Portals in Time 3

by Michael Beals

  Kat almost panicked. She may only have seconds before Grantham walked out of the park. Making a final check that she’d keyed in the right date, she tapped her wrist. The sunlight seemed to flicker, and then the whole scene changed. The foliage was thicker; there were more trees, and she could smell freshly mown grass. The footpath she was standing on was wider, and two people were running in tracksuits. But most noticeable was the absence of Hansom cabs and the height of the buildings on Central Park West. There was also a distant roar of automobile traffic.

  Oh my God, she thought, I’m here. I’m standing in Central Park in 2025. She squinted at Grantham. He was walking briskly and was almost out of the park. Pulling down her sleeve and gripping the field glasses, she raced after him. As she’d suspected, there were no checkered cabs. There weren’t even parked vehicles, just a continuous stream of cars that she’d never seen before. They were smaller and more streamlined than the cars she was familiar with, and they were quieter. Reaching the sidewalk, she searched around for Grantham and immediately spotted him crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing.

  Sprinting over to it before the walk sign changed to red, she followed him across the road. Grantham suddenly turned left into a side street where cars were parked on meters. Grantham walked over to and unlocked the driver’s door of a dark, metallic gray and beautifully streamlined Aston Martin. She watched him climb in and slam the door. Even if Kat managed to hail one of the yellow cabs she’d seen, there was no way she could afford to follow him, not if he’d driven from out of town, which he almost certainly had. If Grantham lived in the city, he’d have caught a cab. Seeing a child’s crayon lying in the gutter, Kat picked it up and wrote the license plate on the back of her hand. If they could trace the license number, they would know where Grantham lived.

  She watched as he drove away. She knew two things now, Grantham lived in 2025, and in all likelihood, didn’t live in the city. Walking back to the main road, she stopped at a newsstand and picked up a New York Times to read the date. It was Sunday, August 17th. Grantham would never leave an Aston Martin parked on a meter for longer than a few hours, which meant that at this moment in time, August 17 was his go-to date. It was also a Sunday. Was Sunday a preferred day of the week for escapees, or was it Grantham’s preferred day? If time in Hell was relatively the same as the real world and escapees teleported once a week, Grantham’s next trip to 1866 would be on Sunday, August 24th. The only question was, would he go to 1866, or would he ring the changes? The only way she’d find out would be by doing the whole Quiggly’s Gulch thing all over again, and she wasn’t about to take on another spy.

  Of course, there was another answer. If Kat and Dore were to open a New York City detective agency in 2025, she’d be able to find Grantham’s address by searching the DMV. Simple. Except that to open up as a detective agency, she would need a license, and she had no idea how to do that in 2025. 1954, however, was a different proposition altogether. If she could stop MI6 from trying to have her killed, she could easily open an agency, and the records would be carried forward.

  “You gonna buy that, lady?”

  She glanced at the owner of the newsstand. Should she buy the paper? Maybe she should. It was a lovely day, and she wasn’t in a hurry. Perhaps she should go back to the park and sit down at one of the outdoor cafes. She hadn’t read a newspaper since visiting her cousin in Virginia. She looked at the price. It was $5.00, which meant breaking into one of the colorful twenties she’d brought. Not that it mattered. It would probably cost $5.00 for a coffee. Paying for the hefty paper, she made her way back to the pedestrian crossing. A group of children were waiting for the walk light to change. Some were carrying boards with wheels, and she was shocked by the things they were saying.

  “Why are we waiting for a green?” one of the kids asked. “I can skateboard faster than this goddamn traffic is moving.”

  “Because we promised my dad we would,” one of the girls said.

  “Yeah, well, your dad’s a fucking wuss.”

  “Go fuck your self,” the girl retorted.

  Kat was incensed. “Hey kid, is that any way for a young lady to speak?”

  The little girls stared at her. “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?”

  Before Kat could reply, the walk light turned green, and the children moved away, but they didn’t walk across the road, they jumped on their skateboards and raced each other, yelling, and screaming with laughter at the girl who’d given Kat lip.

