Before Tomorrowland (4 page)

He ducked into a public restroom, stripped off the wet-suit he’d stolen from the
Watt
, and changed into civilian clothes, tucking the cash and the radio pins in his pockets. He
switched his combat settings to
STANDBY
. He needed to be ready for anything. According to the intelligence provided by the Nazi’s mole, Plus Ultra owned twenty-seven
pieces of property throughout the five boroughs of New York City, and one of their public areas was there on Coney Island. What the intelligence didn’t provide were descriptions of these
holdings. He moved inland, sticking to shadows as he followed the heading on his internal map. He passed through industrial buildings and a storage hangar filled with faded amusement park signs. If
the heading was correct, he was very close.

An expanse of cracked concrete gave way to a larger field of weeds until, at last, he came to a long wooden fence adorned with a sign that confirmed his information:

QUARTER MINUS ENTERTAINMENT

It was an awkward disguise for an awkwardly named organization. Plus Ultra was a defiant rejoinder to the Latin
Non Plus Ultra
, the warning issued by the gods of antiquity to men who
dared venture into territories not meant for them. Plus Ultra had no respect for limits. He was proof of that.

He strolled the perimeter, scanning for defenses, still confused by the site’s classification. It was a junkyard. He stopped at a point where the tall, bent arms of a collapsed carnival
ride stuck up behind the fence. A child-sized rocket ship dangled from the highest arm, poised to fall once the rust ate through it. He peeked through the pickets and saw piles of dented bumper
cars and merry-go-round horses with broken legs. He also spotted what passed for the scrapyard’s security system: a slumbering pit bull.

He kicked the base of the fence, hard. The dog sprung out of sleep and roared toward the fence, but its chain went taut, yanking the mutt backward. It recovered and resumed barking.

It needed silencing.

He leapt to the top of the fence with ease, then jumped again and landed on top of the dog’s chain, just behind its neck, pinning the animal to the ground. He’d put on weight: three
quarters of a ton. There was a joke there somewhere, but he couldn’t laugh. Rotwang hadn’t programmed that into his vocal application. He wrapped the chain around the dog’s
snarling muzzle, then again until the animal could only whimper. When he let go, the metal links that had been in his hand were fused together in a mass that shined in the moonlight, fresh-forged.
The dog whined again and pawed at its nose.

Them’s the breaks.

His father’s phrase popped to mind, unbidden and unwanted. He filed the reminder of his late father under

If a memory wouldn’t behave itself and die, it was best to bury it deep and filter it out as best he could.

Henry Stevens walked around the islands of scrap, noting the different pieces. A target range. Popcorn machines with glass panes broken and scattered. A long conveyor belt.

He stopped.

Before him, broken and hollowed out, was The World of the Future. The exhibit looked nothing like it had in Santa Monica, and not just because it was now a wreck. It seemed smaller. His
calculation of scale was perfect, but it
had
been seven years since

and six years before that when his father took him to see the exhibit. He wasn’t the same, in any way. No wonder it didn’t match his memory.

The kiosks were gone. The ramps were broken and twisting away where the building had collapsed on top of them, and its patterned bronze surface was now grayed out by oxidation and dirt. It was
typical of Plus Ultra to disguise its equipment and its purposes, but an X-ray of the building’s interior revealed nothing. No hidden doors or false walls. No computer systems or circuitry
running under the dirt and rust. He did feel a trace electrical current nearby, but it was small. More likely powering a light bulb than any communication technology.

He looped around the building one more time. He hoped to find a clue to Plus Ultra’s current interests in New York City, but it was quickly becoming evident that the scrapyard was only a
dumping ground for the group’s past. Surveying the wreckage threatened to tease loose more memories of the naïve boy he used to be, so easily dazzled and excited by the cleverly marketed
futurism of allegedly idealistic men. If only he had been wiser, harder, more tempered and cool, he could have avoided the tragedy he had become…

A piece from an old exhibit caught his eye. It was one of the robot butlers, hanging facedown over a beam. Henry stood there a moment and considered its dead metal body. The silver tray was
still stuck to its right hand. Henry reached over and lifted the head. It was much different than he remembered, but not in its shape. It was simply ruined. The mouthpiece was broken on the right
side and one of its camera eyes dangled on a pair of wires.

