Jaclyn the Ripper (8 page)

The helicopters again, circling, nosing into canyons—their alien noise, not comforting. Jaclyn walked faster, tried to fill her mind with a leitmotif from
Götterdämmerung
, but Wagner was far away from the Brentwood foothills and could not soothe her.

Up ahead, a motorcar shot out of a side street, tires squealing, engine growling, and came straight toward her. She hesitated, then froze; she knew better than to run. police was emblazoned on its side. She might have escaped in Whitechapel in 1888 or 1893, but no midnight London fog, no honeycomb of narrow alleyways could help her here. She was caught in the open on a wide street in broad daylight, and these two patrolmen were not mere bobbies with whistles and nightsticks. They had a motor car and pistols. Yet much to her astonishment, they seemed concerned for her. The one on the passenger side leaned over the door so his arm appeared huge—a masculine gesture she hadn't seen before—but she did recognize his grin, his eyes that memorized her body.

“Excuse me, ma'am, but this area has been cordoned off.”

“I'm just out for a walk, sir.”

“I'm sorry, but you're not supposed to be on the street. There's been a murder, and we have units in the area looking for a suspect.”

“Really?” She feigned surprise, looked up and down the street, hugged herself. “That's awful.”

Inside the car, the driver leaned forward so she could see him. “You live around here, ma'am?”

“Why, yes, of course.”

“Well, why don't you let us give you a ride home?”

“That would be lovely.”

She got in the car without hesitation, knowing that one false move, one wrong word or gesture, and their demeanor would change. True, she had cunning and guile, yet she wasn't sure it was enough to overcome these muscle-bound coppers in military-pressed blues.
Jack could've taken them, what with his knives and the strength of Satan, but I am him only in spirit.

The driver eyed her quizzically in his rearview mirror. “Where we going, ma'am?”

The idea came to her as soon as he'd asked, proving that she was not necessarily marooned in an alien year and that Satan did indeed “ride the horses of dark energy,” his influence touching every corner of every universe and beyond. She glanced at Michael Trattner's driver's license, then looked back at the patrolman and smiled.

“1407 Bowling Green Way.”

The patrolman nodded and made a left turn.

Jaclyn studied the picture of Trattner's wife, released a ragged sigh. The longer she looked, the more the wife reminded her of Penny, the only one Jack ever loved, the one who betrayed him. Her mouth overflowed with saliva, and she swallowed hard.

“Here you go, ma'am.”

The car stopped. Twins in lust, both patrolmen flexed and grinned stupidly at her, invitations on their square faces.

As she got out and turned to thank them, the copper in the passenger seat handed her his card.

“You need anything, you
see
anything, you give us a call, okay?”

“Thank you.”

She gave him a little flutter wave—startling herself, for the gesture was totally feminine, hence alien to her soul. Yet she continued on across the street, then up the flagstone walkway over the lawn toward a white Spanish-style bungalow. She had planned to skirt the house and keep on going, but heard the patrol car idling in the street and knew that they wouldn't leave until she was safely inside. No cars were in the driveway, a good sign, but no guarantee that the house was empty. Her heart thudded, but she minced up the steps, went straight to the front door. She turned, smiled and waved at them again, then pulled out Michael Trattner's keys, found the one for the house and shoved it in the lock.

Brakes squeaking, the shuttle bus pulled into a turnout at LAX and stopped, the driver calling out, “America West, Southwest, US Airways.”

H.G. gazed at this new world framed by a dirty window, taking in the dubious wonder of snarled traffic on World Way North, cars, vans and buses fighting for position, the bold anarchy of pedestrians crossing the street despite red lights, then cars coming straight for them, an ugly ballet of mindless machines and indifferent people accompanied by blaring horns and the flatulent noise of buses. He winced at the shadow of a low-flying commuter jet, its echoing roar, then tried to catch a glimpse of it, but failed.

“Southwest.”

H.G. turned. The driver made eye contact in his rearview mirror and nodded curtly.

“Thank you—you're extremely kind, sir,” he said. At the museum's lower tram station, a worker in a bright-orange vest had told him that Southwest Airlines was the fastest way to San Francisco on short notice.

