Before Tomorrowland (23 page)

Over the speaker, a dozen voices speaking a half dozen different languages began talking over themselves, with no one willing to cede the floor to the other. A babble of Babel.

Earhart took a sip. It was going to be a long night.

T
HE SPACE
capsule suspended above Lee didn’t seem as big to him as it did the first time he walked under it with Mr.
Tesla. Still, there it was: gleaming, riveted, and pointed toward arched ceilings thirty feet over his head. It was real, all right. It was all real. He took a deep breath to try and calm his
nerves, but it didn’t work.

“Lee?”

He wheeled toward his mom, her face wearing that concerned expression he couldn’t stand.

“Why would you lie to me? Why would you lie to me and tell them the truth, right in front me? I could have got a job if we needed money! You told me you didn’t
want
to take
all the meds!”

“I’m not going to put any more on you. I’m your mother; I get to decide what’s best for myself, and for you, as long as you’re in my house.”

That struck Lee as just about the coldest thing she’d ever said to him.

“Oh,” he said. “So you don’t need me, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What’s dad doing with his money if he can’t send squat to us? You ever ask him? How’s he afford to stay out on the road for weeks at a time?”

“It’s not his fault, Lee. He’s doing his best!” Beads of sweat appeared on Clara’s forehead.

“That’s…” Lee wanted to say ‘a crock’, but he stopped himself. She was getting worked up, and he couldn’t allow that. He went through his list of
mantras from the doctor, but they kept getting drowned out by the harsh words his mother had spoken in the study.

“I’m not a cynic,” he said.

Clara shook her head, and this time, when she reached for him, he didn’t push her away. They stood together for a minute, her arm around him, under the spacecraft.

“I’m sorry I said that.”

“It’s okay,” said Lee. “You were pretty good in there, actually. I never knew before this trip that you were so good at speeches.”

“I used to be on the debate team in high school, did you know that? They only let me argue with other girls, though. I had to wait to get married for the rest of it.”

That made him laugh. She wasn’t usually funny when she meant to be.

They walked together back toward the sleeping quarters. “I sure want to drop,” said Lee, seeing the Faustus robots in their charging array again. “But I’m not sure
I’ll ever sleep again.”

“You want me to sing ‘Bye-O-Baby’?” she offered, not even kidding.

He smiled and said, “Uh…”

Lee held their room’s door open for her and she stepped in, fumbling her hand on the inside wall. “Where’s the light switch?” she asked. He followed in after her, and the
door closed behind him. Her muffled scream cut through the dark. The instinct to fight surged through him, but what? He couldn’t see anything—

“I’m going to turn the lights on now, Lee,” said a familiar voice. “When I do, you will do what I say, or I will kill your mother.”

The switch clicked. Lee blinked, and when the spots cleared, there was his mother, squirming in the hold of Henry Stevens, one of his bag hands clamped over her mouth. His other hand held a bag.
“Take it,” he told Lee.

“Let her go,” Lee pleaded in a whisper.

“No.” Henry yanked Clara hard. Her body quivered like a rag doll. Lee opened his mouth to yell, then shut it fast, the thought of one miscue on his part causing more violence to his
mother motivating him to obey.

Lee threw the heavy bag’s top flap open. He saw some metal tubes bound together and a red timer switch mounted on top.

“Listen to my instructions carefully,” said Henry. “Turn the switch to the right. Not the left or you’ll blow yourself and your mother apart. Turn it to the right, then
open the door and walk to the charging station with the robots.”

Lee saw tears welling in his mom’s eyes.

“Quickly,” said Henry.

Lee clicked the switch to the right, then opened the door and walked down the hall, Henry following behind, clutching Clara to his side, still muzzling her. He placed the bomb behind the first
of twenty Faustus robots sleeping in their metal tubes. His hand lingered on the strap. He didn’t want to let go. He didn’t want to harm the robots, not to mention anyone else on the
base.

His mother whimpered in response to Henry’s tightening grip. Lee released the strap.

“We’re going to the wire transfer,” Henry said. “Move.”

A sob escaped Clara. Lee, defeated, walked down the hall. They arrived inside the domed room with the sharp spikes. “Put on your glasses,” Henry ordered, and Clara obeyed.

As Henry started to punch something into the control pad, Orson Welles spoke to them, narrating the next step in Plus Ultra’s no-longer-any-fun revelation game. Lee only heard every other
phrase. His mind ran a million miles an hour, trying to think of what to do. “Welcome to the Wire Transfer Pavilion…” Henry punched more codes into the keypad.
“…Transport of persons and goods around our world and beyond…” The large man’s eyes were not on Lee. “…May see lights and visions…” Should
he make a break for it and get help? Would he kill her if he ran? “…Travel, but rest assured, these are only the accompanying…” He couldn’t do it. There was nothing
he could do. “…In any way bring you to harm.”

The air began to swirl. The rods lit up. Electricity arced toward the thing that looked like a diving bell on the center of the platform.

“Courage, fellow visionary,” said Welles. “We invite you to step onto the stage, into the pod, and toward the most incredible wonders yet.”

