Clockwork Twist : Missing (22 page)

“Besides, you’re not a soldier,” Aden added. “No one is questioning your courage or your devotion to your friend. It simply a matter of tactics.”

“Sir,” Skye said, drawing herself into a taller posture, “I’d like to volunteer for the mission.” Everyone looked to her in surprise. “I can bring Kali with me, I’ve faced a dragon before, and…well, sir, I want to go into outer space.” Her words took on an excited, delighted edge by the end, which frightened Twist.

“Good points all, Agent Blue,” Aden said, looking at her with a thoughtful smile. “I can’t think of a reason to refuse.”

Twist’s fears rose sharply. Skye didn’t even know Jonas. This wasn’t her battle. She had nothing to gain by risking her life. He moved to speak, to say anything to change their minds, but Myra gripped his hand tightly, stilling him. He looked to her as a fresh wave of fright flooded through her touch. Her gleaming eyes were stern as she leaned closer.

“I won’t let you go, Twist,” she said with a wavering voice but clear resolve. “If you keep trying, I’ll…I’ll stop you.”

Twist stared at her in shock. Then, slowly, he began to understand her fear. Even now, she couldn’t remember Jonas. She didn’t know him. He was nothing to her, but Twist was…he shook his head and took a heavy breath. Then he mastered his strength and gave her copper hands a gentle pat with his free hand.

“As you wish, my dear,” he said, forcing a smile. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you. I suppose that leaving the planet would be breaking my promise.”

Her fear broke and melted away with her relieved smile. “Thank you, darling,” she said, looking fatigued.

Once the details of the plan had been worked out, Aden asked Skye to lead everyone to a nearby Rook research station, which was hidden away in the dusty red desert outside the city. Not only was the matter transporter located there, but Twist was told that there was another piece of technology that would help the scientists to pinpoint Jonas’s location in the heavens. Storm happily explained that he and his mother had been living at the facility since they came to Australia. They had only traveled to Melbourne to meet Twist.

Storm spoke quickly and excitedly, as the group left the hotel and began to walk down the street outside, telling Twist about all of the strange technology that the Rooks were developing at the secret research center. Twist listened with a light smile, amazed by the incredible things the boy spoke of. Most of the them sounded like they belonged in a Jules Verne novel.

Kima, meanwhile, seemed to have taken on the role of a ranch hand while her son cavorted with the scientists. As the group walked along, Myra’s curiosity eventually drew all of Storm’s attention, allowing Twist to let himself drift to the silence at the back of the group. Kima caught his eye as their paces aligned.

“He seems very happy here,” Twist offered to her pleasantly.

“Yes, he loves talking with the scientists,” she answered with a nod. “I wish he’d spend more time outside, learning to ride, track, or even hunt, but he is always inside talking about things I don’t understand.”

Twist smiled. He had never been an active child, himself. Pursuits of the mind had always held far more interest to him than physical exercise.

“He’s an intelligent young man,” he said to Kima. “Maybe he’s just not meant to be a hunter.”

Kima watched her son speaking brightly to Myra, up ahead. Her expression darkened dangerously close to misery. “He’s less and less like his father every day. He’s less like me, as well. Sometimes, I wonder whose son he really is.”

Twist fell silent, unsure how to respond to her fears. He remembered her telling Jonas and him that Storm had been born with black hair and dark eyes, and that his appearance had changed as he’d grown. In the back of his mind, Twist’s memory of the mythical creature, the changeling, rose to the surface. He shook his head, rejecting the idea. Of course Storm was human. The boy had a Sight, after all. Only human beings had Sights. And changelings didn’t exist, he assured himself easily.

The group came to the far end of the main road through the center of Melbourne, where the edge of the city met the ruddy desert and rugged brush. Twist and his companions were met by two Rook agents. Skye and Henry took the lead, approaching the men with a casual ease. Unlike the agents he’d met in London, these two men were not wearing sharp black suits. One was taller than the other, and dressed in simple but very sturdy looking Western-style clothing. The right side of his wide-brimmed hat was pinned up against his head like a panache-less musketeer.

