What Was I Thinking? (17 page)

“No.
Nothing except your
locket.”

“I’ll wear that for sure. See you soon, Bert.”

When we got to the building, both Susan and I
parked, slammed out, and ran for the door, laughing. I had my laptop on my
shoulder, so she got the doors. She borrowed it to type up a sales agreement
for the car, a simple contract for our agreement about my stuff and contacting
my parents, and a limited power of attorney for her to sign anything needed to
close out my lease.

I skimmed them over her shoulder as she typed.
When I said they looked fine, she printed them out and I made a run around the
apartment, gathering my deposit book, utility bills, lease, and all keys of all
sorts and dropping them beside her on the kitchen table. The forms might not be
exactly as a lawyer would draw them up, but they expressed our intent clearly,
and they should do.

I raced for the bedroom, skidded to a halt, and
got the hated costume out of the closet. First order of business in my new life
would be a more comfortable dress.
Too bad about my jeans.

I had a sudden thought, and pulled my driver’s
license out of my pocket. I wouldn’t need it anymore. I found my kitchen
scissors, and carefully cut out the photo in a neat oval. It fit inside the
locket perfectly. Susan saw what I was up to and smiled. She stood up to fasten
the necklace for me, and then handed me a pen to sign all of our documents.

There was a pounding on the door, and we both
looked up, startled. I opened it. Bert was there, breathing heavily. “The
downstairs door was open.” Oops.
Lucky me that I didn’t have
to think about what the landlord would have to say about that.

“So I just ran up. I think I miscalculated. We
don’t have as much time as I thought. Can you come now?” He registered what I
was wearing, and said, “Can you dress while I get the Steamer ready for
takeoff, if I promise not to look?”

“Of course.
Susan,
is there anything…”

“Nothing.
Don’t forget your boots. Do you
need help carrying?”

“No. No, thank you.” I gave her a hug and ran
for the garment bag and boots. I grabbed the shoulder bag, too. It would be
anachronistic, but at least it had my basics to get through a day. And it was
cloth, so at least I wouldn’t be taking plastic back before it had been
invented.

When I dashed back into the living room, Bert
was thanking Susan formally.

I really hadn’t known her long at all, and I
was just walking out. I looked back, searching for more words.

“Go!” she said. “Don’t miss your wave! I’ll
send the emails for you as soon as you’re out of sight.”

I nodded took one more deep breath, and ran for
the stairs. Bert followed.

He had double-parked, and the car was running.
He had it in gear before I had my door closed. I didn’t care. I bundled my
stuff in my lap and held on.

He screeched to a halt behind the house,
grabbed the garment bag from me, and raced ahead to unlock an old-fashioned cellar
door. It was the
slanty
kind that seems
to stand alone in the backyard. I ran after him, carrying my boots, and feeling
my shoulder bag smack into my hip at every stride.

We went through the door, leaving it unlocked,
down the stairs, and arrived in the back of the It room. Now there was nothing
at all in it, except the Roland Steamer itself. All the equipment and detritus
that had so clearly identified the room as a working lab were gone, and the
floor was completely bare.

He pointed to a far corner. “If you could dress
over there, I think I can get
It
ready for takeoff
without endangering your virtue.” I started to laugh, but he wasn’t joking, so
I smothered it into a gasp.

Bert took a moment to stand still and face me,
saying seriously. “I do apologize. I should not ask such a thing of you. It’s
just the time, you understand. We may not have as much as an hour left.”

Laughing and then justifying the laughter would
just waste time.
Later.
“It’s fine. Go to it.”

I watched as he strode purposefully to a part
of the wooden floor that looked exactly like the rest of it, knelt, did
something fiddly, and then pulled up a plank. He reached in, twisted his hand a
few times, and pulled upward. I saw now that it was a large safe, obviously
mounted in the sub-floor, and opening upward.

“We can put your modern clothes in here,” he
said. “
and
if we come back, they should be waiting for
you. I am the only one with the combination.”

I took the garment bag and headed for my
corner. It still took me the better part of an hour to put my hair up into the
Gibson Girl style, so I just moved the bag of styling supplies from the pocket
of the garment bag into my shoulder bag, to worry about later.

I kicked off my sneakers, undid my jeans, and
let them drop to the floor. Next was the T-shirt.
Over the
head and onto the floor.
On went the Gibson Girl underthings, right over
my own. The getup didn’t come with a bra or anything like comfortable panties,
anyway.

I was just finishing the last of the zillion
tiny buttons on the blouse when Bert called out. “It’s time! We have to go!”

I grabbed my boots, clenched the top of the
blouse closed in my other hand, and ran to him.

“Good. Hop in. I added the harnesses after
seeing seatbelts in your modern autos.
Great idea.
They will make the journey much safer than the last one. Let me fasten you in,
and then you can finish your buttons after takeoff. I won’t look, I promise.”

This time I did laugh. I was exhilarated and
giddy. “It’s okay. If you really love me, kiss me.”

He did. And then he clicked my harness shut,
did his own, sealed the doors, and did something incomprehensible with the
controls. It lurched toward the stairs, started to hover just above them,
shuddered as if it had hit a barrier, and then everything spun in an insane
kaleidoscope.

It was a very bumpy ride, and took a while,
much to my surprise. I had just assumed it would be instantaneous, but I guess
the movies got that one wrong. I was more than glad that Bert had learned about
seatbelts before I hitched a ride, and I clung for dear life until things
settled down a little.

