Winston Chase and the Theta Factor Page 12

  Winston guessed they had about two hundred yards to go before reaching the bridge’s highest point. That would be where, forty-seven years from now, the cargo freighter would pass under. Hopefully. Of course, he realized, a smart person would make sure.

  Winston slipped his backpack from one shoulder and slid it around in front of his chest. He withdrew Little e and the two Alpha Machine pieces.

  “How do you know what to do?” Theo asked as Winston set about making Little e grasp the the chronoviewer, which in turn held the spinning chronojumper within its magnetic field.

  “I cheated,” said Winston. “The answers were already baked into my brain. I just have to relax and sort of get out of my own way. Like the first time I used the chronoviewer, I was all tense and nervous about it, so it acted kind of random. I couldn’t even see the controls. But if I relax and treat it like, I don’t know, a part of me, it works better. I can do more.”

  “Fascinating,” said Theo in almost the same manner as the still-unknown Spock. “So, were you born with the information encoded into your DNA, or did the QVs write in the instructions after the fact?”

  “Cool chicken-and-egg riddle,” said Winston. “Maybe let’s tackle that another time. You mind if I take a minute to concentrate?”

  Theo backed away a few steps and motioned for Winston to proceed.

  Winston took a deep breath and tried to take a more defensive, ready mental stance, like a martial artist stepping into a fight. The last thing he wanted was another surprise that sent him careening through time again, especially since it could involve a fatal fall into the river below.

  Pale gray light bloomed in his vision as the alternate time layer appeared behind his own. The time slider in the corner of Winston’s awareness showed that he was looking a few hours into the future, likely a bit before sunrise. Only dimly aware that he was moving his hands, almost like a conductor, Winston mentally shoved the time handle. The dawn immediately shifted into a blur of oscillating light and dark that Winston found made him dizzy and a bit sick if he paid it too much attention.

  Winston felt the pull of his present like a retracting rubber cord anchored in his mind. He didn’t resist. Instead, he concentrated on landing in the morning of November 4, 2013. Almost like snapping his fingers, Winston arrived at his desired day. That rubber-band tension all but vanished as the chronoviewer landed within an hour of his true present. His heart leaped as the container-laden freighter sped toward him from the east. Shade would be on that freighter, probably huddled in that same steel cell belowdecks. Somehow, he had to find Shade and get the two of them off that rig without being discovered. The rapid approach of a low-flying black helicopter catching up to the freighter did not bode well.

  Winston mentally drew away from the slider, and the freighter dropped to real-time speed. It was hard to tell given his altitude and the Columbia’s flat, featureless expanse, but Winston guessed that the ship was still about a mile away. For now, he was content to let this future unfold at regular speed while he figured out what to do next. A small message along the bottom of his vision notified him in white letters: TEMPORAL PROXIMITY WILL RESULT IN SYNCHRONIZATION. He had a reasonable guess that this meant if he was close enough to landing in his true present, the Alpha Machine would decide it was close enough and block him from going any farther.

  “OK,” Winston said, heart racing at the thought of somehow crossing the gap between the water and this ridiculous height. “I can see the freighter approaching. How should we do this?”

  Theo pointed along the nearby railing. “We’ll tie the rope to the railing at whatever point you think will be directly over the ship’s middle as it passes below. Then you simply slide down the rope and do…what you do to get back home.”

  “Wait, no. Slide down the rope…” Winston repeated, then waggled Little e at Theo. “While I’m holding this? Impossible. I thought you were going to tie the rope around me and lower me down.”

  Theo shook his head. “We can’t. How will you free yourself if you’ve got one hand holding the Alpha Machine? Are you willing to risk me lowering you on the perfect spot, while the ship is moving, and then you set the Alpha Machine down and untie yourself before getting dragged off of a surface or slammed against the next bulkhead?”

  “Well, when you put it like that…”

  “You could use both hands to slide down while wearing the pack on your front. Then you hold on with one hand while using the Alpha Machine with the other.”

