Shipbuilder (3 page)

Sam nodded, with a worried glance at Casey. She was sitting still, wide-eyed and pale. Two bright splotches of red marred her cheeks as she listened to them, but she didn’t try to interrupt.

“I can get you settled for a while,” Riley said. “But what kind of job can you do?”

“Well, I am a physicist. I think I can manage to work in this less advanced time, which, by the way, is considered a heyday of discoveries in many branches of science. I would be thrilled to participate.”

Riley looked alarmed. “I’m not sure if research would be a good idea, Dr. Altair. How would you cope with your advanced knowledge? And what would be the point? If you wanted to, you could just write a textbook, telling us of all the discoveries and knowledge discovered in the next hundred years. It might take us a few years to assimilate it, but just imagine—we’d be a hundred years ahead of ourselves.”

Sam exchanged an uncomfortable look with Casey, who shrugged to show she had no helpful opinion to offer. All three of them were silent. Sam finally spoke, feeling his way.

“That would necessitate announcing to the world that Casey and I have traveled through time. I don’t believe the world is ready for that idea, even if everyone believed us. It’s possible we’d just become prisoners or pawns of governments–I can’t, for instance, see the Queen, or rather, the
King
leaving us alone if he knew about us. I would be terrified of creating an extremely unstable political situation. I’m afraid I can’t even imagine how horrible it would be, Dr. Riley.”

Casey shuddered. “I’d rather we just tried to sink into the woodwork, if you know what I mean. Can we do that? Just work at normal jobs and try to live normal lives in this time?” She glanced at Sam. “We may have made a huge mistake in even talking to Dr. Riley. What if he feels obligated to tell someone, to turn us in?”

Riley shook his head. “Not to worry, Miss Wilson. I wouldn’t dare. I’ve worked too hard to reach this point in my career. I’m not about to throw it away blabbering about time travelers from the future.” He leaned toward Sam, gesturing earnestly. “I would prefer that you find ‘normal jobs,’ as Miss Wilson says. Something outside the field of physics would be best. Try to fit in as well as possible.”

He rubbed his forehead, staring off into space. “If you are from the future, that means the time from now until 2006 has already occurred. Which means we go through it again. What happens if you change something?”

“Not changing things might be impossible, Dr. Riley. You mentioned yourself that just having knowledge of us could change your own research. There are a billion possible variables we might affect at any time, even in all innocence.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Riley sat back and rested his hands in his lap. “Short of both of you committing suicide, though, I think we must take our chances and hope that whatever changes that happen are just small, unimportant ones.”

Casey spoke up, startling both men. “As far as I’m concerned, from the point of view of today, the future hasn’t happened yet. I understand our presence is a paradox, but I don’t see that it changes anything. The future is unknown for us as well as you, and everyone alive today. We have no idea what happens tomorrow. We don’t even know where our next meal is coming from. Except for Dr. Altair’s knowledge of scientific discoveries, the only things we know about are large events, like wars and elections and such. Things we can’t really affect. I don’t see that we’ll be that much of a danger. And if we do change something, how do we know if that’s a bad thing?”

“What if you change something that prevents your own birth?” Riley asked. “There are so many possible paradoxes.”

Casey spread her hands. “So? That seems so spurious. We were born. We’re here, now. Whatever happens from this point on, happens in the normal stream of time. There are no future events that must happen because they happened before. The future hasn’t happened, yet.” She rubbed her forehead. “Jesus, this is giving me a headache.”

Riley raised his brows at her language, but said, “And it’s a circular argument, which I’m afraid to say, is the only argument possible for this situation. We could discuss it forever and still end up where we started. So again, I say you should just try to live normal lives. I agree with you, Miss Wilson.”

“What about the San Francisco earthquake, Casey?” Sam asked.

“What?” She looked confused.

“The 1906 earthquake. That’s a good data point for us. If the earthquake happens in April, with the resulting fire and loss of life and property…” he hesitated. “I don’t know what that tells us. Except that we’ll know that certain events will occur in this “stream of time” as you called it, that did occur in our timeline.”

“We can’t stop an earthquake, Dr. Altair,” Casey pointed out.