  It didn’t take long for Kat to find an outdoor coffee stall with tables and chairs. There were two by the lake, and the first one was Italian. What surprised her was the variety of ice creams it sold. Behind the narrow wooden counter, displayed in rows encased in glass, were more choices of ice cream than she’d ever seen. They ranged through vanilla, coffee, chocolate, pistachio, stracciatella, almond, and strawberry. Spoiled for choice, she ordered the pistachio and sat down to read the paper. The news was fascinating. A new bridge had been built between Upper Manhattan and Edgewater, and gold was being valued at $2000 an ounce. The President of The United States was a woman, Prince Charles was now the King of the United Kingdom, and an organization in Hollywood was campaigning for men’s rights.

  She turned the page and looked at the advertisements. The new Jaguar all-electric was being promoted for $90,000, and short skirts were back in fashion. A new toothpaste was claiming to make dentists obsolete, and face creams using 16-year-old models were, as usual, claiming to keep you forever young.

  She smiled and tilted her face to the sun, feeling its warmth on her skin. Throughout the war, she’d never even considered sunbathing, the war in the desert had kept her fully tanned, but this was real sunshine, she was in the real world again, albeit not her world, and it felt invigorating. But after a while, she sighed. Considering her situation, it was probably a bit decadent to just enjoy herself. She should be thinking about getting back.

  Finishing her ice cream, which had been delicious, she folded the newspaper and stood. The park was packed with people, and she had to find the cherry tree where she’d teleported. She’d never discussed the etiquette of time travel with Harper, whether it mattered if people saw her disappear. Still, it seemed wise to be discreet if it was possible, which would mean stepping into the undergrowth and perhaps getting a nasty shock if that undergrowth hadn’t existed in 1866.

  As Kat walked across the lawn towards the main road, she saw that the cherry tree was missing. But then, it would be. The cherry tree she’d climbed earlier would have been over 150 years old now. And then she spotted the cheeky little girl she’d met at the pedestrian crossing. She was sitting on the grass with one of the other kids. They were looking at one of the wheels of the skateboard she’d been riding. Kat pulled back her sleeve in readiness to tap the time machine, but walked over to the little girl.

  “Well, hello again,” she said, smiling at the child. “Remember me?”

  The little girl stared up at her. “Never seen you before in my life.”

  “Really?” she replied. “Then it won’t matter if I disappear in front of your eyes.”

  The girl looked puzzled. “What?”

  “I’m going to perform a magic trick that would freak most people out, but it won’t matter with you because you’ve got such an appalling memory.”

  Then she tapped her wrist.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was fully dark when Kat arrived in 1866. Interestingly, she wasn’t standing by the cherry tree, where she’d been when she followed Grantham into 2025. Kat was still in the middle of the lawn where, only seconds ago, the little girl had been sitting, which meant that the time machine didn’t behave like the artifact. Kat had tapped the watch to return, but it had taken her to where she’d currently been standing, not where she’d previously been standing.

  Kat peered at her watch, but in the sudden darkness, with her eyes still adjusting from bright sunlight, it took a minute before she could see it, let alone see what time it
was. Kat squinted into the distance. The Hansom cabs were no longer standing in line, and there were lights in the windows on the far side of the street. Shielding her eyes from the comparative glare, she followed the faint outline of the footpath until she reached the cherry tree.

  Her dress was here somewhere, rolled up and pushed under a bush. Feeling around in the dark, she eventually found it draped on the branch of a tree. Someone must have seen the dress and hung it there. Quickly climbing into it, which wasn’t easy in the dark, she made her way back to the main road. There were still pedestrians on the sidewalks and carriages rattling back and forth, but there was no sign of Dore, or the others, which surprised her. She’d imagined that at least Dore would be waiting for her. Holding her watch up to a streetlight, she peered at it. It was 9:30 at night.

