Timelock

by David Klass

  “Eko gave me five layers and they’re keeping me pretty warm,” she tells me. But I notice that she keeps hold of my hand. “Jack, we don’t get much time together,” she says. “Talk to me for a minute. Where exactly did you go when you vanished from New York without saying goodbye?”

  “You can’t blame me for that,” I tell her, noticing how the rest of our group has moved a short distance ahead, perhaps to give us a little room to catch up. Eko hangs back near us for a few seconds, and then, almost reluctantly, joins the leaders. “I ducked into a florist on Broadway to buy you flowers,” I tell P.J. “Then some goons from the future drugged me and—”

  “Hold on a minute,” P.J. interrupts, sounding dubious. “You never brought me flowers in your life. Not even on Valentine’s Day.”

  “I was buying you a dozen red roses. I was a construction worker and you were an elusive college girl, but I was trying my best.”

  P.J. flashes me a smile from under her parka hood. “Really? Red roses.”

  “Look what it got me,” I continue. “They put me in some kind of cellular whip-o-matic and I re-formed a thousand years in the future in the middle of a burning-hot sandstorm.”

  “What’s the future like?” P.J. asks. “Is it as bad as Eko says?”

  I watch the snow swirling across the ice sheet, and I remember the sandstorms and the glagour and the barren kill zone where the Garden of Eden once bloomed. “Yeah. As bad as it could be.”

  We trudge along in silence for a few moments, and then P.J. asks, “Did you meet your mom?”

  “Yes. We went on a weeklong journey together.”

  “Meeting her for the first time must have been a little strange.”

  “Luckily I was only half-conscious. She came into my hospital room and took my hand and sang to me, and we both started weeping. Later, we talked and she tried to explain why they sent me away. I was angry with her, but I started to understand . . .” I break off for a second.

  P.J. nods to show that she understands, and then she asks softly, “Did you tell your mom about me?”

  “There wasn’t much time to talk. We were on a mission, fighting for our lives.”

  She’s watching me closely. “I thought you went on a weeklong trip together?”

  “Sure, battling giant lizards and ducking flying snakes.”

  “So you didn’t tell her about me?”

  I stop walking and look at her. “No,” I admit. “It feels like I have two different lives. She’s part of one. You’re part of the other. It’s easiest if I keep them separate.”

  “Easier for who?” P.J. asks. “Aren’t your two lives converging? They have been ever since that man looked at you in the Hadley diner the night after the football game. Now we’re all here together, your dad, your girlfriend from the future, and me, on the same ice sheet. Which is your real life?” she asks. “Which is the real Jack Danielson?”

  I look into her hazel eyes and whisper back, “This feels real to me. Walking next to you. Holding your hand. In Hadley or on an ice sheet in Greenland. But there’s also something I have to do. I was born to do it and I can’t run away from it. That’s all I know, P.J.” I bend and give her a kiss on the cheek. “If it’s not good enough for you, you should go back to New York and try to forget me, and hang out with that lacrosse player.”

  She shivers, and for some reason I don’t think it’s just from the cold. “I’m with the guy I want to be with,” she whispers. “I helped Eko find the Star of Dann. I held it in my hand. I saw. I understood. And I want to help, too. Now, let’s catch up with the others.”

  But as we hike on in silence, her questions keep pulling at me. Why didn’t I tell my mom about her? Which is my real life? Why do I feel like I belong in a world a thousand years from now that I barely know, and that this epoch I grew up in is just a visiting place for me, a temporary stop before my true life’s work begins?

  Kidah, Gisco, my father, and Eko are waiting for us by the side of a gleaming blue lake. As P.J. and I join them, Eko watches us carefully with her glittering eyes.

  I look back at her for a moment. We shared a great deal together, and I can’t hide the fact that I have strong feelings for her. She gives me a little smile of understanding. I smile back. We’re both in difficult positions, now that P.J. has joined our mission. I can see that Eko is trying to balance her feelings for me with her duties to the group.

  Be careful, she advises me telepathically.

