Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy) by Megan Crewe Read Free Book Online

fire escape over there”—he nods to a spot a few feet from the chair—“if that’s not enough security.”
    If I needed to, I could obviously outrun him. I pull the chair out and sit, just out of reach. The autumn evening chill is settling in, damp and clammy. I shrug my jacket closer around me.
    “Okay,” I say. “Explain.”
    I expect him to launch straight into some elaborate story. Instead, he studies the tabletop with a frown. Then he raises his eyes.
    “I wasn’t lying to you because I wanted to,” he says. “We’re not supposed to tell anyone. Ever. That’s the most important rule. But I think what we’re trying to accomplish right now is more important than that rule. I think you’re more important.”
    I have no idea what to make of that. Win rubs the back of his neck and sighs.
    “The reason I was so tired just now,” he says, “it’s not because of a medical condition. It’s because I’m not fully adjusted to the air here, or the gravity. There’s more oxygen, and less pull, on my planet.”

6.
     
    O n your planet ?”
    This can’t be real. I’m not really hearing this. But I am, and Win’s looking at me with a twist to his lips like he knows how ridiculous it sounds—like he knows but he can’t help it because it’s true. Okay. So he’s insane.
    As I come to that conclusion, I’m already getting to my feet.
    “No, wait,” he says, lunging forward to grasp at me. When I flinch back, he holds his hand out beseechingly. “Let me tell you the whole thing. I’m not lying—I swear it. I can even prove it to you. Please.”
    I stand there, frozen. I don’t want to listen to some long crazy story. But something crazy is going on, isn’t it? Attendants come to drag him back to the psychiatric ward wouldn’t carry strange melty-numbing weapons. And as I stare at him, I’m struck once more by the awful solidness of him: the way, when my attention’s on him, the world around us starts to feel as filmy as tissue paper.
    My hand slips into my pocket, thumb sliding over the beads. After a couple of turns, I can breathe again. But I don’t sit back down.
    “I’m waiting,” I say.
    “My planet,” Win says quickly. “Kemya.” He pronounces the K sound with a slight slur in the back of his throat, the part of his accent I couldn’t place, which adds a disturbing edge of authenticity. “You could say we’ve been ‘studying’ Earth. Seeing how the people here deal with problems. Experimenting with possibilities.”
    “By stopping courthouses from being bombed and stalking high-school girls?” I say.
    “I wasn’t—” He stops, and seems to gather himself. “We have a type of . . . machine, that can create a special field. When we’re inside the field, we can travel between the present and the past. Change events. Observe different outcomes.”
    He nods to the darkening sky. “The largest time field generator ever created is up there, hidden from your sensors and telescopes. It’s holding in place a field that surrounds your entire planet. As if it’s encased in a giant glass ball.”
    He runs a finger through the grime on the tabletop, drawing one circle that I guess is supposed to be Earth, and a dot that must be this generator thing hovering above it. Then a bigger circle, that stretches from the dot all the way around, engulfing the first circle completely. My chest tightens, as if it’s me he’s confined.
    “There’s a team of our scientists and Travelers working on an adjacent satellite up there,” Win says, tapping the generator dot. “They keep the field running and monitor everything down here, and jump in when they have alterations to make that they think will be informative.”
    The words are so pat and technical it takes a moment for their full meaning to sink in.
    “So you’re telling me that you’re an alien, and a time traveler,” I say. “And you and other people from your . . . your planet, you’ve been playing around with things down