Omega City (19 page)

Fiona again. I clenched my jaw and pressed the button marked Speak. “Killing us didn't work.”

“Gillian?” There was a rustling on Fiona's end. “Are you okay? Is everyone all right?”

“No thanks to you!” Savannah hissed at the speaker. She shouldered me aside. “Listen, lady, how would you like being almost drowned three times? How would you like—”

“I didn't authorize any of that!” Fiona cried. “That was my men who set off the explosions, trying to get the door open in the agro-dome. Trust me, they did not run their sorry excuse for ‘strategy' past me. They will be properly dealt with. I have spent the last hour sick with worry that something happened to you children.”

Oh yeah? Well, we spent the last hour almost dying. “Nothing's ever your fault, is it, Fiona?” I stepped back in front of the microphone. “When you broke into my dad's
house, you were just following orders. When we almost died because you started dynamiting the city, it was people not following
your
orders. Isn't that convenient? You'd be more than happy to take the credit for Dr. Underberg's inventions, but there's no way you'll ever accept responsibility for the horrible things you've done.”

I heard more rustling and then a muffled voice. “
They're in the silo
.”

“Don't you dare come after us again, Fiona,” I warned her. “We're done here.”

“We're coming to help you get out!” she insisted.

I believed that like I could believe those salamanders in the granary could sight read.

“I can't wait to tell my father what a liar you are.” I turned the switch off. I didn't want to listen to her anymore.

What I wanted was to explore the spaceship. And when I turned around, it was to discover the others looking at me in shock. My face flushed and I bit my lip, even as Eric shot me two enthusiastic thumbs up. Everyone else gave me a wide berth—or at least as wide a berth as they could in the cramped confines of the rocket. And after the way I'd yelled at Fiona, I wasn't surprised.

“Hey, Gills,” said Eric, “have I ever told you that when you're right, you're very, very right?”

I smiled weakly. “I'm never going to let you live it
down. Now, let's check this place out.”

If you followed the ladder up past the door to the rocket, it went through another porthole. I decided to explore that area. I climbed up the ladder and eased myself through the port. This section of the interior was smaller in diameter than the others, with a domed ceiling that made me think I'd reached the top level. The light here was a deep marine blue, shining out from the giant screen that took up half the wall. The rest of the space was all control panels and two giant command chairs, both facing away from me and toward the giant, pulsing blue screen. I supposed this would be where pilots sat. The ones with the certification the recording wanted to make sure we had.

It was odd that Dr. Underberg had included a spaceship in his city, especially after all that talk about not abandoning Mother Earth and the other things he'd said on the video back in the Comm room. Maybe there was information here about what the ship's purpose was. I walked over to the command seats to see what was written on the controls but stopped short. My breath caught, my bones froze, and my stomach dropped down to my feet.

Dr. Underberg was sitting in one of the chairs. And he was dead.

HIS SKIN WAS GRAY AND PAPERY, HIS HEAD BALD WHERE THE PICTURES I'd seen of him had once shown hair. Age spots speckled his skin, and there were all kinds of tubes running in and out of his body—in his nose, and up under the loose-fitting shirt and pants he wore. I tried not to look too closely at those. He was so, so still.

“Guys?” I tried, but it came out like a squeak. I swallowed and tried again. “Um, guys? Come quick.”

They climbed up the ladder. Savannah was first. “What is it, Gill—eww, gross!”

“Whoa,” Nate added as he arrived and caught sight of the man in the chair.

“Is that . . . Dr. Underberg?” Howard asked.

Eric came up last, his bruised, swollen face somber as he heard the others. Only Eric would really understand what this meant. All this time, Dad would have done anything for a chance to meet with Dr. Underberg. We thought he'd died years ago. But here he was, wasting away alone in a spaceship.

“How long do you think he's been gone?” I asked the others.

Nate blinked at me. “Gillian, have you ever seen a dead body before?”

I was confused. “No. Why? Have you?”

He chuckled. “Trust me, they don't look like this.” He leaned over and touched Dr. Underberg's shoulder. “Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”

The body jerked in its seat. I stifled a scream. He was alive!

Dr. Underberg blinked his eyes open and took a deep breath. “You've come at last,” he croaked. “Is there anything at all left above?”

“Excuse me?” Nate's brow furrowed.

I came forward, my hands clasped in front of me to keep me from tossing them in the air or throwing them around Dr. Underberg's neck or anything else crazy. I couldn't believe it. This was way better than any battery.

“Yes, sir. Everything's fine up there. I mean—well, not
fine.” There were wars and famines and natural disasters and everything else there'd ever been. But the world was still spinning merrily along. “I mean, we're not here seeking refuge.”

He looked at me, his dark eyes wide and watery with age. “Then why have you come?”

“We've come . . . seeking you,” I said. “The truth about you.”

“We found a page from your diary,” Eric explained, “and we followed your clues about Pluto—”

“I did that,” Howard volunteered.

