Revealed

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  As if they’d both been thinking the same thought, Jonah and Angela together hoisted JB into the front seat of the car, so he was right in front of Jonah’s kid parents.

  “It’s like he’s in a coma or something,” Jonah complained.

  “I think the technical term would be more like ‘catatonic,’ ” Angela said. “But I’m sure somewhere in the future, once we get him back to the future, he can be cured.”

  She didn’t sound sure.

  Jonah went over and sat down on the ground with his back against the rock wall.

  “Elucidator, can you show me exactly what happened when Gary and Hodge made time split?” Jonah asked, looking down at the object in his hand. It wasn’t a marble anymore; now it looked more like a cell phone with a perfectly clear screen.

  But the only thing the screen showed was Jonah standing with Gary in the stairwell at the airport. An airplane landed in the darkness outside the window before them.

  “I just lived through all that!” Jonah complained. “I mean, give me the broader view. The big picture!”

  Now the scene Jonah saw was an image of planet Earth. From space.

  “Ergh!” Jonah growled in exasperation. He so wanted to throw the Elucidator down to the ground and smash it into a million pieces.

  “Look,” Angela said, sitting down beside him and holding out her own Elucidator, which had turned into an ID-style rectangle of plastic on a lanyard. But it, too, had a screen on its face.

  “I asked it to let me draw a graph, because my mind keeps tripping over what could and couldn’t have happened in each stream of time,” Angela explained.

  “You’re miles ahead of what I’ve managed to get my Elucidator to do,” Jonah admitted.

  He studied Angela’s drawing, which looked like a tree with only two branches. But she zoomed in on the drawing, showing him more details. At the point where the branch split, Angela had written, Moment when both 13-year-old Jonah and baby Jonah were in same time.

  Then on the first branch she’d written, Only baby Jonah taken off plane at airport. Plane and all other babies taken on to future by Charles Lindbergh. 13-y.o. Jonah delivers baby Jonah to parents; Gary and Hodge say this time stream will collapse soon.

  On the second branch she’d written, Path to glorious future for Gary and Hodge. Not sure exactly what happens with airplane and babies, but they don’t disrupt anything about the 21st century. And there are no time agents.

  Jonah looked back up and saw Angela frown.

  “This is what I don’t understand,” she said. “Doesn’t there have to be some version of time where you and the other babies on the plane stay in place after the time crash, and grow up to be thirteen years old in the twenty-first century? Doesn’t there have to be some version where I saw the babies and got suspicious and studied physics and then met JB and found out about time travel? Doesn’t some time stream have to lead to this moment right now, where you and I are together in a time cave and JB’s crazy and your parents are both thirteen years old?”

  “Ummm . . . ,” Jonah said, because what she was saying made sense to him. He racked his brain, trying to remember everything he’d ever learned about time travel. Even the theories he barely understood. “Maybe Gary and Hodge just haven’t released the ripple of changes from the time split? Maybe this and everything else we remember since the time crash is about to be . . . erased?”

  “But wouldn’t that be too big of a paradox?” Angela asked. “Wouldn’t that also erase you showing up at the scene of the time crash and making time split?”

  She was making Jonah’s head ache more than ever. He dipped toward Angela’s Elucidator.

  “Do Angela and I have the right explanations?” Jonah asked it. “Does the graph she just drew show exactly how the time split worked?”

  NO, the Elucidator flashed at him.

  “Could you fix my drawing so it shows how things really turned out?” Angela chimed in.

  NO, the Elucidator flashed again.

  Now Jonah wanted to throw that Elucidator on the ground too. And stomp on it.

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  EVERYTHING IS STILL IN FLUX, the Elucidator flashed. OUTCOMES AREN’T DETERMINED YET. A LOT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE TWO OF YOU DECIDE TO DO NEXT.

  That was good, wasn’t it?

  “What should we do?” Jonah asked eagerly, leaning closer to the Elucidator. “To help JB, I mean, and to rescue Katherine and the others, and to make everyone the right age and—oh yeah—to save time once and for all?”

  THAT’S NOT FOR ME TO SAY, scrolled across the Elucidator’s screen.

  “What can you say?” Angela asked.

  HELLO unfurled across the screen.

  Jonah slammed back against the rock wall.

  “Maybe both these Elucidators secretly came from Gary and Hodge,” he muttered. “Or some worse enemy—Second Chance, maybe?”

  Now it was his own Elucidator that flashed up at him.

