“I HAVE BEEN dreaming of an elppaenip smoothie,” Cass said, as we burst through the dorm entrance into the bright tropical morning. He held up a small glass box, in which Leonard was lying on a bed of sand. “And a yummy reppohssarg for you?”
Sometimes, just sometimes, Backwardish just got on my nerves. “You know, Cass, maybe you can spell that stuff in your head, but it’s impossible to figure it out by hearing you say it!”
“Pineapple,” Aly said. “And grasshopper.”
“Thank you, I rest my esac,” Cass said.
“Ee-sack is not the right way to say case backward!” I said.
“You dootsrednu it,” Cass replied.
“Aghhhhh!” As I took off after him, Cass ran away, giggling.
Honestly, it felt pretty good being back in the lush lawns and air-conditioned comfort of the KI. We’d all had a day to chill, most of which was spent sleeping. We’d showered and been bandaged up. Bhegad’s intelligence committee had debriefed us on every detail of the visit. Even a team of “textile designers” had made patterns of our tunics and sandals.
Today Professor Bhegad was going to treat us to breakfast in his classroom at the House of Wenders and introduce us to Shelley.
“Maybe she’s a new Select,” Aly remarked.
“Freshly kidnapped,” Marco drawled.
“Well, it’ll be good to have another girl,” Aly said.
“I had a friend named Shelley who was a guy,” Cass said, jogging back to us. “Sheldon.”
“Guy or girl, I don’t know how one more Select is going to make a difference in Babylon,” Marco said. He kicked a stone and it rocketed across the campus lawn.
“Easy, Pistol Feet,” Aly said. She smiled at Marco, but he didn’t notice.
Cass was trilling into the glass box. “Brrrrrr . . . brrrrrr . . .”
“What are you doing?” I said.
“It’s my lizard noise,” Cass said. “It comforts Leonard. He’s very sick. Barely moved since we got back.”
“He’s homesick,” Aly said. “You never should have brought him over from the other side.”
Brought him over from the other side.
I stopped short. “Guys. Wait a minute. How did that happen? How did Leonard come over from Babylon?”
Aly, Cass, and Marco turned. “Same way we did, Brother Jack,” Marco said.
“But Torquin wasn’t able to go through the portal—because he’s not a Select, and only Selects pass through. So why Leonard?” I began pacing across the walkway. “Okay . . . okay, we have to think about this before we see Professor Bhegad. This isn’t the first weird thing that’s happened with Leonard. Remember, when he fell into the Loculus pit, he didn’t disappear—only when Cass reached down to get him! And Cass disappeared, too. Both times—with the Loculus and in the river—Leonard was able to do what a Select did. Not by being a Select, but by being in physical contact with one!”
I stopped. The realization was epic. But the others were staring at me weirdly. “Uh, we kind of knew that,” Cass said. “Marco figured it out two days ago, back when we were in the water. When I pulled Leonard out of my tunic.”
“We talked about it while you were knocked out,” Aly said, “in the tent.”
I didn’t care that they knew. I was thinking about Daria. And the wardum. And the farmers and garden strollers and herdspeople. “This could be a game changer,” I said. “We can save the Babylonians. They don’t have to die. We can bring them through before we take the Loculus.”
“All of them?” Aly added. “Evacuate an entire city one by one—and bring them two thousand years into their future? Or . . . another present, that is the future?”
“Well, it’s worth thinking about . . .” I said, but the others were looking at me as if I were drooling purple slime. I fell into step as we approached the House of Wenders, a building with columns and wide steps that looked like a museum. The morning clouds had burned away, and Mount Onyx was clear in the distance, rising over the top of the building like a black-hooded sentry.
Professor Bhegad met us in the building’s grand lobby, leaning against the statue of the giant dinosaur that had been excavated on the island. “Good morning, cross-dimensional wayfarers,” he called out. “Punctuality is a harbinger of future success.”
“Listening to him is worse than Backwardish,” Marco muttered.
“Right this way,” Bhegad said, ushering us toward the elevator in the back. “If I seem a bit distracted, it is because I have had a restless sleep worrying about the possible discovery of the first Loculus by ancient Babylonians.”
“Yo, P. Beg, I told you, no one’s going to find it,” Marco said. “I barely had my hands in the dirt when I saw the guards coming.”
“Yes, well . . .” Bhegad sighed. “I am a teacher by trade, and I trust you will take this as a teachable moment. Honestly, there was no need to bring an already-secured Loculus into a parallel world. But—tempus fugit!—I cannot dwell on this. All will be right in the fullness of time. As you know, the last few months we have been working very hard. And I think you’ll be pleased with the results.”
We entered the elevator and the door slid shut. We sank downward so fast I thought my stomach would knock me in the jaw. It was my first time riding this thing, and I couldn’t help but notice that Ground Floor was at the top. Underneath it were ten buttons—ten floors going downward. Bhegad pressed SUBBASEMENT SEVEN.
“It’s an upside-down skyscraper,” Cass said. “A groundscraper.”
The door opened into a cavernous room. The air was biting cold. All around us was the low whir and hum of an air conditioner, and the rhythmic clanking of metal. Steam and liquids blasted through clear tubes overhead. Marco nearly tripped over a short, mushroom-shaped robot that whizzed and skittered along the floor. A bat, confused and disoriented, dive-bombed us and then disappeared into the elevator.
“Given the level of emergency, we haven’t had a chance to import the best equipment,” Professor Bhegad said. “Instead, we’ve worked with what we have. Sometimes the results are better that way.”
We followed Professor Bhegad past a busy workstation. White-clad KI workers with bloodshot eyes were clacking away at keyboards. They quickly waved before heading back to their calculations. The screens glowed with rotating AutoCAD diagrams, and on each desk was a steaming mug of coffee or tea.
Just beyond them, separated by a floor-to-ceiling wall of clear Plexiglas, was a gigantic machine. It looked as if it had been cobbled out of spare parts—I spotted a Jeep fender, a small jet engine, a window frame, sewer pipes, a table top, and about a hundred patches made from the backs of iPod cases. Facing us was a black-tinted window at about eye level.
We entered through a sliding door in the Plexiglas. The machine made a scraping noise and let off a puff of black steam, which rose up into a vacuum duct overhead.
I backed away, coughing.
“Boys and girls,” Professor Bhegad said. “Meet Shelley.”