Mr. Grey yelled something back, but Seamus had already leapt into the water and was swimming toward the machine. It was only ten yards away from the shimmering doorway. The water was so cold that it took his breath away, but he didn’t need to breathe. He just needed to get to Felicia. Stubborn, mad Felicia who had allowed herself to be taken by McCullen as Mardi Gras Queen. He understood now. She would have gone with McCullen to try to stop him. That was why the machine had taken a sudden turn toward the time rip. That was why it had lurched earlier, as if the driver had lost control. It had been Felicia.
He kicked off his shoes underwater and swam hard, trying desperately to close the distance between them before she was pulled through the rip. The air burned in his lungs and his limbs ached and protested, but he did not slow.
Seamus now understood why there was so much light. Sunlight shone through the time rip. It was daylight there.
It didn’t matter. Another light on the bottom of the hexapod dimmed and flickered out, but Seamus could still see Felicia clinging to one of the legs. She was submerged to the neck and her arms kept grasping at the thick metal leg and sliding off. She was struggling to keep her head above water. Couldn’t she swim?
Then he understood. Her dress was made of yards and yards of heavy fabric, and once it was wet, it would weigh so much that it would easily drag her to the bottom of the river. Even a strong swimmer could not overcome such weight.
A dark shape in the water approached Felicia. It was McCullen and he pushed her up onto the leg of the machine. She climbed and lay sprawled on it, dragging her lower body out of the water with effort. She sat up and started tearing at her underskirts, kicking them off. She was getting rid of some weight. Good girl. Tear them off and swim to safety, he thought.
The spider machine was caught in the current and moving swiftly now. It was floating toward the rip faster than he could swim.
McCullen was beside Felicia now on the machine’s leg. Though she was still in that dress, he pulled her arms around his neck from behind, as if he were about to give her a piggyback ride. Then they leapt into the water together. McCullen had not left her and swam to safety alone. He intended to tow Felicia to shore. He was trying to save her.
But it was already too late. A moment later, the shimmering time rip swallowed Felicia, the spider machine and McCullen. The river went black as the daylight from the rip and the machine’s lights disappeared.
Seamus swam on, then slowed, then stopped. He treaded water, looking at the place where the rip had been. There was nothing there now but black water with little sparks of light where the moonlight reflected on its surface. The doorway was closed.
It took a few moments for a clear thought to register. Felicia’s nephew would die, she would be trapped in a new time, and it was all his fault.
People on the shore were shouting. They were jubilant. They were safe. The danger was gone. The terrible machine was no more.
“Seamus!” a voice shouted close by. Behind him, Mr. Grey rowed an old dingy. He must have found it near the shore.
When he got close enough, Seamus said, “I thought I told you to close the rip!”
“We did,” said Mr. Grey, pulling up alongside him. “But it stayed open.”
Mr. Grey helped haul Seamus into the dingy and Seamus was vaguely aware that he was cold. His teeth chattered and his clothes clung like icy skin to his body. It made no difference. As suddenly and as strangely as she had come into his world, Felicia had gone.
Chapter 36
She was in a hospital room. Felicia knew that much. It was clean and modern. Well, mostly modern. It wasn’t what she was used to, but it wasn’t the hospital from Seamus’s time either. There was no TV and the bed seemed to move up and down with levers and cranks instead of the electric push-buttons of her time.
She knew she had been here a while, as she had fuzzy memories of nurses and a doctor. She remembered looking out the window, but her room was too high up to see anything but the sides of the nearby buildings. They were made of glass and smooth concrete.
An IV pole stood beside her bed with a tube snaking to the needle taped to the back of her hand. There was a moment when she wanted to tear it out, but that was foolishness. It was only fear that would make her act so rashly. She could take the IV out properly. But not yet.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and noticed that her feet and legs were bare and uninjured. Her arms and hands looked fine as well. She was wearing only a flimsy hospital gown and the cool, recirculated air made her backside feel chilly. She pulled the gown closed.
She needed to see the street below. If she could see cars or look at people’s clothing, she could make a guess as to what era she was in. She grabbed the IV pole and rolled it across the cold linoleum floor to the window. Down below, there were cars. Not horses or carriages or steam-powered mechanical contraptions. Just cars. They looked like the cars from photos of her parents’ childhood. And there were people on the sidewalks. Men wore suits, which didn’t give her much of a clue. The women were more helpful. They wore either dresses or skirt and jacket sets, pantyhose and heels or flats. There wasn’t a sneaker or flip-flop in sight. It looked like the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Either way, a hundred years had passed. Seamus would be dead by now, as would Hazel. Felicia’s own parents would just be children, if they were in this world at all. And here she was, naked but for a thin hospital gown with nothing more to her name than insane tales of time travel. They would lock her away in an asylum if she ever spoke of it.
“Oh, you’re up,” said a woman behind her. It was a nurse. Her auburn hair was styled in a modest bouffant and she wore a crisp white uniform with a skirt that came to just below the knee.
