by Deen Ferrell
“No… Wait—there’s one more thing I remember. They mentioned some guy called Mr. B. Not sure what his involvement is.”
“While I’ve been hiding in the vents, I’ve heard a lot about a guy named Gates. I saw him once. He’s a big black guy. I heard him mention reporting to Mr. B. I think he may be the one in charge of the whole thing.” They all went silent, leaving only the soft hiss of air from the vent to cover the sound of their breathing. T.K. broke the silence.
“Wait…I could swear H.S. went into his cabin the last time he visited us and never came out. Could that mean something?”
“His cabin,” James Arthur mused.
Antonio leaned back. “Yes. H.S. would have wanted to control access. His cabin is a good guess, I think.”
“I understand very little of this conversation, but am I right in assuming we head for H.S.’s cabin?”
“Yes,” Antonio grunted quietly. “Can you lead the way and get us there without being heard?”
T.K. paused. She seemed to be thinking through the route in her head. “It’s doable,” she said. “We’re on the right side of the ship and most of the cabins on this floor were unoccupied. It’ll take a good hour to cover the distance at the rate we’re going, though. Can you make it Antonio?”
“I’ll make it,” Antonio said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Dr. J, you go first, Antonio, you can be second, and I’ll bring up the rear.”
“How will I know where to go?”
“Keep straight the same way we were going until about mid ship where you’ll feel airflow going up. You’ll also feel a rope. I bolted one in at the vertical vent before anyone came on board. The Captain sometimes asks me to keep an eye on things. That’s part of the reason I wasn’t captured like the rest of you. You’ll climb up two floors, and then turn left. We need to go very slow so that we minimize the noise. There is a maintenance closet two grates over after we re-enter the horizontal vents. We can stop there for another brief rest, and I’ll give the rest of the directions. I have the key to the closet, so it will also be locked. Ready?”
“Does it matter?” Antonio grinned weakly.
“No,” T.K. admitted. “It just seemed civil to ask.”
“Civility is high on my list at the moment,” Dr. J chimed in with an equally weak grin. He then sighed, rose to his knees, and climbed back into the narrow vent.
23
Numbers on Air
Willoughby tossed and turned in a fitful dream. He was a child no more than three. A man towered over him—a thin, angular man, rubbing a sparse, black goatee. A woman’s voice called out: “Gustav, it’s for you! Some guy calling long distance from England. He has a British accent. Any idea who would be calling you from Cambridge?” The man seemed deep in concentration, looking out over a chessboard with eight pieces on it. His face clouded over. “Yes, I do. Tell him I’ll call him back.” The man rearranged the pieces on the board, seeming to brood, and then he looked over, noticing Willoughby for the first time. He smiled.
“So, what do you think of my chessboard?”
Willoughby looked at the chessboard. Something was wrong. The pieces were all wrong, but he didn’t know why. He didn’t answer.
“You don’t know what to think of it, do you?” his father continued. “It’s not chess that I’m playing here. I’m working on a famous puzzle. That’s why there are eight different kinds of queens on the board and nothing else. See, to solve the puzzle, you have to find all the ways that the eight queens can be placed on the chess board so that no queens are able to attack each other. That means that no two queens can share the same row, column, or diagonal. It’s not as easy as it sounds. This is a row, this is a column, and this is a diagonal. Now, this is the last queen I have to place. Can you see where I can place it where no other queen is on that row, column, or diagonal?” He turned the board so that Willoughby could see it better. After a long moment studying the board, Willoughby pointed to a square. Gustav’s face beamed.
“Good,” he said, “very good. You see patterns and potentials in the world around you. That’s a gift, Willoughby. Don’t take it for granted. This ability may come naturally to you but it doesn’t to many others. Some work their whole lives and never develop an ability to see with the clarity and understanding that you do. These words may not mean a lot to you now, but try to repeat them in your mind. Try to remember them.”
Willoughby felt himself slowly becoming conscious. Why had this dream come to him now? It was one of the last memories Willoughby had of his father—his father asking him to try to remember. Even at his young age, he had tried to listen, to understand, to remember the words his father said. Were they really the same as they had been in the dream? Who could say? He only knew that this dream had come to him several times, and the words didn’t change. The dream had come frequently before he turned eight, and then less frequently. This was the first time he had thought of those words since his twelfth birthday.
Willoughby became vaguely aware that he was shaking. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to focus his mind. He was done with the dream now. Why couldn’t he wake? He took another breath and remembered the nausea and searing pain in his shoulder. He turned his mind back to the dream in order to force himself to think.
When had it been that he finally began looking for the puzzle his father was working on in the dream? He forced his mind back. He had started looking for it toward the end of second grade, but it wasn’t until third grade that he had found it. The Eight Queens Puzzle soon became a favorite pastime. He had worked out scores of solutions. He read about the puzzle’s history. Proposed in 1848 by a chess player named Max Bezzel, the puzzle had attracted many mathematicians over the years, including Gauss, Cantor, Nauck, Gunter, and even James Glaisher. It was primarily his interest in this puzzle that had drawn him toward higher-level mathematics and especially unsolved mathematical puzzles. In a way, this had been the beginning of his road to uncovering the solution to the Riemann Hypothesis.
