A Twist in Time (2 page)

The couple glanced at each other. “We’ll match whatever you’re offered,” Foucault said
.

Lucy’s mouth worked, but she couldn’t manage any sound. She couldn’t sell it to the woman
who had given it to her. She
wanted
to say she’d just give it back. But that would mean giving it
up
.

Frankie leaned over the counter, blue eyes burning. “There’s more to it, isn’t there?”

Lucy felt trapped. But this woman would know about the book if anyone did. And Lucy needed
to know. “I’ve started to dream about the book. I think about it every waking moment. Is . . . is it
cursed or something? I mean, the way you just left it here when it was so valuable—were you
passing it on to get rid of it?”

Frankie smiled. Suddenly she seemed sure of herself. “No, I had already decided to use the
knowledge it contained to make me happy. I had all it could give me.”

“You do look happy,” Lucy whispered
.

Henri looked to Frankie, then spoke to Lucy. “If you’re short of money, we know some influential
people in the arts in San Francisco. We’ll spread the word about your shop.”

“Keep the book.” Frankie looked into Lucy’s eyes. “You’re meant to have it just as I was.”

And they left her a treasure. Sometimes she wished they hadn’t. The book had hold of her, no matter how much she pretended she wasn’t obsessed. She’d begun to make up fantastic stories about Frankie Suchet using the machine to make herself happy and what that might mean.

She’d daydreamed about using the machine herself as if it really existed. Because ever since her father died, Lucy had been drifting, waiting for . . . something. She wanted what Frankie Suchet had. Certainty? Happiness? Lucy wanted that. She wanted her life transformed into something meaningful, even though she didn’t know what that meaning would be.

And now the whole sequence of events seemed like destiny. The feeling was overpowering. The book had been left to her. Frankie believed it was meant for her somehow. The Italian government sent the machine to America to give it power. Her friend Brad was assigned to the project. Too many coincidences. The book and the machine were coming together with power only the Super Collider Lab could provide.

And they would be used.

Tonight.

Maybe it wouldn’t work. This could all still be some elaborate hoax.

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But Lucy no longer believed that. This was destiny. Her destiny.

A guy with a ramrod-straight military bearing and a brush cut stepped out of an office directly into Lucy and Brad’s path. She could practically feel Brad cringe. The guy had an intense look about him.

“Colonel Casey, just the man I wanted to see.” Brad wasn’t an imposing man, maybe five nine or ten, lean from being a runner. He dressed precisely in pressed chinos and Bruno Magli loafers, maybe too precisely. He wasn’t God’s gift to women. But he and Lucy had their common looks in common. She wasn’t God’s gift to men. Maybe that drew them together—a lifetime of being everyone’s second choice. There was no way Brad was fit to stand up to Casey.

“I heard you made a breakthrough, Steadman. About time. Though what this retro bunch of gears is supposed to do is beyond me.” His eyes never left Lucy’s face. They were the palest blue she’d ever seen. Even though his hair was blond, they seemed unnatural. “Trying to impress your girl with a government project that requires special clearance?” The sneer in his voice was evident. “Not smart, Steadman.”

“As a matter of fact,” here Brad cleared his throat, “Miss Rossano is my research assistant. I’ve located a book about the origin of the machine and its purpose.”

Lucy tried to relax. This guy would never let the machine be used, destiny or not, by some girl he didn’t know. She was off the hook. She had no desire to succumb to some fate over which she had no control, regardless of the feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Okay. Give me the book. I’ll take a look.
You
wait in the lobby, Miss Rossano.”

Like hell. She wasn’t giving up her book. She leaned forward and stuck out her hand. “That’s
Dr
.

Rossano. Nice to meet someone else who reads sixteenth-century Italian.”

Casey stared at her. Boy, if reptiles had blue eyes . . . He didn’t take her offered hand. He shot a disgusted glance to Brad. Then he gestured down the hall.

She saw Brad swallow as he led the way. Casey fell in behind them.

