Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy) (10 page)

12.

W
e wander on, paging through the newspapers. I get the impression Win is moving without any particular destination in mind, just avoiding lingering anywhere we might draw attention. Down one street, we pass a couple of men in intense conversation. One of them jabs his finger upward, and the other sighs before offering a brief protest. Then the first catches sight of Win and me. His eyes narrow. All at once, he breaks into a low tirade, as if our presence has proven whatever point he was trying to make. I walk on, my eyes trained on my last newspaper.

Win’s only partway through his pile, since he’s actually reading the articles. He hands me a few of the ones he hasn’t gotten to yet, and takes mine to give them a second look. I turn a page, and another. My gaze sticks on a name under a headline.

“How do you spell ‘Jeanant’?” I ask.

“J-E-A-N-A-N-T,” Win says. “It’s unlikely he’d use his real name though . . . But we should probably keep an eye out for his code name, the one he’d have used when our group needed to communicate on public channels. Jeanant went by ‘Meeth’—short for Prometheus.”

Prometheus. I vaguely remember our unit on Greek mythology in elementary school. Prometheus was the guy who stole fire from the gods to give it to mortals, wasn’t he? Like Jeanant bringing freedom from his people to us on Earth? It’s fitting.

Curiosity nibbles at me as I study the article, which looks the same as all the others. No jab of
wrong
ness. “So what’s your secret code name?” I ask. “Or is Win it?”

“No,” Win says. “I didn’t really choose mine. Someone else came up with it, as a joke, and it ended up sticking.”

“Well, now I have to know.”

The silence stretches. “It can’t be
that
bad,” I say.

He grimaces. “It’s ‘Pogo,’ ” he says. “Which is sort of short for Galápagos.”

“Galápagos? Is that the joke?”

“Not exactly.”

“So . . .”

“It was just Jule being Jule,” he mutters. “He said I was ‘practically bouncing up and down’ when they first let me in on the mission.”

My mouth twitches in amusement. “And what does Galápagos have to do with anything?”

“It’s a long story,” he says briskly. “Why are you asking about names? Did you see something?”

I point out the article. “Do you think this could be Jeanant? It’s kind of like a mix between his name and the code name: ‘Jean Manthe.’ ”

Win snatches the paper from me. “It could be.”

His eyes light up as he reads the article. “It
must
be him,” he says. “He uses a line that was in that message to Thlo: ‘the theme of our cause.’ ”

I found the clue after all. “So what’s he say?” I ask, leaning closer.

“He’s sending a message to the ‘true people’ of Paris, that while they should fight for what they deserve, he hopes they’ll take care not to ‘destroy the very treasures that should be theirs’—the museums, the art . . .”

“The other detail you said he mentioned—it was something about paint, wasn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Win says with a grin. “Where better to paint over something than in an art gallery? This article could be both a hint to us and a way of making sure the revolutionaries don’t destroy what he’s left.”

“Where should we look first?” I say. “There are a lot of galleries in Paris, aren’t there?”

“The Louvre existed in 1830,” Win says. “It was converted into an art and history museum not long before now. That seems like our best chance. I think we’re close already.”

He turns right at the next intersection, and I follow, staring up at the buildings that are so tall and close I can only make out the very edge of their roofs. My scalp is sweating under the makeshift shawl. I swipe at a droplet running down the side of my face, and realize I’ve probably smudged newspaper ink across my cheek. Oh well. It’ll fit my costume.

Nothing provokes that quiver of
wrong
ness. But then, my special sensitivity hasn’t done anything for us here so far. We figured out our next destination from a name and information Win already knew. He didn’t really need me.

I shake myself, feeling strangely deflated. It shouldn’t matter. What matters is that we find where Jeanant left his weapon, one way or another.

Finally we come to the edge of a wide tree-lined boulevard. The structure on the other side of the street is so immense my first impression is that it’s a castle. It lords over the road, as high as the several-story buildings we’ve been wandering amid, though the huge arched windows form only three rows across the stone face. Between the windows and along the roof, the stone is carved into fluted columns and cornices and figures human and divine. I itch to step closer, but the scene on the sidewalk out front stops me.

Soldiers in the same blue-and-red uniforms I saw on the bridge are gathered along the promenade by the building’s foot. Some are patrolling, others hauling cannons or barrels, or rocks they’re heaping into rough barricades along the sidewalk. One soldier heads across the road not far from where we stand, and I duck back into the shadows. One of Lisa’s favorite phrases pops into my mind in her breezy voice:
Bad news up ahead!
Somehow I suspect this would be enough to dull even her usual bravado.

“That’s it,” Win says, as if I hadn’t figured it out. “The Louvre.”