His mind finally focused and his shivering stopped. He cracked open his eyes. He was flat on his back in a dark room. Was it the room where he had been locked in the chest with Sydney? It felt different. He could hear Sydney speaking in low tones with someone nearby. The answering voice had an Irish accent. Dr. O’Grady! He tried to sit up, but felt an immediate wave of dizziness. He made out piles of broken furniture and scattered belongings all around him in the dim light. He eased himself back down. They must have dragged him or carried him somehow to this place. Where was he? He tried to remember details from before he passed out. He vividly recalled the cramped cedar chest and the searing pain in his shoulder. He remembered the other girl—the one with wavy black hair—who had helped them. He remembered being helped out of the chest and a strange conversation while sitting on the bed. The other girl had wanted them to find something. What was it? He remembered Sydney asking him if he thought the girl was crazy. Why? Because she thought there was a gateway onboard! He had told Sydney it was in H.S.’s cabin. He had tried to tell her to just trust him. Could this be where they were?
He let his eyes trail around the room again. For as far as he could see, the room had been reduced to rubble; drawers had been dumped onto the floor; shelves hastily emptied; bedding torn off beds and mattresses split open. All the wreckage had been piled into heaps several feet high on the floor. Had Sydney and O’Grady done this? Of course they hadn’t. Those men—the hijackers—they must have ransacked the room earlier. He thought again of the girl from his school. Why had she helped them?
O’Grady burst out in a frustrated whisper. “I don’t see any gateway, Miss Sydney. Surely, had there been one, it would have been found when they tore the room apart. Are ya sure the lad was in his right mind? We’ve been over every inch of the room, and those murderous brutes seem to have been quite thorough.”
“He said it’s here,” Sydney snapped, keeping her vo
ice low. “Besides, it’s logical. Where else would H.S. put it so he could slip on and off the ship as he pleased? It’s got to be here.”
Willoughby opened his mouth to let them know he was conscious, but stopped himself. Where was the gateway? He had glimpsed the numbers floating in air, but what did that really mean? True, he had seen the numbers near the gateway at the Certus Grove and at Antonio’s shop, but how close did that mean the gateway was? It could be one floor up, or one floor down, or somewhere else in one of the nearby cabins. Still, what Sydney said was true; if H.S. wanted to slip on and off the ship without being noticed, his cabin was the most logical place for him to hide it. He stared around at the walls…nothing. Had he gotten them to drag him all this way without being caught only to tell them now that he wasn’t sure where the gateway actually was? He had to think! He had to clear his mind.
The voice of Gustav came back to his mind. “You see patterns and potentials in the world around you.” Patterns and potentials… As the words faded, he eyed the room once again.
“Do you remember exactly what the boy said?” Dr. O’Grady asked, breaking the silence.
“Well,” Sydney whispered, “he, he said something about numbers floating in the air and then he was out again.”
“Ah,” Dr. O’Grady sighed, “and did he happen to mention Bigfoot?”
Willoughby ignored the conversation, turning his head slowly. He focused on any faint traces of light that seemed to burn against his eyelids. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he noted a brief glare. He turned to look at it straight on. It was near the front of the room, coming from a slice of chilling blackness. He stared at it, concentrating, coming to realize that it was one of the cabin’s closets. The closet door was partly ajar. He studied the door inch by inch in the dimness, forcing his mind to fill in details he couldn’t see. The bulbous handle on the door emitted a soft, momentary glow. Spirals of ghostly numbers curled and flexed around the glow, seeming to float in the air. He pointed feebly.
“There,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
Sydney spun. “You’re conscious!”
“There—where does it go?”
“Where does what go?”
“That slice of darkness.”
Sydney bent down to help him to a sitting position. She looked where he was pointing. “Uh, that’s a closet.”
“It’s also the gateway. Help me over there. Any idea where it connects?”
“No. I only heard about it when your, uh, your girlfriend told us about it.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Huh. I don’t think she knows that.” Sydney said as she and Dr. O’Grady heaved him to his feet. “She was certainly protective of you, thankfully.”
Willoughby didn’t have the energy to reply. Already, he was feeling nauseated and dizzy. “Just get me to the closet,” he hissed in a low whisper.
“Do ya think you can figure it out, lad?”
“I don’t know,” Willoughby said. “I’ll try.”
As Sydney and Dr. O’Grady helped him navigate the wrecked room, they heard something else further down the hallway. It was a voice, and then footsteps, coming closer. They picked up the pace. The voices were only two cabins away. They skirted around the last pile of rubble. Footsteps were only one cabin away. They stepped into the closet.
“Quick—shut the door,” Sydney whispered to Dr. O’Grady in a voice that was barely audible. The closet went pitch black and silent. Willoughby breathed heavily. His heart was so fast he wondered if the others could hear it. They were breathing hard as well. He put a hand against the wall, hoping to stop his head from spinning. With his other hand, he reached out and touched the knob to the closet door. It felt incredibly cool to the touch and spun in his hand like the lock to a safe.
