Ancient Fire (13 page)

I head toward the winery. Somehow the path
back is harder without Thea. I trip over a couple fallen branches I
didn’t see before, but I get there. And when I do, this time I walk
right in the front door.

“My God. You came back.” It’s Mr. Howe, who
emerges almost immediately. His comment makes me wonder if he
really expected me to come back at all, in which case, why was he
so slaphappy about sending me off into time in the first place?

Two guys in particularly thick Thickskins
emerge and scan me up and down. Some kind of bug alarm, I think.
Right. I could be carrying slow pox or something else. A third guy
comes out of the lab and takes off his hood. I recognize him from
the BART tunnel: one of the Twenty-Fives.

“I want to see my dad.”

Howe exchanges glances with Twenty- Five. “We
haven’t seen him, Eli. He’s been gone for a couple of days. We were
about to ask you.”

I groan. “Don’t tell me he got sucked into
the time stream, too?”

“He just drove away in his truck the other
day.
Ran
away. He was getting depressed
that you hadn’t come back.”

“How long have I been gone?”

“Three weeks, now.”

“But I was only gone for a night.” Mr. Howe
makes a note of that.

Having scanned every tangled inch of me, the
Thickskin guys appear to be steering me to Dad’s lab. I stop
suddenly. They bump into each other, like a pair of bowling pins.
“Why are we going in there if my dad’s gone? Who’s running his
lab?”

“We have to do more tests, Eli. Find out
what’s happened to you.” Then Howe lowers his voice, as if he’s
telling me a secret. “Find out more about the effects of time
displacement on human beings.”

“I’m soaking wet.”

“From time displacement?” He makes another
note.

“From water. Do you think I could get
something to eat? And change my clothes first?”

More notes. I’m also still feeling a little
queasy, which
is
from the time travel, but
I’m not gonna tell him that, ’cause that’ll mean an extra hour or
two of tests.

“We’d rather you didn’t.”

“I’m about to faint.”

Howe looks at Twenty-Five, who nods. “You can
change your clothes, but you can’t eat yet. Put your clothes in
here.” He hands me a plastic bag. “We want to test them for WOMPER
radiation.”

Mr. Howe orders a soldier to go with me.
“Make sure he stays put! But first…”

Howe carefully pulls some Thickskin over his
hands and takes the satchel from around my neck. It’s soaked, too,
and tangled with my jacket. I had hardly noticed it was still
there. But Howe caught a glimpse of the lone surviving scroll from
the library peeking out of the bag. And now he holds it—very
carefully—in his hand.

“Perfect,” he says, looking at it.

“I don’t know what it’s about,” I tell him.
“It could be slow pox. It could be Atlantis. It could be a million
things.”

“It hardly even matters,” Howe tells me.
Before I can ask him why, he’s talking to the soldier again.
“Definitely make sure he stays put.”

I’m trying to figure out a way to lose this
guy, but he’s sticking right next to me.

Heading toward my room, we pass one of
Moonglow’s limestone caves full of old wine barrels. Getting an
idea, I take off and sprint inside. “Hey!” the guard yells after
me.

I have just enough of a head start to duck
behind some of the barrels. But he’s only a few feet behind, and
he’ll find me right away…unless…

“Come on, kid, come out of there. What’s the
use? You can’t hide in here very long.”

I touch the lingo-spot behind my ear. I
slowly peel it off my skin. I hate to give it up so easily…

…but without thinking about it too much
longer, I stick it onto one of the barrels near the guard. “Hey!”
he says. “Come on!”

Now, peeled off me, the lingo-spot doesn’t
stay calibrated for English and goes back to default mode: dinosaur
talk. “
Brrrrk! Braaak!
” The guard jumps.
Every time he speaks, his translated voice comes out sounding kind
of like Clyne’s.

He hears it, and he’s not sure who’s talking.
“Who’s there? Kid?”

“Tkkk ka kaa
kaaaa
.”

“Who is that?” he says, getting a little more
freaked out.

Again, he hears his own question repeated in
Saurian. He unhooks his gun from his holster. When he gets close
enough to start peering into barrels, I tiptoe out behind him, then
tear off down the hall.

By the time anyone spots me, I’m through the
old kitchen in the lunchroom and out through one of the side
windows.

