The Time Heiress (3 page)

Evie was silent. Yoshi looked at her.

After a moment she spoke. “You say it’s programmed to my body?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said.

“Well what if I gain or lose weight?”

Cassandra steered away from her desire to be condescending. “The particular proportions of your face, your hands, your feet, your bone structure, all those things are programmed in, so that even if your body mass index changes, the computer will still recognize you.”

“That’s a relief,” the young woman breathed. “Can I go in the booth?”

“Sure,” said Yoshi. “Try it out.” He opened the door for her.

She went in, feeling along the entrance. Her head reappeared for a moment. “You’re sure I won’t just pop into the past?”

Yoshi laughed. “Not a chance.”

She withdrew all the way into the chamber. “Will Cassandra and I go at the same time?” she called out from within.

“No,” Cassandra replied. “It’s not safe for both of us to go at once. I’ll go first, and you’ll follow along immediately after. There will only be one minute between our arrivals. When we return to this time, you’ll go first, and I’ll follow.”

“Oh,” said Evie, quickly stepping out of the booth. She shivered. “It makes me feel claustrophobic.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jake, laying a hand on her arm, his blue eyes meeting hers. “I’ve done it about a half a dozen times now, and I’m still in one piece. It’s perfectly safe.”

“I trust you.”

Jake dropped the stylus he was holding. “What other questions do you have?” He bent to retrieve it and in the process knocked an electronic notebook to the floor.

“What happens if there’s an emergency and we have to leave quickly?”

Yoshi guided them all to sit in the lounge area. When Evie’s back was turned, Cassandra jabbed Jake with her elbow.

He stuck his tongue out at her before he explained, “You have to come back to the portal exit. There’s no other way to get back.”

Evie nodded her head.

There were many more questions from the young woman, and the scientists tried to satisfy her concerns until Cassandra glanced at her watch and saw that it was noon.

“Should we finish this conversation over lunch? I’d like to catch the one-thirty train from Grand Central back to Boston. We could eat there. Are you comfortable catching a cab with us, Evie, or do you need to call your chauffer?” She hoped the question didn’t sound obnoxious. She’d promised Professor Carver she would try to be tolerant of the girl’s lifestyle.

“Oh, a cab is fine. As a matter of fact, I sent my driver back to Boston. I want to go back on the train with you, Cassie.”

Cassandra noticed the familiarity of the nickname she’d never authorized Evie to use.

“Great,” she said.

As the train sped up through New England, Cassandra watched the spring colors swim past the window like a smeared impressionist painting. The two women had been mostly silent. Evie sat with her sunglasses on, to not attract attention, Cassandra assumed. The affectation irritated her. The young woman was flipping through messages on a holographic screen that only she could see. Cassandra was also working on her holo-computer and wondered why Evie had even bothered to take the train with her.

“What is that tune?” the young woman asked, looking up.

Cassandra hadn’t been aware she was humming. She thought about it now. “It’s a Chopin prelude I’ve been playing. But I haven’t been at the piano for a couple of days. James tells me this is something I do when I spend too long away from my music.”

“Oh. It was pretty.” She flipped her screen away with a flick of a finger. “So, when will we have to start using our nineteenth-century speech with each other?”

“We probably should be using it now, but since we haven’t been practicing it all day, it won’t hurt to let it go a little longer. Let’s make a pact to start tomorrow, shall we?”

“Cassie, I’ve been wanting to tell you for some time that I’m sorry about the painting.”

“The what? Oh, yeah. Well, that’s okay. I hope you weren’t offended that I returned it. It was just…too much.”

“I understand. I get these impulses sometimes.”

“Well, no harm done.” Cassandra wondered if it were just an impulse that made her want to take the journey.

“Thanks.” She glanced out the window and back. “Anyway, I’m feeling kind of nervous about going through the portal. Jake said it takes about a minute. What happens during that minute?”

Cassandra closed her program. “It’s hard to describe. You feel a sort of vertigo. It’s important to stay calm and breathe. I really can’t stress that enough. Stay calm no matter what!”

“And breathe?”

“Mm-hm. It’s as if you were standing here on the train, and the train was going at lightning speed, but you can’t hold onto anything. You just have to stand in the middle of the aisle with nothing to steady you—it’s like that.” Cassandra watched fear spread over Evie’s face.

“Oh.”

“Because there
is
nothing to hold onto. Once the travel mode is activated, you actually enter the wormhole. You are literally moving through time, which is a different experience than moving through space, because your body isn’t changing location, it’s changing dimension. So there is a sensation like something is moving past you, but you couldn’t reach out and touch that thing if you wanted to. You just have to let it move past. And you should keep your eyes closed.”

