by Andy Gavin
“Can’t… swim,” she hacks out between coughs.
“Tell me something I don’t—”
A piercing scream erupts out of nowhere as someone falls out of the sky and plunges into the water. The huge splash settles to reveal my red-faced aunt. Time has given her hair a Chinese-style dye job like Yvaine’s.
“Damn… son of a… wouldn’t… let go!”
She starts an aggressive dog paddle. The harbor’s jammed with boats, mostly Bruce-Lee-style junk ships but also a couple Titanic lookalikes.
Yvaine keeps struggling. I kick furiously but my thirty-something aunt with a broken leg makes better time.
By the time we reach the wharf, my numb limbs, powered by sheer willpower, are long past the point of exhaustion.
We cling to a crude wooden ladder bolted to the stone quay. None of us are in a hurry to climb up.
“You traveled t’get free?” Yvaine asks Sophie. My aunt winces. Her face is white.
“Had to tug off my pants first and kick him away. Didn’t want him following me. Hurt like a bitch.”
Yvaine looks so odd with her long, straight Asian hair. She climbs the ladder halfway, revealing that her silver cami has become a red silk pajama top and her thong white granny panties — both soaked, of course. She must be feeling better, since she slaps her own cheek on the way up — not the one on her face.
“You found a sassy one, Charlie,” my aunt says.
Yvaine nods. “Been called that before.”
“What’ll happen to Tubby down under?” I ask.
“The fat Tock?” Yvaine says. “Call him Backstabber.” She twists her hips to show off his knives, still belted around her waist.
Sophie says, “You didn’t feel a timequake after I jumped away from him, did you?”
I shake my head.
“I hope he rusts at the bottom,” Yvaine says.
“If they really can’t swim,” Sophie says, “we could try to drown them all.”
“Leave me home if you do,” I say.
Yvaine hangs off the ladder rail to let Sophie climb past. Without her pants, my aunt's leg is visible. It doesn't look good. The calf is swollen and purple, the foot twisted at an unnatural angle, and she moans with every rung. Not that she complains.
Yvaine follows, with me right behind her. Despite the cold water and my exhaustion, I can’t object to the view.
On the dock above, a wide boulevard separates the wharf from an impressive row of western-style buildings. Rickshaws fill the street, but I also see the occasional unicycle. The crowds are mixed, mostly Chinese in robes and dark beanies or conical straw hats, with some Europeans in muted formal clothes thrown in — the men in really tall top hats and the women with their hair dyed black like Yvaine and Sophie. There’s no sign of the neon colors and punk styles we saw in the future.
An occasional passerby gives us the odd glance. I really need to find my women some pants.
We spend a while plying the locals for information, a process made easy by our newfound mastery of the language.
The good news is we’ve arrived in Shanghai, June 30.
The bad news is it’s 1955.
“The Tock must have turned the year dial during the struggle,” Sophie says.
Yvaine puts her hands on her hips, newly clad in stolen silk pajama bottoms.
“There ain’t no way Charlie can take us both back a few years?” she says.
My aunt shakes her head. “Too bad he didn’t roll his dial the other way. We could all three go forward, but only two back.”
“Dad said he’d keep coming every first of the month,” I say. “Would he keep at it this long?”
“I would,” Sophie says.
We discover there’s still an emperor in Peking.
“It seems the Prince of Heaven now reports to Parliament,” Sophie tells us after grilling a friendly passerby for political details.
“What about the communists?” I ask.
Yvaine squats on the side of the street and picks her toenails. Her expertise is more in acquisitions. Not only did she lift pants for her and Sophie — local laundry includes a ready supply of silk pajamas — she even liberated a handful of cash from a careless shopkeep.
“I asked,” Sophie says. “Hunan province is in revolt, led by a socialist leader named Mao. Time preserves what it can, but I suspect he’ll make little headway with the British fully in control. In our old history, the Japanese invasion really shook things up.”
I only know the bold strokes of Chinese history — lots of dynasties and all that — but I’m happy to see less clockwork stuff here than there was in screwed-up Philly. The British all wear oversized pocket watches, but the locals don’t seem as keen on them.
“Where we supposed t’meet your da again?” Yvaine asks.
“His letter just said ‘the old place where my mother might find her favorite beverage.’”
“Knowing Fink,” Sophie says, “he probably means the antique tea house by Yu Garden.”
I grin. “Is that a restaurant?”
Sophie nods, and we both laugh.
“Why that be funny?” Yvaine asks.
“He loves restaurants,” Sophie and I say at the same time.
“We need a doctor,” I tell Sophie in the morning. Her leg is even more swollen.
“In mid-century China?” she mutters.
“Do you want gangrene?”
“Barber’ll take it off,” Yvaine says. “Folks often live.”
If we don’t get Sophie looked at soon, I’m worried it might come to that.
My go-go girl doesn’t look so great herself. She didn’t sleep much — who did? — and is all fidgets, tapping her feet, scratching her arms, picking at herself. Her skin looks clammy and her pupils are huge.
I put a hand on her knee, half to comfort her, half to still the incessant motion of her legs.
“Is everything all right?”
