Oh no, Jonah thought, little prickles of panicky sweat breaking out on his forehead.
On his trip to 1918 he and Katherine and their friends had had to use a severely limited Elucidator set up to manipulate them into doing only what Gary and Hodge wanted.
Of course Gary and Hodge wouldn’t have handed Charles Lindbergh an Elucidator that unlocked all the possibilities of time travel for him. Of course they wouldn’t have let him have that much power.
Of course they wouldn’t have trusted him.
Hadn’t the Elucidator already told him it was programmed to be limited?
“Okay, okay,” Jonah said, trying to calm himself down. “I know this Elucidator was used before to turn people thirteen years and three months old. So make Katherine that age again.”
She would make a big deal about being the exact same age as Jonah, and it’d be really annoying. But he could put up with that while she helped him fix everything else, couldn’t he?
But the Elucidator was still flashing objections: THAT FUNCTION HAS BEEN DISABLED NOW AS WELL.
“What?” Jonah said. “But you just did that. You made her thirteen this morning!”
Well, this morning in a different century. But Jonah thought the Elucidator would know what he meant.
AND THEN AFTER THE AGE CHANGE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, CHARLES LINDBERGH RESET MY FUNCTIONS SO I COULD NO LONGER DO THAT, the Elucidator explained.
Charles Lindbergh figured out how to tamper with the Elucidator’s settings? Jonah thought with begrudging respect.
In his own time travels Jonah had barely managed to get Elucidators to do what they were set to do when they were supposed to obey him.
But maybe on this Elucidator I would have the Lindbergh skill? Jonah wondered.
He started to bend down to peer more closely at the Elucidator. But that motion made him more aware of everything flowing past him: Time. Space. Choices. Changing the Elucidator could take ages, and he probably didn’t have much more than a few more moments to play around with.
He glanced at baby Katherine once more: She was blowing spit bubbles.
“Okay, last try,” Jonah told the Elucidator. “What age can you make Katherine?”
FOUR MONTHS OLD, the Elucidator glowed back at him. THAT WOULD BE A SUBTRACTION OF TWENTY MINUTES AND EIGHT SECONDS. WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO MAKE THE CHANGE?
“Don’t bother,” Jonah muttered.
He resisted the urge to bang his hand against his head—or smash the Elucidator over his knee.
Focus, he reminded himself.
He could feel Outer Time rushing past him and Katherine. They seemed to be speeding up.
“Tell me where we’re going,” Jonah commanded the Elucidator. “And then tell me my other choices.”
THIS IS WHERE YOU’RE HEADED, the Elucidator flashed at him. It showed a very precise time and date and location. But it was somewhere Jonah had already been: his family’s living room at 6:57 that morning. As far as Jonah could tell, it was probably the very moment that Katherine had vanished.
“Are you kidding?” Jonah complained. “I already lived through that moment! If I went back, it’d create a paradox! It’d unravel time! It’s not even physically possible for you to send me there, is it?”
The Elucidator flashed a lengthy answer at him, which seemed to be explaining all the theories of time. It was like scrolling through all the legal fine print for accepting a software upgrade on a computer. Jonah didn’t know anybody who ever read all that.
Well, except my dad—my adoptive dad, Jonah thought nervously. But even he would say this is an emergency, and it’s okay to cut corners now.
Jonah caught sight of the name Second Chance—his other enemy besides Gary and Hodge—and that was all he needed to see.
“Never mind,” he told the Elucidator. “Just tell me the other times and places you can take me. And make sure you don’t list any moment in time where Katherine and I have already been.”
THEN YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES, the Elucidator flashed at him. YOU CAN GO BACK TO 1932, BUT ONLY AT THAT NEW JERSEY AIRFIELD WITHIN A LIMITED TIME RANGE.
Where Gary and Hodge would just finish the task of recapturing me? Jonah thought. No, thanks.
“Or?” he challenged, glancing anxiously toward the lights of the future speeding toward him, faster and faster.
