The Cydonian Pyramid (2 page)

T
HEY LOCKED
T
UCKER IN A TINY, WOOD-PANELED ROOM
with a bunk, a metal chair, and a guard outside. Every so often, the guard’s face would appear in the round window set in the door, staring in at him as if he were a zoo animal on display. Tucker sat on the bunk, shivering violently.

The door opened. A thin man with graying hair and a doleful expression came in carrying a heavy blanket and a first-aid kit.

“I’m Dr. Arnay. You have a name, son?”

“T-t-tucker.”

“Tucker. Like Little Tommy Tucker?”

“Just Tucker. Tucker Feye.”

The doctor sat in the chair, leaned forward, and examined Tucker’s hands.

“You have a nasty case of frostbite, son.” Tucker’s fingers were dead white and covered with blisters. He couldn’t feel them at all. The flesh beneath his nails was dark purple. “Put your hands under your armpits, and let’s hope you can keep your fingers.”

Tucker did as he was told. The doctor wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.

“Not a lot we can do right now except get you warmed up. You won’t much like how it feels when things start to thaw.”

“I already don’t like it.”

The doctor leaned close to examine Tucker’s ears. “Those ears look pretty bad. Do they hurt?”

“Nothing hurts, really. I just c-can’t stop shaking.”

“Let’s have a look at your feet.”

“My feet are o-k-kay.”

The doctor was staring at Tucker’s blue foot coverings and frowning. He touched Tucker’s right foot, then jerked his hand back. “Good Lord, I thought that was your skin for a moment! What
are
these?”

“Plastic sh-sh-shoes. They k-kept my feet from freezing.”

“They look like they’re painted on. . . . Where did you get them?”

“Hospital.”

“What hospital? Where are you from?”

“Minnesota.”

The doctor peeled back the top of one of the foot coverings. “You say this is some sort of plastic?”

“I don’t really know what it is.”

The doctor let go; the plastic re-formed itself around Tucker’s ankle.

“Strange. Like it’s alive.” The doctor squeezed Tucker’s big toe. “Any sensation there?”

“Yeah. My feet are fine.”

“Well, I’m going to leave them be for now.”

There was a rap on the door. The doctor opened it and accepted a large mug from the young sailor on the other side.

“Your prescription,” the doctor said, holding the mug out to Tucker. Hot cocoa! Tucker reached for it, but his hands were insensate claws. The doctor held the cup to Tucker’s lips. Tucker sipped. A river of chocolaty warmth ran down his throat and spread out from his belly. He drank slowly and steadily. By the time the cup was empty, his shaking had subsided.

“Are you feeling better?”

Tucker was able to nod.

The doctor pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it with an old-fashioned flip-top lighter. He gestured with his cigarette at Tucker’s right ear. “How do those ears feel?”

“They’re tingling.”

“How long were you out there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe half an hour?”

“At twenty-three below zero, even five minutes would feel like forever.”

“It did,” said Tucker.

The doctor took a drag off his cigarette. “What were you doing?”

“Freezing!”

“You know what I mean. How did you get here?”

“I don’t know,” Tucker said. “I mean, it’s a long story. Where are we, exactly?”

“On the USS
Skate.
”

“Is this really the North Pole?”

“Or thereabouts.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“I mean, what’s the date?”

“It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, son! March seventeenth.”

“Yeah, but what
year
?”

The doctor stared hard at Tucker for what seemed like forever. He sat back, drew on his cigarette, exhaled a plume of blue smoke into the already smoky cabin, then shrugged and said, “It’s 1959.”

Tucker took a moment to absorb that. The doctor continued to smoke his cigarette.

“You shouldn’t smoke, you know,” Tucker said. “You could get cancer.”

“That’s one theory,” said the doctor.

“It’s true.”

“Smoke bother you?”

Tucker shrugged. The doctor rolled his eyes, took another drag, dropped the cigarette butt into the empty cocoa mug, and blew out a lungful of smoke. “That better?”

Tucker nodded.

“All right, then,” the doctor said. “How do those fingers feel?”

“They’re sort of buzzing.”

“You want more cocoa?”

Tucker nodded.

“Let me see what I can do.” The doctor left the cabin and closed the door. Tucker could hear him talking to the guard. He got up and listened at the door.

“I still say he’s a Red,” the guard said.

“He’s just a kid!”

“Yeah, but how did he get here? I bet the Russians dropped him off. Either from another sub or from an airplane.”

“We’d know if there was another sub in the area.”

“Okay, then. Airplane. Maybe the Russians have been monitoring our radio chatter, or maybe they got a spy on board. Maybe they set the kid down right where we’d find him. He’s a Commie spy or an anarchist. You saw him. That long hair? If he didn’t have that peach fuzz on his chin you’d swear he was a girl.”