  NO, it said. GARY AND HODGE DID RIG THE MONITORS IN THIS TIME CAVE SO YOU WOULD FALL IN TO 1932 WHEN THEY WANTED YOU TO. BUT ANGELA’S ELUCIDATOR AND YOURS BOTH CAME FROM HADLEY CORREO. SEE FOR YOURSELF.

  The Elucidator seemed to want to prove its point: It began rolling a scene of Angela—grown-up, time-travel-experienced Angela—standing in a kitchen holding out a piece of paper to the time agent Hadley Correo. Hadley looked just like Jonah remembered, with a grizzled beard and twinkling eyes that seemed to lose a bit of their twinkle as he stared at the paper. Jonah suddenly realized that the paper was the note he himself had given Angela at the airport. But the note was much more tattered that it had been the last time Jonah had seen it. Apparently Angela had folded and unfolded and looked at it many times over the past thirteen years.

  Jonah guessed she hadn’t exactly waited twelve years and eleven months to open it.

  “That was just last night,” Angela said huskily, looking over Jonah’s shoulder. She cleared her throat. “I mean, the last night I spent in the twenty-first century. Since you told me to keep everything secret from you and JB, I was afraid to tell anyone about the note. But I had to tell someone in order to get an Elucidator. And I chose Hadley.”

  “So Hadley gave you an Elucidator right away, and then he went back thirteen years to leave one with Eva the social worker so I would have one too?” Jonah asked.

  “He told me about that part,” Angela said, nodding. “But I don’t know how he knew to do everything else with the social worker and the baby. . . .”

  ISN’T IT OBVIOUS? Jonah’s Elucidator flashed up at them.

  The Elucidator shifted to other scenes: Hadley watching a monitor showing Jonah getting the baby version of himself from Hodge. Hadley going back thirteen years in time and hiring an actress to pretend to be a teenage mother who’d decided adoption was the best option. Hadley giving the actress an innocent-looking Connect 4 game to leave behind in the social worker’s office.

  “How did he keep all that secret?” Angela asked. “Didn’t anyone else at the time agency see what he’d done?”

  NO, the Elucidator flashed. THEY WERE MORE FOCUSED ON EXAMINING EVERYTHING AFTER THE TIME-CRASHED PLANE LANDED. AND THEY DIDN’T SEE THE TIME STREAM WITH LINDBERGH TAKING THE PLANE ON TO THE FUTURE BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T KNOW TO LOOK FOR IT. THEY DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE TIME SPLIT.

  “How do you miss something like that?” Jonah asked incredulously.

  MILLIONS OF YEARS OF TIME TO EXAMINE, the Elucidator flashed. AN INFINITY OF VARIABLES TO CONSIDER. EVEN I CAN’T THINK OF EVERYTHING.

  Not comforting, Jonah thought. Not actually very helpful at all.

  How could he have two Elucidators within reach and still feel so much like he was flying blind?

  “I don’t get it,” Angela admitted. “If Hadley knew Gary and Hodge were going to split time, why didn’t he warn us? Why didn’t he warn the time agency—or even just JB? Why didn’t he stop them before it happened?”

  HE THOUGHT THIS METHOD OF MINIMAL INTERFERENCE WAS B
EST, the Elucidator told them.

  The Elucidator on the lanyard around Angela’s neck began flashing a solid red light, as if trying to get everyone’s attention.

  “What?” Jonah asked it.

  NO, that Elucidator flashed. HE THOUGHT THIS WAS THE ONLY CHOICE THAT MIGHT WORK.

  Great, Jonah thought. So now the Elucidators don’t even agree?

  “So you mean Hadley thought everything depended on us from here on out?” Angela asked, her voice quavering. “On Jonah and me?”

  YES. The flashing light was a little overwhelming. Jonah realized that it was because both Elucidators were saying the same thing. ON THE TWO OF YOU. AND CHARLES LINDBERGH.

  “Lindbergh?” Jonah repeated incredulously. “But he already flew Katherine and the other babies on to the future. Gary and Hodge made it so he couldn’t come back! His part’s over!”

  Once again the two Elucidators flashed back the same message:

  IS IT?

  FORTY-THREE

  Jonah pounded his fists against his forehead. He put his Elucidator down on the ground and got up and walked around, pacing between two rock walls.

  “I hate Elucidators!” he snarled. “It isn’t fair! This is like—riddles! Can’t they ever give a straight answer?”

  There was a burst of light again from both Elucidators—Jonah wasn’t close enough to read either screen, and he still knew the answer they were giving was NO.

  Angela held her Elucidator up and read from the screen, “It says time is too complicated for simple answers. So is life in general.”

