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  “He’s…a boy I know from school. At the hotel.” She still didn’t want to let anyone know I was her son. She didn’t even give me one of her big, loud kisses. Her kisses are corny, but I miss them.

  So far A.J. and Charlie were playing along, even though they both knew she was my mother.

  They took A.J. limping away to see a doctor (“You did right, but I hope your family will be all right, too,” he said to Dan as he left the room) and someone else was off asking Charlie more questions.

  Mom took me into another room, saying she wanted to ask me some things, since she knew me. “We want to get him out of here and back to his parents,” she added.

  “I don’t know if he can go back,” Gravlox said. “Think of everything he’s seen.”

  Wouldn’t he be surprised.

  So now I’m in a small room with Mom, with the radio playing, and she has to pretend she’s calming me down before she asks a bunch of official questions. Someone is supposed to come in and take notes. But now that I know she’s okay, I want to get out to the bridge, to make sure they don’t hurt the time-ship.

  Instead of questions, Mom is giving me what’s probably classified information: A few years ago, Gravlox accidentally created a WOMPER-like reaction that tore a hole in spacetime. It’s possible that the explosion that sent Mom back in time fused with the one Gravlox created, sending WOMPERs back with her…right into Gravlox’s lab in Berkeley. He was doing his own early particle research, testing theories about relativity and how nothing, really, is quite what it seems, and he created a mini-tear between dimensions. The same way Thea’s mom did back in Alexandria with her crystals and light splitting.

  Gravlox successfully repeated the experiment here, in the secrecy of the redesigned fort. This new tear in spacetime hovers in the fort’s central courtyard area. “But it seems to be grow- ing, Eli. They can’t control it, and they’re not really sure what it is they have. They just know that stuff keeps sporadically popping out of thin air. That’s how those white antlers first showed up.

  “I try to do my own tests on the side, with the limited equipment they have. Everyone’s scared, Eli. Nobody knows where any of this is leading — atom bombs, time warps, the war itself.”

  “But we know, Mom.” I hear thumps and booms outside. I think they’re shooting at Clyne’s ship, and I’m getting really antsy. “The good guys win the war, right? The Nazis lose.” At least that’s one less thing she has to worry about, or that we have to discuss.

  “We don’t know if that’s true anymore, Eli, if that’s still the way it happens. Everything’s different now. History isn’t the same.”

  “There’s a dinosaur up on the Golden Gate Bridge!” It’s Gravlox, who’s just stuck his head into the room. “Do you think he came through our time portal?”

  “No!” I blurt out. “He came from the flying time-ship up there. He’s just a kid who wants to finish his schoolwork, but no one will leave him alone. I have to get out and help him before he gets hurt.”

  Gravlox blinks at me a moment. Another series of booms come from overhead. Then he looks at my mom. “Who did you say this young man was again, Margarite?”

  “He’s my son, Samuel.”

  These hundred-year-old rooms are like little brick caves, cold and damp and dark, and ours becomes so quiet that every sound outside is suddenly amplified. I’m looking up at my mother. She always was pretty cool.

  “Well…did he just come through the portal, like you did?” Mom just shakes her head.

  “But how — ?” His second question never gets answered. The angry sergeant bursts in. “Hey, doc! You know somebody name Eli?”

  “No,” Gravlox says. “Should I?”

  “Got a call from upstairs that the Martian lizard speaks English! And he’s askin’ for an

  ‘Eli.’ Already got two soldiers taken off the bridge to see a medic, thinkin’ they’re goin’ crazy. I say we give the order to shoot and figure this all out later.”

  “Don’t do that,” I tell him. “I’m Eli.”

  For the second time in five minutes, the room goes completely silent.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Eli: Midnight Clear

  December 24, 1941 C.E.

  A group of us rush out the center gates of Fort Point, heading to the stairs built in the side of the hill that leads up to the Golden Gate Bridge.