OR YOU CAN GO TO THE SCENE OF THE TIME CRASH, the Elucidator began.
“You mean, my time crash?” Jonah asked. “Thirteen years ago, at that airport, when the planeload of babies appeared out of nowhere? You know I can’t go there! I was on that plane!”
I CAN LAND YOU THERE UP TO THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE TIME CRASH, the Elucidator flashed back at him. Jonah didn’t know how the Elucidator could convey exasperation with just flashing lights, but it really did seem annoyed with him. YOU WEREN’T PRESENT IN THAT TIME THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE TIME CRASH. AND NEITHER WAS KATHERINE.
Why would I want to go there? Jonah wanted to shout at the Elucidator.
But with time speeding past him faster and faster, maybe his brain sped up a little too. An idea jumped into his mind. Maybe there was a good reason for him to go to the scene of the time crash a half an hour before it happened.
“Okay! Okay!” he screamed at the Elucidator. The winds of Outer Time ripped the words from his mouth, and baby Katherine started wailing at the brutality of the forces pounding against her tiny frame. Jonah clutched her even tighter and struggled to say what he had to say.
“Take! Us! Then!” he bellowed into the Elucidator. “Take us to thirty minutes before the time crash!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
They landed on the runway.
“Ha-ha,” Jonah muttered. “Very funny.”
He seemed to be flat on his back, with baby Katherine lying on his chest and the Elucidator clutched in his right hand. The Elucidator felt smaller—oh, it was a digital camera now, not a boxy 1930s type. Jonah blinked up at the blurry runway lights instead. The timesickness seemed to be having an odd effect on him, making the lights seem to stream closer and closer with each moment that passed.
Closer? he thought groggily.
He squinted, trying to bring the lights into focus against the twilight sky. Then he bolted upright.
Oh, crap! Those lights really are getting closer! They’re on an airplane!
The motion and panic made Jonah dizzier than ever, but he managed to clutch Katherine to his chest and scramble across the concrete.
Hmm . . . maybe it’s better if I don’t crawl parallel to the runway lines? Jonah wondered.
He rolled off the cement into frozen mud, just as a huge jet zoomed past him.
“Is there some requirement that you had to put me down in a life-threatening situation?” he shouted at the Elucidator.
YOU SAID TO LAND AT THE SITE OF THE TIME CRASH, the Elucidator flashed back at him. THIS IS THE SITE.
Jonah looked back at the runway, empty now that the jet had zipped on by.
So that’s where we all landed, he thought numbly. Me and the other thirty-five kids. Thirteen years ago. Er, no—where we’re going to land. In thirty minutes. Or maybe just twenty-five or twenty-six now?
He looked down at the Elucidator.
“Can you start a countdown to when the time crash is supposed to happen?” he asked. “So I know how much time I have left?”
He almost expected the Elucidator to refuse, but red numerals glowed at the top of the camera frame: 24.
I’ve already wasted six minutes just landing and getting off the runway? Jonah thought in dismay.
He struggled back up to his feet, wrapping his arms more tightly around baby Katherine. She whimpered slightly.
“Sorry, kid. We’ve got to hurry,” Jonah muttered to her.
Standing upright, Jonah felt horribly exposed by the runway lights—for now that the jet was out of the way, he could see the actual lights lining the runway.
It’s probably a felony or something for people who don’t work at the airport to
walk around on the runways, Jonah thought. I’m probably just asking to be busted by security.
Jonah glanced wistfully at a ditch to the side of the runway—should he crouch down there, and maybe commando-crawl toward the terminal?
No time for that, Jonah told himself.
Just then the red 4 on the Elucidator’s countdown clock blinked out and was replaced by a 3. He had twenty-three minutes left.
“Here goes nothing,” Jonah muttered to baby Katherine.
He held her tight against his chest and took off running blindly toward the brighter lights of the terminal off in the distance. He was close enough to see the Jetways dangling from the side of the building like so many caterpillars; near the scattered planes parked beside the terminal he could see baggage handlers driving carts labeled SKYTRAILS AIR.
