It seemed, however, that luck was on her side. The wave of evening traffic passed over her without her sustaining a single injury. When the cars were all gone, she hoisted herself up, finding in alarm that she had surfaced smack in the middle of Seventh Avenue, which was almost as busy a thoroughfare as Flatbush at this hour. She scurried quickly to the sidewalk, clutching her laptop to her chest and breathing heavily.
To the credit of her sense of direction (something that Marvin claimed females “simply didn’t have”), she was more or less where she thought she would be. She brushed herself off and continued in the same direction, looking around as if she were still afraid agents were watching her. She walked quickly, (which she figured wasn’t suspicious as most New Yorkers tended to move along at a brisk pace), hoping that the F.B.I. hadn’t staked out the entire neighborhood.
Two blocks further she reached the café, looked quickly both ways and turned into the tiny storefront, her heart still beating fast with nervous energy. She smiled innocently as she purchased a hot cider from the attendant, who looked at her with some suspicion; it must have seemed a bit odd, a girl her age coming in alone after midnight. She sat down at an empty table and unpacked her computer, turned it on and let it locate the WiFi signal. There was only one other person in the café, a thirty-something man who looked bleary-eyed and over-coffeed, perhaps some kind of writer or web designer who was up late struggling to meet a morning deadline.
She accessed the Hotmail website and hurriedly typed in her ‘secret agent’ email address, Timetraveler11, which quickly yielded two new messages, one from The Professor and one from what had to be one of Marvin’s web alter-egos, ‘[email protected] . She opened The Professor’s first:
To: Samantha Smart
Re: Further Operations
S. - Communication is difficult. Surveillance is high. Our mission must, however, proceed. Alpha Team will meet in two days’ time, at 2:00 p.m. In the women’s bathroom in the 14th Street subway station, on the middle level. Bring your wrist-communicator. Plans will be discussed at this time. Try to avoid being followed.
Yours,
A.E.S.
Samantha noticed The Professor had shortened his signature to just initials, an extra precaution, no doubt. She mentally filed away the new information and opened Marvin’s email:
To: Samantha Smart
Re: Observation
S. - What up, girl? You’ll probably get a visit from ‘the hawk’ tomorrow, and you can bet she’ll be rooting around in uptown basements as well. Not to worry! We’ve got it all figured out. Pressure should ease off a little by the time Alpha Team comes together. Hope you had a good Hanukkah. See ya soon, lady.
Peace
Dr. Mashizzle
She snickered at Marvin’s signature. Always the clown, she thought. Both messages contained post-scripts instructing her to delete them immediately after reading them. This she did quickly, after sending brief replies of acknowledgment to each. She packed up and headed back outside, flashing a smile at the young man behind the counter. He gave her a subtle nod, unhappily eyeing the slight trail of water that her soaking wet boots had left on the floor.
Samantha shivered as she walked back to her manhole. New York was a bleak sort of place sometimes in the winter, and she clearly hadn’t dressed warmly enough. The lid was still ajar when she reached it, and traffic on Seventh Avenue seemed to be conveniently stalled at a light a block down, so she took the opportunity to wiggle back in, pulling the cover behind her as best she could. The route back was familiar enough, and in short order she was crawling back through the hole in her basement.
She left her wet boots by the dryer and snuck quietly back up the stairs. It was a small miracle that Polly didn’t bark as she re-entered the apartment; it seemed the little dog was content to just greet her quietly at the door, thankfully with a minimum of sproinging.
Another five minutes saw her wet socks off and her computer stashed under the bed. She put on her flannel pajamas and crawled under her covers, inviting Polly and wondering fretfully what the morning would bring. Marvin had always taught her not to worry, though, that whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and so with only a little difficulty she slipped off into a warm, peaceful slumber.
*
As Samantha had expected, morning came violently. At what seemed like the crack of dawn, F.B.I. agents were banging on the front door. Cindy was not happy, throwing her robe on and eyeing the perfectly-put-together Agent Stiles with daggers as she walked through the door.
“Ms. Smart,” the intimidating woman addressed Samantha’s mom, “We have a warrant to search these premises, in connection with our investigation into the attempt on your life.” She held up an official-looking piece of paper and nodded to her two male subordinates, who began searching the apartment.
“What!?” Cindy shrieked. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing!? What, do you think I made this all up or something, now!?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Smart,” Stiles said calmly, almost appearing to smile. “It is actually my belief that you are indeed innocent of any crime. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I can’t say the same for your daughter.”
“Samantha!? What are you, nuts? She stayed at the hospital with me every day! She rode in the ambulance with me! I’ve been a good mother to her for almost twelve years! No,” Cindy waved her hand, walking to the telephone. “You’re crazy. I’m calling the police.”
“Suit yourself,” Stiles shrugged. She walked over and handed Cindy the search warrant. “Just tell the desk Sergeant the number in the upper left-hand corner. He’ll be able to confirm the warrant’s validity.” Cindy scowled and dialed the number for the police.
