Chronal Engine Read online

  “Did you see that?” Kyle asked.

  It was incredibly cool. The animals were probably some species of Bambiraptor, small relatives of Aki’s. And what they’d just done was behavior scientists had speculated on, something seen in modern birds like partridges, called “wing-assisted incline running.”

  It was something they did to escape predators.

  Chapter X

  Stranger on a Plain

  BEFORE I COULD YELL OUT A WARNING, THE FIRST OF THE HUNTING pack arrived.

  A dromaeosaur, like Aki, only fully grown. It raced to the foot of the tree, then stopped, looked up, and snarled.

  There was no response from the bambiraptors in the tree, but Aki hissed.

  The lead dromaeosaur turned toward the sound as the rest of the pack arrived. Only four more, but they were still the size of Doberman pinschers, with vicious teeth and slashing claws.

  Kyle brandished the hatchet while Petra raised her bow.

  I stood ready with the quarterstaff. At the same time, I scanned the creek bank, trying to find a good spot to climb to safety.

  “Five,” Kyle said. “We can take five.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  Petra sucked in a sharp breath. “How do you feel about nine?”

  Four more dromaeosaurs joined the pack. Like the first five, they eyed us warily.

  “We’ve got to—” I began, but was interrupted when Petra let loose with the bow.

  The arrow hit the lead dromaeosaur in the shoulder, just above the arm.

  It screamed and raced off. The others fled after it.

  “It won’t take long for it to bleed to death,” Petra observed. “They good to eat?”

  “You want to go after it?” I blurted.

  She shrugged. “Be nice to get the arrow back.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, deciding not to raise the issue of whether it was a good idea to follow a pack of angry dromaeosaurs into unfamiliar territory or whether it was merely insane. “They’re related to birds and alligators, so they could taste like either.”

  “Leave it!” Kyle said, looking at us like we were both nuts. He waded across the creek and up the other bank.

  Petra and I followed, pushing through the horsetails and ferns growing in the mud until we were on solid ground again. It was bright in the sun, with fewer redwoods and more trees with waxylooking leaves. (I don’t know what kind. Trees are even more boring than fish.)

  As I was about to speak, Kyle exclaimed, “They’re back!”

  I stepped forward to stand beside Kyle, Petra on the other side. Ahead of us, a pair of dromaeosaurs was picking at a six-foot Triceratops skull, horns angled into the air, surrounded by a haze of flies. The reddish-brown bones didn’t have much meat left on them, the head frill and face scraped clean. The rest of the skeleton must’ve been dragged off long ago.

  As we left the undergrowth, the dromaeosaurs looked toward us. Another three came around from the other side, approaching as if to challenge us.

  Petra nocked another arrow just as a figure—a human figure—ran out from the forest toward the dromaeosaurs, yelling and brandishing what looked like a club.

  Startled, the creatures took one look and then bolted away.

  The guy stopped and turned toward us. “Well, that was fun! I don’t suppose one of y’all is named Kyle?”

  He was about our age, between Kyle and me in height and build. He wore a black cowboyish hat, khaki trousers tucked into black stovepipe boots, and a long-sleeved white shirt, sleeves rolled up. An old-fashioned backpack and quiver of arrows were strapped to his back, and a canteen hung from his waist. In one hand, he carried a recurve bow.

  “I’m Kyle,” my brother answered. “Who are you?”

  The guy tipped his hat. “Samuel.” He bowed. “Samuel Littleton, at your service.” He gave Kyle an appraising look. “I think I have something for you.”

  “Do you have a Recall Device?” Petra blurted before I could stop her. For all we knew, this guy could’ve been in cahoots with the kidnapper.

  Samuel blinked at her intensity. “I don’t know what that means,” he replied. “What’s a Recall Device?”

  “It’s part of a time machine called the Chronal Engine,” Petra answered. “We need one to return home.”

