Redeemed (14 page)

Katherine shot Jonah the same kind of look she usually gave Jordan, the mix of
You're an idiot
and
I can't believe I'm stuck with a brother like you
and
It's a good thing you're adopted because I really would not want to share any of the same genes as you.
Except maybe there was a little bit more to this look; maybe she was also thinking,
I really hope you know what
you're doing,
and
Even if you're a total fool, I've got your back.

Was it possible those extra messages had always been in the looks Katherine shot Jordan, too, and Jordan just hadn't noticed?

“Your appeal has been duly noted, and it has been decided that you will be allowed to proceed,” the voice from the ceiling intoned, just as robotically as before.

Arrows lit up on the floor, evidently pointing toward Curtis Rathbone's office.

Jordan waited until Jonah and Katherine took their first steps forward, through the space where the invisible wall had been moments before. He didn't know about the other two, but he had had enough of bouncing off walls he couldn't see.

“Do you think Interchronological Rescue only has, like, nine or ten actual human beings working here, and everything else is automated?” Katherine muttered, glancing around.

Jordan guessed that she was as creeped out as he was that invisible walls could evidently just materialize out of thin air, anywhere and anytime. So could tornado-strength winds that could suck solid objects through the solid ceiling.

“I think they want us feeling primitive and ignorant,” Jonah muttered back. “We can still outsmart them. We know stuff they don't know.”

I don't,
Jordan wanted to say. But Deep Voice, Tattoo Face, and Doreen had acted like Curtis Rathbone didn't know Gary and Hodge were missing. Maybe the CEO also didn't know about Second or Jordan's parents or Charles Lindbergh or the different dimensions or . . .

What good does knowing about all that stuff do when I don't understand any of it?
Jordan wondered.

“Come on, Jordan,” Katherine said, turning back to face him for a moment.

Jordan realized he'd let the other two get way ahead of him. It was amazing how good he felt that Katherine had noticed and didn't want to leave him behind.

He scrambled to catch up.

“What—” he began.

This time both Katherine and Jonah turned to him with fingers over their lips and hissed, “Shh!”

The three of them continued on in silence, following lit-up red arrows that vanished the instant the kids passed by.

What if it's all just a trap?
Jonah wondered.
What if it's another elaborate virtual-reality setup by Second?

Why would anybody bother to lead them into a trap when they'd already been imprisoned and released twice?

Maybe that's not the best thing to think about, since it doesn't do any good anyway,
Jordan thought.

To distract himself, he tried to study the hallways they passed through. They had to be full of all sorts of sensors and speakers and robotic capabilities. But the hallways didn't
look
that odd. Jordan had seen the office buildings where his parents worked; these hallways were just as nondescript, with taupe flooring and beige walls.

So maybe we're not that crazy far into the future,
Jordan thought.
Maybe it's not much past the twenty-first century.

Or maybe these hallways were so advanced he didn't even know what he was seeing.

Then he started noticing the artwork on the walls. First there'd be a photograph that looked like it came straight from some history book: a child crying in the ruins of a bombed-out city, parents clutching bundled-up babies and running from scenes labeled
THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON, 1666
or
INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI, 2004
, or simply
HIROSHIMA, 1945
. Then, right after the historical artwork, there'd be a photo of some happy kid grinning ear to ear in the midst of playing what must be futuristic versions of soccer or Monopoly or video games.

Oh,
Jordan realized.
It's always the same kid in each pair of pictures. First in miserable history, then in the happy future. Before and after.

“Are there pictures like these somewhere of you and me?” Jordan asked Jonah.

Jonah squinted like he hadn't been paying attention, and Jordan pointed at the nearest set of pictures: a toddler crying in what seemed to be a deserted Asian palace, then the same child joyously hugging a man with the same kind of beaded hair as Deep Voice.

Jonah snorted.

“Interchronological Rescue wouldn't hold up either you or me as a success story,” he said bitterly.

