The Time Traveler's Almanac (76 page)

I nod sleepily, and the next thing I know we’re standing on the front steps of a brown shingled cottage and Jimmy’s pulling away. I don’t think I’m hungry, but Sara makes scrambled eggs and bacon and toast, and I eat every scrap of it. She runs a hot bath, grimacing at the purpling, thumb-shaped bruises on my upper arms, and gently washes my hair and my back. When she tucks me into bed, pulling a blue quilt around me, and curls up beside me, I start to cry. I feel so battered and so fragile, and I can’t remember the last time someone took care of me this way.

*   *   *

Sunday, February 19, 1956. 5:00 p.m.

I wake up to the sound of rain and the enticing smell of pot roast baking in the oven. Sara has laid out my jeans and a brown sweater at the end of the bed. I put them on, then pad barefoot into the kitchen. There are cardboard boxes piled in one corner, and Jimmy and Sara are sitting at the yellow formica table with cups of tea, talking intently.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” She stands and gives me a hug. “There’s tea in the pot. If you think you’re up to it, Jimmy and I need to tell you a few things.”

“I’m a little sore, but I’ll be okay. I’m not crazy about the 50s, though.” I pour from the heavy ceramic pot. The tea is some sort of Chinese blend, fragrant and smoky. “What’s up?”

“First a question. If my paper isn’t entirely – complete – could there possibly be any repercussions for you?”

I think for a minute. “I don’t think so. If anyone knew exactly what was in it, they wouldn’t have sent me.”

“Splendid. In that case, I’ve come to a decision.” She pats the battered brown briefcase. “In exchange for the extraordinary wad of cash in here, we shall send back a perfectly reasonable-sounding paper. What only the three of us will know is that I have left a few things out. This, for example.” She picks up a pen, scribbles a complex series of numbers and symbols on a piece of paper, and hands it to me.

I study it for a minute. It’s very high-level stuff, but I know enough physics to get the gist of it. “If this really works, it’s the answer to the energy problem. It’s exactly the piece Chambers needs.”

“Very, very good,” she says, smiling. “It’s also the part I will never give him.”

I raise one eyebrow.

“I read the first few chapters of his dissertation this afternoon while you were sleeping,” she says, tapping the manuscript with her pen. “It’s a bit uneven, although parts of it are quite good. Unfortunately, the good parts were written by a graduate student named Gilbert Young.”

I raise the other eyebrow. “But that paper’s what Chambers wins the Nobel for.”

“Son of a bitch.” Jimmy slaps his hand down onto the table. “Gil was working for me while he finished the last of his dissertation. He was a bright guy, original research, solid future – but he started having these headaches. The tumor was inoperable, and he died six months ago. Ray said he’d clean out Gil’s office for me. I just figured he was trying to get back on my good side.”

“We can’t change what Ray does with Gil’s work. But I won’t give him my work to steal in the future.” Sara shoves Chambers’s manuscript to the other side of the table. “Or now. I’ve decided not to present my paper in the morning.”

I feel very lightheaded. I
know
she doesn’t give her paper, but – “Why not?” I ask.

“While I was reading the manuscript this afternoon, I heard that fat sheriff interviewed on the radio. They arrested 90 people at Hazel’s last night, Carol, people like us. People who only wanted to dance with each other. But he kept bragging about how they cleaned out a nest of perverts. And I realized – in a blinding moment of clarity – that the university is a branch of the state, and the sheriff is enforcing the state’s laws. I’m working for people who believe it’s morally right to abuse you – or me – or Jimmy. And I can’t do that any more.”

“Here, here!” Jimmy says, smiling. “The only problem is, as I explained to her this morning, the administration is likely to take a very dim view of being embarrassed in front of every major physicist in the country. Not to mention they feel Sara’s research is university property.” He looks at me and takes a sip of tea. “So we decided it might be best if Sara disappeared for a while.”

I stare at both of them, my mouth open. I have that same odd feeling of
déjà vu
that I did in the car last night.

“I’ve cleaned everything that’s hers out of our office and the lab,” Jimmy says. “It’s all in the trunk of my car.”

