The Map of Stars, page 30
Ava’s song ended. “Thank you, my friends,” she whispered.
The Zīz shimmered, burning so brightly that Jaime thought its form would be etched on his eyes and in his mind and in his dreams forever.
Then it burst like a star.
Jaime searched the sky for signs of Ono, but there were only streaks of silver and gold and blue.
Ava laid a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t force Ono to help, Jaime. I simply asked. It made its own choice.”
“Will it come back?”
Ava hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said.
“What do you know?” Jaime said. The Exquisite Engines lab was missing its top half and two of its walls. Dr. Munsterberg’s lab beneath the lab was temporarily blocked off by piles of stone and wood. Hunter Roberts’s guards were strewn about the grounds or bobbing in the water, but where was Hunter Roberts himself?
There, behind the half-destroyed building, Hunter Roberts and his daughter were hurrying toward a waiting airship.
And he had the machine, Jaime’s mother’s machine, under his arm.
Jaime took off after them, running faster than he’d ever run in his whole life.
Merry Roberts glanced over her shoulder and saw Jaime heading for them. She wrenched the machine from her father. Jaime wrenched it away from her. He fell backward, cradling the machine, and Tess and Theo, who must have been running behind him, caught him.
“Get on the ship, Merry,” said Hunter Roberts.
“But—”
“Get on the ship!” To Jaime, he said, “Come with us, young man.”
“Are you out of your mind? He doesn’t want to go with you!” said Tess.
“Are you sure about that?” Hunter Roberts said. “Mr. Cruz, you have in your hands your mother’s machine, a time machine. Why do you think that the Morningstarr Cipher asked you to build it?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Because the twins wanted you to use it.”
“My mother was studying the mirror universe. She wasn’t building time machines.”
“Ah, but she was. The mirror universe is simply another timeline. But maybe she discovered much more than that. Not only a way into the shadow world, not only a way to jump to another timeline, but a way to rewind this one.”
“Impossible!” Theo said.
“Which would mean,” Hunter Roberts continued, “that your little friends need this machine at some time in the future to get back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“I have eyes and ears everywhere,” said Hunter Roberts. “Why do you think I let you solve the Cipher?”
“Let us?”
“Yes. You, too, were doing precisely what I wanted you to do. Now,” said Hunter Roberts, “why would the twins need this machine to go back in time?”
Jaime’s whole brain hurt. “Maybe they wanted to fix something.”
“Maybe they did. But how do you know if they fixed anything? How do they know they haven’t made things a thousand times worse? Don’t you understand? If the Morningstarrs knew that 354 West 73rd was going to come down, then they had to have lived through it already. It had to have happened at least once. Maybe it’s happened a thousand times. A million. FOREVER. So what did they change? Nothing! The building came down just as the Morningstarrs knew it would—as well as all the other clues operating as they did. You’re stuck in a pointless and endless loop. Maybe every disaster that has ever befallen the people of New York City—of the world—is inevitable, no matter what the twins do. Maybe the breaking of your home, of the city, of the entire world, is their fault.”
Tess got up in Hunter Roberts’s face. “You shut up!”
But he kept talking to Jaime over Tess’s head. “People have tried to make the world a better place. The twins, they’ve tried it. And still, here we are. Maybe someone else deserves a chance to design the city, don’t you think? Why not not you? And don’t you want to live in a place where your mother is alive?”
Jaime did. He did want this so badly. He thought now that the Cipher was less a set of clues placed in the streets and the artifacts and the monuments of New York City, and more that he and Tess and Theo and all the other people in the city were themselves the clue. That the Cipher—what they had thought was a grand puzzle made up of a lot of little puzzles—was just a whole bunch of people asking themselves questions, trying to find answers—a chain reaction.
“Come with us, bring the machine, and we can bring her back. Don’t you want her back?”