  I stop and look up. If the situation wasn’t so scary, it would be strangely beautiful: the blue-white blaze of searchlights, the flashing red of dozens of sirens, the deep orange of the bridge itself, with the time-ship — I don’t know how else to put it — dancing around it all. The ship is glowing, too, as if the craft itself were absorbing all those lights and shining them back out, only with the colors mixed differently.

  The vessel swings under the bridge, then over it, then tips a little to whoosh through the two towers. Is it showing off, or searching for something?

  “Why are we holding our fire, sir?” one of the soldiers nervously asks the sergeant.

  “The brass are already on the phone to Washington, Private. It’s out of our hands, and I don’t like it. I say we blast the thing before it goes into the city.”

  “Maybe the ship just wants to protect —” and the sergeant is already glaring at me before I finish the sentence —“the dinosaur up there.” “You know, I’m not completely convinced you’re as innocent as you make out, kid.” Kid again.

  A couple more soldiers fall in to our group. Another one passes us, heading down to the fort, pointing to something wrong with his rifle or the buttons on his overcoat. “Probably just scared,” the sergeant mutters. “Who cares if it’s a spaceship? An enemy’s an enemy.”

  We trudge up the steps, get waved past all the barricades, and I finally see my Saurian friend.

  Clyne is surrounded by soldiers. He’s alone in the center of a circle of guns, all pointed right at him. His arms are raised and he’s slowly turning around, looking at all the weapons, and maybe — can this be right? — shaking.

  “Earth Orange hello! Kkt! Don’t shoot! Homework’s not turned in yet!” He’s trying to look at each one of them in the eye. Maybe he figures that way they won’t be so scared, or so likely to shoot.

  Gravlox turns to the sergeant. “The space-being asked for Eli, and Eli’s here. Shouldn’t we try to use him first?”

  Grudgingly, I’m allowed to walk up and “attempt to communicate with the scaly invader,” as the sergeant puts it. “But if he makes a move, we’re gonna tell you to hit the deck, and we’re gonna open fire, whether Washington likes it or not.”

  I fight the urge to stick up my arms again, with all the weapons around, and concentrate on keeping my hands in my pockets as I walk down the roadway. Now it’s just me and Clyne alone in the middle of all that firepower.

  I notice that the time-ship has stopped doing loop-de-loops and has pulled up, hovering alongside the bridge.

  Without the explosions, I can hear music. One of these old, funky olive-green Army cars must have a radio on. Christmas music. Tinkly, in the distance. “It Came upon a Midnight Clear.”

  “Many heartfelt k-k-kh! greetings, Eli,” Clyne says in what I can only describe as a dinosaur whisper, which has a lot more breath behind it than any whisper I could come up with. “Being an outlaw here is sk-tkt! somewhat nerve-sparking. Plus all the many projectile weapons.”

  “Are you okay, Clyne? How have you been?”

  “Basically well. Caught in nets, kept solitary in a zoo pp-pp-kk! and watching the high, sad cost of war readiness in large caves. Much tng-ga! material for class report. Enough for two full academic terms, really. And you, friend?”

  “I found my mom and met Joe DiMaggio, but it’s not working out like I thought. It’s getting hard to remember that some people just live their lives in straight lines. You know, from beginning to end.”

  “Impossible! Time doesn’t move in a line like that.”

  “Don’t get any closer, kid! Hold it right there!�
� the sergeant shouts at me through a bullhorn.

  It is a pretty bad time for me and Clyne to be discussing physics. I have to get my friend out of this jam. “You’ve got to come with me, Clyne. Slowly. Before they really hurt you.”

  “But, Eli, we have come to k-k-k-kt! rescue you.”

  I’m suddenly aware that “Midnight Clear” is still playing, but it seems to be going on for a ridiculously long time, and I realize I’m not listening to a radio at all. It’s the ship.

  The ship is humming.

  “‘We?’ Who’s with you, Clyne? It’s not —” The humming changes in tone, and an opening appears in the craft. Thea slowly sticks her head out.