When H.G. stepped on the curb, the bus pulled away, enveloping him in a cloud of moist emissions. He waved away the stench, but stayed where he was, bewildered by the crush of humanity—lines everywhere, a
sense of desperation, and noise. It made Charing Cross station and downtown London seem like oases of solitude.
It is Sunday, for God's sake. Shouldn't they all be in church?

He thought of the Getty Museum's futuristic beauty, its celebration of art and design that had lifted his spirits and made him feel positively good about man and technology in the twenty-first century. That did not jibe with this grubby center for aeroplanes, claustrophobic with people, reverberating with noise.
One can only hope the museum is not a mere enclave in a Philistine world.

An unusually loud roar made him look up. Resembling an enormous pterodactyl, an aircraft nosed skyward, wisps of the overcast diffusing its blue and silver skin. Given his trip to 1979, he had already seen what had become of the Wright Brothers and their infernal flying machine. Now, he was surprised that the aeroplane looked much the same as it had some thirty years ago. He wasn't sanguine about its future then, having learned about World War I and its progeny. In fact, after returning home, he had decided that it was time to warn the public with a serialized novel he would call
The War in the Air
. His publisher, Frederick Macmillan, expected dueling hot-air balloons or “flying sausages”—those hydrogen blimps that sometimes floated above Berlin and the Black Forest—but Wells had said no, I am going to write about the world's deteriorating political situation and the subsequent horrors of airships bombing cities and creating mass death and destruction. The blank look from Macmillan told him that he might as well have said—as he had before—time machines.

He watched the metallic pterodactyl until it disappeared above the overcast and hoped that such a magnificent airship was a sign that in the last three decades mankind had abandoned war as a commonplace excuse for failed diplomacy. He then looked back at the frantic people of 2010 and couldn't help but wonder if diplomacy hadn't been abandoned instead. He scowled in frustration. None of this was helping him get to San Francisco or a wife who might or might not be badly injured.

Thinking of Amy, he made his way inside the terminal, read the signs—electronic and otherwise—was stopped by one in particular.
What in God's name does “terrorist threat, yellow” mean? Are there cowards among us or does the notice refer to some collective emotional instability caused by overcrowding? Or perhaps a modern disease?
He hadn't a clue. Nor did he notice the security guards, hungry for incidents. They watched the crowds relentlessly, yet saw nothing unusual, and settled for a restless boredom.

H.G. got in the queue for ticket purchases. It barely moved, giving him time for a closer look at the humans around him. Almost all were physically much larger than people from his world, and he assumed that advances in medicine and nutrition must be the reason. He didn't notice that many had fat rolling over their belts, so fascinated was he by their attachments. Half of them had wires hanging from their heads, tiny electronic devices in their hands that lit up when touched, and even more had those ubiquitous boxes at their ears which he'd first gawked at when his shuttle bus had collected passengers. Obviously, these people were using the grandchildren of their telephones.

Who the devil are they all talking to?

A woman in front of him bent over to fish a candy bar from her overnight bag—
Luggage with wheels, how marvelous!
Her sleeveless shirt rode up from her denim trousers—in 1979 they'd called them jeans—revealing a butterfly tattoo. Embarrassed, he glanced away, but couldn't stop searching for more tattoos. He saw them all around him—on arms, legs, bellies, necks, even faces—different sizes and designs, some so hideous he had to turn away, others, not so absurd, not so ugly.
Something tribal must be going on in this century, when tribal ceremony shouldn't be necessary in a civilized world. It must be an aberration, a ritual left over from a useless tradition or a mindless throwback to the Aurignacian period.

He heard small, tinny voices behind him and turned curiously. A man wearing tinted glasses and a cap ridiculously askew was riveted to something electronic in his hand. H.G. peered over his shoulder. The man was absorbed with a drama on a miniature screen, oblivious of the wait and frustration all around him. H.G. couldn't hold back a huge grin, a warm feeling that validated the “what if” in his soul. In 1899, he had imagined “a moving picture player” in his novel
When the Sleeper Wakes
, a leisure-time
device for when one was not near a theater or concert hall or, say, a discreet hotel room with a pretty girl.

The man noticed him and removed the bud from his ear. He winked. “If you go to an Apple store, they got 'em on sale.”

“Ah, yes,” said H.G. as if sharing a joke, “between the peaches and plums, right . . . ?”

