Sabotaged

17

“What’d you do that for?” Andrea demanded.

It had been only an instinct, unthinking fear. The man and his tracer were both still moving their lips, but soundlessly, now that they were apart. Jonah could tell what each of them was saying only because it was almost exactly what he’d just heard: All perished but me; all perished but me; all perished but me…

Jonah shivered.

“What’s wrong?” Andrea asked harshly. “Can’t you take hearing another sad story?”

Jonah rubbed his hands hard against his face.

“No, I just-what if it’s too confusing for the man, being joined with his tracer, thinking with his tracer brain?” Jonah asked, trying to come up with an explanation that sounded reasonable. “The tracer knows he was saved by two boys dressed like Indians, not three kids in T-shirts and jeans or shorts. And then if he sees us but not the tracer boys-because people can’t see tracers in their own time-that will really mess him up.”

“But this guy never saw us save him,” Katherine argued. “He’ll just think the tracer boys saved him and left, and then we arrived… We saw people rejoin their tracers after seeing different things before, back in the 1400s. I don’t think anything bad happened then, because of that.”

Jonah was still figuring out other problems.

“You think, when the man wakes up, it’s going to be okay for him to see us in our twenty-first-century clothes?” Jonah demanded. “Here, now, where we really don’t belong? When it’s all a setup by some mysterious time traveler who lied to Andrea?”

“No,” Katherine admitted. She winced, probably thinking about how she’d poked at the man back on the beach, trying to wake him up: Sir? Sir? That had been a mistake. They were lucky the man hadn’t awakened.

Very deliberately, Katherine pulled her hand back from the man’s shoulder.

“Hold on. Are you saying you just want to… sneak away?” Andrea asked incredulously. “Leave the man alone when he’s hurt?”

The man was still mouthing his silent lament: All perished but me; all perished but me; all perished but me…

Moving just as deliberately as Katherine, Andrea grabbed the man’s hand and held on tight.

“Shh, it’s over now,” she whispered to him. “You’re safe.” She looked back up at Jonah and Katherine. “Didn’t you hear him? He’s the only survivor of some awful shipwreck. So nobody would know to look for him. He’s just as stranded as we are. We can’t abandon him!”

Jonah shook his head.

“Nobody’s saying we should abandon him,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out how to take care of him without ruining time.”

But was that possible? Or was this another trap, one where they’d be forced to endanger time, no matter what?

“I wish we still had the Elucidator to make us invisible,” Katherine said.

Andrea sighed.

“Sorry about that,” she said. She stared into the fire for a moment, her face almost as inscrutable as the tracer boys’. “No. You know what? I’m not sorry. If I hadn’t changed the code on the Elucidator, this man would be dead right now.” She squeezed his hand. “Do you know how much time I’ve spent the past year wishing it was possible to go back and save someone from dying?”

“Andrea,” Katherine said. “This doesn’t change anything about your parents. You still can’t save them.”

“I know, I know, but… this is one little victory over death, all right?” Andrea said fiercely. “One way to stick it to death and say, ‘Ha, ha, this is one person you can’t have yet. Yeah, you’re going to win in the end, but not right now. Not this time.’”

The man still could die, Jonah thought. And is it really a victory over death if he was supposed to be rescued in original time anyhow? Or is it more of a victory over… time?

Andrea’s face was flushed, as if she’d said more than she’d meant to. Jonah had to look away, because he couldn’t think straight, watching her.

“Should we hide, except when we have to be in here taking care of the man?” Katherine asked. “Should we put the man back with his tracer, and leave him like that, because that’d be putting time back the way it’s supposed to be? Or should we keep him away from his tracer until we can find the real versions of the tracer boys? How are we going to find the real boys… and Andrea’s tracer… and whatever else we need to fix time and get out of here?”

She sounded completely perplexed.

This must be what Andrea’s mystery man wanted, when he told her to change the Elucidator code, Jonah thought, staring into the fire. He wanted us confused. So he could make us do… what?

Jonah’s thoughts twisted like the smoke flowing up toward the chimneylike hole in the roof. While he watched, the smoke completely combined with the tracer smoke, so it was indistinguishable. And, he realized, the fire now flamed out and drew in at exactly the same rate as the tracer fire.

Not scientifically possible, Jonah thought. Two fires, started at different times, by different people, should not be identical.

But that was how it worked when time was trying to fix itself. Given a chance, the tracers always took over.

Unless some time traveler intervened.

“The man who lied to Andrea,” Jonah said slowly. “He’s not standing here telling us what to do. But he’s put us in all these situations where we have to make choices. And I think he’s manipulating things so we always make the choice he wants.”

“Like the way he got me to change the Elucidator in the first place,” Andrea said, scowling.

“Exactly,” Jonah said. “So I think we should stop doing what the man expects, what we would normally do. We have to do the opposite instead.”

Katherine squinted at him.

“You’re saying we should abandon-” she began.

“No, no,” Jonah said, before Andrea got upset again. “Nothing that extreme. I really don’t think we should let this man see us, but he’s unconscious and it’s pretty dark in here anyway, so I’m not going to worry about it tonight.”

“You’re talking about whether or not we put the man back with his tracer,” Katherine said, catching on quickly.

“Right,” Jonah said. “I was feeling guilty for pulling him away before, for interfering with time like that.”

“And I was going to say that if we put him back with his tracer, maybe we’d hear more,” Andrea said. “About him, anyway, even if that doesn’t help with my problem with time.”

“I agree,” Katherine said. “So, normally, we’d be deciding to push the man back together with his tracer.”

“So we won’t. We’ll keep them apart,” Jonah said. He tugged the man a little farther away. He looked up at the dark sky, through the hole in the roof. “How do you like that, Mr. Elucidator Code-Changer? We’re forcing your hand!”

“But what if we really do ruin time, doing that?” Andrea asked.

“We won’t,” Jonah said, hoping he sounded confident. “Because that’s what your mystery man is trying to do. We’re showing him he can’t trick us into playing along. It’s like chess or Stratego, games like that, where sometimes you have to use reverse psychology.”

“Jonah, you’re terrible at chess and Stratego!” Katherine objected.

“I am not,” Jonah said. “Not anymore. Remember a few years ago, when I used to go over to Billy Rivoli’s house and play board games? I got a lot better.”

Katherine frowned, but then she shrugged.

“It’s not like I have any better ideas,” she admitted.

Across the fire, the tracer boys were lying down, settling in for the night. Dare curled up at Andrea’s feet. Andrea let out a jaw-splitting yawn.

“I guess it’s worth a try,” she said.

Jonah lay down, feeling surprised that Katherine and Andrea hadn’t argued more.

We’re all too tired to think straight, he thought. But my idea will work. I hope.

The truth was, Jonah really didn’t like Stratego or chess or games like that. There was too much planning, too much strategy, too much trying to figure out your opponent’s plans ten moves ahead.

What was that really complicated game Billy was always trying to get me to play? Jonah tried to remember. The one where you weren’t just competing against one other person, but there could be five or six people, all trying to win?

Jonah remembered the name of the game just as he was slipping off to sleep: Risk.

He woke hours later, to darkness and the sound of screaming.

“Stop! Stop! Halt the battle!”