“Henry!” the tall agent said with a thick Australian accent and clear astonishment. “That crazy contraption really does work, huh?” He gave Henry a hearty slap on the back.

“Seems to,” Henry said with a smile. “I haven’t dissolved into jam yet.” The Australian Rook gave a laugh, though it sounded slightly nervous to Twist. “Collin,” Henry said, gesturing to Skye beside him. “These are the people Aden sent from London.”

“Agent Blue, at yer service,” Skye said with a lazy salute.

“Good to meet you,” said the man with the funny hat. “I’m Agent Collin. This is my partner, Monti,” he added, with a gesture to the man standing beside him who wore no hat but otherwise similar clothing to Collin.

Twist was surprised to find himself looking slightly down at Monti. He’d become accustomed to always being the shortest adult member of any given group. Monti was also just as thin as Twist, but his skin was a dark and dusty brown, and his curly black hair hung nearly to his shoulders. His dark eyes twinkled and almost disappeared into his round features when he smiled at Kima in greeting. She gave him a nod.

“A pleasure, ma’am,” Monti said to Skye, with a lighter accent than Collin’s.

“You too, but don’t call me ma’am,” Skye responded with a smile. “This is Twist, Myra, Arabel, and Vane,” she added with gestures to each of them.

“Nice to meet you,” Monti said pleasantly.

“So you’re Mr. Twist,” Collin said with a smile, looking him over. “Storm, here, hasn’t stopped talking about you for days. I feel like I know you already.” Twist glanced at Storm to find the boy smiling back at him. “We’re ready to leave when you are,” Collin said to Skye, with an inviting gesture to the rest of the group.

“Thank you,” Skye said, taking the lead again as the others followed. “We’re good to go.”

Stepping around the side of the last building on the street, Twist was startled by the design of the carriage that stood waiting for them. It had the shape of an open wooden cart with a blond canvas canopy, but there were no horses before it. Instead, a rumbling engine sat in an iron box at the front; Monti took a seat just behind the box, with his hands on a small wheel. He put goggles on over his eyes, and his hair was quickly tied back with a string. There were also a few sturdy-looking bicycles with what appeared to be smaller rumbling engines bolted to the center bars.

“What on Earth is all of this?” Twist asked.

“I call dibs on a motorcycle!” Arabel said excitedly. Collin glanced at Kima. She gave him a shrug and moved toward the carriage.

“Oh, no fair!” Vane snapped unhappily. “I wanted to ride one.”

“Come along, everyone,” Skye said, heading for the larger carriage.

In a matter of minutes they had all climbed onto the back of the carriage and sat down on the low, padded, wooden seats. Storm sat beside Monti, with goggles on and the one-eyed contraption he usually wore now sitting in his lap. Arabel pulled on a pair of goggles and took a motorcycle, along with Collin who did the same and hung his hat on his back by the cord. Monti gave the word, and the carriage engine growled to life, spewing steam out of the metal gills on its sides as it began to move forward.

In no time at all, the carriage picked up enough speed to rival a train as its heavy wheels tore through the open, red desert. The motorcycles kept up easily—Arabel obviously enjoying the ride as she and Collin raced alongside the carriage—and the smaller engines left a trail of white steam in the cloud of red dust behind them. Twist watched, mesmerized, as the noise of the procession startled herds of strange animals into running with them occasionally.

“Oh, how adorable!” Myra shouted over the din of the engines, pointing to a group of animals that seemed to look curiously back at her as they bounded alongside. “What are those creatures?”

“I think those are kangaroos,” Twist shouted back. “I’ve seen drawings.”

“This is such a fascinating place!” she said brightly. “I’m very glad we get to see it.”

Twist smiled at her, still in her red-and-pink Japanese dress, as the rusty dust billowed off the land behind them. Thinking back now, it seemed to him that no matter what dangers they faced, Myra always seemed to take pleasure in every possible moment. Knowing that they were finally close to actually saving Jonas from outer space, Twist indulged himself to share in her delight. He took her hand and let her wonder ripple over him.

