The Wells Bequest (11 page)

“Oh, Richmond! That's part of London now,” said Jaya. “My auntie Shanti lives there.”

“That's perfect!” I said. “Your aunt can help us find it.”

“But I don't understand—why does the model time machine disappear if it's still there?”

“It's still right there on the table. He explains that in the book. The people in the story just can't see it because it's moving through time so much faster than they are. It's going so fast it's invisible, like a wheel spinning or a bullet flying. So we just have to find the Time Traveller's house and figure out how to stop time and then grab it.”

Jaya jumped out of her chair and threw her arms around me. “Leo Novikov, you are a genius,” she cried. “And so am I, for finding you!”

I didn't bother to argue that she hadn't found me—that
I
had found
her.
Instead, I lurched out of my chair and threw my own arms around her. We stood there in a crazy, awkward hug with the model stove getting tangled in her hair, and all I could think was how this had to be the happiest moment of my life.

• • •

Like all moments, happy or not, it had to end. So I decided to end it before the hug made Jaya uncomfortable. I opened my arms and backed away slightly.

“Ow,” said Jaya. “You're pulling my hair.”

“Sorry! The stove's caught. Stop wiggling, you're making it worse.” I freed it and then carefully pulled a few of Jaya's long hairs out of the hinge.

“Come on,” said Jaya, tugging me by the arm.

“Okay. Where are we going?”

“To Richmond.”

“Richmond, England? Just like that? How are we getting there?”

“I don't know yet, but Doc will,” said Jaya.

Ms. Minnian was sitting in the guest chair by Dr. Rust's desk. “Jaya! Leo! Aren't you supposed to be in Preservation?” she asked.

“Yes, but this is important. It's the time machine,” said Jaya. “Leo figured out how to find it.”

“You mean how to fix it?” asked Ms. Minnian.

“No, how to find it. Tell them, Leo.”

I explained about the demo model.

Doc cocked an eyebrow. “That sounds distinctly plausible. What do you think, Lucy?”

“Very clever. We've thought about trying to capture the big time machine on one of its trips through time, when we know it was working. But nobody ever thought of looking for the demo model! Shall I alert our friends at the Burton and see if they can capture it?”

“No, don't,” said Dr. Rust, just as Jaya was yelping, “No! Let us! We thought of it!”

Doc waited until she was done and said, “Dr. Pemberley-Potts has doubts about the legality of the Wells Bequest. If she got her hands on the demo model, she'd be sure to declare it a cultural treasure and claim it for the Burton. The lawyers would squabble over it for years, and there's no guarantee the council would side with us—after all, it technically wasn't in Steel's possession when he died.”

“That's nonsense,” said Ms. Minnian. “It's clearly covered in the ‘artifacts to be found' clause.”

“Yes, and most likely the ruling would come down in our favor eventually. But
eventually
can take a long time. I think we'd better go to London ourselves—as quietly as possible.”

“All right,” said Ms. Minnian. “I'll book us plane tickets.”

“But that's not fair! It was Leo's idea!
We
should go,” objected Jaya in a near wail.

Ms. Minnian glanced at her impatiently.

I said, “Won't it look weird if our head repositorian suddenly shows up in London for no reason? If you need it done quietly, you should send me and Jaya.”

“Nobody'll notice a couple of kids,” said Jaya. “We can go spend the weekend with my aunt. That wouldn't draw any attention.”

“I don't know. It's an awfully important mission for a couple of pages,” said Ms. Minnian.

“For the head page, you mean! Remember that Grimm Collection thief? The pages were the ones who caught him, not the librarians.”

“You'll never let us forget it,” said Doc.

“Besides, what's the worst that could happen?” Jaya went on. “We go to England, we try to find the time machine, we fail, and we have a nice weekend with Auntie Shanti.”

Dr. Rust nodded. “True. Since we're talking about expropriating an artifact in a foreign jurisdiction without due process, it has to be done very, very quietly. That all argues for the pages doing it. This is a clandestine operation. No commercial plane flights.”

Ms. Minnian frowned. “Well . . . if you think so, Lee.”

“In fact,” said Dr. Rust, “if you two do get hold of the model time machine, don't bring it here. Keep it somewhere safe at home. I don't want it in our possession until we've been over every inch of the legalities. I'll get in touch with our attorney.”

