On the screen, Curtis Rathbone began talking again.
“We here at Interchronological Rescue were determined to take action,” he said. “We studied time very carefully, centuries worth of wars and genocide, famines and pestilence—all the very worst of human suffering. And we discovered hundreds whose deaths were so horrendous, so chaotic, so terrible, we knew we had to save them. And we knew we could.”
Someone gasped behind Jonah.
“That’s right,” Curtis Rathbone said, almost as if he’d heard the gasp. “Rescue was possible. Oh, we knew we couldn’t save everyone. Much as we would have liked to, say, save every victim of the twentieth-century European Holocaust, we knew that was off-limits. The ripple would have been extreme—too much happened as a result of that Holocaust. But to save even the small, insignificant victims of the past—the ‘orphans of history,’ as it were—didn’t our own humanity demand that we try?”
A single tear glistened in Curtis Rathbone’s eye. He dabbed at it and smiled fleetingly out from the screen.
“We began ten years ago, rescuing children of the Spanish Inquisition,” he said. “Babies left in houses that were then burned to the ground, children left for dead who were easily revived by our modern techniques—we could save them! Save them without causing a ripple or a paradox, because they had as good as vanished from history, even without our intervention. And, thus, we could transform those dark days of humanity into a triumph of the human spirit, of modern humanitarianism.” Now he beamed out at the crowd, the terrors of history receding into the past.
“The response of the modern age has been overwhelming,” Rathbone continued. “Everyone was eager to adopt a desperate child from the past, to reach out across the centuries to save some poor soul who had never had a chance. Within five years, we were running ten rescue missions a week, in every century since the beginning of time. Our generous age paid for plastic surgery for Neanderthals, counseling for war refugees, reconstructive surgery for land-mine victims…. And then we perfected our age reversal techniques, so the children we rescued didn’t even have to remember their ordeals. We could deliver perfect happy, healthy bouncing babies to our clients—”
“That’s enough!” JB snarled. “Turn it off!”
Katherine must have managed to hit the right buttons, because Curtis Rathbone disappeared from sight. Maybe it was Jonah’s imagination, but the lights in the room seemed a bit brighter as well.
“Perhaps Curtis Rathbone had humanitarian intentions in the beginning,” JB growled. “Perhaps.”
“He did!” Hodge shouted. “He does!”
JB ignored him.
“But what Interchronological Rescue became was something entirely different,” he said bitterly. “Purveyors of prestigious names from history for wealthy idiots who want to brag at their cocktail parties, ‘Oh, yes, my little Henry comes from a line of British kings.’…Didn’t you try to kidnap Amelia Earhart out of the skies over the Pacific? Didn’t you lure Ambrose Bierce to the Mexican border?”
“The age reversal doesn’t work on adults,” Gary muttered.
“You know that—now,” JB countered.
“Hold on,” Jonah said, because no one else was speaking up. “Age reversal?”
JB flashed him an angry glance, then turned his glare back to Hodge.
“Traumatized children from traumatic times in history have a lot of issues,” JB said sarcastically. “There were problems Interchronological Rescues never wanted to talk about, never wanted the prospective adoptive parents to know about.”
“Erase the memories and you erase the problems,” Hodge said cheerily. “What’s wrong with that?”
Jonah stared at Hodge, trying to understand.
“This is one of the few parts of the theory I was right about,” Angela spoke up, apologetically. “They had turned you all into babies again, even though some of you had once been much older. Teenagers, even.”
Angela’s words seemed to echo in the stone room. Turned you all into babies again… Watching JB’s outrage, Jonah had almost forgotten that any of this time-travel talk had anything to do with him.
“Us?” he whispered. “You’re talking about us?”
JB was still glaring at Hodge and Gary.
“Interchronological Rescue got sloppy,” he accused. “They began taking children whose disappearances were noticed. They caused ripple upon ripple upon ripple….”
He closed his eyes, pained beyond words.
“Oh, and your intervention worked so well,” Hodge accused. “We could have repaired the ripples. We could have put a few children back, if we had to. But, no, you and your friends insisted on attacking, right in the middle of the time stream—”
“The time crash was not my fault!” JB screamed. “If you’d just surrendered…You’re the one who chose to speed away, to slam into the time frame, to ruin her life”—he pointed at Angela—“to nearly destroy thirteen years of time—no, to nearly destroy all of time!”
Even tied up, they were about to come to blows again. Jonah had had it. He’d had it with the suspense, the implications, the accusations, the strain. He stood up. That wasn’t enough. He climbed up on top of a bench and yelled, “Who are we?”
JB and Hodge both fell silent. Then JB said, “Show them. They’re going to have to find out eventually.”
“It’s F six on the Elucidator,” Hodge said.
Jonah watched his sister hit a button. The screen reappeared, displaying a chart. It was a seating chart, Jonah realized, like for a classroom. Or an airplane. He stepped down from the bench to get a closer look and squinted at the names: Seat 1A, Virginia Dare
1B, Edward V of England
1C Richard of Shrewsbury
His eyes skimmed down the list, looking for boys’ names, or names that sounded familiar: 9B, John Hudson; 10C, Henry Fountain; 11A, Anastasia Romanov; 12B, Alexis Romanov; 12C, Charles Lindbergh III….