They listened, perfectly still. There were loud voices in the doorway to the cabin, and then the voices seemed to move away. When the room again was silent, Willoughby spoke. “I think this knob is directional—like some sort of tuning mechanism.”
He turned the knob carefully, noting each time the number strings around it spiked in intensity. Each time this happened, he changed the knob’s direction. On the fifth number, something happened. There was a clicking sound from the door and then the sound of bolts shooting into place. From outside the closet, someone yelled something that was inaudible. Someone was still there!
Willoughby paused for a long moment. The knob now physically glowed so that all in the closet were illuminated in its eerie light. Was the glow visible from the outside the closet?
“Is this what ya have been seein’, my lad?” O’Grady asked, leaning over to whisper in his ear. “Are we moving? Where will it be taking us?”
Willoughby shook his head. It didn’t make sense! The door had locked. The numbers were there. Why hadn’t they entered the time gateway? He clutched at the walls of the closet, determined not to faint again. There was another shout from outside, then a thundering bang as something heavy hit against the outside wall.
“They know we’re here,” Sydney hissed. “They’re trying to break in. What do we do, Willoughby?” There was panic in her voice. She, too, groped at the closet wall. Willoughby turned his attention back to the device. The knob was still glowing bright orange. He moved toward the door just as a second bang sounded. He pushed his hand against the inside of the door. It was cool and when his hand touched it, he felt a slight suction. On impulse, he threw himself against the door. He felt an immediate tug that sent him spinning, falling through open space. It was like a dream. Numbers blazed past in blistering streaks of light, whirling around his appendages like water around a bubble. He could barely open his eyes for the brightness. He noted strands of differing sizes as they occasionally slowed just long enough for him to catch hints of their equations. Within seconds, they had sped back into solid streaks of light. He felt a tug of g-force, like riding a killer rollercoaster, but did not feel the sensation of being pulled apart and slammed together again that had marked his first visit with H.S. Suddenly, all number streaks slowed. When they stopped completely, he felt himself slam onto a soft, springy floor. His head pounded and his eyes did not seem to want to focus.
He tried to right himself, to push himself up. There was an odd smell—a smell of sweat, dust, and something else—was it fish? The light was dim. He barely had time to move when someone slammed into him from behind. He was knocked flat again. Seconds later, another body fell on top of them. The three bodies struggled to get up and out of the tangled heap they had become. Willoughby felt smothered, like he couldn’t breathe. He choked, struggling to pull himself free, even as he felt consciousness once again ebbing away. He crawled slowly forward a few paces and began to retch.
24
Snake in a Basket
The three made relatively good time, Antonio thought. He concentrated on slow, steady movements that made little sound. Whenever they heard voices, or footsteps, they froze until the sounds went away. Once, they had been forced to lie motionless for what seemed twenty minutes while two foul-mouthed men searched a cabin. The men seemed to be searching every cabin, but luckily, they had been moving in the opposite direction down the row of crew berths.
When they reached the knotted rope T.K. had hung in the vertical shaft, however, stealth was more difficult. They had to move more quickly and it was almost more than Antonio could manage to pull himself up. In the end, James Arthur had turned onto his back and dangled his legs down, instructing him to grab hold of his legs. He then slowly pulled Antonio up the rest of the way, while T.K. pushed from below. The three lay panting in the vent once all of them had cleared the bend in the pipe and could rest horizontally. Finally, T.K. tapped Antonio’s ankle, signaling for him to continue, and Antonio had passed the word on to Dr. J. A few minutes later, James Arthur found the grate to the maintenance closet. It took him a few minutes to quietly remove it and make enough room for
the three of them to huddle together.
“So, are you a spy?” Antonio at last asked after they had sat in silence for a moment, their backs leaning against boxed equipment. He directed the question at T.K.
“So, are you a secret paramilitary organization beaming people around in time and space?” T.K. countered.
James Arthur gave a slight grin. “You hear that, ASEC? We look paramilitary.”
Antonio moaned. “We are in no way military. We are dedicated only to science and history.”
“And that’s why this ship has a hidden nuclear reactor, a titanium hull, and laser cannons?”
Antonio was quiet for a moment. “So,” he finally said. “You know your ship.”
“Of course I know my ship,” T.K. whispered back, a hint of irritation in her voice.
“A titanium hull and lasers could be for Arctic exploration.”
“Or they could be for some sort of covert military operations.”
James Arthur raised an eyebrow. Antonio noted the look with irritation. “You could jump in you know, Mr. JAWs.”
Dr. J forced a wider grin. “Oh, but you’re doing so well!”
Antonio turned back to T.K. “We are on a mission to learn more about the seer, Nostradamus. Do you know of him?”
“Of course,” T.K. shrugged. “He’s the guy that predicted the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.”
Antonio tried to roll his eyes, though with the swelling, it looked more like he was suffering from an eye tic. “I see you peruse the internet.”
T.K. nodded. “Of course, but that doesn’t mean I believe it.” She looked away. “The Captain taught me to be curious and keep an open mind. He found me when I was, when I was little and alone. He became like a father to me.”