Torn-missing 4 (21 page)

Jonah remembered that this was the moment the last time when Hudson had hit him for calling out to JB. Automatically he cringed down in his seat, ready to avoid a blow.

None came. Instead Hudson just looked at him, a puzzled squint traveling across his face.

“Was it all a trick? A lie? A prank?” he asked Jonah,
speaking so softly that few others in the shallop would have been likely to hear him. “Were you toying with your father’s dearest hopes?”

Okay, that was new. What did he mean?

“I—I wouldn’t do that,” Jonah protested. “I support your dearest hopes. If they’re possible.”

Wouldn’t the real John Hudson have said something like that?

For a moment Jonah thought that Hudson really would hit him. Staffe edged closer, as if ready to protect him.

But Hudson fell back, still squinting.

“The map,” he murmured dazedly. “The map has to be real.”

“Um, sure,” Jonah said.

Katherine tugged on Jonah’s arm.

“Here’s what happened!” she hissed in his ear. “Wydowse said John Hudson disappeared last—well, I guess it would be last night. He left his dad a note and a map that was supposed to show the Northwest Passage, drawn by this earlier explorer who vanished, named John Cabot. John Hudson supposedly wrote that he was sailing on ahead with some natives in kayaks, and he’d meet his father in the Northwest Passage….”

No wonder Henry Hudson looked so betrayed and confused
when I showed up as John Hudson in the middle of the mutiny,
Jonah thought.
No wonder Henry Hudson actually had hope before I appeared, even in the midst of the mutiny—he thought he’d just meet his son and a group of friendly natives a little ways ahead….

Jonah was trying to puzzle out how things had happened. The real John Hudson would have vanished when Gary and Hodge kidnapped him from time, to take him to be adopted in the future. The real boy wouldn’t have had time to leave a note, and wouldn’t have known anything about a map. So Second had undoubtedly slipped those onto the ship sometime in the night, to serve his own purposes.

And now he expected Jonah and Katherine to serve his purposes too.

Jonah realized that while Katherine was talking, he’d missed hearing the conversation between Hudson and Staffe and King.

“Huh?” Jonah asked.

“I said, your prayers for deliverance were answered,” Staffe replied.

“For now,” King said gloomily, staring off into the fog. “We still have no food, we’ve lost our ship. … Shall we sail toward shore, to set up camp at the winter cabin?”

That’s what he asked the last time,
Jonah thought.
We’re back to this whole conversation again. And next, Hudson will say …

“The winter cabin?” Hudson sneered. “Odd’s bones, man, we’re sailors, not rabbits. At least
I
am. Henry Hudson does not cower in a hole when there are treasure routes to be found, glory to be attained, continents to be conquered.”

Jonah’s hopes sank. It seemed as if everything important were inevitable; time could only repeat. How could he and Katherine make any changes to save anyone or anything—especially when neither JB nor Second had told them what to do?

Maybe we’ll just have to make multiple tries,
Jonah thought.
If we come back again and again to the same moment, maybe eventually we’ll figure out how to fix it.

The shallop lurched strangely, practically leaping out of the water. Jonah remembered that the only reason he could relive any of these moments in the shallop was because time was unraveling.

He and Katherine couldn’t count on getting multiple chances. He wasn’t even sure they had a chance now.

“We’ve got to do something!” Katherine hissed in his ear. “I don’t think we have much time left!”

Jonah turned and glared at his sister.

“Not helping,” he whispered back, without moving his lips.

Meanwhile Staffe was trying to persuade Hudson.

“But if we go to the cabin, we can lay in supplies for next winter,” Staffe said, taking up John King’s argument. “By next spring a rescue expedition is bound to come for us—”

“Henry Hudson will not be
rescued
!” Hudson thundered, smacking his hand down on the side of the shallop just as hard as he had the last time. “Henry Hudson will sail home in glory, with a shipload of treasures from the Orient!”

“You still believe in the Northwest Passage?” one of the sickly, dying sailors murmured. “Even now?”

Jonah realized that the sailor asking that question was Wydowse. Wydowse, who by the end of the day would write the letter Katherine was clutching in her hand, hidden behind Jonah.