Even though he knew that Hunter Roberts was lying, even though he knew that Hunter Roberts wanted nothing more than more of everything—more money, more power, more life lived in a world of his own making, no matter what or who was destroyed in the process, Jaime took a step toward Hunter Roberts,
That’s when a solarcar crashed through the grass, sirens blaring. Detective Biedermann jumped out of the driver’s seat and yelled, “Everybody freeze!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Tess
Her mother had her weapon out. So did Detective Clarkson.
“Mom?”
“Officer,” Merry Roberts said, turning away from the ship, “I’m glad you’re here. My father is quite out of his mind and—”
“Be quiet, Merry,” Hunter Roberts said. “Officer! Arrest these children!”
“Put that thing down, Jaime,” said Detective Biedermann. She wasn’t making eye contact with Tess at all.
“Mom?” Tess said.
Her mother ignored her. “Jaime?”
Jaime did what she asked and put the Morningstarr Machine on the ground.
“Mom,” Theo began. “How did you find us?”
“The giant shark in the Gowanus gave me a clue. Plus I put a chip in Nine’s collar,” said Tess’s mom, still not making eye contact. “Now step over this way. All of you.”
“We really need to be going,” Merry said.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Tess’s mom said. “Nobody is going anywhere.”
“What in the baked Alaska happened here?” said Detective Clarkson. He shook his head at the destruction all around them—a good chunk of Exquisite Engines sheared off and floating in the river; the Robertses’ guards slumped on the ground like felled soldiers; the dripping Cipherists bent over with exhaustion and the one Cipherist on the ground, gray with pain; the Robertses themselves, frozen by their waiting airship.
“It’s a long story,” Theo said.
“You’re going to have plenty of time to tell it, young man,” said Tess’s mom. “Because you’re going to be grounded for the rest of your life and all the next ones.”
Tess crossed her arms against the sudden chill of the wind against her soaked clothes and began to walk toward her mother. She bobbed and weaved around the rubble, around the slumped bodies. As she skirted around one of the Brunos snoring like a hibernating bear, and then around Ramona the koala-crab, motionless as moss next to the Bruno, Hunter Roberts lunged forward and grabbed her. Tess shrieked and struggled, but he got an arm around her neck and shoved something into her side. A knife? A stun gun? Something worse? Detective Biedermann raised her weapon, but Hunter Roberts squeezed tighter. His breath was hot and dry in her ear. Nine growled.
“Back off, Detective,” he said. He didn’t have to say what he would do to Tess if she didn’t.
“Let’s stay calm,” Tess’s mom said, lowering her weapon a fraction.
“I am calm,” Hunter Roberts said. “Put that machine on the ship.”
“Mom! Don’t!” said Tess. She struggled against Hunter Roberts’s grip, but he only pressed the weapon harder against her ribs.
“It’s all right, Tess, everything will be all right,” her mother said. “Don’t worry.”
“Mr. Cruz! The machine! Now!” barked Hunter Roberts.
Slowly, Jaime picked up the machine, but before he could take a step, Tess stamped on Hunter Roberts’s foot. When the pressure on her ribs lessensed, she snapped her head back as hard as she could. Her skull rang with pain, but Hunter’s grip loosened. She slipped from his arms and fell to the ground. She looked up to see Ava grabbing Jaime’s elbows from behind and whirling him out of the way of Hunter’s weapon. Instead of shooting Jaime or Tess, Hunter shot Ava.
“No!” Jaime yelled, and the Morningstarr Machine tumbled to the ground.
A shriek tore itself from Tess’s throat as a million volts of electricity coursed through Ava, momentarily stunning her, making her face and her hands glow like the Zīz had. Ava screamed, a sound that started low and got higher and louder.
Jaime reached for Ava, but Imogen Sparks held him back. Written on his face was everything Tess was thinking: Ava would not be able to survive this, no matter how strong she was, no matter how long she’d lived till now.
The stun gun began smoking in Roberts’s hand, and he yelped and dropped it.