“How are we going to get past them?” I ask, jerking my chin toward the soldiers. They don’t look as though they’re planning to welcome visitors.

Win gives me an amused expression that’s becoming familiar, and lifts the top of his satchel.

I roll my eyes at myself. “Of course.”

“You don’t see anything that seems even a bit off out there?” he asks.

I consider the building and the activity around it once more. The sight of all those rifles and cannons doesn’t exactly soothe my jitters, but nothing stands out.

“No. Sorry.”

“Well, anything painted will be inside. We can start by jumping forward to the end of this revolution. Jeanant could have placed what he wants us to find anytime during the three days, so that’ll give us the best chance of getting there after him. If it looks like the locals have disturbed things inside, we can always work backward.”

“Fine with me,” I say.

Win directs me into the shelter of a doorway, out of view of the windows overhead. He whips the cloth around us. I lift my feet instinctively as the floor of the tentlike shape forms beneath them. Win flicks his fingers, and presses his hand against the data display.

The walls shudder. I stumble, and snatch at the back of Win’s shirt. And the movement stops. We’ve Traveled less than a mile and no more than a couple days, after all.

Then Win pushes open the cloth, and my jaw goes slack.

The walls and floor of the vast hallway we’ve arrived in are lit with an amber afternoon glow, washing in from the few lofty windows nearby. Beside us, a ring of marble figures lounge on polished pedestals, carved in such detail I could have mistaken them for living people if they weren’t so still and stony white. Beyond them, massive paintings line the walls. The curved ceiling looms some twenty feet above our heads, and it’s a work in itself. Sculpted marble and glints of gold surround a scene of cherubs at play.

When I lower my gaze and step toward the paintings, the floor creaks softly. I don’t recognize this image of a woman sitting by a pond, but the style makes me think of the Italian Renaissance. The canvas is taller than me and wider than I could reach with my arms spread. Standing in front of it, only the rippled texture of the brushstrokes stops me from feeling I could step right into the image. I’ve almost touched it before I realize and yank my hand back.

This is probably a masterpiece. Preserved from centuries ago for centuries to come.

And I’m here to see it, in the most famous museum in the world.

Angela would just about explode with artistic excitement. A pang of homesickness wobbles in my chest. I wish she were here, seeing it with me.

Maybe she will be, someday in the future I’m protecting right now. Assuming we can keep following Jeanant’s trail to his weapon.

A sharp cracking sound echoes through the walls, and I flinch. Win is standing by one of the windows, staring outside.

Another shot crackles, somewhere in the distance, beyond the courtyard the window looks down into. The courtyard itself is empty, but past the wing of the museum opposite us, a stream of smoke is curling up toward the deep blue of the late-afternoon sky.

I’ve only heard cannon fire in movies, but the boom that reverberates through the glass a moment later makes me remember the weapons I saw the soldiers hauling. Those cannons were real. That smoke’s from a real fire. It seems so distant, on the other side of the pane, but right now one of those stately buildings we passed just a few minutes and two days ago could be burning down. Real guns are being fired out there; real bodies are fleeing the flames, falling on the cobblestones. The gentlemen and women on the riverside street, the boys who pelted Win . . . people who already died long before I was born are dying again.

I walked among them for an hour or two, but I still have no idea what it was like for any of them, living here in this now. Instead I’m busy thinking of happy futures.

My throat’s closed up. I force the words out. “Do you think we’re safe in here?”

“It looks like Jeanant’s appeal to save the art worked,” Win says, tipping his head toward the vacant courtyard. “Let’s go—we have a lot of ground to cover.”

The sounds of the revolution dwindle when we head down the hall, until all I can hear is the tap of my boots and Win’s shoes. I’m glad to leave it behind, but then I’m pricked by guilt. I was out there wrinkling my nose at the smells and cringing away from the muck, but I
can
leave. I can slip away into this museum and pretend this is some big vacation, and then I can jump back home, where there are no battles raging in the streets.

But I can’t do anything about the violence out there. So as we walk farther, I let the sense of peace that emanates from the high ceilings and pale walls wash over me. I examine every relic we pass, absorbing lines and colors, expressions and gestures.

This is what humans have created, despite the shifts Win’s people have made: things of beauty, things of meaning, even if most of the symbols and allusions go over my head. It’s amazing.

We reach the end of one hall and wander through a series of smaller interconnected gallery rooms before emerging into another grand passageway. Win walks smoothly and efficiently, but when I glance at him, he’s ogling the art as openly as I’ve been.

“You haven’t been here before,” I say.

