Timelock

by David Klass

  “What’s going on?” P.J. demanded.

  “Just go back to sleep,” Eko told her.

  “I was drugged, wasn’t I? Scott . . . ?”

  “He gave the bartender a pill to slip into your drink. I’d guess GHB. It’s a general anesthetic and a date rape drug. Nice people you hang out with.”

  “I have a terrible headache.”

  “You’ll feel worse before you feel better. Sleep is the best thing for you now.”

  “I don’t want to go to sleep. I want to know what’s going on. What am I doing in this plane? Why did you save me? You don’t even like me. And where are you taking me?”

  Eko glanced at her. “I really don’t think you could handle the answer.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” P.J. told her. “I may have done a few dumb things at that party, but I can handle the truth, and I have a right to know where we’re headed.”

  Eko glanced down at the controls and thought about it for a good ten seconds. She finally answered: “The Amazon.”

  P.J. grimaced. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes,” Eko assured her. “Every hour is precious. We’re about to break the sound barrier. We should arrive before dawn. Lie back and try to sleep.”

  P.J. looked back at her and responded softly but strongly: “You wouldn’t have come for me it you didn’t need my help. With all your powers, I can do something you can’t, and it must be important. So if you don’t want me to fight you every step of the way, you’d better tell me what’s happened. Is Jack okay? Will he be there to meet us?”

  25

  I still don’t understand why you needed me,” P.J. said as the bat-winged plane hurtled silently through the darkness, thirty thousand feet over the Leeward Islands. “Why didn’t they just send Jack back in time to find the watch?”

  “Because the trip might have killed him,” Eko told her. “The passage through time puts tremendous stress on the heart and the central nervous system. A human body needs time to recover. Jack made the jump forward less than two weeks ago. If he tried to come back too soon, he could have a stroke or a heart attack. Even if he made it back and found the watch, he could never have returned with it to the future again, where he’s urgently needed. So bringing him here wasn’t an option. You’re the only other person who knows where the watch was discarded.”

  “But I swear I don’t know,” P.J. almost shouted. She got control of herself. “Jack and I were talking and winding our way through river channels. My mind was on getting out of the Amazon, taking a hot bath, and heading home. I wasn’t watching where we were going. I couldn’t find that bend in the river again in a million years.”

  “You’ll find it,” Eko promised her.

  “No I won’t. I can’t. Look, I’d help if I could. I admit I don’t particularly like being kidnapped by you—”

  “I saved you from being raped.”

  “That’s true. Thank you. And then you kidnapped me for your own purposes. And when I said I didn’t want to go, you knocked me unconscious.”

  “They’re Jack’s purposes, too,” Eko pointed out.

  “You want them to be Jack’s purposes,” P.J. fired back. “From what he’s told me, he’s been as helpless in all this as I am now. He didn’t want to go off to find Firestorm. He was forced to go to the Amazon to try to rescue me. And I bet he didn’t willingly jump into a time machine a week ago. Why don’t you just admit it—you guys hijack our lives for your own purposes and find self-serving ways to justify it.”

  Eko gave her a tiny smile tinged with admiration. “Nice speech. You must be feeling a little better.”

  “My head still aches,” P.J. admitted.

  “Drink some water. Here’s a thermos.”

  “Thanks.” P.J. took a long sip.

  There was a moment of silent connection between the two women that surprised them both.

  “I guess it was pretty stupid of me to get tricked that way,” P.J. said softly. “You want a sip?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Eko took the thermos from her. “It wasn’t your fault. Men are not to be trusted. Now or a thousand years from now, most of them can only think about one thing. Then again, their simplicity makes them much easier to manipulate.”

  P.J. took the thermos back and swallowed a big gulp of cold water. “I bet you’re good at manipulating them.”

  “When I need to be.”

  “Have you had lots of . . . ‘boyfriends’?”

  “Do you mean have I slept with a lot of men?” Eko asked with a smile.

  “Have you?”

  “Not as many as I’d like.”

  “Meaning you haven’t slept with Jack?”

  Eko turned her head and looked at P.J. The beautiful gray eyes glittered.

  “But you’d like to,” P.J. whispered. “I bet you’d do anything to manipulate him into your arms, and I bet you could justify that as part of some cosmic necessity. I feel sorry for you. You lie to yourself about the things that are most important.”

  Eko didn’t reply right away. She touched the controls, and the plane began to descend through thick cloud cover.

  “The notion that I even have to justify anything to you is absurd,” she told P.J. “It may be hard for you to accept this, but your life is insignificant and utterly meaningless when the stakes are considered. As for Jack, he’s fulfilling his destiny. He was born to a family, a fate, a role, and he must accomplish that task.”

  “And, of course, part of that task just happens to be marrying you?” P.J. suggested quietly.

  “It is written that if we save the earth, we will rule together in a new Eden. Our descendants will be as numerous as the sand grains.”

  “You’re nuts,” P.J. told her. “And you’re also wrong. People have the right to choose.”

  The dials showed that they were already down to twenty-five thousand feet. The clouds completely screened their window.

