Revealed (30 page)

Silently Angela pointed to words at the top of the branch: LINDBERGH TAKES KATHERINE SKIDMORE OUT OF TIME, DISTURBING TIME ENOUGH THAT GARY AND HODGE CAN ALSO REMOTELY ZAP ALL THE MISSING CHILDREN BESIDES JONAH INTO A SECRET TIME HOLLOW OF THEIR CHOOSING. THIS STREAM OF TIME COLLAPSES SOON AFTER BECAUSE OF THE EXTREME DIFFERENCE OF LOSING THIRTY-SEVEN KIDS WHO'D BEEN THERE FOR UP TO THIRTEEN YEARS.

“Thirty-
seven
kids?” Jonah read numbly.

“Because of you, Jonah,” Angela said. “Gary and Hodge wanted you out of this branch of time before it collapsed too.”

They were actually being nice to me?
Jonah wondered.

Then he decided they must have had other reasons.

“But only because they want me in that other branch when
it
collapses,” Jonah muttered.

GARY AND HODGE TOOK A PARTICULAR DISLIKE TO YOU, Jonah's own Elucidator explained, and somehow its glow seemed apologetic. THEY BLAME YOU FOR GETTING THEM SENT TO TIME PRISON.

Well—yeah!
Jonah thought.
I did do that!

“Did you notice this?” Angela asked, pointing to the
middle branch of the time split, which showed Gary and Hodge getting their glorious, wealthy future. It was the only branch that wasn't broken off at the end.

Instead it split again.

At that split the screen read, IMPACT OF HAVING THIRTY-FIVE DUPLICATED KIDS IN THE SAME TIME CAUSES TIME SPLIT SO EXTREME THAT IT ERASES THE POSSIBILITY OF TIME TRAVEL EVER AGAIN.

“What's
that
mean?” Jonah moaned. “All of time ends, after all?”

He looked down, not sure he actually wanted to know the answer. But that just meant that he was looking directly at his own Elucidator.

NO, it said. TIME WOULD CONTINUE WITHOUT A PROBLEM, EXACTLY AS GARY AND HODGE WANT IT. BUT IT'S LIKE ENDLESS DAMAGED TIME. THE TIME AGENCY CEASES TO EXIST, BECAUSE THERE'S NO TIME TRAVEL ANYMORE. GARY AND HODGE AREN'T IN TROUBLE, BECAUSE IN THIS VERSION OF TIME THEY NEVER ILLEGALLY CRASHED A PLANELOAD OF BABIES INTO THE WRONG TIME. ALL THEIR BABY-SMUGGLING LOOKS PERFECTLY LEGIT. AND PEOPLE WILL BE PARTICULARLY PROTECTIVE OF THESE ENDANGERED BABIES FROM HISTORY, BECAUSE THEY'RE THE LAST ONES ABLE TO ESCAPE. IN EACH OF THE TWO BRANCHES REMAINING, GARY AND
HODGE HAVE THIRTY-SIX VERY, VERY VALUABLE BABIES TO SELL.

The Elucidator seemed to be hesitating; then it added, AND THEY'RE CONSIDERED HEROES FOR SAVING THOSE KIDS.

“No!” Jonah yelled, shaking his head ferociously. “NO!”

Angela just sat there as if she was too stunned to move.

“And us?” she whispered. “What happens to us? And JB and Hadley and Jonah's parents and—and everyone who isn't in those time streams?”

She pointed to the branches where Gary and Hodge triumphed.

PEOPLE END WHEN THEIR TIME STREAMS END, her Elucidator flashed back. PEOPLE IN TIME HOLLOWS LIKE THIS ARE STUCK THERE FOREVER.

Jonah thought about what it would be like to stay in a time hollow forever. There'd be nothing to do, and no reason to do anything, because nothing ever changed. It was bad enough to stay in a place like this temporarily—but
forever
?

“You said we could get back to 1932,” Jonah wailed. “You promised!”

YOU STILL CAN, the Elucidator said, and now its glow seemed soothing. NOT EVERYTHING THAT GARY AND HODGE PLANNED HAS HAPPENED. YET.

Jonah looked around frantically.

“We've got to stop Charles Lindbergh,” he said. “Send us back now. Send us to—”

“Don't!” Angela yelled, yanking the Elucidator out of Jonah's hand. “We need a plan first, remember?
How
are we going to stop Charles Lindbergh?”

