The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 29

Colin made certain that nobody was near any of the windows at the front of the house before making his way across the driveway toward the silo. His mother was conveniently busy with something-she had hardly spoken to him all day, and her face had that tightly-drawn look which meant he should be glad about that-but he didn’t want to take a chance someone else would see him and mention it either to her or Mr. Walkwell. Fortunately the old Greek monstrosity was occupied noon and night trying to make up for Ragnar Lodbrok’s absence.

Colin paused at the silo door for a last scan of the perimeter, then used his copy of the padlock key to let himself into the empty silo. He liked to think of his adventures as military missions, everything planned down to the last detail; he had made his own set of keys on one of the trips to Standard Valley for just such occasions. It was another example of why he should be the master of the farm someday, and sooner rather than later.

He opened the lock on the hatch door, then made his way down the ladder and into the outer section of the Fault Line cavern, unvisited as far as he knew since Simos Walkwell had come here weeks earlier, searching for Gideon.

Colin set down his powerful flashlight and sat beside it on the cavern’s stony floor, then carefully lifted the Continuascope out of his pack. It had felt quite heavy when he was carrying it down the hill from Alamu’s nest and even when he had held it in the library, but here, so close to the Fault Line, it suddenly seemed much lighter. He even fancied he could feel it trembling a little, like an animal longing to be let down to run.

He reached up and flicked on the headlamp he had ordered from an internet camping store, then held the Continuascope out before him. He had assembled many pages of Octavio Tinker’s musings about how to design and build a tool that would allow him to navigate the Fault Line-a time machine, Colin had come to understand, with a tickle of wonder and fear-and had studied them carefully, but he still wasn’t certain he could make it work. Tyler Jenkins might be able to find his way back out of the Fault Line by some kind of sheer dumb luck, but Colin didn’t think the same would be true for him.

The first thing he wanted to check was whether the thing could open the Fault Line at all-worrying about navigating the countless different “temporal strata,” as old Octavio had put it, would have to wait. From the information he’d gathered, the Continuascope seemed to work a little like a crystal radio: it could be adjusted to measure different energy frequencies. In fact, Octavio Tinker’s greatest invention was not that much different from a radio tuner, with each frequency it could locate being a route to a different time and place. The Fault Line gave anyone who stepped into it access to those routes, but they were basically infinite in number: only with a Continuascope could anyone who didn’t have Octavio’s own bizarre natural gift locate a particular destination or find a way back home with any accuracy.

Colin made sure all the parts were in their starting position. One of the most fascinating things about the Continuascope, he had discovered, was that it worked without external power-no cord, no batteries. Instead its mechanism was based on vibration, and was set into motion by a collection of springs and gears much like those of a huge and extremely complicated pocket watch.

With all the vibrating coils tuned to their most basic setting, Colin gave the winding stem a dozen brisk turns, as Octavio’s papers had suggested. As soon as he let go of the stem the Continuascope began to vibrate softly in his hands, pulling ever so subtly from one side to the other like a spinning gyroscope. Some of the smaller rings had actually begun to spin at various speeds within the curve of the Continuascope’s main frame, and others were beginning slowly to revolve. It was a strange sensation: when he held the shiny mechanism a little closer to his head he could just barely hear its quiet hum, but he felt its trembling quite strongly in his teeth and the bones of his head.

Colin got up and walked farther down into the cavern until he reached a spot that he knew was where the Fault Line commonly opened. He left the coils at their loosest setting, what in a radio would be the dead air at one end of the dial, and then pulled back a small lever on the frame and released it. A tiny striker hit a tuning fork, which sent its vibrations up and out of what looked like a little halo of nasturtiums or tiny trumpets at the end of the golden spine that traversed the instrument. A moment later the air in front of him and the darkness that filled it both began to part, like a zipper being pulled in midair. When he could see the light of a pale, overcast day leaking in, Colin Needle shouldered his pack, took a deep breath, and stepped through into the Fault Line clutching the Continuascope to his chest with both hands.

He shivered for a long time after he stepped back through into his own place and time, and even after he kicked the ice and snow from his shoes his feet still felt like they had been frostbitten, but he was full of triumph. Not only had he successfully entered the Fault Line and come back out again, but unless he was completely mistaken he had stepped out into the very moment in the Ice Age that had spewed out that troglodyte Ooola and her rescuer, Tyler Jenkins! In fact, he had even seen what he felt sure were their two pairs of footprints leading toward the spot where he had stepped out, although fast disappearing under falling snow. If it was true, he had learned something else-that on its own, the Fault Line itself did not necessarily change times or locations all that often. Ordinary Farm had apparently been connected to this particular ancient glacial valley since last summer, and even the moment on the far side did not seem to have changed.

Which was all good-very good. Had he ever taken the initiative back from Tyler Jenkins now! But unlike Jenkins, Colin was going to experiment carefully and scientifically until he could make the Continuascope-and the Fault Line itself-do just what he wanted. In fact, he could imagine the day would come when everyone would just call it “the Needlescope.” No, maybe “the Amazing Needlescope,” because he was going to do things with it no one else had even considered. And what better way to insure that control of Ordinary Farm stayed where it ought to stay, with Colin and his mother?

He supposed he ought to thank Tyler Jenkins for helping him, not only to find the Continuascope in the first place, but by being stupid enough to get himself and his sister thrown off the farm, leaving the field clear for Colin Needle.

He laughed out loud, a strange sound in the empty cavern, the cold in his feet and fingers offset by the warm glow of triumph. He was going to do great things now that the Fault Line was his to command. He was going to make everyone sit up and take notice. In fact, he was going to do more than that-he was going to make them all bow down and admit the farm should be his.

Needle Farm!