  Jonah made a disgusted growl. His pacing took him back close to Angela and the Elucidators. He crouched down and asked the Elucidators, “What can we do from here? What can Charles Lindbergh do?”

  Both Elucidators flashed back the reply: INFINITE POSSIBILITIES.

  “Well, show us some of them,” Jonah asked. “Start with Lindbergh’s.”

  He figured that would be less frightening.

  Both screens flashed with a quick succession of scenes. Lindbergh was climbing a mountain; he was flying a plane that looked much more high-tech than anything Jonah had ever seen; he was giving a speech; he was hugging a child; he was dropping bombs on an old-fashioned-looking building. In some of the scenes he was middle-aged or older; in others he was just a baby or a child.

  “Wait—there’s some possibilities ahead of Charles Lindbergh where he’s a baby again?” Angela asked. “Or a little kid?”

  The Elucidator screens flashed together: YES.

  Jonah collapsed from his crouching position. He hit the ground, and he picked up his Elucidator again.

  “Is that how Gary and Hodge plan to keep him in the future?” Jonah asked, feeling proud that he was finally starting to figure something out. “They’re going to un-age him back to being a baby on his trip to the future? Why try selling Charles Lindbergh’s kid, when you can sell the baby version of Charles Lindbergh himself!”

  YOU HAVE PERFECTLY ENCAPSULATED ONE PORTION OF GARY AND HODGE’S VIEWPOINT, the Elucidator flashed back at him.

  It was almost like having a teacher write Good job! on a test. Maybe he didn’t hate Elucidators so much, after all.

  “But I thought adults couldn’t be un-aged back to being infants through time travel,” Angela said. “It was dangerous even making some of us teenagers again. Look at what happened to JB!”

  Jonah glanced toward the car containing his sleeping parents and JB.

  Please let it be possible to cure JB, he thought. Please let my parents be okay when they come out of this too.

  ADULT-TO-INFANCY UN-AGING IS PROHIBITED BY ALL TIME-AGENCY RULES, Jonah’s Elucidator flashed up at him. He was pretty sure Angela’s was saying the same thing. BUT AS YOU KNOW, GARY AND HODGE HAVE VERY LITTLE REGARD FOR TIME-AGENCY RULES. THEY FIGURE EVEN A 30 PERCENT CHANCE THAT LINDBERGH WILL ARRIVE UNDAMAGED IS A 30 PERCENT CHANCE THAT THEY WILL MAKE HUGE PROFITS.

  “But that means it’s a seventy percent chance that—” Angela began numbly.

  THAT CHARLES LINDBERGH WOULD LIVE OUT HIS LIFE IN THE FUTURE WITH BRAIN DAMAGE AND/OR PHYSICAL IMPAIRMENT, the Elucidator said. OR HE MIGHT JUST DIE. YES.

  For a moment neither Jonah nor Angela said anything. Then Jonah exploded angrily, “And Gary and Hodge don’t care! They don’t care whose life they ruin, or how much of time they destroy! As long as they get rich!”

  AGAIN, YOU SHOW A KEEN GRASP OF THEIR REASONING, the Elucidator acknowledged.

  Jonah snorted, furious with Gary and Hodge, and exasperated that the Elucidator could stay so calm about it.

  Angela was acting perfectly calm as well. She squinted thoughtfully at her own Elucidator.

  “But they could have gotten even richer if they’d taken baby Jonah on to the future and passed him off as Lindbergh’s son,” she said. “To make time split, they only needed the two versions of Jonah in the same time for a few moments, right?”

  YES, both Elucidators flashed.

  “So why didn’t they still have the baby Jonah go on to the future on the plane with everyone else?” Angela asked.

  “Because they put Katherine in my seat,” Jonah growled.

  He was surprised that his Elucidator flashed an additional explanation at him.

  AND THEY THOUGHT LEAVING THAT BABY WITH YOU WOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU FEEL TOTALLY DEFEATED, it said. THEY THOUGHT YOU WOULD GIVE UP. BUT YOU DIDN’T.

  Proving Gary and Hodge were wrong, Jonah thought. He was proud of that. It was something to hold on to, no matter how frustrated and stymied he felt right now.

  “And I guess they could no longer pass Jonah off as Lindbergh’s son if they had Lindbergh himself right there, available for DNA testing, to compare,” Angela said.

  “Hey, I could have been just as much of a ‘famous missing kid of history’ as Katherine,” Jonah protested. “Since she got her fame through saving the other kids with time travel—I did that too!”

  Angela shrugged.

