Before Tomorrowland (28 page)

His arms squeezed tighter. Black spots filled her vision, blocking out parts of his straining face and the hangar ceiling above him. She heard heavy metal footsteps. Another Nazi mech coming to
assist Duquesne in murder, she thought.

But it wasn’t. Duquesne’s arm went limp. A pair of big brushed-nickel hands reached down into the agent’s suit and ripped him straight out of his harness. Duquesne screamed and
kicked as she rolled away, coughing. When she propped herself up, she was surprised to see Clara, of all people, standing behind Earhart’s slender metal savior. Duquesne kept screaming as the
thing held him in the air with one hand.

“Henry, put him down!” shouted Clara.

“All right,” said the automaton.

Earhart couldn’t believe her ears.

Henry.

He reared back and heaved Duquesne across the hangar floor and out of sight. Earhart was still stunned, Clara tsked and shook her head, but she couldn’t suppress a small smile. “You
said put him down. I put him down,” said Henry with the slightest shrug of his ball-bearing shoulders. “Where is Rotwang?”

I
T HAPPENED
so fast, he couldn’t stop her.

He was watching Ms. Earhart struggle in the chokehold when his mom disappeared from their hiding place behind a pyramid stack of avgas barrels. Frantic, he scanned a hangar that had become a
smoking battlefield and spotted her running and limping between the planes.

What was she doing?

He leapt from his crouch like a sprinter out of the blocks and was into his third stride when he slipped in a hay-colored slick of oil. His ankle twisted badly, and he fell in the puddle with a
howl. He kept his eyes on his mother and called out to her, but she either couldn’t hear him or wasn’t listening. She dropped out of view, obscured by the wheels of a vacant German
airplane, then reappeared running once more, cradling something under arms, looking like a football halfback. She sprinted across the hangar to Henry’s inert mechanical body, scorched of his
fake flesh in an act of violence that had made his mother wail into her hands. She shoved the canister Dr. Rotwang had removed from the metal man’s chest, and turned it and turned it and
turned it, until it was screwed into place.

What in God’s name was she doing?!

Henry sprang back to life with a series of violent twitches, then abruptly settled. He lowered his head and glared at Clara with terrible, unblinking blue eyes, the way a raised cobra might
regard some defenseless prey before eating it. But she met his gaze, pointed at Ms. Earhart, and said something. Henry paused for a moment and then bounded into the fray, throwing the man with the
waxy mustache like a Lefty Gomez fastball. It all took a couple minutes, and it was the most bizarre, brave, and frustrating thing Lee had ever seen. Henry was a monster, and everyone but his
mother seemed to know it.

“I saw that! I saw that!”

The accusatory yell came from Mr. Hughes. He was stepping off the lift at the center of the hangar, pointing a furious finger at Clara. Trailing him were Tesla, Einstein, and Szilard, flanked by
Faustus units. “She plugged it back in! Don’t you all see? She’s working with that killing machine!”

“He’s not a machine,” said Clara. “He’s a man, like you!”

Lee winced at the pain in his ankle and tried again to get up, but it was no good. Even crawling took his breath away. Through watery eyes, he watched Mr. Tesla tenderly attend to Ms. Earhart,
examining her for injuries while Mr. Einstein and Mr. Szilard circled Henry, participating in an increasingly intense debate while casting nervous looks at the robot. Lee needed to get over there
to defend his mother…

Lee felt something metal-cold press down on his shoulder. He didn’t need to crane his neck know it was the barrel of a gun. Dr. Rotwang crouched awkwardly beside him with a wheeze, the
index finger of his free hand to his lips. His gray hair was matted on his forehead with sweat, and his suit was covered in filth. He tapped the gun against the back of Lee’s head, then
lifted the tip up to the ceiling, indicating “
up.
”

“I can’t,” said Lee.

Dr. Rotwang saw the ankle and sighed. He pulled Lee by the arm and held him up with a surprisingly strong grip around his bicep. Lee was about to scream from the pressure on his ankle when the
doctor jabbed the gun into his side. Lee shut up. They hobbled together into the field of jets and through the obstacle course of landing gear until they got to the row of planes nearest the mouth
of the hangar. With a flick of the Luger, the hunched man, winded, ordered Lee to climb the ladder into the cockpit.

Lee set the knee of his bad leg on one of the rungs and let out a muffled grunt. Dr. Rotwang pressed the gun into his back, hard, and took Lee’s face in his other hand, pulling it around
to show his angry, wild eyes. He pointed upwards again, and Lee gritted his teeth and pulled himself higher. Lee thought of the doctor’s mantra:
Good foot to heaven, bad foot to hell.
His mom did a version of this every day. He could do it, too.

When Lee reached the top, Dr. Rotwang followed. Lee thought about trying to kick him in the face. Maybe they’d hear and come running. But his captor must have realized his vulnerability.
He kept the gun trained on Lee as he climbed and bared his crooked teeth. Dr. Rotwang motioned for him to take the rear seat. After he sat, Rotwang removed the leather belt around his waist and
bound Lee’s wrists to his knees, forcing him to lean forward and put more pressure on his ankle. The doctor settled into the forward seat and pulled the cockpit hatch down over them. Lee
heard him flick on some instruments. Dials and screens lit up around them.

“You may scream now,” said Doctor Rotwang. “Do it!” He pressed the barrel of his gun into Lee’s ankle. Lee’s scream not only filled the cockpit, but echoed
throughout the hangar.

