The Rogue World

  Like Badri, she sat and watched for several minutes, trying to decide which of the G.E.T. workers were scientists or other technicians, and which were the guards. She watched the patterns of their movement, and quickly noted that some of the women and men marched a consistent route. They had to be guards.

  The other G.E.T. staff worked in a more haphazard manner, their full attention on the Concentrator and the instruments they either stood near or carried in their hands. They might not even notice her if she waited until there weren’t any guards around.

  After a time, she could begin to predict gaps in the guard patrols that would allow her to get close. The hard part would be climbing around all the conduit circling the Master Concentrator. But the coils stood a few feet off the ground, so she decided it would be best to crawl underneath them, military style.

  She waited a few minutes more.

  This was it. Her stomach, breathing, and heartbeat got churned up in the same storm. But then her moment came, and she made herself move.

  She eased out of the narrow opening onto the floor of the cavern, sprinted a few yards, and dove beneath the conduit coils. She felt partially hidden there, at least, but realized Uncle Jack would never have fit.

  Overhead, through the space between the conduits, she glimpsed the black branches of the Master Concentrator twisting, the cave’s ceiling high above them. She also sensed confusion in the telluric currents here. They now flowed in opposing directions and whirled in vortices, as if someone had stuck a paddle into the middle of them to disrupt them. Perhaps that was the purpose of the conduit?

  Whatever the meaning, it didn’t matter. Eleanor rolled onto her belly, inching forward on her elbows and knees, keeping as low to the ground and quiet as she could. Occasional shadows moved across her as she got close to the guards and workers, but none of them spotted her.

  She crawled a few yards at a time, pausing to make sure she wouldn’t be seen, and drawing nearer to the Master Concentrator. Its presence swelled in her mind the closer she got; even at a distance, she felt the strength of this one, waiting for her.

  At last she reached the edge of the conduit coils and faced her next obstacle. The conduit stopped short of the Master Concentrator by twenty feet or more. That left a gap that Eleanor would have to cross without any cover. She spotted the alien control panel around the side of the World Tree to her left and crawled toward it. She wanted to be as close to it as she could before emerging into the open. On her way there, she sneaked past two of the G.E.T. scientists, and she overheard their conversation.

  “No difference,” a woman said. “It doesn’t matter how we charge the array. The currents find a way through.”

  “Let’s try again.”

  “But—”

  “We try again. That was the directive Dr. Watkins gave us.”

  “I wonder how much longer that arrogant old buzzard will be giving the orders.” A moment of silence passed. “What about the ship?”

  “No change there either, last I heard. But Hobbes is in charge of that site now.”

  Ship? What kind of ship? Eleanor remembered Hobbes, the severe henchman who had been working for Watkins in Egypt.

  “As soon as Dr. Watkins is done here,” the man continued, “he’s got some major damage control to take care of.”

  “Glad I’m not him. I hate politics, and politicians.”

  “At this point, I don’t think politics even matter. We’re well past that. Rumor has it Dr. Watkins is finished anyway.”

  How could Watkins be finished? And what did he mean by damage control? And by ship, did they mean an alien ship? That might explain the new presence Eleanor and Uncle Jack had felt back on the plane. But the scientists had just answered another of Eleanor’s questions.

  Watkins was here. In the Himalayas.

  “I’ll let my team know we’re going to prep for a new configuration,” the woman said.

  “Let’s try the calculations we came up with yesterday afternoon,” the man said. “I don’t expect a change. But it’s better than sitting around doing nothing.”

  The woman sighed. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  They both moved away, and Eleanor’s mind buzzed. Everything was changing. There was some kind of ship somewhere. It seemed the Master Concentrator had stopped working like it had been. And it seemed the UN wasn’t happy with Watkins anymore, which Eleanor thought might be connected to the ship, or it might be connected to Watkins losing control of the earth’s energy. Of course, it might also simply be that Watkins was Watkins, and the UN was sick of him.

  Still, none of that made any difference to her plan in that moment. She still had to shut down the Master Concentrator, which was even more important if it was true that Watkins had lost control of it.

  She crawled onward and reached the spot nearest the control panel. When she couldn’t see anyone else around, she scrambled out and raced toward the Master Concentrator. She wouldn’t have much time, perhaps only moments, to do the job. But she had now done it three times, and knew what to expect.

  She laid her palm on the console, feeling the cold contours of the metal, imagining her hand sinking into it, becoming one with it. She let out a deep breath and took control of her thoughts, bracing herself. But when she reached into the Master Concentrator through her hand, feeling with her mind for the intelligence lurking inside it, she encountered something new.

  The intelligence that reached back toward her felt stronger than any of the others. And it was . . . curious. Certainly not vulnerable as the others had been, and definitely not afraid.

  The trusses of Eleanor’s confidence cracked, but didn’t yet cave in. She extended herself toward the intelligence, letting it get close to her, wrapping itself around her mind. She felt its shape and its nature, and she knew instantly that it was something else entirely than the intelligences she had encountered before. It was part stars and part earth, its parts forming a new whole.

  But none of that mattered. The moment Eleanor sensed its guard was down, she exerted her will against it, trying to wrestle it into submission and extinguish it the way she’d done before.

