I’m not going to lie—it hurt to hit the ground.
M.K. yelped.
“Ow!” I rolled over and lay there on my back for a second, then reached up to make sure my glasses weren’t broken.
Zander didn’t say anything, but when I looked over at him, he looked like he wanted to say “Ow!” too.
“Everyone okay?” he asked, once he’d gotten his breath back. “You two made it?” It wasn’t any problem staying on the ground until the train was out of sight around the bend, and once it was gone, we stood up and walked out of the field toward another large open one that had just been mowed. M.K. had her right arm cradled against her body, her shoulders hunched up. Pucci squawked and made a wide circle in the air as though he was trying to tell us something, but when we searched the sky and the horizon, we couldn’t see a thing but clear, blue sky for miles and miles. No dirigibles, no nothing. The only object on the horizon was a big commercial airship, far away to the south of us, heading east. A huge, rolling irrigator sat at the edge of the field, and we took off our vests and sat down under it to rest. It would shield us from anyone flying overhead, but if the police came by ground, we were out of luck.
My left hip throbbed where it had slammed into the ground and my back ached from the long journey on the floor of the cargo car. We leaned back against the irrigator, Zander and I breathing hard. M.K. was still holding her arm.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Yeah.” She rubbed at her biceps, and winced. “I think I hit a piece of metal when I landed. Can you see what happened?”
I pushed up the sleeve of her shirt, finding a long gash, oozing blood. “This looks bad,” I told her. “I need a cloth or something so I can clean it. Zander, do you have anything in your vest?”
“I think there was a little…” He went through the pockets, coming out with a small chamois cloth. I used it to soak up the blood and then pressed it against the wound, hoping it would stop bleeding.
“Look in ours, too,” I told him. “We should put something on it.” He searched through our vests and in mine and found a small first-aid kit. He tossed me a small tube. “‘Roweben juper berry cream’,” I read. There was some very small writing on the tube and I scanned it until I read, “‘antibiotic properties’.”
“This is the stuff, M.K.” I spread some on the wound, but I didn’t like the way the sides opened up. It was deep. It might need stitches. Zander had found a bandage in the first-aid kit and he came over and spread it carefully over the cut.
M.K. tried to grin. “Good as new,” she said. “Thanks, guys.”
But there was something about her voice that made me nervous. M.K. didn’t cry when she got hurt, never had. She wasn’t crying now, but she looked a little pale and her grin stayed on her mouth, never reaching her eyes. I felt panic creep through my veins. If that cut didn’t heal, we couldn’t just walk into a hospital and ask them to stitch it up.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked Zander. “We can’t hop another train out west. They’ll be looking for us. In fact, when they discover we’re not on the train, they’ll probably come searching for us. We’re not exactly good at blending into the scenery, you know.”
“I know,” Zander said. “It’s a problem.”
“A problem! Dying of thirst and hunger in a field in the middle of I-don’t-even-know-where is a little bit more than a problem, Zander.” My glasses were dusty. I polished them on my shirt and then replaced them on my face. Everything was brighter: the green fields, the blue sky. “And what if M.K. needs a doctor?”
“I’m fine,” she said in a stubborn voice. “I won’t need a doctor.”
“Dad wants us to find the treasure,” Zander said in the annoyingly calm way he has when he’s arguing. “Do you wish you’d never opened the book? Do you wish you’d put the map back in the drawer?”
I hesitated. “No, of course not. But we don’t even know what Dad meant for us to do with it. It’s crazy. It’s a wild goose chase.”
“Dad would never have sent us on a wild goose chase.” Zander folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back against the big metal contraption.
Zander and I sat on opposite sides of the irrigator, not talking. M.K. picked up the newspaper and looked through it while Zander and I sat, mad at each other and getting hotter in the bright sun.
We’d been sitting there for a good five minutes before M.K. said, “Zander, Kit, look at this.”
She held up the newspaper that had held the cookies, folded so that we could read the story on the back.