  Winston tried to imagine carrying out the maneuver. It sounded only slightly less impossible than the first plan — and ten times harder.

  “I hate your idea,” he said.

  Theo grimaced. “Well, we could head back and reconsider. It shouldn’t be take more than a day or two to find a detachable harness, maybe even a winch to help—”

  A mile away, just beyond the toll gate and now rushing down the bridge’s long entrance loop, a flashing red light appeared above two headlights.

  “Aw, come on!” Winston cried.

  Theo said, “That does narrow our options.”

  In 2013, the black helicopter hovered over the approaching freighter. A rope ladder unfurled from the helicopter’s side, its end dragging across the ship’s top deck. A figure began to descend from the aircraft.

  The chopper didn’t carry military markings. Winston guessed it was FBI. That meant they would be waiting for him on the freighter when he arrived. And they would have Shade.

  Winston knew that the longer he stopped to consider things, the more likely he was to become paralyzed by fear. He could do another time jump, but there was no guarantee that his next time wouldn’t be even worse than this. His gut told him that it was now or never.

  Winston released his hold on Little e and stuffed everything back in his pack. He wore it backward so that it hung over his chest, as Theo had suggested. He snapped the belt strap together at the small of his back.

  “Pick your spot where the freighter will pass,” said Theo.

  Winston eyeballed where he believed would be dead center over the ship’s deck and, close to that point, spotted a gap where two sheets of white canvas met as they rode up the steel girders. He and Theo both removed their rope coils, and Theo expertly tied the two lengths together.

  “I guess it pays to study nautical knot techniques,” he said.

  Winston carefully balanced his belly on the bridge’s side rail and lifted his legs over the railing one at a time while Theo secured one end of the rope to the railing. When Winston had both feet firmly on the concrete lip between the steel beams, he poked his head through the protective canvas. Only a few inches before him, the world dropped away into blackness. Rationally, he knew the drop was about two hundred feet, but gazing down at the sweeping expanse of the Columbia, Winston felt he might as well have been staring down from the edge of space.

  Winston shook his head.

  Don’t look. Just don’t.

  He focused on the canvas and let his gaze wander along its length. The white fabric was reassuringly close and real, unlike the view of his second reality, which remained muted yet conveyed just how vast the distances were before him. Winston didn’t know which layer scared him more.

  “I’m going to toss the rope out now,” announced Theo.

  Winston nodded and held tightly to the railing as Theo tossed the coil past him. It arced out beyond the girders, then plummeted quietly down. The end of the rope did not strike the water’s surface and instead dangled wildly as it swayed in the breeze. From his vantage, Winston found it difficult to gauge how high the end was above the water. If he was too low, he would stand a very good chance of materializing inside a wall or cargo. That was a scenario he’d neglected to plan for.

  Winston gingerly planted both feet on the other side of the railing. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop seeing the long fall under him.

  “Theo?”

  “It’s OK,” said the curator. “You can do this.”

  I can d
o this. I can do this.

  Never had four words in his mind sounded more empty and unconvincing.

  Winston took the rope in one hand while keeping his death grip on the railing with the other. In the distance, he heard the police cruiser’s siren pierce the night’s quiet.

  “They’re at the gate,” Theo said. “You’d better hurry.”

  16

  A Deadly Drop

  The toes of Winston’s sneakers dangled over the drop into black nothingness. A gust of wind nudged him, and he moaned with fear.

  This bridge idea wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. Winston knew he was going to die roughly four seconds after falling from this height. The brutally accurate encyclopedia of his brain recalled a reputable article detailing the fatality rate of people who jumped the 240 feet or so from the Golden Gate Bridge: 98 percent. Their bodies struck the water with the force of a speeding truck colliding with a concrete wall, resulting in massive internal injuries.

  The Astoria-Megler Bridge wasn’t as tall as the Golden Gate, but Winston had no doubt that it was close enough. The distance to the water yawned before him, a perfect blend of his worst phobias: water and heights.