“And then we found the elevator,” I said, “and came down and . . .” And what? What would be a sufficient description of everything that had happened to us in the past day? All the frights and the discoveries, the adventure and the near-death experiences? “Here we are,” I finished lamely.

Underberg pressed his head back against the seat cushion. “All these years I've waited. I've waited for you to come. Y2K, I was sure, would send you scurrying down here, terrified that a bunch of ones and zeroes had the power to bring the whole world to its knees.”

“What's Y2K?” Savannah cocked her head to the side.

Eric waved his hand dismissively. “When people invented computers, vey only programmed in two spaces for the year, instead of four. So when it turned from
nineteen ninety-nine to two vousand, it was going to go from ninety-nine to zero zero.”

“That's dumb,” she said.

“Yeah, it was. But it wasn't as big a deal as everyone said it was going to be. People were afraid all computers would shut down—banks, airliners, missile defense systems—at midnight on New Year's Eve. But it didn't happen.”

“No,” said Underberg. “It did not. And then came the secret war.”

“The secret war?” The very named thrilled me. I imagined my father would go nuts for this information.

“The one that started with the plane crashes.”

“9/11?” Howard asked incredulously. He turned to me. “No wonder you like this guy so much.”

Nate gave his brother a dirty look. “I think maybe he's been down here a while.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “There was a war after 9/11, but it wasn't a secret. There have been lots of wars.”

But he didn't seem to be listening. “And then, when the calendar of the Mayans reached its end . . .”

The Mayan apocalypse? Okay, that was a stretch, even for me. Here's what that whole thing was: Once, thousands and thousands of years ago, the Mayans made these huge stone calendars, like giant wheels, that supposedly counted out the entirety of time, but the calendar ran out in December of 2012. And because the Mayans were
amazing ancient astronomers, a lot of people—not Dad, but friends of Dad's—believed they knew when the end of the world was about to happen.

But Dad said that was silly. What happened when the free wall calendar you got from the auto mechanic or the dentist ran out? You just go get one for another year, another calendar of race cars, cartoons, or puppies in teacups. There's no evidence that the end of a piece of carved stone indicates the end of time. People were just being crazy.

I wondered if Dr. Underberg was crazy. Staying underground, alone in this city all these years, just waiting for the world to end—it had to make you a little weird, right?

“Sir,” I said softly. I went to touch his arm, but it was papery and cold. “All of those things happened, but none of them destroyed the Earth. We're not in any danger.”

“Yes, you are!” he exclaimed. “You are in the greatest danger the world has ever known. Worse than the Cold War . . .” He trailed off.

I looked to the others for help. Savannah twirled her finger around her temple in the universal sign for
crazy
. Nate looked like he wanted to head back down the ladder and make a run for it. Eric wore an expression I knew well and dreaded most: disgusted pity. He pitied Dr. Underberg's crazy theories the same way I'd seen him pity Dad's. This whole time in Omega City, he'd had to drop the skeptic
act. After all, the proof was right in front of his face. But now it was back, full force. I hadn't realized how much fun it was hanging out with the old Eric until I had to see the doubtful, angry one again.

Only Howard was still invested. “What is it?” he asked. “What's the danger?”

“The Shepherds,” he intoned solemnly. “They have gone too far. Their goal was always to guide humanity, not destroy it. But they value our species above all others, our survival over that of our home planet. They've become warped.”

“Like . . . German shepherds?” Eric asked. Savannah snickered.

“Don't,” said Nate. “It's not nice. He's senile.”

Howard pressed on. “Who are the Shepherds?”

“You know them. You speak to them.” He turned to me and suddenly, my hand was captured in his terrifying, oddly strong grip. I felt his bones through his too-soft skin. I started to pull away, but he stopped me with a single sentence. “I know who you are, Gillian Seagret. I've been watching you.”

My eyes widened. “You have?”

“From the moment you arrived in my city. You'd never have made it this far without my help.”

“You . . . helped?” Eric asked. “Explain how.”

“Shh.” I waved at Eric. “That was you?” I said to Dr.
Underberg. “That was you who turned on the turbine?”

“And the water cannon?” Nate added.

Dr. Underberg's eyes hadn't left mine. And as I stared into his face, I thought about all the other times things randomly started to work in the city. The elevator shaft doors that mysteriously came unstuck. The Comm room lights that didn't work, although the diagram and the speakers did. The Russian elevator that didn't end up gassing us after all.

“That was you helping?” Savannah asked, incredulous. “We nearly got ourselves killed. Wait, did you try to drown me in that turbine control booth?”

Dr. Underberg lifted one bony shoulder. “Some things, alas, are in slight need of repair.”

“Slight,” echoed Howard.

“And I find, these days, I . . . sleep a lot. There is not much to stimulate me down here, and you were not always in a section of the city where my monitors still worked.”

“So when we were trapped below the dome,” Savannah suggested, “you what? Got bored and took a nap?”

Dr. Underberg made no reply, just stared at me for several long seconds. “I have watched you in my city. You love it, don't you?”