“No, we can’t. I suppose if we had sufficient time, we could try to warn them, tell them what to do to prepare for it.”

“But they’d have to know you’re from the future,” Riley stated. “Back to our original problem.”

They were silent for several minutes, then Sam sighed. “A day at a time, I guess. We should try to solve our immediate problems and worry about the larger picture later. Dr. Riley, can you give us advice? How do we find jobs, shelter, clothing? What’s our first step?”

Riley leaned back in his chair. “Belfast is an industrial city, but the country has been through a rough economic time. People are pouring into town from the rural areas, hoping to find work. You’ll have a lot of competition. I can get you a newspaper; you can see what jobs are being offered.”

“This is going to take some thought,” Casey said, leaning forward in her chair, gazing at Sam. “You can’t just waltz into a shop somewhere and expect them to hand you a job. What will you tell them? Who are you? What experience have you had? Where have you worked before this?” She glanced at Riley. “Will we need some kind of identification? You can’t do anything in the future without that. What about now?”

Riley shook his head, bewildered by her quick questions. “Do you mean papers of some kind? No. Most people don’t have any kind of identification. Births, deaths, marriages, things like that are supposed to be recorded, but I don’t believe any employer would ask for something like that. They will want references, however.” He swallowed nervously, glancing at Sam. “I suppose I could write a letter of reference for you. Just general character, skills, knowledge, that kind of thing. It may not be the perfect solution, but it’s a start.”

Sam nodded. “I’d appreciate that. I think it’s safest to stick as close to the truth as possible. We can’t just make up all new personas.” He shrugged in Casey’s direction. “I imagine it would become very difficult to keep our stories straight, if we made everything up.”

Casey and Riley both nodded at this, Riley waiting for further information, Casey no doubt trying to figure out what in her past could be applied to this time period. Sam was wondering the same thing, disturbed at the difficulty of applying a lifetime of physics research to the low-tech task of a job in 1906.

“Do you have a pencil and paper?” he asked Riley. “I’ll write down a few skills and bits of experience you can work into a letter. Casey could do the same thing.”

Riley handed Sam a pad and pencil, but looked Casey over with a critical air. “She’s a girl. She could maybe work at the rope factory or as a servant.”

Casey looked flabbergasted, but Sam said, “Let’s assume her class is a bit higher than that. I don’t believe she has the background to do either of those jobs.”

Riley pursed his lips as he thought. “Seamstress?”

Casey shrugged. “I can sew up a cut in an emergency.”

“What?” Riley seemed quite confused.

“First aid,” Casey explained. “My mother’s a doctor and she made me take extensive first aid training. ‘So I’d be useful in emergencies,’ she always said. The only real job experience I’ve had has been working in the Botanic Garden as a student assistant.”

“Her major was horticulture,” Sam supplied. “Quite useful to Ireland in the twenty-first century.”

Casey nodded, looking hopefully at Riley, but he just shook his head. “I can’t imagine what use a girl would be in the gardens. That’s hard work.”

