The Wells Bequest (15 page)

“There's no point saying you're not cute when you're six inches tall and you look like a kitten who wants to scratch me but doesn't quite know how,” said Jaya.

I actually gnashed my teeth. I'd read about tooth gnashing, but I had no idea people really did it. I wished I
were
a kitten—then at least I would have claws to scratch her with. “Can you please stop shrinking the whole world for ten seconds and tell me what the quark you think you're doing before you do it?” I said.

“Well, first I'm going to see if you're the right size to ride the model time machine,” said Jaya. She reached down toward me with her vast, brown, bony fingers.

Time Passes
-
Backward

I
tensed every muscle in my body, prepared for a bruising squeeze. But she held me gently. She lifted me up to the desk and put me down next to the time machine.

I was amazed at its workmanship. I was used to looking at things through magnifying glasses and microscopes. Usually the objects looked crude up close, with splinters and loose ends. But not the demo time machine—every edge was clean and polished. The Time Traveller who made it must have been an amazing craftsman. I wished I could make things that well.

“Climb on the seat for a second, will you? That looks like a good fit,” said Jaya. “Don't touch the controls! Wait for me. Okay, now I'm going to shrink the stuff I brought,” she continued. “Do you have anything you need shrunk?”

“The maps and stuff. They're in that laundry bag. Wait, don't shrink the battery pack and the adapter.”

Jaya must really have been impatient because she didn't stop to ask why. She took out the items and put my bag next to hers.

I climbed down from the time machine and ran over to the edge of the desk, dodging around pencils, to watch them shrink.

“Then—let's see—I'm going to shrink myself,” said Jaya, plopping the leather bag down on the desk beside me with her fingertips. She had chipped coral-pink polish on her gigantic fingernails. “Okay, here I go.”

“Wait!” I said. “My desk won't be there back in 1895. You better put the time machine on the floor.”

“Oh, you're right.” With her gigantic fingers, she moved the time machine, the bag, and finally me down to the floor.

I looked up at enormous Jaya and the enormous shrink ray. “How are you going to reach the switch?” I asked. “You can't touch it and stand in front of the nozzle at the same time. I would do it for you, but I'm too small.”

“Watch,” she said. She took an unsharpened pencil off my desk and expanded it to the size of a spear. Then she placed the end with the lead in it against the shrink ray's on switch, twisted a knob, and stood in front of the nozzle, where I had been standing when she shrank me. She leaned against the eraser, turning the machine on.

“Jaya! No!” I yelled. She was writhing and shrinking. How would she be able to keep hold of the pencil and turn off the machine before she shrank out of existence?

But somehow she managed it. When she was eye level with the desk, she writhed hard against the pencil and threw the switch. The green light went off and she stopped convulsing. She still looked enormous, but a lot less enormous.

“Relax, Leo,” she said. “I'm good at this. Now I'm going to put the shrink ray on autoshrink and make it smaller. I need to keep it more or less the same scale as me.”

“This would be a lot easier with a third person,” I said. “You should have asked Francis to help us.”

“You're right. I didn't think of that. Well, too late now.” She reached up, switched the shrink ray to autoshrink, and pressed the on switch.

I was impressed to see that while the machine shrank, its electric plug stayed the same size. It made sense—otherwise you couldn't plug it in.

Using the pencil as a switch-poker, she took turns shrinking herself and the shrink ray, back and forth, until she was just my height and the shrink ray was small enough to fit in her traveling bag.

“Here,” she said, pulling a pair of black leather shoes and some clothes out of her bag. “Put these on.”

I looked around for somewhere to change. There wasn't really anywhere good. “Turn around,” I said, ducking behind my desk leg.

“Like I was planning to peek,” said Jaya.

I changed into the old-fashioned clothes. The shoes were too small, and I didn't know what to do with the tie. “How do you . . . ,” I asked, coming out from behind the time machine.

“Hang on, I'm not ready,” said Jaya. “Stupid buttons! Why couldn't they have invented the zipper a few years earlier? Okay, you can come out now. Can you button me, please?”