Wydowse, who would soon be dead.

“You shall refer to it as the Hudson Passage, henceforth,” Hudson said haughtily. “Because I
shall
discover it.”

Last time Jonah had heard Hudson say that, he’d still been hoping for JB to rescue him. Jonah had whispered frantically into the Elucidator in his pocket.

Now he knew there was no use trying that.

Everything’s up to me and Katherine,
Jonah thought.
That’s one of the few things JB and Second still agree on.

The shallop rocked unsteadily, the regular rhythm of the waves turning jerky and unpredictable. Was it possible to actually feel time falling apart? Off in the distance Jonah could see a shadow in the fog—the ship coming back for them from the wrong direction, completely manipulated by Second.

If we get back on that ship, we’re locked into that fate,
Jonah thought.
Second will be in control all over again, posing as Prickett, leading us to the end of time. And
—Jonah glanced over at Wydowse, who was already reaching into his cloak for his compass.
And Second will murder Wydowse all over again.

It was odd to focus on the death of one sickly old man when they were faced with worldwide disaster, universal destruction. But the thought of everyone and everything dying was too big for Jonah. It paralyzed him. One man—Jonah could handle saving one man.

It was just like before, when Jonah could only focus on Andrea. Except, of course, that Andrea was beautiful, and Jonah was kind of in love with her.

Wydowse was hideous.

He’s going to die no matter what,
Jonah thought.
Just look at him.

Wydowse had hollows in his cheeks, bruises around his mouth, teeth that seemed barely anchored in his gums. But Jonah had just spent an entire day with similarly sickly-looking men who had still somehow managed to raise and lower the sails, scramble up rigging, steer an entire ship through a minefield of ice. Maybe Wydowse wasn’t actually as close to death as he looked.

Second kept changing the subject, every time we brought up Wydowse’s death,
Jonah thought.
It was like … like a magician trying to distract the audience: “Look! Look at this empty hat!” While the whole time he’s stuffing a handkerchief up his sleeve, keeping it out of sight until the next trick.

But in Second’s case what he was trying to distract them from was a dead body.

Jonah kept staring at Wydowse. Jonah didn’t know what JB had ever expected him and Katherine to do to save 1611. He didn’t know how they could save Andrea, Brendan, Antonio, and JB from 1600. He didn’t know how Second expected them to keep all of time from collapsing.

But he did know a way to keep Wydowse from being murdered. He just had to keep Wydowse and Second apart.

If you only knew how to fix one thing, wasn’t that at least a start?

“Maybe …” Jonah stopped and cleared his throat. “Maybe Staffe and King are right. Maybe we
should
go to the winter cabin.”

Belatedly Jonah remembered that he’d said pretty much the same thing the last time. But that had been only for selfish reasons then, not to help anyone else.

It took the fist slamming into his jaw to remember that Hudson had punched him for saying that before.

Hudson used his other hand to pin Jonah back against the side of the shallop.

“You dare to challenge my authority?” Hudson snarled, looming over Jonah, just as he had before. “I said we will
not
retreat to the winter cabin. We sail on to glory! Do you not remember who is captain here?”

Jonah felt Katherine beside him, practically holding him up.

“You’re doing this for Wydowse, aren’t you?” she whispered in his ear, and it gave Jonah extra courage, that she was thinking the same way as he was.

Jonah stared into Hudson’s eyes. He remembered how he’d felt the last time, how he’d seen so many choices before him. And then all those choices had been taken away from him, because the ship had shown up from the wrong direction, looking so much like their salvation, their rescue. But that wasn’t what the ship
had been—it wasn’t what the ship would be this time around. With Second disguised as Abacuk Prickett at the helm, the ship could only take them toward disaster.

For the first time Jonah thought to wonder what had happened to the real Abacuk Prickett—had Second cast him out on the ice with the mutineers?

Jonah could see Second doing that, and not caring in the least.

Of course, he says he’s trying to improve history,
Jonah thought.
He’s granting Henry Hudson his dearest dream. He’s giving the world a true Northwest Passage. He’s saving the lives of everyone in this shallop.

But how did Jonah know that their lives weren’t going to be saved anyway? What if John Hudson was supposed to save them?

