Before Tomorrowland (25 page)

“What happened?” she yelled, to no one in particular.

“A bomb!” shouted Szilard. “The Nazis are bombing us, I told you! It’s war—”

Einstein ignored his friend and came over to check on Earhart. “Amelia, are you sure you’re all right?”

She thought of the Bracketts, then, and her body came back to her. She ran through the buckled metal doorway and down the hall, shouting, “Faustus! Faustus, where are you?” But none
of the robots answered. When she reached their charging station, she saw why.

The bomb had obliterated the station, leaving behind just shards of metal and glass and the burning parts of robots. Sixty percent of their New York Faustus inventory, gone. Part of the
room’s ceiling had collapsed and earth poured in over everything. She bolted across the space, running over hot scrap metal and battery acid, but before she could reach the sleeping quarters,
the rest of the ceiling caved in. She leapt out from under a huge mass of rock and gravel as it smashed into the floor.

Earhart ran along the south wall back the way she’d come, jumping over bouncing debris. Dust clouds overtook her as she fumbled, reaching her right hand to find the tunnel out of the
charging room, but her feet were trapped and the dirt pressed up around her legs, then her torso, and she felt speckles run down her collar as a great pressure overtook her neck and head. She
shifted and struggled, but her body was locked in place in the dark. The ground pressed tighter and tighter around her, squeezing the wind from her lungs, and she tasted bitter soil in her mouth.
She flailed her still-free right hand, trying to reach and dig, but it was past her elbow. Hollow places in her body she’d never felt before compressed down to nothing. She let her hand go
limp.

Another hand gripped hers, cold and strong, and she felt it pull her forward, and she felt the earth giving way. A second hand dug into the dirt around her, grazing her other arm, and then the
light poured in and she saw the big, bespectacled eyes of Faustus. There were three of him pulling her out. She coughed and spat out dirt on the collar of one robot’s silver suit. She gasped
and coughed some more as they carried her out of the collapse and through the tunnel.

When they reached the adjoining room, she saw Tesla and the others on a raised walkway, shouting orders to ten other Faustus units and directing them toward the Trylon elevator. “Put me
down,” she said, and her robots obeyed. She wouldn’t be carried out of this scene in front of any of those men if it killed her. Einstein walked past above her and gave Earhart a
horrified look before a Faustus ushered him through the lift doors.
Am I really that frightful a mess?
she wondered.

Tesla saw her too, and hung over the rail. “Where are the Bracketts?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t seen them—”

“We have to go, Amelia! The entire base may collapse!”

She pulled her MFD out of her pocket, but it was busted. “Give me a device!” Tesla tossed his down to her. She ran a wireless patch into the surveillance hub, flicking through the
interface as fast as she could. Three of the base’s twelve video feeds were blank. The rest still covered five or six areas, but it was almost impossible to see anything through the smoke and
sprinklers. Earhart watched the feeds, breathing deep for a few seconds. No Clara. No Lee. She scrubbed the video footage back to just before the explosion, and that’s when she saw them. They
were in the wire transfer room, pushed toward the teleport stage by a large man.

Henry. In a flash, they disappeared, and the video feed distorted.

They made it out. He had them, but they made it out.

The men continued to shout at her as she and the two robots ran up a metal stairway to the elevator. Before she stepped inside, she checked behind her for other staff, but there weren’t
any more. She was the last one to board.

She shut her eyes. The doors sealed. The lift rose and shook as another rumble sounded below them. She opened her eyes, took another breath, and went into another fit of coughing. Wells somehow
fought through his pain to comment on her appearance: “Good God, woman, what happened to you?”

Earhart ignored him. “They’re alive,” she said, holding up the MFD so the rest could see. “They’re alive, and they’re with
him.
He made it into the
base,” she said, “and planted a bomb near the Faustus bots. Then he took Clara and Lee over wire transfer.”

Hughes grabbed Tesla by the lapel. “They’re working with him, you old fool!”

“Are you blind!? Look at the footage! They’re clearly being coerced—” said Tesla.

“It’s an act! Explain to me, how
else
could he have found us?! You fool, Tesla! You incompetent, sentimental—”

Earhart reared back and slugged Hughes in the face, and the billionaire fell hard against the elevator wall. Wells let out a sort of girlish squeal in protest. She shook the pain out of her hand
and glowered over Hughes, who was sprawled in the corner. He wiped a little blood from his mouth and squinted up at her. He didn’t try to get up. She knew that punch probably meant a whole
lot of trouble, but it felt good enough that she didn’t much mind. In fact, it inspired her: “Say anything else and I’ll find a special place for that fork you use to eat
peas.”

The elevator came to a stop, and only the Faustus robots were kind enough to help Hughes up. Earhart stepped through the lift doors and felt the warm night air blow past her. She walked across
the small platform at the top of the six-hundred-foot Trylon and boarded the zeppelin’s gang-plank, leading the rest of them in single file. At the top, she waited for Tesla, who was
surveying the sinkholes all around the fairgrounds. Faustus robots scrambled across the terrain like ants, hustling to repair and rebuild. They had four hours before the fair opened for the Fourth
of July.

The airship’s cables disconnected and they rose away from the monuments. Tesla spoke: “It is an incredible thing, to have spent your life building a dream for mankind…then to
have it snuffed out before men can even dream it.”

“It’s not too late,” she said. “We can still stop him.”