I blinked and met his clear, penetrating gaze. “Yes.”

Yes, I loved it—every broken, flooded inch. I loved that this man loved the world so much that he created a
sanctuary for the human race. I loved his old-fashioned gym and his freeze-dried ice-cream bars. His Russian booby traps and his luxurious movie theaters. I loved that he didn't want guns in his world; he wanted space suits. I loved Omega City, and as much as I hated to see it in ruins, I was thankful that no one had ever had to live here.

And if he'd been watching me, he knew exactly how I'd felt. Every room where I'd lingered, every videotape I'd stuffed in my pockets.

“You know what this place has been to me, don't you? I was driven here, so long ago, by the Shepherds. I waited for the others, but they never came.”

“The other . . . people?”

“I thought it wouldn't be long until the Shepherds released their scourge upon the world. Do you remember Earth Day?”

“Earth Day?” I asked. “Like the holiday where we all remember to recycle and stuff?” He wasn't making any sense. Maybe he
was
senile, like Nate had said. “Sir, how long have you been down here?” According to Dad's book, Dr. Underberg had disappeared soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, way back in 1989.

“Just a year or two.”

“Where have you been ve rest of ve time? It's been twenty-five years!” Eric asked. I looked at my brother in surprise. Well, wouldn't you know it. Little Mr.
I-Don't-Believe-Any-of-This-Stuff had actually been paying attention.

“I told you—the Shepherds drove me down here.”

“Well, vat's what vey do,” said Eric. “Herd, I mean.”

“Eric!” I looked at Dr. Underberg. “What he means is, where have you been since the fall of the Berlin Wall?”

“Here.” The man lifted his shoulders in a pitiful shrug. “I await the disaster that is to come. Maybe I'll wait into the new century.”

“That's a pretty long wait,” Savannah said. “I'm not sure you're going to make it that long. I'm not sure any of us are.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Howard. “I intend to live to be a hundred and twenty. Ray Kurzweil says it can be done—”

“Kurzweil!” Underberg snapped. “That child! I mean the century to come in a few years.”

This was starting to make a little more sense, in a twisted way. “I think,” I said slowly, “that Dr. Underberg may have forgotten what year it is.” That could happen too, stuck down here, where you didn't even notice the passage of a day, let alone a season.

“He remembered it five minutes ago,” Savannah pointed out. “He remembered 9/11.”

“Savvy, give him a break,” said Nate. “He's an old man. He gets confused.”

Dr. Underberg fixed me with a look. “If at all possible, can you get the tall one to stop calling me senile? I know precisely what I am about.”

With great effort, he leaned forward and started tapping buttons on the control panel. The screen came to life, showing multiple views of Omega City. It was even more damaged than it had been before. The main chamber was completely flooded now, as was the greenhouse. Water poured through the blades of the turbine.

“My beautiful city,” he said sadly. “What has the Shepherd done to you?” He sat back in his chair. “She didn't start it, of course. The destruction has been going on for years. There was an earthquake, then a flood. I could not manage the pumps on my own. As more and more sections of the city became uninhabitable, I was forced to retreat to smaller and higher ground. So much of my work has been lost. I feared that the city would not be able to support inhabitants, should the need actually arise.”

Something dark moved across one of the images, a kind of inflatable speedboat, zipping across the dark water in the main cabin. I saw three blurry figures onboard.

“Look! Fiona.”

Dr. Underberg nodded. “The Shepherd. Still she comes. They never stop, do they?”

“So Fiona is one of these Shepherd people,” Howard prompted.

I looked down at my suit. “Arkadia Group,” I said softly. “Fiona worked for Arkadia Group. Are they the same as the Shepherds?”

“Yes. Once, I thought we worked together to build a better world, but they have given up on our home, and now seek to drive us from it. As this Shepherd is driving me from my precious city.” Dr. Underberg sighed and looked around the cockpit. “This ship is my masterpiece. When I first built the city, I programmed it to send survivors into space should Omega City fail. I knew
Knowledge
would be able to support me, even if the rest of the city could not.”

“Fiona—” I began. “I mean, the Shepherd? She wants to take the inventions you've hidden here and claim them as her own, out in the world.” You know, that world that isn't actually destroyed? “That's what's she's doing here. She told us that unless we help her she's not going to let us get out.”

“That is a foolish claim,” he replied. “For you are in a rocket ship and she is not.”

“Good point,” said Howard.

“Good point?” Eric echoed in disbelief. “Yeah, if you want to go into space.”

“I do want to go into space.” Howard didn't hesitate for a moment. “Can we? Can we go into space?”

Nate didn't hesitate either. “No.”

Howard looked down at the ground.

“Sir,” I said, in as convincing a tone as I could manage, “you have to come with us, to show us the way out. I want you to meet my father. He's your biggest fan. He even wrote a book about you. And they—I mean, the Shepherds or whatever—they destroyed him for it. You have to come with us and prove them wrong.”