by Megan Crewe
“Are you all right? What’s going on?”
There’s a note of impatience under his concern. “What do you think’s going on?” I say. “I’m not used to this, remember?”
“Of course I know that, but I didn’t expect— Are you going to be all right?”
“Just let me . . .” I step back, pulling my gaze to the buildings overhead. My fingers close around the beads. Five more shops before the next cross street. A looping script spelling out the name of the restaurant beside us. A slight figure ducking past the green curtains over a third-story window. Three times . . . Three times . . . Three times . . .
Even if I’m not much more than a piece of dust here, all I have to do is float along and play by the rules of this time, this place. Isn’t that what I’ve spent the last decade of my life doing: blending in? This is just a more intense version. I’ve managed to fool my classmates, my friends, my parents; I can handle this.
The queasiness slowly subsides. Win shifts from foot to foot, his gaze fixed on my face. His expression makes me think of a little boy worried he’s broken a favorite toy. I guess I still don’t look so good.
I still don’t feel so good, but I’m okay enough to keep going.
“All right,” I say. “I’m over it. What next?”
Win purses his lips. “Start looking at these,” he instructs, passing his collection of newspapers over to me. “You don’t have to understand them, just see if anything feels odd.”
I study the headlines and the old-fashioned type beneath them as we wander on down the street. A few words with Spanish counterparts catch my eyes—mal and mentir and colère—and here and there one with an English equivalent, but otherwise the articles are a mess of letters to me. I skim each line, flipping pages, while Win accepts more papers. Having something small and concrete to focus on helps me tune out the wide, unwelcoming world around us. When a fresh wave of dizziness threatens, I already have the bracelet in my hand. I spin the beads, and the feeling draws back. There, I’m getting the hang of this.
I glance behind us after finishing my scan of the third newspaper, and tense. A couple of soldiers are striding our way. One is badgering the newspaper-holders they pass, but the other is eyeing Win. I tap Win’s arm.
“Merci!” he says to the latest newspaperman, and tilts his head toward me.
“We’ve caught someone’s attention,” I whisper. Win looks over.
“Nothing from the alarm?”
I shake my head.
“Locals, then,” he says, “but we’re better off not risking a confrontation.”
Setting his hand on the small of my back, he ushers me forward and around a corner. We scramble down the narrow street, ducking behind a small domed church. Win pauses and peeks around it. After a few moments, he nods.
“They haven’t followed us,” he says. “I’d imagine the soldiers here have more important things to worry about.”
Not yet, it seems like. The increasingly narrow streets we continue down are quiet: every voice dampened, every movement restrained. Few people are outside at all, off the main strip. I glimpse faces here and there through greasy windowpanes. I’d pictured passionate shouts and cannon fire, figures stampeding through the streets. That must come later. It’s building up to that, behind all those closed doors.
Or maybe that’s just one more way I’m wrong.
A window creaks open overhead. I glance up in time to give a yelp of warning. A handful of rubbish rains down on us. Mainly on Win: carrot ends smacking his forehead and shoulder, a twist of wire tangling in his hair. Sharp laughter follows as he swipes them away. Two boys lean out of the fourth-floor apartment, one of them making a remark I can’t understand. From the way Win’s face hardens, I suspect it wasn’t complimentary. He walks on, turning back to his newspaper, just as a third boy joins the others, holding what looks distinctly like a chamber pot.
“Win!” I dodge out of the way, pulling him with me, just as the reeking contents of the pot splatter the cobblestones. I grit my teeth against the urge to gag.
The boys jeer as we hustle around the next corner. I don’t know why they decided to target us, but I will not let it get to me. I will focus on being grateful that I managed to avoid being splashed with bodily waste.
Staring down at the smudged print of the newspapers, I try to imagine the guy from Win’s recording here. Jeanant, strolling along the riverside, evading trash in this warren of streets. Holding one of these newspapers with a glint of determination in his eyes. I get the feeling he’d have just laughed at those boys. Every thinking, feeling conscious being deserves our respect.
Sometimes it’s hard even for me to remember that.
I rub my ink-stained fingers on the skirt of my dress, recalling Win’s suggestion that my clothes will blend in better if they’re dirty. Win’s frowning at his own stack of papers.
“This all seems like the sort of rhetoric I’d have expected from the period,” he says. “Interesting, but nothing stands out.”
“Well, Jeanant couldn’t make it too obvious, right?”
“No,” Win agrees, with a weight in his voice that reminds me I’m supposed to be the solution to that problem. I examine my last paper, my heart sinking. What if my sense of wrongness doesn’t even work in this time, other than to tell me how wrong it is that I’m here at all?
12.
We wander on, paging through the newspapers. I get the impression Win is moving without any particular destination in mind, just avoiding lingering anywhere we might draw attention. Down one street, we pass a couple of men in intense conversation. One of them jabs his finger upward, and the other sighs before offering a brief protest. Then the first catches sight of Win and me. His eyes narrow. All at once, he breaks into a low tirade, as if our presence has proven whatever point he was trying to make. I walk on, my eyes trained on my last newspaper.