  “Well, thanks a bunch, Jock,” she muttered. Hiring a Hansom cab, Kat headed back to the hotel. Arriving at The Fifth Avenue Hotel, she found the foyer was crowded with people, which felt odd. Kat noticed as new guests coming and going, the restaurant was emptying. She peered into the dining room. Most of the tables were empty now, but at the far side of the room, she was relieved to see Dore and the girls. Making her way over there, she pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Good to see you’re enjoying dinner,” she said, snitching a roast potato from Lily’s plate.

  Dore almost spilled his wine. “Where ya been?” he demanded. “We waited until well after dark. We couldn’t stay any longer because Rostock made an appearance. At least, I think it was him.”

  “You saw Rostock?”

  “Couldn’t have been anyone else,” Giselle said. “He was seven-feet-tall and ugly as hell. He did look kind of human, but not anyone you’d care to meet in a dark alley.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “He was nosing around by the Hansom cabs,” Lily said, forking a piece of chicken into her mouth. “Even the horses were getting jittery.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  Dore shrugged. “Hard to see in the dark. Some kind of long coat. So where’ve you been?”

  “I wasn’t there very long, but the time machine doesn’t behave like an artifact. Adjusting the hours and minutes might be possible if you’re only traveling for a few minutes or hours, and it seems to correspond to the same time of day when you’re going forward in time, but not when you come back. I doubt if I was in 2025 for more than an hour, but I did teleport 150 years into the future. Maybe there’s some kind of drag coefficient when you come back.”

  Dore grabbed a pencil from the menu and scribbled on the back of a napkin. “Well, you left at about nine in the morning, that’s about twelve hours. Divided by twelve, that’s a drag coefficient of one hour every 15 years.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does. I mean, if next time Grantham goes to a different year in the future and you want to come back in daylight, you can calculate when to return. If you’d wandered around for a few hours, perhaps had lunch, and gone shopping, you would have arrived back tomorrow morning. Arriving in the park with Rostock hanging around is a risk when it’s still dark.”

  “I’ll try to remember, but I don’t think Grantham will go to a different year. I’m pretty sure he lives in 2025. He was driving a new Aston Martin, so I think he has a house outside the city.”

  “What, you mean like upstate New York.”

  “Not necessarily. It could be closer than that. Grantham lived at Cape Cod for quite a while. If he likes being by the sea, he could be living at Long Beach. Either way, we might have some time to kill.” Borrowing Dore’s pencil, she grabbed a fresh napkin and wrote down the number she’d written on the back of her hand. “It could be a week before we see the next batch of escapees, but maybe it doesn’t matter. I think I know how to track Grantham down. I wrote down his car’s license plate number, but we’ll need to be a registered detective agency for the DMV to give us his address.”

  Dore pulled a face. “A detective agency in 1866? I wouldn’t know where to start. Anyway, it won’t exist in 165 years.”

  “I realize that. We’ll have to go back to Hell, register the company there, and then teleport to 1954 and do the same thing in the real world.”

  Dore stared at her. “Are you serious? I know you mentioned this before, but have you discussed it with Hades?”

  Kat tried to remember her last conversation with Hades. It had been a long and involved conversation, and she’d certainly discussed going back to earth, but she hadn’t broached the subject with him of opening a detective agency.

  “Not exactly, although I did discuss it with Persephone. She suggested we open a detective agency in both Earth and Hell. If she was the one to suggest it, how could Hades possibly say no?” Kat chuckled, “she is in charge, after all… To set it up, I might need help from someone like Cabot, but I don’t see it being a problem.”

  A waiter appeared carrying a plate of Parisian chicken and a knife and fork, which he placed in front of Kat. When he’d gone, Giselle said, “We took the liberty of ordering for you.”

  “Wow!” she exclaimed, picking up the cutlery and digging in. “Thank you guys. I’m famished.”