I’m in a full run to Wolf House, and I’m
winded when I finally see the fire that Thea has going. But I gasp
when I see she has company: Clyne. And my father.

I’m not sure which one of them amazes me
more. Clyne’s time-vessel, with its still-fresh rhino dents, is
parked where horse-drawn wagons were once supposed to come to Wolf
House’s front doors. He fixed his ship somehow, which explains,
kind of, how he got here. But what about Sandusky?

“Dad?”

After all that’s happened, he doesn’t know
what to say to me at first. I can’t really blame him. So he doesn’t
say anything. He hugs me.

“Dad. They said you’d disappeared, too. I
thought maybe…you’d gone after Mom.”

“I had to get away from the lab. I had to get
away from them. I’ve been hiding out. But I’d check by here a
couple of times a day. I figured this is where you’d go if you came
back. When you came back.” He seems relieved that it turned out to
be “when,” after all.

“I’ve met your friends,” he adds.

“Aaak!
Nice sire
man! Met
k-kk-kkk
your father.” Clyne
seems happy to see me. It’s almost like he’d give me a hug,
too…except there’s a big gash on his left arm. It doesn’t seem to
faze him. “Being raised by a single parent of each gender is unique
and worth studying!”

Thea is pressing a damp bunch of leaves
against Clyne’s wound. “Thea…,” I say to her, and realize that
while she can understand me, I’m once again without a lingo-spot.
She gives me a little smile, but she’s crying, too.

“Clyne here’s been translating,” Dad says.
Then he pulls me aside and whispers, “Is he from another planet, or
another time?”

I whisper back, “Both. He’s a dinosaur.
Evolved. Like us.”

I turn to Clyne. “How’d you get out?”

“Not easy, with so many mad mammals
tail-close. Good leg jumps help—
pa pa pa
paaak!
—landing me dab-smack in the light tower!” He pats
his time-ship. “Found Thea leftovers—”

Thea hears her name and says something to
Clyne. Whatever it is causes him to nod in a gentle way. “Her
mother’s
kris-talls
,” he continues, trying
out the word, “very helpful in reconstructing engine—
gra-bakk
ness in time-vessel.”

“What’s ‘
gra-bakk
’?”
my dad asks.

“We don’t really have a word for it,” I
explain.

“But chrono-compass is half-right now,” Clyne
continues.

“Half?” I ask.

“Can’t
fft-tt-kkk!
blaze new time paths now. Can retrace old ones. Tracks particle
residue of time travelers…
skkk.
Found my
way back following you and Thea. Do a d-jump home, next stop, maybe
in time for class.”

“What’s a ‘d-jump’?” Dad asks.

“We probably don’t have a word for it,” I
tell him.

“Dimension jump,” Clyne explains. Then he
shakes his head in a very human way. “Teachers will unbelieve
stories of this Earth. Dancing mammals! Failing marks for me.
K-tng!
Even with proof.”

“Proof?”

“Look.”

I go over to peer inside the ship, and the
light from the fire is just enough to let me see the pile of
scrolls Clyne must have pulled out from the library flames after we
left. Most of them are scorched.

“Many mammal fires,” Clyne says. “Had to get
going, or more would be brought.”

I look back to see if this cheers Thea up,
but it doesn’t.

“What’s wrong?”

My dad looks sad. “Apparently, Clyne told her
what happened to her mother.”

“What?”

“She didn’t make it.”

I turn to Thea. “I’m sorry.”

That makes Dad bring up the question of
my
mother. “I’ve been studying some recent
history, myself. Took one of your Comnet screens so that I could
read up on the 1930s and

’40s. Trying to find out what happened to
Margarite.”

“And?”

“Don’t know. Yet. Haven’t found anything.
That
Chronicle
article is the last report
we have.”

Thea is still dressing Clyne’s wound, but
there isn’t time for it. “They’ll be here fast,” I tell them.
“They’ll be after me.” I look at Clyne and Thea. “The two of you
need to get going. If they catch you, they’ll turn you into lab
specimens. You’ll never be free.”

“It’s true,” Dad agrees. “Look what happened
to us.”

Clyne looks over to Thea, and without saying
anything, invites her onto his ship.

With the campfire behind her, Thea looks kind
of smart and heroic, even though she’s wiping her eyes. She
looks…
cool
. And I don’t just mean for a
girl.