“Why?” asked Evie. Her voice had risen several octaves.

“Because the lights are very disorienting.”

“What lights?”

“Well, they’re not really lights: they’re years, decades, centuries, eras. They flash by you in seconds. It looks like lights, and I only know this because I once made the mistake of looking. Trust me, don’t look. It will just make you feel dizzy.”

“Okay then,” gasped Evie, turning pale, “breathe and don’t look.” She took off her sunglasses and wiped a hand across her eyes.

“That’s it in a nutshell. I tend to liken it to the feeling of a bad plane landing—I mean the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. It’s like that.”

The young woman was looking queasy.

“Do you want some water?” Cassandra reached for the fresh water dispenser by their seats.

“Yes, okay.” Evie closed her eyes.

Cassandra handed her the cup. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. It will be over before you know it.”

“Thanks.” Evie drank, opened her eyes, and relaxed.

The trained slowed as they pulled into South Station.

“Oh, we’re here,” said Cassandra. “That was fast.”

They gathered their things and filed off the train with the other passengers. As they entered the station, a teenage boy looked at Evie and pointed.

“That’s Elinah Johnston,” Cassandra heard him say to his friends.

She saw their wrists flick into communication with unseen cohorts. Other travelers heard the name and looked in the direction of the two women.

“Uh-oh,” Evie said.

A small crowd began to form around them.

“Frank, where are you?” Evie said, activating her transmit.

“Just pulling up to the station,” Cassandra heard a man’s voice respond.

“Get here! I need you!”

People held their palms toward Evie and the nearly invisible transmit devices that were always attached to their wrists became sliver-thin cameras snapping pictures of the pop-icon artist. A group of girls approached.

“Can I have your autograph?” one asked.

Evie smiled politely and wrote her name with her finger onto the device in the girl’s palm. The girl squealed, and, with a single command, sent it to myriad friends. Emboldened, the other people in the crowd came forward too.

Cassandra felt the energy of the mob intensify. She and Evie were trapped and she couldn’t see how they would manage to shove their way free. Suddenly, an enormous blonde man came rushing through the doors of the station, with two slightly less statuesque but equally muscle-bound men and one extremely athletic looking woman in his wake. They carved their way through the crowd with a force that did not seem to actively push anyone. The blond man grabbed Evie’s arm and led her away, while the others formed a shield around them.

“Bye, Cassie!” Evie called, waving behind her.

The crowd focused their attention on the red-haired woman left standing alone. Realizing she was not anyone they recognized, they lost interest and meandered away.

Cassandra took a deep breath and shuddered, then stalked off to find the entrance to the metro.

We did as the ferryman said, and after a time walking, came to a little white house near the creek. I shrank back, but Lill was brave. She walked right up to the back door and knocked. A
small old lady answered. Lill told her we were heading up north, and she let us right in. She was most kind. She gave us food and then took us to the cellar stairs and bade us go down. In the small room lit by just one lamp there were two beds, water, soap, and clean clothes that pretty well fit.

We slept sound that night, in the silence of the cellar, and when we woke, the lady gave us a good breakfast. Then she and her husband put us on a wagon that had a hidden area under the boards just for the purpose of hiding runaways. This was before there was an organized system—just folks helping each other along the way.

When we got down under those boards, laying as flat as we could, with sacks of feed and such piled on top, I felt like I was in a coffin. We could hardly move a muscle, and I wanted to scream out and grab some breath. But we three held hands tight and stayed quiet.

Once, we stopped, and the old man took off the sacks and pulled off the boards. I thought he was giving us away—that we’d been tricked. But no, he just wanted to give us some lunch and a chance to let go our water. Then we rode on till night to another house.

From Caleb Stone’s narrative, as remembered by Dr. Cassandra Reilly

*****

Sheets, blankets and pillows, were strewn about the bed and floor of the sparsely furnished room in the Dylan Hotel where Nick and Cassandra were spending their last night together before her departure. They lay sweaty and spent in each other’s arms as the glow of the full moon filtered past the city lights and through their hotel window. The couple was silent now after their energetic love-making, Nick gently stroking Cassandra’s hair away from her forehead. She looked up into his face. He was staring out the window, past the buildings, into what could be seen of the sky.

After a moment, she spoke. “Are you worried about me?”

He didn’t answer, though she could see he was searching for the right thing to say.

“We’re going to be fine,” she offered.

