“There!” the girl called. “See it?”
Not more than thirty meters away was a large black crevice in the rock. The cave! They’d made it.
As though sensing that their prey was about to escape, the wolves began to growl and dart closer. They seemed as if they were summoning their nerve for an all-out charge.
“Hurry!” Patrick shouted. The group surged toward the cavern’s entrance.
As they were about to enter the cave, a figure rose up out of the darkness. The group pulled up short. For a moment the same thought ran through the entire group: a wolf.
But then Patrick realized it was a human figure. A girl, waving her arms furiously.
“Hey!” the girl yelled. There was a broad smile on her face, smudges of dirt on her cheeks. But she looked to be in fine spirits. “You guys found me!”
Patrick felt overwhelmed with relief. “Shana!”
“I got bored sitting around that stupid shelter. So I tried to come back and find you. Did I take the wrong trail?” Shana grinned brightly. “Anyway, Mr. Mac, I’m sorry if I got all weird on you this morning. I was in a bad mood, and I took it out on you.”
“No problem,” Patrick said.
Shana pointed over his shoulder. “Hey, look!” Her eyes were shining. “Wolves!”
“We kinda noticed,” Jay said dryly.
“Ohhhhh,” she said in a high voice, clapping her hands in excitement. “They’re so cuuuuuuute!”
TEN
Patrick wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected. That the book would be sitting there in the middle of the cave waiting for him? Maybe.
If that was what he had expected, it didn’t work out that way. The cave was not a large flat-floored room like you always saw in the vids. It was a slanted crease in the stone, no more than three or four feet wide. You couldn’t stand upright in it. You had to lean your back on the slimy rock.
The only good thing was that there was no way for the wolf pack to attack them. It was too narrow for more than one animal to enter at a time. Those were bad odds for the wolves—and the wolves knew it. After a few minutes of trotting back and forth in front of the entrance, the wolves suddenly turned and slunk back into the forest. They obviously felt they’d wasted enough time on the humans and were ready to find something that would be easier to kill.
After the wolves disappeared, Roger said, “So should we head on back, Mr. Mac?”
Patrick shook his head. “It’s already starting to get dark out there,” he said. “There’s no way we’d make it back to the shelter.”
“Maybe we could go by flashlight,” Roger said, pulling a bright flash out of his pack.
“Wolves see a lot better in the dark than we do,” Patrick said. “We’re just going to have to wait out the night here.”
The students didn’t say anything. But it was obvious they were disappointed. As Patrick was readying himself to give them a little pep talk, Em said, “Mr. Mac, can I talk to you for a minute?”
Patrick looked at her curiously.
“Back there,” she said, pointing into the murky depths of the cave.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” he said. “It’s hard to see, and I wouldn’t want you to fall again.”
“I shined my flashlight back there,” she said. “It looks like the space opens up a little.” Without waiting for his assent, she began inching her way back through the crevice.
Patrick followed her dubiously, threading his way through the line of students. It took about ten minutes for them to go fifty or sixty meters deep into the cave. Em should have been in a lot of pain. But she didn’t seem to notice.
Suddenly she stopped and waved her flashlight in front of her. Patrick’s eyes widened. A huge sparkling cavern opened up in front of them. The walls and ceilings and even the floor seemed to be lined with jewels.
“Wow,” he said. “You were right.”
She looked at him for a moment. “I’ve been here before,” she said.
Patrick blinked, then stared at her. “Follow me,” she said. Then she leaped down about two meters.
“Your leg!” he said.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“You mean—” He broke off in the middle of the sentence.
“There’s nothing wrong with my leg. The blood was made of syrup and red dye.”
“You made those kids carry you all this way?”
She nodded. He studied her face. She looked the same as ever—serious, calm, earnest. There wasn’t a sign of shame or mischievousness on her face, no sign that she had done anything wrong at all.
“Come on.” She motioned him to follow her.
Against his better judgment he jumped down into the cavern. As he hit the floor, he saw that the “jewels” on the walls were actually beads of water that had condensed on the rock.
Em was already walking briskly through the cavern. “Wait!” he called. But she didn’t stop. His confusion was turning to anger. “Em, what’s this all about? Did you steal those books?”
She just kept walking.
He followed her through the cavern, into a narrow tunnel, then into a smaller chamber. This one was full of multicolored stalactites and stalagmites. It was brightly lit by a light source that Patrick couldn’t see.