  “Then they really were all about making you feel defeated,” she said. She grinned mischievously, a look that she couldn’t have carried off as a grown-up. “I didn’t think the baby version of you was that terrifying when I saw it!”

  “But you never saw—” Jonah began. Then he realized what she meant. “Oh, right. You mean you saw the baby me in the version of time where you stepped onto the plane and everyone carried the babies off. And we all got adopted right afterward.”

  “The version of time that we aren’t sure exists anymore, because of the time split,” Angela reminded him, wrinkling up her face in confusion. “Except it has to, or we wouldn’t be here.”

  Something tickled in Jonah’s brain.

  “The last time I saw time split,” he began slowly, “it was different. In 1611, the new versions of Henry Hudson and the other sailors went in one direction, into the time period Second Chance created. The other versions of all those people rejoined their tracers and pretty much went back to time the way it originally happened.”

  Angela’s jaw dropped and her eyes got big.

  “So how come both versions of you ended up on the same side of the time split?” she whispered.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Jonah gaped back at Angela. Was this what was missing from the graph Angela had drawn? Or was the difference something bigger?

  “Then . . . then . . . maybe there wasn’t even a time split at all!” Jonah cried. “Maybe there’s some sort of technicality we don’t know about. . . . Elucidator! Was there actually a time split or not?”

  He looked down, eager for confirmation of the new ideas starting to grow in his mind. But the Elucidator in his hand flashed up, THERE WAS A TIME SPLIT. IT JUST DIDN’T WORK THE WAY ANGELA DREW IT.

  “Then how did it work?” Jonah demanded.

  BADLY, the Elucidator answered.

  Another exasperating answer.

  “Could you explain a little bit more than that?” Angela asked, sounding as annoyed as Jonah felt.

  SURE, the Elucidato
r flashed up. But it didn’t give the explanation Jonah expected. YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND NOT JUST GARY AND HODGE’S MOTIVES, BUT THEIR MODUS OPERANDI scrolled across the screen.

  What in the world was a modus operandi?

  Jonah didn’t bother stopping the Elucidator to ask. It was continuing to explain.

  GARY AND HODGE ARE CARELESS AND RECKLESS AND LAZY, the Elucidator flashed. MOST OF THEIR PLANS CONTAIN FATAL FLAWS. BUT IT’S HARD TO TELL THEIR MISTAKES FROM INTENTIONAL LIES AND MISDIRECTION. SOMETIMES THEIR OWN INEPTNESS BECOMES SOMETHING OF A TALENT. IT PROVIDES THEM PROTECTION FROM THE TIME AGENCY, BECAUSE THE TIME AGENCY FINDS THEM COMPLETELY UNPREDICTABLE.

  “Well, that was as clear as mud,” Jonah complained.

  Was it at least a good sign that the Elucidator was acting like there still was a time agency?

  Or is that something else that will disappear after Gary and Hodge release the ripple from all their changes? Jonah wondered.

  “How about giving some concrete examples?” Angela asked. She seemed to have a lot more patience with the Elucidator than Jonah did. “Something connected to Jonah, maybe?”

  SURE, the Elucidator said. WHEN GARY AND HODGE WERE TRYING TO PASS JONAH OFF AS CHARLES LINDBERGH’S SON, THEY LISTED HIM ON THE AIRPLANE ROSTER AS CHARLES LINDBERGH III.

  “So?” Jonah asked.

  THE BABY WAS THE SECOND CHARLES AUGUSTUS LINDBERGH IN THE FAMILY, NOT THE THIRD. SO HE WAS ONLY A JUNIOR. HIS GRANDFATHER’S MIDDLE NAME WAS JUST AUGUST—A SUBTLE BUT SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE, the Elucidator explained.

  “Who cares?” Jonah asked in disgust. He rolled his eyes.

  BECAUSE OF THAT ONE MISTAKE, THE TIME AGENCY WAS ALWAYS AFRAID THAT THEY WERE MISTAKEN THEMSELVES ABOUT JONAH’S ORIGINAL IDENTITY, the Elucidator flashed. JB IN PARTICULAR WONDERED IF YOU ACTUALLY CAME FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION—MAYBE THE ONE THAT SECOND CHANCE CREATED—WHERE THE NAMES WERE JUST SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT, AND MAYBE THE FIRST FLIGHT TO PARIS CAME A GENERATION LATER.

  So that’s why JB was always so cagey about discussing my identity? Jonah wondered. Just because of a name?

  “Couldn’t they have done DNA tests?” Angela asked.