Before Tomorrowland (29 page)

and his first flight with Amelia Earhart, when he tried to make her cop to the existence of the other world. Now, there he was, back on a plane and flying with his unkillable
Amelia Earhart, on a mission to save a place she felt was so important that she couldn’t tell him the truth about it all those years ago. Except, when he thought about it, he realized she
had. “You know, Tomorrowland really is a better name.” He renamed the file

and slammed the side of the plane. “Let’s go, Lady Lindy!”

Henry turned his head and saw Clara waving as they raced past the zeppelin and out of the hangar bay. They rose over the Atlantic. The stars were dimming as dawn was creeping up on the horizon.
Henry tuned in to Earhart’s radio frequency and heard her report: “Command, this is A.E., requesting Rotwang’s position, do you copy?”

Tesla’s voice came back over the radio: “Copy that, A.E., stand by.”

Henry took speed measurements by looking back at Long Island as it shrank away from him. They moved three hundred, four hundred, then five hundred miles per hour. Earhart was pushing the 325 to
its limits, but three minutes into their flight, they still had no sign of Rotwang.

Tesla radioed again, urgent: “A.E., we place him forty miles out from the jump zone. If you continue closing at your current speed, you’ll have three minutes of contact before he
jumps; less before the portal shakes your plane apart. Take him down however you can and get clear, over.”

“Command, I have him in sight,” said Amelia. “Closing. Henry, are you with me?”

“I am.” He scanned and zoomed in on the speck just visible over the 325’s nose. He saw the bright yellow of the jet’s engine, and through its flame, the rippling
silhouette of the plane. When they were within two miles, he picked up the jet’s electronics. He searched, straining his scanners to create a mental map of the cockpit interior: instruments,
radios, two headsets, fore and aft. Which was Lee wearing? Neither of the passengers spoke, but Henry could differentiate them by their breathing. He found Lee. His young, strong heart thumped loud
and clear through the headphones. Henry ran a wireless hack on the cans and established a link.

“Lee Brackett, this is Henry. Rotwang can’t hear me, I’m speaking only to you. Don’t talk. I’m coming to help. This will not be fun. But you cannot be scared, and
you will need to follow my directions exactly and immediately. If you understand me, cough.”

Henry waited, watching the gap between their planes close. For five long seconds, there was radio silence. Then the boy coughed.

“Good,” said Henry. “We have very little time, so listen close: I’m coming up behind you in another plane with Ms. Earhart. We need you to eject. Beside your left knee,
there’s an emergency release lever. Your seat will eject with a parachute. Ensure you’re wearing your harness, then pull that lever.”

Lee coughed and he kept coughing, insistent. Something was wrong.

“Amelia, bring us over them,” said Henry. “I need a visual.”

With two hundred yards to close, Earhart cut the throttle and pulled up sharp, positioning them above Rotwang at matched speed. Henry could see down into the jet’s cockpit. Henry saw the
problem: Lee’s harness was on, but Rotwang had used a belt to bind the boy’s hands tight to his knees. He couldn’t reach the lever.

“Get me closer, Amelia. I need to board.”

“What?!”

“They boy can’t eject; I need to board their plane! Get me in close, now!”

“I can’t stay with them, Henry, they’re going to make the jump!”

The atmosphere crackled and vibrated with electricity, shaking their plane. Down below, the forty-eight crisscrossed power lines of the Grid rose from the ocean floor, radiating with hot
electromagnetic energy. In the ocean’s boiling glow, Henry could see thousands of fish scattering to escape.

“Close in now!” he yelled.

Amelia descended until they were within twenty, fifteen, then ten yards of the Plus Ultra tour jet. Rotwang, finally spotting them, gawked at Henry with a priceless expression of terror and
outrage. Henry braced his feet against the 325 and pushed off. He flew through the air, then came down hard on the back of the jet. It pitched and dipped. Rotwang cursed and fought the controls.
The fingers of Henry’s left hand dug into the jet’s steel skin as the plane leveled.

Lee screamed over the radio as he watched Henry ball his hand into a fist, and he only screamed harder when Henry punched it through the cockpit glass.

Air rushed through the cabin, battering the boy’s face. Henry reached to liberate Lee from Rotwang’s belt, then to pull his seat harness tight. He unlatched the safety on the
ejection switch and yanked and rolled to avoid Lee as he shot into the lightening sky. He watched him reach the apex of his trajectory and plummet toward the ocean, a parachute blooming behind him.
Earhart peeled off and doubled back for the boy.

Henry was starting to flop hard against the top of plane, which was now vibrating violently from severe turbulence. Wild shoots of electrical energy sprouted from the forty-eight crisscrossing
power lines in the water, tickling the belly of the plane. The sky was tearing open ahead of them, like curtains parting at the middle. An alien landscape revealed itself, vibrant with iridescent
color. Rising above a rain forest with trees as tall as skyscrapers was a man-made structure, a lattice tower capped with a dome comprised of sparking coils, resembling a glowing ball of yarn. It
was a fully realized, totally functional version of Tesla’s great folly, Wardenclyffe Tower, and it was transmitting clean natural energy wirelessly through the dimensional divide to power
the Grid.

