CHAPTER 1OVER THE EDGE
"What's taking him so long?"
Isabel hated to admit it but she was worried about Edgar, and in
the past this had always been a bad sign. She had a knack for
knowing when Edgar was in terrible danger.
He's climbed to the Highlands and back again.
He's been inside Atherton and lived to tell about it.
He almost never falls.
This last thought turned out to be a bad one, because it
reminded Isabel that even Edgar wasn't totally invincible. He'd
fallen--just the one time--but all the same, he'd let his fingers
slip and it had nearly killed him.
"We should have tried harder to discourage him," said her
friend Samuel.
"It was only a matter of time," Isabel told him. "At least he let us
tie him to a rock."
Isabel and Samuel were lying down on the ground a few feet
away from the far edge of Atherton. Dr. Kincaid and Vincent,
and all of the other adults, had forbidden them to go all the way
out there by themselves. But Edgar had convinced Isabel and
Samuel to come with him, so here they were. Only Edgar wasn't
there anymore. He'd kicked his feet over the edge, turned over,
and climbed down the curved side of Atherton.
A rope made from the twisted bark of the first-year fig trees ran
between Isabel and Samuel. It was tied around a boulder that
sat heavy and immovable twenty feet back.
"At least he's got the moonlight," said Samuel. "It will help."
"I don't know why he insists on doing this," said Isabel. She
knew Samuel would understand her frustration. "With the lake
in the middle, Atherton is flat. Why can't he accept it? I realize
it's a lot for Edgar to get used to, but I don't understand why we
can't convince him that Atherton's not made for climbing
anymore."
Isabel touched the rope to see if she could feel Edgar's weight
on the other end. She could not.
"I didn't believe he'd go through with it. I'm beginning to wonder
if he's lost his mind."
"You do know why he's down there, don't you?" asked Samuel.
The mere thought of Edgar hanging on to the bottom of Atherton
made Samuel feel like throwing up. He was the least likely of
the three to take risks that might get him killed.
"Because he loves to climb," Isabel replied, "and it's the only
place left on Atherton where he can do it."
Samuel had been thinking a lot about this very topic.
"I think that's only part of the answer."
"He climbs for the thrill of it," said Isabel. "There's something in
the climbing that makes him feel more... I don't know... alive. He
tells me that all the time."
Isabel had moved forward and was now even closer to the edge
than Samuel. Her head peeked out over the rim of the world.
Samuel had made a point of holding back a few feet, but now
he moved forward on his elbows, careful not to rise up too far
into the watery current of gravity. He came alongside Isabel and
glanced down.
Gazing over the edge, Samuel marveled at what he could see
in the soft grey light. He'd seen it before when they'd come to
look at night, but every time it surprised him. A distant orange
light, the source of which he could not see, cutting through long
chasms of stone on the bottom of Atherton.
"I think Edgar climbs for another reason," said Samuel,
regaining his voice as he held the rope running between them.
"Why else would he do it?"
"I remember the first time I met Edgar," answered Samuel. "He
had climbed all the way up to the Highlands before it collapsed.
I thought he used magic to trick me into believing he'd done the
impossible. But later--when he came back a second time--I
stopped wondering how he could climb so high, and began
asking myself why he had done it."
"And you've been thinking about it ever since?" asked Isabel.
Samuel nodded. "It's too dangerous to do it just because it's
thrilling or even just because he loves doing it. I think
something else drives him. Maybe Edgar began climbing as a
means to an end. What if it was only ever about finding things,
never about the climbing itself? What if he was always
searching for something?"
Samuel took a deep breath and looked out into the stars.
"What if he's still searching for something?"
Isabel shook her head and sighed. "I just wish he'd find safer
places to search for whatever it is he's looking for."
Isabel thought of how she, Samuel, and Edgar had become
totally inseparable after the fall of Atherton. As the world had
gone from three levels high to three levels deep, it seemed to
have tried to destroy them with falling rocks, fierce quakes, and
a billion gallons of rising water. Somehow the three of them had
not only survived, they'd each played an important role in the
evolution of Atherton.
But Edgar had never stopped feeling restless.
The rope between them moved ever so slightly and Isabel
leaned out, craning her neck down in search of Edgar in the
darkness below. For a while she'd been able to see him clearly,
but he was too far away now.
She noticed that the rope seemed to lie differently than it had
when he'd started. Gravity pulled every thing in toward the
bottom of Atherton, so the rope didn't exactly hang straight
down. It curved inward with a big looping shape. She could not
see its end.
