A Quill Ladder

by Jennifer Ellis

  “We’re going to take another path up the hill, if you don’t mind. No need for everyone to know what we’re about,” Beret Man said.

  HT One, HT Two, and Beret Man got out, and Mark scrambled out as well. The three men set off at a rapid pace up the hill, and Mark hustled behind them as the trail wound through the trees and toward the stones.

  The two other very bad men and the very bad woman—the ones that had been in the future at the train station and at the library (with guns), and in Dr. Ford’s office in the present—were waiting for them by the stones. Jake stood behind them with his hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets.

  The woman wore a deep scowl. Even Mark, with his limited ability to interpret facial expressions, could tell that she wasn’t happy. The cloying scent of her perfume made Mark’s head hurt. “What took you so long, Ian?” the woman said.

  “I had to find Mark, and then convince him to join us. I wasn’t keen on just abducting him.”

  The air came out of the woman’s nose in a rush. “Very well then. Are you ready?”

  “As we’ll ever be. Mark is going to join us.”

  The woman’s eyeballs got wide and dry-looking (kind of like Mark’s had felt when he was staring at the Dorset Hotel), and then went all squinty, eyeballing Mark up and down as if he might start lurching around, moaning like Frankenstein. Then she turned and looked with at Beret Man again with her eyes slitty. “This is important,” she said, as if everything important by definition excluded Mark.

  Beret Man just shrugged. He reminded Mark a little of Caleb. “It’s just an experiment, Selena.”

  “An important experiment.”

  “Let him come. We should get going.”

  “Fine.” The woman jabbed a sharp-looking fingernail in the air in the direction of Jake. “You first.”

  Jake pursed his lips and then obligingly stepped on the stones and vanished. The rest followed one by one. Mark went second-to-last, with HT Two behind him.

  He was a bit surprised to find himself in the deep dark wood of the forest where they had come a few weeks before—the one where they had seen the dancers and Abbey and Jake had used the docks. The damp air saturated his lungs, and Mark suppressed a faint shiver.

  The others had gathered in two groups. The claw-fingered woman with the red scarf stood with the two very bad men with guns, and Beret Man stood with HT One and Two. Only Jake, like Mark, stood detached from the rest.

  “All right,” Beret Man said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s find ourselves a wormhole.”

  “You needn’t make a joke out of it, Ian. We need to find it,” the very bad woman said.

  Beret Man, or Ian, as Mark tried to remind himself (he needed to get better at names), broke into a broad grin. “Well, that’s a matter of opinion. But since we’re all here, we might as well give it a go. What was it you said, Selena? Right person, right place, right time? Let’s see if we’ve got three for three. Too bad the universe doesn’t give you part marks. We might be able to narrow things down that way.”

  The woman’s arched dark eyebrows pulled upward into two very pronounced commas. “Very funny.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, can we get a move on?” Jake asked. “I have to work in my parents’ restaurant at five.”

  “Absolutely. Should be a lovely little walk in the woods. Let’s be off then,” Ian murmured before turning and marching off into the trees, heading in the direction of one of the higher mountains that bordered the Circle Plateau and whistling a cheery collection of notes that made Mark all the more nervous.

  *****

  Abbey discarded her orange and pink sweater in favor of her purple hoodie and took another look at her jeans. They were dark and tight, tighter than she was used to wearing, but all of the other girls wore them, and her mother had bought them for her, so they must be okay. She had already examined every pore in her face, wondering if she looked even a fraction of a second older than she had six months ago at science camp. The small, furtive stroke of eyeliner across her upper lids was surprisingly effective. She just had to make a decision about her outfit. Sam would be arriving any minute, and would hopefully be able to pass sufficient muster with her dad such that he would be permitted to chaperone her to the coffee shop down the street to talk about a science project for an hour.

