CHAPTER 15

T for Torture

I got a shiver, thinking about how appropriate it was for a hexagram called Decay to contain the Morse code for dead. Tom was right; it wasn’t a coincidence.

“Is that it?” I asked Frankie. “Is somebody dead who shouldn’t be? When we were in the past, did we accidentally kill somebody without noticing? What if Chester died of fright when Mr. Ganto took him away? Getting grabbed by Mr. Ganto would have scared me to death. At the very least, I would have needed clean underwear. Or, what if that book they gave you”—I waved at Frankie’s backpack—“was supposed to save somebody’s life, and it didn’t because it wasn’t there when it should have been? Like, maybe someday somebody was supposed to be holding it, and it was supposed to stop a bullet?”

“I’m thinking it might be the opposite,” replied Frankie. “We didn’t accidentally kill anybody, but we did deliberately save somebody’s life. What if Dwina was supposed to die then, but because we saved her, she lived to do something—or her children went on to do something—that eventually caused all this?”

Her fingers typed furiously.

“Are you crazy?” I exploded. “That nice lady? How could she possibly do anything that could mess things up as bad as this? The best thing about our trip was saving her! I’d do it all over again if I had to!”

“You’d probably even save Killbreath under the same circumstances,” Frankie said gently. “I’m beginning to see that’s the kind of person you are.”

“I wouldn’t put that to the test,” I said, not comfortable with a compliment coming from her.

She leaned in and squinted at a blurry PDF file.

“Okay—I did a search for Edwina Landry. The only thing that came up is a genealogical record from 1910.”

“Why Landry?” I asked.

Tom was quick to slip in the answer; it was right up his nineteenth-century alley.

“Because former slaves sometimes kept the last names of their onetime captors, and Dwina mentioned a Master Landry!”

“Yes,” Frankie agreed. “It was a long shot, but here it says Edwina and Seth Landry were married and had a daughter Rosella, who grew up to marry a man named David Stemplehill, and then Rosella and David had three daughters: Violet, Columbine, and—if you can believe it, Morning Glory. The record takes the family up to 1910, but beyond Morning Glory, the original document is too damaged to read.”

“Morning Glory Stemplehill!” I exclaimed, hardly able to believe it.

“You’ve heard of her?”

“My mother used to say that her favorite name of all her ancestors was Morning Glory Stemplehill! She was my mother’s great-great-great-something-grandmother, maybe there should be another great, or a couple less, but I’m a direct descendant!”

“Then, if you add two more greats, you’re directly descended from Dwina herself,” said Frankie thoughtfully. “If you hadn’t saved her, you would’ve ceased to exist!”

My head was starting to hurt, and it wasn’t just from lack of sleep.

“I don’t know about that,” said Tom. “This is a classic Grandfather Paradox. If you traveled back in time and accidentally knocked your grandfather off a cliff before he ever met your grandmother, your father or mother would never have been born, and you wouldn’t exist. But then you couldn’t have gone back in time and accidentally killed one of your ancestors. It’s not possible.”

“It’s like in the old Gypsy rhyme,” Frankie added.

“Your time-travel tales can be thrillers,

’Bout time-traveling grandfather killers,

But with Granddad destroyed,

There is often a void,

And limericks do make good fillers!”

“That’s an old Gypsy rhyme?”

“We also have a nice one about werewolves. So, obviously, Dwina was supposed to live so you could be born and go back in time to save her. It has to be something else we changed that’s made all this mess.”

“Wait,” I said. “If what we did caused that purge thing, where they eliminated a bunch of people in 1933—like, probably, our great-grandparents—why are we still here?”

“We shouldn’t be,” Tom admitted. “Maybe it’s because we’re visiting from a different timeline. Or maybe it’s because we somehow do manage to fix this thing!”

“There’s another computer over there!” Frankie pointed and snapped her fingers. “And there’s a tablet on that table! Help me figure it out! We have to know what we did before we go back!”

Tom went to the other computer and began tapping at the keyboard.

“What, exactly, is it we’re looking for?” I asked, picking up the tablet and watching it spring to life at my touch. It was only 6 percent charged.

“The point where history starts running amok,” said Frankie, rapidly scrolling through documents. “The point where it deviates from the history we know.”

“It would help if we knew more history,” I muttered to myself, looking for a news feed.

“Obviously,” continued Frankie, “it had to have happened after we were there. What was that date again?”

“August 12, 1852,” said Tom as he studied some nineteenth-century photographs. “A very important date in Chinese history.”

