The Far Time Incident (14 page)

Kamal and Abigail sat down cross-legged on the platform. Abigail took a test photo with the large Polaroid camera. After some investigation, she discovered that tugging a white strip out of the camera released the photo. After giving it a good minute, she peeled the photo away from the negative and showed it to us. There was the chief, who had wedged his dark strands under the fedora Dr. Rojas had dug up, and one pretty fab (I’d like to think) science dean’s assistant.

“Well, I have to say I’m kind of excited about this,” I said, having decided that I was too old to squat beside Abigail and Kamal, not to mention the tight skirt. “Traveling back in time
may be old hat to some of you, but it’s not for me. I just wish it was happening under different circumstances.”

“While we’re waiting, Dr. Presnik,” Chief Kirkland said to Helen, “do you mind if I ask you a few questions about Dr. Mooney? For my, uh—report.”

“Ask away, my dear man. What is it that you want to know?”

“Your marriage to Xavier Mooney, how long did it last?” was the question Chief Kirkland chose first, tilting his fedora back as he spoke. Like me, he seemed to think that Helen had figured out what was going on. I hoped he didn’t assume that I’d told her. Kamal and Abigail, for their part, looked surprised at the nature of the question.

Helen raised an eyebrow at the chief. “Our marriage? Just over sixteen years. Xavier and I met and got married when I was a graduate student and he was a junior professor. There is a fourteen-year age difference between us. We were in different departments, of course.”

“Was it a happy marriage?”

Helen was silent for a moment, then said, “It wasn’t an
un
happy one.”

Jacob was still sitting on the lab stool, eagerly watching us with his mouth open. “Why don’t you go see what’s keeping Dr. Rojas?” I said. His face drooped but he headed out of the lab, his shoulders bent as if to say
How unfair
. He would probably tweet that, too.

“And the divorce? What was the reason for that?” the chief asked Helen.

She sighed. “Some people, my dear Chief Kirkland, cannot figure out how to live together even after sixteen years of trying. I walked out one evening in a huff. But really, it was mutual.”

“Any interest on his part in your love life since the divorce?”

“Really, Chief Kirkland. What an idea.”

“And vice versa?”

“Even more absurd.”

“I think I hear Dr. Rojas,” Abigail said thankfully as the lab doors opened and closed with their usual creak, and got to her feet.

“Dr. Rojas, are we good to go?” Helen called out, her strong voice reverberating around the cavernous lab.

There was no answer, but we heard the clicking of keys and, after a moment, the whole lab suddenly seemed to come to life, the quiet hum of the computer equipment vanishing under the rumble and
brr-brr
of motors powering to life. They were just needed to move the mirrors; the specifics of the generator that powered STEWie itself were above my pay grade. (About all I knew was that it involved thorium, the element discovered by a fellow Norwegian, the Reverend Hans Morten Thrane Esmark, and named after the Norse god of thunder.) The mirrors pivoted and inched into position around us like they were executing a slow, complex dance routine.

“Shade your eyes,” Kamal reminded the chief and me.

I positioned myself next to the grad students and felt another pang of doubt about the wisdom of taking them with us. I had a responsibility for their well-being. But would they really be safer if we left them behind? After all, there was probably a murderer loose on campus. I ran out of time to consider the question as the brightness in the room increased to a painful level and I shielded my eyes with my hands—then wished I had an extra pair to cover my ears as the hum of STEWie’s generator grew. There was a high-pitched whine and the platform beneath our feet started to vibrate—gently at first—then harder—it got brighter—louder—I heard a
thump, thump
—I was having trouble keeping my feet steady—the world shook harder than ever—
thump, thump
—I lost my footing—warm air hit my face—

“Ouch.” I let out a sound as my body hit a surface much rougher than the polished glass of STEWie’s platform. I stayed still for a moment, my eyes clenched shut, my ears abuzz, my body aching, then slowly felt around me. My hand touched a patch of grass, dirt, then something squishy. I sensed somebody else moving nearby, then cried out in pain as my fingers met something sharp—my cat-eye glasses, shattered into pieces where I had landed on them—and opened my eyes in the direction of the one sound, the thumping, that was refusing to go away.

