“When I arrived back in Khan’s laboratory this morning, someone was there—”
“Not Khan’s lawyer!” exclaimed DaVinci.
Edmund’s brow furrowed, and Halley grabbed nervously at her ponytail, only just stopping herself from chewing the ends.
“I think so,” said Jillian, keeping her tone as calm as possible. “I heard a car leaving, and it sounded just like Mom’s.”
“The lawyer drives a Mercedes,” DaVinci explained to Halley and Edmund.
“This is something we’ve been worried about,” said Halley. “I know you’ve had an incredible breakthrough because of those trips back to meet the Wright brothers—”
“Wright brother, singular,” DaVinci said.
“Right,” said Halley. “It’s great you had your breakthrough, but we’ve got to stop using the machine, period. The three of us talked about it earlier this week, after I was interviewed by the PI. We were planning to tell you when you got home—”
“Only you came back two days before you were supposed to,” said DaVinci.
“So we didn’t have the chance,” finished Halley. “But the three of us agree: it’s too dangerous now. Even after the investigation into Khan’s death is over, it will be too dangerous. The property will be sold, which will mean realtors and potential buyers crawling all over the place.”
“I see,” Jillian said quietly. Now how was she supposed to ask for their help with her next trip?
“Anyway,” said DaVinci, “you did the stuff you needed to do, and you didn’t get caught. So, yay!”
Jillian fidgeted. She’d almost been caught. She’d almost been killed.
“Jillian,” said Halley, “this isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”
That was just it. She didn’t have a choice about 1903. So how was she going to persuade her friends?
“It is a problem. The thing is,” Jillian said slowly, “I have to take one last trip to 1903.”
“Um, are we not speaking English?” asked DaVinci. “Because, no. Just, no.”
“I don’t have a choice about going,” said Jillian. “It’s already happened. I mean, for Everett it’s already happened. And for Wilbur Wright. For me it hasn’t. But I have to go back and make sure it does happen.”
DaVinci sighed dramatically and threw her hands up.
“It’s too risky,” said Halley. “Don’t you see that?”
“I don’t have a choice,” said Jillian. “I already went. I don’t get to choose whether or not I go. Somehow, I am going.”
“I’m sorry,” said DaVinci, “but just because some people a hundred years ago think they met you does not mean you have to do it. In their version of real, you were in 1903. Fine. In your version of real, it’s not happening.”
“Jillian, you could have been caught,” added Halley. “Can you imagine the . . . the—”
“Shit storm?” suggested Edmund.
“Offensive language alert, babe,” said Halley.
“Pray forgive me,” said Edmund.
DaVinci snorted in laughter.
“Edmund’s right, though,” said Halley. “If someone caught you and started investigating what, exactly, that machine in the basement does, can you imagine the repercussions? This could be dangerous for the whole world, not just for you or for us.” She glanced to Edmund and DaVinci for support.
“Besides, I don’t think you actually have to go. Ever heard of a little thing called ‘parallel universe theory’?” asked DaVinci.
“What are parallel universes?” asked Edmund.
“It’s a theory,” replied Jillian. “That’s all it is. A theory Jules Khan did not believe in—”
“We don’t care about Khan,” snapped DaVinci. “We care about you, Jillian.”
“What would we do if anything happened?” asked Halley, more gently.
Jillian chewed on her lip, uncertain. She hadn’t even told them about the power outage. She couldn’t, now. They would just use it as one more reason why it was dangerous to go to 1903.
So what should she do? It had been so obvious to her before. If Wilbur and Everett had met her in 1903—if Everett had fallen in love with her, for goodness sake—then it followed she had to make the trip.
Didn’t it?
Edmund spoke. “You stand in fear that your actions may change the past or the future, do you not?” he asked Jillian.
“Well . . . yes,” she replied.
“And yet, here we are,” he said. “As we have been.”
Halley spoke. “Khan told me that small interruptions to history couldn’t change things.”
