The Far Time Incident (40 page)

Nate threw an expert eye over the cheese bowl. “We’ll have to start over. Do you have more of the cheese?”

I pointed to the hefty chunk of Gruyère sitting on the counter, of which I’d only used half.

“We’ll need a touch of flour. Wine or brandy, too, if we can get our hands on some.”

“There’s cornstarch in the cupboard, left over from the non-Newtonian goo we made for Halloween, and I keep a bottle of wine in my office. For emergencies and such,” I explained, leaving the room to get the wine.

My white cabinet had been in storage along with my other office things, and I had reinstated it next to Brittany’s fridge, which I had decided to keep—it would come in handy for stockpiling snacks for department meetings. I had also kept Brittany, who was a graduate student in the Astronomy Department, first to help me out until I got back on my feet, and then as my part-time assistant. The school was happy to let me do it. The trustees were no doubt relieved that none of us had decided to sue, and I was almost tempted to ask if, once the excitement over our return
and Lewis Sunder’s arrest had died down, we could go see the Beatles after all.

I brought the wine back to find that Nate had scrubbed out the congealed cheese at the sink, dried the bowl, and cubed the rest of the Gruyère. He uncorked the bottle and added a good dollop of the white wine to the cubed cheese, which he’d already sprinkled with cornstarch and what looked like nutmeg. He seemed to be fitting in better on campus, I decided, though I don’t know why the sight of him stirring wine into cheese would have led me to that conclusion. He placed the mixture in the microwave and turned it on. “By the way, I pulled some strings to get a birth certificate and a social security number issued for Sabina.” He nodded at the manila envelope sitting on the counter. “That’s what I came by to drop off.”

“You did something illegal?” I was touched by this unexpected side of him.

“Not at all. Just pulled a few strings with Chancellor Evans’s help. Turns out she has a lot of connections.”

“Chancellors tend to.”

“Really, it was no more than what would be done for someone who was headed into the Witness Protection Program. Everything she needs is in that envelope—a birth certificate that’s a translation from an ‘original’ Italian one that’s also in there, immigration papers, a newly issued social security card. We’ve made Abigail her legal guardian.”

“Good. It will make enrolling her in school easier. What was the second thing?”

“Hmm?” The microwave beeped and he stirred the cheese mixture, adjusted the power level, and set it for another minute. “Oh, that. Sabina’s birthday present. I don’t know what to get her.”

The party was tonight. We were sticking to the calendar date for Sabina’s birthday, the Ides of Julius (that is, July 15) and had solved the math problems that had arisen from our jump in time by planning to double-celebrate her thirteenth birthday. Nate was making shrimp curry, Helen and Xavier were bringing walleye sandwiches, and I was contributing mint chocolate chip ice cream, Sabina’s new favorite.

“I got her math books,” I said. “Everything from elementary to junior high. She’s been devouring them. There are no language barriers there, which I think helps a lot. That, and I think she’ll be a scientist one day, though people say that children never grow up to be what you expect them to be.” I thought of something. “You could get her a cell phone, she’s been asking for one.”

He stirred the cheese dip some more and put it back in for a bit. “Do you think she’s ready for that?”

“It would help her keep in touch with Abigail throughout the day. And with Jacob. I think she might be developing a crush on him. She’s fascinated by his tan eyebrows.”

“Cell phones, crushes—I have to say, I’m not ready for that. I feel responsible for her, like I’m her uncle or something.” The microwave gave a final beep and he reached for the cheese bowl. “Ouch, hot.”

I handed him a kitchen towel. “I know what you mean. Any day now, I expect she’ll start calling me Aunt Julia.”

He watched me stack a box of crackers, a plate with apple slices, and the cheese bowl on a tray. I picked up the envelope, thick with documents, from the counter and slipped it under the tray. “See you at the party tonight. Come by early if you need help wrapping Sabina’s new cell phone.”

He held the kitchenette door open for me. “Good luck, Julia.”

“With what?”

“The new dean.”

“Well, she can’t be worse than the old one, can she?” I said, sliding past him with the tray and hurrying over to Dr. Braga’s office before the cheese dip crusted over.

Just outside her office door, my cell phone rang. I managed to answer it, balancing the tray and the documents one-handed. A familiar voice said, “Hey, Jules, it’s Quinn. Not calling about the divorce paperwork. I know about Sabina. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me—but I need a favor in return. I want to go somewhere. The fourteenth century.”

THE END

St. Sunniva University is purely a figment of this author’s imagination. There is no relation to St. Olaf College in Northfield, which is named after the better-known patron saint of Norway. I had more fun than I should have in painting the campus into Minnesota’s landscape of lakes and trees and choosing the names of the buildings.

Like Julia, I am not a historian. It is an extraordinary thing to walk the ancient paving stones of Pompeii. I have taken the liberty of moving wall frescoes and a fountain found elsewhere in town into the as-yet-unexcavated parts visited by Julia and the others. The floor mosaic of Scaurus’s villa did indeed proclaim “Best fish sauce.” I have given Nigidius Maius a house and additional rental quarters beyond the ones he owned by the Herculaneum Gate.

A full translation of Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account can be found in Joanne Berry’s
The Complete Pompeii
. In addition to Berry’s book, I relied on Mary Beard’s
The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found
, Peter Connolly’s
Pompeii
, Jo-Ann Shelton’s
As the Romans Did
, and Alison E. Cooley and M.G.L. Cooley’s
Pompeii: A Sourcebook
as to what life might have been like in 79 AD. The 2007 article in the
Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research
by G. Rolandi, A. Paone, M. Di Lascio, and G. Stefani
titled “The 79 AD Eruption of Somma” provided a helpful summary of wind direction studies and the debate surrounding the Vesuvius eruption date. Special thanks go to Tony O’Connor, tour leader extraordinaire, for patiently answering all the questions I pestered him with. (Where
did
the women go to the bathroom in the public baths?) It bears underlining that any errors, misinterpretations, or downright flights of fancy are my own.

Thanks go out to my agent, Jill Marsal, and to the book’s awesome team at 47North: Alex Carr, Justin Golenbock, Katy Ball, and Patrick Magee. John Baron, Karen McQuestion, and Jill Marsal read an early draft (and, in the case of John, a late draft as well) and provided invaluable feedback. Angela Polidoro was the Jedi master of editing and wielded the editor’s lightsaber with a firm hand and much wit. Jenny Williams went over the manuscript with a sharpened copy editor’s pencil.

The Moon landing hoax quote on
page 73
is from a tweet written by Neil deGrasse Tyson on May 25, 2011.

Thanks go out to both sides of the family, the Maslakovic side and the Baron side, for their unfailing encouragement and support. As always, my most grateful thanks go to my husband, John, and my son, Dennis, without whose support the journey in this book would not have been possible.

Neve Maslakovic is the author of the highly praised debut novel,
Regarding Ducks and Universes
, which was published in February 2011 by AmazonEncore. Before she became a fiction writer, Maslakovic was hard at work finishing her PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford University’s STAR (Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience) Laboratory. Born in communist Yugoslavia, she has called London, New York, and Silicon Valley her home and now lives near Minneapolis/St. Paul with her husband and son.
The Far Time Incident
is Neve Maslakovic’s eagerly anticipated second novel and the first book in a new series of time travel adventures.