Time Snatchers (20 page)

I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Frank is bent on revenge. That’s never a good thing.

I reach for my carving and knife. It’s a long time before I’m able to calm down again.

G
et up, Caleb,” says Raoul, bursting into the dorm. “Nassim mindpatched me. He says you have an appointment with Uncle. Frank is already there, and Abbie is on her way. You’ve got five minutes to get to the fifth floor.”

“Are you serious?” I ask, but I know the answer just by looking at Raoul’s paler-than-usual face.

I stash my carving and scramble off the bed. Why does Uncle want to meet? And then I remember. The Xuande vase. Nassim said that Uncle wants to do the scanning himself. He must have done it, and now he wants to meet with us to announce the results. Why not just tell Nassim and have him tell us? My stomach clenches. None of this can be good.

I take a pit stop in the bathroom. After I wash my hands, I let the faucet run for a minute. Watching the water spiral down into the drain usually relaxes me. But not this morning.

I head upstairs. When I arrive at reception, Nassim is hunched over a crossword puzzle.

“Hello, Caleb,” he says.

He sounds cheery, but you never really know with Nassim. The guy keeps a pretty tight rein on his emotions.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m here for the meeting with Uncle.”

“Right, let’s go.”

The big man turns, and I follow him down the hall.

I’ve got nothing to worry about, I try to reassure myself. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that there’s no way Frank could have outsnatched me on this one. I got the Xuande vase at the earliest possible instant. If he’d gone back any earlier in time, it would still have been baking in the kiln or it wouldn’t exist at all. So why does it feel like I’m marching to my own execution?

The door to Uncle’s office slides open. Nassim and I enter.

Frank and Abbie are seated cross-legged on the floor, their backs to me. Uncle is standing by the aquarium, hands at his hips. He looks sharp in a forest green
hanfu
with matching red dragons down the arms and a red sash. His jeweled sword is in its usual position tucked under the sash.

Two vases rest on simple small tables in the middle of the room. I wonder idly what happened to that special bamboo table Uncle showed us on the holo. Maybe he’s saving it for after the scan.

From here I can’t tell the vases apart. In front of the vase on the left, a simple white placard says
FRANK.
A second one, with my and Abbie’s names, stands before the second vase.

No one moves a muscle when I enter. Uncle appears to be totally engrossed in the aquarium. Which is strange because nothing is going on unless you count Shu Fang and Ting Ting swimming lazily through the water. I’ve never been jealous of a turtle before, but if someone offered me the chance to switch lives with either one of them for however long this meeting took, I’d say yes in a heartbeat.

“Caleb,
zaˇo shàng haˇo
!” says Uncle, turning.

“Good morning, Uncle.”

“Please.” He gestures toward a spot on the floor between Abbie and Frank.

Nassim stays put by the doorway, arms folded over his chest.

As I sit down, Frank shoots me a glance, but I ignore him.

“Now that everyone is present, let us begin,” says Uncle. “You may be wondering why I have called you here this morning. But I think not. I think that you know the reason. After all, the three of you are very intelligent.”

I glance at Abbie out of the corner of my eye. She’s sitting ramrod straight and looks as tense as I feel.

“And being the intelligent time snatchers that you are, you would have very quickly deduced that something in this room is not quite right. What do you think that might be, Caleb?”

My mouth is dry, and my words come out raspy. “There are two vases when there should only be one.”

“Precisely. But why should I complain? I send my time snatchers out to steal one Xuande vase and instead they come back with two. I should be overjoyed, should I not?”

He leaves the question hanging out there. None of us dare touch it.

“But in this case there can only be one original, isn’t that right, Abbie? The other must be a replica.”

“That’s right, Uncle,” says Abbie. To her credit, I don’t detect even a slight hitch in her voice.

Uncle turns back to the aquarium and presses a button on the control panel. Scores of tiny goldfish stream into the aquarium. In a flash, one of the turtles—Ting Ting, I think—is upon them, devouring several with each snap of his jaws. Shu Fang appears content to wait for leftovers.

“Well, then, we have a dilemma. Frank, I will start with you. This was not your snatch. How was it that you became involved?”

“It’s true, Uncle,” Frank says. “This wasn’t my snatch. But I happened to see Caleb and Abbie at Expo 67 when I was there on …
other business. So, I decided to keep an eye on them just to make sure they didn’t mess up.”

“Whatever would make you think that two of my top time snatchers needed a babysitter?” says Uncle. His voice is so cold. I’ve never heard him speak to Frank this way.

I can sense Frank squirming beside me. There’s no good answer to that question. Even for Frank.

“I … I don’t know, Uncle. It was just a feeling I had.”

Uncle paces slowly back and forth in front of the aquarium, hands clasped behind his back. It looks like he is deep in thought, weighing Frank’s words. But it’s all a show. I’ll bet my carving that he planned exactly how this meeting would go long before any of us stepped into his office.

“I see. You had a ‘feeling.’ Tell me, then, at what point did you decide that it was incumbent on you to perform their snatch?”

“At about the twenty-eight-minute mark from when they arrived, I checked up on them and noticed that neither of them was at the snatch zone. So I thought I’d better do the snatch myself.”

A sound escapes from Uncle’s mouth that I’ve never heard before. I can’t be sure, but I think it’s a kind of mocking laugh.

