The Cydonian Pyramid (31 page)

“I’m not telling you any more until you let me out of this room. Five minutes of fresh air, and I’ll tell you everything.”

The doctor pursed his lips and looked at Tucker for what felt like a very long time. Finally, he stood up and went to the door.

“I’ll talk to the captain.” Arnay left the room.

A few minutes later, one of the guards entered the room carrying a pair of steel handcuffs.

“Let’s go, kid,” he said.

The guard led Tucker, wrists handcuffed in front of him, through the submarine. Dr. Arnay, wearing a parka and a fur-lined cap, followed.

“Don’t I get a coat?” Tucker said.

“We won’t be outside long,” Arnay said. “Besides, frostbite doesn’t seem to bother you.”

They climbed up a short ladder, then up a longer ladder, past an array of tubes and pipes. Tucker guessed they were inside the conning tower. The largest tube would be the periscope.

When they reached the top, the guard pulled on a pair of mittens and a watch cap. He opened a hatch above his head, letting in a blast of cold air, and stepped up onto a metal platform.

“Go ahead,” Arnay said from below. “Enjoy the fresh air.”

Tucker climbed up clumsily, hindered by the handcuffs. When he stood on the platform, the top of the conning tower came up to his chest. He rested his cuffed hands on the frosted edge of the tower and looked out across the ice. The North Pole looked as forbidding as ever — a bleak expanse of ragged ice capped by a low gray sky. The only sign of the sun was a horizontal smear of muddy yellow on the horizon. He looked up. A thick, telescoping radio antenna rose twenty feet from the top of the tower. The disko hovered within an arm’s reach of the antenna, nearly invisible against the ash-gray sky.

The guard crossed his arms over his chest. “Can’t say I’ll mind leaving this place,” he said.

Dr. Arnay joined them on the platform. “Like I said, a lovely afternoon on the Pole.” He pulled his fur-lined cap down over his forehead. “A balmy twenty-six degrees below zero.”

“Twenty-eight below now,” said the guard. “Not so windy, though.”

“What are you looking at?” Arnay asked Tucker.

“Nothing,” Tucker said. He knew he was stronger and faster than a normal person, but was he strong enough to do what he planned? His hands were getting cold. That was good. The steel cuffs were getting cold, too.

“Looking for your airplane?” Arnay asked.

“There is no airplane,” Tucker said. He lifted his hands over his head and slammed them down as hard as he could on the edge of the tower. The steel cuffs shattered. His hands were free. Before the guard could react, Tucker drove an elbow into the man’s throat. The guard made a choking sound and crumpled. Tucker pulled himself up onto the edge of the tower. Dr. Arnay was staring at him, openmouthed.

“You really should quit smoking,” Tucker said. He grabbed the base of the radio antenna and climbed up to the waiting disko.

T
OM
K
RAUSE HEARD HIMSELF SCREAM
. H
E FELL
, twisting and turning in midair, flashes of blue sky, yellow leaves, clouds, sun — then a shock of cold as he sliced deep into the water. His feet hit the muddy bottom, and for a moment he was stuck there. Flailing desperately, he kicked free from the muck, swam for the light, and broke through to the surface. Air! He sucked down several desperate lungfuls, treading water and looking around to see where he was. His eyes were drawn to an exceptionally large cottonwood tree.

Hardy Lake! He swam for shore, staggered onto the narrow beach, and collapsed on the sand. He was back in Hopewell. Whatever horrible nightmare thing had happened to him, it was over. But had any of it been real? Had he
really
just seen Tucker? An
older
Tucker . . . in a nightmare version of a Hopewell from the past? Tom squeezed his eyes closed. It had to have been a nightmare. Maybe he’d dreamed it all, everything since that day in the park. Now he was soaking wet and shivering on the shore of Hardy Lake, and it was over.

He tipped his head back and looked up at the tall cottonwood. Most of the leaves had fallen. The day of the revival in the county park, when he had been called up on the stage by Father September, the trees had just started to turn. Now it looked like late fall, and it was cold. Not as cold as where he’d just been, though. At least it wasn’t snowing.

Tom climbed wearily to his feet. The brisk air cut through his wet coveralls. It would be a cold walk home. He looked again at the cottonwood. Something was missing.

The rope. There was no rope.

Had somebody stolen it? He scrambled up the steep bank to the base of the tree. The steps they had nailed to the trunk were gone.

This was starting to feel very creepy. Had he dreamed the rope swing, too?

The sun went behind a bank of clouds, and suddenly he was shaking, more from fear than from the cold. Maybe he was completely insane and nothing he remembered had ever happened at all. If he went home now, what would he find?