“And those,” Sara says, gesturing to the boxes in the corner, “are what I value from my desk and my library here. Other than my Nana’s teapot and some clothes, it’s all I’ll really need for a while. Jimmy’s family has a vacation home out in West Marin, so I won’t have to worry about rent – or privacy.”

I’m still staring. “What about your career?”

Sara puts down her teacup with a bang and begins pacing the floor. “Oh, bugger my career. I’m not giving up my
work,
just the university – and its hypocrisy. If one of my colleagues had a little fling, nothing much would come of it. But as a woman, I’m supposed to be some sort of paragon of unsullied Victorian virtue. Just by being
in
that bar last night, I put my ‘career’ in jeopardy. They’d crucify me if they knew who – or what – I am. I don’t want to live that way any more.”

She brings the teapot to the table and sits down, pouring us each another cup. “End of tirade. But that’s why I had to ask about your money. It’s enough to live on for a good long while, and to buy all the equipment I need. In a few months, with a decent lab, I should be this close,” she says, holding her thumb and forefinger together, “to time travel in practice as well as in theory. And that discovery will be mine – ours. Not the university’s. Not the government’s.”

Jimmy nods. “I’ll stay down here and finish this term. That way I can keep tabs on things and order equipment without arousing suspicion.”

“Won’t they come looking for you?” I ask Sara. I feel very surreal. Part of me has always wanted to know
why
this all happened, and part of me feels like I’m just prompting the part I know comes next.

“Not if they think there’s no reason to look,” Jimmy says. “We’ll take my car back to Hazel’s and pick up hers. Devil’s Slide is only a few miles up the road. It’s—”

“It’s a rainy night,” I finish. “Treacherous stretch of highway. Accidents happen there all the time. They’ll find Sara’s car in the morning, but no body. Washed out to sea. Everyone will think it’s tragic that she died so young,” I say softly. My throat is tight and I’m fighting back tears. “At least I always have.”

They both stare at me. Sara gets up and stands behind me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “So that
is
how it happens?” she asks, hugging me tight. “All along you’ve assumed I’d be dead in the morning?”

I nod. I don’t trust my voice enough to say anything.

To my great surprise, she laughs. “Well, I’m not going to be. One of the first lessons you should have learned as a scientist is never assume,” she says, kissing the top of my head. “But what a terrible secret for you to have been carting about. Thank you for not telling me. It would have ruined a perfectly lovely weekend. Now let’s all have some supper. We’ve a lot to do tonight.”

*   *   *

Monday, February 20, 1956. 12:05 a.m.

“What on earth are you doing?” Sara asks, coming into the kitchen and talking around the toothbrush in her mouth. “It’s our last night – at least for a while. I was rather hoping you’d be waiting in bed when I came out of the bathroom.”

“I will. Two more minutes.” I’m sitting at the kitchen table, rolling a blank sheet of paper into her typewriter. I haven’t let myself think about going back in the morning, about leaving Sara, and I’m delaying our inevitable conversation about it for as long as I can. “While we were driving back from wrecking your car, I had an idea about how to nail Chambers.”

She takes the toothbrush out of her mouth. “It’s a lovely thought, but you know you can’t change anything that happens.”

“I can’t change the past,” I agree. “But I
can
set a bomb with a very long fuse. Like 40 years.”

“What? You look like the cat that’s eaten the canary.” She sits down next to me.

“I’ve retyped the title page to Chambers’s dissertation – with your name on it. First thing in the morning, I’m going to rent a large safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank downtown, and pay the rent in advance. Sometime in 1995, there’ll be a miraculous discovery of a complete Sara Baxter Clarke manuscript. The bomb is that, after her tragic death, the esteemed Dr. Chambers appears to have published it under his own name – and won the Nobel Prize for it.”

“No, you can’t. It’s not my work either, it’s Gil’s and—” she stops in mid-sentence, staring at me. “And he really
is
dead. I don’t suppose I dare give a fig about academic credit anymore, should I?”

“I hope not. Besides, Chambers can’t prove it’s
not
yours. What’s he going to say – Carol McCullough went back to the past and set me up? He’ll look like a total idiot. Without your formula, all he’s got is a time machine that won’t work. Remember, you never present your paper. Where I come from it may be okay to be queer, but time travel is still just science fiction.”