The man gave him a weird look and turned away, but now H.G. was staring at a girl, wondering if the spot on her nose was a diamond or a pimple. Rather than seem unduly strange, he asked, “Excuse me, miss, is there an exchequer who changes currency at the counter?”

“You gotta go to an ATM.”

Helpless, he was about to ask what on earth did she mean when a cheerful, musical voice spared him the humiliation.

“I know where they are.”

He found himself staring up at a woman with cobalt eyes, Medusa-like black hair and perfect breasts behind a pale-blue, V-neck blouse above tight, faded jeans.

She led him toward double doors. “I'm Amber Reeves.”

“Herbert. . . . Herbert Wells.”

The terminal was much larger past the doors—glass walls soaring up to glass ceilings, wide escalators like in 1979 lifting hordes of people, more people descending on the other side. Thousands of conversations counterpointed with PA announcements and aircraft rumbling overhead echoed in the space.

“Where you going?” she asked.

“I'm meeting my wife in San Francisco.”

“Cool.”

He didn't notice her puzzled frown—he felt a sudden urge and had to find a bathroom. He looked for a “gents” or “ladies” sign and missed the sudden change in her expression as well.

“You know what? I'm going there, too.” Now she was wearing a beautiful, excited smile.

Beginning to perspire, he took off his coat, dropped it on a plastic chair and turned to her as if he hadn't heard. “You know, I really must find a loo.”

“You walked right past it.” She nodded at an alcove. “Men's room.”

He half-ran for the restroom, forgetting his coat. She picked it up and followed. He glanced at her as he backpedaled in the men's room, and she pointed at his coat over her arm.

“I've got your jacket. No worries.”

 

The hallway opened on a row of scratched, industrial-gray stalls and block-modern urinals, shadowless under the green-tinged light from fluorescents that had fascinated him in 1979. What drew him here was noise from a blower on the wall, a miniature, chrome version of the monster on the worker's back in the garden at the Getty Museum. A man stood before it rubbing his hands, and H.G. wondered if the device was blowing a disinfectant. As he relieved himself, he thought that a remarkably good idea, then crossed to the line of sinks and washed his hands. He glanced around for the hand towels and saw none. Bewildered, his hands dripping, he went in a stall, and chose a seat cover as a towel as opposed to toilet paper, was both horrified and amused by crude drawings on the wall depicting female and male genitalia in stark ugliness. Names, phone numbers and obscene slogans framed the drawings making a mockery of H.G.'s lofty assumptions about twenty-first-century man.

When he came out of the stall, he saw another man at the sinks. The man removed a silver and midnight-blue object clipped to his ear and began washing his face. H.G. guessed the device was modern technology's answer for hearing loss. Pleased, he went to the blower on the wall, tentatively pushed the button and bathed his own face in what he assumed was wonderfully clean air.

The man finished, looked around for towels, but like H.G., found none. Irritated, he dried his face on his T-shirt, then hurried from the men's room, and H.G. saw that he had forgotten the thing for his ear.

“Sir!” H.G. picked it up and went after the man. “I say, excuse me, old chap!”

The man turned in the hallway.

“You've forgotten your ear trumpet.” H.G. grinned and waved the Bluetooth. “It's quite impressive, I must say.”

The man gave him a look that ran the gamut from astonishment to annoyance to fear, then took his device and ran from the men's room, not a hint of gratitude in his manner.

Trembling, clutching his coat to her breast, Amber Reeves had gone to the plastic chairs, sat down and tried to compose herself. She was certain of it—now that she had seen him up close. He was the same man as the one in the photo display at the museum, though she hadn't quite been prepared for the adorable bushy mustache, not to mention the eyes, an uncompromising, limpid blue. He was H. G. Wells. If not for that brilliant white flash, then the figure running from the time machine in the central gallery, she would've thought she was losing her mind.
They say time travel isn't possible, but, hey, a thousand years ago flying to Paris wasn't, either.
She had followed him from the Getty on the airport shuttle bus. Halfway to LAX, she remembered the lieutenant's meeting, called his voice mail and left a message saying that her car wouldn't start, and the Milan was the worst car ever built. Then she felt guilty, yet only for a moment, the incarnation of H. G. Wells and a strange new reality much too overwhelming.
I'll make it up to the lieutenant
, she thought fleetingly, then had forgotten that, too, the scratchy wool of H.G.'s coat now against her face.