The Far Time Incident (13 page)

I drove back to campus humming “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

Oscar complimented my cat-eye glasses as I hurried up the front steps of the TTE building. Once inside, I stopped to consider whether I should have dropped off my shoulder bag in my office. Dr Rojas hadn’t given us instructions one way or the other. I decided not to waste time making a side trip to the History of Science building. Besides, the black, square bag with a snap mechanism would fit seamlessly into 1964 (or many another modern time period) and would be handy in case I needed a tissue or something.

“Julia,” a voice stopped me as I started down the hallway.

Dr. Little, dressed in a blue-green plaid vest, had poked his head out of his office. I had a feeling that he’d been hovering just inside the door trying to figure out what was going on. Asking
directly would have put him in the position of admitting to ignorance, something I suspected he disliked immensely.

“I hear Kirkland is going on a run,” he commented, inviting more information.

“He is.”

“Where?”

“It’s just a test run.”

“Who’s accompanying him? I should have been contacted. Is it Erika?”

“Dr. Helen Presnik.”

“Dr. Presnik? From the English Department? That’s ridiculous.”

“She’s been on many runs. Besides, it wasn’t up to me.” As far as everybody but Dr. Rojas, the dean’s office, the security office, and the board of trustees was concerned, a laser focuser had malfunctioned. Chief Kirkland had been the one to ask for somebody outside the department. Helen, while she had some personal involvement with the case, was the most experienced traveler who wasn’t a member of the TTE Department. Plus it would give Chief Kirkland a chance to ask the professor whatever questions he had for her.

Dr. Little seemed to notice my outfit for the first time. “Are those new glasses?”

“Sixties style,” I said noncommittally. “I really should go.”

His eyes went from the cat-eye glasses to my boots, and back up. “I have great respect for Chief Kirkland,” he said slowly, “but in this case I think he’s overstepping his bounds.”

“He is investigating a—an accidental death. There are no bounds.”

“I’m concerned that he is merely using Mooney’s unfortunate demise to indulge in living out his fantasies.” He eyed my boots and glasses again, his eyes narrowing.

“You think Chief Kirkland has a time travel fantasy?”

“Everyone has a time travel fantasy.”

He probably had a point there, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

“Well, fantasies aside,” I said, “the chief needs to familiarize himself with STEWie so that he can write up his final report. Dean Sunder has asked that we give him our full cooperation.” Dr. Little looked like he was far from convinced that the security chief had anything to offer on what he (as far as I knew) assumed was a technical matter. I hoped I hadn’t said too much. “Unless you’d like me to convey to Dean Sunder that you disagree. I could do so later today, when he and I make a preliminary pass at next year’s budget—”

“Of course, of course, I only meant…” He turned and stalked back into his office, mumbling something about STEWie roster priority, research deadlines, and—I was almost sure—uppity secretaries. I felt a sudden and totally underserved stab of satisfaction that I was a good half a foot taller than he was.

Outside the TTE lab I ran into Dr. Baumgartner, who had her hand on the door handle to the travel apparel closet. “Julia, are you back? Has the chief found out what caused the focuser to malfunction?”

“Back?” It took me a moment to parse what she meant. “No, we’re just on our way out. We’re moving as fast as we can,” I added somewhat snappishly. My exchange with Dr. Little had left me a bit testy.

She seemed taken aback. “Julia, I didn’t mean—it’s just that Gabriel said that he exchanged the faulty focuser, so everything is fine now and I don’t see why the chief—well, let me know when you get back. I’ll change and then wait in my office.”

“Thank you, Dr. Baumgartner. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

I heard the tap-tapping of heels and turned to see Penny Lind, paper coffee cup in hand, approaching in a whirlwind of activity. She greeted us, complimented me on my glasses—“The
fifties are making a comeback, might get a pair myself”—and followed Erika into the travel apparel closet before I could explain that I had been aiming for a different decade.

Inside the lab, I found Gabriel Rojas and Helen Presnik standing side by side. A grim task had brought us together, but I couldn’t help but crack a smile at Helen’s outfit. It was like a winter version of tropical. The boxy, lemon-colored jacket had large gold buttons and a fur trim. There was a matching skirt of the same yellow. She saw me staring. “I know, Julia, I look rather—matronly. I found the suit in the travel apparel closet,” she added, as if wanting to make sure everyone knew that she would never own such an outfit. “It’s woolen. It should be warm enough. Are the shoes acceptable? I don’t usually wear modern apparel on runs.”