“Father,” Jonah said, still staring directly into Henry Hudson’s eyes. “You’re not the captain anymore.”

He’d considered saying something very much like that before, but he’d known nothing about Hudson then; the words would have come out sounding harsh and mean.

This time he sounded as if he felt sorry for his supposed father, as if he truly regretted insulting him.

Hudson’s grip on Jonah’s cloak faltered.

“You … too?” he murmured. “Even my own son …?”

“I know you want to find the Northwest Passage,” Jonah said soothingly. “It’s a great dream. But—it’s not worth the lives of your own crew. You have to think of your men first. Do you want their blood on your hands?”

Hudson stared at Jonah. Jonah could kind of guess that sea captains in the early 1600s hadn’t typically been very concerned about their crews’ lives. He realized that what he’d said wasn’t really what he wanted to tell Hudson—it was what he wanted to tell Second. Second also had lofty dreams, and he’d gone to great lengths to carry them out: changing 1600, making the
Discovery
sail an impossible route, digging a river that shouldn’t exist. But it was all a game to him. Second didn’t care about any of the people his changes affected; he acted as if he were only playing with puppets.

Jonah looked up at Staffe and King.

“Do what you know is right,” he said. “Set the sails to take us to shore.”

They both looked startled but did exactly as he said.

And then Jonah felt the oddest sensation. On almost all his trips through time he had endured a phase where it felt as if every cell in his body—and every atom of every cell—were being pulled apart from every other cell, every other atom. This time Jonah would have sworn that he felt his individual protons, electrons, and
neutrons being pulled apart as well. Pulled apart—and then torn again, maybe even ripped in half.

“I feel … so strange,” Hudson moaned beside him.

The old man slumped over onto the seat—fortunately, he landed just beyond Katherine, because she wouldn’t have had time to get out of his way.

“All my dreams, ruined,” Hudson mumbled, burying his face in his hands. “Gone, everything’s gone.”

“Changed,” Jonah said gently. “Maybe just postponed?”

But the words sounded distorted to Jonah’s ears. He wasn’t sure if he’d actually managed to say them aloud.

Jonah realized that everyone else must be feeling the same tearing sensation, too—maybe theirs was even worse than Jonah’s. Staffe and King slid down to the floor of the shallop. Wydowse and the other sickly crew members hunched over in agony. Then a new symptom cropped up for Jonah: something like double vision. He could see two versions of everyone in the shallop: two Katherines, both looking see-through and anxious; two Hudsons, one defeated, one defiant; two Staffes, one huddled on the floor, one standing by the mast; two Wydowses, one with his head in his hands, one staring confusedly at a compass.

A compass.

Jonah realized that he was seeing two versions of time at once: the current one, and the way it had gone the last time he and Katherine had been in the shallop. But this wasn’t like seeing real time beside tracers with their wispy, ethereal glow. Each version of each person was equally substantial, equally solid. Equally real.

Now Jonah could even see a second version of himself, dressed in John Hudson’s cloak, the mask and wig completely disguising his real face and hair. His other self was staring in drop-jawed dismay at …

The ship. His other self was watching the
Discovery,
newly returned, hijacked and redirected by Second.

Jonah forgot all caution and grabbed Katherine’s arm.

“We can’t change anything!” he whispered urgently in her ear. “Any minute now everyone’s going to see the ship, and we’ll be right back where we started!”

“No!” Katherine whispered back, just as urgently. “I don’t think our version of the crew can see that! Look! Isn’t John King staring right at it?”

Actually, both John Kings were gazing toward the ship: One was pumping his arm in the air and looking as if he’d just been rescued from almost-certain death. The other one was writhing on the floor in pain, his eyes unfocused and unseeing, even though they were indeed directed toward the ship.

“Think this is another case of time travelers being able to see things others can’t?” Jonah asked quietly. “What is this, another time shift, like Second used in 1600?”

“I don’t think time shifted,” Katherine whispered back. “I think it
split.
See how neither version is fading away?”

This was true. Even as two versions of the shallop and its passengers sailed apart—one toward the
Discovery,
the other toward land—they both stayed substantial and real.