“His first law of temporal inertia,” murmured Jillian.
She’d read his musings on the subject. Khan insisted small changes to the past got swallowed up by history’s march toward what he called “strange attractors,” but was he right?
“It’s too dangerous, Jillian,” said Halley. “There are just so many things that could go wrong.”
“Halley has already been called in to answer questions about a possible murder,” added Edmund. “It is not sensible to implicate yourself, as a known friend of hers.”
“The bottom line is, it’s not life or death if you cancel your appointment with 1903,” said DaVinci. “But it could be life or death if you try keeping it.”
Jillian’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. She was one gigantic bundle of nerves, and she still had a big evening ahead, flying by herself. Maybe her friends were right.
Quietly, she murmured as much.
“Duh, we’re right!” said DaVinci, throwing her arms around Jillian.
“What would we tell your parents if anything happened to you?” asked Halley. “Or Branson?”
Jillian thought about the loss of power again. About what could have happened.
“Forget about your mom or dad,” said DaVinci. “Consider us.”
DaVinci was right. How could Jillian consider hurting her friends like that? How could she ask them to be complicit in the danger? She made her decision. She wouldn’t tell them about the incident with the breaker box, which would just worry everyone needlessly, but she would do as they recommended.
“Okay,” said Jillian out loud. “I won’t go.”
But as she said it, she saw Everett, his mouth quirked to one side, Caribbean-blue eyes shining as he asked her, “Looking for Mr. Right?”
37
· KHAN ·
Wellesley, Florida, the Present
Having demonstrated it was possible for an item from the past to exist in more than one iteration, Khan naturally wished to confirm his findings with additional data. He began the morning after Littlewood’s departure for Santa Barbara, starting with one simple criterion: remove items that could be proven to exist in the historical past. This led him to visit Littlewood’s university office, where he asked Littlewood’s administrative assistant a few seemingly innocent questions.
When had she picked up that funny bobble-head alligator on her desk? For how long had his employer’s dusty-framed diploma been languishing on top of a filing cabinet instead of being mounted on the wall? And did Littlewood pick up that bottle of 2012 Dalla Valle Napa Valley Cabernet himself? In Napa? In what year?
Khan could see the assistant beginning to indicate annoyance with Khan’s “twenty questions.” He wondered if she thought he was flirting. How amusing. He had much better things to do with his time, thank you very much. And he commenced doing them as soon as he drove back to the warehouse complex where Littlewood’s real work was done.
Upon arriving, an e-mail update from Littlewood slowed Khan for a few minutes, containing the comparatively dull news that Jones’s old group had disbanded completely upon his retirement six years ago but that Littlewood had an appointment to meet with Jones tomorrow.
Khan replied and then began to establish the repeatability of the experiment with the fountain pen. He traveled to midnight, 2007, to pull Littlewood’s framed diploma from his university office (the keys hadn’t changed since 2007�
��lucky, that). On a separate trip to 2012, he snatched the bobble-head alligator from the desk of Littlewood’s administrative assistant. And finally in 2014, he grabbed that rather nice bottle of 2012 Dalla Valle, earning himself a throbbing headache the next morning, when he went to check that all three items were still to be found in Littlewood’s office. And there was evening and morning, a first day.
And what a day it had been. He had absolute proof of his “multiple iterations” theory now. He wrote up his findings, hiding them on his laptop behind a layer of encryption. He didn’t mind being the only person in the world who knew what he knew.
On the second day, he added a little twist to his experiment: remove items from the past that could be sold for a profit in the present. Because why not? It was never a bad thing to have a little cash on hand.