  The two-hour coffee date, or tea date, as her dad had reminded her, since she was not permitted to drink coffee, had already required a phone call from Sam, from his Berkeley number, to officially request the meeting. Sam had also indicated to Mr. Sinclair that he was considering Abbey for a junior counselor position at camp next year, which had made Abbey jump around her room for half an hour in a very undignified way. But that was two days ago. She was over it now. She had to look casual about it in front of her dad and Simon, and of course in front of Sam. Definitely in front of Sam.

  Simon had already wrinkled up his forehead at the announcement that Sam was coming, no doubt because he knew about the list. At least Simon didn’t know that Sam’s last name was Livingstone—only Caleb did, and he wasn’t due back from his game until that evening. Although that could easily slip when Sam introduced himself.

  Abbey made her way to the living room, clutching the file folder of notes that she had made about time travel and parallel universes, the second card from Ian nestled within the folder as well. How much should she tell him? She really wasn’t sure.

  Her father and Simon were already sitting in the living room. Simon’s eyes fell to her jeans and his eyebrows arched fractionally. She ignored him and turned to look out the window.

  A blue Vibe slowed in front of their house, then pulled into the drive. They all watched Sam get out, and Abbey heard her own intake of breath, which she tried to cover with a coughing fit that caused both Simon and her dad to look at her askance.

  Sam had cut his hair and grown a beard. A beard. She had a crush on a man with a beard. It was all too inappropriate. Physics and time travel; those were the only reasons she wanted to see him.

  The doorbell rang, and Abbey found herself unable to move, so they all sat there staring at each other in the living room in full view of the picture window through which Sam could easily see them. Finally her dad rose and opened the door, and he and Sam shook hands. Only men shook hands. Abbey smiled weakly, and moved toward Sam and his startlingly blue eyes.

  *****

  “What are you doing here?” Jake said.

  Mark had dropped back behind the clawed woman and the two bad men. Ian was far up in the lead, leaping over fallen logs and weaving his way through the undergrowth at an all too rapid pace. HT One and Two brought up a distant rear, struggling with the tight trees and brush with their bulky frames almost as much as Mark was. They had already been hiking for what seemed like at least half an hour, and generally in an upward direction. Mark thought for sure that soon there would be no more up to go, that they would be at the top of the hill looking out over the Circle Plateau, but still the mountain continued relentlessly on in front of them.

  The foliage was dense and unyielding and fog patches hung low in hollows. If they abandoned him, he had no idea how he would find his way back to the stones. The digital GPS compass in his Garmin Forerunner wasn’t picking up a signal, although he was fairly certain from the position of the sun that they were traveling northeast. He should be using this opportunity to further his contour line analysis, but with the denseness of the tree cover, he was totally lost.

  He checked his watch. It was 2:12. They had been hiking for twenty-seven minutes. The Sinclairs, who considered him an adult, wouldn’t be worried about him in the slightest until at least five.

  “I don’t know,” Mark said in response to Jake’s question. In actual fact, he had thought that they were going to the other future, the one where he might be able to go back to the library, get his photocopied map, and go see Kasey’s map. This treed, unpleasant place was not at all what he had expected.

&nb
sp; “Just so you know, they’re making me help them,” Jake said. “Said they would tell my parents everything if I didn’t. My parents don’t need any of this. I’m just trying to get it over with. So far it’s mostly involved a lot of walking and standing around.”

  Mark nodded. He had no idea why Jake was telling him this, or what the appropriate response was.

  “They’re looking for something. They didn’t tell me what. Another set of docks or stones or something. They keep taking me places and asking me if I feel anything. It’s weird. What was that guy with the funny hat saying about a wormhole?”

  Mark shrugged. Sylvain had been looking up wormholes at the library, but he didn’t see how mentioning that to Jake would be relevant. Jake was looking at him now, that scrutinizing look that people gave him before they decided he wasn’t quite right in the head. Perhaps Jake didn’t know that Mark had Asperger’s. Mark wanted to say that he was quite fine in the head, just that his head and his ability to express himself didn’t connect very well.

  Jake was still staring at him. Waiting.