We could see through the Plexiglas windows he’d
been installing the first time I saw
It
, but I
couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. The view wasn’t as simple and pretty
as the streaming stars that indicate a jump into hyperspace on Star Trek, it
wasn’t as distant and tidy as looking down at the ground from an airplane, and
it wasn’t as close and clear as the landscape from a car. It was sort of all of
them and none. Things went by at least as fast as the streaming stars of
imaginary warp drive, but they weren’t recognizable as stars, or anything else.
They looked big and dangerous, sometimes, and sometimes little and colorful.
Bert seemed to be steering madly around, under, above, to avoid the obstacles.
Sometimes we glanced off something and the Roland Steamer shuddered, but I
clung to the seat harness and tried not to scream, Bert hunched over the
controls and concentrated, and at some point we settled into a steady flight,
and the obstacles seemed to rotate around us instead of leaping at us.

Eventually, I released my hold on the harness
and looked over at Bert. He was relaxing a little too, sitting up straighter
and resting his hands on the controls instead of gripping them with all his
strength. My breathing was beginning to return to normal, so I tried speaking.

“Can we talk now? Or will it disturb your
concentration?”

“I think we can talk. I’ve never had a
passenger before.” He smiled at me, a little shakily.

Now that the flight—or whatever it was—had
steadied, it wasn’t very loud. The tight engineering I’d noticed the first time
Bert showed me his invention was even more obvious now.

“Is it a long trip?”

“It’s hard to say, since you can’t really
measure time during the transit. When I came forward, it felt like about half a
day. I didn’t need to sleep, and I wasn’t overly hungry in the gap, but that’s
about all I can use as an estimate. Are you sufficiently comfortable? I’m sorry
I didn’t even think to tell you how long it would be.”

“Yes, I’m okay. I’m just surprised. I thought
it would be instantaneous.”

He grinned at me. “That’s what I assumed about
your jet aeroplane travel, before my first trip on it. I was very
disappointed.”

“I think we’re all disappointed in air travel.
Maybe you’ll improve on it, after you’ve perfected time travel.”

“Maybe so.
Excuse me. I have to adjust the
calendar sextant.” He turned back to the controls and moved something around.
When he had satisfied himself that our course was right, he excitedly explained
the controls, and then he pointed out all the other features of his invention
to me. I admired it all, and didn’t slow him down to answer questions. He was
excited and I didn’t want to spoil it by saying I didn’t understand. There
would be plenty of time for the science of the thing later.

We landed with something of a thump and
It
shivered slowly to immobility. Our surroundings came into
focus and, to my surprise, I recognized them.

I turned to Bert in wonder. “We’re back in the
It room,” I said.

“Yes. That’s what it—the room—was built for. To
have a space kept completely clear for this buggy,” he patted the dashboard
affectionately, “to take off and land without bumping into obstacles or causing
alarm. That’s the real reason for the house, and the trust.”

I didn’t quite follow. “It is?”

“It is. The trust keeps the house available to
me and habitable for all time—beginning the day it was built in 1900. The rules
of the trust forbid the use of the cellar by anyone other than the recipient of
the trust, which would obviously be me, though the trust does not say that
explicitly. That way, the space is kept empty. Even entry into it is forbidden,
except for an annual cleaning. No changes to it can be made except for updates
required by building code.”

Interesting.
He really had thought this out.

“Are you ready to get out?”

I was and I wasn’t. I was quite as ready to
stand up and stretch as after any long ride, but I was also very nervous. I
nodded, and let Bert help me with my harness and the door. They were
unfamiliar, and I was happy for the help.

I stepped down, and my legs wobbled a little
the way I’ve read they do after an ocean voyage. Bert steadied me with a gentle
hand on my arm, and then he looked down and smiled at me.

“Thank you for coming, Addie. You won’t regret
it, I promise.” And he kissed me, gently at first, in what I was coming to
recognize as his version of an appropriate gesture between a betrothed
couple
, and then deeper, in what
I
thought was a good kiss. It was all good, and when we stepped
back, we were both trembling a little.

“I love you, Bert.” It felt good to say it—so
good
that I didn’t care how uncomfortable the stupid dress
was.

“I love you, too.” He nudged my cheek gently
with the back of his hand. “But we should go upstairs and see when we arrived,
and who is here.”

I nodded.
“Of course.
Aren’t you able to control the date you arrive?”

“A little, but it’s not an exact science yet,
as they say in your time.” He grinned, and I grinned back. We were both a
little giddy.

“I can steer, as you see, but it’s more like
using a rudder on a ship than like steering your modern automobile. It’s not
very precise. One intends to arrive at Boston Harbor, but depending on
currents, weather, and accuracy of calculations, one may disembark at New York
or Charleston.”

“I see. So we need to go upstairs and see how
far we are from Boston?”

“Yes, and if we haven’t missed by much, Mother
will still be living upstairs and she will tell us when we are. If we’ve missed
by a lot—landed in Nova Scotia, so to speak, or Jamaica—we’ll need to explain
who we are and how we got here to whoever is up there.”

“How will we do that?”

“Carefully.”
He grinned again. “I learned
that joke from TV. It’s good, isn’t it?”

I laughed. “Bert, are you giddy from the trip?”

“I am, and from finding you, my love.” His grin
softened, and he pulled me to him. “One last time before we re-establish proper
behavior,” he whispered, sliding his hand into my hair as he tipped my face up
for a kiss.

The phrase “re-establish proper behavior”
rattled ominously in my mind, but I pushed it away, and gave myself over to the
feel of being so loved and wanted, and so thoroughly kissed. Bert would
probably die on the spot if he knew I could tell, but he
wanted
me.

He pulled back far too soon, and stroked my
hair back into place. “Now, let me get out some papers in case we do have to
prove who we are, and we’ll go.” He headed for the floor safe.