She laughs. “Well, given a choice, I suppose that’s preferable, isn’t it?”

I nod and pull the sheet of paper out of the typewriter.

“You’re quite a resourceful girl, aren’t you?” Sara says, smiling. “I could use an assistant like you.” Then her smile fades and she puts her hand over mine. “I don’t suppose you’d consider staying on for a few months and helping me set up the lab? I know we’ve only known each other for two days. But this – I – us – Oh, dammit, what I’m trying to say is I’m going to miss you.”

I squeeze her hand in return, and we sit silent for a few minutes. I don’t know what to say. Or to do. I don’t want to go back to my own time. There’s nothing for me in that life. A dissertation that I now know isn’t true. An office with a black and white photo of the only person I’ve ever really loved – who’s sitting next to me, holding my hand. I could sit like this forever. But could I stand to live the rest of my life in the closet, hiding who I am and who I love? I’m used to the 90s – I’ve never done research without a computer, or cooked much without a microwave. I’m afraid if I don’t go back tomorrow, I’ll be trapped in this reactionary past forever.

“Sara,” I ask finally, “are you sure your experiments will work?”

She looks at me, her eyes warm and gentle. “If you’re asking if I can promise you an escape back to your own time someday, the answer is no. I can’t promise you anything, love. But if you’re asking if I believe in my work, then yes. I do. Are you thinking of staying, then?”

I nod. “I want to. I just don’t know if I can.”

“Because of last night?” she asks softly.

“That’s part of it. I was raised in a world that’s so different. I don’t feel right here. I don’t belong.”

She kisses my cheek. “I know. But gypsies never belong to the places they travel. They only belong to other gypsies.”

My eyes are misty as she takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom.

*   *   *

Monday, February 20, 1956. 11:30 a.m.

I put the battered leather briefcase on the floor of the supply closet in LeConte Hall and close the door behind me. At 11:37 exactly, I hear the humming start, and when it stops, my shoulders sag with relief. What’s done is done, and all the dies are cast. In Palo Alto an audience of restless physicists is waiting to hear a paper that will never be read. And in Berkeley, far in the future, an equally restless physicist is waiting for a messenger to finally deliver that paper.

But the messenger isn’t coming back. And that may be the least of Chambers’s worries.

This morning I taped the key to the safe deposit box – and a little note about the dissertation inside – into the 1945 bound volume of
The Astrophysical Journal.
My officemate Ted was outraged that no one had checked it out of the physics library since 1955. I’m hoping he’ll be even more outraged when he discovers the secret that’s hidden inside it.

I walk out of LeConte and across campus to the coffee shop where Sara is waiting for me. I don’t like the political climate here, but at least I know that it will change, slowly but surely. Besides, we don’t have to stay in the 50s all the time – in a few months, Sara and I plan to do a lot of traveling. Maybe one day some graduate student will want to study the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Carol McCullough. Stranger things have happened.

My only regret is not being able to see Chambers’s face when he opens that briefcase and there’s no manuscript. Sara and I decided that even sending back an incomplete version of her paper was dangerous. It would give Chambers enough proof that his tempokinetic experiment worked for him to get more funding and try again. So the only thing in the case is an anonymous, undated postcard of the St. Francis Hotel that says:

“Having a wonderful time. Thanks for the ride.”

ON THE WATCHTOWER AT PLATAEA

Garry Kilworth

Garry Kilworth is a critically acclaimed British writer with over eighty novels and short-story collections somewhere out there in the ether, mainly fantasy and science fiction, but a few other genres too. He’s currently writing a science fiction novel with the working title of
Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses.
This story was first published in
Other Edens II
in 1988.

There was the chilling possibility, despite Miriam’s assurance that she would dissuade the government from physical confrontation, that I might receive the order to go out and kill my adversary in the temple. They might use the argument that our future existence depended on an answer to be dredged up from the past. I wondered if I could do such a thing: and if so, how? Would I sneak from the watchtower in the night, like an assassin, and murder him in his bed? Or challenge him to single combat, like a true noble warrior is supposed to? The whole idea of such a confrontation made me feel ill and I prayed that if it should come to such a pass, they would send someone else to do the bloody job. I have no stomach for such things.