  “A time machine,” Samuel said. “That explains a lot.” He took off his hat and blotted sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “It was either that or Conan Doyle’s Lost World.”

  “How did you know Kyle’s name?” I demanded. Something about the guy bugged me. He seemed way too calm—or maybe too smooth for someone in the current situation. Not to mention the fact that he was, for no apparent reason, here in the Cretaceous.

  Samuel was silent a moment. “I have a message for him.”

  “A message?” Kyle said. “From who?”

  Samuel hesitated again. “I don’t know. Listen, y’all’d best come with me.”

  “You don’t have a Recall Device?” Petra asked.

  “No,” Samuel replied. He gestured. “I don’t know how I got here. My brother and I were out camping, then there was a flash of light, and I found myself here. In the middle of a pack of dinosaur lizards. That was ten days ago.” He cocked his head as if listening. “But we can get to the bottom of that later. Right now, we need to go. I’ve got a camp just a spell upriver. Those vicious feathered things will be back soon.”

  His eyes widened as Aki emerged from Petra’s hair. “Like that, only bigger.”

  “It’s a baby dromaeosaur.” Petra stroked Aki under his chin. “I’m training him.”

  Samuel gripped his bow with both hands. “If you want my advice, I would say to drown the little monster right now because you’ll never be able to control him.”

  “Uh-oh,” I heard Kyle mutter.

  “I am not going to drown him,” Petra snapped. “And if I wanted your advice, I would have asked for it.”

  After a tense moment, Samuel gave up. “Fine, then.” He took a couple steps, then paused to see if we were with him.

  With a shrug, Kyle began to follow.

  “Wait.” I grabbed my brother’s arm. I lowered my voice. “Do you think this is a good idea?”

  “No,” he answered, “I think, other than the boat, this is our only lead.”

  Petra nodded, then strode after Samuel.

  “What’s your connection to Professor John Pierson?” I asked, as I stepped forward.

  “Who?” Samuel said, giving me a blank look.

  “The guy who invented the time machine,” I replied. “We were at his place when we were sent here.” I avoided looking at Petra and Kyle and hoped they would get the hint: we weren’t going to tell this Samuel any more than necessary.

  Samuel wiped sweat off his face. “I’ve never heard of anyone named Pierson.”

  “You didn’t have anything to do with the boats?” Petra asked.

  “What boats?”

  As she explained about both the beached boat and the one we’d seen going upriver, I regarded the newcomer. “What year was it when you left?”

  Samuel blinked. “It was 1919. And y’all?”

  “Early twenty-first century,” I put in. I didn’t think it was smart to be telling Samuel about his future world. Potentially even his future. Who knew what that could do to the time stream?

  “Why are y’all here?” Samuel said.

  “We’re here to rescue their sister,” Petra answered, and explained about Emma’s kidnapping.

  “Oh.” Samuel looked thoughtful. “Well, there’s this hill near this cave I found. You can see for miles.”

  “That’s . . . convenient,” I said.

  Almost too convenient.

  “Where were you camping?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You were camping with your brother, you said,” Kyle put in. “Where?”

  “Out,” Samuel said with a slight hesitation. “Out along the Guadalupe River.” He looked off into the forest, then back. “Listen,
I know something strange is happening, but we have to get moving.”

  “Why?” Petra demanded.

  “Y’all can trust me or not,” Samuel replied, “but I told you . . . in addition to that vicious pet of yours, we’re in the territory of a pride of Tyrannosaurus rexes. I’ve seen the footprints, and, believe me, we don’t want to meet what made them face-to-face.”

  If he had been here awhile, he should know the territory at least a little better than we did. And if Samuel was telling the truth about the T. rex pride, we definitely needed to clear out. And since it was only recently that paleontologists concluded that tyrannosaurs might have traveled in prides, Samuel was likely telling the truth about that at least.

  Assuming he really was from 1919.