Strangely, a man stood in the middle of the room. Patrick did a double take.
“He did great, Press,” Em said to the man as Patrick entered the room.
“Okay, who are you and what is this about?” Patrick demanded.
The man gave Patrick a big, disarming smile. “Hey, I’m sorry we put you through all this nonsense,” the man said. “But it was for your own good.”
Patrick looked at Em, then at the man whose name, apparently, was Press. “Do you have the book?”
“Oh, we’ve got all of them,” the man said. He pointed to his left. Sitting in a neat stack were the stolen books.
“But—they were burned up!” Patrick said.
Press shrugged. “I guess if you can make it look like they were being stolen by a three-thousand-year-old cartoon, you could make it look like they were getting incinerated, too.”
“We had the director’s full consent and assistance,” Em said. “Without her access codes, Jay would never have been able to rig the security vids.”
“So, wait a minute…Jay was in on this too?”
Patrick heard laughter echoing behind him. He looked up to see Jay sitting on the lip of the path leading down into the cavern, his feet swinging lazily. “I’m Em’s acolyte,” he said.
Patrick was feeling more confused—and maybe even humiliated—by the moment. None of this made any sense at all.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to the man who had been waiting for them in the cavern, “but exactly who are you?”
The man laughed genially. “That’s a trickier question than you might think.”
Em said, “Press and I are what’s known as ‘Travelers.’ He’s the Traveler from Second Earth and I’m the Traveler from Third Earth.”
Patrick looked at them blankly.
“You’ve been lucky so far here on Third Earth,” Press said. “So far Saint Dane has yet to operate here. But when he comes, we’ll need to be ready. You’ll need to be ready. You see, in some respects Third Earth is more vulnerable than any other territory in Halla. The people of Third Earth have nearly forgotten what life-and-death struggle is all about.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Patrick said. “What is all this about travelers?”
Press frowned. “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.” Press looked at Patrick for a moment, scratched his face, then said, “I’ve got a lot to tell you. You might want to sit down….”
After Press had finished the long explanation about Travelers and Halla and Saint Dane, Patrick said, “Okay, so assuming this isn’t the world’s most elaborate practical joke, why did you steal the books?”
“It’s your destiny to be a Traveler,” Press said. “But that doesn’t mean you don?
??t need a little push. Your confidence needed a jolt. Finding these books wasn’t a test. Think of it as training. Preparation. Some Travelers are natural—I guess you call them—men of action. Or women of action. The Traveler from Zadaa—her name is Loor—she’s ready to go at the drop of a hat. To prepare her, she needed to learn restraint. You, on the other hand, you needed to see that you have more courage, more strength, than you probably give yourself credit for. You needed to see what you were capable of.”
“What am I capable of?” Patrick said skeptically.
“Look at what you did today. In the face of all kinds of danger, you managed to keep your group safe, and you recovered a hugely valuable artifact, something that’s important both to you and to the world at large. And you did it with a lot of grace and good cheer. You didn’t force those kids to do what they did. They actually had fun. They love you. That’s a harder trick than you might think. Being a Traveler is not just about courage. It’s about leadership. And that’s what you demonstrated today.”
Patrick felt something warm moving inside him. On the face of it this whole story seemed ridiculous. And yet there was something about it that felt familiar. It was like the feeling he had when he came back home after being on a long vacation. As though a part of him had been waiting for this all his life.
“Mission, Patrick,” Press said. “Everybody needs a mission in life. This is yours.”
Patrick took a deep breath. He didn’t know quite how to feel. If what this man was saying was true, then it was very scary and very exciting at the same time.
“This is just the beginning, Patrick,” Press said. “This is just the beginning.” Press paused. Then his smile faded. “But I have to tell you, it’s only going to get harder from here.”
ELEVEN
The next day an emergency airlifter arrived and picked up the whole class. The students had slept on the floor of the cave that night, and everyone was looking stiff and bleary as they stepped onto the lifter.
Before they climbed on, Shana ran out of the cave and threw her arms around Patrick. “Thank you for taking us here, Mr. Mac!” she said. “This was the best day of my life! I’m going to remember this forever.”
The whole group cheered. “Yeah, Mr. Mac! This was the best!”
Patrick looked around at the group, smiling and feeling a little stunned. He had expected them to be angry with him for getting them into this mess. But they weren’t angry. They were grateful.