"Edgar?" said Isabel. She couldn't yel his name too loudly. The
village was only a half-hour walk away and voices carried
something fierce on Atherton. What if someone were out
looking for them? She said his name once more, a little louder,
and then she scampered away from the edge and began
hauling in the rope. It was much lighter than it should have
been. The rope was a hundred feet long and as it piled up
beside her she grew more and more afraid.
"Keep pulling!" said Samuel, still lying at the edge of Atherton.
"I don't see him!"
Soon the end of the rope came over the edge with a soft
snapping sound. There was no one tied to the other end.
Edgar was gone.
The rocky terrain of Atherton's outer shell was a perfect place
for Edgar to regain his confidence. Giant rocks and fissures
provided plenty of hand-and footholds. And the surface was
bursting with sharp edges and protruding masses of grey and
brown stone. The gravity on Atherton pushed against his back
so his legs and arms didn't dangle out into the air. And yet, if
he'd let go altogether, he felt certain he would freefall until he
smacked into something hard. The thought of crashing into the
bottom of Atherton made Edgar extra cautious as he continued
down the curved side of the strange world he lived on.
One thing had made the going slow and tedious: the rope tied
around his midsection, which had bothered him from the start. It
kept getting in his way, wrapping around an arm or a leg and
forcing him to rethink his position. And what was worse, the
rope kept snagging on sharp rocks and jerking him to a stop as
he descended. He actually felt unsafe with it tied around him.
He didn't want to scare Isabel and Samuel, so at first he'd
managed to untie the rope and put it between his teeth. But it
kept snagging, pulling his head back, and soon he'd decided to
let go of it altogether. He opened his mouth and let the rope
swing lazily against the rocks.
"It hangs almost like someone's holding on," Edgar said aloud.
"Maybe they'll think I'm still attached to it."
He looked down at the vast space left to be explored.
"Just a little farther..."
Samuel had only been half right when he'd guessed about what
drove Edgar to climb. It was true Edgar had first begun climbing
so long ago because he'd had a distant memory of something
hidden in the stone walls above him and he wanted to find it.
But somewhere along the way the climbing became something
more.
There was something amazing about holding on to Atherton
itself, like he was truly part of Atherton. Whenever he reached
the top or the bottom of a climb he felt sadness at having to let
go. It was like cutting himself away from the world.
Tonight Edgar wanted to go far enough to see where the
orange light came from. There were two men Edgar had asked
about this: Dr. Kincaid, the often secretive old man of science,
and Vincent, Dr. Kincaid's protector and companion. Both men
had lived in the Flatlands long before Atherton's violent
collapse. They'd had years and years near the edge without
anyone else around.
When he asked the two men about the light, they re sponded
with what seemed to Edgar like rehearsed shrugs. Either they
didn't know where the light came from or they wouldn't tell.
The light glowed brighter as Edgar traveled down a certain
fissure, but he couldn't guess how much farther it would be to its
source. It looked like it might be a long way.
Edgar had come to where the sides of Atherton curved more
sharply toward the bottom. It would be tougher going from here
on out with a far greater chance of losing his grip. Still, Edgar
decided to go a little bit farther, because Samuel had been
partly right, too. Edgar was searching for something--he was
always searching--and he had a deep feeling that climbing
would bring him to something more. His heart told him that Dr.
Harding, the maker of Atherton and so much more, had left him
something else. He remembered the voice of Dr. Maximus
Harding:
I made you, Edgar. Just as I made Atherton.
Edgar held this thought firmly in his mind as he felt his aching
hands and forearms. Maybe he'd pushed hard enough on his
first attempt at scaling these new, unknown places.
I don't want them to worry, Edgar reasoned to himself. He
touched the side of Atherton with what one might describe as
affection. "I won't be gone long," he said aloud. "You'll see me
again."
He started back toward the flat surface of Atherton, racing up
the side with alarming speed and skill. Edgar wanted to return
in the light of day so that he could see the surface and better
make his way to the very bottom. His fingers tingled with
excitement at the thought of spending an entire day exploring
this hidden world, a world only he could see.
This place is mine and mine alone, he thought.
When Edgar came to where he thought he should see the rope
hanging and did not find it, he climbed faster. They had
discovered him missing. Edgar felt terrible that Isabel and
Samuel might think he'd fallen or been trapped below.
As he neared the top he glanced up and saw the silhouettes of
two small heads--but a moment later they were gone.
By the time he had finally pulled up his head and shoulders and
looked over the top edge of Atherton, Samuel and Isabel had
moved back by the rock, their arms folded over their chests. And
what was worse, the old, stooped figure of Dr. Kincaid stood
with them--and he did not appear the least bit happy.