Jonah would have been willing to make it up as he floated through time.

“I'll tell Charles Lindbergh I'm not really his son,” Jonah said. “Then he'll have no reason to do what Gary and Hodge told him to do.”

“Didn't you already try to tell him that?” Angela asked.

Jonah remembered his silent mouthing of the words in the stairwell at the airport.

“I bet he didn't hear me,” Jonah said.

“All those early pilots were really good at lip-reading,” Angela said. “Because it was so loud in their cockpits. I bet he could tell what you were saying.”

Jonah frowned, not wanting to admit that she was probably right.

“Then we'll prove it to him,” Jonah said. “We'll prove I'm not his son, and I'll prove that Gary and Hodge have no way of giving him back his real son—they couldn't even manage to kidnap the boy. . . .”

Jonah expected Angela to object to this as well, but she didn't.

“I think if we
could
prove those two things, it would stop him,” she said. “But how can we possibly prove anything?
And when can we get to him without Gary and Hodge stopping us? What can we do to make him trust us?”

Jonah looked down at his Elucidator, which Angela was still holding a safe distance away from him. But Jonah could see it still showing Lindbergh in the cockpit of the plane, growing younger and younger and younger.

Jonah pointed toward the Elucidator screen.

“Lindbergh's a pilot,” Jonah said. “Don't you think he'd trust us more if we went flying with him?”

Angela looked back and forth between her own Elucidator and Jonah's.

“Can either of you Elucidators get us on that plane?” she asked. “Early enough that it's still possible to fix everything?”

NO, both Elucidators flashed. NOT BOTH OF YOU.

Jonah had been talking to Elucidators enough now that he knew to ask another question: “What about just one of us?”

It seemed to take a long time for the Elucidators to consider this question. Jonah wasn't sure how many millions of variables they were sorting through. Maybe it really was an infinity of possibilities, and he and Angela were sitting there waiting for the Elucidators to think about each and every one.

But then, in unison, the Elucidators flashed the same answer: YES. THERE IS A POSSIBILITY.

“All right!” Jonah screamed, thrusting his arm in the air.

“But with just one of us getting on that plane?” Angela asked cautiously.

YES, the Elucidators flashed again. And then there was a pause that almost seemed apologetic, because the next words showed up:

IT HAS TO BE JONAH ALONE.

To Jonah's way of thinking, it took forever for him and Angela and the Elucidators to work out all the details of his trip.

First Angela seemed to want the Elucidators to explain every single reason she couldn't go with Jonah. It boiled down to one problem: The only safe, open time for anyone to sneak onto the plane was while it was parked at the airport, right after the time crash, right after the time split, right before Lindbergh flew it out of time again. And Angela was already present in all versions of time that resulted from the time split. Throwing another version of her into the mix would make everything too unstable, create another time stream, and, as Jonah's Elucidator calculated, CREATE A 99.99999 PERCENT CHANCE OF DESTROYING TIME FOREVER.

Then it flashed with what had to be faked innocence, YOU DON'T WANT THAT, DO YOU?

“But Jonah's present in that time period too!” Angela protested, sounding almost exactly like Katherine always did when she didn't get her way.

“Not in every version,” Jonah reminded her. “Remember the one where Lindbergh flies the plane on to the future without there being a baby removed first—because I was never on it?”

Part of Jonah wanted to do a victory dance, to rub it in to Angela that he got to go and fix everything, and Angela would be stuck waiting in a time hollow.

Another part of him wished fervently that it was the other way around.

Angela was still talking to her Elucidator, asking for suggestions about what Jonah could tell Lindbergh to get him to defy Gary and Hodge's plans before it was too late.

Jonah was having trouble listening very well. He kept glancing over toward the kid versions of Mom, Dad, and JB in the car.

If I fail
, he thought,
all time travel ends. I won't be able to come back for them. And all of them will be stuck in this time cave with Angela forever. Mom and Dad will be stuck here sleeping forever. JB will be crazy forever.

And Angela would, for all intents and purposes, be alone forever.

The planning went on and on. Finally, Angela looked
up at Jonah and said, “Is there anything else you can think of to ask?”

“No,” Jonah said quickly. Angela looked at him doubtfully, and he added, “I'll have the Elucidator with me. I can ask it anything I want, as I go along.”