SkyTrails Air—that’s the airline Angela worked for thirteen years ago! he thought excitedly.
No—that was the airline Angela worked for now. Today. Right at this moment. He was in the time he still thought of as thirteen years ago. He was at the airport on the one and only day Angela worked for SkyTrails.
And Angela was the person he needed to see and talk to sometime within the next twenty-three minutes.
It’s probably not a good idea to ask one of the baggage handlers if they know where I can find her, Jonah told himself.
He was close enough now that if any of the baggage handlers looked his way, they’d see him. And then they’d probably yell and set off alarms—and make it impossible for him to get in to see Angela.
Jonah stopped running and crouched down beside the front wheel of a small SkyTrails jet parked near the terminal.
A baggage handler parked a cart full of suitcases next to the jet.
Okay, run over behind that next, Jonah told himself. And then . . .
And then there was a long stretch of open concrete between him and the airport terminal.
Can’t be helped, Jonah thought. He clutched baby Katherine to his chest and took off running again.
There was an open door in the shadows under one of the Jetways. Jonah was already stepping through it before it occurred to him that he would probably be entering baggage-handler territory: a place of conveyor belts loaded with suitcases and big burly men who were so used to throwing around fifty-pound bags that they’d probably think nothing of pummeling Jonah.
Jonah struggled to come up with a decent excuse: How about, ‘My baby sister was crying so much they made us get off the plane, right in the middle of the runway’? No, that doesn’t sound plausible. . . .
Then he blinked and realized the doorway just led into an empty stairwell.
Wouldn’t that be a huge security violation, having an open door like that? he thought uneasily. Should I be suspicious, that maybe this is a little too . . . easy?
The Elucidator showed that he had only twenty-two minutes left. He didn’t have time to be suspicious.
“Gaa,” baby Katherine said, waving her arms as though she approved of getting inside, away from the cold. The stairwell even had a heater roaring loudly at the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh, right, I guess you are just wearing . . . ,” Jonah began, looking closely at Katherine’s clothing for the first time. She was wrapped in a pink-and-purple-striped blanket over some sort of white cotton nightie or . . .
No. She was wrapped in the pink-and-purple-striped sweater she’d put on that morning as a sixth grader getting ready for school. It just looked like a blanket because it was so much larger than her body now that she was a four-month-old baby. And the white cotton “nightie” below was a strategically knotted version of the T-shirt she’d been wearing this morning too.
“So, um, no diaper?” Jonah muttered, patting Katherine’s rear.
That was yet another reason he needed to hurry.
He crept up the stairs and was relieved to find them empty all the way up to the next level. He came to a closed door and opened it just enough to see out into the long crowded hallway of passenger waiting areas. Nobody was looking his way, so he stepped out. He started to let the door shut behind him, but at the last minute he grabbed the handle.
Don’t forget your escape route, he told himself.
He saw a crumpled-up gum wrapper on the floor and slid it back between the door and the door frame to keep the door from latching completely.
Brilliant, he told himself.
He so wished Katherine were her correct age right now, so she could admire his genius.
But she’d probably just tell me I should be focusing on what’s next, he thought.
He did need to be focusing on what was next.
Blend in so nobody kicks you out before you find Angela, he told himself.
He stepped out onto the broad carpeted area where people were walking from the security checkpoint to their gates, or from just-landed planes toward the baggage-claim escalator. He wasn’t sure how much he could blend in when he was wearing 1920s knickers and a nerdy-looking pullover sweater—and carrying a baby wrapped in a teenager’s clothes—but he tried to plaster a cheerful look on his face that said, Hey! I belong here!
For all his experience with time travel, Jonah was surprised at how odd it felt to be just thirteen years away from his regular time period. The colors seemed too bright somehow. The Christmas decorations hanging from the ceiling looked too big. The carpet he was walking on looked too new—probably because it was supposed to be another eight years before he’d remember seeing it, from that time his family flew to Florida when Jonah was in second grade. A man in a business suit walked past telling another guy, “Hey, did you see my new cell phone? Newest model Sprint has!”—and he was holding out a flip phone, of all things.
