Trail of Bones (21 page)

“Arlington Howard! I order you once again to
stand down
!”

Jefferson’s voice is loud and booming, in
contrast to the laughter coming from Mr. Howe.

“
Arlington
Howard! You even got his
name right!” Mr. Howe jumps in front of Jefferson. If his hands
weren’t chained up like the rest of ours, I think he might have
grabbed him by the throat.

“Are you in on it?” he asks Jefferson, then
Claiborne. “Are you? Are
you
?” He looks at Thea, then
rattles his chains at me.

I couldn’t rattle back, though, even if I
wanted to. My hands are bound tight, and on top of it all, the
packet of portable soup that Lewis gave me is leaking all over the
place now, dripping inside my jacket and sleeves. The whole thing
makes me realize that I probably need a really, really good
bath.

“
Arlington
Howard!” Howe shouts.
“Have you tried on the hat yet?”

Howard narrows his eyes suspiciously. “What
hat?”

“The one that made you crazy!”

Howard’s eyes narrow even more.

“Oh, this is all a test, isn’t it, some kind
of elaborate holographic recreation. Is it to find out if I’m still
loyal
? Is that it?”

Who is he talking to? Who else does he think
is listening? He’s obviously been back here awhile, but hasn’t
accepted it yet. And he looks terrible. I almost feel sorry for
him.

“All the files you kept from me! You already
knew
about an ‘M. Sands’ who worked on a secret time-travel
project during World War Two — and disappeared. The same project
was taken over by a ‘Dr. Royd’ right after the war. You knew all
this
before
you ever assigned me to be Sandusky’s
handler!”

Disappeared again?
Mom?
Where was she
now? And what’s a “handler?”

“And what about the file on another
scientist, a Dr. Royd, recruited by our government right
after
World War II, who worked on
different
time
travel research, and likewise went missing? Is somebody trying to
make me disappear, too?”

“The man is touched, sir!” Howard points at
Mr. Howe. “And dangerous.”

“And you,
you
, Mr. Arlington
Howard
. The family had to shorten its name after you
vanished.”

“Vanished!?” Howard looks startled. “Where?
When?”

“Because you were busy helping slaves escape
when you were supposed to be the Treasury agent protecting the
president!”

“What!? Never!”

“That’s the story that’s been passed down
from generation to generation.”

“Why, Mr. Howard, I didn’t know you had it
in you,” Sally says to him.

“I don’t. I won’t!”

“But Mr. Howe, shouldn’t you be proud of him
if he really helped slaves?” I ask.

Mr. Howe’s eyes narrow. “Oh, yes, ask me a
question and
test
me,
Danger Boy
. That story was a
cover. I mean, who kept records of federal employees in 1800? Who
cared
? But you might, if the only trace of someone who
deserts their post is a set of clothes — and
this
.”

Mr. Howe waves the shimmering cloth at
me.

“The
sklaan
!” Clyne chirps.
“Plasmechanical extra skin, for moderating temperature extremes.
Nicely engineered. Once used by Thea.”

“The same material. Arlington Howard
disappeared —”

“I did not!” Howard protests.

“—and all that was found were some of his
clothes, and a snippet of this… this
alien
material, with
cellular and molecular structures not found anywhere on Earth. It
was stored in a restricted archive they didn’t want me to see. But
they retrieved the sample after they found this”— and he shakes the
sklaan
again— “in Europe a few years ago. And because my
distant ancestor was found with this same cloth on him, I find that
I
am a suspect.
I
am studied because perhaps I am
something other that what I claim to be!”

“The
sklaan
is not meant for causing
disruptions,” Clyne says. “Only comfort.”

“Comfort! Did
Danger Boy’s
father
steal this from my office in order to
comfort
somebody?”

“Hmmm, intriguing,” Clyne continues. “Did
Sandusky-sire say what he did take it for?”

“What for? Because you want to cut me out!
You want me to be the last to know! Thirty! Sandusky! I don’t know
who or how or why, but I won’t take the fall for this! I won’t be
set up! I want to keep my security clearance!”

“That is quite a fever-dream of a story,
sir,” Jefferson tells him. “What, pray, is ‘security
clearance’?”

