Before Tomorrowland (24 page)

RR-RRRR!

“What do you see now? Did something change?”

She shook her head. “The whole board of numbers just flashed, but now they’re just the same as they were.”

Lee boarded the chessboard and stood on
THIRTY-NINE
, then stepped off.

RR-RRRR!

“It’s the same,” she said. “One, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, fifteen, and twenty-seven are lit up.” The boy tried several more numbers, all to the same
effect.

Henry resented waiting on their feeble efforts. He wished he could patch into their brains like any other computer system to see whatever significance was staring them in the face. “Think,
woman. Have you seen these numbers somewhere before? Somewhere in the tour? What about your home address? Your phone number?”

“No, these numbers don’t mean anything to me!”

Henry cursed and released a blast of laser fire like an angry spit. The dirt and weeds on either side of the metal plate smoked, but the beams did no damage to the plate.

He turned around and saw them cowering like animals, the boy in front of the mother.

“You could have killed us with that!” yelled Lee.

Henry was tempted to threaten them again, but refrained, knowing if he did it one more time he’d have to follow through. They weren’t the enemy, they were like him, victims of the
toxic Plus Ultra pipe dream. He X-rayed the ground. Perhaps he could dig through, if there was a tunnel below. He walked from one end of the plate to the other, then back once more, but the scan
revealed nothing until he passed by Clara and Lee again. Henry let his eyes rest on the mother for a moment. There was something there he hadn’t seen before. He focused on her head. He
enhanced. Zoomed and enhanced. Zoomed…

“What’s wrong with you?!” the boy yelled, pulling his mother away from Henry.

“There is…nothing wrong with me.” His response was slowed by the results of the analysis of the image in mind. The woman had tumors in both frontal lobes of her brain. They
were small, but growing. She was six weeks away from a 100 percent likelihood of debilitating seizure, seven months away from catastrophic neurological disruption. Henry thought of the hotel. He
remembered the woman with her boy at the Future of Medicine display. He remembered how her eyes had shined. Clara knew she was dying.

“Waitwaitwait,” said Lee, breaking toward the plate, running the numbers with urgency. He stood on the
ONE
, then stepped over the
TWO
,
the jumped over to the
SEVEN
, and then stopped and checked his work. The first two tiles stayed down. He jumped backed to the
FIVE
, and the depressed
SIX
stayed put. He paused, then side-stepped to the
FOUR
. The
FIVE
did not pop.

“Gotcha,” said Lee, and finished the puzzle, and when he was done, the plate began to rumble, and all the tiles began to shift. Lee had to leap away to avoid getting pinched as they
settled into a new form: the checkerboard of glowing paving stones had become an illuminated stairwell spiraling into the ground.

“One, two, seven, five, four, eight, twenty-seven, six, fifteen,” said Lee. “It’s the opening day batting order for the Yankees.”

Once again, Orson Welles’ voice chimed in: “Well done, friend, and welcome. Please watch your step as you descend.”

The expression on Lee’s face seemed torn between pride and guilt. Henry gave him a smile, but it wasn’t returned.

“Well, then,” said Henry. “Shall we go down?”

I
T MUST
have been midnight when they arrived at the elegant townhome on the lower east side. The house was one of many on
the row, but it stood out to Rotwang as better maintained than even the more luxurious places they passed along the block. Porcelain angels with uncaring smiles looked down on them from over the
front door. Rotwang thought it was the perfect decoration for a Nazi’s home; domestic, yet subtly terrifying. Each angel came from a central point above the door, where their legs tangled
together in a mess of diaphanous drapery. Duquesne pulled one side of his mustache as he turned back to Rotwang and raised his knuckles to knock.

“Ready?” asked the American.

Rotwang shut off his video receiver and nodded. The HS1’s latest movements were most enlightening, so much so that Rotwang forced their car to pull off so he could take copious, accurate
notes. Because of that, they were arriving very, very late.

Duquesne rapped on the door three times, sharp. After a moment, Rotwang heard what was either a metal lock unlatching or the cock of a machine gun. He took a deep breath, and the door opened. It
was Kurt, the young cadet. His eyes searched past Rotwang for the rest of Duquesne’s men, just as their driver had done.

“Mr. Duquesne—” Kurt started, but Duquesne entered before the youth could ask anything. He hung his coat on a crowded rack beneath a wide mirror. The house had a clean, warm
smell like cedar and spiced candles, and when Rotwang stepped over the threshold, he saw a number of beautifully dressed young women descending upon Duquesne from the parlor, the stairway, and the
hall. The mere soft mention of his name seemed to draw them right out of the floral wallpaper, or from the laps of the
Dunkelstar
crewmates who lounged on the home’s velvet-covered
furniture. The women wrapped themselves around the American like the vines of a carnivorous plant, pulling him into the heart of his house while checking his every exposed patch of skin for
injury.

A young woman with the face of a gypsy took Rotwang’s arm. He didn’t recognize her at first, but when she spoke, he realized she was the one in the red dress from earlier that day.
(Had it only been that day?)
She guided him toward the living room. The rest of Lohman’s away team was present. The superior officer stood and shouted, “Doctor Rotwang! What is
the meaning of this?”

“Not so loud,” winced Duquesne. “My neighbors.”

“We have news to share with Lohman, Herr Baumann,” said Rotwang. “Where is he?”

