Instead of making her excuses and leaving, she leaned in slightly. Conspiratorially. “Do you know Wilbur Wright, personally?” she asked.
“Oh, he knows me, all right,” replied Everett, his film-star grin back in full force. “Introduced himself at Kitty Hawk to kindly request I put away my camera.”
Jillian laughed in spite of herself. “Could you . . . that is . . .” She paused, trying to keep her speech as correct as possible in asking for an introduction to Mr. Wright.
But Everett, distracted, was staring overhead and pointing.
“Say! Look up—here he comes!” The enthusiasm in Everett’s voice bordered on worshipful, softening his intensity.
Jillian looked in the direction he was pointing. Sure enough, there was something vaguely biplane-shaped on the horizon, approaching from just atop the tallest trees.
“Isn’t she something?” murmured Everett. The flirtatious, conceited part of him seemed to disappear as he watched the aircraft. He was utterly captivated.
Jillian focused her attention on the plane, which was growing steadily larger. Soon she could make out the noise of its engine. It sounded a lot like the riding lawnmower back home—the larger one used for the arena.
“Just imagine what it must be like,” murmured the young man, his velvet tone soft with wonder. “Soaring like a bird on the wing.”
A twinge of nervous energy pulsed through her as she tried to imagine it, and she had to look away from the plane, her eyes falling on Everett, instead.
Maybe his eyes were more the turquoise blue of the Caribbean, or of the infinity pool back home, or simply the blue of the sky on a clear day. They were such expressive eyes, fierce with yearning as he tracked the biplane across the sky.
As the craft drew closer, it hardly looked substantial enough to get off the ground, much less stay up once it had. The engine was noticeably louder now; Wright swept past their side of the field, and as he did, Everett let out a rather undignified whoop.
And then, just as the flimsy looking plane completed a second sharp turn, the engine cut out. Jillian inhaled sharply. How was he going to land? Her heart racing, she turned to Everett.
“What happened?” Jillian felt her chest contracting. Wilbur Wright wasn’t supposed to crash. His brother Orville had crashed a few months earlier, but Wilbur was supposed to be safe in France. If he was going to crash, she couldn’t watch. What had she been thinking, coming here to watch the inventor of the airplane fall out of the sky on the very day she was supposed to be getting on a plane to San Francisco? She should never have come.
“What’s that you say?” Everett asked Jillian without taking his eyes off the plane.
Her throat felt too dry to speak, but she managed to squeak out, “His engine died!” She clutched her stomach, afraid she was going to be sick.
Everett laughed. “What’s he need an engine for if he’s landing?”
“This is . . . normal?”
Everett shrugged. “I reckon.”
He reckoned? He reckoned? But then she saw another problem, potentially more deadly: the craft was descending fast, and the wheels weren’t down. The people in the grandstands were clapping. Didn’t they know what would happen if the wheels didn’t drop down? And then, just as Jillian was sure Wilbur Wright was going to die in a ball of flame, the aircraft touched the ground, skidding to a stop on what she realized looked like . . . skis.
Her heart in her throat, Jillian pulled her hand from where it had crept to cover her mouth. “Is he . . . okay?”
Everett gestured to the field. “See for yourself.”
Mr. Wright was already standing, stepping down from his plane as though he hadn’t a care in the world. She’d been worried for nothing. Apparently airplanes could land without power or wheels. Her heart slowed to a sort of rapid skitter; she’d been so sure she was going to witness a horrible accident.
“Say, if you don’t mind my asking,” said Everett, “don’t you think we’ve met before?”
It was the sheer, mundane, ordinariness of the pickup line that shocked her stomach, heart, and lungs back to normal function. Everett was still hitting on her. She ought to scorn him for it, but after seeing that glimpse of his soul as he’d watched Wright flying, well, she felt in a more forgiving mood.
“I know we’ve met,” said Everett. “I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t think so,” she said apologetically. “Listen, I need to speak to Mr. Wright. Can you provide me with an introduction right now?”