At this point, Samantha was out of bed and dressed, and she loosed Polly, who was barking furiously, from the bedroom. The terrier ran out into the living room and growled fiercely at one of the agents, who was kneeling behind a low chair looking at something or another. Slowly, he looked up with a thin, slight smile on his face. Suddenly, Polly let out a little whine, laid down on the carpet and was silent. Samantha was shocked. So was Cindy. They stared in disbelief at the dog and then at the agent, who broke into a large grin and shrugged.
“Hello, Samantha,” Stiles greeted her icily. “Perhaps you’d like to end this little charade of yours right now and save yourself the trouble of putting your home back together.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Samantha lied. “I thought you were helping us.”
You don’t have to talk to her, Samantha,” Cindy snapped, on hold to speak with the local police.
“No, and you obviously don’t want to, either,” Stiles frowned. “All right, be difficult. Gentlemen, let me know what you find; I’m going to meet the other team over at the museum. Perhaps I’ll see you ladies there later?” She raised her eyebrow and turned to leave. This was obviously a rhetorical question, one that she didn’t really expect an answer to.
After she left, Cindy finally got a desk Sergeant on the phone and grudgingly acknowledged the legitimacy of the piece of paper she was holding in her hand. She sighed and looked at the remaining two agents, black-suited and sunglassed just like the familiar stereotype.
“Well, go on, then!” she barked, clearly unhappy. “But if you leave this place a wreck I’ll sue you from here to Jersey City.” Cindy could be intimidating, too, if she wanted to be.
The agents were thorough. They confiscated Samantha’s laptop, which made her very nervous. She had, of course, deleted all the possibly incriminating emails, but she knew that the ‘professionals’ had ways of extracting information from computers that you thought had been safely erased. She was actually surprised that The Professor hadn’t told her to re-boot the whole system to insure that anything on the hard drive would be wiped. It was unlike him to not have calculated in details like that; she was also a little angry at herself for not having thought of it on her own. In any case, it was too late now. At least they had promised to return
it “as soon as possible.”
They had also found her lockbox and taken it. The ‘cleansing’ CD was still in it and Samantha kicked herself mentally for leaving it there. She hoped they wouldn’t be able to somehow trace it back to The Professor. Her one consolation was that the wrist-communicator was still in her pants pocket when she woke up, and this she transferred to her shoe in case the agents would be searching their persons as well.
She needn’t have worried, though, as they did not. They were most pleased with their finds of computer and CD, and had made her open the box with the little key on her keychain. Likely they, too were serious computer geeks, and couldn’t wait to get the stuff back to their lab to try to pry loose any electronic secrets they might find. After they left, Polly got a brief walk and then it was time to go. Even though it was Christmas Eve day, the twenty-fourth, Cindy needed to go to work and demanded that Samantha accompany her. Her own brand of interrogation began on the walk to the subway station.
“Do you know what’s going on here, Samantha? Why is this Agent Stiles suddenly all over our lives? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“I don’t know why she’s doing this all of a sudden,” Samantha tried hard not to lie outright. “She thinks I know who blow-gunned you and that I’m not telling her.”
“Well, do you?” Cindy asked, peeved.
“Mom, I told you,” Samantha did her best tweener whine. “I didn’t see exactly where the dart came from.” This was essentially true, though she had dodged the more direct question. They reached the Ninth Street station and descended the stairs.
“Well, what happened with the guy that they caught?”
“It wasn’t him, Mom. He was just some teenager with a little bit of a record. I know it wasn’t him, and I didn’t want him to get in trouble for something that he didn’t do.”
“Did you even go and look at him? You were home so fast yesterday–how could you know?”
“Agent Stiles described him to me. Just a poor Hispanic kid. It wasn’t him, Mom–I remember the guy she described–he was at the show, but he was way too close to us to have used a blowgun. If you think hard enough, you’ll remember him yourself.”
“Well... all right,” Cindy grumbled as they boarded an inbound F train. “I’ll believe you. My own memory is pretty, well, fuzzy, as you might expect. But I would hope that you would want whomever is responsible for this to answer for it! This was no prank, Samantha; I was in a coma for five days! And let me tell you, I can always think of things I’d rather be doing than eating my dinner through a tube!” She grabbed a pole as the train started moving, taking Samantha’s hand with her free arm. It was crowded–more last minute Christmas shoppers, no doubt.
“Of course I want them to answer for it, Mom. And they will, if I can do anything about it. It just wasn’t that kid, I swear!”
They rode along in silence until they reached the Fourteenth Street station, where they had to switch to the C train to get uptown. They walked up the stairs through hundreds of rush-hour commuters and more frenzied shoppers and Samantha scoped out the women’s room on the way. She asked her mom to wait so she could stop and check it out, feigning an urgent need. Cindy decided she might as well come in, too, so Samantha had to fake that she was using one of the toilet stalls. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly special about the place, but this was to be Alpha Team’s rendevous tomorrow afternoon. She marked the bathroom’s location in her memory, flushed the toilet and came out to wash her hands.
“Come on, Samantha, we don’t want to miss our connection,” Cindy tried to get her moving.
They hurried to the uptown platform and just squeezed onto a C train before the doors closed and it left the station. It didn’t really matter that much - there were lots of different lines that ran this route and they had taken a B, a 3 or a 4 at times when they’d had to. The C was probably the fastest, though, and they got off at Seventy-second Street no more than ten minutes later.