“I know.” He glanced down at her. “It’s just that—”

“From past experience—”

“Yes. Things go wrong sometimes.”

She knew that he was not only thinking about the trouble she and her son had gotten into in England, but also about the death of his wife during her journey to ancient Egypt. “What if something does go wrong?”

He looked at her sharply.

“What will you do?” she continued.

“Well, it depends. If you get into trouble and there’s some way I can help you, I will.”

“You won’t know if something goes wrong.”

“I’ve thought about that.”

“You’re going to have to trust me—and Evie.”

“I do trust you. And I trust that Evie is smart and resourceful. I just worry that she’s not experienced.”

“But I am. It’s going to be all right; why are we having this conversation again?”

He didn’t answer, but got up out of bed. He walked the few steps to the window and leaned against the wall looking down at the street below, just barely shielding himself from the view of passersby or people in other windows. Cassandra’s eyes wandered up and down his sleek, naked body.

“I wish you weren’t doing this,” he said, still staring out the window.

Cassandra sat up, leaning on her elbows. “Nick.” Her scalp began to prickle.

He turned and looked at her. “I’m starting to have a bad feeling. It’s all happened so fast, the planning for this journey, the setting up of the portal. Maybe there’s something we missed. New York back then was so volatile.”

She was now fully frustrated. “Hundreds of thousands of people walked the streets of New York City every day with no harm coming to them.”

“Yes, but they really knew the antebellum city and its dangers.”

“Are you saying I can’t take care of myself?”

“No.” He grabbed his pants off of the floor and yanked them on. “But—”

“But what?”

“Well, you did get into trouble in England, and if it weren’t for me—”

“I would still have been all right! I would have figured it out.” Her voice softened. “Don’t think I wasn’t grateful for your help, but if something goes wrong, Evie and I will figure it out too.”

His eyes narrowed. “And if you don’t?”

“Look, Nick, making mistakes is an inevitable part of the experience.”

He inhaled sharply. “No one is more aware of that than I am.”

“Nick, I’m sorry.”

He quietly put on his shirt and shoes and opened the door. “I’m going to go for a walk. You should get some sleep.” He closed the door. 

She reached down, grabbed the sheets and blankets off the floor, and pulled them over her. As she lay back down, a tear ran onto the pillow. He thought of her as helpless, when she had assumed that he saw her as an equal in every way.

She was not aware that she’d dozed off or how much time had passed when the click of the door startled her eyes open. Nick came to sit next to her on the bed.

“I need to know something.”

“What?”

“That you’ll keep me in your heart and in your mind. That you won’t get distracted from our relationship by…whatever, the lure of the times, the people that you meet.”

“Nick, I’m not going to meet someone else and forget about you in a month!”

“I’m sorry for being jealous. I just love you so much!”

“You need to let me go on this journey without any hindrance. I can’t have emotional turmoil as I begin this project. It’s important to me.”

“You have my support. I’m here for you.” He bent to kiss her. She allowed his lips to press into hers but then turned her head.

“I need to sleep.”

“Of course. Good night.” He climbed under the covers as she rolled away from him and stared out the window at the city.

*****

“Yeah, my band is pretty popular in Boston. You should come hear us play sometime.”

James was perched on the arm of Evie’s chair, his tall, slim body slouched in a casual attitude. Evie was staring off in the direction of the control room.

“Uh-huh.”

“We play a kind of music called entropic interpretation,” James continued. “Have you heard of it?”

“What? Entropic?”

“Interpretation. It’s a mixture of—”

“Can I ask you something, James?”

His dark eyes sparkled. “Sure, sure, whatever!”

“Is it scary when you go through the portal?”

From her vantage point from across the small lounge, Cassandra watched, and listened to her son with amusement.

After a moment he smiled and spoke. “Well,
I
wasn’t scared. Excited, actually. Besides, I was focused on finding my mother.”

Cassandra smirked, but no one noticed.

“And what about when you were in prison? I do not think I could have handled an experience like that.”

“Well, yeah,
that
was scary. But I knew they’d figure out a plan to get me out. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure that nothing like that will happen to you.”

“Will you come and get us if we don’t come back on time?”

“Of course! That’s why I’m on the team. I’m going to be here on June seventh to help oversee your return. ”

Cassandra rolled her eyes.

“James,” Jake called from the control board, “could you come over here?”

“Excuse me,” James said, as he rose and swaggered into the other room.