  But this Master Concentrator fought back instantly, and, too late, she realized that it was much, much stronger than she was.

  It didn’t move quickly, but attacked her in the confident way of something that knew it could take its time. As it emerged from within the machinery and the vastness of space, Eleanor glimpsed its full shape and size, and she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. She could do nothing to resist as it reached toward her and pulled her in, wrapping itself around her.

  Eleanor now felt something strangling her mind, tightening coils around her mind, her heart, shutting everything down, sending her vision down into an inky pit. She couldn’t hold on to her thoughts, and soon lost sight of where she was, or what she was doing there. Then she started to lose sight of herself. She couldn’t remember her name or . . .

  “Eleanor!”

  The voice barely reached her. But it sounded familiar.

  “Eleanor!” the voice said again.

  That was who she was, though she wouldn’t have remembered on her own. Eleanor tried to find the source of the voice, but she couldn’t move. She could hardly think, so she focused every thought she had on herself. Her body, her legs, her arms. One of her hands felt icy and numb, frozen to something. She decided she needed to pull it away, but that seemed impossible.

  The dark thing smothering her squeezed her tighter, and she lost hold of the voice calling to her. What had it been saying?

  Her hand.

  Her hand was on fire. She knew that, and she knew that it would burn up if she didn’t pull away. So she poured everything she was into her hand. She focused every scrap of thought on it. She let go of everything, every part of her down to her last hair and her last breath, until she was nothing but her hand.

  And she moved.

  She pulled away from the cold flame. The burning ceased, and the dark thing broke away from h
er, after which her mind flooded back in, bringing the rest of her with it. She clutched her head and opened her eyes, gasping, disoriented by a pain in her skull unlike any she’d ever felt.

  “Eleanor!”

  It was Uncle Jack.

  She turned to see him scrambling toward her over the conduit, guards in pursuit.

  “Get away from it!” he shouted.

  Eleanor looked up at the Concentrator. The massive expanse of black branches whipped and writhed in the air overhead as if by the force of a hurricane. Eleanor staggered backward away from it, remembering what had just happened, remembering the dark thing inside the World Tree, knowing now how the intelligences in the other Concentrators had experienced their deaths. The same thing had almost just happened to her, and now this Master Concentrator knew about her.

  She turned away from it and rushed toward Uncle Jack just as one of the guards behind him raised a gun.

  “No!” she screamed.

  The guard fired. Something crackled through the air and struck Uncle Jack in the back.

  He made a noise, “Uh-hn,” and tumbled forward over the conduit. The metallic clamor echoed through the chamber as he writhed.

  “Uncle Jack!” Eleanor tried to reach him, but the guards were already on top of him, and then she felt someone grab her by the arms from behind.

  She kicked and thrashed, broke free for a moment, but the guard snagged her again, and by this time a second one had come to help. They pinned her facedown against the conduit, the metal cold against her cheek.

  “Uncle Jack!” she screamed again, but no one listened.

  “Has Watkins left yet?” one of the G.E.T. agents asked above her.

  “No,” came an answer from someone else.

  “Go get him,” the agent said. “He’s gonna want to see this.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  FINN COULDN’T SLEEP AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF THE yeti. None of them could, because they totally believed him, even though a few weeks ago he probably would have called himself crazy for thinking he’d seen what he saw. But that big white gorilla was real, and it was somewhere out there, probably watching them.

  The four of them stood outside their tent, scanning the surrounding hills. The night hadn’t really lifted yet, and the light from the stars did little.

  “What was it doing?” Dr. Von Albrecht asked.

  “At first it was just sitting there.” Finn pointed at the spot where the yeti had crouched. “It was staring down at the G.E.T. base. Then it started pounding the ground with its fists. Hard.”

  “That’s what woke me up,” Luke said. “Thought it was an avalanche or something.”

  “It was just hitting the ground?” Betty said. “Why?”

  “Could it have been angry? With us?” Luke asked. “Gorillas do that, right? Some kind of territorial display?”

  “I don’t think it even knew we were here,” Finn said. “We were downwind, and as soon as you made a noise, it disappeared.”

  “Luke just might be on to something.” Dr. Von Albrecht stared along the mountain slope. “This may sound far-fetched.”

  Luke put a hand on Dr. Von Albrecht’s shoulder. “Professor, that train left the station a long time ago.”

  “In that case, do you remember the evidence we saw of avalanches?”

  Finn remembered that Badri had pointed it out.

  “What about it?” Betty asked.

  Dr. Von Albrecht paused, opened his mouth, paused, and finally said. “Perhaps . . . perhaps the yeti was trying to trigger such an avalanche.”

  No one spoke up to accept or reject that hypothesis. Finn didn’t know whether to laugh or be afraid.

  “We’ve had fresh snowfall in the past twenty-four hours,” Dr. Von Albrecht continued. “It’s warmer tonight by about five degrees than it was last night, and tomorrow will likely be warmer, as well. We’ve seen recent avalanche activity. Even without the yeti, the warning signs are there. But look—” He pointed toward the place where the yeti had pummeled the ground. “Do you see that crack in the snowpack?”