Edgar scrambled the rest of the way back onto Atherton and
walked toward the three figures in the dark. "It's not as hard as I
thought it would be," he began, hoping to head off questions
before they started. "And I didn't go very far. Honestly--it was
easy."
"We were worried about you," said Isabel. "I mean really
worried. How could you leave the rope like that?"
Edgar wanted them all to understand that he felt safer when he
was climbing than almost any other time. "You don't need to
worry about me. At least not when I'm hanging on to a rock
wall."
"Not very different from walking, right?" asked Samuel. He was
closer to the truth than he might have imagined. As he and
Isabel came toward Edgar they all smiled at one another at last.
That is, until they saw that Dr. Kincaid had turned away and
begun the journey back home without them. There was a grave
tone in his voice when he uttered the only words he would say
on the long walk.
"All of you come with me. I have something to show you."
CHAPTER 2THE DARK PLANET
There was a fire burning at the entrance to the cave Dr. Kincaid
lived in. Soft light drifted into the opening that led inside, but Dr.
Kincaid's closest companion was nowhere to be found.
"Where's Vincent?" asked Isabel. "He wouldn't just leave a fire
burning like that, would he?"
Dr. Kincaid ignored her question. The long walk in the middle of
the night had made the bottoms of his old feet ache. He
slumped heavily on a wooden bench and waved his walking
stick in the direction of a row of low, fat boulders on the other
side of the fire.
"Sit down--all of you."
Edgar, Samuel, and Isabel did as they were told, wondering just
how much trouble they were in.
"Vincent likes to scout at night," said Dr. Kincaid, returning to
Isabel's question now that the pressure was off his feet. "He's
been going out later and longer, but he'll return before dawn."
The old man breathed a deep sigh and looked at the glowing
embers. He laid the walking stick across his lap and tapped it
slowly. Lately he'd been carrying the walking stick everywhere
he went and, as far as Edgar could tell, Dr. Kincaid never let it
out of his sight. He seemed to have gone from merely old to
ancient in the space of a year. His hair was whiter than it had
once been. His big ears flopped more freely and his eyes
drooped heavily over a long nose. He was nearing the grave,
and what remained of him was in rapid decay.
But when Dr. Kincaid finally spoke, his voice sounded as crisp
and strong as it ever had in its nearly ninety years.
"I might have known you'd do something like this. I suppose I
should have expected it. But for some reason the idea of you
climbing off the edge of the world--I guess I tried to avoid
thinking about it."
Dr. Kincaid fumbled around in his mind for the rig
ht words. He
began pulling on one of his ears as he looked at Edgar.
"I thought your searching was over."
Edgar raised his eyes from the fire. When the two locked eyes,
Dr. Kincaid knew.
"But you haven't stopped searching, have you? You know we
haven't come to the very end just yet." The way Dr. Kincaid
spoke was almost spooky, like he was unearthing thoughts he
wasn't sure should be out in the open.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Isabel.
Edgar touched her hand and discovered she was trembling. In
the stillness before the fire Edgar ran the words over in his
mind. You know we haven't come to the very end just yet.
"Tell us what you mean," Samuel said. "Where is the very
end?"
Dr. Kincaid thought about how he should answer. He always
struggled with communicating clearly.
"Far away, down there." Dr. Kincaid turned the bottom of his
walking stick toward the ground and tapped it twice on the dirt.
"The Dark Planet turns darker still."
Something about those words broke Edgar's heart. The Dark
Planet turns darker still. He was speaking of the place where
Dr. Harding had made not only Atherton, but made Edgar as
well. The planet far away in the distance that looked so grey
and bleak.
"Minute by minute, hour by hour, the Dark Planet is dying,"
continued Dr. Kincaid. "Somewhere in the backs of your minds
you all know this."
"That sounds terrible," said Isabel.
Dr. Kincaid felt like a failure as he thought about his past. "In a
way, this is completely my fault."
"What's your fault, Dr. Kincaid?" asked Samuel.
Dr. Kincaid seemed on the verge of revealing a dreadful
mistake he couldn't quite bring himself to confess. "I convinced
everyone I could control him, even after he became more and
more secretive," said Dr. Kincaid.
"You mean Dr. Harding," said Edgar.
"I still thought I could trust him, even after he made you."
This stung Edgar somewhere deep inside. The thought of being
made was always confusing for Edgar, because he had no idea
what having been made by a mad scientist meant. How had he
been made? What was he, really, if not a normal child of normal
parents?
Sensing he'd said something that might hurt the boy, Dr.
Kincaid tried to be clearer.
"Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, Edgar. Once you were
here, I was very happy he'd made you, but that doesn't change