  While she ate, Dore and Giselle debated the idea of a detective agency. Giselle was excited by the plan; if it allowed her to teleport between the dimensions, it would be ideal. She no longer had friends in the real world, but she had Dore, and if it allowed them to be together, she’d be more than happy. Between mouthfuls, Kat tried to tell them that it was far from a done deal. She would still need Hades’ permission.

  “I’ve even got a name for the agency,” she said, putting down her knife and fork and sipping Dore’s beer. “We could call it The Demon Detective Agency.”

  Lily burst out laughing. “The Demon Detective Agency? You’re going to name it after Rostock?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous… A demon can be a good thing. In the 1950s, when you say he worked like a demon, it means he worked his butt off.”

  Dore snorted. “I’m not sure if the clients in Hell would quite see the joke.”

  “The thing is, it means you and I are going back to Hell to discuss it with Hades.”

  “You’re taking Jock with you?” Giselle asked, frowning at her.

  “You won’t even notice we’re gone,” Kat said. “All we have to do is program the artifacts. But there’s something I’d like to do before we go.” She took another sip of Dore’s beer. “I want to find Rostock.”

  Dore stared at her. “Are you serious? You want to blow our cover?”

  “No, of course I don’t. Rostock can’t know that we’ve come to 1866. McInnes has sent him here because he’s afraid that we might have, but they’re all guessing.”

  “You don’t think McInnes has a pretty good idea after Lily vanished? Lily knew the date everyone was escaping to.”

  “All Grantham knows is that Lily didn’t turn up, but Grantham’s gone forward to 2025, and McInnes can’t reach him there, so he doesn’t know. All McInnes really knows is that the bus driver went missing. He’ll find out in the end of course. They must have a way of contacting each other, but it won’t happen immediately. In the meantime, I want to put a scare into Rostock. I want to scare him so badly; he’ll go back to Hell.”

  Taking the pencil back, Dore began to doodle on his napkin.

  “What the hell are you doing, Jock?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “About?”

  “About whether spooking Rostock’s a good idea. I might have a better plan. If you and I time travel to August 16, 2025, the day before Grantham drives into the city, we can follow him when he drives home on the 17th.”

  “Follow him? How? He’s driving an Aston Martin. Even if he’s living in Long Beach, if he sees a suspicious cab following him, he’d be quite capable of losing it.”

  Dore stopped doodling and grinned. “We wouldn’t be in a cab. We’d be driving the car we stole, which, if we’re lucky, would be parked on a meter.”

  Kat
blinked at her wily Scottish friend. “You want to time travel to 2025 and steal a car?”

  “Absolutely. We might have to nip into 2024 to buy some pants and a pair of shoes for me, but that’s not exactly a problem. We’ve got a time machine. We can go where we want, whenever we want. We’re not exactly poor.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to do the detective agency?”

  “No, of course I’m not saying that. I think it’s a great idea. But we’re here now. It’s frustrating to have to go back to Hell just yet. Don’t forget, Grantham’s a clever guy. He’ll be prepared for people trying to trace him via the DMV. The car’s probably registered to a derelict barn or something. We need to get to know Grantham. At the moment, he’s just some guy we saw in Central Park. That might not even have been Grantham.”

  Kat had to admit, that hadn’t even occurred to her. What if Grantham was in partnership with a look-alike? It seemed unlikely. The man they’d seen in the dining room, and then again, welcoming the escapees before promptly disappearing, would be a hard act to follow, but it was indeed possible. Either way, Dore was right, it would pay to get to know Grantham.

  “OK, we delay opening the detective agency for a couple of days. Do you know how to steal a car in 2025?”

  Lily laughed. “That’s easy. You ride the subway to the suburbs, find a self-service gas station, wait until someone goes in to pay for their gas, then drive away in their car. By the time they call the cops and put out an APB on the car, you’d be in the city.”

  “What’s a self-service gas station?” Dore asked.

  “It began in the sixties. You drive into a gas station, put gasoline into your car yourself, then go into the shop, and pay for it. There won’t be any full-service stations in 2025.”