It was a strange use of the word
modern
. “Helen, where did you find those?” The orange pumps had large gold buckles. Penny Lind of
Les Styles
would have choked on her fat-free latte.

“I stopped by the retirement home and borrowed them from my mother.” Helen had a purse slung over one shoulder, which meant I could definitely bring mine, too.

Chief Kirkland walked in, wearing a navy suit that was one of his own and not a TTE travel apparel one, judging by the way the material fit over his tall frame. He still managed to look very uncomfortable in it. A dark-gray overcoat lay draped over his shoulders, and he’d chosen a dark-gray tie to complement it. The shiny black of his hair completed the look. He was alone. Officer Van Underberg, I knew, had been dispatched to fetch Xavier Mooney’s things out of storage to start going through the boxes, looking for anything that might shed light on the murderer’s motive. Oscar had gone to help him.

Dr. Rojas chuckled. “Chief Kirkland, your hair is longer than the Beatles’. I believe you need a hat.” I watched
him leave the lab and cross the hallway to the travel apparel closet. I was glad to see that the professor seemed more relaxed. Perhaps passing the baton to Chief Kirkland had done the trick. It would be up to the chief to solve the crime; all Dr. Rojas had to do was compute the coordinates for our JFK landing site, and he could do that sort of thing in his sleep.

Abigail bounced into the lab. Before I could open my mouth to say anything, she announced, “Dr. Rojas said I could go.” Her short hair was back to its natural blonde state. She was wearing a lime-green cotton sweater, pink three-quarter-length pants, and little white sneakers. She looked like she was ready to go flower picking in a spring meadow, which is to say, she looked very unlike her usual self. I could just picture it. She had asked Dr. Rojas if she could go, and he’d given a vague wave of agreement after barely registering the question. I tried to catch Chief Kirkland’s eye. All of Dr. Rojas’s test runs had gone off without a hitch and I was pretty sure that STEWie was safe from an engineering perspective. Still, was it right to let students—plural, because I had no doubt that Kamal was somewhere changing into a sixties outfit—climb into STEWie’s basket without letting them know we had a killer loose on campus? As I tried to figure out whether I should say something, Chief Kirkland sent a barely perceptible shake of his head in my direction. That settled it. “Where did you get the outfit?” I asked Abigail. “From the travel apparel closet?”

“It’s my own stuff. I don’t usually wear the pink and the green together, though.” She had a tiny backpack slung across one shoulder and a large, folding-type Polaroid camera in her hands. “It’s authentic, from the early sixties,” she said of the camera. “Found it on a shelf in the travel apparel closet. We got a whole bunch of stuff off eBay a while back.”

“Aren’t you going to be cold, dear?” Helen asked as Abigail set the camera on a table, opened a film pack, snapped it in, and carefully pulled out the protective black strip.

“I plan on insinuating myself right into the middle of the crowd and taking a photo or two—if anything, I’ll be too warm, Dr. Presnik.”

The doors opened again and Kamal strolled into the lab like he had every right to be there. He still had jeans on but had exchanged his sneakers for brown leather shoes and the
So you want to be a PhD, not a
REAL
doctor?
T-shirt he’d had on earlier with a tie-dyed one. It looked like he had slicked down his thick, dark-brown hair with either water or a hair cream of some sort.

“I didn’t know what to wear,” he said somewhat sheepishly. “I usually don’t have to worry about fitting in, except for having to blend into foliage and stuff.”

Kamal’s thesis had to do with cataloging safe landing zones in Neanderthal Eurasia.

“Tie-dyes are more of a late-sixties fashion item, aren’t they? Plus you’ll be cold,” I said, “unless, like Abigail here, you plan on insinuating yourself right into the middle of the crowd.”

“I probably do, but I’ll go get a coat,” he said, and hurried out of the room.

“I’m not sure those boots of yours are quite 1964 either, Julia,” Helen said with a smile, “but I think we’ll do.”

“If you don’t want the students to come along, I can tell them so,” I said to the chief in a low voice as Abigail and Helen headed toward STEWie’s basket.

