Revealed (15 page)

Jonah went back over to his sleeping kid parents in the car.

“I'm still alive,” he told them. “Maybe JB or Angela managed to fake my body, and they just couldn't get the word to me that everything's okay. Maybe I won't ever have to go back to my past. Maybe they're just quietly in the background taking care of everything, and any minute now they'll show up here, with everything fixed. And with Katherine. Maybe they'll have rescued Katherine already, and I won't have to. And then they'll make you two the right age again, and everything will be fine.”

In their sleep, kid Dad still looked goofy and kid Mom still looked fierce. Jonah reached in and gave both of them hugs. They were both so small now. Diminished. But they were still his parents.

“You know I think I'm lying, don't you?” he asked them.
“You know I don't really believe that any of this is going to be easy?”

Kid Mom's fierce expression seemed to be saying,
If you don't believe it's going to be easy, why are you over here talking to us instead of doing everything you can to get Katherine back and rescue JB and Angela and fix time and us? Why aren't you doing what you know you should?

Kid Dad's expression seemed to say,
I love you, Jonah. I know you'll do your very best.

How could it hurt so much just to look at his own parents?

Jonah went back to watching the Lindberghs on the monitor—watching his other parents—and this hurt too. Anne and Charles had both been told now that their child's dead body had been found. They'd been told that their little boy had been dead since the very first night. For seventy-two days they'd been searching and hoping, and every government agency available in 1932 had been searching and hoping, and the whole time the child had been dead.

That's a fake dead body they're talking about
, Jonah thought hollowly.
It's not really me. And there's no connection with Katherine—her kidnapping is not the same situation. She's still alive. Somewhere in time. Somewhere I'm going to be able to find her.

But Jonah saw how completely the hope died in Anne
Lindbergh's face—how completely it died even as she maintained, “I never really thought he was still alive. From that first night I knew he was dead.”

Charles Lindbergh set his jaw and said very little. He didn't cry, not even when he went to identify the body. Jonah didn't know how he could stand it. Even knowing the body was fake, Jonah was still horrified to see how much a body could decompose in seventy-two days of lying in the dirt. Which was worse—the parts of the fake corpse that were gone, or the parts that were still recognizable, like the golden curls?

Jonah had to turn away when Charles Lindbergh began examining the fake corpse's face. It was still possible to see the dimple in the chin. Without thinking, Jonah lifted his hand and fingered his own chin—fingered his own dimple.

What I see on the screen isn't real
, Jonah told himself.
That corpse isn't real, isn't real, isn't real, isn't real . . .

It didn't matter. Jonah still had to walk away.

“You understand, don't you?” he asked his parents. “You wouldn't be able to look either, would you? You wouldn't be as cold and heartless as Charles Lindbergh.”

Even kid Mom's fierce expression looked less fierce now. How could she look so lost and afraid when she wasn't even awake?

Jonah was almost certain the corpse he'd seen on the screen wasn't real, but the people he loved really were that fragile. Even the strongest, most determined people he'd met or seen or heard about in history were still just flesh and blood, bones and skin.

And this is why people believe in God, isn't it?
Jonah wondered.
Because we can tell there's something bigger out there that we're part of. Because we can tell that there's something more to all of us, and more to all of our lives.

And then it felt like Jonah was talking to God, not to his parents:
Please help me figure out what to do. Please help this all work out.

He went back to watching the monitor.

Somehow he'd missed a huge chunk of time. It was summer now on the screen, maybe even August. Charles Lindbergh was climbing back into an airplane, flying high over the water again. Jonah caught a glimpse of one of Lindbergh's maps, which seemed to match the coastline he was leaving behind—Lindbergh was flying out over the Atlantic Ocean once again. When he was far past the last sight of land, he pulled the window back so the wind flowed directly onto his face. He lifted a small urn toward the open window and uncorked it. And then he shook fine dark powder out into the wind.

Ashes
, Jonah thought.
They had the fake body cremated.
Lindbergh thinks he's spreading his son's ashes over the ocean.

Lindbergh held his head out the window, watching until every last ash disappeared into the waves below.

And then Lindbergh began to howl.

“Nooooo,” he wailed, the sound so painful and intense that Jonah actually put his hands over his ears. He could still hear Lindbergh anyway.

“This was supposed to bring me peace?” Lindbergh screamed. “This doesn't bring me peace! I refuse to accept it!”

He pulled out one of the maps and flipped it over and began to write, the paper braced against his own knee.

The camera angle spun, as if Jonah himself were whirling around the cockpit, spinning into position over the paper Lindbergh was writing on. Now Jonah could see what the man was writing. He could see what his original father was writing:

I will not accept it. I cannot. I will find a way to turn time back around.

I will get my son back.

I will make it so we never lost him.

Time travel
, Jonah thought numbly.
He's talking about time travel.

Wasn't that what Lindbergh meant?

But he's in 1932
, Jonah reminded himself.

As far as Jonah could tell, they didn't even have computers yet in 1932. Jonah had seen video games that were more sophisticated than the airplane Lindbergh was flying right now. No—even when Jonah's
father
was a kid, there'd been video games that were more sophisticated that Lindbergh's airplane.

It's not like Charles Lindbergh is going to invent time travel right then and there
, Jonah told himself scornfully.

On the screen Lindbergh was swooping and rolling his plane, as if his refusal to make peace with his son's death had unleashed an odd, frantic playfulness.

He's not going to succeed
, Jonah thought. He felt small and mean. How could Jonah be so cruel as to
want
Lindbergh to fail?

Because if he succeeds, that ruins my life
, Jonah thought.

Lindbergh had turned back toward shore again, flying the same route he'd been over before, only in the opposite direction. The playfulness was gone; his flying seemed methodical and precise.