“Let’s go join the hordes,” said Everett, a twinkle in his blue-as-sky eyes.
“Okay,” said Jillian. She began walking as fast as she could in her ridiculous long skirt. The crowd surrounding Wright was still growing. She should have started running as soon as the plane came to a stop. She was going to miss her chance to talk to him.
“I don’t suppose you hail from New York?” asked Everett, jogging to catch up to her.
She shook her head no and began jogging herself. Why hadn’t she started toward Wilbur Wright sooner? Now he was surrounded by dozens of people. She tried to run faster, but her costume was slowing her down. Checking her watch again, she saw that only eight minutes remained until she needed to hide in the woods for her return trip. Eight minutes! It wasn’t enough.
“Folks are always like this following the first flight of the day,” said Everett. “Like it’s never been done before. Can’t say as I blame them, though. Half the crowned heads of Europe have been by, with the other half making travel plans to do so once Wright relocates to the south of France.”
Jillian stopped jogging. Applegates knew when to face the facts; she wasn’t going to have enough time. She wasn’t going to be able to speak to Wright after all. She’d lost her chance.
“There’s always the next time,” said Everett, shrugging off the missed introduction.
Jillian swore under her breath, causing Everett to look at her curiously. There wouldn’t be a next time for her—not today, at least. Time had been passing back in Montecito as surely as it had passed here, and she had an early breakfast with her mother. There would be no “next time” until she came back home after her semester at Berkeley had ended. She was out of time in every sense of the word. She’d failed. Again.
“Say,” said Everett, “maybe your people know mine—the Randolphs?”
Jillian couldn’t help it. She threw him a wilting glance, wanting to somehow blame Everett for her failure to get close to Mr. Wright in time.
“The Connecticut Randolphs,” he added.
The Connecticut Randolphs? Seriously? Jillian vowed to never, ever refer to herself as a California Applegate.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said. “We’ve never met. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need some . . . some shelter. From the wind.”
She turned from Everett and made for the row of trees from which she’d emerged nearly twenty minutes earlier.
But Everett didn’t seem to take the hint.
“I’ve got coffee,” he said, trailing alongside her. “Hot, too. I keep it in the same style of Thermos flask Mr. Wright uses.” He reached into a pocket and held out something else: a flask too small to be a Thermos. “Or something a little stronger than coffee . . .” It was a flask of spirits. “If you need it.”
What she needed was privacy. What she needed was a good cry to get past this epic failure of a journey.
Everett dashed ahead of her and, raising his fingers to his mouth, gave two loud whistles. Almost instantly, two little boys detached themselves from the crowd at the grandstands. One carried a picnic basket that looked bigger than the boy himself. The other, an even smaller boy, was carrying what looked like a very heavy camera. The two boys, impeccably dressed (or so she assumed—she didn’t know “impeccable” from “improper” in 1908) ran to Everett, who knelt and retrieved from the basket a Thermos and a teacup and saucer.
“My servants,” said Everett, gesturing to the boys while grinning up at Jillian. “Louis,” h
e said, indicating the little boy carrying the picnic basket. “And Louis.” He indicated the boy holding the camera.
Jillian stared at Everett, trying to stifle her shock. These tiny boys were servants? Giving a kid a few coins for carrying a basket was one thing but keeping them as servants? They were children! Small children. They should be in kindergarten. Or home playing with their LEGOs or . . . or whatever boys played with in 1908. She was too appalled to speak.
“Coffee?” asked Everett.
“No, thanks,” she said coldly. What little patience she’d had with Everett was now at an end. Even if she didn’t have to dash off, she’d rather freeze than drink something hauled around by a six-year-old for his lazy, snobby, entitled employer.
Everett’s expression hovered uncertainly. “Have I offended you?”
He had, but she found herself unable to say it out loud. She turned to go. “If you’ll excuse me—”
“Kitty Hawk,” said Everett, calling after her. “That’s where we met. You’re the girl that kissed me.”