“This is all just . . . propaganda,” Katherine muttered, sweeping her arms toward the artwork. “Like we studied in language arts. They're trying to make people think that Interchronological Rescue is like a charity or something, when really they're kidnappers and baby sellers and . . .”

“Katherine, they can hear you, remember?” Jordan interrupted.

“I don't care,” Katherine said. “I'm not going to lie about this. Gary and Hodge wanted to steal Jonah away from our family, and they sent Charles Lindbergh to steal me away, and . . . the whole company needs to know we won't let anything like that happen ever again!”

Jordan expected Jonah to shush Katherine once again, but Jonah didn't seem to be listening. He'd stopped in front of a huge wooden door framed by actual pillars.

Okay, that is kind of different from Mom's and Dad's offices,
Jordan thought.

But then, neither of his parents was a CEO.

It took Jordan a moment to realize that the entire floor was lit up with arrows now—all pointing toward the elaborate door.

“Katherine,” Jonah said, under his breath. “I know it's hard for you to be quiet, but could you let me do the talking in there?”

Katherine fixed him with a steady gaze.

“Do you have a really good plan?” she asked. “Have you thought it through?”

“I think so,” Jonah said. “It's the best I could come up with.”

“Okay, then,” Katherine agreed.

Jordan gaped. Was this the real Katherine standing in front of him? He'd never once seen his sister agree to let someone else do all the talking.

Then Katherine slugged Jordan in the arm, which made her seem more normal.

“Don't you ruin things either,” she hissed.

“But, I—” Jordan began.

Jonah was already reaching for the doorknob, and Jordan shut up.

As soon as Jonah's finger's brushed the huge brass knob, the door completely vanished. It didn't creak open, it didn't slide to the side—it just disappeared.

“I could live in this time period a million years and I would never get used to that,” Jordan muttered.

“Shh,” Katherine whispered.

Jonah was already stepping across the threshold. He seemed to be very deliberately easing his feet forward on the lustrous carpet, almost as if he expected a trapdoor to open beneath him.

Jordan had to resist the urge to huddle close to Katherine. Or to cower down behind Jonah and hope nobody saw him.

A man was waiting for them behind a desk that seemed as enormous as a yacht. The man—Curtis Rathbone?—was wearing an ivory robe rather than a business suit, but Jordan thought it was probably a really, really expensive ivory robe, intended to let everyone around him know,
I'm powerful. Don't mess with me
. Probably the president of the United States had one just like it—if there was still a president of the United States.

Mr. Rathbone raised one eyebrow, as if to say,
Don't waste my time. I know who you are. Get to the point.

Jonah stopped so abruptly that Jordan and Katherine almost ran into him.

Is Jonah secretly carrying some weapon I don't know about?
Jordan wondered.
Something the wind didn't pull away? Is he going to threaten this guy? Does he think he has time to do anything
before invisible walls fall around us and trap us once more?

Jonah cleared his throat.

“Your employees are afraid to tell you that your top performers, Gary and Hodge, have vanished,” Jonah said. His voice trembled only a little. “But I know where they are. I'll make you a deal. You give us a working Elucidator, and we'll help you out. We'll rescue Gary and Hodge.”

Jonah's switching sides?
Jordan thought. He was so stunned his brain could barely keep up.
Jonah hates Gary and Hodge, but now he wants to rescue them? He wants to work for their company and fight the time agency?

It took him a ridiculous amount of time to figure out,
Oh. No. Jonah's lying. He's just trying to trick this guy into giving us a good Elucidator. One that has no connection to Second.

Would it work?

Jordan glanced back at Mr. Rathbone. The man's expression hadn't changed. Did
he
know Jonah was lying?

“Jonah Skidmore,” Mr. Rathbone said in a booming voice. “I finally get to meet the famous Jonah Skidmore. And this is your sister, Katherine?”

So he's just going to ignore Jonah's offer?
Jordan wondered.

Jordan was really bad at figuring out people's motives
when they didn't just come out and say what they wanted, or what they planned to do. That was probably part of the reason he never had any hope of being one of the cool kids at school, but would be doing well to just stay a not-so-cool kid, not a total loser. But he could tell that Mr. Rathbone was one of those people that Jordan's dad always called “a real operator.”

