The Live-Forever Machine by Kenneth Oppel Read Free Book Online

green light from the hologram billboard sweeping across the walk and the museum wall.
    If he couldn’t call Alexander, the best he could do was go back to the museum in the morning and wait around in the hopes of seeinghim again. Or he could try to find that door. It probably led to the back of the museum, to the storerooms and workshops. He looked up at the high arched windows that faced onto Astrologer’s Walk. Back there, behind the clouded glass.
    “Clank, clank, clank yourself!”
    Eric started in surprise and looked into the shadows against the museum wall. A man in tattered clothing stood holding a fishing rod, yelling down into a storm drain grate. Eric had seen him before, lots of times. Jonah—that was the name Eric and his father had given him. He was always surrounded by garbage bags bulging with newspaper, and talking to himself. In the summer he fished through the storm drain grates behind the museum, lowering his line deep into the city and, if what Eric had heard from his father was true, occasionally reeling in a catch. Eric had never seen him so agitated.
    “Dry as a whale’s skeleton in a desert!” Jonah blustered, throwing his fishing rod to the ground. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Fire and brimstone. You! Come here.”
    Jonah was talking directly to Eric now, motioning to him urgently. He held back. Jonah was crazy, like all the other people who lived on the streets, shouting on corners, huddlingin alcoves. But he looked harmless enough. And he was waving so insistently that Eric found himself stepping slowly closer.
    He stopped a few feet away. He’d never been close enough to see how worn down Jonah was. His face was stubbled and sun-cured like leather. He seemed to be wearing fragments of several different shirts, wrinkled and layered with dirt, and a baggy pair of grey trousers with pockets all up and down the legs. He gave off a strong smell, too: sweat and mildew and something chemical. Like rug cleaner, Eric thought, and his nostrils contracted involuntarily in revulsion.
    “No more,” Jonah was muttering urgently, ducking his head. “Gone, all of them. No more water.” He stabbed his finger down at the castiron grate.
    “You haven’t caught any fish lately?” Eric asked, glancing at the fishing rod and tangle of line.
    Then Jonah looked him straight in the face, and Eric saw his eyes for the first time. They were startlingly clear, gleaming brightly in his crumpled face.
    “Fire and brimstone!” Jonah shouted, and before Eric had time to step back or raise his arm, Jonah had lunged forward and seized his bony shoulders.
    “Hey,” Eric began. “What—?” He tried to wrench himself free, but Jonah’s grip was too strong; his fingers levered into Eric’s skin like claws.
    “Down, underneath, down there, down,” Jonah yelled, spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth. “Smoke and hot air, clank, clank, clank. Fire and brimstone.”
    “Right, yeah,” Eric said. The few people on the path hurried by with their heads turned in the other direction. Great, that was just great; he could be getting a knife put through him and everyone would just pretend they didn’t see anything. What a city.
    “No, listen,” Jonah said, and his voice was now softer and slower. His eyes were clear and deep. “Fire and brimstone. You tell them inside—” He nodded up at the museum wall. “Tell them, yes?”
    “All right,” Eric stammered, nodding. “All right; yes.” He’d promise anything if Jonah would just let go.
    Jonah released his grip and turned to his plastic garbage bags. “Away all the fish, no more,” he mumbled to himself as if Eric weren’t there, had never been there.
    Eric looked back over his shoulder as he walked away. Crazy idiot. Except that …
    Clank, clank, clank.
That was the noise he andChris had heard from the underground platform. So Jonah had heard it, too. But the rest was just junk—sounded like the guy who stood on the street