 Casey rolled her eyes and Sam sighed, turning his attention to his pad of paper.

~~~

When they left Riley's office an hour later, they were not much better off than when they arrived. Sam possessed a generic letter of reference and a newspaper folded to the classified section. He also had in his pocket two five-pound notes that he had reluctantly accepted from Riley, along with directions to a store that had cheap clothes. Riley insisted they take the money, as he had no other help to offer them and they would have needs while looking for work. He assured them it would not last long, but that it was all he could spare. He also asked them not to come back. If a prospective employer called, he would give a good reference, but he hoped to never see them again.

"I think we scare him, Dr. Altair," Casey offered in consolation as she and Sam headed for the business district. "Give him some time to think about it. Maybe his scientific curiosity will get the better of him and he'll be in touch."

"Maybe." Sam was doubtful. "Listen, we may as well get on first names, don't you think?" He stopped and looked at her in regret. "I'm afraid we may be here a long time and we'll be better off if we stick together." He paused at her hesitant expression, then moved over to a bench and sat. Casey followed, but remained standing.

"I don't know you, Dr. Altair," she began, then stopped, and sat down next to him, staring at her feet. "Until last night, I'd never laid eyes on you. Now you're the only person in the world that I know. You seem like a nice enough person," she looked up at him with narrowed eyes, "although perhaps a bit careless at times." He "harrumphed" at that and she smiled a bit, but turned serious, again. "I'm really afraid, Sam," she said. "But I want to survive. I'm not sure what that means in this time period, but I guess we just take it a day at a time. And you're right: we need to stick together."

She stood again, but regarded him, still serious. "So let's call it friends and see what happens. But Sam, I really do know karate. Brown belt."

He laughed and stood as well, rubbing his arm. "I'm convinced you know karate," he said as he started off toward the store. "You're in charge of security."

"Great," she muttered, following after him. "At least I have a job."

Chapter 3

January 25, 1906–March 1906

With judicious use, the ten pounds lasted them several weeks. One pound, and a story about Sam being Casey's guardian, got them a room at a boarding house in a middle-class section of town, with a bed for Casey, a couch that Sam could sleep on, and a folding room divider for privacy. This was expensive for one room, but the landlady, Mrs. Fitzsimmons, kept it clean. Board was included, along with the knowledge that their room was not rented out in shifts to other people. They purchased some inexpensive clothes–pants, suspenders, shirt, vest, jacket and bowler hat for Sam, and for Casey, a skirt, blouse, bloomers, petticoat, camisole, and a large, ugly hat with feathers that the shopkeeper insisted was a favorite of the "best ladies." Casey horrified the shopkeeper by refusing to buy or wear a corset.

They decided that Casey's cloak was neutral enough in style for her to wear, as were her boots, but Sam bought a used overcoat to replace his Kevlar rain jacket. He also bought a pair of shoes and a toothbrush. Casey had a toothbrush in her backpack, along with toothpaste, shrugging at Sam's astonished expression.

 "Sometimes, I stayed at a friend's place overnight, which I obviously should have done instead of walking home last night. It's not such a dumb thing."

Sam didn't think it was dumb at all, and realized that of all the teenage girls who could have stumbled into his experiment, he may have lucked out with the one he got. She seemed to have a good head on her shoulders. She didn't waste time on panic or hysterics, preferring to get on with the task of surviving.

But she was far from okay. Until the battery ran out on her cell phone, Sam would often catch her sitting on the floor in their room, staring blankly at the pictures or messages stored on it. And although she tried to be quiet about it, when she went to bed and the lights were out, he could hear her cry.

~~~

Steady work did not come easily. Sam found occasional temporary positions that lasted for a day or two. He grumbled about “age discrimination,” but there was nothing to be done about it. Casey suggested he try teaching, perhaps at a technical school or even one of the public schools for young children. It turned out, though, that teaching was one profession where past experience and good references were important. And the one reference they had was not to be found, as Casey discovered a couple of weeks later, when Sam arrived for dinner just as the other boarders were starting to eat. She noticed that he looked upset, but let it go until they returned to their room.

“You look like you had a bad day,” she said.

He sat on the sofa, leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Aye, you could call it that.” He said nothing else, and Casey waited until he continued, with a shake of his head. “Riley’s left town.”

“Riley?” She didn’t know what to make of that information. “Where’d he go?”

His gaze shifted to her. She realized he was really angry. “The official word from the university is that he’s on sabbatical. They wouldn’t tell me where he went or even if the sabbatical had been planned, or taken suddenly. My guess is, it’s sudden. I think he took off like a bat out of hell.”

“Because of us?”

“Hell yes, because of us!” Sam curved his hands in front of him, as he if wanted to choke someone, reminding Casey that she didn’t know him very well. Then he dropped his hands, more sad than angry. “I don’t understand it. Why such fear, Casey?” He looked bewildered. “I ask myself how I would have felt if people from the future had shown up on my doorstep. Like you said, considering my work, it was a real possibility. I hope…” he shook his head again, “…that I would have reacted with more professional curiosity. And courtesy.”

“Well, screw ‘im,” Casey said.

“What?” Sam asked, with a startled laugh.

“If he’s that afraid, he’ll be nothing but trouble. We’re better off with him gone.”