“The voice you are hearing over the hangar’s loudspeakers belongs to Mrs. Brackett’s son,” said Dr. Rotwang. “I’m taking him for a ride, and I would kindly
request you allow us to exit unmolested and enjoy our flight without incident. Do you understand me?”

There was no waiting for a reply. Rotwang switched on the engines, and the jet roared.

R
OTWANG’S PLANE
soared through the hologram and into the black skies over the ocean. His screamed protests filled the
hangar and reverberated inside Henry’s metallic frame. They also touched something deep inside him, something he could feel.

Compassion.

Mrs. Brackett grabbed Tesla by his suit jacket and pleaded with him to stop Rotwang, to save her boy. The old man stammered, not sure what to do, as the Faustus robots took hold of the woman and
pulled her away from their master.

“Shoot him out of the sky!” Hughes barked at Earhart. “Do it now, before he activates the Grid!”

“No!” begged the mother.

Einstein came up beside Mrs. Brackett and held her around the shoulders. “Howard, her child is on that plane!
Gott sei Dank
we have no weapons!”

“Then invent one! You’re the smartest people in the world! Do something!”

“Howard, please,” said Telsa, trying to calm him. He turned to the Faustus units and ordered them to shut down the Grid, but they all shook their heads in unison.

“Doctor Rotwang has done violence to the control room and effectively locked us out of the Grid,” said one of the robots.

“I’ll fly after them,” said Earhart. “I’ll try to veer Rotwang off the Grid. If I can’t, I’ll clip him before they go through.”

Mrs. Brackett looked sucker-punched. “There has to be another way.”

“There is none,” said Faustus. “We cannot chase Doctor Rotwang into the other world. He has initiated the system so that the Grid will only recognize his plane. And Mr.
Tesla…” Faustus paused, perhaps due to a calculation. “Given Doctor Rotwang’s areas of expertise and the programming of the service androids in the other world, I would say
he has at least a fifty percent chance of seizing control of the three RMP sites in the other world with minimal effort or resistance. I am not sure what Doctor Rotwang would do with those
facilities. But given his obsessions, I would assume he would do something.”

“RMP sites?” asked Mrs. Brackett.

“Robot Manufacturing Plant,” said Earhart. “It’s where we make the Faustus units—”

“Although at present, they are currently manufacturing a new generation of worker robot to build the infrastructure for the New Frontier tourism business,” said Hughes.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brackett. But for any number of reasons, and not all of them business-related, we cannot allow that madman access into the other world.”

His companions fell quiet, for they knew Mr. Hughes was correct. Henry couldn’t take his eyes off Clara, her face etched with agony. She might have only months to live, and now it was very
likely that those months would be spent without her son. She was a victim of life’s cruelty, like himself. The difference between them was that she still dared to hope; even to hope for
Henry. He thought of what she had said when she replaced his core and brought him back to life:

“‘Never too late, if Faust can repent.’ Do you know what that means?”

He searched his knowledge engines. She was quoting a line from a play.
Doctor Faustus
by Christopher Marlowe.

“A robot can’t change. But a human being can. Will you help me?”

He did. And he would.

“Don’t take one of your jets,” said Henry, and all eyes turned to him. “Take that.” He pointed to one of the German Dornier 325s. “That plane is twice as fast
as your jets. Amelia can catch them, easily.”

He caught himself. He hadn’t said the name “Amelia” since

Something flashed in Earhart’s eyes. A recognition of someone she knew. Someone that he still was, or could be. Henry felt a passion, a drive, a
feeling
flickering inside.

“Put me within a few yards of their jet,” he said, “and I’ll get the boy back alive.”

Hughes shook his finger at Henry like a preacher calling out sin from the pulpit: “If you even
think
, Earhart, about taking this…
thing
, I will revoke your membership
immediately!”

“Trustworthiness is a variable to consider,” said Faustus. “Despite appearances, he is more man than machine.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Henry.

“You should,” said Mrs. Brackett, no tremor left in her voice. “You can trust him. I trust you.” She looked at Henry.

Henry clanked over to one of the apocalypse jumpers. “I’ll give you a safeguard,” he said. He reached inside the apocalypse jumper, stripped it of the weapon the Nazis had used
against him, and tossed the box to Earhart. “If I get out of line, jam my transmission like Rotwang did. Put the code in your MFD and you’ll have a radar point and a jamming protocol
tuned to my system.”

Earhart took a deep breath. She pulled her MFD out and did as Henry instructed over Hughes’s protests. She faced the billionaire and placed her right hand on his shoulder. He flinched like
she was going to slug him again. She might as well have.

“Howard Hughes,” she said. “Don’t ever threaten me again.” She then strode toward the 325s. “Let’s fly if we’re flying, Henry.”

Henry went to follow, but Mrs. Brackett moved into his path. She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. And she didn’t have to.

“Thank you,” he said, separating from her touch.

He caught up to Earhart and said, “I’ll be on top.” He initiated a leap to the top of the German aircraft she had chosen, but his system jammed mid-jump, and he crashed into
the wing, rolling to the ground.

Earhart stood over him, holding the MFD. She clicked the jamming signal off. “Looks like it works,” she said with a smirk. She pointed to another 325. “Let’s take that
one.”

Henry found a grip on the back of the plane, spreading himself out flat on its back while the props whined and spun up. Earhart gunned the throttle and they took off down the runway. The wind
buffeted Henry, rattling his metal limbs against the fuselage. He thought back to