Win’s only partway through his pile, since he’s actually reading the articles. He hands me a few of the ones he hasn’t gotten to yet, and takes mine to give them a second look. I turn a page, and another. My gaze sticks on a name under a headline.
“How do you spell ‘Jeanant’?” I ask.
“J-E-A-N-A-N-T,” Win says. “It’s unlikely he’d use his real name though . . . But we should probably keep an eye out for his code name, the one he’d have used when our group needed to communicate on public channels. Jeanant went by ‘Meeth’—short for Prometheus.”
Prometheus. I vaguely remember our unit on Greek mythology in elementary school. Prometheus was the guy who stole fire from the gods to give it to mortals, wasn’t he? Like Jeanant bringing freedom from his people to us on Earth? It’s fitting.
Curiosity nibbles at me as I study the article, which looks the same as all the others. No jab of wrongness. “So what’s your secret code name?” I ask. “Or is Win it?”
“No,” Win says. “I didn’t really choose mine. Someone else came up with it, as a joke, and it ended up sticking.”
“Well, now I have to know.”
The silence stretches. “It can’t be that bad,” I say.
He grimaces. “It’s ‘Pogo,’ ” he says. “Which is sort of short for Galápagos.”
“Galápagos? Is that the joke?”
“Not exactly.”
“So . . .”
“It was just Jule being Jule,” he mutters. “He said I was ‘practically bouncing up and down’ when they first let me in on the mission.”
My mouth twitches in amusement. “And what does Galápagos have to do with anything?”
“It’s a long story,” he says briskly. “Why are you asking about names? Did you see something?”
I point out the article. “Do you think this could be Jeanant? It’s kind of like a mix between his name and the code name: ‘Jean Manthe.’ ”
Win snatches the paper from me. “It could be
.”
His eyes light up as he reads the article. “It must be him,” he says. “He uses a line that was in that message to Thlo: ‘the theme of our cause.’ ”
I found the clue after all. “So what’s he say?” I ask, leaning closer.
“He’s sending a message to the ‘true people’ of Paris, that while they should fight for what they deserve, he hopes they’ll take care not to ‘destroy the very treasures that should be theirs’—the museums, the art . . .”
“The other detail you said he mentioned—it was something about paint, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Win says with a grin. “Where better to paint over something than in an art gallery? This article could be both a hint to us and a way of making sure the revolutionaries don’t destroy what he’s left.”
“Where should we look first?” I say. “There are a lot of galleries in Paris, aren’t there?”
“The Louvre existed in 1830,” Win says. “It was converted into an art and history museum not long before now. That seems like our best chance. I think we’re close already.”
He turns right at the next intersection, and I follow, staring up at the buildings that are so tall and close I can only make out the very edge of their roofs. My scalp is sweating under the makeshift shawl. I swipe at a droplet running down the side of my face, and realize I’ve probably smudged newspaper ink across my cheek. Oh well. It’ll fit my costume.
Nothing provokes that quiver of wrongness. But then, my special sensitivity hasn’t done anything for us here so far. We figured out our next destination from a name and information Win already knew. He didn’t really need me.
I shake myself, feeling strangely deflated. It shouldn’t matter. What matters is that we find where Jeanant left his weapon, one way or another.
Finally we come to the edge of a wide tree-lined boulevard. The structure on the other side of the street is so immense my first impression is that it’s a castle. It lords over the road, as high as the several-story buildings we’ve been wandering amid, though the huge arched windows form only three rows across the stone face. Between the windows and along the roof, the stone is carved into fluted columns and cornices and figures human and divine. I itch to step closer, but the scene on the sidewalk out front stops me.
Soldiers in the same blue-and-red uniforms I saw on the bridge are gathered along the promenade by the building’s foot. Some are patrolling, others hauling cannons or barrels, or rocks they’re heaping into rough barricades along the sidewalk. One soldier heads across the road not far from where we stand, and I duck back into the shadows. One of Lisa’s favorite phrases pops into my mind in her breezy voice: Bad news up ahead! Somehow I suspect this would be enough to dull even her usual bravado.
“That’s it,” Win says, as if I hadn’t figured it out. “The Louvre.”
“How are we going to get past them?” I ask, jerking my chin toward the soldiers. They don’t look as though they’re planning to welcome visitors.
Win gives me an amused expression that’s becoming familiar, and lifts the top of his satchel.
I roll my eyes at myself. “Of course.”
“You don’t see anything that seems even a bit off out there?” he asks.
I consider the building and the activity around it once more. The sight of all those rifles and cannons doesn’t exactly soothe my jitters, but nothing stands out.
“No. Sorry.”
“Well, anything painted will be inside. We can start by jumping forward to the end of this revolution. Jeanant could have placed what he wants us to find anytime during the three days, so that’ll give us the best chance of getting there after him. If it looks like the locals have disturbed things inside, we can always work backward.”
“Fine with me,” I say.
Win directs me into the shelter of a doorway, out of view of the windows overhead. He whips the cloth around us. I lift my feet instinctively as the floor of the tentlike shape forms beneath them. Win flicks his fingers, and presses his hand against the data display.