“Does that mean you're letting me and Leo go? Great!” said Jaya. “How are we going? Jet packs? Flying carpet? Dirigible?”

Jet packs! Flying carpets! Would I ever get used to this place?

“Jet packs would be fun,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Or could we take the
Nautilus
?”

“Too loud and too slow,” said Dr. Rust. “You need something fast, silent, and unnoticeable. We don't want them shooting you down with fighter jets or blowing you up with depth charges.”

“What about the dissolution transporter?” suggested Ms. Minnian. “Is it still checked out?”

“Let's see.” Doc went over to a card file and flipped through it. “No, it's back downstairs in the Chresto. Excellent idea.”

“What's a dissolution transporter?” I asked.

“Sort of like a fax machine for objects,” said Dr. Rust.

“What's a fax machine, then?”

“Oh, you young people!” said Ms. Minnian.

“Never mind about the fax,” said Doc. “A dissolution transporter deconstructs an object—in this case, you—taking note of its exact structure and composition. Then it transfers that information to another location, where the object is reassembled from material there.”

“Kind of like the transporter on
Star Trek
except it only works one way,” said Jaya.

That sounded alarming. “But if we're deconstructed here and reassembled someplace else, won't we turn into other people?”

“Technically, yes. But you'll be other people with the exact same memories. And exact duplicates of your bodies, down to the last quark,” said Ms. Minnian.

“Yes, but I'll be dead! Just because someone else has my memories, that doesn't mean it's me!” I objected.

“It's okay, Leo,” said Jaya. “I've used the diss tran a zillion times and I still feel like myself.”

“Of course you do. You have all of the original Jaya's memories, so of course you
think
you're her. That doesn't mean you
are.
”

“What makes you so sure you're the same Leo who went to bed last night?” said Ms. Minnian. “Dissolution transportation is no more discontinuous than falling asleep and waking up again. But you don't have to go if you're afraid.”

“No, I'm not afraid! I want to go.”

“Great,” said Jaya. “Let's go get beamed.”

Chocolate at the Time Traveller's House

W
e told our parents we were participating in an educational weekend project for the repository—which, if you thought about it, was true. Dr. Rust gave us forms for them to sign.

“Though I don't see why I need a permission slip to visit my own aunt for the weekend,” said Jaya, once we had all reassembled in Doc's office.

“Because the rules apply to you too, young lady, much as you'd like to believe otherwise,” said Ms. Minnian, putting our forms in a folder.

Jaya winked at me behind her back. “You talked to my aunt, right, Doc?”

“She knows you're coming. I caught her at the office, but we didn't have much time to talk. I told her you'd explain when you get there,” said Dr. Rust, handing Ms. Minnian a fist-size metal globe. “Will you do the honors, Lucy? You're so precise.”

“Of course,” said Ms. Minnian. “Stand over here by the window, you two. No, closer together. You've both got your backpacks?” I swiveled slightly to show her mine. She lifted the globe to her eye as if she were looking at us through an old-fashioned camera's viewfinder. “Get closer together—I don't want to leave parts of you behind. Leo, put your arm around Jaya's shoulders. That's right.”

Ms. Minnian lowered the globe. I stood there awkwardly with my arm around Jaya—her shoulders felt surprisingly sharp—while Ms. Minnian fiddled with some rings on the globe's surface.

“Jaya, what's Shanti's address?” she asked.

“Number 127 Sidney Terrace.”

“Is that the north or south side of the street?”

“North.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Hang on—here's the Time Traveller's address,” said Dr. Rust, scribbling something on a blank call slip and handing it to me. “Travel safely, kids. Warm regards to your aunt, Jaya.”

Ms. Minnian lifted the globe to her eye again. “All right. Stand still now. I said
still,
Jaya! Don't fidget, you could lose a finger. Ready, you two?”

“Ready,” said Jaya and I together.

Ms. Minnian pressed something on the globe and the world blinked black.

• • •

A second later—or maybe a lifetime—the world went bright again. I found myself standing on something unstable, looking down at a small living room from an odd angle. It was evening. Little lamps with colored shades spilled pools of cozy light around the room.

“Jaya, really—your shoes!” said a woman with an English accent. “Aren't you a little old to be bouncing on the furniture?”

I looked down, clutching Jaya's shoulder. We were standing on a velvet couch with carved wooden arms. I still felt like myself, only more unsteady.