“What’s the date?” asked Felicia.
“June fifteenth. Would you like to sit down? You look a little woozy.”
“I’m fine,” she said. And though she was indeed dizzy, it wasn’t the terrible sickening feeling she had experienced when she had come through into Seamus’s time. “How long have I been here?”
“Eight days. Do you remember the accident?”
Felicia did. She remembered it all: the darkness of the water, the light coming through the rip, the weight of her dress pulling her under and the terror that she would drown.
“No, I don’t remember,” she said. “What happened to me?”
“Come on and sit down. I’ll be back in a minute to take your blood pressure.” The nurse left and came back a minute later. “I notified the front desk and I had Dr. Fairfax paged. He has been very concerned about you.”
Felicia sat on the bed and the nurse fastened on the blood pressure cuff and pumped the bulb. Felicia let her do the mental countdown without bothering her.
“Can you tell me what happened to me?” Felicia asked when she was through.
“You had a boating accident and you almost drowned.”
“There was a man with me. Oren McCullen. What happened to him?”
“He was discharged a few days ago. But he sent you those,” she indicated a dying bouquet of flowers beside the bed. Felicia had not noticed them before. “He’s fine. Is he a friend of yours?”
Felicia nodded, but only because she could hardly say that he was an enemy. He was back in his own time, approximately where he should be after going missing in 1947. He had told her he was born in Omagh, Ireland. She wondered if he would head home, assuming this was his home world.
“Someone at the desk will call your aunt,” said the nurse. “Ah, there he is.”
The doctor entered. “May I have a moment with my patient?” he asked.
Something about the shape of his eyes and jaw was familiar to Felicia. The nurse nodded and left.
“Felicia Sanchez,” he said, flipping through a chart. “It’s good to see you up and awake.”
“Where am I?”
“LSU Medical Center, New Orleans. June fifteenth, 1961.”
She had only asked the location, not the date. He looked at her unflinchingly, watching her reaction. He knew. She was sure of it. She glanced at his feet. The toes of the shoes were big and blocky. Seamus’s universe then. In 1961.
“What’s this about an aunt? And how do you know my name?”
“You told us your name, though you probably don’t remember. As for your aunt, she has been visiting every day. A nurse called her and let her know that you are awake. She says she’s your only living relative.”
Dr. Fairfax was silent as he examined her. She noticed that he did not put on rubber gloves.
“What happened to me in the water?” she asked.
“The paramedics reported that you and a gentleman friend had a boating accident. You almost drowned. It was touch and go there for a while, but you pulled through.”
“What about the machine? The thing we were in?”
“I don’t know about the boat. You could ask the police. I only treat the patients who are brought in.”
“Am I allowed to leave?”
“I want you here for a while for observation, but then yes, you can leave. I can release you to your aunt.”
Felicia hesitated. She wanted to know who this person was who claimed to be her aunt. But asking something like that would make her seem brain damaged. It was sure to get her placed under observation for another day or two.
“Doctor, I have a question,” she said. “Have you ever seen feet like mine before?”
He paused. “Once, when I was younger.”
“My shoes, where are they?”
“I think they were lost in the river, or maybe after. You didn’t have any personal belongings registered.”
Well, her fancy ball dress was gone for good. That was not as bad as losing her shoes.
“What about my jewelry?” She had no personal affection for the Egyptian antiquities, but they might fetch her a little money if she sold them.
Dr. Fairfax flipped a sheet on his clipboard. “We had no belongings registered to you.”
A nurse came with a stack of clothing. The items must have been abandoned, or perhaps they belonged to the dead. There was a wool skirt and cotton blouse, a camisole, shoes, clean panties and a bra in something close to her size. There was also a sealed plastic bag with a comb and a toothbrush. Felicia went to the bathroom to get dressed and clean herself up. She looked in the mirror. There were dark marks under her eyes and her lips were pale and sickly. Well, a week in bed will do that to you. That, and falling through a time rip twice in as many weeks. Her hair looked terrible and her skin felt like it was covered in a grimy film. She showered, shampooed, combed her hair and got dressed.
When she left the bathroom, a woman in her sixties stood looking out the window. She had gray streaked through her mouse brown hair and wore a gaudy paisley shirt in a blue and green print with some kind of loose trousers tucked into soft leather boots. The woman turned, and though age had changed her face, her eyes were the same. They were brown with an impish spark that the years had not touched. Then, she smiled, and there was no doubt left.
“Hey, Miss Sanchez.”
Chapter 37
“I’ve come to say good-bye,” said Mr. Grey.
Hazel stood in the entryway of the Professor’s house, her house, but she could not speak. She just hung onto the door and stared at Mr. Grey. She had seen him coming up the walk from her bedroom window and had run downstairs, glad to see him. And now here he was, holding a large paper sack and telling her good-bye.
“Where have you been?” Hazel asked. “It has been a week since the spider machine.”