  I’m doing the best I can, I answer her. It’s an awkward situation for everyone. You know how much I care about you.

  She means be careful of moulins, Jack, Gisco warns me, and I remember that I’m surrounded by telepaths. This lake was made from melting snow, the dog explains, and it’s draining out now.

  How far does it drain? I ask him.

  All the way to the ground rock, which is twelve thousand feet beneath us. We’re walking over one hundred thousand winters of accumulated snow and ice. But it’s melting now, faster and faster.

  I look over to warn P.J., but just as I do, she lets out a scream as the ice shelf opens beneath her and she slips into a hole. I keep tight hold of her hand, and am yanked in after her!

  56

  The moulin is dark and very steep, a pitch-black bobsled course. I hear P.J. screaming as we pick up speed, and I get one arm around her and pull her close. Eko taught me on the Outer Banks how to avoid unseen obstacles in darkness, and I use that training now to visualize the tunnel ahead and guide us around bumps and ridges. But if this chute drains to the bottom of the ice sheet, we’re about to fall thousands of feet and land on solid rock.

  I claw and kick to find a handhold or foothold that will at least slow us down, but the walls are too slippery. Suddenly the echoing thunder of what sounds like Niagara Falls roars up ahead. Our moulin is about to join a larger drainage chute, filled with surging, freezing water!

  I have to find a way to stop us. I reach my free hand into my coat pocket and take out the handle of my scimitar. It’s made of a futuristic metallic alloy, and tapers to a point. The laser blade won’t do me any good in this ice tunnel, but I grasp the metallic handle and jab the pointed end as deep as I can into the icy wall of the moulin.

  The sharp end of the scimitar handle bites in, and P.J. and I jerk to a stop. The torque almost pulls my arm out of its socket, but I don’t let go.

  “HOLD ME!” I shout to P.J. above the roar of the nearby torrent, and as she clings to me, I take my left hand and feel around for the slightest ridges or cracks that we can use to try to climb higher. The ice walls around us are as smooth as glass. All we can do is hang here and wait until my strength gives out, or until the ice melts from our body heat and my scimitar handle slips free.

  “We can’t last here much longer,” P.J. gasps.

  “There’s no place to go,” I tell her. “The walls are impossible to climb.”

  Beneath us in the darkness, the waterfall roars like a hungry beast demanding its dinner.

  “I’m sorry,” P.J. whispers.

  “For what?”

  “Falling into that hole.”

  “It was pretty well concealed,” I tell her, and my lips graze her ear. “Anyway, they aren’t holes. They’re called moulins.”

  “You never could pronounce French,” she whispers back, and I hear her voice tremble.

  I kiss her on the neck. “I love you,” I say softly.

  “I love you, too, Jack,” she whispers. “I always did and I always will. I guess this is goodbye.”

  Why do you humans persist in being so damn heroic in moments of extreme peril? a familiar canine telepathic voice inquires. Find an escape. Pray to your gods. Play a long shot. But don’t just exchange noble, poignant sentiments and wait for the grim reaper.

  I look around the moulin. Gisco? Are you coming to save us, or are you just going to insult us at long range?

  Dogs can’t climb, and I suffer from a touch of claustrophobia. It’s a family malady. My great-grandfather was once
trapped in a chicken coop for three days and he nearly went mad. Well, it was his own fault. He was hungry and there is a family weakness for poultry . . .

  Gisco, we’re about to fall to our deaths!

  Hold on and fear not. Help is on the way.

  I can feel the scimitar handle loosening. Gisco, help better get here very soon or we’re finished.

  Just a few more seconds, Jack, my father advises me telepathically. Don’t give up.

  P.J. sobs, and I can feel her grip slipping. “Hold on,” I tell her. “They’re sending someone to rescue us.”

  “How do you know?” she asks.

  “Gisco told me telepathically. And my dad.”

  “Tell them to hurry.”

  “I did.”

  “Jack, let me go. My weight is pulling us down. You’re the one they need.”

  “No,” I say.