He's playing some kind of game,
Jordan thought.
We're going to have to be really careful, or he'll outsmart us.

But Jordan's next thought was,
Hey, why does he recognize Jonah and Katherine, but he's acting like I don't even exist?

Jordan forgot that he'd been trying to hide behind Jonah. He inched to the right a little, so Mr. Rathbone had to see him.

Mr. Rathbone tilted his head slightly and squinted at Jordan curiously. But Jordan couldn't tell if he was actually surprised, or if he was just pretending.

“Why, Jonah,” Mr. Rathbone said, peering back at Jonah. “I see that you went back to the nineteen thirties and rescued your doomed twin. Should I applaud your humanitarian instincts, so similar to the ones that inspired me to found Interchronological Rescue? Or should I remind you that the time agency thoroughly discourages such blatant meddling, unless it can be absolutely proved that the removal of the child will have no effect on time?
Did
you
do all the necessary impact studies? Did
you
fill out all the necessary paperwork, and file it the necessary six months in advance of any rescue trip, so the agency had ample time to review all the plans and mount any possible objections? Did you—”

“The time agency knows about Jordan,” Jonah interrupted.

It was on the tip of Jordan's tongue to say,
No, wait. I thought Gary and Hodge were the ones who rescued me from the 1930s. Jonah was just the one who took me to my parents in that whole mix-up with the different dimensions. Doesn't Mr. Rathbone know about Gary and Hodge rescuing me? Or is he just trying to psych me out, like Deep Voice did?

“Jonah didn't do anything wrong,” Jordan began. “He—”

Before he could say anything else, Katherine dug her elbow into Jordan's side, and Jordan remembered that he and Katherine were supposed to let Jonah do all the talking.

This wasn't the right place for Jordan to ask all his questions about the different dimensions.

Mr. Rathbone tilted his head a bit more.

He saw Katherine trying to shut me up,
Jordan realized.
Oh, no—what if
he
decides to interrogate all three of us in separate cubicles?

Jordan resisted the urge to inch back to the left, to hide behind Jonah again.

But Mr. Rathbone didn't even seem to be looking at them now. His eyes were focused on what seemed to be empty air right above his desk, where a computer screen might sit in a twenty-first-century office.

Could he have a computer screen that he can see from that side, but we can't see at all?
Jordan wondered. He thought he'd seen something like that in a science-fiction movie. It seemed possible.

“Interesting,” Mr. Rathbone murmured. “Fascinating . . .”

He's trying to get us to ask, “What's interesting? What's fascinating?”
Jordan thought.
Isn't he?

Jordan sneaked a glance at Katherine. She had her lips pressed firmly together. If Katherine could stay silent, so could Jordan.

After a moment Mr. Rathbone looked back at the three kids.

“I'll confess, the nineteen thirties exhaust even my capacity for compassion,” he said. “So much human misery compressed into one short decade. Worldwide economic collapse, the Japanese invasion of China, the rise of the Nazis in Germany, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the start of world war . . . and, oh, lest we forget, that poor little Lindbergh baby . . .”

“I know I was never the Lindbergh baby,” Jonah said in a tight voice. “I know Gary and Hodge were planning to use me as a fake.”

Mr. Rathbone lifted an eyebrow again.

“
I
never endorsed such a deception,” he said. He pushed back from his desk. “In truth, Gary and Hodge exhaust me as well. They exhaust my patience, and there is always the danger that their . . . tactics . . . could exhaust the goodwill the public has toward Interchronological Rescue. The time agency has become pricklier than ever—perhaps it would be best for Interchronological Rescue if Gary and Hodge were never found. We could arrange such a lovely ceremony honoring their memories. Now, that would be
good
PR. We could invite all the children who are here only because of Gary and Hodge's skill at time extraction. . . . Happy children always stifle any possible criticisms. . . . It's so petty to ask nitpicky questions in the face of a smiling toddler. . . .”