“Except he was a reference for us. That’s what caused all the bloody trouble, today. One of the employers I talked to had tried to call Riley and get a personal reference, but found out he was gone, with no warning and no expected date of return. It didn’t look good and he turned me down for the job.” Sam’s lips tightened, his anger back. “You’re right, though. We’ll do it without his help. And I’m going to do what I should have done all along.”

Casey just raised her eyebrows, and he answered, “Look for work as a physicist. It’s what I know how to do, even in this day and age.”

She nodded, a little smile tugging at her lips. “What about documentation? Sure, you can tell people you lost all your papers in a fire, but they’ll want to know why you can’t write to Stanford and have them send you a copy.”

He laughed. “One reason would be that Stanford was not in operation in 1872, which would be the year I got my PhD.”

“Oh.” She laughed with him. “Maybe you went to Cambridge or something?”

He gave it some thought, then asked her, “Do you think it’s possible to have someone counterfeit a degree?”

“We’re going to be regular criminals?”

“Just the bare minimum. I don’t like it either, you know.”

She leaned back in the chair, her legs extended and hands folded over her stomach, the pose incongruous with the Edwardian clothes she wore, as she considered their plight. “I suppose I could live with the ethical quandary, but let’s be practical. How do we find someone who knows how to do that kind of thing? And how do we pay them?”

He looked helpless. “Damned if I know.”

“Could Queen’s test you and give you an honorary degree or something? After all, you have the knowledge and experience. You’re just missing the paperwork.”

He considered that. “Maybe. Let me think about it.”

~~~

Sam decided to contact Albert Einstein, who was living in Bern at this time. “Einstein,” he told Casey, “has an intuitive grasp of time travel and the paradoxes involved. I’ll go slow, but if I can convince him of what’s happened, any thoughts he has can only help.”

He sent a letter, writing a little about his research and the practical applications he had been developing. He would have preferred to go to Bern himself, but he felt responsible for Casey, and was unwilling to drag her across Europe with no money and no guarantee Einstein would be able or willing to work with him.

They talked about Sam working as an “inventor,” creating appliances and technologies they knew would catch on. While this would no doubt make them rich, the obstacles were overwhelming. Even the simplest invention required materials that they could not afford or that did not yet exist, although Casey facetiously suggested he figure out how to invent a better sound system. Her music player no longer worked and she hated how the gramophone mutilated music.

Casey faced predictable discrimination as she looked for work. She was a girl, thus her options were limited. And like young people everywhere (and evidently in all times) she complained about the catch-22 of how to get experience when all the jobs required experience! But one obstacle came from an unexpected source–her nationality. More than once, a possible employer turned her away with the comment, “there’s plenty o’ Irish out of work. Can’t see my way straight to hirin’ an American who could just go home.”

~~~

It was after just such a rejection a few days later, that Casey, her head down against the wind, hurried across a street, fighting back tears at the shopkeeper’s rude shout and slammed door. She paused at the entrance to an alley, her back to the street, and gave vent to a brief gasp of sorrow and rage. She tried to stop, knowing that red eyes would make people think she was on the morning after. Then she gave up, turned her face to the wall, and wept.

Someone brushed past her into the alley and she looked up, startled. A man stood farther in, well-dressed, hands in his coat pockets, hat pushed firmly onto his head as he regarded her with a friendly face. She wiped the tears away as she murmured, “excuse me,” and started to turn.

“Looking for a job?” His voice was mild and she turned back to face him, hope making her voice bright.

“Yes, I am. Do you have a position open?”

He tilted his head deeper into the alley and took her arm. “We can discuss positions a little farther out of the wind and prying eyes, lass. Come along.”

“Oh, for pity’s…” she jerked her arm back and turned to the street, but he grabbed her again and pulled her roughly into the alley, pushing her against the building. His hand covered her throat, just firmly enough to keep her silent as he told her, “Shush, now.” He searched her face a moment, smiling a little.

“Not looking for that kind of work yet, lass?” He smiled wider at her glare. “I’m giving you the option of taking home a few shillings for the work of a few minutes. That’s more than you’ll make applying at stores.”