His first trip took him to 1938, where he planned to buy, for a mere ten cents, a copy of Action Comics #1, now worth a million bucks. He aborted his plan when he realized that in spite of having dressed the part for the trip, he’d only brought twenty-first-century coins. Time travel “for Fun and Profit” was more difficult than it looked. However, by day’s end, he managed to find a coin shop, where he bought a 1936 dime in “good” condition. Shortly afterward, he traveled again to 1938, where he exchanged the dime for the valuable comic book. Once he was back in the twenty-first century, he even tried to read it, but he couldn’t see the appeal, really.
He had just set the comic aside when it occurred to him: Were objects the only things that were duplicated when captured within the temporal pocket of a returning time traveler?
His heart began to race. He thought of the escaped Roman. Did the man live in two separate iterations as well, just like the comic book, the bottle of wine, and the rest of it? How could he check? He should have gotten a name. Something he could have researched. The research might have been tricky, but now he would never know.
Khan swore in frustration. How was he supposed to test this hypothesis? It wasn’t like he could bring a duplicate administrative secretary back from 2014.
Khan froze. He’d just realized something. He didn’t need to bring the secretary forward from 2014. That experiment had already been run. The Roman hadn’t been the first person to be displaced by time travel.
Jules Khan, PhD, had.
This was big. This was . . . huge. This was also . . . not good.
“Not good at all,” he muttered, jumping up from his desk and pacing. He stared at the phone on Littlewood’s desk. Suddenly he didn’t want to be the only person who knew about Khan’s law of temporal inertia. He wanted to consult with someone.
He swore again.
He wanted someone to tell him he was wrong or crazy or both. He dialed Littlewood’s cell phone.
Littlewood didn’t pick up. Was it too late at night? No. California was three hours behind Florida. Littlewood was probably at dinner. Or driving. He was a stickler for not talking and driving. Khan tried again.
And again.
Over the next two hours, he tried Littlewood six more times. Finally, in desperation, he called his former adviser, Dr. Llewelyn Jones.
Without thinking about it, he gave his real name to Jones, which turned out to be the catalyst for the next great revelation.
“I need to reach Littlewood,” said Khan. “It’s urgent.”
“Of course. Nice to hear from you, too, and all that. He was asking about you, actually. I sent him to your place in Montecito, must have been half an hour ago. He was very keen on hearing what you’d been up to in the last two decades. Just sit tight, and he’ll be there to your place any minute, I should think.”
Khan, feeling bile rising in his throat, swallowed hard. “My place.”
“In Montecito. You do still live there?”
“My place. In Montecito. Of course.”
Khan hung up without saying either thank you or goodbye. He sat down at Littlewood’s desk and unlocked the drawer containing Littlewood’s stash of whiskey.
38
· JILLIAN ·
Montecito, the Present
Jillian flew back to Santa Barbara without DaVinci, who was very excited to stay and visit a live movie set with Halley the following day. For Jillian, this marked her third successful flight in twenty-four hours, where success was defined as not having a full-blown panic attack. She’d hesitated when it had come time to scan her boarding pass, and she’d felt queasy when the propellers began to spin, and she’d had to close her eyes during a bumpy stretch, but she’d done it. She was now confident she could make it to Italy, even flying alone. Which should have put her in a jubilant mood.
Sadly, jubilation was nowhere in sight. By the following morning, separated from her friends, Jillian had started worrying again about 1903 and how it would get on without her. What if her decision was ripping a hole in the fabric of history? How would she even know? Maybe Khan was right about his theory of temporal inertia, but what if he was wrong?
She settled in the family library, where she spent an hour searching Khan’s notes on the subject, including a highly technical paper he seemed to have intended to publish after his death (dying wish or no, Jillian wasn’t carrying out that plan). But after stumbling across the name Arthur Littlewood for the third time that afternoon, it occurred to Jillian that there might be more than one expert on space–time, someone still living who could answer her questions about temporal inertia and messing with history.
It only took a little digging to learn Littlewood had, indeed, published in the field, mostly in the related area of chaotic cosmology theory. She searched Khan’s laptop again and discovered contact information for Dr. Littlewood, both an e-mail and a phone number marked private, which felt forbidding enough that she decided to try e-mail.