  Chapter XI

  Messages

  SAMUEL LED THE WAY, WITH KYLE RIGHT NEXT TO HIM. THEY WERE talking about how Samuel had survived here for so long. Or what Samuel claimed he’d done, anyway. It involved eating something called fiddlehead ferns and hunting a pair of small birds with stubby, one-fingered claws where their wings should’ve been. These sounded to me like alvarezsaurs, which were theropod dinosaurs, but actually fairly close to birds.

  I didn’t see any reason to tell Samuel or Kyle this, especially since they were now talking about Knute Rockne and the development of the forward pass in college football. After a few moments, I drifted back to hike beside Petra and tried to ignore the throbbing in my ankle from the cut.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, watching my step. “It just seems . . . Samuel’s being here is awfully coincidental.”

  “Our being here seems awfully coincidental,” she observed. “So’s the fact that you’re some kind of dino expert, and we happen to have been transported to the era of dinosaurs, but I don’t think you sent us here.”

  I felt my face redden.

  “You don’t trust him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said again. “But we’re here to find my sister, and I think he’s hiding something. And bringing a stranger with us could be dangerous.”

  Petra raised a hand for Aki to nuzzle. “It seems to me that we were mostly strangers, at least until two days ago.”

  “Sure, yeah. But our moms knew each other. And your mom works for my grandfather. So we’re not exactly total strangers.”

  She smiled. “Just because Samuel is attractive and mysterious doesn’t mean he’s dangerous.”

  I could not believe she’d just said that. “You think he’s ‘attractive and mysterious’?”

  “Not as cute as your brother, though. Maybe more mature.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, deciding not to take the conversation any further.

  “That doesn’t mean I trust him, though,” she finished.

  For a while the only sounds came from our footsteps and the forest creatures. Birds and dinosaurs called in the distance. The river to our left meandered its muddy course downstream. I paused once or twice to take a look, but didn’t see any Deinosuchus. Or steamboats. Or signs of Emma.

  Every now and then, out of the corner of my eye, I would spot something scurrying in the trees. I couldn’t tell if it was a bird, a dinosaur, or a mammal. I just didn’t want it to drop on my head.

  Not long after my talk with Petra, the trees thinned and the forest brightened. It wasn’t what you would call sunny, because the sky was cloudy and it looked like rain, but there was definitely more light.

  At the edge of a clearing stood a fifteen-foot-tall stump, about ten feet in diameter, the remains of a redwood that had fallen or rotted away or maybe had been struck by lightning. Beside it were ashes from a campfire.

  Samuel hoisted himself into a cleft in the side of the stump. He tossed a bag out at me.

  A modern grocery bag made from recycled material. From Whole Foods.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, peering inside.

  “What is it?” Kyle wanted to know.

  I pulled out a package of stiff blue material. It unfolded as I held it up. It was some kind of body armor. A bulletproof vest. Kevlar, I supposed. Pinned to it was an envelope with the words Read me printed on it.

  I opened the envelope and a gold cross attached to a chain fell out.

  As he picked it up, Kyle whispered, “It’s Emma’s.”

  Mom had gotten it for her for Confirmation last year. Emma wore it all the time.

  Also inside the envelope was a folded sheet of paper. I opened it and held it up so we could both read it: Make Kyle wear the vest.

  “Like you could make me do anything,” Kyle said with a smirk. Then he realized what he’d just said and his eyes widened. “Max, that’s your handwriting!”

  I nodded, speechless, wondering what it meant. I mean, obviously it meant that in some future, the future that I had come back from to leave this, Kyle was going to get shot. By the kidnapper? Or someone else?

  I turned the paper over and looked inside the envelope. Nothing. Why didn’t I give more information?

  “We make it home,” Kyle began, “or at least you do and maybe Emma, too, and you’re able to come back again and leave us a clue, and this is the lame clue you leave?”

  I did not tell him I’d been thinking the same thing. “It’ll probably save your life.”

  After a moment he put on the vest.

  “How did you get this?” I asked Samuel, when he climbed out of the tree.