Jonah expected her to scold him for wanting to do just seat-of-the-pants planning. Instead she nodded.

“That makes sense,” she said sadly. She seemed to be trying to smile. “I think you're ready, then.”

Jonah took a deep breath.

“No,” he said. “I'm not. I want to say good-bye to Mom and Dad first. In case I fail and I never see them again.”

“Well, go ahead,” Angela said, gesturing toward the car.

“No,” Jonah said. “I want to say good-bye where they can hear me. We need to open the time hollow and go back to the twenty-first century so we can wake them up. And
then
I'll say good-bye.”

“Jonah—” Angela began. And then she stopped, reconsidering. “You want them to know the truth either way, don't you? And are you giving me a choice, too? In case things don't work . . . you're giving me the option of living out the rest of my life in real time. Even if time collapses.”

“Don't you think that's better than being trapped in a time hollow with three people who aren't even awake?” Jonah said.

Angela seemed to be studying his face intently. Then she gave a quick bob of her head, up and down.

“You're really a nice kid, you know that?” she said.

“No thirteen-year-old boy wants to be told he's ‘nice'!” Jonah protested.

“Okay, let's get through this, and I'll tell you when you're fourteen,” Angela said, grinning.

They set the Elucidators to tell them how to open the doors and wake up kid Mom and kid Dad.

“Shouldn't we make ourselves visible again too, so we don't completely freak them out?” Angela asked.

“Oh, yeah . . . ,” Jonah muttered.

He'd been so focused on getting information from the Elucidators that he'd stopped noticing that he, Angela, and JB were still mostly see-through from their time in 1932.

And Mom and Dad probably wouldn't be able to see us at all, because they've never traveled through time
, Jonah reminded himself. He didn't think that their going into the time hollow would count.
But staying invisible wouldn't do me any good when I go back to talk to Lindbergh, because that would freak him out too. And anyhow, Gary and Hodge would be able to see me as translucent. . . .

Angela turned everyone visible again, and then Jonah woke his parents and opened the cave door. He led his parents outside into the autumn sunshine. Both of them were blinking groggily.

“Where
are
we?” Mom asked. “What happened? What's going on?”

Dad let out a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Mom, Dad, I've got something to tell you,” Jonah said. “This friend of mine, Angela”—he pointed, and she waved—“she's going to explain all the details. But I wanted to tell you . . . Katherine and I have been traveling through time constantly the past few months. Everything's kind of a mess, but I'm going to go off and try to fix everything and rescue Katherine. I just wanted to tell you that before I left. Because . . . I'm not sure I'm going to be able to come back.”

They both stared at him blankly.

I can't make them understand
, he thought despairingly.
This was a huge mistake.

But then both his parents launched themselves at him, engulfing him in an enormous hug.

“We'll go with you!” Dad cried. “We'll get Katherine and have an adventure together. As a family!”

For a moment Jonah just let them hug him. He let himself hug them back and draw in the strength he'd gotten from thirteen years of them being his parents.

And then he pushed them away.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “This is the way it has to be. I love you.”

Quickly, because he was thoroughly embarrassed, he added, looking off to the side, “You too, Angela. Thanks for everything.”

He glanced down to make sure that nobody was still touching him. Then he told the Elucidator in his hand, “Take me back to the plane at the airport!”

Jonah knew that once he said that, the entire scene in front of him would disappear. He closed his eyes. But he could have sworn he heard Mom calling after him, “Be careful! Make sure you remember to brush your teeth, wherever you're going!”

It seemed like no time at all before Jonah was landing again.

Timesickness—not too bad
, he thought, blinking quickly.
Of course it shouldn't be, since I came through only thirteen years.

It seemed that he was lying in the aisle of the airplane. His vision was already clear enough that he could see numbers above the seats—his head was positioned right below the seats in row 11, and his feet were stretched out toward the front of the plane.

Okay
, he thought.
Stand up slowly, then go see if Lindbergh's sitting in the pilot's seat yet.

He was just stretching his hand up to grab on to the side of the row 10 seats to pull himself up when he heard a voice near the door at the front.

“Let me get this baby into place, and then you can take off immediately,” the voice said.

It was Hodge. Hodge was about to walk down the aisle, evidently to strap baby Katherine in. Of course. Of course Hodge would be sending her off to the future in this version of time too. Jonah knew that.