“And what manner of man are you?” Howard
asks.

“
Me?
You’re just a hologram in some
kind of elaborate test I’m going through! Why don’t you ask about
him
” — he lifts his chains and points to Clyne — “since he’s
an alien trying to invade the planet! Or
her
” — he points to
Thea — “since she’s some kind of witch or priestess from Egypt. Or
him
.” He points to me. “Ask him why
Danger Boy
keeps
putting everyone else at risk by not doing
exactly what we tell
him to
!”

So that’s it. Basically, Mr. Howe is upset
with me because I don’t do what I’m told. What about all the risk
I’m
in? What about the fact that I don’t really have a
family anymore?

Heck. Mr. Howe apparently has more family,
at the moment, than I do.

“Your man is right, Mr. President. This
fellow’s touched. As are they all. Including, I’m afraid, your Mr.
Howard. Let’s just burn this site and get the soldiers to march
everyone back to town.” It’s Claiborne again. He seems to be
getting a little nervous himself. And the slaves, who’d been trying
to escape, seem to be scared and angry. They’re shifting around a
lot, and they’re making the soldiers and the farmers — the ones
with the weapons — jittery as well.

“And to what
hat
did you refer?”
Howard asks again. He seems to be taking it personally.

“Perhaps this hat?” Banglees says casually.
“He was trying to bury it by the river when they caught him.” He
points to Mr. Howe. “I jus’ dug it up.”

He tosses a muddy blob of cloth down on the
ground. Then he takes out a big buck knife and peels the material
back.

And there, dirty and wet, but still in one
piece, is my Seals cap.

Chapter
Twenty-four

Eli: Closed Loop

February 1805

Banglees slams his knife through it.

“Do not touch it. It ’as strange powers, I
think.”

I look at Howe and his shredded clothes. He
must have torn off pieces of his jacket to wrap around the hat. But
if he’s had it with him or near him, the whole time, how has it
affected him?

“I was trying to keep it safe!” Howe shouts
to no one in particular. “I wasn’t going to use it! Isn’t that part
of the test!?”

“He must have wound up in possession of it,”
Thea tells me, her voice quiet but urgent, “when he and I fell
through time together. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I tell her. She lifts
the chains to brush her fingers against my hand, to thank me, I
guess, or let me know it’s okay. It’s a little bit corny, too —
though not like that kiss — and I don’t know if I should brush her
back because that portable soup is running down my arm and out my
sleeve, and I’d get it all over her, and then she’d feel
greasy…

Greasy.

I start to move my wrist inside the irons.
The soup is making my arm slippery.

“Give me the hat!” Howard yells, He leaps at
Banglees, who grabs it up and twirls it on the end of his
knife.

“For a price, perhaps. Remember, I ’ad to
find it.”

My poor Seals cap. “Hey, be careful, there’s
a Joe DiMaggio autograph inside!”

Everyone looks at me like they’re going to
add me to the “crazy” list.

“We need to put this place to the torch, Mr.
President,” Claiborne insists again. “We need to master this
situation with a firm hand.”

The restlessness of the escaped slaves is
now all mixed together. They don’t know what’s going to happen to
them. They’re frightened for their lives. It’s almost like I can
feel what they’re feeling.

Know.

No what?
Know
what? Who’s talking?
Why is my lingo-spot itching so much? “Know what?” I say out loud,
without really intending to.

Jefferson, at least, doesn’t look at me like
I’m nuts. In fact, he nods.

“The young squire is right, governor. We
need to know exactly what mysteries we’re facing here. What drove
the slaves to this spot. What science possesses this lad’s strange
headgear. And where on earth this
incognitum
comes from.”
Jefferson paces around while he talks, and he winds up standing
directly in front of Clyne.

“Not from this Earth, mammal man.”

Jefferson looks around. “I think the enigmas
we face here are much greater than the question of why slaves are
escaping. We know why slaves escape.” He looks at the faces around
him in the torchlight. “But we do not know what that strange
apparatus is,” he waves his hand at Clyne’s ship. “Or how the bones
of Brassy came to be buried here. Or how the
incognitum
came
to know her.”