  “I can’t hold on any longer.” She loses her grip and starts to fall, but as she slides away I grab for her with my left hand and snag her parka hood.

  “Let go,” she pleads. “Save yourself.”

  “They’re coming. We can make it.”

  “They’ll never reach us in time.”

  “They already have,” I tell her.

  A faint blue light illuminates the ice tunnel from above. A shadow descends toward us, sliding swiftly and gracefully down an ethereal blue rope. It’s Eko! She appears to be at the end of the rope, but as she continues to descend, the rope lengthens. As she nears us, she calls out: “Jack, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I answer, “but we can’t hold on much longer.”

  Eko sees the precarious way we’re dangling, and she realizes how dire our situation is. She quickly rappels down to us and says, “Grab my rope.”

  P.J. grabs it and I do, too. Just as my fingers close around it, my scimitar handle slips free from the ice wall. I catch it and tuck it back into my pocket.

  Now the three of us are hanging from the same thin blue rope. “I can’t climb up,” P.J. tells her. “I don’t have the strength.”

  “We’re not going to climb up,” Eko replies. “There’s a much faster and easier way.”

  She clings to the rope with one hand and uses the other to take a small blue disc out of her coat pocket. It’s the size of a CD, and reminds me of the red disc my dad stretched into a flying sled to get us away from the lion cyborgs. Eko fastens it to the end of the rope, just beneath us, and moves her fingers outward. The disc begins to widen out. It increases to the size of a dinner plate, then a car tire, and soon it has the same diameter as the ice tunnel. “Sit on it,” she instructs us. “Keep your balance centered in the middle.”

  We sit there, on top of the stretched-out blue disc, waiting for something to happen. “How are we going to get out of here, if we’re not going to climb?” P.J. asks.

  “Propulsion,” Eko answers.

  “Who or what is going to push us up?” I ask.

  Eko smiles, and then I hear a roaring sound. The torrent beneath us suddenly sounds much closer. I can hear waves slapping against ice walls. Water is being drawn up the moulin, toward us!

  “KEEP YOUR WEIGHT IN THE MIDDLE!” Eko shouts above the roar. A second later, I feel a gentle nudge as the first waves graze the bottom of our blue saucer. The water pressure builds steadily beneath us, and we start rising, faster and faster. Soon we’re flying upward through the chute. I feel like a champagne cork flying out of the bottleneck.

  A circle of sunlight shines down from far above like a halo. We speed toward it, and burst out onto the ice. Water geysers above us for a few seconds, and then recedes back into the hole as Kidah slices his arm through the air in what looks like a karate chop. The thin blue rope vanishes back into the Star of Dann.

  “Are you guys okay?” Kidah asks.

  “Never better,” I tell him. “Thanks for getting us out of that tight spot.”

  “I just put some water to good use,” he says. “You should thank the gal who climbed down to you.”

  I turn to Eko, but P.J. has beaten me to it. “That’s the second time you saved me,” she says, her hand on Eko’s arm. “I’m sorry I made you risk your life.”

  “It might turn out to be a good thing after all,” Eko tells her.

  P.J. looks back at her. “How could it be a good thing?”

  “Because we’re very close to the ice fortress where the Dark Lord and the Omega Box have holed up,” my father explains. “Our best chance against them is a surprise attack.”

  And you and Jack just showed us a very original way to go in through the back door, Gisco adds telepathically.

  I look at his face, and then I turn to my father and the wizard. “You’re not going to try to slide into their ice fortress through moulins? It’s too dangerous. Believe me, I’ve been in one.”

  Kidah gives me a grin. “Oh, I believe you. That’s exactly why we think it might work.”

  57

  We press on across the ice sheet and snow begins to fall. At first the soft flakes are welcome, but it’s soon snowing so hard that we can barely see. The wind picks up, too, and blasts the fallen snow back up into our eyes, so that every step becomes a slippery adventure. We walk in each other’s footsteps, five people and a dog sharing their fates like mountain climbers tethered together.