  He crouched, picked up a stick, and began spreading the ashes from his cold campfire. Then he tossed on a couple logs and some kindling and sat back. “I found it here yesterday when I got back from a hunt. Why would you leave that here?”

  “It means that we makes it back,” Petra put in. “Or at least Max does. With Emma.”

  It didn’t, really, but it did make it more likely.

  “Why would anyone take Emma in the first place?” Kyle asked.

  I still didn’t have a good theory.

  “Maybe someone’s trying to get back at Mad Jack Pierson,” I said.

  “By kidnapping his great-great-great-granddaughter?” Kyle asked.

  He had added one too many greats, but I didn’t comment on that.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t say it made sense.”

  “Do you think someone’s trying to change the past?” Petra wanted to know. “Isn’t that the plot of every Star Trek time-travel episode?”

  I gave her a look. I would never have guessed that she watched Star Trek.

  “Usually,” I said, “the bad guys try to change the present or future by changing the past.” And then the Starfleet people have to go back and try to fix things. Except in the reboot movie where they killed like nine billion Vulcans, and no one seemed to care. “How do you think Emma could be involved?”

  Kyle wasn’t listening. “You think someone came from the future to grab her? Does that mean that we’re not where we’re supposed to be?”

  “No,” I said, “because they’re changing our present in the past so their future is also changed. In their present. But they could’ve also come from the past.”

  He snorted. “I have no idea what you just said.” Then he gestured. “And why is Samuel here?”

  No one answered.

  We decided to make camp there that night—Samuel had said that his cave was less than a day’s walk from the stump and that there was a large lake not far from there, which was probably where the launch was going.

  The four of us sat in a kind of semicircle around the fire and made dinner with the last of the granola bars. They didn’t go far and we were all a little hungry at the end of the meal, but Samuel said there was a place we’d be able to do some hunting or gathering tomorrow.

  After we’d eaten, Petra tossed Aki small chunks of her ration—a peanut butter granola bar. The dromaeosaur chick used both his mouth and front claws to pluck pieces off. Every now and then, he would pounce and slash with his back legs.

  The lab books were s
till in my backpack, because I didn’t want Samuel to know about them yet. They probably needed more drying out, anyway. Assuming they hadn’t liquefied by now.

  Kyle wore the bulletproof vest over his T-shirt, which still sort of surprised me. He had to have been pretty hot, but now that I thought about it, probably no worse off than in football pads in August. He was still moving stiffly from the bruises, but hadn’t complained. My ankle was throbbing a little too, but I didn’t mention that, either.

  As we relaxed after our meal, Petra asked, “Samuel, what’s life like in 1919?”

  Sitting cross-legged next to her, he was quiet for a moment. “It’s home. My father is a university professor. He’s thinking we might move to Hyde Park, near the streetcar line.” Samuel gestured across the fire at Kyle and me. “I suppose to y’all, that’s ancient stuff. So what’s the twenty-first century like?”

  Petra began, “Well, for one thing—”

  “Wait.” Sitting up, I startled Aki. “Don’t answer that.”

  “Why not?” Petra replied, as she held out a hand to soothe the hatchling dinosaur.

  I looked over first at Samuel, then at Kyle, before addressing Petra directly. “Because we don’t know if he’s telling the truth about how he got here, and we don’t know what could happen if he finds out about the future.”

  “I’ve told y’all the truth,” Samuel protested.

  “Max is right,” Kyle interjected. “Listen, I don’t know if we can change the past, but we can’t risk it. So we have to try not to tell Samuel anything that could affect—”

  “But I wouldn’t,” Samuel interrupted.

  “—even by accident.”

  Kyle was right, but I still had a nagging feeling we were being set up. And what was the “real” past, anyway?

  After a moment Petra nodded from across the fire. “Something about that vest is bothering me.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “Okay.” She leaned forward. “Future-you left it because you knew current-you would be there, or Samuel would be there, or whatever, right?”