Jaya was wearing the long, dark gray dress I'd seen her in when she appeared in my room and started the whole adventure. It had puffy sleeves, a tight waist, and a flared skirt that ended just below her ankles. She turned her back and I fumbled down a long row of tiny buttons. What with her undershirt thingie and petticoat, she was covered from head to foot. But somehow I still found it embarrassing to fasten her dress.

Embarrassing and exciting.

“Tickles,” she said.

“Just two more . . . okay, done.”

She turned around. “Well? Put on your tie. A gentleman always wears a necktie.”

“I don't really know how,” I confessed.

“What? You're kidding!” She stared at me like I was some kind of alien. “I'll do it for you.” She reached around my neck with her cool fingers, twitched my collar up, and pulled the tie around my neck.

“Ow. Not so tight!”

“That's how it's supposed to be. Haven't you ever worn a tie? Put on your shoes now.”

“They don't fit. You need to expand them with the shrink ray.”

“I'll do it when we get there.”

“No! I know you're impatient, Jaya, but I'm not going back a zillion years into the past wearing shoes that pinch. What if we have to run away from someone—or something? Do it before we go.”

Jaya sighed. “Fine. But if Simon destroys the world while I'm fussing with your shoes, you're the one who's explaining it to Dr. Rust.”

• • •

Jaya stowed her traveling bag under the time machine's saddle. She put the battery pack and adapter in my laundry bag—they took up half the bag—and stowed it next to her traveling bag, then scrambled on board, leaning forward in the seat. “Get up behind me, Leo,” she said. “Time to go!”

“No,” I said firmly. “I'm driving. Come on, move over.”

She didn't budge. “I told you, I'm good with machinery.”

“It isn't safe. You're way too impatient.”

She shook her head impatiently.

“Also,” I added, “it isn't fair. I'm the one who found the time machine.”

That was a more effective argument. I could see from the way Jaya's forehead wrinkled that her sense of justice was fighting it out with her passion for control.

Justice won. “Go ahead, then,” she said, scooting as far back as she could without falling off the saddle.

I climbed on. She put her arms around my waist, turning me into the tiny guy I had been jealous of way back when I first saw us, the one sharing a saddle with the beautiful girl. I savored the moment.

No savoring for Jaya. “Well? What are you waiting for? Let's go!”

I took a deep breath, leaned forward, and pushed the lever marked
PAST.

• • •

Traveling through time is the weirdest feeling. When you go very fast through space—by car or speedboat, say, or if you've ever ridden a motorcycle—it feels urgent. Everything moves. The world whips past you, trees and houses or buoys and boats, the wind in your hair,
here
vanishing away,
there
looming up to meet you, then rushing by.

When you travel through time, you get the same headlong urgency but minus the
here
and
there.
The result is a horrible, unsettling feeling of motion in stillness. You hurtle without moving. Every second you feel you're about to crash into the unknown.

It's even worse when you're going backward, into the past instead of the future. Not only are you hurtling blindly at unnatural speed (if
speed
is even the word for it), but your body somehow knows that you're going in the wrong direction. Time closes over your head. It's like drowning.

For me, the feeling took the form of overwhelming dread. For Jaya, apparently, it came out as amplified impatience. She hugged me so tight it pinched. “Hurry up, Leo! Can't we go any faster?” she urged in my ear.

“Not without losing count.” The sun was whipping across my south-facing window from west to east, over and over and over, ticking back the days. They flicked dark-light-dark-light. “We need to end up in March 1895. If we go back too far, we'll die!”

“That's decades away! We'll never get there like this! Can't we count the years instead?”

“It's not as safe.”

“Come
on
!”

“All right, I'll try. Watch the sun. When it disappears under the building across the street, that means it's December.” I pushed the lever farther toward
PAST.

My sense of dread intensified as the flickering days smudged together into twilight. It was a brilliant dark blue. The sun blurred into a streak, an arc that rose and fell like a vicious yellow snake. Whenever it vanished behind the downtown buildings, we counted off another December.

“1927, 1926, 1925 . . . ,” chanted Jaya in my ear.

I pulled the lever back.

“No, don't slow down yet! We have thirty more years to go!”