He shakes his head. “There are a lot of places and periods on Earth,” he says. “I’ve only seen a few. I wish we had time to really take this in.”

He won’t get the chance to later on, if his group succeeds and the generator is destroyed. I don’t know why Earth’s history would matter much to some alien race, but I can imagine how a person could find that freedom hard to let go of.

“You have your own art, don’t you?” I say. “On your planet?”

“My dad creates pictures,” he says hesitantly. “With paint. When he can afford it. He’d be overwhelmed by this place. It’s not the same on Kemya—taking anything artistic seriously is discouraged, so there aren’t really any traditions, any teachers to learn from. You’d find it hard to understand. There’s a saying we have.” He speaks in his native tongue, and then translates. “
If it doesn’t build, then it breaks.
Making something that doesn’t have an obvious use, it’s considered wasteful, even destructive. What did we lose that we could have had if that person had applied him or herself to something more practical? It makes sense, of course. But I still wonder what we might make, if we had more opportunity.”

Wow. With every new thing he tells me about Kemya, I like the place less. “Do you do anything . . . creative?” I can’t help asking.

His mouth twists. “I copied my dad with the paint a little when I was young, because I wanted to do what he did. Before I knew exactly what people thought about that. Anyway, I didn’t—”

He cuts himself off, and at the same moment I hear it. The faint rapping of footsteps somewhere behind us.

Win nudges me over to the wall, beside a display case holding a row of ornately etched pottery. The alarm band is calm against my ankle. “It can’t be the Enforcers,” I whisper.

“Probably a museum guard then,” Win says. “Safer to be at work than out there. If he comes this way, I can take care of it.”

The certainty under his flippant tone gives me pause. Does
he
have one of those awful numbing blasters?

The footsteps halt, then continue. We wait silently. There’s a touch on my hand; Win’s reached out, curling his fingers around mine. The
there
ness of the skin-to-skin contact sends an odd shiver up my arm, but it’s comforting too. A very solid reminder that I’m not alone. I peek at him warily just as he looks away from me, his expression going distant while he listens.

After a minute, I’m sure the sound’s getting fainter. In another, I can’t hear the steps at all. Win steps away from the display case.

“Keep quiet,” he murmurs to me, “and hopefully he’ll never know we were here.”

“What if Jeanant ran into a guard when
he
was here?” I ask softly as we continue down the hall.

“I’m sure Jeanant could handle that.”

I frown. “What exactly would you or he—”

And then Win’s gone. Vanished. Without a movement, without a sound—in the blink of an eye, except I haven’t blinked.

My voice dies in my open mouth. I spin around, one way and the other, but there’s not a single indication that seconds ago Win was standing there beside me.

13.

W
in?” I say, my hands clenched at my sides. It isn’t like before, on the hotel roof, when all he did was step inside the time cloth. He didn’t have it out—he didn’t
do
anything. He just disappeared, right before my eyes.

I take a few steps forward, peering through the shadows. The hall is so quiet the thudding of my heart is deafening in my ears. Nothing stirs. The wide-open space that seemed so peaceful moments ago now feels horrifyingly lonely.

“Win, if this is some stupid joke . . .”

But as little as I know him, I find it hard to believe he’d suddenly start playing pranks when we could be mere minutes from stumbling on what he’s spent weeks searching for.

Which means . . . something else snatched him away? A trap set by the Enforcers? Some other danger he didn’t warn me about?

Oh God, what if he can’t get back here? If he’s trapped, if they take his cloth . . .

My skin goes cold as the full implications sink in. Without Win,
I’m
trapped. If he doesn’t come back, I have no way to get home, ever.

I waver on my feet, hugging myself. “Win?” I call again, my voice shaking. “Win!”

No answer. I hurry back the way we came, not knowing what else to do. I can’t go outside, into the smoke and the cannon fire. I don’t belong here, and I feel that right down to my bones. I can’t speak the language. I don’t know anyone. It’s a hundred years before the oldest people I’ve met will even be born.

Flashes of home flicker through my mind. Sitting with Mom and Dad at the dinner table. Joking with Angela and the others in the art room. What I wouldn’t give to be there instead.

I skid to a halt outside the series of rooms we passed through, hugging myself tighter. “Win!” I shout.

There’s a rattle of footsteps in the distance. Joy bursts in my chest as I whirl toward them, for all of the split second it takes before a voice carries with them. A thick, gravelly voice bellowing a demand in French.

The guard. I forgot about him. My legs lock. His footsteps are getting louder, running now. What kind of punishment was there in 1830 for breaking into a royal museum?

I duck through the interconnected rooms, searching for something large enough to hide behind. A second shout follows me, sounding as if the guard’s already in the hall I just left. I dash through another doorway, and then, like a miracle, the voice I wanted to hear reaches me.