“Was it?” Frankie looked up from her scrolling.

“Totally. On August 12, 1852, in San Francisco, the Chinese first introduced chopsticks to America. Two days later, we opened the first Chinese laundry, to clean the shirts of Americans who tried to eat with chopsticks. It was the most brilliant piece of marketing ever, although we try not to brag about it.”

“Did you just learn this?” asked Frankie.

“Gee Gee Pa told me over breakfast the other day.”

“Gee Gee Pa?”

“My great-grandfather. He tries to teach me one new thing about China every morning. Every Friday, he gives a quiz. It makes Puma Ma furious. She says it’s irrelevant.”

“So the date was in your head.” Frankie returned her attention to the screen. “That’s probably why, of all the available dates in the 1850s, we went to that one. Your thoughts overrode mine.” She didn’t sound happy about it. Tom just grinned.

“Hey!” I blurted. “According to this, Lenny Killbreath’s father has been president of the United States for twelve years now! He was just re-elected for a fourth term—the inauguration was today! His son Lenny—eighteen-year-old Lenny!—is Secretary of the Inferior, a department that decides what to do with U.S. residents who fail their annual citizenship tests! Am I going crazy?”

“No, it’s the world that’s gone crazy,” Frankie assured me. “Lenny’s father, Bruno Killbreath, is the fourth member of the Killbreath family to be a president of the United States, starting with Horace Killbreath, who was elected in 1884. Horace’s son, Montgomery Killbreath, was president in 1933 and is considered ‘the architect of the Great Purge.’” She waved her hand at the monitor, as if we might be wondering where she was getting all this from. “After he was elected for a third term, some people started calling him King Monty. Or, at least they did before they were hanged.”

“What could have made the Killbreath family so powerful?” I wondered.

“We did, apparently!” Frankie clenched her fists in frustration. “I haven’t dug far enough yet to figure out what it was—”

“Hey, guys!” Tom’s voice was full of alarm. He pointed with his pencil to the far corner of the room. Just below the ceiling, aimed in our direction, was a TV camera. The little red light on it glowed brightly. “Acrimonious! We’re under surveillance,” he said woodenly. “The I-Ching was right. We’re dead!”

“Maybe not,” said Frankie, renewing her efforts at the keyboard. “There must be a camera in practically every room of this place. Meaning there’s a control booth somewhere with hundreds of TV screens in it. And what? A single guard, maybe two, trying to watch them all? While they also keep an eye on the portable TV they’ve probably got hidden at their desk to watch the football game?”

“Assuming football still exists,” I said.

“They may not have noticed us,” Frankie said, with forced optimism. “One of the guards may be asleep; the other might be in the bathroom; maybe the game’s gone into overtime.”

Something snicked in the lock of the room’s only door.

“Or maybe the guards aren’t football fans,” I said, giving a second look to the room’s window. It was barred, and the space between the bars was too narrow for even a kid to squeeze through, no matter how flattering and slimming the kid’s dress might be.

The door burst open, and two men with machine guns flew into the room. They skidded to a halt, leveled their guns at us, and barked, “Nobody move!”

We didn’t. We locked ourselves into whatever position we were in and stared up at them, wide-eyed. Nothing happened. Long seconds dragged by, and I was almost about to ask “Can we help you?” when Quentin Garlock appeared at the door.

He was wearing a gray winter coat and a gray woolen scarf and gray leather gloves, and even the snowflakes on his shoulders were gray, unless it was dandruff. He leaned wearily against the doorframe and, as he skinned off his gloves, said, “I was almost to my car. A five-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner, and I’ve already missed a hundred dollars’ worth of fruit cup. What nonsense has called me back?”

He studied us, his expression growing more sour as his eyes roved from Frankie to Tom to me.

“This is a prison!” he announced. “People try to break out of prison. NOBODY breaks into prison! Are you insane? What is wrong with you? Who are you?”

All three of us made the decision not to speak. Garlock turned purple. It was a nice contrast to all the gray.

“Three cross-time dressers! Of three ethnic types that haven’t been seen in these parts since sometime in the last century! Two of you not even wearing clothing proper to your gender! This has to be some kind of sick joke!”

Our bonnets were hanging down our backs by their chin straps. I was, ridiculously, relieved that Garlock had realized Tom and I were boys.

“And children, on top of it all! Who helped you get in here? It wasn’t Gnuteson, was it? He’s wanted my job for years! He probably thinks this will somehow embarrass me politically. I hate people who scheme to get the jobs of others! ONE OF YOU SHOULD ANSWER ME!”