  “I like maps,” Mark said. “Somebody stole my maps.”

  Jake’s expression shifted to the scrunched-up quizzical contortion that usually followed one of Mark’s non sequiturs. Except that they usually weren’t non sequiturs. They were related. People just didn’t know that.

  Someone was definitely looking for something. That’s why they stole the maps. But Mark had no idea what a wormhole was, or even if he believed they existed. Mark tried smiling to communicate this, and Jake nodded gravely and then turned away, and moved ahead of Mark on the trail.

  *****

  “So, what piqued your interest in time travel and parallel universes all of a sudden, Abbey? I thought you were in the Newtonian camp.”

  Sam sat across from her in the coffee shop. During the five-minute drive down Coventry Hill in the blue Vibe, Abbey had held her breath and tried not to say anything stupid. Her father and Sam had chatted about the most recent hockey game between the Blackhawks and the Kings and then shaken hands, and Sam had promised to have Abbey back within two hours. And then she was left alone with a man she was supposedly going to marry and live with in a bubble. Or maybe that was in a parallel universe, and in this one she would marry Jake and live in L.A. She really had no idea.

  “Do you think it’s possible?” Abbey said.

  Sam took a small bite of his brownie. “Hmm. Hypothetically, yes, but that puts me on pretty unstable ground within the physics community, let me tell you.”

  “How do you think it would work?”

  “Which: time travel, or parallel universes?”

  The server placed Abbey’s tea in front of her and Abbey folded her hands around the warm mug. It was foggy and damp today. No snow yet, which was unusual for this time of the year.

  “Let’s go with parallel universes first. And stick with ones with the same laws of physics, for now.”

  “So we’re talking like Schrödinger’s cat, a branching hypothesis?”

  “Let’s go with that for now.”

  Sam’s smile revealed his chipped front tooth, acquired from a childhood encounter with a baseball. In a many-world parallel universe, Sam’s tooth would be intact. “Well, quantum physics would suggest that there is something to it, and I do tend to subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation and superposition. But I’m not sure if our physics will ever arrive at a point at which we can prove any of it. Everett’s Many Worlds theory doesn’t have a lot of support among serious physicists, but it hasn’t been, and may never be, disproven, and the real answer might be some combination of sub-quantum string theory and Many Worlds theory.” Sam’s fingers twitched a few centimeters above the table, and Abbey was sure it was because he was thinking of drawing something, as she had so often seen him do at science camp. “I still have a problem with the overall amount of space and time required for that many universes, even though the universe is expanding. Mathematically, it just doesn’t work out for me. But Cleland’s work with the paddle is intriguing.”

  “What if the number of universes was limited somehow? What if there was branching, but not as a result of every quantum decision? What if the branching happened as a result of a Big Bang intersection of the existing limited universes?”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed as Abbey spoke. “That would be an entirely new proposition. So, same as the ekpykrotic brane collision theory, but causing branching of our existing universe? So we would have doppelgangers? I don’t know. Seems pretty far-fetched.”

  The hypothesis was far-fetched. It was half-baked, in fact. But she needed something to grab on to, to explain the events of the last few months… and the list she had left herself. Sam continued to smile attentively at her, as if he was enjoying the conversation and not dismissing her.

  “But do you think it’s possible?”

  He snorted a bit. “I’ve decided that in the world of quantum physics, almost anything is possible. Probable, I’m not too sure about. But I’m not sure if I’m your man to discuss this. One of the reasons I wanted to come and talk to you is that I’m switching careers.”

  “What?”

  Sam grinned at her shock. “I’m just switching to chemistry. I did a double major for my undergrad. You know I just defended my dissertation in November.”

  Abbey nodded. This she knew from Facebook.