  “I can’t!” he called, leaning back into the rail and wrapping his right arm around it. “If I had the other piece, I could space jump, but… Theo, there has to be a different way.”

  Theo’s gaunt face appeared over the railing. “Maybe. But the police will be here any second.”

  Cursing through gritted teeth, Winston let go of the railing and gripped the rope with both hands. The slight breeze ruffled his hair and chilled the sweat at his temples. Even though his hands were now only inches from the rail, the rope felt hopelessly frail and unreliable.

  Dead. I’m dead. I’m dead.

  The words beat inside his mind in time to his racing pulse.

  Worst case, Winston might have less than a minute. At the outside, if Theo could hide, the police might go all the way to the Washington shore before circling back.

  Winston’s breath came in short, frantic gasps. The breeze felt icy on his face, and his hands trembled.

  “For you, Mom,” he whispered, then stepped off from the beam.

  In sixth grade, rope climbing had been a mandatory part of PE class. Winston had always been terrible on the rope, mostly because his arm strength seemed so puny compared to most of the other boys’. He would make it three or four pulls, knees and feet gripping the rope for dear life, before his strength ebbed and he had to quickly descend, often chafing the insides of his thighs enough to draw blood. Naturally, the class would snicker at him. Real boys were supposed to do better.

  Winston had turned to YouTube and found a video called “Navy SEAL Rope Climbing Techniques.” It had changed everything. On rope-climbing day, he had shown up to PE with his shorts on over his jeans, because shorts were required for class. After everyone had finished mocking him, Winston volunteered to go first. As he had practiced after school two days before, he jumped and held himself off the floor with his arms, then wrapped the rope around the outside of his right foot and over the top of his left shoe. When he pinched the rope between his feet, he could stand on the rope as it looped under his right foot, even to the point of having one hand free. The trick was in holding the rope steady at his chin while re-grabbing the rope with his feet as he brought his knees up. So long as the grab went well, everything else was a snap. Winston ascended the rope faster than any other boy in the class. Descending was even easier, provided one was careful not to release too much pressure in the feet. The first couple of boys who tried to copy him while wearing only shorts quickly found themselves with long, bleeding rope burns along their shins and knees, as he had known they would, and no one mocked him about his pants again.

  Tonight, that Navy SEAL method might save his life.

  Part of Winston’s mind hoped that this would be one of those moments when time seemed to slow down. Everybody talked about how terror brought the world into focus, a lifetime flashed before one’s eyes, or whatever. That didn’t happen.

  Winston felt gravity grab at him. His legs dangled free over the abyss. Within only a second or two, his biceps were quivering as his legs worked frantically to find and place the rope. He felt the rope bump repeatedly against his thigh, but it refused to line up against his foot. Why hadn’t Winston practiced this in the last several months?

  At last, he felt his left foot pinch the rope against the arch of his right foot, and the pull of his weight all but vanished from his arms. His right ankle complained as it bent inward, and Winston wished he’d worn boots rather than sneakers

  “Yes!” cried Theo from just above him. “There you go. Now, nice and easy.”

  Winston swung back and forth, feeling decidedly out of control. He cast a quick glance at the knot around the railing, which gave off a menacing creak with each swing. Then he made the mistake of looking down. Winston couldn’t see the bottom of the rope, but had to be down there somewhere, whipping about in the darkness.

  Winston relaxed his feet slightly and felt the sisal cords slip quickly between his shoes. He clamped again and halted the movement, but his thighs were already starting to burn from how hard he was squeezing. And there was still a very long way to go.

  He put one hand under the other, then repeated with the opposite hand. With his body bent and the strain increasing on his arms, Winston let his feet slide down until his body was straight, then clamped them together again. No, that wasn’t it. He couldn’t bend so much. His arms would be trashed in no time. Stay straight. Just relax the feet a little and let the hands follow.

  He tried again, careful to concentrate more on his feet, and that helped. His progress was painfully slow, but that was the price for holding physical exhaustion at bay. A slight relaxing, a slip, and a squeeze. Over and over.