“I wish they’d fix that other damn stop,” Cindy complained as they emerged from underground into the frigid air. Samantha silently agreed. She actually enjoyed the walk in the warmer months, but all travel was a pain in the winter, especially walking. It did perk the both of them up, however, and Samantha felt more awake and aware as they climbed the museum’s steps. This was a good thing. From what Samantha could tell, they would want their wits about them to contend with Stiles.
The museum seemed normal at first glance. People were milling about as usual and the gift shop was especially busy due to the holidays. Cindy greeted Luann as they walked into the office behind the ticket counters, who immediately went into an excited account of the Federal agents’ arrival that morning. Apparently, they were still there somewhere downstairs, likely tearing apart Professor Smythe’s labs and office. Cindy grabbed Samantha’s hand and headed for the stairway, assuring her somewhat dim-witted co-worker that she would be back shortly to commence her ticketing duties.
After walking down the stairs and traversing some length of hallways, they arrived at The Professor’s office. Samantha gasped. It was in a shambles: Books and papers were strewn everywhere, CDs and floppy disks lined the floors and The Professor’s main desktop computer was packed up in a pile of cords and wires. They could hear Smythe’s voice coming from his back room, his closet-library, emphatically trying to protect his books, notes and databases.
“Lingering looters!” The familiar English accent almost shrieked. “This is my work! And–and my library! These books are priceless! If you harm a page of any of them, I’ll have the mayor on you!”
“Relax,” Stiles’ silky voice replied. “We’ll return everything exactly as we found it.”
“When!?” The Professor blurted out in exasperation.
“When we’re finished,” Stiles said calmly.
“Wonderful,” Smythe quieted down. “When you’re finished. Well, I suppose I’ll just have to start some new research in the meantime,” he went on, almost just babbling to himself at this point. “Perhaps something useful this time, like how to breed the curiosity out of Federal agents or how to dissolve Federal agents in a red wine vinegar solution... ”
Agent Stiles frowned at him, but her face quickly changed into a slight smile when she saw Cindy and Samantha coming toward her, picking their way through the debris.
“Ah, our other favorite suspect,” she said, looking at Samantha.
“Cindy! Samantha!” Smythe ran up to them. “What’s going on? Why is this woman destroying my office, my–my labs!?”
“I don’t know, Ainsley,” Cindy replied.
“They’re tearing our house apart, too!” Samantha tried to play her best little girl.
“What are you people looking for!?” Smythe barked at Agent Stiles, who was just then whispering with a fellow agent.
“Actually,” Stiles smiled a tight, thin-lipped smile, “we may have just found it. Professor, Samantha, would you follow us please? Ms. Smart,” she turned to Cindy, “you’re welcome to come as well, or you can return to your ticketing station, whichever you prefer.” The way she said “ticketing station” made Cindy’s blood boil. It was a snobbish, looking-down-the-nose tone the agent had used. Cindy decided to follow.
They walked out of The Professor’s office and past his two main laboratory rooms, both of which contained agents hauling away some of the smaller machines and photographing those that were too big to easily move. Gallons and gallons of chemicals had also been impounded, and one agent was busy stuffing plant samples into large, plastic zip-lock baggies.
“I don’t know what it is you think you’re going to find,” The Professor sighed deeply. “I’ve already given you all the information about the plant, my antidote formula and my process for getting it, Agent Stiles. What have I not made completely transparent to you?”
“Our scientists have studied your antidote–and your story, Professor,” Stiles walked on, her words punctuated by the clack of her heels on the basement’s t
ile floors. They were now heading straight for the time machine room. They reached the door and Stiles looked up at Smythe. “They’ve concluded that your explanation is implausible, and that they were unable to reproduce your experiments in their lab. Live DNA could not be extracted from the fossil samples you provided. This leads them to believe that your antidote could only have been synthesized from a recently harvested plant, that plant being Phylathimus Phylathum, which accepted knowledge holds has been extinct for at least nine hundred years.” They reached the door with the keypad lock on it. “Combination, please.”
The Professor looked up at Agent Stiles, then at Cindy and Samantha. Samantha tried not to gulp obviously but began to break out in a nervous sweat. Stiles smiled as The Professor started punching in the correct numbers and resumed putting forth the conclusions of her investigation.
“Therefore, it follows that you either a) know of some secret supply of this plant that’s growing somewhere that no one else, except perhaps the perpetrator of this crime, is aware of, or b)–” The Professor finished dialing the combination and the lock clicked open. The little LED indicator light went from red to green. “ - you’ve found a way to retrieve things–living things, even, by manipulating... time.” She barely smiled and turned the doorknob, pushing the door open. Samantha held her breath. One of the lesser agents reached in and flicked the light switch on... and found nothing.
Well, it wasn’t exactly nothing. Samantha let out her breath, closing her eyes for a split second in relief. Agent Stiles looked puzzled, her usually perfect composure somewhat shaken and uncertain. She looked all around, her hawk-like eyes seeking out the slightest sign of a cover-up. She bit her lip.
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