It took longer for her to compose an askable question. She wasn’t about to give away that she was actually time traveling, so she had to frame her question in theoretical terms. Eventually she hit on the idea of pretending the question was from a physics class and writing her question like a story problem.
Dear Dr. Littlewood,
I read that you have been working in the field of chaotic cosmology and studying space–time singularities for nearly three decades. I have become interested in this topic, which I plan to write a paper on, and my friends and I have been debating imaginary scenarios. I was wondering if you would give your opinion on the following dilemma, which is of course totally hypothetical—
Jillian stopped and deleted the last clause; then put it back in again and continued writing out the “dilemma.”
On her tenth birthday, a granddaughter born in 2060 takes a trip by time machine to 2045 to ask for her grandmother’s secret chocolate cake recipe.
When the granddaughter arrives, her grandmother gives her the recipe but says, “I already gave it to you, my dear, when you traveled to me on your tenth birthday.”
The granddaughter returns to 2070 with a dilemma. She has the cake recipe already, but according to her grandmother, she will take a second trip—to 2040 this time—on this same day, that is, on her tenth birthday.
What will happen to history if the ten-year-old decides not to travel to 2040 for the recipe after all?
She checked her work to make sure the question was clear, and when she was satisfied, she sent the e-mail to Dr. Littlewood. It was nearly eleven in the morning, her time. Littlewood should still be at work. Almost immediately, a response appeared, but it wasn’t the response she was hoping for.
I am away from my office and will not return until after January 1. Please address all urgent concerns to my secretary.
“The first of January?” Jillian groaned and closed the e-mail. After all that, she’d gotten exactly . . . nowhere.
She searched again for the phone number marked private. It had a Florida area code. If it was private, would that mean it was a cell phone he carried with him wherever he was now?
It took Jillian two hours to work up the courage to dial the number. For safety,
she first blocked her number from appearing.
“Yes?” It was a man’s voice.
“Dr. Littlewood?”
“Not in. He went to Santa Barbara.”
“Santa Barbara?”
“Yes.” The man on the other end sounded distracted, the way Jillian’s dad sounded if she asked him questions when he was reading the paper. She heard a grinding mechanical noise, and then the man swore.
“Who is this?” asked Jillian.
“Jules Khan.”
Dr. Khan?
The man spoke again, his voice having shifted from distracted to alert—and suspicious. “Who is this? Who gave you this number?”
Jillian swallowed. This was impossible. It had to be impossible. How was Khan alive?
“Who is this?” demanded the man on the other end. She knew that voice. She remembered it from the day they’d all met while hanging DaVinci’s tapestries.
Shaking, Jillian tapped “End.” The call went dead.
39
· JILLIAN ·
Montecito, the Present
Someone had answered Littlewood’s phone. Someone claiming to be Dr. Khan had spoken to Jillian. It wasn’t possible. Khan was dead. Jillian had stood over his unmarked grave as Edmund spoke a prayer for his soul.
A shiver ran up Jillian’s spine. Edmund. There were two Edmunds. And if there were two Edmunds . . .
But if there was a second Jules Khan, what was he doing answering a phone with a Florida area code? Had it escaped his notice that he had an estate with a laboratory and time machine? She could only hope.
He worked with Littlewood now. Well, that made sense. Khan couldn’t have duplicated himself without help. In fact, he couldn’t have done it without a time machine. Littlewood must have one.
And Littlewood was in Santa Barbara.
“Santa Barbara—not Montecito,” she said softly. Not that the distinction meant much outside Santa Barbara County. But it would have meant something to Khan, the Khan she had known. If he had knowledge of his Montecito laboratory, and if Littlewood was going there, wouldn’t Khan have said “Montecito” instead? Maybe this Khan didn’t know about the time machine in Montecito. But why would Littlewood travel to Santa Barbara?
A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2) Page 17