“I do not know her! I just
tk-tk!
deduce! She was a prime nexus! She had a history-changing
snkt
life ahead. But that was stolen from her. Everything
changed
knkt!
on this spot.”

“Changed, you say,
incognitum
? For
the better, or…?”

“Or for much more long-term sadness. It’s
unknown
sktkt!
until your history works itself out.”

“Maybe, Tom,” Sally says to Jefferson, “in
Brassy’s dying, there’s a lesson. About the value of things. Of
persons.”

“You let her talk to you like that?”
Claiborne asks.

“I think,” Jefferson continues, sighing
heavily, “we need to arrange a way of keeping what happened here a
secret. Until we can deduce what has transpired and what it means
for America.”

“Are you saying we need to act to protect
national security, sir?”

“I’m a little uncomfortable with the
broadness of that phrase, Mr. Howard. But perhaps, yes. And I would
like to start by relieving you of your duties until we determine
your involvement with these strange personages.”

“No.
No!
You cannot do this to me!
You will not! You
must
not!” Howard looks around, like he’s
cornered, trapped, though no one moves toward him. Instead, he
moves toward Mr. Howe — his descendant. And snatches the
sklaan
out of his hand. “Setting me up to take the fall with
this! No! A thousand times I tell you, no! I was the one trying to
maintain order! Me!
Me!
” And with another shake of the
sklaan
, he turns and sprints away toward the river,
disappearing into the darkness.

He was acting just like Mr. Howe. Or, at
least, the way Mr. Howe always acted until he showed up here in New
Orleans.

A couple of the soldiers turn to pursue him.
“No,” Jefferson says. “Desist. Let him run. We will look for him in
the morning. He can’t get far tonight. And we can’t afford any more
people getting lost.”

“Closed loop,” Clyne says.

“What,
incognitum
?”

“Closed loop. He has the
sklaan
now.
So it can be found. And then hidden by your government. And brought
back again. Closed loops. Prime nexuses. Temporal displacement.
Tk-tk-tng!
Much to discuss. All fascinating. Do you study
such things?”

Howe stands, still a little surprised,
looking at the spot where his distant relative disappeared into the
trees. And then, much to my surprise, he turns to me. And isn’t mad
or hysterical about something.

“I don’t want to end up like him, Eli. I
don’t want to disappear.”

“None of us do.”

“She didn’t want to disappear, either.” Thea
nods toward Brassy’s grave. “I wonder who she was? Or if we’ll ever
know.”

“Maybe we do know,” Howe says. “Maybe it’s
another secret file I haven’t come across yet.”

The whole time this is going on, I wiggle my
soup-drenched wrist around more. And more. Until I almost have it
—

And then I do. I have one of my wrists out
of the iron. But I clench my hands together, so no one knows
yet.

“So what am I to do with this hat?” Banglees
waves it around on the tip of his knife. “Does anyone care to buy
it from me?”

“That’s government property,” Jefferson
tells him. “I am ordering you to hand it over.”

“I think, right now, it ees private
property.”

“You heard the president!” Mr. Howe lunges
at Banglees. The trapper steps back in surprise but flashes his
knife at Mr. Howe without thinking. Howe steps to the side, but the
knife just catches him on the shoulder.

My Seals cap goes flying.

“Guards! Guards!” The governor is
frantically calling his men over. After the fidgety slaves, Mr.
Howard’s dash into the woods, and the fight between Banglees and
Mr. Howe breaking out, none of the soldiers is sure what to do, but
a couple run toward us.

Clyne, who had been trying to avoid making
sudden moves, so that the armed men wouldn’t get too nervous, now
jumps back and forth near his ship. “Watch out for the time sphere!
Watch out for the
gng!
sphere!”

“Put it to the
flame
, Mr. President!”
Governor Claiborne grabs one of the torches, using the distraction
to start lighting leaves and branches near Clyne’s ship. There’s
smoke, and the slow lick of flames.

The cap meanwhile, has landed near the feet
of Sally Hemings. She looks at me. She looks at Thea. Then she
picks up a stick and uses it to toss the hat in Thea’s
direction.