“You heard the man,” said Henry. “Let’s go.”

They ascended the steps and stepped into the pod. The interior was strangely cool, the air smelled of both ozone and ammonia cleaner. There were spots on the floor like stains. The hatch
automatically closed. A dozen deadbolts locked into place with a rapid succession of THUNKS that caused Lee to jump. The sounds reminded him of the gunfire at the hotel, sounds he never wanted to
hear again. Welles warned of “nausea,” but Lee was too distracted by the flash of light he glimpsed through the port window in the door, and the sudden rocking of the pod, and his own
sickening realization that several hundreds yards down the hall from them, the bomb he had placed behind all those peculiar human-looking robots had just detonated.

“Commencing transfer,” said Welles.

There was a moment of darkness. Colorful, elongated shapes of light emanating from a fixed point ahead reached his eyes and seemed to tickle them. Lee felt terrified and exhilarated at the same
time. He didn’t know whether to scream or laugh, so he did both, producing the weirdest sound ever to come out of him. The sensational assault lasted seconds, and ended abruptly. The dull
chamber dome light flickered on, the bolts unfastened, and the door opened. Lee saw grass, rocks, trees, and a starry sky waiting for him. He jumped for it, and collapsed to the ground in a heap,
felled by a spinning head and roiling stomach.

“Take twenty seconds to collect yourselves,” said Henry. “Then we have work to do.”

Clara dropped to a knee. She didn’t seem sick at all. But then, she was no stranger to nausea. “We’re going to get through this, okay? Don’t be afraid,” she said,
and kissed him on the cheek. His mom had found her courage. He realized he needed to, too.

He got to his feet. Wherever they were, there were no electric lights, and the air was cooler than New York’s. It smelled fresh and salty. Close to the beach. They were in a flat rocky
field, patchy with weeds and occupied by a sad brick building that resembled a boarded-up schoolhouse. At the edge of the field there was a chain-link fence about twelve feet tall running along all
sides. Something about the smell and the feel of the earth made him think of baseball.
Why was he thinking about baseball?

“Please proceed to the tower’s security checkpoint,” said Welles. “Be sure to wear your glasses.”

Henry was standing in place, scanning different points around the field. He found his direction and shoved Lee and his mother forward. “Move.”

They walked to the other side of the building and found the remains of something like an old water tower with a rib-cage dome on top. Lee remembered it from the stereoscope at Penn Station. It
was something Mr. Tesla had built, but it didn’t look like the picture. It was broken down.

“Wardenclyffe,” said Clara.

“Put the glasses back on,” said Henry, staring at a rectangular metal plate near the base of the tower, about fifteen feet long by four feet wide. The surface was divided into ten
rows of ten tiles like a chessboard, each tile the size of a paving stone, each tile engraved with a different number. “What do you see?”

Clara shook her head. “Nothing.”

Henry threw her down to the ground, hard. “Try harder.”

Lee hit the big man then, right in his angry face, but Henry didn’t even blink. He hit him again, and again, but it was like a bad dream where Lee’s hits didn’t even land.
Henry grabbed him by the back of the neck and faced him toward Clara. “Tell me what you see, or I’ll kill him.”

Lee’s mom got to her feet and stared up at the robot man, matching his anger. She took a step back and held the glasses out in front of her, shaking them. “I don’t want any
more threats to my son. You understand? You know you can’t get anywhere without us!”

Henry held Lee tighter and raised his voice at Clara: “Without
you
, Mrs. Brackett. I don’t need your son at all.”

“Let him go or I’ll snap these in two,” she said. She held the glasses in front of her like a wishbone. “I promise you.”

Lee’s pounding heart leapt high into his throat, right under Henry’s thumb, or so it felt, until the metal man eased his grip and let Lee fall toward Clara. She caught him, and her
soft arms felt like a suit of armor.

“You’re quite a gambler, Mrs. Brackett,” said Henry. “If I were you, I’d start being helpful right now.”

“Why should she help you?” yelled Lee.

“Because if you don’t, I am going to use the lasers in my eyes to incinerate the two hundred and thirty-four people currently sleeping in the houses within the five-mile range of my
vision. Then, I will burn you where you stand,” said Henry. “You have fifteen minutes to be useful. It’s up to you.”

T
HEY BOUGHT
his bluff.

The mother put the glasses back on, viewing the metal floor through them.

“Is there anything there, Mom?” asked the boy. “Do you see something?”

Henry hovered over her. The woman threw him an irritated glare. “I don’t know what it is,” she said, turning back to the puzzle embedded in the earth, “but there are some
numbers that look different.” She lowered the glasses, then raised them, toggling between her enhanced vision and her own. “They’re illuminated.”

“What numbers?” asked Henry.

“One, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, fifteen, and twenty-seven.”

It took Henry half a second to recognize the digits: it was the same set of numbers the Faustus unit at the science fiction convention had spouted before meeting its demise. He stepped on the
large tile labeled
ONE
. It depressed like a button. He applied his foot to the tile labeled
TWO
. It sprang right back up, along with
ONE
and a negative buzzer sound: