Island of the Sun (15 page)

“Are you suggesting we go back?” Eleanor's mom asked.

“Maybe?” Eleanor said, still a bit unsure of the idea, but growing more confident with each moment that she considered it.

“That seems almost as dangerous as turning ourselves in,” Luke said. “We don't know where those tunnels go. Or if they go anywhere. What if we get trapped? Or lost?”

“If we stay here,” Eleanor said, “we're iced. They'll find us tomorrow for sure. This is our one chance.”

“So what are these tunnels you're talking about?” Betty asked.

“They supposedly ran beneath the entire Inca empire,” Eleanor said. “Amaru said they were a legend. But we saw them. They're real.”

“You
think
you saw them,” Luke said. “All we really saw were the openings to a couple of tunnels that might be twenty-foot dead ends.”

“I've read about the Inca roads,” Finn said, sounding sullen. “They're pretty famous. The Inca king could eat fish that was only two days old, if he wanted. He lived in Cuzco, and the coast was three hundred miles away.”

“That's a hundred and fifty miles a day,” Betty said. “How is that possible?”

“Relay runners,” Finn said. “Lots of relay runners. But I haven't read about any tunnels.”

“They're down there,” Eleanor said, and turned to her mom. “You saw them, too.”

Her mom laid her hooked index finger across her
lips. “Yes, I saw the entrances to some tunnels,” she said. “I agree with Luke that we don't know where they lead. But I also don't think we have any other options. If we're going to just wait here for Watkins to catch us, we might as well have surrendered and saved ourselves a cold and uncomfortable night.”

“So you agree with Eleanor?” Betty asked.

“Unless someone has another suggestion, I agree it's worth a shot,” her mom said.

Eleanor was grateful to have her mom's support, mostly because it felt good to agree with her about something. Finn looked pale and scared, but Eleanor understood why. She didn't know what she would do if someone told her she had to leave her mom behind. And it was true that she'd hopped a plane for the Arctic to go find her. But this was different. The situation and the stakes were different now, and she hoped that under the same circumstances, she would have the courage to do what needed to be done.

Luke scratched his head. “If we're going to do this, we better move quick.”

“Will I get to see the Concentrator?” Betty asked.

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “And then you'll understand why we're doing all this.”

Eleanor, her mom, and Luke decided to remove the outer rubber shells of their dry suits and proceed
wearing the thermal suits underneath. Betty removed three pairs of shoes from the pack and handed them to Luke, Eleanor, and her mom, for which they were grateful. Then they all left the safety of the alcove and made their way back up to the Titikala and its secret stone door. Eleanor turned on her flashlight, as did the others, and they entered the tunnel. Once everyone was inside, Eleanor turned to see if there was any way to close the door behind them. If there wasn't, Watkins would find the opening when he searched the island the next day, and that would take him directly down to the Concentrator. Eleanor didn't want to make it easy for him, but she couldn't see any mechanism for rolling the giant stone back into place.

“All the more reason to hurry,” her mom said.

They descended the spiraling pathway down through the mountain. The corridor was familiar to Eleanor, and she moved quickly, but Betty and Finn took it more slowly, unsure of their footing.

When they reached the bottom and entered the Concentrator chamber, Betty stopped and stared in an almost comical way, complete with the gaping mouth. Finn had seen the Arctic Concentrator, so he merely nodded in recognition as he came in and trudged off to look at the ring of statues.

“Believe it now?” Luke asked Betty.

“I do,” she said.

“And what do you think?” he asked.

“I . . . all I can think is what my aunt Celia would say.”

“And what's that?” Eleanor asked.

“I feel like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” Then Betty shook a little, as if a chill had just taken her by the shoulders. “Is that thing safe?”

“I turned it off,” Eleanor said.

“That doesn't answer my question,” Betty said. “On or off, that thing doesn't look very safe to me. And it makes me want to get as far away from this place as I can.”

“Then let's not waste any more time,” Eleanor's mom said.

They crossed the chamber, and Betty hugged the wall, maintaining the maximum possible distance from the Concentrator. When they reached the far side, with the corridor that led to the sea, Eleanor called to Finn, who was still studying the statues.

“What were you doing?” Eleanor asked as he caught up to them.

“Just curious,” he said, head bowed. “I was trying to decide if those statues were supposed to be the aliens.”

“Maybe they helped build this place.” Luke grunt-laughed. “Maybe the pyramids, too?”

“No,” Finn said. “Not like that. We know the Concentrators predated Amarok's people, so that puts them on earth long before the pyramids were constructed. But if some early human ancestors saw the aliens, maybe that got passed on in legends and myths.”

That was same idea that had led Eleanor to study the Titikala. She didn't think the Inca actually knew about the aliens, but rather, perhaps they simply knew that this site was somehow connected to some mysterious power.

“That's an interesting idea, Finn,” Eleanor's mom said. “But we'd best keep moving.”

They entered the corridor and followed it back until they reached the intersection with the two tunnels they'd seen racing away into darkness, before they'd found the Concentrator. Eleanor looked in both directions, and both passages appeared identical as far as her flashlight could reach.

“Looks like we have a choice to make,” Luke said.

“W
HICH WAY DO WE GO?”
B
ETTY ASKED. “
I
'M COMPLETELY
turned around down here.”

“I think we want to go north or northwest,” Eleanor's mom said. “That would take us in the opposite direction from Copacabana, back toward Puno.”

“Any idea which way is north?” Eleanor asked.

“That way.” Luke pointed back toward the Concentrator chamber.

Eleanor's mom sent her light down one tunnel, then the other. “How can you be sure?”

“Call it a pilot's intuition,” Luke said.

“I'll go with that,” Betty said.

“All right, then.” Eleanor's mom nodded toward the
tunnel to Eleanor's right. “That would make this west. I suppose that's close enough to the way we want to go. This way is it?”

She led them forward, and they walked for quite some distance down a very straight passage. The walls proceeded uniformly, with very few distinguishing features beyond the subtle grain of the stone, and soon the view was the same looking forward or back, which created the unnerving sensation that they weren't moving at all. But the longer they walked, the more sure Eleanor became that the path would not lead them to a dead end. This tunnel had been made to take people someplace. She just wished she knew where.

“So are we under the lake?” Finn asked.

“I believe so,” Eleanor's mom said. “I don't know how this tunnel isn't flooded.”

“Inca ingenuity,” Betty said.

They walked for an hour.

Then another.

And another.

“I'm not claustrophobic,” Eleanor's mom whispered. “But this could drive a person insane.”

“That person could be me if we don't get out of here soon,” Luke said.

Eleanor couldn't believe how long it was taking them, and she worried whether the batteries in their
flashlights would last. The scuff of their steps and the sound of their breathing filled the tunnel until they were all she could hear. Her body felt each and every one of the miles they had walked. She was hungry, and tired, and thirsty. They stopped to rest occasionally, and that helped. In addition to the Sync, the pack Betty had grabbed off the boat held the few snacks they'd brought from the plane. Granola bars didn't fill Eleanor up, but they gave her some strength, and sips from the water bottles gave her relief from her thirst. None of that helped her with the weakness from her connection to the Concentrator, although that seemed to be slowly fading.

After they rounded the fourth hour, Eleanor thought her vision was deceiving her, because the straight tunnel appeared warped ahead. But she soon realized that it wasn't her vision. The corridor was actually changing course, rising up at an angle. After the maddeningly hypnotic journey they'd just taken, Eleanor welcomed any deviation.

The tunnel climbed by degrees for some distance, and then they came upon a stone door much like the one Eleanor had recognized at the Titikala. It even had the same release mechanism. But when Eleanor pulled the little rock from its notch, this door didn't move on its own. Luke had to put his shoulder into it, but once
he got it going, the stone rolled away with the same grinding sound.

It was dark outside. They stepped out of the tunnel, and Eleanor sucked in a chestful of cold, fresh air. The plentiful stars and the slivered moon above them alloyed the white clouds into pewter.

“I thought we'd never see the end of that,” Betty said. “I can't even imagine what it took to build it.”

Luke clapped Finn on the back. “Aliens, you think?”

“No,” Finn said, and left it at that. Luke was obviously trying to lighten the mood, perhaps distract Finn from his father and brother's situation, but it wasn't working.

“So where are we?” Eleanor's mom asked, partly to herself.