“Skylar? I’m over here!”

Relief hits me so hard my sight blurs. I run in the direction Win’s yell came from, dodging stands and benches, through two, three, four more doorways. Win’s just saying my name again when I burst into the gallery he’s striding through.

He stops when he sees me, his mouth curved a little sheepishly and a matching relief in his deep blue eyes. I gulp air and swipe at the tears that have started to trickle down my face.

“Hey,” Win says, sounding startled. He grips my shoulder, and his voice softens. “I wouldn’t just leave you. I wasn’t expecting that to happen.”

Get it together, Skylar.
I blink furiously, and a sharp command echoes from a nearby room.

“The guard,” I murmur around the lump in my throat. “He heard me calling for you—he’s coming this way.”

Win’s already yanking the cloth out of his satchel. He pulls it over us.

The room outside goes gray and hazy. I bite my lip, fighting to calm my rasping breaths. I’m okay now. I’m not lost, not trapped in the past.

Win takes my hand like he did before, squeezing it. I have to stop myself from clinging to his fingers. He must think I’m weak enough as it is.

The guard’s footsteps approach. My shoulders hunch automatically, even though I know the cloth is keeping us invisible.

A thin man in a charcoal-gray uniform marches into the room. He scans it with narrowed eyes, drumming his fingers against his thigh just below his holstered pistol.

As the guard peers behind a statue in the corner, Win lets go of me to open his satchel. He pulls out a small blue-gray sphere about the size of a pea. When he slides his thumb over it, it gives a soft ping
.
Two flat edges materialize like wings. He brings it to his face and exhales over it. Then he propels it between the flaps of the cloth.

The sphere vanishes into the grayness on the other side. For several seconds, nothing happens. The guard mutters to himself and eyes the room one more time. Then a distinct pattering sound carries from off to our left, beyond the rooms he hasn’t checked yet.

The guard spins around. He hurries through the doorway, bellowing a warning. His footsteps thunder across the floor, and gradually fade as he chases the fleeing noise.

Win peels open the time cloth, grinning. “That little piece of tech is what you’d probably call a distractor,” he says, his voice low. “It’ll make enough noise to keep him after it for a few hours, and never enter the same space we’re in.”

I’m a little impressed, but Win looks so impressed with himself I don’t feel the need to mention it.

“What the hell happened?” I say. “How did you get over here?”

“I was, ah,
doxed
,” Win says, heading back toward the hall where he disappeared. “We ran practice scenarios in training to prepare us to recognize the feeling when it’s about to happen, but it comes on fast, and I guess I was distracted.” His sheepish expression returns. “The time field doesn’t allow certain types of paradoxes, like meeting someone from your future. It’s as if we all carry around this big bubble of our present, whatever time it is for us outside the field, and if two bubbles clash”—he bounces his palms off each other—“whoever’s from the later time gets bumped out of the way.”

Suddenly I’m picturing Win as a goldfish floating around in our fishbowl Earth in a bubble of air. Colliding with another goldfish . . .

“So there’s someone else here?” I say, my head whipping around. “One of your people? The alarm band didn’t go off.”

“I’d have been doxed before there was any chance of even hearing them,” Win says. “Which is going to be a wider range than the alarm has.” He pauses as we step out into the hall. “But you weren’t.”

“Obviously.” I consider his explanation. “I’ve never been outside the field. Does that mean I don’t have a ‘bubble’?”

“Apparently not. We never discussed how Traveling would work for Earthlings, since Earthlings are never supposed to Travel.” He stares down the hall, understanding dawning on his face. “There’s a good chance it’s Jeanant who doxed me. If he’s here right now—if you can’t get doxed—you could
talk
to him, find out everything we need to know!”

Before I can respond, he’s tugging me toward the display case we hid behind earlier.

“How do you know it’s him?” I ask.

“We know Jeanant was planning on being in here sometime in these three days. There’s no reason any other Traveler should have been in the same place in that short a period of time.”

He stops when we reach the case, just a few steps from where he disappeared before.

“I shouldn’t go any farther,” he says. “It is possible it’s not him, so be careful. But hurry. I don’t think Jeanant would stay here very long.”

My mind hasn’t quite caught up with this new development. “What do I do if it’s not him?”

“Run back here. I won’t move from this spot.”

I hesitate, and Win grasps my arm. “Please,” he says, turning the full force of those blue eyes on me. “You know how long it’s taken us to get this far. If you can talk to him, we won’t need to worry about decoding any more clues. You can get him to tell you exactly what we need to know. Say—say Thlo sent you. If he knows you’re here for her, he’ll explain everything.”