  “I just got a fellowship offer to do a postdoc in chemistry at Purdue that I couldn’t refuse. Chemical extraction methods for mining under Dr. Isaac Burton. You may have heard of him. He’s super-famous, in the chemical extraction world anyway.” Sam gave a slight smirk and eye roll of acknowledgement that fame in the chemistry world wasn’t probably common knowledge. “Industry is pouring a bunch of money into the program and the fellowships are pretty attractive. Nobody’s putting any money into physics these days. Anyway, I need a research assistant at camp, but I’m switching to the chemistry stream this year. I know you prefer physics, but I was wondering if you’d be interested in the job?”

  Abbey tried to funnel the wild beating of her heart into a facsimile of a casual smile before blurting, “I’d love to.”

  Sam gave a broad grin. “Great! We can talk about it more in late spring. Anyway, back to the parallel universe thing. If it’s a paper for school, I’m sure you’ll get an A plus if you just summarize and show an understanding of the existing hypotheses. You don’t need to advance your own hypothesis. Save that for when you’re a superstar at MIT or Harvard.”

  Abbey studied the amber wood of the small table they occupied. Sam can help. “It’s not just for school,” she said.

  “Is it a competition?”

  “More like a personal problem.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows.

  *****

  The sweat ran down Mark’s face in streams. He couldn’t understand why anyone would go hiking without water and food. The ascent had turned steep for the last several minutes, and Jake and the others had quickly outpaced Mark and HT One and Two, leaving them to scrabble up a rocky seasonal creek bed, clutching at bushes to propel themselves upward.

  “And here we are! And there it is!” Ian announced in his melodious voice.

  Mark burst through the final spray of snowberries to find the rest of the group assembled on a rocky outcrop that overlooked the plateau from which they had just climbed. A sea of treetops lay below them—a mixture of robust evergreens dotted with the occasional leafless deciduous. Mark edged his way out onto the outcrop, which appeared to hang precariously over the edge of the mountain, to where the rest of the group stood. He could hear the heavy breaths of HT One and Two behind him. He looked in the direction that Ian was pointing. Rising up out of the evergreens, its leaves a lush green despite the season, was the tallest Madrona Mark had ever seen.

  *****

  “I just step on them, and then I go to the future,” Abbey said. She was feeling a bit ridiculous now. But Sam was watching her earnestly, probably t
rying not to think that she had completely lost her mind. Abbey was also trying not to think that she had completely lost her mind. She was completely disobeying her parents, possibly sharing critical family secrets, and Sam probably thought she was crazy. They had parked on the side street a few blocks from the house and then taken the other path up to the stones.

  The presence of the two Franks’ burgundy Camry on the side street had given Abbey pause. Perhaps they just lived in the area. But she doubted it. This was a bad idea. Yet this might be one of her only chances to show Sam the stones. Or to use them herself. Now that she was back near them, she felt the old familiar pull, and had to wonder how much her scientific approach to figuring this out was all just a smoke screen for a deep-seated need to use the stones again.

  The stones themselves had interested Sam significantly, particularly the symbols on them: pyramids, spirals, pentagons, hexagrams, tree branches, snowflakes, flowers. All examples of phi. Abbey felt stupid for not having noticed this before, but too much had always happened when they were in the vicinity of the stones, and, unlike her, Sam could touch the stones, brush aside the dirt and bramble that covered them, and have nothing happen, which gave him a much better opportunity to examine the symbols.

  “It even happens just when I touch them,” Abbey said.

  “Then why am I not in the future?”

  “Apparently it only works for some people,” Abbey said. She didn’t want to say “witches,” as that sounded completely stupid.

  Sam’s eyes betrayed his incredulity.

  “Do you want me to show you?” Abbey said.

  Sam shrugged and smiled, as if to suggest he didn’t think anything would happen, but that she might as well.

  Abbey scowled and brushed past him. She placed her foot on the stones, experienced the familiar whoosh, and found herself standing in the lush overgrown forest of Caleb’s future—or former future, Abbey corrected. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the time periods becoming linked, as Sylvain had suggested. But he had said that there were exceptions. So she could have arrived before Caleb’s people would even leave this future.