EXPLORER AND SON TO EMBARK ON SOUTHWESTERN TREASURE HUNT
By Dolly Frost Exploration Correspondent
Famed explorer Leo Nackley and his son, Lazlo Nackley, a student at the Academy for the Exploratory Sciences, leave today on a hunt for Dan Foley’s famed golden treasure in a remote canyon in the American Southwest. The senior Nackley told our reporter that new information has come to light that will help his son pinpoint the location of the treasure, which has long been rumored but never found despite considerable effort and outlay of funds. Nackley said that the treasure is priceless, in terms of both monetary and cultural/historical value. We await news from our intrepid treasure hunters.
“New information? Hah!” I said. “Mr. Mountmorris told him about the map!”
“You’re right.” Zander shrugged. “But he doesn’t have it. We do.”
“For what it’s worth,” I grumbled.
“We’ve got to beat them out there,” Zander said. “Maybe we could hitchhike.”
“Hitchhike? Are you crazy? Who’s going to pick up three children and a bad-tempered parrot with the ability to rip a man’s face off?”
Pucci murmured indignantly.
“Something’s bound to turn up.”
I didn’t even bother answering. It was so hot out in the field, the sun beating down on our heads. The dust from the dry ground was making it hard to breathe.
“I just think,” Zander said, to fill the silence, “that it’s going to be all right. I don’t think Dad would have sent us out to Arizona if he didn’t think we could find the treasure.”
“Dad didn’t send us to Arizona,” I reminded him. “He didn’t send us anywhere.”
“He wouldn’t have left the map for us if he didn’t think we were going to go after the treasure. I know that.”
“You don’t know anything,” I said. I stood up and glared at him. “Maybe the man with the clockwork hand works for BNDL. Maybe that’s the trap. I don’t know what we were thinking. You convinced us to come all the way out here, with no plan, with no food. M.K. attacked those agents. We broke into the Map Room. They could put us in jail!” I pushed my glasses back up my nose. I was sweating and they kept slipping down.
Zander hardly reacted. He just bent down and plucked a straggly piece of grass from the dust. “Dad wanted us to—”
I cut him off. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe Dad didn’t have the best sense of direction? Dad got lost, remember? That’s why he’s dead! He left us! Maybe his judgment wasn’t so great, Zander. Did you ever think of that?”
By the time I finished, I was almost shouting. Zander just stared back at me with a stunned look. He was about to say something when Pucci flew up into the air, very excited, and squawked, “Plane! Plane!” We looked up to find a small plane approaching.
“It must be security agents,” I said, scrambling to get up. “That rail rider must have told them about us. Quick! We’ve got to hide.” We put our vests on and started running. But as I started moving, I realized how improbable it was that they’d send a plane for us rather than a dirigible. Hardly anyone used planes anymore because they used too much gasoline. I stopped for a minute and listened, but I couldn’t hear anything.
“It’s unmarked,” M.K. shouted. “And it’s not a plane. It’s a Router Glider 432. The same kind Delilah Neville flies.”
The three of us stopped and looked up as the glider sailed closer and closer. It was a graceful, birdlike machine, painted a creamy white that made it look like a huge airborne swan. The glider’s wings were much bigger than the wings of an airplane, broad and flat and shaped to make the most of the thermal air currents that Neo machines depended on. Most of the gliders used by Neo explorers were combination machines, with an engine to get them off the ground and huge flat wings to help them stay up once they were airborne.
“Do you smell anything?” I asked, sniffing the air. “Doesn’t it smell like popcorn?”
“That’s not popcorn,” M.K. said. “That’s a late-adapted biofuel engine burning pure-grade corn oil!”
“Do you think…?” Zander started as the glider circled lower and the lone figure in the cockpit waved to us. We heard an engine kick on and then the aircraft made a long approach, setting down neatly in the unplanted field. We all stared as the door opened and the tall, copper-haired pilot stepped out and strode over to us wearing her bright blue flight suit, her brass and blue-leather goggles pushed up onto her turquoise leather flight cap.
“What’s the story with the matching vests and pants?” Sukey Neville asked, grinning at us, her eyes an intense amber-brown. “You three starting a singing group or something?”