A pained look crosses her face. She grabs her belly, bolts into the corner, pulls down her pajama bottoms, and spends a long time looking really uncomfortable.
Sophie says, “Juice withdrawal looks like a bitch, but at least she gets to keep all her limbs.”
“You’re not going to lose your leg. Yvaine’ll look after you while I go find my dad.”
“I can take care of myself—”
Her attempt to move elicits a scream loud enough to wake the dead.
“That be settled,” Yvaine says.
I squeeze Sophie’s arm and kiss Yvaine. The teahouse is only a hundred yards away, floating over a grubby pond on stone pillars. It looks like some fairytale building out of Chinese Disney, all red painted wood and crazy peaked pagoda gray roofs, complete with hanging paper lanterns.
Dad better be there, and he better know a good doctor.
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
Age Gap
Shanghai, Summer, 1955
INSIDE, THE TEAHOUSE IS A CRAMPED MAZE choked with foreigners and sweet smelling smoke. I work my way through room by room, table by table.
If not for his extra-sharp time traveler aura, I’d have trouble recognizing my dad.
He was always tall — but lanky, like me. Now his midnight silk robe tents across his big belly, and he has at least two and a half chins. His dark hair is shot through with gray and braided down his back. His eyes are the same: bright with intelligence and alight with curiosity.
His table is strewn with plates of food, and his chopsticks are poking at the remnants of a huge meal. Across from him is a silver-haired Chinese guy so fat he makes my dad look like Abbot to his Costello.
“The sea cucumber in abalone sauce is particularly fine today,” he says.
“I prefer the frog’s legs in bird’s nest,” his friend says, the motion of his jaw making his wispy white beard dance.
I walk up to the table. “Got your note, Dad.”
My father drops the oyster skewered on his chopstick.
“Charlie?” He forces himself to his feet, nearly
toppling the table, and wraps me in a bear hug.
For a minute, I imagine he’s just come home from one of his trips, and while the warm bulk of his belly against me messes with the fantasy, it’s amazing to see him. Things are going to be all right now, no more of this crazy by-the-seat-of-our-pants—
“I knew you’d come! I cajole Master Li into joining me every month.”
“Pull my beard and buy me sixty-six dishes,” the fat old man says.
I’d love to hang out and catch up, but Sophie can’t wait.
“Dad—”
“Forgive my manners.” My father steps back to introduce Master Li, who gives a little bow, really more of a nod. “Sit down, Charlie. You look starved—”
“Dad! I brought Sophie, but we need a doctor.”
That gets his attention. He grabs my arm.
“Master Li, can you settle the bill and arrange for Doctor Wu to meet us at your house?”
Outside on the bridges, I jog toward Sophie and Yvaine, quickly leaving Dad behind.
“What happened to you giving me piggyback rides up and down the art museum steps?” I call back over my shoulder.
He puts on a burst of speed — for about five seconds — then returns to his walrus waddle.
“Seven years happened… and about seven thousand meals.”
I have the grace to drop back so we arrive together. Yvaine looks really worried. My aunt looks even worse than she did when I left. Dad bends over her — no easy feat.
“Little sis,” he says, “Just can’t let you out of my sight, can I?”
Sophie grins — also no easy feat.
“I missed you too, Finkwinkle.”
Dad knows how to get things done. He flags down a large rickshaw and pays some guys — coolies, he calls them — to help load Sophie inside. Soon we’re dodging traffic.
“Is your name really Finkwinkle?” I always assumed Fink was one of Sophie’s inside jokes.
“Your grandparents had a perverse streak,” he says. “They thought a ridiculous name no one noticed was too funny to pass up.”
“Methinks Finkwinkle be a leprechaun name,” Yvaine whispers louder than she should.
Sophie winks at her. “Fink traded his forties for forty pounds.”
My father scowls as he wedges a seat pillow under her leg.
“That be only the half of it.” Yvaine’s trying, none too hard, to keep from losing it.
Sophie elbows me. “I like this girl.”
The thinner three of us laugh. The rickshaw is tilted to Dad’s side, even with Sophie in the middle and Yvaine and me on the other side.
We approach a stone wall and a pair of servants open big wooden gates. Master Li waits in a courtyard surrounded by beautiful structures and gardens — what he modestly calls home.
“I set the bone and gave her something to make her sleep,” Doctor Wu says when he returns from the garden bedroom where we carried Sophie. “She must drink nine cups of tea each day.” He hands a servant a scrap of paper that must be the traditional Chinese equivalent of a prescription and tugs at the rat-tail of white hair snaking from under his black beanie. “Strength of an ox, that one, but she must not leave bed for a month.”
“I’ll make sure of it,” my dad says. I don’t envy him the task.
“If her fever rises, send word.” Doctor Wu bows and glides out of the room.
“Master Li, thank you again for hosting,” Dad says.
“My friend, after seven years, I think this is your home too.” The big man smiles. “Fortune has blessed you. Family reunited, injuries on the mend.”
“And a lot to talk about, Dad,” I say. “Like how to fix this mess so Mom remembers who we are again.”
He takes a seat on a bench and looks out across the ponds stuffed with oversized goldfish.
“So you met her?” he says. “In the new future?”