“I had business to conclude with the police. Please tell the Professor that with McCullen gone, they have been able to confiscate a few of the engines. Some have been surrendered by owners who now understand the danger they pose. There are still some being used, but the police think that they can use the legal clause that makes the machines revert to the McCullen manufactory if they malfunction. If they are accident prone, then they are classified as defective. Then the matter is simply forcing the manufactory to surrender or destroy them. Without McCullen pulling strings with the krewe, the police can act without fear of repercussions. McCullen was very secretive about the designs, and the second in command at the manufactory is now more concerned with keeping his fortune and avoiding prison than in making more engines.”
“I’ll tell him. Why do you have to go? And where are you going? Why can’t you just stay?” She knew she sounded whiny and childish, but she didn’t care.
“I have to. I came to do a job, and I’m done.”
“Well, you failed at it.” He looked startled, and Hazel felt an evil satisfaction. “Miss Sanchez is gone, the Professor is miserable and McCullen is with Miss Sanchez, wherever that may be. If your job was to do nothing while terrible things happened, then you did it. You’re a terrible time traveler. And that’s a fact.”
“And what should a good time traveler have done?”
“Well, he should have helped people. And saved people. And fixed things, not just let them get worse and then leave.”
“Is that what you would do?”
“Darn right,” she said, not caring if she didn’t sound polite or ladylike. Mr. Grey wasn’t the sort of man who thought that little girls should be sunshine and smiles all the time. “I’d save all the people who needed saving. I’d have saved Miss Sanchez.”
“How?” he asked in a way that meant he really wanted her opinion and wasn’t just asking to rile her up.
“Well, I don’t know,” she admitted after thinking for a few moments.
“Neither do I. But I did accomplish some things. I kept the Professor from being detained for days by the police for rummaging around McCullen’s study. And my partners got the Professor an engine.” He looked as if he really wanted her to understand what he had done. “And I can tell you this. Things will work out in the end. You’re in the midst of the worst part just now.”
“Yeah, and it’s always darkest before the dawn. I’m too old for that load of rubbish. And hey, there’s one more thing. How are you leaving if you don’t have a way to rip a hole in time? Are you going to walk back to Miss Sanchez’s time?”
He didn’t answer. Hazel had learned that Mr. Grey would not tell direct lies. At least, she thought she knew that about him.
“You do have a way to rip holes, don’t you?” she asked. He looked at her with that expression that was part surprise and part pride in her. “You awful man! You have a way and you didn’t save Miss Sanchez and now the Professor is in a terrible state. He’s up in his laboratory all the time. He only comes out to teach his classes or eat supper. He barely sleeps and I think he’s drinking again. I hear him rattling around in there at all hours, working on the machine. He curses and yells and he’s just miserable.”
“He’ll be fine. He’ll figure it out.”
Hazel glared at him and then a thought clicked into place. “He’s going to do it? He’ll get the machine to work? Are you sure?” At his little shrug, she gave a little jump. “Ha! Of course you’re sure. You’re using his machine!”
“Now pipe down. You can’t go saying that. I never said anything about using his machine. You can’t say a word.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll keep my mouth shut. Promise.” She traced an X over her heart with her finger.
“There’s something else,” he said. “Did you see the newspaper?”
“Mrs. Washington says it’s not proper for a little girl to read the papers.” Hazel was rarely limited by propriety, but she was trying to be an obedient child to please the Professor and Mrs. Washington.
“And I know you’d never do anything improper. Here.” He pulled a
folded newspaper from his inner jacket pocket and opened it. He pointed to a short paragraph at the back of the business page.
Hazel read. It said that for the last eight weeks, Mr. Andrew Dubois had been under investigation for corruption in connection with local land ownership disputes. Families had been driven bankrupt and had lost their homes and farms. He had made many enemies. Legal circles stated that his disbarment was inevitable. But the night before last, he boarded a train for New York. He was found dead in his sleeper car, apparently of heart failure. The police and coroner were not performing an autopsy and there would be no investigation of foul play.
“Something about this isn’t right,” said Hazel, handing the paper back to Mr. Grey. He stuck it in the large paper sack he was carrying.
“Nothing about this is right,” he said.
She thought of something, a terrible thing. She almost didn’t say it, but she had to know.
“Where were you that night?” she asked. He had promised that her uncle would not bother her again, and now it was true. Without Miss Sanchez to restrain him, she could imagine the Professor doing violence to her uncle. But not Mr. Grey. He was so composed.
“I was here, in New Orleans,” he said.
“Word of honor?”
“Word of honor.”
“I still don’t believe that he just died on a train. It sounds like someone killed him.” She bit her lower lip in thought.
“He had many enemies. There were all of those people he cheated. Though it says there was no evidence of foul play.”
“Even so,” she said. She was trying to think it through, but she could find no satisfactory answer. How could someone disguise a murder as heart failure? And how could her uncle die just after he had found her and Mr. Grey had spoken to him on the front lawn?
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 28