“Excuse me?” Jillian stared at him with the combined haughtiness of generations of Applegates. And maybe a little snobbishness, too.
But Everett was speaking in a rapid burst of French addressed to his young servants. He spoke too fast for Jillian to understand in spite of four years of high school French. The little boys stared solemnly up at Jillian and then back at Everett, whispering to him in French. He laughed again and fixed his glacier-blue eyes on her.
“They don’t believe you kissed me,” he said. His full lips tilted upward in a smile.
“Well,” Jillian said, “that makes three of us. Please excuse me.”
This time, looking crestfallen, Everett took the hint.
Jillian crashed through the brush toward a cluster of trees, freezing and angry and defeated.
16
· LITTLEWOOD ·
Wellesley, Florida, the Present
One or two things became three or four, and gradually Littlewood and Khan fell into a working relationship much like that between any other postdoc and professor. Littlewood paid him (Khan had argued his way into a salary), provided him with a smart phone, and even housed him, giving Khan the use of the “mother-in-law” unit at the back of his own property. Littlewood frowned at the AC bill for the small unit, asking Khan if he mightn’t wear fewer layers, go barefoot? Khan had frowned back and said he hadn’t asked to be removed from Santa Barbara’s year-round seventy-degree weather.
There were still small issues left unresolved—a driver’s license, credit cards, a legal existence—but Littlewood wasn’t sure how to obtain these outside lawful channels, and Khan wasn’t complaining. Each morning Littlewood checked to make sure Khan still existed in the past (he continued to). And each morning Littlewood told himself this meant that eventually Khan would return. It didn’t have to be today. And besides, just now the young man’s presence was extremely helpful.
The laboratory where Littlewood kept his time machine and associated research was not the same as the lab where his university research group worked on chaotic cosmology. He maintained a second, private laboratory off campus, far from the lab that ostensibly comprised his life’s work. This meant Khan was often in the secret lab alone. Littlewood had taken the precaution of installing a retinal scanner on his time machine. So, unless Khan planned to pluck out Littlewood’s eye à la King Lear, Littlewood figured he had nothing to worry about. He did, however, wish he hadn’t thought of the King Lear possibility. There were times Khan’s gaze seemed almost malevolent, generally after Littlewood had denied some request or other.
But malevolent glares aside, Khan was certainly useful. When Littlewood mentioned a potential link between the use of the temporal singularity device and local seismic activity, Khan researched local geological activity and wrote up a paper recommending against trips taken back-to-back, which Littlewood had suggested might allow them to extend the time spent in any given past.
Khan also fine-tuned the length-of-stay formula for any given past, discovering that for extremely near history, there was a critical point after which length of stays began to shrink. Khan theorized about temporal inertia. He suggested experiments to test the limits of the singularity device. He made adjustments to the machine to reduce the decibel level from an ear-splitting eighty to a more tolerable sixty-five. Khan worked and worked and worked, and Littlewood began to feel guilty for suggesting Khan turn the thermostat up “two or three degrees, at night, at least?” in the mother-in-law unit. And if Littlewood occasionally caught Khan hastily exiting a screen on a computer or suspected a bottle or two of his better wines had been . . . absconded with, well, in terms of sheer productivity, Khan remained the best bargain in postdoctoral salaries ever.
And so they rattled along together, Littlewood growing day-by-day more deferential to this man only half his age, this genius snatched from seventeen years in the past. Gradually Littlewood stopped checking for historical proof of life every morning, checking only once or twice a week. Gradually Littlewood began to think he couldn’t let Khan go.
17
· KHAN ·
Wellesley, Florida, the Present
Jules Khan had become curious as to the limits of time’s ability to “heal” itself when wounded by one of Littlewood’s journeys. At first, he shared some of his thoughts on the resiliency of space–time with Littlewood, but gradually he began to keep his thoughts to himself. He wasn’t worried Littlewood would take the credit for his work as Dr. Jones had been known to do, rather Khan simply didn’t like to share. His research was his, and he saw no benefit in sharing it with anyone else.