The fastest route home took him through the Beckers’ back soybean field. The field had been harvested. Tom zigzagged his way through the rows of brown, crumbling bean plants. He entered the woods and followed a cow path up the hill, then down to West End Road. He looked down the road and saw a familiar red brick chimney. Home! At least one thing was normal — his house was still there. He began walking quickly, then broke into a run. As the rest of the house came into view, he almost started crying from relief. He ran up the short driveway. His dad’s pickup truck was parked in front of the garage. The minivan was gone. His bike was leaning against the shed. Chachi, their black-and-white mutt, was sleeping on the front steps. Tom shouted his name. The dog looked up and began wagging his tail. Tom ran up to the dog and hugged him, even though he and Chachi had never liked each other much — Chachi was more Will’s dog.

Tom pushed through the screen door.

“Anybody here?”

No answer. He looked around, but the house was silent. Still, everything else was reassuringly familiar. He went to his bedroom. Everything the same. He undressed, leaving his wet clothes in a pile on the floor. The blue plastic things on his feet peeled off easily. He crumpled them into a ball and tossed them in the trash. He put on a pair of clean jeans and a T-shirt, went to the kitchen, made a peanut-butter sandwich, took it out to the front steps, and shared it with Chachi.

As the dog accepted the last bit of crust, Tom asked, “So what day is it, boy?”

Chachi wagged his tail in reply. Tom went back inside and checked the calendar hanging by the back door. The year on the calendar was the same as it had been. That was a relief, even though it made the mystery of the missing rope swing even more puzzling. He looked closer. His mom always crossed out the days as they passed. It was Saturday, October 26. He had been gone almost a month!

He saw a notation in the Saturday square of the calendar, in his mother’s neat hand.
Good Shepherd 2 p.m.

Good Shepherd was his parents’ church. It had been his church, too, before Father September came to town. Why would they go to church on a Saturday? He looked at the clock. Two thirty. He got on his bike and headed down the road.

Tom had never seen so many cars at church. There had to be fifty of them, so many that they lined the road all the way past the adjoining cemetery. Tom leaned his bike on the stone wall surrounding the churchyard and went to one of the stained-glass windows. He looked through one of the light-yellow panes. His view was distorted, but he could see that the pews were full. Several baskets and vases of flowers lined the communion rail.

Tom walked around to the back of the church. The door leading to the rooms behind the altar was open. He went inside. The room was separated from the altar area by a curtain. He stood behind the curtain and listened. Pastor Jacobs was talking in his usual drone, something about the permanence of love and our time on Earth and the passing of time. Peeking past the edge of the curtain, Tom saw his parents sitting in the front row. Will was sitting next to his father. His mother was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. His aunt and uncle were there, too, along with his cousin Tony. Why were they there? They lived way over in Frontenac.

He listened to what Pastor Jacobs was saying: “We all remember him as a good boy — curious, rambunctious, and good-hearted — and if in his last days, he fell under the influence of those who would do him harm, I know that God in His wisdom understands that the boy was only seeking the truth, as the young are wont to do. And in his goodness, the Lord”— it’s a
funeral,
Tom realized, but where was the coffin? —“God will accept Thomas Jefferson Krause into His arms with understanding and forgiveness.”

Tom felt the blood drain from his face. His hands began to shake. He threw the curtain aside and rushed out in front of the congregation.

“I’m not dead!” he shouted.

His mother clutched her chest and pitched forward onto the floor.

K
EEP THE MORNING SUN ON YOUR FACE, AND THE
afternoon sun at your back,
the old woman had told her.

All the trees looked the same. Lia had never spent much time in the woods — her childhood had been confined to the marble walls of the palace. Even in Hopewell, she had always had a road to follow, or a path of some sort. Now she was making her way through a trackless wilderness, climbing over fallen trees, wading across creeks, getting mired in bogs and tangled in thickets, occasionally stumbling over fragments of ancient, crumbling concrete, all that remained of the old roads.

Dusk had arrived by the time she reached the river. She found the trail along the bank and followed it north. The old woman had told her she would find a bridge. She soon came upon a trio of rotting ropes stretched across the river. The ends of the ropes were tied to trees growing from the banks. The center rope hung low, a few of its broken strands trailing in the current. She climbed the tree and stepped out onto the bottom rope, grabbing on to the other ropes with her hands, hoping they were strong enough to hold her. Swimming was not among the skills taught to her as a Pure Girl. If the ropes broke, she might drown. She edged out a few feet and bounced up and down. The ropes rippled like wounded snakes. Hanging on tight, she slid her boots along the bottom rope until she was over the water.