They stood on a rocky hillside at the base of an escarpment, and not too far below them was the lake. Off in the distance, the Isla del Sol was a thin black streak across the shimmering water.

“Looks like we're on the western shore of the lake,” Betty said.

“That island's gotta be twelve, maybe fifteen miles away,” Luke said.

Eleanor marveled at the distance, too. They had traveled under Titicaca, using the ancient roads of the Inca. Or maybe the tunnels were even older than that.
Perhaps there was something to Finn's idea that even if the aliens hadn't been directly involved, they had somehow inspired or influenced the people who lived around the Concentrators.

“Now we just need to get back to Juliaca,” Eleanor's mom said. “Get on the plane and get out of here.”

“What if the G.E.T. found
Consuelo
?” Eleanor asked.

“We never told Amaru about her,” Luke said. “The professor told him we'd been in Lima. Smart thinking on his part. Watkins and the G.E.T. know what
Consuelo
looks like, but if they're actively looking for her, let's hope it's in the wrong place.”

At the mention of Dr. Powers, Eleanor turned her attention to Finn. He stood apart from them, facing the water, his face slack, emotionless. She had felt a measure of what he was going through when they had decided not to pick up her uncle Jack. But this was different. The G.E.T. wasn't holding her uncle Jack captive. Eleanor walked up beside Finn but kept a respectful space between them.

“We'll get them back,” she said.

He kept his eyes forward. “I know.”

“I'm sorry,” Eleanor said.

“Not your fault. I should've been with them.”

“Don't say that.”

“Why not?” He looked at her, his emotions still too hidden for her to read. “It's true.” Then he turned his back on the lake and walked toward the others.

Eleanor's mom had pulled the Sync from the pack. “No cell signal,” she said. “But I've got GPS. It looks like we're not too far from a main road. It's late, but maybe we can pick up a ride there.”

She led the way, and about a mile later they reached the road and followed it in the general direction of Puno. The landscape around them was starting to feel familiar, with its fields of grain, white as snow in the moonlight, and the low-swelling mountains on the horizon. Distant lights marked farms and homesteads, and they even saw the occasional pair of headlights, but no vehicles approached them for several miles.

When they did finally cross paths with a car, it turned out to be a truck with a tall, wooden, crate-like bed. The driver, an old man with graying hair and a face that had borne a lifetime of wind and sun, looked very confused, and even a little irritated, after Luke flagged him down and tried to ask for a ride in broken Spanish. But apparently, he was heading to Puno, and Eleanor heard the word alpaca. She had no idea how they must've appeared to him, walking down a road out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, and she expected him to just drive off.

But instead he nodded with a frown and said, “Yah, yah,” and thumbed them toward the rear of the truck.

“Gracias,” Luke attempted, and they went around to the back of the bed.

The driver got out of the cab and met them there, where he lifted a couple of thick metal pins and lowered the back of the box. The vehicle was obviously used for transporting livestock, and even though there weren't any animals in it at the moment, the evidence of them was. It smelled of fur, and of the hay that lined it, and of the manure that hadn't quite been cleaned out.

“Gracias,” Luke said again, not quite as enthusiastically, and they all climbed into the box.

The driver raised the back and shoved the pins back into place, effectively trapping them inside. Only then did Eleanor feel unnerved. The man could now take them anywhere he pleased, and she suppressed the paranoid thought that he was somehow working for the G.E.T. and Watkins.

The truck emitted a resigned kind of let's-do-this growl and lurched ahead, and everyone in the bed stumbled and reached for something to hold on to at the same time. The smell of old engine exhaust mixed with the animal aroma unpleasantly, though every now and then a clean breeze would find its way
through the slats in the box.

It was a bumpy, long ride, and after the hours and miles they'd just walked, everyone soon settled down as best they could to rest. Eleanor ended up sitting in the straw, her back against the rough side of the truck, watching the road in slices and growing very tired. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw Amaru—the fear in his eyes and the blood on his chest—and she thought about his family. Eleanor hadn't made Amaru the promise he had wanted. She had made him a different promise, and she intended to keep it, but deep inside she feared she couldn't, and that made her guilt and grief over Amaru's death even worse.

“You were right,” Eleanor's mom whispered.