  I don’t think that even Kidah would be able to stay on the Dark Lord’s trail through this storm if he didn’t have help. Arctic foxes trot ahead of us, and I see white owls with great wingspans diving in and out of the billowing blizzard. We reach the top of a ridge just in time for me to spot a polar bear rear up on its hind legs and then duck out of sight and vanish in a puff of new-fallen powder.

  P.J. sees the huge bear, too, and reacts.

  “He’s on our side,” I tell her. “There’s a much narrower web of life here than in the Amazon, but we’ve got friendly eyes and ears on every glacier.”

  Kidah stretches out his arms to stop us. “They’re very close,” he announces. “The good news is that our journey will soon be over!”

  “And the bad news?” I ask him.

  The wizard gives me a mischievous smile, and his eyes glint. “I’m afraid the weather is about to take a turn for the worse.” He holds the Star of Dann high in one hand while he moves his other arm in slow circles, as if stirring water in a cauldron.

  The sky darkens, and wind blasts down at us in savage gusts that knock P.J. and me back several steps.

  My father catches us, and for a moment P.J. and I share his safe, fatherly embrace. “Stay low,” he counsels.

  “We are staying low,” I tell him. “Trying to walk in this storm is crazy.”

  “It’s as hard for them as it is for us,” he says. “We need to pin them down and blind them.” He releases us back to the winds.

  You’re staying low, but you’re not low enough, Gisco advises. I notice the savvy hound is now practically slithering along on his belly. Unless I’m mistaken, this is a katabatic wind.

  A what? I ask as P.J. and I stagger forward, holding on to each other and crouching down.

  A rare and dangerous weather pattern. It’s a powerful drainage wind that blows off a mountain or glacier. Air becomes denser as its temperature drops, and it starts flowing downward, faster and faster.

  Eko silently takes my other arm. It feels very strange for me to walk with these two women who I’ve shared so much with on either side of me. But there’s no other way to move forward—we might all get sucked off the ice at any moment and blow away to Oz.

  How strong can one of these katabatic winds get? I ask Gisco.

  There’s something called a Piteraq, he tells me. It’s a hurricane-force katabatic wind that can form over the Greenland Ice Sheet when conditions are just right. A Piteraq can blow right off the scale.

  Great, I say. I take it that they’re just right?

  Yes. I believe we’re smack in the middle of a Piteraq.

  How do we get out of it?

  Find shelter immediately or die! the dog
replies without hesitation. And my mother didn’t go through the pains of birthing a litter just to have her favorite son glaciate on this ice sheet. Follow me! And he bravely crawls out in front of our slow-moving column.

  My father and Kidah link arms and fall in behind Gisco. I watch them stagger along ahead of us—even the wizard and the King of Dann struggle to take each forward step.

  Suddenly, we see snow rising off the ice sheet in an endless column reaching to the dark sky. A cyclonic wind is heading toward us, and we can hear the shrill howl as it spins closer and closer.

  P.J., Eko, and I stop walking. There’s nothing to do and nowhere to run. We just stand there, holding each other and waiting for it to hit.

  The mesocyclone slams into Gisco first, since he’s out in front. He dives flat and tries to hug the face of the ice sheet, but the wind lifts the hunkered-down hound off his stomach and blows him back at my father and Kidah like a canine bowling ball. Whoa! he howls telepathically. Somebody catch meeeeeeee!

  My father and Kidah crouch low to absorb the impact, but Gisco slams into them with all the force of the raging Piteraq. Gisco, Kidah, and my dad are swept back toward us. I see flailing limbs and white hair and a wagging tail flying at us like a giant living snowball in an avalanche.

  I get into my best tackling stance and try to hit them low and at least slow them down, but the impact combined with the ripping wind is impossible to resist. Eko and P.J. are thrown over along with me, and we’re all blown backward together, totally at the mercy of the gale.

  We spin and scrape and slide at terrific speed, six out-of-control windsurfers with no way to steer or apply the brakes. I fear we’ll be blown clear across the ice sheet, but after two or three minutes we thunk into something large and hard that stops us cold.