“You seem to have known quite a bit about their snatch,” he says. “What time they arrived, where the snatch zone was and, apparently, what the snatch object was. How was it that you knew all of this when mission information is strictly confidential between me, Nassim and the assigned time snatchers?”

“Caleb was bragging about it in the dorm,” says Frank without skipping a beat. “He said it was a very important snatch to you, Uncle, and rubbed it in my face that he and Abbie were picked to do it and not me and Lydia.”

“That’s a lie,” I shout.

Uncle raises his hand toward me. “Do not interrupt, please. Now, Frank, before you performed the snatch, did you scan the snatch object to determine whether it was a replica?”

“I couldn’t do a proper scan because I didn’t have the mission file,” Frank answers. “But I didn’t need to. Before they abandoned the snatch, I overheard Caleb tell Abbie that he had scanned the snatch object and that it was the original.”

He’s lying through his teeth. But I can see why. He’s trying to pin the blame on me.

“Hmmm,” says Uncle, “if the one you snatched was the original, how is it, then, that there are two vases here?”

“Theirs must be a replica,” says Frank.

“I see,” says Uncle, turning toward me.

“And what do you say, Caleb? Is your vase a replica?”

“No, Uncle, it is not,” I say.

“Well, then, we are no closer to discovering the truth, are we? Abbie, is there anything you care to add to the discussion at this point?”

“No, Uncle,” she says.

Is that all? Isn’t she going to say something like “the one we snatched is definitely the original”? Or “it’s obvious that Frank is lying”? Or even just “I agree with Caleb”?

Uncle lets out a long sigh. “I suppose we should put an end to this mystery. Nassim, the hammer please.”

Hammer? I can’t believe it. He’s going to smash one of the vases! I don’t understand … destroying it won’t tell him if it’s a replica. And what if he destroys the original by mistake?

Nassim strides over to where Uncle is standing and hands him a silver hammer.

“Now, let us see. Which one will we start with first. How about yours, Frank?”

I can see that Frank is trying to hold it together but his right knee is shaking like a leaf. Here’s his chance. Maybe if he says it’s a replica now, he’ll get off a bit easier. But he says nothing.

In a single motion, Uncle raises the hand with the hammer well over his head and brings it smashing down on Frank’s vase.

With a loud crash, the vase shatters into about twenty pieces.

Nassim, broom and dustpan in hand, moves forward, but Uncle holds up his hand, “Not just yet,” he says. Then he bends down, picks up one of the shards and examines it.

I exchange glances with Abbie. It’s clear from her wide eyes that, like me, she has no idea what’s going on.

After a moment, Uncle drops the shard to the floor and moves to his left. Now he’s standing over the vase that I snatched from the kiln near J
ngdézhèn. The hammer is still in his hand. I have a sick feeling in my stomach. Surely he won’t.

Uncle lifts the hammer high over his head, pauses and then brings the hammer smashing down on the Xuande vase.

I gasp.

Somewhere in my brain, it registers that the sound made by the hammer’s contact this time is different. But that thought is overruled by another that screams,
He has just destroyed the original Xuande vase!

The broken remains of the Xuande vase lie on the table. Without a trace of emotion, Uncle lays the hammer down, picks up two of the fragments, studies them and places them back on the table. Then he picks up the largest fragment and turns it this way and that.

As he does this, I notice what looks like a thin dark line on one side of the fragment. At first I think the line is painted on, but then, as Uncle continues to rotate the piece in his hands, I realize that it is not a line at all. It’s an opening. The piece is hollow.

Uncle reaches beneath his
hanfu
and withdraws a pair of tweezers. Next he inserts them into the narrow opening in the shard.

My mouth goes dry. On either side of me, Abbie and Frank are craning their necks forward.

When he withdraws the tweezers, they are gripping something. A strip of paper? No. Not paper. But something that is paper thin.

A smile plays across Uncle’s lips as he holds the brittle thing up to the light.

“Exquisite. Do you know what I’m holding?” he says.

I’m glad Uncle didn’t put my name at the end of his question, because I have no idea.

“This is a fragment of one of the earliest versions of the
Analects
of Confucius. Have you heard about the
Analects
, Caleb?”

“No, Uncle, I haven’t,” I say.

“The
Analects
are the teachings of Confucius, first committed to writing by his students. One of his most passionate students was his grandson, Zisi, who recorded his grandfather’s teachings on strips of bamboo.

“The strips were passed from generation to generation among the descendants of Confucius. Certain of them were acquired by an artisan by the name of Wu Yingxing.”

Uncle is in his element. I’m trying to focus on his story, but all I can do is stare at the pieces of the broken Xuande vase.

“Wu did not have any children to bequeath his treasure to. So, when he became old and sensed his own death was near, he decided to do something special. He made a vase with hollow walls and slipped the precious bamboo strips inside. And to mark the vase as the special one, he engraved upon it the symbol of Confucius.”

Uncle shifts his gaze from me to Frank. I let out a long breath.

“Well, Frank,” says Uncle, “it appears that your vase was the replica and that Caleb and Abbie’s was the original.”

Frank says nothing.

Uncle steps to the right, bends down and picks a shard off the floor. It’s a large, crescent-shaped piece of Frank’s replica. He touches its jagged edge with his middle finger and smiles.