We all clenched our lips a little tighter.

“Really? Don’t trifle with me! I’m in no mood to waste time!”

Garlock gestured, and one of the guards pulled Frankie away from her computer while the second guard pulled Tom away from his. I slipped the tablet into the pocket of my apron as the guards jammed the three of us shoulder to shoulder in the center of the room.

“Now, I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?”

We refused to answer. None of us even made eye contact.

“Right! If you want to play it that way, there’s an easy way to make you talk! Millard!” Garlock addressed the bulkier of the two guards. “In the top drawer of that filing cabinet, you’ll find a thin wooden case containing stainless steel implements designed to cut, crack, break, and sever. Be a good lad and fetch it here.”

Millard slung his weapon over one shoulder and rummaged in the drawer.

“We’ll soon have you singing like little birds,” Garlock promised us.

“Uh, where, exactly, would it be?” asked Millard.

“Look under T, for torture,” suggested Garlock.

“Uh, time sheets… tax forms… a recipe for tuna casserole. Nothing to do with torture.”

“Try P for pain.”

“Personnel records… payroll forms… a jar of peanut butter… no wooden case. Maybe under O?”

“O for what?”

“Ouch?”

“Ouch? I’ll give you ouch! Out of my way!”

Garlock shoved Millard aside and ransacked the drawer himself, finally slamming it and pulling open the drawer beneath it.

“There!” he said triumphantly, waving the case around. “Totally misfiled! Heads will roll in clerical, unless they’ve also misplaced the portable guillotine, in which case I’ll have to content myself with a strongly worded memo. Now—”

He flipped open the case and displayed its contents to us. It was full of brightly shining surgical tools. I particularly didn’t like the one that looked resembled a can opener.

“—whom shall I interrogate first? Or would you prefer to reconsider and simply tell me everything?”

“Hey, boss?” said the guard who wasn’t Millard.

“Not now, Alphonse; I’m busy.”

“Why is there a trombone case on the desk?”

Garlock turned and regarded the case. I decided we had reached the point where one of us had to speak.

“You should open it,” I said, because opening it was the last thing I wanted him to do.

“Oh, I should, should I?” Garlock stepped over to the desk and put his hand lightly on the Shagbolt’s case. “Nobody breaks into a prison and brings a trombone with them. A harmonica, possibly. In an extreme case, an ocarina. But nothing this size. What is it, really?”

“It’s a trombone,” I answered honestly.

“It is the symbol of our cause,” said Frankie. “You’ve heard the expression ‘bold as brass’? We are BRASS. The trombone is our symbol. And we are your worst nightmare!”

“BRASS? Never heard of it!” Garlock drummed his fingers on the trombone case. I made a great show of ducking my head and wincing, like I expected something horrible to happen, and he stopped, yanking his hand back like he’d been stung. “What does it stand for?”

“What does what stand for?” asked Frankie.

“BRASS!”

“Boys—” I said the first word beginning with B that popped into my head.

“Brotherhood—” Frankie overrode me.

“Right!” I agreed. “The Brotherhood of—”

“Brotherhood Rebuilding—” Tom corrected me.

“A Saner Society!” Frankie finished. “Brotherhood Rebuilding a Saner Society! BRASS! Hear it and tremble!”

“You’re one of those sick little protest groups that will stop at nothing to make some wrongheaded, meaningless point?” Garlock goggled in horror at the trombone case. “IS THIS… A BOMB?”

“Why don’t you open it and find out?” I asked.

“Want I should call the bomb squad?” asked Alphonse, reaching for the nearest phone.

“NO!” Garlock caught Alphonse’s hand before it could get to the receiver. “We’ll handle this ourselves. If this is some trick of Gnuteson’s, I will not be made a laughingstock!”

“But, boss, what if it really is a bomb?”

“Then one of these clever children will disarm it.” Garlock took a scalpel from his collection of razor-sharp flatware. “It’s time we stopped fooling around!”

Two strides brought him over to us. He gathered Frankie’s hair in one hand and tilted her head back. “Stay perfectly still,” he advised her. “If you so much as raise your hand, or try to kick me, I can guarantee things will go very badly for you and your friends. Now, which one of you offensively dressed young men cares enough about this young lady to save her from getting a very nasty scar across her neck?”

He raised the scalpel to Frankie’s throat and pressed the tip against her skin.