Up the stairs now. Ascending through the skeleton with its crisscrossing metal beams, Caleb marveled at the interior of the garment, the incredibly thin copper sheets joined by iron bars. Two stairs at a time he climbed, while he heard others coming down the other side of the helix, seemingly less taxed with the descent. Caleb ran, pulling himself along using the railing. He slipped as his sloshing sneakers lost traction at one point, painfully banged his right shin, then got up and kept moving.
Come on, he urged, trying to stimulate his powers during the physical exertion, and he was again reminded of that night in Alexandria when Nina had taxed him fully, exhausting his body to the point his mind broke free and soared.
Gasping for oxygen now, feeling the air thinning, his temperature rising, the muscles in his legs and arms taxed to the extreme. He dared to look up and saw he was only halfway to the top.
He tripped again, hammering his elbow on the cool metal and nearly banging his head against the side railing. And then he lay there, heart thundering and the back of his neck pulsing.
Groaning, he opened his eyes…
And looked down at himself… wearing dark blue coveralls. A tool belt… and holding a leather satchel, with something inside wrapped in several layers of leather padding. Ascending these very stairs. Nervously gripping the satchel tight.
A flash and a rumble of thunder. Caleb felt the statue sway in the storm winds. He held both railings to steady himself, then pushed himself upward. One glance down sent him to hugging the far side of the stairwell, and for a second he again felt like Demetrius, the first librarian of Alexandria, during his tour of the Pharos. Keep going, almost there. He thought about his other boys, the twins he’d never seen. They were up here just a day ago. Searching for the same thing. Searching for the spear, to keep it out of his hands.
So they knew, or at least had the same sense that it wasn’t in the cornerstone or somewhere underground.
It had to be up there. The certainty fueled his muscles and he climbed again. Rounding another bend, then another. One more tentative glance down, and his heart leapt. Nina emerged from the pedestal entrance, flanked by three men in dark suits. All of them looked up at once.
And Caleb’s breath fled in a rush. This was it. He could still make it, assuming he could find and extract the spear quickly, then make it back to the descending staircase when it split at the crown and then get back down before they saw him. He rushed up the remaining flights, calling on every ounce of energy. Finally, he reached the last bend and then he was into another separate staircase leading up to the crown.
Now completely gassed, he joined a half-dozen people under the white ridged interior of her skull. Several viewers had climbed to the walkway and were gazing out the windows over the harbor and looking up to the torch. The temperature up here was twenty degrees hotter even than the interior at the base. Sweltering and oppressive, the sweat was dripping off him. He flung off the hat, figuring it was useless now. And he turned his attention to the crown, the spikes especially–
-and had a glimpse of men standing outside in bowler hats, wresting a new spike in place, replacing a damaged section.
Too early, he thought. But it showed him that they could be hollow, and easily contain something. Where did that worker hide it? Come on, show me!
A few other people were looking at him funny. Someone asked if he was okay, another told him to sit and rest. But their voices had faded, along with their images, and he had shifted back, back… almost seventy years.
The man in coveralls…
Heading up a ladder, with the heavy satchel over his shoulder. Climbing the narrow, tight rungs, climbing…
Into the arm!
Caleb pushed away from the concerned person bending over him. “It’s in the torch,” he muttered. “I’m in the wrong place. Damn it!”
“This is the crown,” said the man, and Caleb focused and was surprised to see it was the Asian tourist from the ferry. “Hi there, you bought that extra ticket. Sorry it was such a bad climb, but you’re here. You made it!”
“No,” Caleb whispered, trying to stand. “Have to get to the torch.”
“The torch? No way, wish we could, the view would be sweet, but it’s been closed to the public since 1916. Some kind of attack on munitions plant nearby. The explosion damaged the arm and the torch, and no one’s been allowed in since.”
Caleb shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Where’s the ladder?”
“Back down a bit, I guess. I saw it and took some neat pictures. You have to cross over a narrow walkway, then climb up through the arm. It looks really tight. And dangerous.”
Nodding, Caleb patted the man’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t expect otherwise. Thanks.” He stumbled for the descending stairs.
“But there’s no way you’ll get in,” called the tourist. “If you need to see the torch so bad, why not just go to the museum lobby? The original one’s down there…”
Caleb froze. The pounding of steps below, on the ascending stairs, was getting louder. Nina was closing in. His head snapped back. “The original? How long ago was it moved?” He cursed himself for being so careless. A quick review of the history on the statue’s website might have told him all this.
The man scratched his head and looked at his wife, who had just now come down from the observation area. She met his questioning eyes. “The original torch? I remember—the changes made to it by that sculptor—the one who designed Mount Rushmore…”
“Gutzman,” Caleb said, recalling the man working on the torch, retrofitting the windows with amber.
“Yeah, him. The glass windows he put in? I guess they leaked or something. Water and snow got in and corroded the torch and parts of the arm over time, so they decided to replace the whole thing. What’s up there now is a gold-plated, solid structure facsimile.”
“Right,” said the husband. “And they shine the huge spotlights on it from the base, and it lights up nice now. No need for interior lamps.”
Caleb’s head throbbed. “What year? When did they move it?” Was it after Patton’s man came up here?
“Oh,” said the woman, “not too long ago. I think during Reagan’s term. Part of his public works improvement project, and…”
But Caleb didn’t stay to listen any longer. He was racing down, heading for the lobby.
The narrow steps made it difficult, but after first checking to make sure he couldn’t see Nina anywhere down there, he went as fast as he could, but quickly caught up with other people moving very slowly. He squeezed around them wherever possible, but other times had to complain that he was about to be sick and they had to move aside or face the consequences. Soon he was back at the pedestal. Outside, the rain was still falling in torrents and the sky had darkened. The elevator was nowhere to be seen.
But he wasn’t waiting for it anyway. He made his way to the stairs and flew down, finding his energy getting better as the heat and altitude decreased. These stairs were much wider, with plenty of room to race by stragglers. He wondered how far back Nina was. Surely they had found he had slipped by them. Hopefully she may have been sidetracked at the torch, and had gone up there to check.
He could imagine a Hitchcockian scene if he had stuck to his original plan. If it hadn’t been for that couple and their information, the torch might have been his last stand—or more likely—fall.
Now he had a chance. He was almost there. Rounding the last bend, then onto the main floor, past the attendant still sitting with his crossword puzzle. He looked up, recognition in his eyes. “Oh, it’s you! A pretty lady was down here a short time ago, looking for you. Figured you wouldn’t mind, so I told her.”