And then this will be over, Win’s group will have what they need, and I can return to the world I belong in.

“Okay,” I say. “Just . . . don’t move an inch.”

He nods. “Go!”

I can feel his gaze following me as I jog down the hall. I’m about to do something he thought was impossible. Underneath my nervousness, excitement tingles through me.

I’m going to meet the guy from the recording. Talk to him, face to face. Show him that it’s not just his people taking a stand for both our planets.

That thought emboldens me. I walk faster, past a series of paintings. A huge vase decorated with geometric patterns. A line of busts of presumably famous men. An intricately carved stone box that appears to be a coffin.

Halfway down the hall, the band around my ankle starts to quiver. A hundred feet. I slow. The quivering rises to a frantic vibration as I approach a wide doorway that leads into a side gallery.

Peeking through the entrance, I see only a large maroon-carpeted room filled with paintings. But there’s another, smaller doorway on the other side. A faint scraping sound carries from it.

I pad across the room. The adjoining gallery is equally vacant, but the sound has gotten louder. Then, when I’m halfway to the next opening, it stops. Shoes tread lightly against the floor. I edge over to the doorway and peer beyond it.

It’s him.

I recognize the guy from the recording in an instant. Jeanant. He’s poised by the cushioned bench in the middle of the room, studying the paintings on the wall before him. A shading of stubble has darkened the bronze skin of his jaw, and a bluish smudge colors his right thumb, as if he got paint on it and couldn’t wash it completely off. A top hat like the ones some of the gentlemen on the street are wearing is tipped over his curly black hair. He’s dressed in one of their trim jackets over a shirt and pants identical to Win’s Traveler clothes, but somehow he makes it look like a proper outfit instead of a bunch of random clothing thrown together. The assurance I saw on the screen, it wasn’t just a performance. It’s in him now, in his expression, the way he’s standing, when he’s unaware anyone’s watching.

I gather myself and step through the doorway.

Jeanant’s head snaps around. His dark brown eyes connect with mine, and the full impact of his presence hits me: the
there
ness that felt like attraction when I first stood close to Win, like terror when faced with the pale woman. I’m struck by the sense that we are exactly where we need to be—not just Jeanant, but me too.

His name catches in my throat. Before I can recover, he’s turned, his composure regained, and lifted his hat to give me a slight bow. As he straightens up, he says something in that low, measured voice, something that sounds quite friendly although I have no idea what the words mean. Because he’s talking in French. Of course. He’d assume anyone wandering around in here looking clueless has to be a local.

But even though I’ve interrupted him and as far as he knows I’m just an inconvenience, he’s waiting patiently for me to respond.

“Jeanant?” I say. “I need to—”

The moment his name passes over my lips, I know I’ve made a mistake. His expression shutters. He flicks his hand toward his side. A sliver of cold jabs the center of my abdomen, making my sentence cut off with a gasp.

As he sweeps up the canvaslike bag on the bench and pulls out a familiar puddle of silky cloth, Jeanant says something in the lightly slurred tones of the alien language I’ve heard Win speak a few times. His voice is defiant.

He must think I’m an Enforcer, here to apprehend him. “No!” I cry. I try to step toward him, but the cold has seeped through my limbs, and my legs won’t budge. “I’m not—”

He’s already tossing the cloth around his body. His form vanishes amid its oily surface, which shimmers to reflect the room around us. “I’m a friend of Thlo’s!” I force out, a second before the cold grips my jaw.

The cloth has vanished, and I can’t do anything but stand there. Jeanant doesn’t reemerge. I don’t know if I got my last words out in time for him to hear.

I’m frozen solid. Win’s too far away to hear me if I call out—if I could call out. My chest tightens, but I’ve hardly started to panic when a prickling creeps over my skin. My fingers and toes twitch. The paralysis is easing already.

Whatever Jeanant threw at me, it isn’t half as powerful as the Enforcers’ weapons. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. Just to delay me, so he could get away.

I grimace inwardly. He was
right there
and I couldn’t manage to say anything useful. I should have known he’d be worried about the Enforcers tracking him, just like Win. The whole reason Jeanant’s here, hiding the weapon, is that they almost caught him already.

At the same time, that weird sense of purpose lingers inside me. I really am a part of this mission now. And if I get another chance to talk to Jeanant, I won’t screw it up.

My gaze wanders the room as my body comes back to life. I’m sure that was paint on his thumb, but I don’t see any message or hint that he’s covered one up. There’s no gleam of wet color anywhere.

The cold seeps out. I shake myself, rub my arms, and head back for Win.