“You mean the future where she’s married to our neighbor and has to wheel herself around the house?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Dad, why didn’t you tell me I was a…” I glance over at our host, not sure if I should finish the sentence.
“I have no secrets from Master Li, Charlie. And besides, brilliant as he is, time only allows him to understand so much.”
Master Li checks his pocket watch — ominous and out of place in this zen setting — and smiles.
“I’ll have the chefs prepare an eighty-eight course dinner for luck.”
Didn’t he eat like a thousand dishes of puppy tails in ginger sauce an hour ago? Just thinking about a long meal makes me want to collapse.
“Dad, don’t you think we ought to rest up tonight? Maybe start the celebrating tomorrow?”
“You’re probably right,” he says.
But Master Li looks like somebody just consigned him to gruel and water for three days.
After he leaves, my dad wanders over to a niche and picks up a china bowl.
“I’ve learned a great deal here,” he says. “Master Li is the greatest historian China has produced in centuries. Even the emperor thinks so. He personally inscribed this bowl with a poem praising Li’s work.”
Looking around at the lavish estate — it’s like a private park in the middle of busy Shanghai — I’m thinking Master Li must also be the richest historian China has produced in centuries.
My father gets a dreamy look on his face.
“Of course, Master Li and I have our separate areas of expertise, his being the detailed course of history as currently represented on the timeline, mine the effect of fulcrum manipulation on the fifth dimension.”
“Is he speaking English?” Yvaine asks.
“Shanghainese actually,” I whisper. Then louder, “Dad, try to cater to the TV audience.” Still, I take an odd satisfaction in being lectured — God knows that’s mostly what he did when he was at home.
“Sorry.” Dad puts the bowl down.
“Why didn’t you tell me what I was?” I say.
“Sophie gave me an earful about that too. Charlie, I should have, but I didn’t want to spoil your juvenescence.”
Where does he get these words?
“Yeah, Dad, I had a great childhood being a friendless loser and not knowing why.”
“We call that causal-dampening,” he says. “I should begin with our history — what little I know — since we time travelers have no normal means of recording our culture. Even if we write down our experiences, time erases our efforts whenever we travel, except for—”
“The Brief History?” He’s not the only one who knows stuff.
He raises an eyebrow. “You have been talking to Sophie. Much of what we know comes from pages written by the Regulator, the first and most brilliant of all time travelers.”
Through my jacket, I pat the brass page I’ve carried since France. But in the ongoing spirit of petty payback, I decide to show-and-tell later, after I get some real answers.
“But first,” my dad says, “tell me everything that happened since I last saw you.”
I launch into the story but try to whitewash Yvaine’s career choices, not to mention her love life. While the part about Ben Franklin is impossible to avoid, I downplay the whole Billy thing. The Rapier-in-the-church bit has Dad riveted, but when I start in on France — editing for a PG rating — his gaze wanders and he picks up the china bowl again.
Then I mention the buried brass page.
He drops the bowl back on the pedestal, where it rocks back and forth.
“Dad, it’s here, but—”
He zooms across the room to snatch it out of my hand. Zooms. At his weight.
“Gee, would you like to borrow it?” I don’t think he even hears me, he’s so riveted by the text. “I could only make out a few words,” I say.
His two and a half chins jiggle when he nods.
“This is the Regulator’s work. His cipher is complex, but I broke the key some years ago. I’ll take it to my study to translate.”
Chapter Twenty-Nin
e:
Pages
Shanghai, Summer, 1955
AFTER THE SERVANTS BATHE AND DRESS ME, I go looking for Yvaine. As her room is nowhere near mine, this involves crossing a stone bridge over an ornamental fish pond to traverse a courtyard filled with rocks and lanterns — all this before I figure out which building she’s in.
The house is more a collection of Asian bungalows nestled in a giant garden. The windows are just reddish wood latticework, so I peer into a couple rooms.
And hear my father talking to Sophie about the page.
“It’s been two years since I had anything new to work with,” he says. “But I’ve made progress. Three years in, a historic oddity and several camels led me to a tomb in Xian, where I found seven more pages.”
“Traveling without me is so old-fashioned,” Sophie says.
“Better than popping up inside a dumpster.”
She chuckles. “Now that’s the Fink I love. Have your precious pages revealed the secrets of the eons?”
“That’s how long since I held my wife. Eons.”
“So you’re my even older brother now,” my aunt says. “Doesn’t mean the end of the world.”
“I’ll probably never see her again — probably a good thing.” A big sigh. “Look at me. What would Renni say?”
“Twice as much of you to love!”
“She’ll never forgive me for stealing Charlie.”
“That isn’t your fault. Besides, he was never hers to begin with.”
I slip away, not wanting to hear any more than I already have. I stumble over to a stone dragon crouched on a mossy garden wall.
We travelers belong only to each other.
When I finally find Yvaine’s room, she’s lying on the bed, a low wood thing, wearing a half-belted silk robe. Her legs are bent and her bare feet press a folding screen against the wall.
“Methinks I’ll likely sleep for a month.”
I flop down next to her. She smells all clean and soapy. It’s not exactly what I’m used to, but it’s nice.