Cassandra could see, although Evie could not, Jake smack James on the back of the head. Suppressing a laugh, she looked over at Evie and shot her a reassuring smile. She didn’t blame the young woman for feeling nervous. This was always the moment when she felt most tense herself. It didn’t help that there was a flock of fans teeming around the door outside the lab. Try as they had to keep this trip from the press, word had leaked. Cassandra found the whole scene intensely annoying. Her own best-selling book was one thing; Evie’s art groupies were another.

Cassandra scratched at a place on her calf where the crinoline petticoat was poking her. Shannon, the clothing designer, glared at her from her post in the doorway between the rooms, her arms folded sternly across her stout body. Cassandra straightened her back and crossed her ankles, but her hands strayed to the pockets of her dress where money had been sewn in, to reassure herself it was still there. Then, extracting a small hand mirror from her bag, she checked her face and hair. She looked plain, she thought, without makeup. Her eyebrows, eyelashes, and lips were permanently dyed with subtle color, something that most modern women did, but she was so used to it, it had just become part of her face. She glanced enviously at Evie, who was looking down at her lap, smoothing a wrinkle in her dress. Her eyelashes were extraordinarily long, curly, and black. Cassandra wondered if they were natural. Her wine-colored lips wore a perpetual and alluring pout. There was a small cleft in her perfect chin, and when she smiled, as she now did, looking back up at Cassandra, dimples appeared in her youthful cheeks. She was wearing a subdued, gray woolen dress, form fitting through the torso, with a graceful, full skirt. The sleeves were long, and the bell shape near the wrist was set off with black satin ribbon. The same ribbon accented the neckline, the waist, and ran down the front of the bodice, which closed with jet buttons. Cassandra’s own dress was equally reserved. The chocolate brown color matched her red-headed complexion, and she wore a small, amber pin at the neck as her only ornamentation. She knew she was attractive for a woman of her age; her skin was firm, the curves of her face pleasing, but not even the restorative processes she employed that made her look close to twenty years younger could allow her to compete with someone of Evie’s extreme beauty. She sighed and began to hum a Bach fugue, then stopped. She had to stay focused.

The minutes passed quickly, and before she knew it, Jake was calling to them. “Okay, ladies, let’s have you in here.”

They stood, gathering their handbags and shawls, and moved into the control room. James and Yoshi hurried to grab their luggage and squeezed it in along with everyone who was crowded into the small area.

“Yoshi,” said Jake. “Place Cassandra’s bags in the chamber.”

He did so as Cassandra studied the monitor. There was no indication of human life in the alleyway of the portal exit.

“Get ready to go, Cassie.”

She quickly hugged her colleagues and Professor Carver one last time, kissed James on the cheek, and gave Nick a peck on the mouth. She could feel him trying to prolong the kiss but she pulled away. He gave her a searching look, but she ignored it. She couldn’t deal with his getting emotional, and felt glad for the four-week break from him. She stepped into the chamber and took a deep breath, glancing around to make sure her luggage was all there.

“Okay, here we go!” Jake cried.

Abruptly an alarm sounded, and everyone exhaled.

“Wait,” Jake said. “Someone’s standing in front of the alley.”

The person came into the monitor’s sight, paused, and then passed out of it. Although it was Thursday, May seventh in 2122, the same date was a Saturday in 1853. They’d chosen the day for a variety of reasons, one being that on a busy Saturday night, there was more chance of them finding an available hackney coach driving by. The downside was that there might be more people about. But the almanacs they’d checked from 1853 had shown that it was an especially cold May that year. They were hoping that the people who were out and about would be driving rather than walking, and that the streets wouldn’t be too busy.

They waited another moment. “Let’s do it,” said Jake. “Here you go, Cassie, Good luck!”

He activated the travel mode. The chamber doors slid shut. There was a humming sound, and Cassandra’s form disappeared from behind the opaque panel. Evie gasped.

One minute later, the doors slid open.

“Get in, Evie,” Professor Carver said.

She grabbed him and hugged him for reassurance, blew a kiss to the assembled room, and stepped into the chamber as James placed her luggage next to her.

“Bye,” he said with a grin.

“Bye,” she replied with a scared smile.

The scientists all eagerly watched the monitor. Cassandra’s highlighted form appeared, accompanied by her two large bags. They all sighed in relief.

They watched as Cassandra moved through the darkness beyond the confines of the alley, paused, and then stepped out onto the sidewalk. They could see the forms of two people pass by her just then, a woman and a man. Cassandra appeared to nod and they returned the greeting.

Everyone in the control room held their breath. In the chamber, Evie could feel sweat running down her sides from her armpits. She tried to take long, slow breaths. The scientists could see on the monitor Cassandra turn and look behind her into the alley.