When they got on the plane, Em sat down next to him. She wore a large ring on her finger, with odd writing on the sides.
“Every Traveler has his or her own path to walk,” she said. “My job was to get you ready to be a Traveler in your own right. My work is done.”
Patrick nodded, still trying to make sense of all this in his head. “Why did you go into the tunnels under the city?” he asked. “How did you get out here?”
“The deepest tunnels in the city are connected to the intercity magtrain lines. I took the train up here. There’s a maintenance stop underneath the caves and a maintenance tunnel connects right to it. So I came up inside the cave, placed the books, then went back down into the tunnels and took the magtrain home.”
“Why all that trouble?”
“We knew you’d use the computer to predict the next book. Once we figured that out, we knew you’d put a tracer in it. Tracer signals can only go through a few feet of rock, so we had to go deep underground to break up the tracer signal. Then, once we came back up here, the books were close enough to the surface for a clean signal to get out.”
“It seems like an awful lot of work.”
“On most of the territories, the Travelers run into big challenges all the time. But here on Third Earth, nothing ever goes wrong. We had to be the Key-Slapping Slizzard, see? We had to keep you out of Solla Sollew for a little while.”
As they were talking, Patrick’s comm beeped. “I guess the sunspots must be over,” he said.
The comm beeped again.
He thumbed the talk button and looked at the screen. It was Sergeant Lane, the Unit 9 detective.
“Hello, Pat,” the detective said. “I just wanted to let you know that there’s been another theft.”
Patrick frowned. “What? That’s not possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve been lying on the floor of a cave a hundred kilometers from New York all night. Every one of my students has been with me.”
Sergeant Lane looked puzzled. “That’s very odd,” he said. “Very odd indeed. They used the same security codes.” He shrugged. “Well, hey, I’m as puzzled as you are. But I just thought I’d call to let you know. I’m uploading the security vids to your comm. Take a look and see if you spot anything that might help me out.”
“Okay.” Patrick’s comm beeped, signaling the vid feed had been received. “So what book was stolen?”
“Something called the”—Sergeant Lane frowned as if trying to recall something—“The Gutenberg Bible? Does that name ring a bell?”
Patrick’s eyes widened. “But…that’s one of the most important historical artifacts in the whole—”
The screen went blank before Patrick could finish talking.
He turned to Em. “Did you hear that?”
Her brow furrowed. “But it doesn’t make sense. We were right here. Obviously we couldn’t have…” Her voice broke off.
Patrick queued up the security vid and began running it. It showed the Key-Slapping Slizzard, same as before, dashing through the library, stealing a book, taking it out onto the front steps of the library and burning it.
Em’s face was white. “This is not good.”
Patrick felt something clutch in his chest. He replayed the final part of the vid. It was a little different from the earlier vids. This time the Slizzard dumped some kind of chemical on the book and ignited it. The entire book was consumed in seconds. It could have been a fake, too. But in retrospect, the fire in this vid looked much more convincing than it had in the other ones.
Patrick replayed it twice. There was an odd hitch in the vid, a sort of stutter in the image as the book ignited.
“Wait!” Em said. “What was that?”
“I was wondering that too,” Patrick said.
He reran the vid, this time on slow speed. It happened again. One frame was different from all the others, as though something had flashed. It was still too quick to make out what it was.
“Stop!” Em said.
Patrick stopped the vid and began backing it up, frame by frame by frame. And suddenly there it was. One single frame was different from all the others. Instead of the Key-Slapping Slizzard, Patrick could see a flesh-and-blood human standing there, the Gutenberg Bible on the ground before him, a small flame extending from his hand.
It was an extremely tall man, staring toward the camera, with a broad smile on his face. He had pale blue eyes and long gray hair. And despite the fact that he was smiling, there was something vaguely menacing about him.
And then, as quickly as they had found the picture, it began to fade. As the image of the man faded, it was slowly replaced by the image of the Key-Slapping Slizzard. For a moment nothing was left of the man but his smile.
And then that too was gone.
“Who was that?” Patrick asked. “Do you think that was the person who really stole the book? Or was it just some random image that infected whatever program was used to generate the Slizzard?”
Em kept staring at the screen.
“Oh, no,” she whispered finally. “There’s even less time than we thought.”
D. J. MacHale, Book Three of the Travelers
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