Eleanor glanced in her direction and found her mom looking at her as though she'd been doing so for a long time. “About what?” Eleanor asked.

“What you said about Amaru. I
would
do the same for you. And more.”

They'd been thinking about the same thing, a rare moment of connection, and Eleanor felt suddenly glad, and grateful, at the same time that she still felt guilty, and sad, and scared, a mosaic of emotion that made an unsettling picture.

“His son's name is Lucio,” Eleanor said. “He's two years and four months old.”

Her mom nodded and smiled. “Lucio.”

Nothing more was said, and the moment of connection between them passed away gently on its own. Dawn came, and soon a lattice of sunlight crisscrossed the interior of the truck bed. Not long after that, the truck came to a stop, the engine still running, and Eleanor watched as the driver walked down her side of the bed to the rear of the vehicle, pulled the pins, and lowered the back wall.

Everyone inside rose, and stretched, and winced, then hobbled out of the truck onto the street. Betty tried to offer the driver some money, but he waved both hands before him and wouldn't accept it. Luke helped him raise the back of the truck and secure it, after which they shook hands and the driver got back into his cab and drove away in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

“We need to find water and food,” Eleanor's mom said. “Then hire a cab back to Juliaca.”

Luke's gaze darted up and down the street. “What we need is to be careful.”

“But no one will be looking for us here,” Eleanor said. “Watkins will probably just be getting back to the island now. It'll be hours before he discovers how we escaped, if he even finds out at all.”

“Might be,” Luke said. “But if there's anything I've
learned by now, it's that the G.E.T. has eyes everywhere. We can't afford to take any chances.”

So they wandered the backstreets of Puno, watchful for anyone who might be following them, until they found a bakery. They bought some pastries and breads, along with several bottles of water, and moments later, every drop and crumb was gone, and Eleanor felt much better. The cabs were a little harder to come by, but they eventually managed to hire a van similar to the one in which Amaru had driven them, and they were back on the road.

Eleanor recognized some of the landmarks they passed on their way back to Juliaca, including the university at the edge of town. The van took them right to the airport, and as soon as it came into view, Eleanor's body tensed up. They still didn't know if
Consuelo
had been discovered, and if she had, Eleanor had no idea what they would do next.

Luke seemed even more on edge. He got out before the cab had even come to a full stop and marched toward the tarmac. Betty paid the cabdriver, and they all hurried after Luke, walk-running as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves. Eleanor leaned ahead as they approached the place they had left their plane, craning to see around the corner of a hangar.

And there she was. Parked right where they had left her.

“Oh, thank God,” Eleanor's mom whispered.

Luke beat them to the plane and looked her over, circling all the way around and crossing under her belly.

“I don't think she's been tampered with,” he said. “But it's not like we have time or equipment to do another sweep for trackers. We need to move and hope for the best.”

“Then let's get going, shall we?” Betty said.

So they boarded the plane and took their places. It was hard not to notice the two empty seats, the ones Dr. Powers and Julian usually claimed. Eleanor glanced back at Finn and caught him staring at the vacancies. When he noticed her watching him, he snapped his attention away and directed it out his window.

Luke roused
Consuelo
, radioed the flight tower for clearance to take off, and she labored along the tarmac into position on the runway. Eleanor watched the airfield and the terminal, searching for G.E.T. agents or police cars in a way that was becoming a familiar routine. How many times would they have to take off under threat or with the fear that at the last moment they would be caught?

But moments later, they were in the air, and Eleanor
breathed a slight sigh of relief. If Watkins did know where their plane was, he hadn't found out about their escape in time to stop them. But as they climbed higher into the sky, leaving Lake Titicaca and its Island of the Sun farther behind, the small measure of triumph she had felt in no way compared to the loss.

They had left Dr. Powers and Julian in the hands of the G.E.T..

Eleanor couldn't believe it had really happened; it felt as if it was a decision someone else had made, one she'd read about in a book. But it was
she
who had decided to leave them behind. They all had.

“Mom?” she whispered, hoping Finn couldn't hear her.

“Hmm?”

“What if we missed something?”

“What do you mean, sweetie?”

“What if there actually was something we could have done to rescue Dr. Powers and Julian?”