Henry was seeing Tomorrowland for the first time—and, he knew, the last. He knew something else: gratitude.

“Rotwang! Veer off now, or I’ll cut the plane in half!”

The doctor looked up at him. Henry expected to see the madman fuming with rage. Instead, his face was so serene, it was eerie. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even afraid. It was as if
seeing what Henry was seeing had marked him, too. There was resignation, and perhaps a question in his eyes, but whatever the question was, he didn’t ask it. He simply pushed the
airplane’s yoke forward and gunned the plane through the parting veil, straight toward the tower.

Henry tried to jump free, but his left hand was still lodged in the jet, locking him down. In the seconds between that realization and their impact with the Grid, Henry heard a strange sound
over the radio. It was Rotwang’s soft, broken laughter.

T
HE MOMENT
the HS1 leapt aboard the jet, Werner Rotwang saw his moment of reckoning.

There would be no more chances. What remained was the inevitable thing he’d been trying to escape his entire life. The glimpse of paradise opened before him was all he would ever see, and,
if his aim was true, all anyone would see. Something about it made Rotwang giggle as he pushed the yoke down and drove his jet into the Grid. His blurred vision and the pain when the glass and fire
flew against him detracted nothing from his broader sense of where he was, what was occuring, and what had occurred in all the seconds of his fifty years, three months, and twenty-five days.

E
ARHART’S GERMAN
jet shook so hard from the shockwave that she bit her tongue and tasted blood. She looked behind her
to see a giant mushroom cloud blossom, then vanish completely. She looked to the ocean and saw the Grid go dark, then sink into the deep. Understanding instantly, she allowed a pang of grief to
have its way with her for one full second. Then she cursed, and focused.

Earhart saw the white billowing silk of Lee’s parachute two miles ahead of her. She locked the yoke, grabbed a parachute of her own, tied the tether of a rough landing kit around her
ankle, hit the bomb bay door release, and dived out of the plane. She was spinning upside down, whipped by wind. The damned chute release strap slipped from her hand. Earhart dropped the kit and
beat her palms over the harness, searching for the pull. It slapped and flapped across her face, and she grabbed at it, two, three times, got a hold, and yanked. The force pulled her upright, and
she glided no more than five hundred feet above the ocean.

Pulling her chute control to the right, she drifted around in a lazy circle, scanning the sky below for Lee. Her timing had been pretty good, after all; she was a quarter mile north of his
chute. He was already in the water, and the white fabric drifted and bubbled behind him in a tangle of lines. She couldn’t see him moving at first, but as she soared closer, he waved at her,
smiling with the joy of just being alive.

Earhart plunged into the ocean just a hundred yards from Lee. She surfaced, pulled off her harness, and tried to paddle over to help him, but it was too tough to swim in her leather jacket.
Cursing, she unzipped it as a swell sloshed over her face, and wriggled out of it. She gave it one last glance.

“See you on the other side,” she said before tossing the jacket away and swimming toward Lee. When she got close, she flipped onto her back, reached for the tether around her ankle,
and pulled the kit toward her. Unfastening a strap caused the kit to automatically unfold into a one-man life raft.

“Get in,” said Earhart.

“I might need help,” he said, “my ankle is sprained pretty bad.”

She moved around the raft and hoisted him onto the raft by the waistband of his jeans. “Sorry about the wedgie,” she said.

“Oh, bygones,” he said, and laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“It just won’t die. It loves you,” he said, pointing. She saw her jacket bobbing toward them on the surface of the water.

She sighed and shook her head as the boy chuckled. “Yep,” she said. “I’ll never have anything nice.”

“H
OW’S THAT?”
asked the robot. “Too tight?”

Lee sat forward on the weathered wooden deck and
shifted his foot a little in the elastic bandage. He shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. “Thanks, Faustus.” The robot smiled and snapped its first-aid case shut,
then walked its stiff strides up the beach house steps past Lee and his mom. She had her arm around him and slept with her face pressed against his shoulder.

The night was hot, but there was a breeze off the ocean, and it was sure a lot hotter inside the house. Ms. Earhart had warned Lee that he and his mom might want to take a couple of blankets
down to the beach if they wanted to get any rest, because the little house was about to become a war zone.

Lee saw and heard what she meant. Just then, Mr. Tesla was trying to talk sense to Mr. Hughes, and Lee wondered why such a smart man couldn’t understand how that was a complete waste of
time. Their angry words poured out of the little cabin.

“If you are so sure about it, then tell us! Tell us how!” Mr. Tesla shouted.

“I don’t care how you do it,” said Mr. Hughes. “I want us back on schedule!”

Mr. Hughes couldn’t accept the reality that Dr. Rotwang had put a nail in the “New Frontier” coffin when he blew up the grid. Tesla’s giant tower had powered the portal
to the other world. But it was also a radio mast that facilitated Plus Ultra’s radio communications with the robots there. Without it, Mr. Hughes certainly wasn’t going to make a return
on his investment. Even Lee could understand that much.