Ava stood there, glowing like the Zīz, otherworldly as an angel.
“You’re not dead,” Hunter Roberts said in wonder. “You should be dead.”
“It only makes me stronger,” Ava said sadly.
“Don’t move!” said Tess’s mom, aiming her weapon at Ava.
“Mom! She’s our friend!” Tess screamed.
Detective Clarkson pointed his weapon at Hunter Roberts, then Ava, then Hunter again. “We’re in the soup now.”
Ava, still glowing, approached Tess’s mom.
“Don’t come any closer,” her mom said. “Stop.”
But Ava kept coming. She said, “I’m your friend, too, Miriam.”
“Stop!”
“Benjamin Adler’s little girl, his little song.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Ava pushed the weapon aside. “Far kinder tsereist men a velt.”
Tess’s mom blinked, her arm sagging. “How do you . . . what do you . . . ?”
“You should visit him. He’s still here.”
Her mom’s eyes filled with tears. The weapon wavered. “Not the way he was.”
“No one is the way they were, and no one is the way they will be,” Ava said. “Neither are you.”
Despite herself, Tess thought about what Hunter Roberts had said. That even if she and Theo really were the Morningstarrs, and had used the machine to go back to the Industrial Revolution to fix something, they could just as easily have broken something else, or a whole bunch of things. Or maybe things were so broken that nothing they did worked, nothing they did mattered. Maybe they’d been here before. Maybe they’d been here a billion times, stuck in their own terrible immortality.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tess saw Ramona twitch. The koala-crab scurried across the debris, launching itself at Ava.
“Biedermann!” Detective Clarkson yelled. “Watch out!”
Tess’s mom knocked Ava out of the way and pulled the trigger on her weapon. Ramona easily dodged the stream of sticky foam and sank a claw into Tess’s mom’s ankle. Howling, Nine jumped on top of Ramona. Ava pulled Nine off Ramona and then punted the koala-crab like a furry football.
Then Merry Roberts rushed forward, grabbed the machine, and ran back toward the ship.
Tess scrambled to her feet and ran after Merry. Rage made her fast. She shoved Merry from behind. Merry fumbled the machine, juggling it from one hand to the other.
“I’ll take that,” Tess said, and swiped the machine out of the air, away from Merry.
“Let go, you horrible little girl!” said Merry, her face screwed up like a toddler about to have a tantrum. “I earned it!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Tess, give it here!” said Clarkson.
“Here!” said Imogen Sparks.
“Here!” said her mother.
“Here!” said Merry Roberts.
“Here!” said Hunter Roberts.
For the first time in her life, Tess thought: They should have left the Cipher alone. They should have left the treasure of the Morningstarr Cipher—the greatest treasure known to man—hidden forever. For every person who would use it to save the world, there was someone who would destroy it. And for every attempt to try to make a world where that didn’t happen, there was someone, or something, that would be there to unmake it. Was that the point of everything Theresa Biedermann did? Of everything she would do?
Tess wanted to make a different choice, except how was she to know what that choice should be?
“Tess!” said her mother.
Her grandpa Ben always said that the Cipher was about process, not about the end result. And he said that the Cipher studied you as much as you studied it.
Maybe they were all the Cipher, were all the treasure. Tess and Theo, Jaime and Grandpa Ben, Ava Oneal and the society and even Detective Clarkson. Maybe they were all the treasure they ever needed. Maybe the world wasn’t perfect, and it wouldn’t be, no matter how may times they tried.
But that didn’t mean they shouldn’t try.
“Ava!” Tess said. She tossed the machine into the air.
But she didn’t count on how fast Jaime was, and how desperate he had become. As desperate as Tess had been and Theresa Biedermann would be in the future, as desperate as a person who has witnessed the world falling to decay and ruin and will do whatever it takes to fix it. When he met Tess’s eyes, she knew what he was going to do before he did it, because it was exactly what she would do.