He shook his head. “Let them stay. Students are part of STEWie runs. I want to observe a run that’s as typical as possible.”

“How long will we be gone? I left a research program running,” asked Kamal, who had hurried back in with an overcoat.
Behind him was Jacob Jacobson, who looked like he would dash off to the travel closet to change at the first invitation. Dr. Rojas brought up the rear, carrying a gray felt fedora. He handed it to the security chief. “You’ll have an hour there. STEWie will drop you off behind the arrivals building. Find your way to the upper arcade—that should be the best viewing spot. Enjoy yourselves. Don’t go looking for public phones to call your relatives.”

Helen tapped an impatient orange pump. Being an expert in Shakespeare’s English and other bygone languages, she seemed bored with our destination and hadn’t bothered to say much during our viewing of the airport footage in the conference room. I got the sense, without her ever saying a word on the subject, that she had an inkling of what was going on and had volunteered to accompany us because she was rather peeved that someone had done away with Xavier Mooney, as if the job should have been reserved for her and her alone.

“A big crowd, everyone focused on the arriving band, we should be able to move around with relative ease,” she said as the five of us gathered around STEWie’s basket. The fish tank was no longer there, the moody tilapia having presumably been returned to the Genetics lab.

Kamal and Abigail, who had been on a dozen of these runs, scrambled up onto the platform and took standing positions inside the wall-less basket. Dr. Presnik fetched a small stool and used it to step onto the platform. I followed her and, after making sure that we were all secure, Chief Kirkland hoisted himself up, too.

“It will take a few minutes to upload the coordinates,” we heard Dr. Rojas say. One of the larger mirrors blocked our view of what he was doing at the workstation. “I’m sending you to the JFK airport of 1964, more precisely, to the seventh of February—a Friday…early afternoon, a few minutes before the
Beatles’ plane lands…but one can never be too careful. We don’t want you arriving at the wrong building or in the middle of the runway.”

He was starting to make me nervous. The thick glass of the platform under our feet distorted and dimmed the floor lights. The steel frame of the basket gaped open like an unfinished house waiting for its builders to return. I repeated Dr. Rojas’s rules in my head—
One hour there = 133 seconds here. History protects itself. Blend in. There’s always a way back
. Seemed simple enough. I put my coat back on and felt more comfortable in the chilly lab.

Helen spritzed something into her nose. “For our own protection. Probably not necessary for 1964, but protocol is protocol. Here.” She passed out the disposable sprays to the rest of us. “We’ll sanitize again—hands, too—when we get back.”

Jacob, clearly disappointed that he hadn’t been invited along, dropped onto a lab stool, phone in hand.

“No tweets, Jacob,” I said from the basket, spritzing my own nose.

“But Julia—oh, wait, is this trip supposed to be a secret? Oops. I didn’t know that. No one told me.”

“It’s not a secret,” I said. “That doesn’t mean we want everyone on campus receiving a play-by-play of what we’re doing. Put the phone away.”

“I’m kind of excited we’ll get to see the Beatles,” Abigail said as Jacob complied with my order. “Should we scream and swoon with the other fans to blend in? Per Dr. Rojas’s rule number three?”

“Rather than joining you and Julia and the other adoring Beatles fans on the upper arcade,” said Dr. Presnik, “I think I’ll walk around the airport listening to people’s conversations. Maybe take some notes,” the linguist added. “I know it’s policy
for the team to stay together, but in this case it doesn’t seem necessary—”

“Let’s stick to the usual protocols,” Chief Kirkland said. “Though I think I’m going to feel out of place on the arcade, too.”

Helen backed off the idea. “Fine. You’ve got a touch of the exotic about you, Chief Kirkland,” she added. “People will probably assume that you’re an international traveler who’s just arrived from abroad. What’s your background?”

“I’m from Duluth.”

We could hear Dr. Rojas muttering to himself as he worked. “The seventh of February, 1964…let’s make it 13:15…final coordinate check…”

The lab phone rang jarringly. Dr. Rojas picked up and absentmindedly said, “TTE lab, yes?”

There was about thirty seconds of silence on our end, then we heard the professor’s voice again. “Does it have to be now? I’m in the middle of something… I suppose it can wait a few minutes… I’ll be right there.”

He called out, “Give me five minutes, I’ll be right back,” and the lab door creaked open and shut as he hurried out.