I was in a vineyard, on all fours behind a boulder. Down a row of vines heavy with small unripe grapes lay a cobblestone road. An oxcart bounced along it, a figure in a tunic spattered with road dust wearily leading the animals. Odder still was what was
on
the cart—a bloated leather pouch, almost as big as the cart itself. Leather straps secured it in place. An extra strap had been tied to the throat of the pouch to prevent whatever was inside from spilling out.

“So…not New York City, then,” I heard Chief Kirkland whisper behind another boulder, to my right.

Thump, thump.
The repetitive clatter of spoked, iron-rimmed wooden wheels striking rut and stone. Instinctively, the chief and I waited until the cart and its unusual cargo had passed before we pulled ourselves to our feet. I steadied myself on the boulder, which felt slightly cool in the shade of the tall tree we were under. My head throbbed from the lights and sounds we had been subjected to in the TTE lab. The brightness was still there, but now it was from sunlight, not STEWie’s artificial rays.

“Julia,” a voice said from behind the tree. Abigail’s. She was crouching on the tree’s braided aboveground roots. She rose and brushed off her hands. “
That
was odder than usual.”

Kamal was also behind the tree. He stepped out and looked around at the grapevines in their neat rows, then up at the tree, then down at the ground as if he expected it to open up and swallow us whole. Meanwhile, Abigail was pressing keys on her cell phone. “I don’t understand—this is definitely not the airport—” The alarm that was evident in Kamal’s face was there on hers as well.

The air was warm.
Quite
warm, in fact. I proceeded to take off my coat and folded it over the boulder. Next I removed the clip from my hair and let it fall down around my shoulders. Wherever we were, one thing was for sure—there was no need to project an aura of efficiency and competence.

“Here, Ms. Olsen.” Chief Kirkland bent down and picked up my cat-eye glasses from where they had been crushed by my landing. A few of the faux diamonds had been dislodged from the rims and one of the lenses had fallen out and broken. The other had weblike cracks spreading from the center.

“Will you be able to see?” the chief asked. He picked up his gray fedora from where it had tumbled off his head and slid it back on. “You did bring your everyday pair along for backup, didn’t you? In that bag of yours?”

“What? Oh, the cat eyes. They are plain glass. As it happens, my everyday pair are—uh, plain glass as well. As a matter of fact,” I said and took a deep breath of the unexpectedly warm air, “I have twenty-twenty vision.” Why was he harping on eyewear? We had more pressing matters to attend to, like figuring out where we were. Maybe even
when
we were. I stepped over one of the tree roots and reached out to touch the trunk.

“A fig tree,” said Kamal. “An old one.”

The gray bark felt smooth under my fingers. I hoped it wasn’t some side effect from moving around in time, a dulling of sensation perhaps. No, that was silly. My broken glasses hadn’t felt
smooth. The new cut inflicted by the shattered lens had reopened yesterday’s wound from the Geology Department rock, which had started to heal nicely. The fig I’d landed on had left a sticky spot on my other palm—it itched slightly—and I rubbed it off on my skirt. Now there was a sticky spot on my skirt.

“Julia, are you all right?” Abigail asked, moving the cell phone left and right as if searching for better reception. I wondered why she was trying to dial it, since there weren’t any cell towers in 1964—if that was even the year we were in. And where was Helen? I pulled myself together and attempted to explain about the glasses. “Before I started wearing the glasses and the hair clip, I’d often get mistaken for a student. An undergraduate student. I’m told I’m a bit baby faced.

“Yeah, without the glasses you kind of are, Julia,” Kamal said, temporarily distracted. “You do look younger, not at all like you have a real job. Your face is round and your nose is so small—”

Chief Kirkland grunted in agreement (I couldn’t tell which way he meant it—whether he preferred the baby-faced look or my usual look of efficiency and can-do) and took a few steps forward to examine the grapevines, his back to me.