The wind blew Tesla’s hair around his high, gaunt cheekbones. He held the MFD out to her, and the video feed she saw wasn’t from the fairgrounds base. It was from beneath
Wardenclyffe.

“They are already on the train.”

T
HE WHIRR
of the pneumatic engine quieted and the whole subway slowed. Lee prayed it was the end of the line, but it was
just another corner. As the train veered to the right, Lee pressed into the big robot-man, who sat between Lee and Clara. Their car was flashy and noisy with Plus Ultra propaganda. He could hear
that awful Orson Welles’ narration from his mom’s glasses. “Congratulations! Are you ready for the future?” Lee glared at the little screen and its animated footage of a
happy couple drinking coffee in an automated aircraft. They glided through alien tropics, smiled and pointed. Plus Ultra sure spared no expense on the production. Too bad its only audience was a
pair of trauma victims. Or three, if Earhart’s defense of this “Henry Stevens” was to be believed.

The train eased to a full stop, and its doors popped out and slid open. “Please watch your step on the way out of the car and greet my friend when you see him,” said Welles.
“I’ll see you in the other world!”

Henry grabbed Lee and Clara by their arms and pulled them up. They exited the train through a diamond-shaped tunnel toward another glowing light. Triumphant processional music like a graduation
march swelled as they stepped into a large hall. The shine off the floor blinded Lee so that he couldn’t make out much at all, or tell where the light was coming from, but little by little it
dimmed and he made out the room’s details. Long banners hung from the ceiling, showcasing inventions. A big art deco chandelier glimmered above them, and in front, maybe thirty feet away,
there was a low stage with an ornate wooden couch with red upholstery. The sofa was framed by a big set of silver double doors set behind it on the far wall. Perched on its fluffy cushions was a
man in a golden suit so radiant the shine obscured his face. But then the jacket began to grow dull, like a bulb being dimmed, until Lee could finally see him without squinting.

“Hello and welcome, Clara and Lee!” said Faustus. “I’m so glad you could join me. And I see you’ve brought a friend. Welcome to him, too.” He bounded down the
steps and offered a hand to Henry, who took it reluctantly. Faustus shook it. “My new friend, I hope any inattention you feel from me, sir, is understood as my own lack of training. I am
programmed to understand and assist all of our fellow visionaries on their journeys, but I lack a certain fluidity as regards unknown persons.”

“Enough, Faustus,” said Henry. “Let me through.”

“I do apologize, sir. Perhaps you believe you know me because you’ve met one of my younger associates. I was made specifically for this occasion, for this venue, and my
consciousness, such as it is, is separate from theirs, so it lacks particular remembrances about
you
. I am only aware of Clara and Lee because of selective data supplied by my silver cohort.
I’m afraid they never mentioned you.”

Henry took the words in without expressing emotion. Maybe it was just that a blank face came across so menacing on Henry, but Lee was pretty sure this Faustus had offended him.

“At any rate,” said the golden bot with a pleasant smile, “I expect you all have a number of questions regarding your experience thus far. While I cannot give you all my time,
as there remains much to do in your adventures and those of other visionaries, I
am
integrated with Plus Ultra’s historical archives and the current details of our dress rehearsal, as
we like to call it. I’m happy to answer a few questions at this time, while offering you the assurance of further explanation at the end of your travel to the world beyond…” He
paused for dramatic effect: “…for that is what you are here to do.”

“I don’t have time for this!” Henry interrupted. He tried to storm past their host, but Faustus placed himself in front of the robot man. “Get out of my way,
Faustus.”

“Charming familiarity, sir, but I’m afraid I can’t let you pass.” The golden robot smiled at Lee’s mom. “As the bearer of Plus Ultra’s spectacles,
it’s Mrs. Brackett’s honor to enter through the silver doors. You are here as her guest, after all.” He patted Henry’s shoulder and leaned in close with a mock-whisper:
“Are you sure there’s nothing you’d like to ask? It
is
my favorite part.”

Lee came to his mom’s side and held her. He saw Henry’s back stiffen, but instead of blowing his top, the big man took a step back down off the stage.

“All right,” said Henry to Faustus. “The Grid. Tell me everything you know about the Grid.”

“Oh!” said Faustus, glowing with pride. “You picked a good one. If I told you everything it would take all night, so let me give you the finer points: The Grid is a
mass-transit, inter-dimensional runway between this world and the other world. It can generate an enormous gravitational field capable of jumping hundreds of vehicles at a time with no adverse
environmental effects, per the Einstein-Tesla Impact Imbalance Act established in nineteen twenty-eight…”

“Einstein-Tesla what?” interjected Henry.

“It’s a bylaw that prohibits Plus Ultra development of any technology with the potential for producing equal or greater amounts of negative effect than positive effect. Weapons and
so forth. We used to use atomic bombs for inter-dimensional travel, but those are quite rough.”

Henry sneered at Faustus. “Tell me this, then: if Plus Ultra doesn’t make weapons, where do I fit in?”

“What is your name again, sir?” he asked.

“Henry Stevens.”

Lee saw Faustus’s head jerk and magnified eyes flash. “I am quite embarrassed! I do have data on a Henry Stevens!” The robot paused. “He was a young man we had on the
Hughes aircraft base for two years, ending July fourth, nineteen thirty-two. He and his father, Max, were part of a mechanics team that we lost to a terrible accident in Rockets and Jet Propulsion.
Does that sound correct?”