  “We’re almost there,” Eko told her. “I understand now why Jack liked you. Part of it, of course, was nostalgia for his lost childhood. You represent an innocent time that he knows he can never get back, but he still craves. But you’re also strong and smart and I think you really do love him. Unfortunately for you, the more you try to hold on to each other, the more you both will suffer. You’re going to have to forget him.”

  “I can’t and I won’t.”

  The plane darted out of the clouds. They were high over the Andes. Dawn had broken, and golden sunlight was spilling over the crags and slowly seeping into the valleys like yolk from a cracked, magical egg.

  “I can help you forget him,” Eko said.

  “How can you do that?”

  “By getting inside your mind.”

  P.J. looked back at her and fear showed plainly on her face. “No way. I don’t ever want you inside my mind.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no choice,” Eko told her. “That’s how we’re going to find the watch.”

  26

  The emerald carpet stretched as far as P.J. could see in all directions. As the plane flew lower, the green became flecked with glinting sequins connected by silvery threads—the lakes and rivers of the vast Amazon Basin.

  P.J. was feeling stronger, and she tried to hide her recovery from Eko. She didn’t know how she could fight off this powerful woman from the future, but the prospect of a stranger who was also a rival invading her mind and possibly changing her memories was terrifying.

  As she slumped down in her seat, feigning exhaustion, P.J. tried to figure out a way to resist. She clearly didn’t stand a chance with just her bare hands, and there was nothing resembling a weapon in the plane’s tiny cabin.

  Suddenly, the seamless green tapestry below was riven by an impossibly wide, black gash. Even from this height, the dark body of water looked like an inland sea that had somehow been squeezed and elongated. But it was not a sea or even a great lake—it had two banks and flowed from one horizon to the other. “What is it?” P.J. gasped.

  “The Amazon River,” Eko to
ld her.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “There is nothing like it,” Eko agreed softly.

  P.J. glanced quickly at her. Sadness rang in Eko’s voice, and as she looked down at the mighty river, her impassivity slipped for a second and regret and longing showed clearly on her face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Eko answered quickly, dabbing some moisture from the corner of an eye. “It’s just . . . the scale of it is so awesome. It’s got greater river flow than the next eight largest rivers combined,” she mumbled, using her storehouse of facts to try to mask her lapse in self-control. “If you go to the mouth of the Amazon, and then sail out of sight of the coast, you can still drink. That’s how much fresh water is discharged into the ocean. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “You look so sad.”

  Eko returned P.J.’s gaze and nodded.

  For the second time, there was a connection between the two women. “It’s of no consequence,” Eko muttered. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You hate to show emotion because you think it’s a weakness,” P.J. observed, looking back into the glittering gray eyes. “But it’s not. It’s who you are. So tell me. Is it something about Jack? Or your childhood? Did you grow up on a big river like this?”

  Eko hesitated and then whispered, “The opposite.” She looked down at the wide ribbon of dark water and added softly, “If you could see my world. A scorched wilderness of sand and gravel. Mothers and children dying for lack of a drink of water. And then you look down . . . and see . . . what our earth once had to offer . . .”

  “And that’s where Jack is right now?” P.J. whispered back. “In that dying future?”

  “Trying to change things.”

  “If we find the watch, there’s a chance that things might turn out differently?”

  “If we don’t find it,” Eko said, “it’s over.”

  The plane swooped lower over the glistening black river. A flock of brightly plumed birds broke through the tree cover of the near bank and made a rainbow streak of color as they flew out over the dark river.

  “Okay,” P.J. said, “I’m willing to try to help. But I need some kind of guarantee that you won’t hurt me or erase what’s mine.”

  Eko looked back at her. The gray eyes hardened, and the beautiful face regained its sphinxlike demeanor. “There can be no bargaining between us,” she said. “You will help me because you must, and I will do what I need to do. That’s all.”

  Eko stroked the yellow sphere and the bat-winged plane transformed again, but not back into a Cessna. They were now so close to the river’s surface that tiny windblown waves were visible. The wings came together and twisted beneath the body of the craft to form a steel skirt. The engine began blasting a pillow of air down at the water below, while at the same time propelling them forward horizontally at great speed.

  They were now in a futuristic hovercraft, sleek, silent, and perfectly suited to this watery world. They skimmed over the four-mile-wide Amazon, heading swiftly upriver. Eko soon steered them off the main channel, and they began threading their way up its tributaries.

  Occasionally they passed a small village, but it would have been hard for even the keenest lookout’s eyes to spot them. The skin of the hovercraft had a chameleon-like quality that allowed it to match the color of the water, and they were traveling silently and at great speed. The tributaries gave way to smaller rivers, and then to snaking streams, until they finally reached a watery crossroads.

  Eko brought the hovercraft to a stop near a bank, and they floated beneath overhanging trees. “This is as close as I can bring us,” she told P.J. “Only you can get us closer. Do I have to force you to do this?”

  P.J. did not have to pretend to be panicked—she was truly terrified. She merely gave in to her own building hysteria, and began shaking and hyperventilating. “No, I don’t want you to force me,” she gasped. “I’ll do what you say. But I’m afraid. Can I lie down and go to sleep, and pretend it’s . . . like an operation in a hospital?”