The desert stretched out to all sides, endless as an ocean. It wasn’t long, however, before a single estate appeared in the brush and sand. As they drew closer, Twist saw a few large, pale buildings surrounded by wide, fenced patches of crops and livestock. It all also appeared to be sitting near a deep chasm in the ground: a long, jagged ravine cutting violently across the desert floor that promised a river hidden far below. What caught most of Twist’s attention, however, was a giant, gleaming, silver dish that was held aloft on a long mechanical arm, above the roof of the center building of the estate.

“What in the world is that?” he asked, leaning closer to shout to Skye over the noise of the carriage.

“Radar telescope,” Skye answered, shouting back.

Twist looked to her with deliberate patience. “And, pray tell, what in the world is a radar telescope?”

“It’s for listening to stars,” Skye yelled with a shrug.

Twist narrowed his eyes at her. “Stars make a noise?”

“You’ve got me,” Skye said. “I just work here.”

Twist shook his head, smiling. Her funny turns of phrase were beginning to strike him as charming as well as incomprehensible.

“What?” she asked, frowning at his mirth.

“Oh, nothing,” Twist said, looking back to see that the carriage was already slowing down as it approached the estate.

It was only a few moments more before the procession came to a halt in a cloud of rusty dust. As Twist and his companions stepped off the carriage, a handful of people hurried to them from the main house. The people from the house surrounded Henry the moment he set foot on the ground and began to barrage him with questions, most of them to do with his physical health. While they hurried him off to one of the smaller buildings, Storm and Kima led the others into the main house.

The interior of the main house looked much the way that Twist had imagined it would, with its single center hall, a multitude of smallish rooms on all sides, and a reasonable amount of usable furnishings. There were, however, a considerable amount of people bustling about inside. Many wore long white coats, and most carried clipboards, notebooks, and strange-looking apparatuses of varying and confusing design. With all of the people moving through the small, enclosed hallways and doorways of the house, Twist struggled to keep himself out of the way.

Myra stepped up behind him and put her hands on his arms, guiding him to follow quickly after Storm and Kima. Once they had made it to their destination, inside a large room at the back of the house, Twist took a deep breath and willed his heart to stop pounding. Try as he might, he couldn’t banish the thought that Jonas would have noticed his discomfort if he’d been there, and would have done something casual and simple to ease it. Myra stepped in front of him and peered at his face, reaching up to tuck a stray curl behind his ear.

“Are you all right, my dear?” she asked him gently.

Twist clung to the brightness that her touch gave him, and nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

She smiled and moved back, looking at the room around them. A multitude of windows spilled the honey-gold light of late afternoon into the large parlor and onto the bare wooden floor. Four or five large blackboards, all covered with figures and mathematical formulas, stood on wooden legs in a jumble in a corner of the room. The large table in the center of the room was covered completely with multiple layers of note pages, books, and huge maps of the night sky. A number of young men and women—prominently thin in build, speckled of complexion, and wearing glasses on their noses—stood at the blackboards or stooped over books or maps on the table.

“Apparently,” Collin was saying to Skye, “the night sky is really big.” One of the young women in the room glanced up at him with a displeased expression.

“But it’s been a week,” Skye said, looking over the scientific work that surrounded her. “Have they found anything yet?”

“Not yet,” Storm answered with a sigh.

“What are they trying to find?” Twist asked Arabel, who stood beside he and Myra near the door.

“Your spaceship,” she answered.

One of the young men—a tall boy of maybe twenty with mousy brown hair and thick-lensed glasses—approached Collin and Skye with a clipboard.

“Well?” Collin asked him.

The boy gave a proud smile. “We found an asteroid yesterday that came within four million, six hundred and forty seven thousand miles of the Earth,” he said brightly and with a clear Australian accent. “We were quite excited about it.”

“What does that mean?” Skye asked Collin.

Collin gave her a shrug.

The boy with the clipboard gave a sigh. “It’s not easy to find things like that,” he muttered, deflated. “But according to our calculations, an object like the one Storm described would have to orbit at…” He paused, his long finger running over a page on the clipboard. “Ah, yes,” he said brightly. “It would have to orbit at no more than three hundred miles from sea level in order to have a view of the Earth that matches the image Storm described.”

