No answer. Eric felt a brief flash of fear: was his father going to get up and leave the room?
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “There were probably hundreds of reasons or none at all. I don’t think I made her happy, or at least she wasn’t happy with me.”
Eric felt an overpowering urge to sweep away all the furniture and books in the room and start again.
“Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with you,” he said.
His father looked doubtful.
“Maybe it was just the way she was,” he went on, “and no one could have helped her.”
“She wasn’t always unhappy. There were wonderful times. In Paris, for instance.”
Dad was doing it again, travelling back, recreating conversations and scenes. Eric knew he had to break through the silence, but he wasn’t sure how to begin.
“Would you do something for me?” he asked.
His father looked grieved. “What?”
“Write a story for me.”
“Lots of stories upstairs. I’ll give you any one of them.”
“No, I don’t want any of those. You wrote them for yourself.”
“I suppose, but—”
“I want this one to be just for me. About her. Not made up. Tell me everything about her, all you knew.”
“It would be a sad story.”
“Will you do it?” It was the most important thing in the world that his father say yes.
“I don’t know.”
He watched his father stare at the typewriter. He reached out his hand and touched his father’s forearm. He remembered how the dinosaur bone had felt in his grasp: cool, hard, lifeless. But this was warm and soft. This is the way you should hold onto people. With all your strength.
“It’s been bad for you, hasn’t it?” his father said, turning to him. “Not just me.”
Eric nodded, awkward. “What about the story—”
“I’ll try. I don’t know how good it will be.”
“You’ll do it, though, right?”
“Yes.”
“Promise.”
“Yes. All right.” Laughing awkwardly. “I promise.”
“When?”
“Do you want me to start right now?”
“Tomorrow’s fine. There’s a story I want to tell you first.”
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for their financial assistance while I was writing this book. There are also many people who helped me put this book together one way or another: Bill MacGregor, Dylan Reid, Diana Patterson, JoAnna Dutka, Chris Torbay, Philippa Sheppard, and Charis Wahl, whose criticism was invaluable.
Books by Kenneth Oppel
Starclimber
Skybreaker
Airborn
Darkwing
Firewing
Sunwing
Silverwing
Dead Water Zone
(For Younger Readers)
Peg and the Yeti
Peg and the Whale
Emma’s Emu
A Bad Case of Ghosts
A Strange Case of Magic
A Crazy Case of Robots
An Incredible Case of Dinosaurs
A Weird Case of Super-Goo
A Creepy Case of Vampires
Also available
It’s been months since Paul has seen his younger brother, Sam. Now Sam has disappeared.
Why?
The truth lies at the heart of Watertown, a polluted slum afloat in the city’s toxic harbour, where Sam has been working as a research assistant. Paul goes there to find his brother – and encounters people who will do anything to stop him. Can Paul find out the truth? Or does the dead water zone devour everyone who dares to enter it?
An exciting thriller from the bestselling author of Silverwing and Sunwing, Dead Water Zone brings Kenneth Oppel’s unique brand of gripping storytelling to an audience of older readers.
Copyright
The Live-Forever Machine
© 1990 by Kenneth Oppel, © 2001 Firewing Productions Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 978-1-443-41128-8
Published by Harpe Trophy Canada™,
an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
HarperTrophyCanada™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
First published in paperback by Kids Can Press 1990.
First HarperCollins Publishers Ltd paperback edition 2001.
First mass market paperback edition 2004.
This mass market paperback edition 2009.
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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Oppel, Kenneth
The live-forever machine /
Kenneth Oppel.
ISBN 978-1-443-41128-8
I. Title.
PS8579.P64L5 2004 jC813’.54 C2004-900345-3
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IMS 9 8 7 6 5 4
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