Ignoring her pounding heart, Casey glared at him, her hands grasping his in an effort to loosen his grip on her throat. “Are you going to force me?” she croaked past his hand. “Strangle me if I say no, or scream? Or will you just let me go like a reasonable person?”

His smile faded as he stared at her. “I’m not a rapist nor a murderer. But only a whore wanders the streets without a chaperone. I’m offering you a business deal.”

Her body tensed in fury. He was not prepared for her to defend herself and she knew she could hurt him. “I have a right to look for honest work, and I have a right to not be molested while I do it. Let me go, now.”

He thought about it before releasing her with a haughty twitch of his brows. “I don’t need any trouble. Another time, perhaps. When you’re hungrier.”

She shoved him a little as she moved past him, muttering “asshole” under her breath, not caring if he heard. He didn’t follow. Her mind swirled and she walked blindly down the street, afraid to stop anywhere, afraid to take the time to pull herself together. The tears had returned but she kept walking, oblivious to anyone around her.

Fucking Edwardians! How can they justify this society? I can’t work at an honest job and I’d be condemned if I was a prostitute! But that’s the only option they give me! I hate them! I feel like I’m in the middle of Les Misérables!

 That’s when she saw the sign in a barber’s window.
We purchase hair!

She hesitated
. That could work. I have lots of hair. But it will only work once.

She stepped inside and stood self-conscious at appraising stares from several men. The proprietor looked over her cheap skirt and blouse and waved her off. “Go somewhere else. I don’t run that kind of place.”

Casey glared at him and lifted her chin in defiance. “I want to inquire about selling my hair. You advertise that you buy it.”

The barber looked at her a bit more critically, then jerked his chin toward a chair. “Sit there. I’ll be with ye in a few minutes.”

It was almost thirty minutes before he judged enough customers had been taken care of and he walked over to examine her locks. She removed the pins that held it up and saw the gleam in his eyes as he ran his fingers through the red curls.

“I’ll pay ye ten shillings for six inches,” he stated with finality.

She winced. “Take it all for two pounds,” was her counter, and he gaped at her.

“All? Are ye sure, Miss? Ye’ll look like a boy.”

She shrugged. “That can only help in finding work. Go ahead. Cut it like a boy’s.” She gazed at him in the mirror and relented at the concern in his eyes. “It’ll grow back, you know.”

He bit his lip as he picked up his comb. “Sure ye don’t want to check with yer mother, first? Ye can come back.”

His innocent question filled her with pain and she found herself blinking back tears. She grabbed the bunch of curls, twisted it harshly, and let it fall again down her back. “Cut it!” she demanded, and closed her eyes.

~~~

On the way home, Casey used a bit of the two pounds to buy a boy's pants, shirt, shoes and cap. As she approached the boarding house, her steps slowed. She kept her eyes on the ground, holding her purchases in front of her like a shield. Her head was strangely light and naked-feeling, and she was cold. But a plan had coalesced in her mind at the barber's protest that she would look like a boy. She had to try.

She had noticed the boys on the streets. Little more than waifs, they darted here and there, doing odd jobs picked up from shopkeepers or strangers, and earning a bit of money. Probably not much money, but Casey figured she had an advantage or two over the young boys. Age was one. Most of the boys were between ten and fifteen, she was twenty. And she had more education than any of them.

Disguised as a boy, she would qualify for all kinds of odd jobs not available to a girl. She’d be safe from people like this morning’s asshole. She could even go into pubs if she needed to. Odd jobs would help in another way, too. Almost any kind of permanent job meant sitting in a dark and dull room somewhere, performing the same task over and over for fifteen hours. A recipe for insanity. If she could pick up enough work, the variety alone would keep her sane.

~~~

Casey plopped the cap on her head and gazed in the small mirror. Her curls were cut almost to her scalp and the cap covered them easily. But her skin was too soft and smooth to be a boy's, her eyebrows too arched, her cheekbones too high. To her, the face looked like a girl's face, but the definitive test would be Sam. She stepped out from behind her privacy screen. Sam glanced up, then did a double take. Eyebrows scaling up to his hair line, he walked around Casey to examine all sides.