When he inspected the good eye, its iris shrank and focused on him.

“MORE GEL-A-TIN, MA’AM?” Henry jumped back as the robot twisted and writhed, trying to escape the beam from which it hung. Its broken teeth lit up its face like a
jack-o’-lantern as it talked. “All of these gourmet dining op-p-p-p-tions in a mere five minutes! Try the pork chops and see if they aren’t just—just as delicious as
Mom’s!”

Without a second thought, Henry reached into his bag, pulled out a sticky bomb, and placed it on the robot’s face. It kept blurting script: “Farm fresh! Microwaved to
perfection.” Current rippled through Henry’s synthetic gut, charging him up, telling him to run. He upended the backpack, spilled all the bombs below the squirming robot, then turned
and pumped his heavy legs as fast as they would go. He bolted to the fence and jumped it, pressing on across weeds and concrete toward the beach. After a minute of sprinting, Henry pushed the radio
trigger. The robot’s rant, now looping through his mind, and the sound of ten thousand laughing voices were drowned out in the roar. The landscape lit up all the way to the surf. He never
once looked back.

“W
HAT’S THE
name?”

“Brackett. Clara Brackett.”

Lee stood next to his mom in the hotel lobby, holding their suitcases and looking at the scuffed tile floor. The place wasn’t in bad shape, but they weren’t trying to impress anyone.
Sort of like a fraternity he’d visited last year on his college tour. Sloane House was the largest residential YMCA in the States and the go-to choice for “transient young men,”
according to the ad. A flophouse. It catered almost exclusively to soldiers, past and present. Strapping, happy lads not much older than Lee. Old army vets, haggard and haunted. The homeless, lost
and hollow. Lee felt both inadequate and unsafe, but with the World’s Fair going on, there wasn’t anything else available they could afford. His mom had to mention his father’s
army service just to get them into a family room there.

The desk clerk pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, shuffling papers. “I have something for a Mr. James Brackett,” he said.

“That’s it,” said Clara.

“Very good.” He waved a pen at Lee. “I’ll just need the gentleman’s signature for the room.”

Clara opened her mouth to correct the clerk, then stopped herself. She turned to Lee with an impish smirk. “James, my dear, he needs your signature.”

Lee flushed with embarrassment as he stepped forward and scribbled his father’s name there, there, and there. Clara tried to hide her amusement.

“Room three fifteen,” said the clerk. “Two double beds with a sink and three nights comes to three dollars ninety cents.”

“Here you are, dear,” said Clara, handing Lee bills from her purse. Lee slapped the money on the counter and grabbed the key, then turned and marched toward the elevator.

“James?”

Lee turned. His mom pointed to their luggage. “You forgot our bags,” she said. “I would bring them myself, if not for the weakness of my sex.”

Lee felt an overwhelming urge to curse, but he stomped back and played his part. When they finally got into the elevator and after the doors had closed, Clara let out a laugh that doubled her
over. He still couldn’t look at her.

“Oh, good…I’m—HAH—I’m sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Yeah, you seem really broken up. Can we please just never talk about this? Ever?”

The “family room” was smaller than Lee’s bedroom back home. The windows sported bars, and the beds were springy in the most literal sense, covered tight with thin wool
blankets. Still, after a hard night’s travel, they called to him. Lee suggested his mom take a moment to rest. But no. She unzipped her suitcase and transferred a series of items into a
smaller day bag—business cards, journal, pens and colored pencils, camera, film, and her
costume.
It was sort of a jumpsuit thing a pilot might wear, with goggles and a leather cap.
There was also a backpack with green canvas straps and brass buckles and a little sewn-on insignia.