When he landed, Lindbergh waved away the others at the airfield who were ready to help him.

“I just want to sit in my plane for a while and be alone,” he called to them. “Keep the press away, all right? Don't let any reporters near.”

For a long time Lindbergh just sat in the plane, staring out the window at nothing. Then he ripped a fresh sheet of paper out of his flight logbook and began to write. It wasn't until Lindbergh finished and placed the letter on his pilot's seat that Jonah saw what Lindbergh had written:

To Whom It May Concern:

I have a mechanical mind. I understand engines and gears, how one gear turns another. The gear of my fame turned the gear of my son's kidnapping. And then that turned the gear of my son's death.

How do you un-turn a gear? How do you roll back time? How do you bring the dead back to life?

I have been changing my focus in recent years, from exploring the air to exploring the inner workings of life. I thought finding the secrets of immortality would be man's ultimate achievement—perhaps my ultimate achievement.

I aimed too low. Or, rather, I have reason now to see where even that lofty goal will never be enough. Surely someday man will learn how to undo time, how to rewind and repair his worst mistakes. When he does, how will this ultimate tool be used?

And how can I lure the possessor of that marvel back to my time to assist me? Why would he want to?

This is my answer. I address you, the time traveler of the future: You can look and see what I have accomplished thus far in my life. You can see my determination, my single-mindedness. You can see what I want, and how hard I am willing to work for you, what willingness I would bring to helping you in almost any way. For myself. For my wife. For my son.

You have my bounden word: I would make it completely worth your while to come to me. To hire me.

All I want in exchange is my son back.

Sincerely,

Charles Lindbergh

Lindbergh left this letter on his seat barely long enough for Jonah to finish reading it. And then Lindbergh picked
up the letter, lit it on fire, and stomped it down into ash on the ground.

He understands things about time travel that I took ages to figure out
, Jonah realized.
He understands that there is no reason to leave the letter in place for a long time. As long as it exists at one point in time, a curious traveler from another time will be able to see it.

And Jonah guessed that by destroying the note, Lindbergh was making sure that nothing would leak to any newspaper or radio reporter about how he had gone crazy with grief and was writing letters to nonexistent time travelers, asking for help.

But he
is
acting crazy with grief, isn't he?
Jonah wondered.
How could he think that any time traveler would want anything from him?

Sure, Charles Lindbergh had proved himself brave enough to fly across the Atlantic Ocean all by himself in essentially a tin can covered in cloth. But what could he do for any time traveler? Time travelers had Elucidators. They had all the marvels of the future. They didn't need Charles Lindbergh.

Lindbergh was looking around the runways stretching ahead of him. The airfield seemed deserted now. Other planes had been flying in and out earlier, but they were all either abandoned or aloft now. It was getting late in the day. Lindbergh began strolling toward the airfield
office, a small space off to the side of a cavernous hangar. Jonah could see two shadows in the windows of the office. Lindbergh evidently saw them too: He picked up his pace.

Did he have some appointment to meet friends there?
Jonah wondered.
Who is it?

“Strangers,” Lindbergh whispered to himself. “And I know I would have seen anybody the guard let in through the gate. . . .”

Lindbergh was beaming. He looked more hopeful than he'd looked even on the most optimistic day of searching for his son. Jonah had never seen Lindbergh look this happy to see anyone.

Lindbergh reached the door of the office and yanked it open. He stood in the doorway, his tall frame and broad shoulders blocking Jonah's view of the people inside. And then Lindbergh stepped across the threshold and to the side. In the moment before the door slammed behind him, Jonah saw just enough to understand.

Jonah had not been the only one who'd seen Charles Lindbergh's letter. The letter had worked exactly the way Lindbergh had wanted it to: It had indeed summoned time travelers to 1932.

For Jonah himself recognized the two men sitting in the dusty airfield office, ready to meet with Charles Lindbergh.

The two men were Jonah's enemies Gary and Hodge.

“Don't trust them!” Jonah yelled, even though of course Charles Lindbergh couldn't hear him. “They're liars and cheats, and—and kidnappers! They're kidnappers, your worst enemies! They kidnapped your son, or they will, or—well, I don't know how the timing works, but you can't trust Gary and Hodge!”

Jonah was surprised at how much he wanted to keep yelling.

You should be relieved
, he told himself.
You've been waiting for ages for Gary and Hodge to show up. Finally! Now you have your chance to see what deal they offered Lindbergh, how they got him to kidnap Katherine.

But how could Lindbergh kidnap any other parents' child, after what he'd been through himself?

Jonah forced himself to shut his mouth. He forced
himself to keep watching Lindbergh and Gary and Hodge on the screen.

And . . . he watched as the door finished its swinging arc, coming to a stop firmly against the wooden frame of the doorway.

Okay, readjust the camera angle
, Jonah thought. In the hours and hours and days and days Jonah had already watched, the camera had almost always jumped automatically to the best viewpoint. But now, in the one moment Jonah wanted to watch the most, the camera seemed stuck, trained on nothing but the closed door.

What are they saying?
Jonah wondered.
Can I hear even if I can't see?

Jonah pushed his ear close to the screen, as if he were right there beside the real door and putting his ear against the wood were possible.

He still couldn't hear anything.

What? Why not? Who's controlling this?
he wondered.

What if it was Gary and Hodge?

The door stayed firmly shut, shutting Jonah out.

Jonah kicked the rock wall beneath the monitor's screen. This didn't help: It only jammed his toe.

“This isn't fair!” Jonah yelled.

He thought about how JB hadn't really seemed to understand how the monitors worked; how even JB hadn't known that this particular monitor would be
capable of plunging viewers back into the past.