“We're getting close. I'm afraid we'll miss it. 1911, 1910, 1909 . . .”

Jaya dug her fingernails into my ribs. “Come
on,
Leo!”

But she didn't have long to wait. When we hit the winter solstice of 1895, I pulled the lever back almost all the way. Out the window, way over in the park, trees went from leafless to autumn yellow, then deepened from yellow to tired green. They brightened backward through June and May, shrank through April, turned into a yellow spring haze, and then vanished. I counted the days.

“This is it, I think,” I said, pulling the lever almost to the stop position. “March 13.”

“Go back one more day,” said Jaya. “The lab fire starts at 3 a.m. We need to get there before that.”

“Oh, you're right.” I pushed the lever up gently and pulled us one more day into the past. The room was empty now, without even any furniture. The early spring sunshine backward darted across the floorboards and faded into a rainy night. Clouds hid the moon. The sun rose sunset orange in the west.

“Here we are, I think,” I said. “March 12.” I slowed us down in the morning, judging by the light. But there was someone in the room, a gigantic, ghostly-looking workman. He flitted jerkily around the room, sawing something with blurry movements like a video on fast-forward.

“Don't stop! Someone's there! Go forward again!” urged Jaya.

“I see him.” I pulled the
PAST
lever upright and gently pressed the other lever, the one marked
FUTURE.
We slipped forward in time past the workman. When the room was empty, I pulled us to a stop.

Jaya let go of my waist and stepped off the time machine. The place smelled of sawdust and paint. There was an electric light miles away up in the ceiling, but it didn't have any bulbs.

I stepped off the time machine too. It was a huge relief not to be going backward anymore, but I also felt strangely empty.

The floor stretched out like a tan soccer field with the grass worn off. It was brand new—it hadn't even been varnished yet.

“So this is it,” I said. “1895.”

“Come on,” said Jaya. “Let's get big, and let's get going.”

A Steam Train in Manhattan

“
I
hope the power's on,” said Jaya, taking the tiny shrink ray out of her bag. It looked ridiculous with its gigantic, normal-size plug. “Where's the wall outlet?”

We couldn't find one. I guess they hadn't been invented yet. Good thing I'd brought the batteries! Twenty minutes and endless fiddling later, we were back to life size, with the shrink ray and the demo time machine tucked away in the traveling bag.

I wanted to stow the time machine in the apartment while we went downtown to Tesla's lab. I thought it would be safer than dragging it around town through who-knows-what terrible neighborhoods full of thugs and pickpockets. They had gangs called things like the Dead Rabbits and the Roach Guards, who would pour boiling water on people's heads before shooting them.

“That was back in the 1850s,” said Jaya. “Schist! Don't you know
anything
?”

I laughed. “Okay, so maybe the Dead Rabbits are gone. But I'm sure there are new gangs.”

“What's stopping the thieves from coming in here and taking the machines while we're out? Or the guy we just saw?”

She had a point. I shouldered the bag.

Having workmen around meant the doors would be open, so we could get back in when we needed to. We went out the back way, past what would be the janitor's door when the building was finished. Nobody saw us.

I looked back at my building. It seemed much more impressive in the 1890s. For one thing, it was the tallest one on the block. They hadn't yet built the skyscrapers that New York was going to be known for. My building was seven stories tall, with a fancy entrance and lions carved over the windows. It towered over the low brown houses.

“We can take the El downtown,” I said. “It's over on Columbus Avenue.”

We buttoned up our coats, tied our scarves, and walked down my street. It was weird how similar everything was, and how totally different.

The first different thing was the smell. You know how Central Park South reeks from the carriage horses? It was like that everywhere. Some of the sidewalks were paved with slate, and some of the streets had cobblestones. But there were also unpaved streets and streets so covered with mud and muck and horse droppings that I couldn't really tell whether they were paved or not.

The next thing I noticed was the quality of the noise. New York is a loud city, with horns honking, sirens screeping, jackhammers hacking up streets, and people shouting into their cell phones.