“He sleeps in the study.” The officer pointed down a hall and shouted at Kurt:
“Gehen ihm zu bekommen!”
The officer turned his furious face back to Rotwang.
“We expected communication hours ago from Commander Hagen. We have been at great pains awaiting news—”

Rotwang surveyed the group around him. “Very great pains, yes,” he replied, “but I prefer to explain myself once, Herr Baumann.”

Kurt ran to the back of the house, and Rotwang waited under the German officer’s stare. Duquesne sank into a big armchair next to a supremely elegant woman of about forty who was swirling
a glass of something brown. Duquesne allowed four of the younger women to buzz over him with washcloths and iodine.

“Would you care for a washcloth, Doctor?” asked the girl beside him, and only then did he remember the hideous soot that must have still covered his face.

“Yes, please.”

She returned with a basin of water and a standing mirror and set them up on a coffee table in the center of the living room. He let himself be seated and had most of the grime washed off when he
heard the quick knock-step of Lohman’s cane on the hardwoods. Rotwang exchanged a resigned look with Duquesne, and the door opened.

Lohman, clad in bedclothes, entered the room hissing labored breaths through his yellow teeth. He leaned on his cane with one hand and carried an EHF long-distance radio of Rotwang’s own
make with the other. His doe eyes appeared smaller as they blinked at Rotwang behind a pair of spectacles. The ghoul waited a long time before speaking.

“You lost an entire squad
again
?” The old man scanned the room like he couldn’t believe his eyes. “The only thing harder to believe is that you are here now. Is
there some reason I should not have you shot? There must be.” He raised his head toward heaven and reached his arms outward.
“God, give me good news.”

Lohman knock-stepped his way into the living room and took a seat. The other Germans had all stood up when their master entered the room, and they remained standing. Duquesne motioned the girls,
who retreated back to their German guests, although Rotwang’s gypsy companion exited the room altogether. He was alone in a corner and all their eyes were upon him.

“Did you at least
see
the HS1?” said Lohman. “I hope you didn’t just waste Mr. Duquesne’s men on the mean streets of New York City.”

Rotwang squeezed the washcloth into the basin. Black soot clouded the water. “I thought you knew.”

“Knew?” asked Lohman. “We had no word from you for six hours!” He slammed the radio down on the coffee table. “What did you expect me to know?!”

“The HS1 was here today,” said Rotwang, slow and cool. “In this house.”

“In…what?! I never thought you would be joking if I ever saw you again. But yes, continue: the HS1 was here, having a cup of tea with me…”

“No, it’s all true,” said Rotwang. “It came here when it found out I had tapped into its system. Somehow it traced the signal back to that radio.” He pointed to the
handset resting on the table. “An oversight on my part…it is my own design. The beast was misled by its signal, but in the process, it found
you.
”

Lohman’s smile turned down and he knit his brow into a hundred fine lines. “It found me?” he asked, incredulous.

Rotwang slopped the washcloth into the basin and savored his next words. “It found you, it killed your men, and it mortally wounded you.”

Five overlapping gunshots cracked the air, and Lohman’s men collapsed around him. Young Kurt, the officer, and the other three crewmen each lay at the feet of their female escorts, who
each held a silenced handgun. Duquesne stood and held his own pistol to Lohman’s temple. The old man scrambled, not standing up from his chair, but just flailing his feet underneath him while
he jerked his head from side to side.

Rotwang flicked the last drops off his fingers into the basin and continued, speaking louder to compensate for Lohman’s hyperventilating. “It was only a stroke of luck I arrived back
here in time to hear your last orders. Seeing your officers all dead, I asked what I could do, and you told me, ‘Werner, I give you charge of my submarine, not because you are one of us, but
because you are our best chance for gifting our beloved Führer with a wealth of technology and resources that will make him the most powerful man who has ever lived. I offer you your freedom
and implore you to bring our great nation the glory you have promised; the riches of Plus Ultra and the treasure of the other world.’”

Rotwang stood up and walked around the coffee table to kneel on Lohman’s right. He reached down and touched the old man on his shoulder. “‘But how am I to tell this to your
leaders?’, I asked you, and with tears in your eyes you said, ‘Mr. Duquesne will vouch for you, my friend.’ I was so moved, I could not help but obey you in everything.”
Duquesne clicked the safety off his pistol and pressed the barrel tight against the old man’s head.

Rotwang gave Lohman’s shoulder one last squeeze.

“And then you died.”

S
HE LAY
on the cold concrete floor and felt something wet lapping around her body. Steam and hot water poured out of broken
pipes on the ceiling above her, spraying drops across everything. Any sounds were muted and accompanied by high ringing, but she could tell Szilard was next to her, yelling about bombs and Nazis.
Tesla and Einstein were bellowing at Wells. She blinked, shook her head, and the sounds started to clarify.

“Get it off, take it off my leg!” Wells moaned.

“Keep still,” said Einstein. “Hughes, check on Ms. Earhart!”

When Hughes came into view above her, he seemed to be wading through something. He stood there and squinted over her from her feet to her head. “Earhart,” he said, “get
up.”
No,
she thought, but then he reached down and pulled her to her feet. “She’s fine,” he declared before leaving her to assist Tesla and Einstein with extricating
Wells from a table that had fallen on his leg.

Earhart felt like she had just climbed back into her body and was finding the controls again. She shook her head a second time and looked around the room. In front of her, a shelf was tipped
over, and all its books were scattered in a giant pile around her feet. Glass from broken video screens had scattered everywhere. Behind her, the steel walls by the door were buckled and blackened.
Above, the base’s sprinkler system poured water over everything, beating down smoke and steam and turning the rare tomes to pulp.