  Half the guns swerve around to aim at her. “HOLD YOUR FIRE!” the sergeant screams.

  He comes running up to me, a pistol in his hand aimed right at Clyne. “What is going on here, and why are these people invading the United States!? Who is that girl?”

  “Sir…sir…it’s not what you think.”

  “These…these individuals will either agree to be taken into custody and turn their ship over or we commence firing. Aiming to kill.”

  “Sir, I just don’t think firing these kinds of weapons will work. Not on the ship.”

  I can’t tell if he looks terrified or more enraged. “Is that a threat?”

  “Eli?” It’s Mom. She’s come up with Gravlox. “What’s happening? Who is that girl?”

  Thea is becoming quite popular. “She’s…her name is Thea. She’s from Earth.”

  “You know her?” the sergeant demands.

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “Is it because…from when you were…?” Mom leaves the question unfinished, mainly so the sergeant won’t pick up on the missing time-traveling part, but Gravlox must get it, because he’s slowly nodding.

  “Yeah,” I say, “before I found you.” I point to my two friends. “They want to take me home.”

  Mom looks over at Thea again, who waves at us — very carefully. “She looks nice.”

  “Mom!”

  I don’t even think before I say it. Gravlox already knows Margarite’s my mother — it’s the sergeant’s wide eyes I’m worried about now.

  “I think,” the sergeant hisses through clenched teeth, “somebody owes me a big explanation. Especially when Washington gets on the phone in the next few minutes to chew my butt out for not blasting that ship to bits!”

  “You don’t need to blast them,” I tell him. “You just need…you just need to let them go. And me, too. And her.” I point to my mom.

  “What!?” My mom and the sergeant speak in unison. But it’s Mom who pulls me aside.

  “Eli! What are you doing?”

  “We can go back, Mom. All of us! On their ship. It’s way easier than just shooting through the Fifth Dimension like a cannonball. Trust me.”

  “I can’t go back, Eli. Not now. Not yet.”

  “Why not? We can just leave and let them have their history.”

  “But it’s our history, too, Eli. Don’t you see? And if it starts unraveling too fast, if they invent time travel too soon, if it gets used as a weapon…Somebody has to stay here. The things that happen between now and the time you’re born are awful enough — your father knows I can’t let them get any worse.”

  “Then when will you ever come back to Dad? To me?”

  Suddenly the time-ship’s version of “Midnight Clear” seems to be pounding in my ears, and it feels like everyone in the world is staring at me and my mom — even though it’s only everyone on the bridge.

  “I can’t yet, Eli. I wouldn’t be any kind of parent to you at all if I let the world get even more wrecked than it already is. Please try to understand that.”

  Mom wipes her eye, and I’m thinking there still might be some way to figure this out — convince her to go, convince the soldiers not to shoot at Clyne or Thea, and get us all on that ship, but before I can even think how, something unpredictable happens.

  Fort Point explodes.

  At least, a chunk of it does, and right then, the tension snaps. Bullets are whizzing every- where — I think I see Gravlox get hit in the arm — bazookas tear off chunks of the bridge railing and the suspension cables as they try to blast the ship, and I land hard, cracking my knee as Mom pulls me down to the pavement. It’s like we’re in a war.

  Well, I guess we are.

  I don’t hear “Midnight Clear” anymore, but instead a loud sound like chanting and moaning combined. From the ship, which rotates upward, then tilts on its side again. Thea’s trying to get to Clyne, to both of us, but she can’t get low enough.

  A few of the shots hit the craft, but it seems to absorb the explosive force, though its color gets darker and darker each time, and it starts to wobble.

  Clyne is jumping around. “Ouch! Mammals! Stop!” he yells. He looks like one of those guys in an old cowboy movie being made to skip and dance when the bad guys shoot around his feet. I feel sorry for him, and worried, and then mad that I can’t help.

  And then I watch in horror as my friend jumps over the side of the bridge.

  “Clyne!” I jump up, but Mom pulls me back down.