Jaya shrugged out of my grasp, tumbling me off my feet like a load of laundry. She jumped off the couch and threw her arms around the woman. “Hi, Auntie Shanti!”

“Hi yourself, incorrigible,” said her aunt, hugging her back.

Shanti Rao had her niece's snapping black eyes and long thin arms. She wore her black hair pulled back firmly, but I could almost see it scheming to get loose. “You must be Leo,” she said, holding out her hand. With her accent, she sounded like the narrator on a Masterpiece Theater program.

“Thank you for having us,” I said, taking her hand to shake it. She pulled me to my feet and looked me up and down.

“Too tall to sleep on the sofa,” she said. “Pity. I've only the one guest bed.”

“He can have it,” said Jaya. “He's the guest.”

“I don't mind the floor,” I said. “Really, Ms. Rao.”

“Well, we'll sort it out later. Please call me Auntie Shanti. Hungry?”

Jaya and I nodded.

“Good. Fish and chips? And then you can tell me what on earth the two of you are doing here.”

• • •

Richmond, where Auntie Shanti lived, had bendy streets lined with houses made of red or yellow brick. Some were whitewashed, some trimmed with stone. Some had arched doors or bow windows, some had slate roofs and little gardens in front. It was very pretty and very old.

But it wasn't raining. Wasn't it supposed to rain all the time in England? The air felt cool and pleasant.

Jaya's aunt bought fish and chips “to take away” at a little shop on one of the wider streets. We ate sitting on a bench in a park where a few people were walking their dogs in the cool evening air.

I bit through the crisp crust. It was salty, vinegary, and greasy, in a good way. My teeth met in tender, steaming fish. “This is awesome,” I said. “Why don't we have this stuff at home?”

“I know, right?” said Jaya. “There's that place in the Village where I used to go with Simon, but it's not really the same.”

“You have better pizza in New York, though,” said Auntie Shanti, crumpling up her empty fish paper. “Now, tell me what brings you here.”

I ate my fish while Jaya explained.

“Clever boy,” said Auntie Shanti when she finished.

“You won't tell Pem-Po, will you? I promised Dr. Rust you wouldn't,” said Jaya quickly.

“No, of course not,” said her aunt. “The Wells time machine belongs to the New York repository.”

“Doesn't the Burton have its own time machine anyway?” asked Jaya.

“Well, yes. A few of them,” said Shanti. “But that never stops any repository from wanting another. Besides, the ones at the Burton are weaker than the H. G. Wells machine.”

“Of course—that makes sense,” said Jaya.

“What are you guys talking about?” I asked.

“Each machine follows the principles of its underlying fiction,” said Jaya.

“What does that mean?”

She licked a crumb off her upper lip. “Say you want to travel faster than light. You would need to find a spacecraft from a science-fiction story where faster-than-light travel is possible. If you tried to go faster than light in a rocket from a novel where faster-than-light travel isn't possible, it wouldn't work.”

“But I thought Einstein had proved that
nothing
can ever go faster than light,” I objected.

“Yes, he did, for all practical purposes. That's why the books are science
fiction.
It's what makes the Special Collections special. The objects in the Wells Bequest don't exist in the boring old ordinary world. Or they don't exist
yet.
”

“The same's true of the objects in the other Special Collections—the ones in other repositories, like the Burton,” said Auntie Shanti.

I thought about it. “So some of the things in the Special Collections violate the laws of nature?”

“Of course,” said Jaya. “The whole Grimm Collection, for starters. You've got wishing rings and flying carpets and magic tables that make food appear.”

“Okay, sure, but that's fairy tales. They're not supposed to make logical sense. Science fiction is different. It's supposed to be . . . I don't know. It's supposed to be
possible.
”

“All the science-fiction objects
are
possible, in their own terms,” said Jaya. “They do obey the rules of nature—just
different
rules of nature.”

“But what if those rules contradict each other?” I objected. “The stories all have different rules. They shouldn't all be able to coexist in our world. It's impossible.”

Jaya shrugged. “Would you really want to live in a world where only the possible is possible?”

I laughed. “You're right, I wouldn't. You can be pretty impossible yourself, but I'm glad you're here.”

“Thanks! You're pretty impossible too. Especially that curl.”

