“That’s who you are,” JB said quietly. “You’re the missing children of history.”
THIRTY-ONE
“Which one am I?” Jonah demanded. But his voice got lost in the sea of voices around him, all calling out the same question. And shouting, “How could it be?” “That’s not possible!” “I can’t believe it!”
“Believe it,” JB said, his voice carrying over the shouts. “It’s true.”
Incredibly, Mr. Hodge was nodding too.
“Virginia Dare,” he said. “First child born of English parents in the Americas. Who vanished with the rest of Roanoke Colony. Edward and Richard, the British princes who vanished from the Tower of London in 1483. Anastasia and Alexis, the two youngest children of Czar Nicholas II, who disappeared during the Russian Revolution. The kidnapped Lindbergh baby, the so-called Eaglet…It was my best rescue mission ever.”
“It was your worst rescue mission ever!” JB retorted. “If we hadn’t discovered how to hold back the ripple, just temporarily, just until we can heal all the wounds, until we can return the children to their rightful place in history…”
Jonah’s head was spinning. He knew he should be paying attention, listening closely. He had the feeling that JB had just said something important, but he couldn’t quite grasp what he meant, couldn’t quite understand.
“What?” This was Katherine, exploding. “You want to send everyone back in time?”
Oh. That was what JB meant. That was important, all right.
Suddenly the whole room was quiet, everyone stunned into silence at once. Katherine turned the Elucidator away from the wall, aiming it at JB once more.
“You can’t do that,” she said. “I won’t let you.”
JB held out his hands apologetically, a particularly pitiful gesture with his wrists bound.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I wish there were some other way. It’s not fair to any of you. But…some of you are royalty. Or the children of explorers. You can understand the need to sacrifice for your country, to take risks for all of humankind. This is even more important. Yes, returning you to history may be dangerous for many of you. Even deadly. But—think of it as your chance to save the world. To give your own life in order to help every other person on the planet, for all time.”
Someone began clapping. It was Mr. Hodge.
“Oh, very noble,” he said sarcastically, his clapping too slow and exaggerated to be sincere. “What a pretty speech. But you forget, my friend, that these children haven’t been raised as royalty. Or as sacrificial lambs. They think of themselves as twenty-first-century Americans. They’re selfish. Spoiled. Overprivileged. The richest society in history, up to this point. They aren’t capable of sacrifice.”
Jonah waited for some kid to speak out, to complain, “We’re not selfish!” But nobody said a word. They were all watching Mr. Hodge.
“What I’m offering—myself and Gary, that is—is the glorious future,” he said. “Even more privilege than you’ve ever imagined. Technology beyond your wildest dreams. I mean, we have time travel—you can be sure that the video games will be truly awesome!” His eyes seemed to twinkle hypnotically. “I just want to complete my original mission. That ripple effect he’s so worried about”—he pointed at JB jeeringly—“pah! You won’t even feel it!”
He took a hop-step toward Katheri#8800; he seemed barely constrained by the ropes around his ankles.
“We’ve worked so hard to bring you all together again,” he said softly now. “The time crash put thirteen years off-limits, but we came back for you as soon as we could. Just hand me that Elucidator, sweetie, and we can all be on our way. There are families waiting for you!”
Katherine jerked the Elucidator back, away from Mr. Hodge.
“All the kids here already have families,” she said coldly. She stared defiantly toward Jonah, as if she expected him to spring to her side, to link arms and agree: “Yeah! What she said!”
He didn’t move.
“And, if we do what you want, we’d have to go back to being babies again?” a voice said quietly from the crowd. Jonah looked back—it was Andrea Crowell, the girl with braids. “We’d have to forget everything, forget our entire lives? Forget everyone we’ve ever known?”
“Well, uh, yes, but it’s not like you’d even remember that you’d forgotten anything,” Mr. Hodge said, looking uncomfortable. “You’ll be perfectly happy in the future. I promise.”
Jonah looked from Mr. Hodge to JB. Both of them were staring back at him as if they expected him to make some sort of decision. He glanced back over his shoulder—several of the other kids were peering anxiously toward him as well. Why?
Oh, yeah, Jonah thought. I did kind of take charge before. Grabbing the Elucidator, “capturing” Angela, opening the door, closing the door… He felt like climbing up on top of the bench again and calling out, “Hey, guess what? I’m good at quick things—snap decisions, rash actions—that’s all. This one’s too big for me. Someone would have to think about this one for a long, long time. That’s not my department.”
But no one else was talking.
Jonah sighed.
“What if we just want to stay in our own time?” he asked. “This is where we belong—the twenty-first century, I mean.”
“But the future’s even better,” Mr. Hodge said, as JB interjected, “No, you really don’t belong in the twenty-first century.”
“Yes, we do,” Jonah said stubbornly.
JB shook his head.