Brad opened a door at the end of a long hall. Lucy had memorized each detail of the diagram in Leonardo’s book. But that didn’t prepare her for the sheer size and weight of the machine standing on a platform across the lab. It gleamed faintly in the tiny work lights that still left shadows in the cavernous lab. The whole experience was like the first time she’d seen Rodin’s
The Thinker
in the sculpture garden at the Norton Simon Museum. Everybody knew what it looked like from pictures in countless art books. But that never prepared you. It was that dense occupation of space that gave it emotional resonance.

The giant, brass gears towering above her, immensely heavy, made her catch her breath and struggle for air. The gems that studded the wheels coruscated with emerald green, ruby red, and the blue of sapphires as big as your fist. Where had Leonardo gotten such jewels? A fortune
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winked from among the interlocking wheels, none bigger than the huge diamond that formed the knob of a control stick. Everything looked just as it was in the book, except for the lunch box–sized metal box bolted to the frame just under the largest wheel.

Could this medieval machine really send someone to another time? On the face of it, it was ridiculous. Yet if anyone could build a time machine surely it would be Leonardo da Vinci. Half scientist, half artist, in some ways he was more than either—a magician, perhaps. Was it that possibility that had fueled her obsession?

Both the colonel and Brad watched for her reaction. She thought Brad might explode with excitement. “It’s Leonardo’s machine, all right.” She couldn’t help that her eyes filled.

“Da Vinci?” Casey’s voice was sharp.

Lucy nodded. She could hardly see his light eyes in the dim room.

Brad tried to calm himself. He cleared his throat. “If the book is right, this machine could be more important than you’ve been thinking, Colonel.” Was Brad excited only to prove himself to Casey? Maybe.

Casey’s hard eyes reassessed her. “And
you
, Dr. Rossano, know what it is.”

She nodded slowly. Well, at least he’d never believe her. “Yeah. It’s a time machine.”

“A time machine,” Casey snorted. “Right. Are you crazy, Steadman?”

“No, you’ve got to see the book, Colonel,” Brad protested. He hurried to a long table that faced the machine and switched on a small work light. “Luce, bring the book and show him.”

Lucy hefted her bag off her shoulder. The book wouldn’t help a military guy believe. Huge girders loomed in the ceiling far above her. The place had that peculiar sterile environment that left only a faint metallic odor. She pulled out the book and spread it open. Casey leaned over it.

Lucy pointed. “Leonardo’s signature.” She flipped pages to show the diagrams on assembly, key notes in the margins, mathematical equations. Then she flipped to the full drawing. Casey drew in a breath. She paged back. “Here’s where he says that time is a vortex. And here . . . he says the jewels focus the power.”

“How do I know that’s what it says?” Casey asked softly, his eyes darting over the text.

“You can check it with another expert in archaic Italian.” There. That would buy time. She could feel the machine looming above her, heavy with . . . with purpose. That was bad.

“How do you select a time? There are no dials or settings we could see.”

Lucy smiled. This would seal his disbelief. “It says in the book that you pull the handle and just think about the time you want to be in.”

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Casey blinked once and chuffed a disgusted laugh. “Oh, great. I get the really good assignments.”

“Okay. I know it sounds a little out there,” Brad admitted. “That’s why we’ve got to try it. If we’ve spent a lot of someone’s money powering a machine that doesn’t do anything, better to know that now. If it’s a hoax, all the Italians have is a fortune in tourist dollars when they put it on display in the Uffizi. But if it’s not, then we’ve got something
everybody
is going to want.”

Lucy was dismayed at Casey’s look of speculation. He couldn’t be considering powering up the machine, could he?

“And then this wasn’t such a crappy assignment after all,” Brad continued. “In fact, you can probably name your next one.” Brad really struck a chord with that. Casey thought he’d drawn a crappy assignment and he was now thinking how nice it would be to come up with something incredible no one ever expected. “So why don’t we test it out? Right here. Tonight.”

No, no, no. Definitely not
. Lucy looked around wildly. The machine seemed to be vibrating in satisfaction. “Wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t that be bad scientific method? You should do a . . . a controlled experiment.” Brad was always talking about controlled experiments.