  She half closed her eyes and stretched out on the seat, and then leaned back even farther so that her head touched the control panel. Suddenly P.J. spun and grabbed the yellow sphere. She wrenched it off its base, jumped to her feet, and held it over her head. “Don’t make a move or I swear I’ll break this into a million pieces.”

  Eko stood to face her, her eyes flicking from the sphere to P.J., estimating distances and microseconds of reaction time. “That’s just a guidance system,” she said. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  “I sincerely doubt that it’s just a guidance system. I watched you use it to make the plane change shape. I think you need it to accomplish this mission, and I bet there aren’t too many of these gizmos available in the twenty-first century. Right now you’re thinking that maybe you can grab it out of my hands. Are you sure you want to risk that? I’ve seen you move and you’re super-fast, but I can smash it in an instant. So sit back down.”

  Eko studied P.J.’s face, gauging her strength and resolve, and then she sat back down. “Okay,” she said, “I can see that you were playing possum, and you’re stronger than I thought. And you’re right, I do need that to complete my mission. You’ve been very clever. But where do we go from here?”

  “I want to help you find the watch and save your world, and I especially want to help Jack. But we’ll do it my way.”

  “What way is that?” Eko asked.

  “A swap. You go into my mind, and I go into yours.”

  “That’s impossible,” Eko told her. “You know nothing about telepathy.”

  “Any road that can be walked down one way can be walked down the other way, too. I’m sure you can find a way to manage it, since the hopes of the future are at stake.”

  27

  The two women sat on the floor of the hovercraft, facing each other. P.J. still held the yellow sphere in her right hand, ready to dash it to the floor in an instant. It seemed to throb with a faint golden pulse that covered them both in a warm glow.

  P.J. felt her mind being unlocked and entered. As the doorway to her earliest memories was breached, she felt herself passing the other way . . .

  Running. A little girl on unsteady legs, fleeing across a dark wilderness, trying to keep up with a frightened woman who clutched her by the hand. The young girl had seen her father die, and now her mother was badly wounded. There was the horror of being hunted.

  A dark mouth opened and enveloped them. A cave. They ran into blackness, and suddenly they were no longer alone. Glittering eyes studied them. Hands aimed weapons at them. But these weren’t the monsters of the Dark Army. These were humans, dressed in white robes.

  “Take my daughter,” the woman gasped. “Please . . .”

  And then there was a horrible double scream—a woman dying in agony and a little girl wailing as she sensed that she was suddenly alone in the world.

  That double scream billowed into long white robes. Girls and boys. Acolytes. Learning the wisdom of Dann, and the disciplines of the priesthood.

  One dark-haired girl sat by herself. Meditating alone. Fasting while the rest of them ate. Learning to fight in ever more complex movements of punches and kicks, pirouettes and leaps. Practicing the kata over and over through the stormy night when the loneliness was the worst.

  P.J. had never felt such loneliness—it was a live thing, gnawing inside the girl’s stomach. No family and no friends, no one to hold as the thunderstorms howled and ice storms belted down on a desolate, war-racked world.

  And even as P.J. sat, watching the lightning lash the mountains through that solitary girl’s eyes, she was aware of another little girl in a very different place and time, walking down the stairs of a dark house.

  Step by step. As shadows moved on the white walls.

  Those were the shadows Eko saw through little P.J.’s expectant eyes as she left the warmth of the coverlet, and moved from the cozy bedroom with stuffed ani
mals and a night-light, down wooden stairs that creaked, to a living room with a tree in the middle of it.

  The smell of pine. The pile of boxes arranged carefully. Presents under a Christmas tree.

  One present was larger than the rest. Even in darkness, it held a special magic.

  Then morning light and laughter. Music played and there was the smell of something sweet baking. She was opening that large box, with a man and a woman smiling down—her parents—and an older woman, too, with white hair, whose kind eyes seemed to follow her every movement. Wooden legs were revealed. A straight back. An easel!

  She sat before it. The woman with white hair held her hand gently. Her mother stood behind, watching. Three generations of women traced a shape together. The sense of shared joy, of love and belonging, hung in the air.

  And even as Eko experienced that feeling of deep and unshakable family security, she was aware of total chaos and hysteria in a faraway place, as an alarm sounded . . .

  Smoke swirled in the air. Desperate shouts rang out.

  A village was under attack by the Dark Army! P.J. heard those alarms and smelled the smoke from Eko’s childhood as the young ninja warrior plunged into the thick of the fighting, whirling a laser saber, defending women and children who fled for their lives.

  Right in front of her, a little boy was decapitated by a swipe of a razor-sharp claw. His blood pumped out and sprayed the battlefield like a scarlet geyser.

  She turned on the fiend who had struck the blow, dodged a deadly strike, and sliced his chest apart.

  Blood was all around. Piercing death cries shrilled. And tears were shed for an embattled, dying world.

  P.J. saw that world the way Eko recalled it, in a series of indelible images. The lifeless, acid oceans. The parched land, drained of groundwater. The cloudless skies with a merciless sun blistering down through an ever-thinning atmosphere. It was a disaster but it was also a cause. P.J. felt the young woman latch on to that cause as a reason to live.