I blushed and pushed it out of my eyes. “So how does all this work for the Burton's time machines?” I asked quickly.

“Same as any other science-fiction objects,” said Jaya. “They follow the laws from their stories of origin.”

“Which are what?”

“Well, one of the Burton's time machines, the Tuck machine, comes from a can't-change-the-past story,” said Auntie Shanti. “Whenever the characters in the Tuck novel try to use their time machine to change the past, they fail. They try to shoot Hitler and the gun misfires or they try to launch a missile, but they trip before they can reach the on switch—that sort of thing. According to the rules in Tuck's book, you can't change the past. So the Tuck machine really is only good for tourism. You couldn't use it to correct a mistake or prevent 9/11 or anything like that. And you can't even use it to collect souvenirs—it won't let you take anything home with you.”

“What about the others?” I asked.

“The other two are both weak also. The one from
Tomorrow's Tomorrows Today
only goes to the future. It doesn't have a past setting. Which means if you use it to go to the future, you're stuck there,” said Auntie Shanti. “Some people would say it doesn't really count as a time machine.”

“And the third one?”

“The Kerr machine? That one's a little more interesting. It's from an alternate-worlds story. You know about alternate worlds, right?”

I nodded.

“The Kerr time machine opens a portal to the past or the future. When the characters in the Kerr novel use it to change the past, they splinter off a new future,” said Auntie Shanti. “The world is different for the versions of the characters who exist in the new future. But their actions don't affect the future that they themselves come from.”

“You mean their original present?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

I thought about it. I guess I looked confused because Jaya said, “Look at it this way. Suppose you used the Kerr machine to open a portal and travel back to 1930 and kill Hitler. Then in the world where you did that, World War II would never happen. But that wouldn't affect the world you left from. If you went home in the Kerr time machine, your own world would be the same as ever—World War II would still have happened in that world.”

“I see,” I said. “So you couldn't go back in time and change your
own
past even though you could change the past for other people in alternate universes. Including other versions of you.”

“Right,” said Auntie Shanti. “You would never experience the new past yourself.”

“So how does the Wells machine work? What rules does it follow?” I asked.

“As far as anyone knows, it's unrestricted,” said Auntie Shanti. “H. G. Wells doesn't say anything about not being able to change the past or bring back information from the future, or alternate universes, or anything like that.”

“Wells doesn't even mention the grandfather paradox,” said Jaya. “I bet you could even use his machine to go back in time and kill your grandfather before he met your grandmother, and then you'd never be born. You would probably just disappear.”

“That sounds unbelievably dangerous,” I said. It was exactly what I'd been worrying about when the tiny time machine first appeared in my bedroom.

“All powerful objects are dangerous,” said Jaya. “I like to think things work out all right anyway.”

“Only if you're careful,” I said.

“Don't be a worrywart, Leo,” said Jaya.

“I'm not a worrywart. I'm sensibly cautious!” I finished my fish and chips and crumpled up the wrapper. “Here, want me to throw that away for you?”

“Thanks.” Jaya and her aunt handed me their wrappers. I walked over to a trash basket a few yards behind our bench.

• • •

When I came back, someone was talking to Jaya and her aunt. He had his back to me, but I recognized his stiff posture and reddish-blond hair. It was Simon FitzHenry!

“You came to tell me you forgive me, didn't you?” he was saying.

“I'm just here visiting my aunt for the weekend,” Jaya said.

“But you do forgive me, don't you? You're not still angry?”

“Not angry, just disappointed. I thought you were a different kind of person.”

“I will be. I'll be whatever kind of person you want me to be. You and me—we're not like everyone else. We've always understood each other. Please, Jaya!” He sounded a little desperate. Jaya looked uncomfortable.

I went around the bench and stood next to her. Simon's face contorted when he saw me. “Leo? What are
you
doing here?”

“He's visiting my aunt with me,” said Jaya.

Simon stared at me murderously. Then he turned to Jaya. “I thought you came here to see me, but clearly I'm wrong. I can see I'm not wanted.” He turned on his heel and walked off.

“That was weird,” I said. “How did he know we were here?”

“Well, he does live in London,” said Jaya. “Maybe he was just walking in the park. Should I go after him? I feel bad for him. He really did sound sorry.”

“
Do
you forgive him?” asked Auntie Shanti.

“Sure, I guess. Now that Francis has the job.”