Back in 1895 it was just as noisy, but the sounds were different. There was a lot more clattering—all those horses' hooves and carriage wheels bumping over the cobbles. In the side streets, servants banged metal trash cans and ladies practiced pianos in their parlors. On the avenues, knife grinders and nut roasters and hot corn sellers spun their wheels and shouted for customers. Chickens crowed in empty lots—the neighborhood had been farmland just a few years ago. And the horse-drawn fire trucks announced themselves with deafening bells.

Traffic lights hadn't been invented yet, which made crossing the avenues exciting. With cars you only have one person to worry about: the driver. But with carriages, the horse also gets to have an opinion about whether you'll survive the crossing. And horses are a lot bigger than we are.

“Don't be so scared,” said Jaya as we crossed Amsterdam Avenue. “It's just a horse. It's not going to eat you.”

“Who's scared? It's just . . . big,” I said.

As I spoke, the horse in question let loose a loud, yellow stream of pee. It foamed as it hit the cobbles. Jaya jumped back, pulling her skirt away. “All right, all right. I admit cars have some advantages,” she said.

We heard the elevated railroad before we saw it. Smelled it, too. The air got even smokier and a tooth-shaking clatter came from overhead. Three stories up, on top of a looming iron track, a train roared and lurched past.

At the front was an engine like something out of an old children's picture book. Thick coal smoke poured out of its smokestack. I coughed.

“Wow, that thing is
cute
!” exclaimed Jaya. “It's like a whole old-fashioned steam train! On
stilts
! Did you see its little engine? Run, we're missing it!”

I caught her arm. “That's not ours. It's going the wrong way,” I said. The train had been heading north, and we needed to go south.

We walked in the shadow of the track until we reached the staircase that led to the next station. The railings were decorated with curled ironwork.

“Did you bring the 1895 money?” I asked. “The fare should be a nickel.”

“Here you go,” said Jaya, handing me one. It had a lady's head on one side and a
V
on the other.

We climbed the stairs to the station. A guard was standing next to a tall wooden boxy thing. We tried to give him our nickels.

“You need a ticket, sister,” he grunted.

“Oh, okay. Where do we get them?” said Jaya.

He jerked his thumb at another guard at a little window.

That guard was even surlier. He grabbed our nickels and pushed our tickets at us without a word.

The first guard took them, stuck them in the boxy thing, and pulled a lever. The machine gave a snap. He handed us back our tickets, now with holes in them.

The station was stuffy, with grimed-up windows and a little potbellied stove slamming out heat. Overhead, fancy sockets held dim, bare electric bulbs. The place smelled of damp woolen coats and the people wearing them. “Let's wait outside,” suggested Jaya.

We pushed through the double doors to the platform. The wind was sharp, but we didn't have long to wait. Soon a roar shook the station and one of Jaya's cute little engines came tearing into view, pulling a tail of cars. The brakes screamed, the doors opened, and we stepped on.

• • •

The train was crowded. People glanced at us, but nobody stared. Either Jaya had found us convincing 1895 clothes or New Yorkers back then considered it part of basic politeness to mind their own business, just like they do today.

The train rattled past third-floor windows. We saw a man brushing his hair with two handle-less brushes, one in each hand.

“His hair must be really messy if he needs two brushes,” said Jaya.

“
You
might need three,” I said.

“Oh, thanks! My hair isn't
that
messy, is it?” She poked a curl back into her bun. “Yeah, I guess you're right.”

“It looks good messy,” I said.

We passed empty lots, some with brownstones going up, some with old barns falling down. “Look, is that a
goat
?” said Jaya. We passed a woman in an apron standing on a chair, polishing the window with a piece of crumpled newspaper, a cat with its nose to the glass and its ears turned forward, another cat with its ears flattened back against its head, a whole family sitting around a table eating soup, and a man at a desk writing in a big ledger.

It was funny only getting to see the beginnings of things. We saw a man start to walk across a room, a woman start to talk to someone out of sight, three men start to lift a piano—but we were always gone before they'd finished.

Jaya waved at a little girl in a window. We were gone before she could wave back.

“I'd hate to live next to this train, but it's fun seeing into all the houses,” I said.

“My sister's boyfriend lives next to the El up in Harlem,” said Jaya. “She complains about the noise, but Marc says he doesn't even hear it anymore.”