Still, still, she said, “Jaime, no!”
He pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
He pressed it again and again. “This can’t be for nothing, this can’t be for nothing, this can’t be!”
Still glowing with her fire, Ava went to him. “Jaime.”
“It can’t be, it just can’t,” he said. Tears fell. “Please. Please.”
Ava hesitated, then reached for the machine. She put her finger on top of Jaime’s.
“Jaime,” Tess said. Everything she felt was in that one word: her exhaustion, her rage, her relief, her sorrow, her love.
Jaime looked at her one last time, his expression so sad, but steely, too, as steely as any hero he’d ever drawn.
Together, he and Ava pressed the button.
The air around Ava and Jaime seemed to fold in on itself, and then they were gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Theo
The city had many nicknames: Gotham. Metropolis. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. These nicknames were not always accurate. For example, why would anyone refer to a city as an overlarge piece of fruit? Also, the city did sleep, but it slept the way a cat does, eyes half open, watchful, ready to spring at the first sign of fun, or danger.
That evening, a very different kind of cat was getting ready to spring. The cat in question lived in the Biedermann family’s apartment at 354 W. 73rd Street and kept her sock collection underneath the Biedermanns’ coffee table. This was not normally a problem for the Biedermann family, except when they had guests or when their feet were cold.
Tonight, they were having guests.
They were also having a problem.
The cat—a large, spotted animal that would have looked more at home in a South African savanna than in the living room on the Upper West Side—had the business end of a striped sock gripped firmly in her teeth. Tess, sitting on the floor gripping the other end of the sock, growled right back.
“Seriously, Tess?” said Mrs. Biedermann.
“This . . . is . . . my . . . favorite . . . sock . . . ,” Tess said, her dark braid whipping like a tail. The cat’s striped tail lashed in kind.
Theo, who was standing at the kitchen counter, counting plates and silverware, said, “The cat’s winning.”
“I shouldn’t have to clean this up,” Tess complained.
“I had to move my entire tower into my room!” Theo said. “Do you know how much space twenty-six hundred Legos take up?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Biedermann. “Since we’ve been tripping over your model for three months.”
“Also, I helped you finish that tower, so technically, it’s our model,” Tess said.
“You helped me one afternoon!”
“But Jaime’s seen all this anyway,” Tess said, going back to the socks. “He doesn’t care.”
“I care,” said Mrs. Biedermann. “We can’t have piles of socks or piles of Legos around with people coming for dinner.”
“My model is not a pile,” said Theo.
“Our model.”
“In any case, we have to have room for everyone.”
“We have plenty of room!” Tess protested. “This place is huge!”
“Not big enough for you two,” said Mrs. Biedermann.
They used to live in a smaller space on a lower floor, but when their grandfather got sick and had to move to a nursing home, they took over his old apartment on the top floor. Real estate agents might call the place a penthouse, but it was more like a museum with very big windows. Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann liked it because it had so much more space than their old apartment, which meant that Grandpa Ben could come and stay with them on weekends. Theo liked it because it came with Lance, a suit of armor who liked to whip up batches of cookies and pancakes, and because the enormous windows gave them a view of the whole city. Tess liked it because what could be more awesome than living in a museum?
“Why don’t you stop playing with Nine and help your brother set the table?” said Mrs. Biedermann. “Your father will be home any minute.”
“Sorry, Nine,” Tess said, and let go of her end of the sock.
“Mrrow,” said Nine, forlorn at the abrupt end to her favorite game.
Tess and Theo set the dining room table with plates and napkins, silverware and water glasses. They were filling the glasses with ice and water when the door to the apartment opened and Mr. Biedermann came in, Grandpa Ben in tow.
“Hello, Grandpa!” said Tess. She ran to him and gave him a hug.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Did I miss anything?” He asked this every week when he visited.
“I made history, Grandpa,” said Theo.