  Every so often, Winston would pause to release one hand and give it a quick shake to let some blood back into the fingers. However, every time he let go with a hand, the pressure on his legs increased. The pain in his right ankle was becoming considerable, and he couldn’t straighten it without losing the grip of that inside edge of his sole, which then put more strain on his arms. To make matters worse, the coarse fibers of the sisal rope were chafing his palms like mad. His hands were accustomed to typing and turning screwdrivers, not this sort of abuse. He wasn’t surprised to see spots of blood begin to appear on the rope as he continued his descent

  Winston guessed he might have gone fifty feet when he heard Theo call out, “The police are stopping! I’ll try to delay them! Hurry!”

  He looked up in time to see Theo’s head duck back behind the railing and the white canvas flap open and close. It was very hard to judge, but Winston thought that the railing looked a lot more than fifty feet away. He tried to see the distance in terms of Shifford’s football field. Was it thirty yards? Maybe forty? He chanced a glance beyond his feet. He might even be halfway between the bridge and water. Not bad!

  Then he examined the end of the rope in relation to the water. If these were hundred-foot ropes, and it was two hundred feet from bridge to water, the rope’s end should be hovering at or just above the surface. And it wasn’t. Not even close. The end lashed about far above the surface. These were not hundred-foot ropes.

  Winston did the math. If they were eighty-foot lengths, he might be all right. If they were fifty-footers, he was in serious trouble.

  His legs were starting to give out, and after another few scoots down the rope, Winston found that he couldn’t entirely stop his downward slide. No matter how hard he tried to squeeze his feet together, his descent continued, one creeping inch after another. He groaned with the pain and effort through gritted teeth.

  It’s OK. It’s fine that I’m dropping slowly. That’s good. That’s what I want. Right?

  Self-reassuring chatter was not as calming as he’d hoped. Winston tried to take a deep breath, failed, and had to settle for closing his eyes.

  He continued to fight for a firm h
old while simultaneously trying to drop faster. He wouldn’t last much longer up here.

  At last, the rope’s end wiggled only a few feet away. If he couldn’t stop, he would drop right off the end in a few seconds. Why hadn’t they tied a knot at the bottom? Stupid!

  Biting down on a cry of agony, Winston pulled himself up with his hands, put all his weight onto his right arm, quickly looped his left arm around the rope above his head, then grabbed the rope again. This way, some of his weight was trapped by the rope, and some remained on his foot, but a large part of the strain fell to his left shoulder, which felt like it was about to rip out of its socket. The sisal bit deep into his hand, forearm, and triceps.

  He slowly let go with his right hand and confirmed, as he suspected, that it wasn’t contributing much to his grip on the rope. As quickly as his overwrought fingers could manage, he undid his backpack’s straps, already knowing what had to follow: grab Little e, use it to hold the chronoviewer, let the activated ring magnetically grab the smaller chronojumper, see the freighter coming, then jump back to 2013.

  Inch by inch, Winston lifted the canvas pack’s flap. He felt the tip of Little e’s six arms, all pressed together into a space the size of a half-dollar coin. He slid his fingertips along the length of the arms until he found the oval tube of the wrist guard and gingerly worked his hand inside it. Winston located the crosspiece, wrapped his fingers around it, and drew the device from the pack. The crosspiece warmed against his palm, and the arms separated.

  A searing wave of pain rolled though Winston’s left shoulder as the muscles threatened to cramp. He winced and redoubled the pressure with his legs, trying to take some of the weight off his arm.

  When he felt able, Winston slowly raised Little e with bleeding fingers that felt little besides pain. He wasn’t sure exactly what happened next. He knew that the tube tips caught under one of the pack’s straps. He felt the device tilt around his wrist. He thought he had a grip on the crosspiece, but when he instructed his hand to close around it, the bar was no longer there. The inside of the wrist guard knocked against his knuckles as it fell.