In every movie I’d ever seen with a female assistant or librarian as a character, the assistant would at some point remove the glasses and hair clip that had up until then inexplicably hidden her glamour, beauty, and luxurious locks. Then she would proceed to sweep the hero off his feet. If only. Besides, I had no intention of trying to sweep anyone off his feet—Kamal was a student, and the security chief… Well, his jaw was too square and he called me Ms. Olsen. Not to mention that I wanted a roommate, not a romantic entanglement.

Helen emerged from the overgrown grass by the edge of the stone road. She was holding one arm awkwardly, her eyes following the diminishing outline of the oxcart as the road took
it down the gently sloping terrain. All around us lay a veritable tapestry of orchards, farmhouses, and sun-drenched vineyards. In the direction the cart had come from, the road steepened. We had landed on the lower flank of a small mountain.

“There you are, my dears,” Helen said, turning. “We have clearly arrived somewhere
rustic
. Has anyone spotted a landmark of any use? An electrical post? A plane—or the contrail of a plane? Heard the sound of a car?”

It took me a moment to figure out that by “landmark” she meant an anchor not in space but in
time
.

“Well, we’re definitely not at JFK airport,” Chief Kirkland pointed out the obvious. “Nor does this look like any part of New York state that I’m familiar with. Could we have arrived on the wrong coast? This place reminds me of California wine country. Napa Valley, I’d say, except for that mountain.”

He had a point. It did remind me of California (Quinn and I had eloped in a quickie beach ceremony in San Diego). The sun had jumped higher in the sky and shone brightly and warmly, too warmly. It was a summer sun. I took another deep breath. Winter was a quiet season for the senses on the St. Sunniva campus; here the air hung heavy with heat and there was a sweet aroma to it, like a flower and herb garden in full bloom, and also something else. The unmistakable scent of marine life, of air heavy with salt, of a breezeless summertime seaside.

“I’ll give you the sunshine and grapevines, Chief Kirkland, but the cart that just passed—it was carrying a wineskin, not exactly a modern contrivance.” Helen adjusted her right arm and winced. “I fell. It almost felt like the ground shifted a little just as we landed. Odd.”

“Not so odd for California, perhaps,” Chief Kirkland said, watching a seagull pass high above us in a smooth, wide-winged glide. “And don’t you smell the ocean?”

“Leather wineskins, dear Chief. Oxen. Stone roads…”

“It could still be California,” he countered stubbornly. “They have cattle there. As for the cart—maybe we’re in the middle of a movie set.”

I opened my mouth to point out the ridiculousness of the suggestion, when an almost imperceptible rumble shook the ground beneath us. A purple-green fig fell down by my boots, a large, five-pronged leaf still attached to it.

“There it is again, see?” said Chief Kirkland. “A small earthquake. California. They have fig trees there, don’t they?”

Helen carefully pulled her injured arm out of the sleeve of the fur-lined wool jacket, which would clearly not be needed in the mild climate of wherever we were, California or otherwise, and said briskly, “Mr. Ahmad and Miss Tanner, which one of you has the Callback?”

“I do,” Abigail said, holding up what I’d assumed was a cell phone. On second glance, it didn’t look much like one. The device was more like an old, clunky handheld calculator, with a screen and a number pad.

Chief Kirkland, who had been scanning the road with a frown that belied his insistence that we were on the West Coast in the middle of a movie set, turned back and asked, “What is that?”

“STEWie’s Callback. It reconnects the basket sections and launches us on a reverse trajectory,” Kamal explained, not helpfully at all, I thought. He was glancing up occasionally, as if he expected an asteroid to come crashing down on our heads any minute. I didn’t think he was merely watching out for seagull droppings.

“Imagine that there’s a twisted elastic band that winds through time and connects us to the TTE lab,” Helen said. “A band stretched so thin it needs the merest touch, the smallest
release, to unwind and send us home. That’s what the Callback does.”