“The trains are quieter in our time, though,” I said.

“The lab is in SoHo,” said Jaya. “Do we have to change to a crosstown train somewhere?”

“No,” I said, “this is the right train. We get off at Bleecker Street. It should head east pretty soon.”

It did, with a stomach-turning lurch and a screech that stabbed me through both ears and smashed together in the middle of my brain. After a block or two, it lurched, screeched, and turned again. From there it was a straight shot downtown.

“Isn't this our stop?” Jaya grabbed my sleeve as our train pulled into the Bleecker Street station. The doors banged shut behind us and the train roared away, shaking the platform. Jaya pushed through the station doors and ran down the stairs to the street, holding up her skirt so she wouldn't trip.

“43 South Fifth Avenue,” she said, reading the number on the building on the corner. “The lab's at number 35—that's downtown from here. Wow, none of this looks the tiniest bit familiar.”

I hurried after her. The elevated tracks threw gloomy shadows over the low, rundown buildings. “It's all NYU buildings in our time,” I said.

Jaya stopped. “Look, I think this is it.”

We had come to a large, dirty, plain-looking factory building on a block of similar buildings. It said
33–35
over the door.

“Do we just, like, knock?” I asked.

Jaya shook her head. “It's Tesla's lab. He's the greatest living inventor. Want to bet it's going to have an electric bell, at least?”

It did. In fact, it had several. The chipped enameled plaque next to the bottom button read
Gillis & Geoghegan, Steamfitters' Supplies.
The one above it had a simple card that read
N. Tesla.
Jaya reached out a gloved finger and pressed it.

Nothing happened for a long time.

Jaya pressed the bell again.

“Give him a minute, Jaya. I don't think they had intercoms back then,” I said.

“I don't see why not. They had telephones,” she argued. She was reaching out to press the bell again when the door opened.

According to the books I'd read, Tesla was a tall man, skeletally thin, with black hair and eyes like blue lightning. This man was shorter than Jaya and stocky, with reddish hair and freckles. He looked like an intelligent calf. He wasn't wearing a jacket, just a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and held in place with black straps. He had a smudge across his forehead, as if he had pushed his hair back with sooty hands.

“Yes?” he asked.

“We're here to see Mr. Tesla,” I said.

He frowned. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but we need to speak to him. It's urgent,” I said.

“Well, he isn't here.”

“That's all right—we can wait for him in his office,” said Jaya.

Tesla's employee stared at her for a moment, halfway between puzzled and hostile. “I'm not authorized to admit strangers,” he said.

“Can we talk to Mr. FitzHenry, then?” I asked.

“Never heard of him.”

Jaya and I glanced at each other. Simon's ancestor must have some other name. That made sense, if you thought about it. The ancestor who was supposed to be Tesla's assistant wasn't on his father's side—it was his grandmother's grandfather.

“When will Mr. Tesla be back?”

“Not before tomorrow. If you'll give me your names, I'll let him know you called.”

“But tomorrow's too late! We need to see him
now,
” persisted Jaya.

The man frowned at her suspiciously. “Who are you? Did the Wizard send you?”

“What wizard? Mr. Tesla is a scientist,” I said.

“You know exactly who I mean. The Wizard of Menlo Park—Thomas Edison. Tell him to stop sending his spies. It's useless. He won't get anything out of any of us.”

“We have nothing to do with Edison! We've never even met him,” said Jaya. She sounded convincingly outraged. “We need to talk to Mr. Tesla right away about a matter of extreme importance. Believe me, he will want to talk to us. Let us in at once, please.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't do that.”

“Then tell us where to find him. He'll be very angry when he finds out you kept us away.”

The man's smudged forehead wrinkled. I could see he was picturing his boss angry. “All right. He's giving a lecture at the Electric Club,” he said.

“The Electric Club? Where's that?”

“17 East 22nd Street, near Fifth Avenue,” said the man. “He won't be back in the lab until tomorrow. If you'll leave a card, I'll tell him you called.”

“We'll go see him at the Electric Club, thanks,” said Jaya.

“Suit yourselves,” said the man, and shut the door in our faces.