  Finn squinted, and then he saw it against the blue-white. A faint, grim line spread horizontally along the mountain’s face.

  “The question,” Dr. Von Albrecht said, “is whether the yeti intended that to happen.”

  Another moment of silence passed. Finn no longer felt like laughing.

  “Why would it want to do that?” Betty asked.

  Dr. Von Albrecht looked downhill. “Finn did say it appeared to be preoccupied with the Yggdrasil Facility. Isn’t that right?”

  Finn nodded. “It was staring that way for a while.”

  “You see?” Dr. Von Albrecht continued. “Perhaps the yeti wants to find a way to destroy the facility.”

  “Never thought I’d have anything in common with a yeti,” Luke said. “But if you’re right, what do we do about it?”

  “If I’m correct,” Dr. Von Albrecht said, “we must also remember that Badri is down there, and so, perhaps, are Eleanor and her uncle. They would all be buried.”

  Finn hadn’t thought of that, and he suddenly found it harder to ignore the question of whether his dad and Julian were down there, too. “So we need to find them and get them out.”

  “That’s right,” Luke said. “I’ll go check it out. Alone.”

  “Why alone?” Betty asked.

  Luke looked at her with his jaw set, but his voice was gentle. “Because whoever goes down there will be in the path of any avalanche, and there’s no reason to put all our lives at risk.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” Betty said. “I’m not going to sit here—”

  “We have other people here to think about,” Luke said, and cast a glance at Finn.

  “Hold on,” Finn said. “You don’t need to treat me a like a kid—”

  “You are a kid,” Luke said. “And I’m going to make sure that when this is all over you’ll be back with your parents and your brother in one piece. So you stay here. Got it?”

  Finn knew arguing wouldn’t do any good. Luke had made up his mind, and it seemed like Betty and Dr. Von Albrecht agreed with him.

  If Finn wanted to help Eleanor, he would have to do it on his own without asking for anyone’s permission.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Good man,” Luke said. He turned to Betty and Dr. Von Albrecht. “Keep an eye out?”

  “Of course,” Betty said. “What’s your plan?”

  Finn smirked. “What if you just knock on the front door and tell them the abominable snowman is trying to bury them alive? That’ll work, right?”

  Luke squinted at him. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “I know. Either way, I’ll be improvising.”

  “Don’t forget about those Arctic transports,” Finn said. “Seriously, those things are tanks. If there is an avalanche, try to get inside one of them.”

  “Now that’s a good idea,” Luke said. “Thanks, kid.”

  He gave them all a nod and set off down the hill, carving switchbacks in the snow. The three of them watched him go, eventually settling down on the cliff’s edge. Finn used the binoculars to scan the surrounding hills, but never caught sight of any further movement.

  “Maybe the yeti is . . . What’s the opposite of nocturnal?” he asked.

  “Diurnal,” Betty said.

  “Right. Maybe the yeti is diurnal?”

  “Let’s hope,” Betty said.

  “Diurnality is common among higher-order primates,” Dr. Von Albrecht said. “But of course, in the twentieth century, the North American Bigfoot was thought of as a nocturnal animal.”

  Betty leaned back. “You’re not making me feel better about being out here.”

  But apart from the risk of avalanche, Finn wasn’t worried. The yeti didn’t frighten him. It had most likely been following them for days, and it could have attacked them if it had wanted to. Last night, it ran as soon as it realized they were there. To Finn, its
behavior appeared more shy than hostile.

  Except for the avalanche. The avalanche was definitely hostile.

  “Can I see those?” Betty reached toward the binoculars, and Finn handed them over. She brought them to her eyes, wrinkling her nose and curling her lip as she looked through them. “Luke’s made it to the bottom of the hill.”

  “Good,” Finn said. “Now what’s he doing?”

  “Looks like he’s trying to find a way through the fence.”

  “Do you see any guards?” Dr. Von Albrecht asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Quite a few.”

  “Maybe he can—”

  “Damn it, Fournier!” Betty said.

  Finn looked down the hill. “What is it?”

  “That fool just turned himself in!”

  “What?” Dr. Von Albrecht asked.

  “He just walked up to the gate with his hands in the air,” Betty said.

  “Why would he do that?” Finn asked.

  “Fastest way in, I suppose.” Betty lowered the binoculars and shook her head. “He goes to bust them out, and we have to bust him out. This is starting to feel like the old woman who swallowed a fly.”

  “Maybe he has a plan,” Dr. Von Albrecht said.

  Finn looked at the professor. So did Betty.

  Dr. Von Albrecht shrugged. “I didn’t say it was a good plan.”

  Betty sighed. “It sure doesn’t look good from here.”

  Finn scanned the rest of the Yggdrasil Facility. Activity elsewhere in the complex hadn’t changed much. The whole place seemed fairly quiet, but it was still nighttime. By morning, he figured there would be G.E.T. agents everywhere. Maybe they would even resume searching for them, especially now that Luke had just revealed they were still hanging around.

  There wasn’t anything they could do about it from up where they were except wait and see. So that’s what they did for the next few hours, but the only thing that changed was the light in the sky and the color of the snow.