“He says he’s from Minnesota.”

“So he’s been trained. Brainwashed. No telling what these Reds got up their sleeves.”

“I’m not Russian!” Tucker yelled through the door.

The men on the other side fell silent. The door opened a few inches, and the doctor looked in.

“Then what are you?” he asked.

“American.”

“Oh, yeah?” said the guard. “Who’s the president?”

“Barack Obama,” Tucker said.

He realized his mistake the instant the words left his mouth.

As the guard closed the door, Tucker heard him say to the doctor, “What did I tell you? That name don’t even
sound
American. He’s a Russki for sure.”

For what seemed like a long time, Tucker sat perfectly still on the edge of the bunk. His shivering had stopped, but his face and hands were buzzing. The doctor had implied that he might lose some fingers, but he felt strangely detached, as if all this were happening to some other Tucker. At the same time, he knew it was real. He was stuck in a submarine on the North Pole in 1959, and his fingers were frozen, and they thought he was a Russian spy.

There was nothing he could do at the moment. He might be here for a long time. Maybe the rest of his life. He lay back on the bunk and tried to think what 1959 had been like. Did they have computers? Television? Telephones? He was pretty sure they had phones. Not that it mattered — there was no one he could call. His father wouldn’t be born for another nine years.

His
father.
If not for his father, none of this would have happened.

The doctor returned with another mug of hot cocoa.

“How are you doing?”

“My hands and face are all hot and crawly.”

The doctor leaned close. “What’s going on with your ears?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“They’ve turned pink.”

“They itch.”

The doctor set the cocoa aside, moved the chair over to the bunk, sat down, and placed his palm against Tucker’s cheek. His hand felt deliciously cool. “You’re radiating heat like a furnace!” He touched Tucker’s left ear. “You feel that?”

“It tickles.”

“Never seen anything like it. Let’s have a look at your hands.” He sat Tucker up and unwrapped the blanket. Tucker held out his hands, and both he and the doctor gasped.

His fingers were covered with hundreds of tiny red goosebumps, but these weren’t like any goosebumps Tucker had seen before: these bumps were moving, like tiny insects crawling around just under his skin.

The doctor pushed back in his chair. “What is
that
?”

“I don’t know,” Tucker said, although he had his suspicions. The Medicants had done some things to his body.
Certain of your functions have been enhanced,
they had told him. It was true — they had made Tucker faster and stronger. Maybe they had put something inside him to help him heal. Little machines, like the tiny corpse-eating robots from the recycling center. Only it didn’t feel like they were
eating
him, but more like they were
fixing
him.

“Kid, if you have brought some sort of Commie plague onto this boat, I —”

“It’s not a plague,” Tucker said quickly. “I think this is what happens when frostbite heals.”

“Not that I ever heard of!”

Tucker flexed his fingers. They felt peculiar but didn’t hurt. “I’m pretty sure it’s not, like, biological warfare.”

“Biological warfare? Where’d you hear that?”

Tucker shrugged. “Look, I’m not a spy.”

“Then what are you? How did you get here?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

The doctor could not take his eyes off Tucker’s hands.

“You just sit tight.” He stood up abruptly, left the cabin, and exchanged some terse words with the man outside. Tucker stared at his hands. The little bumps had stopped moving.

A few minutes later, the doctor returned, wearing a surgical mask.

“You are officially quarantined,” he said, the mask muffling his voice.

Tucker thrust out his hands. “I’m not sick. Look.” The bumps were almost gone.

“You’re still quarantined. You and I are going to be spending some time together while the captain tries to sort out what to do with you. The aurora is active, so we might be stuck here for a while.”

“Aurora?”

“The aurora borealis.”

“Isn’t that the northern lights?”

“That’s right. They interfere with our radio transmissions. You said you had a story. Let’s hear it.”

“Okay,” Tucker said, then stopped.

“Well?” the doctor said after a moment.

“I’m trying to think where to start.”

“Try the beginning.”

“You aren’t going to believe me.”

“I
already
don’t believe you. Go ahead.”

Tucker cleared his throat. “Okay. I guess the beginning would be the day my dad brought home this girl. He said she was from Bulgaria.”

The doctor grunted. “Bulgaria! That’s a Communist country.”

“Except she wasn’t really from Bulgaria. She was from the future.”

“Oh, for crying out loud . . . Kid, you’re going to have to do better than that. I want the truth, not some fairy tale!”

“Do you want to hear this, or not?”

The doctor took a breath, puffing out his mask as he exhaled. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I guess I’ve got nothing better to do. This future-girl-not-from-Bulgaria, did she have a name?”

“Her name was Lahlia. She said she was from a place called Romelas. . . .”