“Well, we’ve got a problem,” Brad said, his eyes on Casey. “We can’t go to my boss, or your boss, and tell them we’ve got a time machine. We’d be laughed out of the office.”

“Well, yeah,” Casey said, dripping sarcasm. “I guess we would.”

“Unless we had proof. Come on, Casey.” Brad was on a roll. Sure of himself. “You want prestige and power. If it works, you’re in like Flynn. A time machine built by Leonardo da Vinci and powered by our project?” It must have killed him to share the credit for the project.

Casey was becoming convinced. He’d gotten that speculative look, in spades. “Your little lunch box over there works?”

“Of course it works,” Brad said through gritted teeth. “We successfully moved the gears today using a fraction of the power it’s capable of.”

“Could you go to the future?” Casey stared at the machine, even though he was addressing Lucy. He was caught by the possibilities. He would be the one to use the machine tonight.

Maybe that was okay. But it didn’t feel right. She shook herself mentally. What was she thinking? She had to get out of here or something . . . momentous would happen.

But she answered anyway. “I don’t know. Leonardo was more interested in understanding the past. I guess if time is really a vortex you could go either way.”

Casey continued to stare. “What if you can’t power up the machine again once you’re there?”

Oh yeah. She’d been through that possibility in her mind a thousand times.

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“According to Leonardo, the machine can’t stay in another time forever. It’s too much pressure on the flow of time. It’ll snap back to where it came from with you or without you.”

“If he knows what he’s talking about. And if he doesn’t?”

She took a breath. “You get stuck there, along with your machine.” There. That should make them think twice about using it.

Brad looked desperate. He wanted the project to succeed that much. “Look,” he said. “There’s always risk. Somebody has to be first. Chuck Yeager had to go up and fly fast even though nobody knew what would happen when you broke the sound barrier. John Glenn had to go up in Friendship I. Sometime, somebody just has to do it.”

Casey peered at the illustration in the book, then straightened. “I agree.” He turned to Lucy.

“How about her?”

Both Brad and Lucy were stunned. “She isn’t even part of the team,” Brad sputtered.

“She’s perfect. She’s obviously read this book a hundred times. She knows how it’s supposed to work.” Here Casey looked at Brad. “And we have plausible deniability. We were doing tests and she pulled the handle while our backs were turned.” He’d gone through all the permutations in his mind. One: It didn’t work. Nothing lost. Two: It did work and she went back and returned.

He won big. Three: She went back and only the machine returned. He won. He didn’t care about her. Four: She went back and neither she nor the machine returned. That was bad.

They’d have to admit that she hoodwinked them. But it was one in four. Odds were with Casey.

Really
with Casey with how big the odds were that it wouldn’t work in the first place.

Lucy felt the lab almost tremble with intent. Brad’s face was a comical combination of eagerness and guilt. He wanted so badly to try the machine. Badly enough to risk her life?

Apparently. “Brad?”

He took a long breath. Fear flashed across his face before he pulled down a mask over both the fear and the eagerness. “You’ll be okay, Lucy.”

So that was it. He did want it that bad, but he didn’t have the courage to use it himself.

Casey looked at her. Brad looked at her.

It all came down to this moment. The months of obsession, the feeling of her life being without purpose, stale, and tasteless since her father died, her fascination with how happy Frankie Suchet had been. If she walked out now, what would she be walking out
to
? She had nothing out there. A successful business, maybe even wildly successful since Frankie and Henri had directed all their friends to frequent her shop, but it didn’t
mean
anything to her. She had no friends except a crazy old loon of a landlord and Brad, and Brad didn’t look to be a great friend right now. She had nothing but her obsession with the book. And if she walked out, they’d never let her take the book with her. That left . . . nothing. Her life beyond the walls of this lab
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had not a shred of magic in it. But here, in this sterile place, magic hung in the air, delivered across time by a magician named da Vinci.

A thrill of . . . expectation made it hard for Lucy to breathe. How long since she had had expectations of life? A feeling of rightness washed over her. Everything was about to change, and that was as it should be. Her breathing calmed. “Okay.” She turned to the machine. “Rev up your lunch box, Brad.”