“Are you really gonna wear the cap?” he asked.

She glanced up, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I just don’t think you’ll want it in this heat, and I sure don’t want to carry it.”

She went back to packing as if he hadn’t said anything, mouthing the names of things as she went, making sure. Resigned, Lee set to packing his own day bag, which was really another bag
for her. Her meds, her spare clothes, a first aid kit, and his dad’s army canteen, which he topped off at the sink.

“Ready?” she asked. She was beaming.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Thirty-Fourth Street was alive with purpose. The morning air was already warm and thick with the smell of exhaust, roasting meat, and pavement. Lee wondered if it was always like this, or if the
city was swollen from the World’s Fair. Clara looked left and right and bolted into the current of moving bodies, and Lee swerved around people to keep pace. Her energy on this trip continued
to surprise him, but it didn’t mean she was always sure on her feet. The last thing he wanted was her falling in the crowd.

This is a bad idea
played again in his father’s baritone.

Clara slowed at Seventh Avenue, outside Macy’s. Their bus stop. When the double-decker pulled up, she insisted they ride topside in the open air. Lee liked the idea, given the heat, but
the stairs on a moving vehicle were a potential problem. His mom still struggled with weakness on her left side, and it was most evident whenever she tried to climb stairs. He hustled to her and
she reached for his arm. He encouraged her to lead with her strong right leg with the mantra they had been taught by the physical therapist: “Good foot to heaven, bad foot to hell.” By
now, it was a familiar, easy dance for them, and as always, it concluded with her saying, “Thank you.”

When they finally took a seat, Lee felt like an anchor finding the sea floor. Between his general worry, the train station fiasco, and keeping track of their gear, the last hour might have been
the longest of his life. Not to mention that “Mr. Brackett” business.

“Isn’t it incredible?”

Clara was leaning back in her seat, taking in the city with delight. He blew out a deep breath in reply as she leaned over and took her journal from the day pack. “I have to sketch
this!”

“We’re already moving,” he told her. “You want the camera?”

“Film’s expensive. Besides, I want to save it for the more exotic scenery.” She grinned at him again.

She drew. His mom’s hand jumped from corner to corner, laying down architectural lines, then scribbles for trees and people. In less than a minute she had a perfectly descriptive sketch of
Herald Square, with Macy’s on one corner. Lee never had much use for art, but it was clear to him that his mom had a gift. Once in a while she talked about how they used to sketch together
when he was little, but he didn’t remember that.

“Look,” she whispered, squeezing his arm. He followed her line of sight toward the sky. The Empire State Building loomed above them. “What an endeavor,” she said.
“You know they were going to put a blimp station at the top of it?”

He did know. She’d told him at least twice before, but he pretended otherwise. Since her diagnosis, she sometimes forgot what she’d already said, or got confused about where
she’d left something. This wasn’t one of the stressful moments, though. She was in the grip of wonder, and she wanted to delight in it. So he bit back on his inclination to make a crack
about the Hindenburg disaster of a couple years ago.

She held her hat on with one hand as she leaned back. “Can you imagine? Surveying the greatest city on the face of the earth from the clouds, then docking at the restaurant at the top of
the tower for a high tea.” She elbowed Lee in the ribs. “High. Tea.”

“I got it, Mom.”

The bus turned left and puttered uptown. Clara sketched as they passed the New York Public Library, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and others. When the bus stopped near Tiffany’s, Clara
was especially excited, but Lee’s attention drifted. A group of girls in school uniforms walked past the store windows, pointing at the jewelry, and then past a newspaper vendor just below
them on the street. Front and center on the racks were dozens of copies of a tabloid sporting Lou Gehrig’s face and a headline:
LOU GEHRIG TO ADDRESS FANS AT JULY
4TH RETIREMENT GAME
.