Littlewood was no genius. He was a diligent worker, good at synthesizing the work of others and drawing conclusions, but he wasn’t particularly original. And he was shockingly absentminded. Wholly for entertainment, Khan had taken to playing small pranks on Littlewood. This was childish, but it was also highly entertaining.
It was purely by accident that the pranks and Khan’s thoughts on the resiliency of space–time came together one day. Khan’s favorite amusement was to hide Littlewood’s things. His Harris Tweed jacket, his car keys, his books. When the Harris Tweed went missing, Littlewood frowned and grumped for a few days, but eventually he solved the problem by ordering a new one.
“It was getting a bit shabby anyway,” he announced to Khan, smiling blandly.
The car keys had caused Littlewood greater annoyance. He had a spare, but it didn’t allow for keyless entry. Still, in the end Littlewood simply ordered a new one.
Khan told himself he ought to stop while he was ahead, but he couldn’t help himself. Or didn’t want to. He didn’t bother to examine which it was. Possibly, he had a touch of kleptomania. When the two of them were discussing the need for a theory of temporal inertia one morning, Khan popped Littlewood’s favorite fountain pen into a pocket.
As he twisted the pen idly in his pocket, Khan had a sudden insight. His best thoughts often came to him like this, in inexplicable flashes. What if space–time took a more . . . active role in maintaining the timeline? What if it “repaired” itself somehow? It was remarkable that Littlewood, who had now taken sixteen trips into the past, had noted no changes whatsoever to history. This might be accounted for by the fact that Littlewood was cautious. With the exception of having brought Khan forward, Littlewood assiduously avoided things that might be expected to change the historical timeline, to drive it from one “strange attractor” to another. But what if the lack of changes to the timeline were somehow assisted by time itself?
Once Khan had entertained the idea, he found it hard to shake. In fact, it was impossible to dispel. And so, without telling Littlewood, Khan began an experiment of his own.
18
· JILLIAN ·
Montecito, the Present
When Jillian stepped off the time machine platform, she realized she’d brought Everett’s scarf along with her. The fresh, lemony scent filled the laboratory, reminding her of her
failed visit. It was ten minutes past five. She had no time to try again; she had to get home to meet her mother. Jillian didn’t think she could bear being lectured about Berkeley, but she’d promised to meet for breakfast, and a promise was a promise.
When she arrived home, however, she saw an envelope on the kitchen island. It was addressed to her in her mother’s handwriting.
She reached for it and tore it open, reading it as she walked back to her bedroom.
Jillian,
I’m so sorry to miss our breakfast. I was called away to LA unexpectedly. I’d hoped we might talk about your education one last time, but since we can’t, allow me to leave you with a few thoughts before you return to UC Berkeley to finish the semester. If there’s one thing I know about my daughter, it’s that she is not a quitter. I know you’ll do the right thing. It’s only another two years and change.
Hang in there now, and someday you will thank your father for making this decision easier for you. I know that if you quit college now, you’ll always regret it. We’re trusting you to make the right decision.
Love,
Mom
Filled with thoughts of her freshest failure, Jillian sank onto her bed. Tears formed in her eyes. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she should stick it out instead of quitting now, when she only had two and a half years to go. Did she really think she could live on $300 or $400 a month in a country she’d never visited? And what about flying? She’d experienced failure after failure. She might never fly. She almost surely would never fly.
Her mother was right. Wasn’t she always? What had Jillian been thinking? She wasn’t going to Italy. She wasn’t going to become a baker. Exhausted, she crawled into bed.
When she woke up two hours later, the first thing Jillian saw was her mother’s card. Her eyes caught on a phrase: not a quitter.
She read the phrase again: not a quitter.
A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2) Page 10