“Okay…” Collin toned, nodding slowly.

“Which means,” the boy went on laboriously, “that it would be moving fast. I mean, about fifteen or sixteen orbits a day.” He said this as if it should be common knowledge.

“I see…” Collin toned, nodding again.

The boy gave another sigh. “Finding something small, close, and fast is almost beyond our means of observation. We could keep looking for generations and never find it.”

“But the dragons will leave for Jupiter any time now,” Storm said urgently.

“Without some help or even a vague direction in which to look,” the boy with the clipboard said sadly, “I honestly don’t think there’s much hope.”

Twist felt a tightening in his chest as Storm expressed his misery with a pitiful tone. How could Twist have come so far, gotten so close to resolution, only to be stopped by the limits of the science of his time? It seemed unreasonable and bitterly unfair.

“Twist!” Storm gasped suddenly, rushing to him. Twist jumped back a step as the boy came too close. “Can’t you feel him?” Storm asked, having stopped mere inches away from him. “When Jonas isn’t close to you, he can follow the buzz in his neck to find you. Can’t you do the same thing?”

“Well…” Twist muttered, feeling the eyes of everyone in the room turn on him.

“He just said that even a vague direction to look in would help,” Storm pressed.

“All right, all right,” Twist said, holding up a hand. “Just give me a moment.”

Storm stepped back, his lips pressed tightly together and his hands up. Twist gave a sigh and closed his eyes, his head bowed absently. He tried not to think of the others watching him. He tried to calm his nerves and focus on his Sight, on the spot at the base of his neck where Jonas’s presence always touched him. Taking a deep breath, he pressed his awareness onto the spot. His Sight complained instantly against the strain, but he pressed on as gently as he could. He reached up to put a hand on the back of his neck, struggling to find even the slightest hint of the buzz.

He caught a sense of it suddenly, buried deep inside the dull, aching pain that billowed up to fill his mind. Twist felt his body go limp as his awareness dashed quickly after the fleeting, subtle sensation of Jonas’s existence, impossibly far away. He was vaguely aware that he’d fallen to his knees on the wood floor, and that there were voices in the outside world, but he knew he was close. Just a moment more, just a little more strength…Jonas’s heartbeat was fluttering ahead of him, just beyond his grasp, deep in the worst of the pain.

Pure determination drove Twist on through the last few millimeters. His attention finally took a solid hold of the subtle buzz as the painful world around him melted away into nothing. The soft, soothing, familiar electric buzz broke over him like a chilly, sparkling wave, drowning him in peace, calm, and white light. Pure relief stole all of his thoughts away as he savored the delight of the familiar fog.

“
Twist…
?
” a voice called as if from a great distance. The moment Twist realized that it was Jonas’s voice, the sound drew closer to him, whispering at his ear. “
What are you doing
?
”

Twist’s tattered senses returned to him suddenly. He was here for a reason. He needed to tell the others where Jonas was. He’d have to go back through all that pain and leave the light behind him. His fear rose sharply in his thoughts.

“
You can’t stay
,” Jonas’s voice said at his ear. “
You’re in pain, Twist
.”

Even though he felt no fear here in the fog, Twist knew the voice was right. If he didn’t let go and return soon, he might not have the strength to relay any information when he did. But the calm, cool relief was so sweet…

“
Please, go,
” the voice said, sorrowfully but sincerely. “
Go now
!
”

Twist mastered his unwilling soul and dove back out into the world, into the dark, stinging, aching pain that surrounded that tiny oasis of calm. He felt himself scream through the agony, and he hurried his pace, striving for reality with all he had.

He blinked his eyes open to find he’d fallen onto the floor on his side, while shadowed figures surrounded him. His vision was blurred and flashed with tiny motes of light, while the world around him looked like nothing but deep shadow and blinding light. He struggled to breathe, and his ears rang with a high whine. Everything—inside, outside, bone, skin, and soul—burned in pain. He knew he would slip from consciousness any second.

With the very last of his exhausted will, Twist threw his arm into the air, pointing back along the path his awareness had traveled. “That way,” he gasped in a ragged voice before he felt himself tumble helplessly into black, empty nothing.