Honestly, there were even people walking around with what looked like portable CD players instead of iPods.
Jonah was turned around looking at someone wearing prehistoric-looking headphones rather than earbuds, when he bumped into an airline worker in a navy blue uniform.
“Watch where you’re going!” she snapped.
Before Jonah had a chance to apologize, she stepped around him, leaving a ghostly tracer version of herself to walk straight through him.
Of course she left a tracer, moving away from me, Jonah thought. Well, just wait another twenty minutes or so, lady. When the planeload of babies lands, this airport is going to be overrun with tracers!
And then something struck Jonah with such force that he stopped in his tracks.
In his first thirteen years of life, he had never once seen a tracer. And he should have. Anyone who traveled through time could see tracers, and Jonah had made his first trip through time when he was only four months old. His entire childhood had been a time-travel disruption. Practically every move he’d ever made should have set off a flurry of tracers.
Maybe it didn’t because I was so young the first time I traveled through time? he thought. Maybe there’s some kind of age limit—time travelers can see tracers only after their first time trip that they’re aware of?
But baby Katherine, in Jonah’s arms, was definitely peering directly at the stream of tracers Jonah had just created in the middle of the airport hallway, as everyone had to step around him. Her eyes were wide and scared, and she gave a little gulp every time one of the ghostly figures brushed past her. She reached out as if trying to stop the tracer of a SkyTrails pilot that seemed to walk right through her and Jonah. She could see tracers, and she was just a baby.
And anyway, after Alex, Chip, Katherine, and I came back from the 1400s, we definitely should have been able to see tracers in our own time period then, Jonah told himself. Why didn’t we? Why didn’t we ask JB why we didn’t see tracers in the twenty-first century?
They’d just had too many other things to think about. And Jonah, at least, had really not wanted to think too much about all the weird and scary aspects of time travel.
This was definitely weird and scary.
In 1611 when the tracers vanished, it was because time w
as unraveling, because our enemy Second Chance was ripping time apart. . . . Second Chance isn’t here now! Second Chance wasn’t involved in the time crash that stranded me and the other babies on the plane!
At least not as far as Jonah knew.
The Elucidator in Jonah’s hand flashed a glowing red numeral up toward Jonah: 15.
He had just fifteen minutes left. He didn’t have time to worry about tracers or unraveling time or Second Chance or anything else except finding Angela.
Think, think . . . did she ever tell us what gate she was working at that night? Jonah asked himself.
He couldn’t remember. But he looked around frantically, thinking it might help to at least see which gates were nearby: 2A, 2B . . .
Something about 2B jogged his memory. It was right beside the door he’d sneaked through only moments ago, but also . . .
Didn’t Angela say the planeload of babies pulled up to 2B? Jonah wondered. And didn’t she say she could see it from the gate she was standing at?
Jonah pushed his way through the crowd to the other side of the aisle. There was gate 3. Two women were standing in front of clunky-looking old computer terminals at gate 3. One was the surly-looking lady who’d snapped at Jonah, commanding him to watch where he was going.
The other one was Angela.
TWENTY-NINE
Jonah resisted the urge to run over to Angela and give her a big hug. He resisted screaming out, Angela! I thought I’d never see you again! It’s been months!
She doesn’t know who you are, Jonah reminded himself. As far as she knows, she’s never met you before in her life.
And this Angela, the Angela of thirteen years ago, truly hadn’t ever met Jonah. Their first meeting was still supposed to be fifteen minutes away, and Jonah wouldn’t remember it.
But Angela would. Angela would stubbornly remember every single detail—even the ones she was supposed to forget. And that would ruin her life.
“Sorry,” Jonah muttered.
What if Jonah’s current plan made Angela’s life even worse? What if it backfired?
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