  When I look up, the time-ship’s disappeared, and so have Clyne and Thea.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eli: Fixing Time

  December 24, 1941 C.E.

  “The fort, come on.” Mom prods me to follow her down the stairs before everyone’s attention turns back from the vanished ship.

  Below, one of the fort walls has been ripped open, and we can see smoke billowing out. Mom is in a panic to see if the time-rip is still contained.

  “Whether it was the geometry of the walls, or some element in the bricks, or the weather, or the soil, I don’t know, Eli. But something kept Samuel’s WOMPER-reaction contained inside the fort.”

  “So the whole fort was like a giant version of Dad’s time spheres?”

  “More or less.” She seems distracted. I can’t blame her.

  The explosion was Rolf’s work. He must’ve been the “scared soldier” who waved to us as he headed toward the fort. A surviving witness with blood running down his face described him yelling something about Hitler as he jumped straight into the time-rip. He was holding a pair of antlers.

  Seconds later, the bomb went off.

  “If the whole thing’s destroyed now, Mom, you can come home. There’s nothing to keep watch over.”

  “The time-rip’s invisible, Eli. The only way to know how far the field has spread is to watch its effects. For all we know, anything from Civil War veterans to cavemen could start popping up anywhere in San Francisco. But what’s worse is he’s out there now.”

  “Yeah. Rolf.”

  “He could be trying to change history, to force it in some different direction, right this moment. Things are spinning even more out of control, Eli. I can’t come home.”

  The smoke is getting in my nose, making my eyes watery. Mom dabs my face with her sleeve.

  “Someone has to go back after him,” she adds in a quieter voice. “The portal here seems to be flowing back to ancient Britain at the moment, based on the things coming out at this end.”

  “Like the antlers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want me to go after him?”

  “No. You should return to your father.”

  “But you sent this!” I hold up the note on Fairmont letterhead with the word help on it.

  “I was feeling desperate that day. I wanted to come home. I still do. But I can’t. That was like a message in a bottle, Eli — I wasn’t really sure where it would wind up. Look at the ink.”

  She lightly touches the paper.

  “After the explosion, when I regained consciousness in Samuel’s lab, I still had most of the things that were stuck in my pockets. Including the pen I’d been using.”

  I know the one she means: a carved wooden pen, shaped to look like a double helix, those two long twisted strands of DNA. Dad gave it to her as
a gift when they were dating. I always considered it one of those details that just confirms your parents are, in fact, a little weird. She reaches into her pocket and takes the pen out now.

  “I don’t show it here much, because no one knows what a DNA strand looks like yet. But I wrote the note with it. I’m working on a theory that objects hold a kind of energy or memory of a place or time— and can help take you there.”

  “But that won’t be any use to you in finding Rolf.” Now it’s my turn. I take the chrono-compass out of my pocket. “This can help me find him, though. And you can go back home.”

  “What is it?”

  “A prototype Dad was working on. Like a steering wheel through time.”

  “Dr. Franchon?” One of the soldiers comes up, and I hide the compass in my hand. He points to me. “I have orders to hold the boy here until everything gets straightened out. A lot of people have a lot of questions for him. And for you, too.”

  “Where are you taking him?”

  He doesn’t answer that question. “Sorry, ma’am. You’ll have to say goodbye here.”

  Mom bends over and whispers to me. “I should be the one to fix this. I helped make this mess. You need to go home.”

  “We all need to go home.”

  She takes out a slip of paper. “I was hoping I could get this to your father.” With her DNA pen, she quickly scribbles something else on it, then slips it in my pocket. “I love you more than anything, Eli.”

  “Sorry, Doctor.” The soldier is eager to get going.

  “I want to go with him,” she tells the soldier. “Wherever you’re taking him.”

  If I stick around, they’ll keep asking me questions that will get harder and harder to answer. But I don’t know if I’m going home, either. Mom’s right about getting history unstuck, or back on track. Especially if Rolf Royd is out there trying to change things.