first order of business is to find it,” her mom said. “Then we can figure out our next step.”

Everyone agreed with that plan, and the others returned to their rooms while Eleanor and her mom settled in for the night. The bed was large enough for them to lie next to each other without crossing the invisible line into each other's space. They both lay on their sides, Eleanor staring at her mom's back,
moonlight falling through the window in an icy stripe across the middle of the bedspread.

“Good night, sweetie,” her mom whispered.

“Good night,” Eleanor said.

When she closed her eyes, her thoughts wandered back over the water to the island and up its slope to the Titikala and the Chinkana, with its maze of corridors and chambers. It did not take long for the image of the Concentrator to invade her mind, though, tangling her thoughts up in its confounding branches, a bramble her eyes could not comprehend because they were not built to. She felt herself being lifted up in those branches and turned around, squeezed, stretched, sundered, and scattered until all that remained of her was her awareness that she had been changed.

It was the same vision she had experienced under the ice, and she wanted to stop it but couldn't.

The Concentrator shot her up into the sky, through the void of space, until she reached the rogue world, which appeared to her as something she could not say was truly there, but that nevertheless filled her perception to its farthest reaches. The surface of the immense being had the twisted and impossible quality of its seedling Concentrator, an oil slick that sent the eye skimming off it.

This was Eleanor's destination. This was where the earth's energy was sent, and where she was now sent, against the only thing left to her, which was her will. If she had still possessed a mouth, and a throat, she would have screamed.

The planet drew nearer, a void with teeth that whispered a stream of incomprehensible language, and she prepared to be devoured, unable to close the eyes she no longer had.

“Eleanor!”

She woke up.

Her mom leaned over her, her face worried and horrified in the darkness of the hotel room. “My God,” she whispered. “Eleanor.”

“What?” Eleanor said.

“You were . . .” Her mom rolled onto her back and covered her face. “No, it wasn't talking in your sleep. It was . . . I don't know what it was.”

“What was I saying?” Eleanor asked.

“It was just noise.” Her mom shook her head, still covering her face, still, apparently, unable to look at her daughter. “Terrible, terrible noise.”