“It’s a long goodbye,” Clyne agrees. “But
I’ll probably return with my teacher
k-k-kkkatt!
to show what I’ve been through and fix
back my scores.” He extends his hand to Thea. “You can come to
class. Together, we’ll win every science fair.”

Thea’s about to step into the ship when she
stops and does something totally embarrassing.

She thanks me.

I could tell that’s what she was doing. I
didn’t have to know the exact words she was saying. But that wasn’t
the embarrassing part. It was the kiss on the cheek.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. No problem,” I say
quickly.

“Yes, gratitude!” Clyne says, and as cheerful
as he tries to be, he can’t help wincing as he moves his wounded
arm.

He’s about to follow Thea into the ship when
the light from the campfire explodes. At least, that’s how it seems
when a row of spotlights get flipped on, each one held by a DARPA
soldier. The new light reveals other DARPA henchmen carrying guns.
Mr. Howe is with them, along with the lone Twenty-Five. “Nobody
should be leaving just yet,” Mr. Howe says.

“This is a severe security breach, Eli,” he
continues. “You’ve brought living organisms with you back through
the time stream.”

Clyne takes another step toward his ship.

“Don’t do that,” Mr. Howe tells him.

Clyne shakes his head. “All the time, angry
mammals! Like big Saurian carnivores with empty stomachs!”

All the soldiers step back when Clyne speaks.
“You talk,” Mr. Howe says to him.

“You, too!” Clyne chirps agreeably.

“I can’t let you leave.”

“We can’t let you stay,” Dad mutters under
his breath.

“Sorry. Bye!” Clyne steps toward the ship,
and all the DARPA men raise their guns.

My hands fumble nervously in my pocket. I
still have the Mark McGwire card that I used in Alexandria.

But right here, right now, I’m not a wizard.
The card won’t spook anybody. But then I realize that sometimes the
most amazing trick of all, the one that can be hardest to do, is
simply standing up for what you know is right.

“I’m your secret weapon!” I yell back at Mr.
Howe, jumping between Clyne and the guns. “I’m your Danger Boy! You
can’t let them hurt me.”

There’s a long pause as everyone considers
what I just said.

“Right?” I add hopefully.

“We wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Mr. Howe says,
almost whining. “The ammo in these guns is just for
tranquilizing
. So step away from there.”

Nobody does.

Clyne moves, and I adjust my position to stay
between him and the guns.

“Gratitude!
Kkkh!
”
Clyne whispers to me. “When I move, you fall.”

I’m not sure what he’s talking about.

“I can’t let you get back to that ship,” Mr.
Howe says. Apparently, that’s not what Clyne has in mind. He
performs a jump that—if this was a basketball championship—would
lead the highlight reels for all time. He leaps up high enough to
kick shut the door to his ship, locking Thea inside. Off the door,
he catapults himself backward through the air. Before the guns
start firing, I hit the ground.

“Eli!” my father screams.

Clyne’s ship starts taking off — either with
Thea guiding it or the ship guiding itself. Twenty-Five pulls a
weapon out of his jacket, which is definitely
not
a tranquilizer gun. He aims it at the vessel, and
a long beam comes out, glances off the ship, and causes it to
wobble.

But the ship vanishes anyway. The other men
are aiming at Clyne, who keeps jumping and somersaulting farther
away. Twenty-Five lowers his gun, and I rise up to put myself
between him and Clyne again.

I buy just enough time so Clyne can disappear
into the trees. Twenty-Five keeps the gun raised in my direction,
but Mr. Howe forces his hand down while waving the DARPA men into
the woods to try and capture Clyne on foot.

So I’m not a genie, but at least I helped my
friend.

My dad, however, doesn’t fare so well.

One of the tranquilizer darts — I hope that’s
what they really are — is sticking out of him. Right near his hip.
He looks at me; his eyes widen a little, then he crumples over.

I race over to him and hold his head in my
lap. The soldiers run past me, chasing after Clyne.

It’s good not to be the center of attention,
for once.

Mr. Howe isn’t even looking; a couple of
parchment scrolls from the library fell from Clyne’s ship. Howe
quickly wraps some Thickskin around his fingers, then picks them up
gingerly, almost tenderly.