The walls shudder. I stumble, and snatch at the back of Win’s shirt. And the movement stops. We’ve Traveled less than a mile and no more than a couple days, after all.
Then Win pushes open the cloth, and my jaw goes slack.
The walls and floor of the vast hallway we’ve arrived in are lit with an amber afternoon glow, washing in from the few lofty windows nearby. Beside us, a ring of marble figures lounge on polished pedestals, carved in such detail I could have mistaken them for living people if they weren’t so still and stony white. Beyond them, massive paintings line the walls. The curved ceiling looms some twenty feet above our heads, and it’s a work in itself. Sculpted marble and glints of gold surround a scene of cherubs at play.
When I lower my gaze and step toward the paintings, the floor creaks softly. I don’t recognize this image of a woman sitting by a pond, but the style makes me think of the Italian Renaissance. The canvas is taller than me and wider than I could reach with my arms spread. Standing in front of it, only the rippled texture of the brushstrokes stops me from feeling I could step right into the image. I’ve almost touched it before I realize and yank my hand back.
This is probably a masterpiece. Preserved from centuries ago for centuries to come.
And I’m here to see it, in the most famous museum in the world.
Angela would just about explode with artistic excitement. A pang of homesickness wobbles in my chest. I wish she were here, seeing it with me.
Maybe she will be, someday in the future I’m protecting right now. Assuming we can keep following Jeanant’s trail to his weapon.
A sharp cracking sound echoes through the walls, and I flinch. Win is standing by one of the windows, staring outside.
Another shot crackles, somewhere in the distance, beyond the courtyard the window looks down into. The courtyard itself is empty, but past the wing of the museum opposite us, a stream of smoke is curling up toward the deep blue of the late-afternoon sky.
I’ve only heard cannon fire in movies, but the boom that reverberates through the glass a moment later makes me remember the weapons I saw the soldiers hauling. Those cannons were real. That smoke’s from a real fire. It seems so distant, on the other side of the pane, but right now one of those stately buildings we passed just a few minutes and two days ago could be burning down. Real guns are being fired out there; real bodies are fleeing the flames, falling on the cobblestones. The gentlemen and women on the riverside street, the boys who pelted Win . . . people who already died long before I was born are dying again.
I walked among them for an hour or two, but I still have no idea what it was like for any of them, living here in this now. Instead I’m busy thinking of happy futures.
My throat’s closed up. I force the words out. “Do you think we’re safe in here?”
“It looks like Jeanant’s appeal to save the art worked,” Win says, tipping his head toward the vacant courtyard. “Let’s go—we have a lot of ground to cover.”
The sounds of the revolution dwindle when we head down the hall, until all I can hear is the tap of my boots and Win’s shoes. I’m glad to leave it behind, but then I’m pricked by guilt. I was out there wrinkling my nose at the smells and cringing away from the muck, but I can leave. I can slip away into this museum and pretend this is some big vacation, and then I can jump back home, where there are no battles raging in the streets.
But I can’t do anything about the violence out there. So as we walk farther, I let the sense of peace that emanates from the high ceilings and pale walls wash over me. I examine every relic we pass, absorbing lines and colors, expressions and gestures.
This is what humans have created, despite the shifts Win’s people have made: things of beauty, things of meaning, even if most of the symbols and allusions go over my head. It’s amazing.
We reach the end of one hal
l and wander through a series of smaller interconnected gallery rooms before emerging into another grand passageway. Win walks smoothly and efficiently, but when I glance at him, he’s ogling the art as openly as I’ve been.
“You haven’t been here before,” I say.
He shakes his head. “There are a lot of places and periods on Earth,” he says. “I’ve only seen a few. I wish we had time to really take this in.”
He won’t get the chance to later on, if his group succeeds and the generator is destroyed. I don’t know why Earth’s history would matter much to some alien race, but I can imagine how a person could find that freedom hard to let go of.
“You have your own art, don’t you?” I say. “On your planet?”
“My dad creates pictures,” he says hesitantly. “With paint. When he can afford it. He’d be overwhelmed by this place. It’s not the same on Kemya—taking anything artistic seriously is discouraged, so there aren’t really any traditions, any teachers to learn from. You’d find it hard to understand. There’s a saying we have.” He speaks in his native tongue, and then translates. “If it doesn’t build, then it breaks. Making something that doesn’t have an obvious use, it’s considered wasteful, even destructive. What did we lose that we could have had if that person had applied him or herself to something more practical? It makes sense, of course. But I still wonder what we might make, if we had more opportunity.”
Wow. With every new thing he tells me about Kemya, I like the place less. “Do you do anything . . . creative?” I can’t help asking.
His mouth twists. “I copied my dad with the paint a little when I was young, because I wanted to do what he did. Before I knew exactly what people thought about that. Anyway, I didn’t—”
He cuts himself off, and at the same moment I hear it. The faint rapping of footsteps somewhere behind us.
Win nudges me over to the wall, beside a display case holding a row of ornately etched pottery. The alarm band is calm against my ankle. “It can’t be the Enforcers,” I whisper.