Khan set his coffee cup on a crowded bussing tray and turned to leave, whereupon he experienced a momentary shock: there was Littlewood himself. Not on a yacht. Not bound for the Channel Islands. But headed straight toward him. Khan looked over his shoulder in expectation that someone was behind him. Someone Littlewood would want to chat with. But Littlewood was making a beeline for him—Dr. Jules Khan, lowly postdoc.
Khan straightened his tie. Then regretted the action. It made him look nervous. He ran a hand over his head, smoothing his hair. Idiot.
Then, exiting into the hall from a corridor on his right, he heard a woman’s voice. Dr. Miranda Ching, the only female presenter at the conference.
“Miranda,” called Littlewood, his face lighting up at the sight of Ching.
Littlewood must have arranged to meet Ching here. Khan had never been the object of his attention. Khan attempted to look busy with his (very dated) PalmPilot.
“You look like hell,” Miranda said, returning Littlewood’s greeting, while simultaneously managing to rebuff conversation.
Khan looked up from his handheld device. Littlewood did look like hell. Khan heard him murmuring something about a rough night as Ching swept past and out of hearing range.
Littlewood, too, murmured, “There’s a postdoc I shouldn’t have let get away.”
Then he turned back to Khan, his hand extended. “Dr. Khan?”
Khan took Littlewood’s hand automatically, relieved his own was the cooler (and drier) of the two.
“I’m sure you’re busy,” said Littlewood, “but I wonder if I might borrow a moment of your time?”
Khan’s brow furrowed and he nearly looked over his shoulder again to see if Littlewood might actually be addressing anyone else. What could Dr. Arthur Littlewood want with him?
Littlewood was waiting, a rather pained smile on his lined face.
“Uh . . . yes,” Khan blurted out. “Yes, of course.”
And then he realized what was probably going on. Jones must have sent Littlewood, telling him Jules Khan was the person with whom to lodge complaints about the conference. Littlewood’s excursion had evidently been canceled, and he probably wanted a refund.
Khan pasted what he hoped was an inviting expression on his face. He might be able to turn this encounter into an opportunity. Ask Littlewood a few questions about his research after dealing solicitously with any complaints. If he played his cards right, he might get the opportunity to casually indicate his own interest in Littlewood’s research group. Mention he wasn’t sure his current postdoc really suited his talents, that sort of thing.
“I appreciate it,” said Littlewood. “Maybe we could go somewhere more . . . out of the way?”
Arthur Littlewood looked nervous. And exhausted. Or maybe he had simply looked better from the remove of ten rows of seats from the podium.
“I didn’t sleep,” murmured Littlewood. “Damn time change.”
Khan nodded. Littlewood worked in Florida. Eastern Time.
“What can I do for you?” Khan asked in his most solicitous tone.
The two had passed from the central hall into the narrow corridor leading to the department’s office—empty because it was Saturday—and the lavatories.
Littlewood indicated the office. “In here, I think,” he murmured.
He did a lot of murmuring. A classic absentminded professor, right down to the god-awful 1980s tie and the Harris Tweed sport coat.
“So, how can I be of service?” Khan repeated.
He had a sudden fear Littlewood might have sequestered the two of them away to inquire about where to get lucky in Isla Vista, but Littlewood evidently had business on his mind. He’d already set his laptop computer—a drool-worthy PowerBook G4, if Khan wasn’t mistaken—on a desk and was scrolling through a document.
“I want your opinion on something. In your dissertation, you advocate for what you call ‘temporal inertia’ in your discussion of the existence of the space–time singularity . . .” Littlewood broke off, evidently having trouble locating what he was after on his G4.
Khan stood a little taller. His doctoral work had been on the singularity. It had won him the attention of Dr. Jones and gotten him the postdoc he now held in Jones’s lab. Jones, however, was not a believer in temporal inertia, refusing to allow Khan to pursue his theoretical model while he was on the clock. It was the sorest of several sore points between the two.
“Just here,” Littlewood said, tapping an equation. “Do you have any reason to believe you were on the wrong track? Would you argue for a more chaos-driven explanation at this point in your thinking?”
Khan frowned. Littlewood had taken his original equation and altered it slightly, essentially taking Khan’s theory a step further than Khan had been able to since joining Dr. Jones’s group. For the second time in five minutes, Khan asked himself what he was doing here in Santa Barbara, wasting his time with Jones, when there were minds like Littlewood’s.
“This is . . . good,” murmured Khan. Murmuring was evidently catching.
“Thank you,” said Littlewood. “But do you think it might be right?”
Khan continued to frown. He wasn’t accustomed to having his work taken seriously. He was accustomed to keeping his theories to himself. Perhaps he was even temperamentally disposed to keeping things close to the vest. But Littlewood was taking his theory seriously. Pride swelled inside Khan, and for once, he didn’t want to keep his thoughts to himself.
Littlewood slid his jacket off, arranging it haphazardly on a pile of letters that scattered. Joyce, the department’s head secretary, would be furious. Khan ignored the letters for now. He had more important matters to address.
He cleared his throat.
“Everyone agrees temporal history is an infinitely complex, chaotic, nonlinear system. I’m not arguing that point. However, if my theory is right, there are robust ‘strange attractors’ that make massive changes in the time line very unlikely. Virtually impossible.”
“Hmm,” replied Littlewood. “Like traffic funneling onto trunk roads. In theory, motorists could use alternate routes, but in actual practice they stick to trunk roads.”
“Exactly. Drop a boulder in a stream and the water appears to shift its direction, but only until it rounds the boulder. The boulder won’t change the course of the stream. It’s the same with time. Temporal history is locally changeable yet globally stable.”
“Kill Christopher Columbus in 1490—”
“And some other European sets off the pillaging of North and South America instead,” finished Khan. He paused and then pointed to the equation on Littlewood’s PowerBook. “If anything, I think you’ve underestimated the degree of rift necessary to move the temporal system from one stable attractor to a different one.”
“Underestimated?”
A burst of raucous laughter sounded in the hall outside the office.
“The rift in space–time would have to be significant—really significant—to change the course of history. In the imaginary example of Columbus, you’d have to have stopped Basque fishermen from crossing the Atlantic. You’d have to get rid of the European lust for gold. The changes to history would have to be . . . incomprehensibly inclusive for Europeans to have left the so-called New World alone. Or take Caesar. Plenty of historians agree history would have looked different without Julius Caesar, but something like Rome’s empire period would have happened anyway—”
“Because of the strong attenuation in the temporal fluctuations,” Littlewood said, completing the thought. “Right. You’re right, of course. That’s very . . . comforting.”
What an odd response, thought Khan.
Hearing another burst of laughter, Khan looked over his shoulder. That was Jones’s laugh.
“Listen, that’s Dr. Jones. If you want a second opinion . . .”
“No, no,” replied Littlewood. “Jones and I have gone round and round on related topics. He’s great at securing grant money, but I wouldn’t want him in my resea
rch group, if you know what I mean.”
Khan did know. And Khan wanted nothing more than to seize this opportunity to ask Littlewood if he might have an opening in his group, but at that moment Dr. Jones burst through the office door with two other men. Khan felt his face heating. Felt as though Jones could see his intentions written across his forehead: I plan to jump ship and work with Littlewood!
“Arthur!” said Dr. Jones, addressing Littlewood while utterly ignoring Khan. “I thought we weren’t going to see you today—”
“Change of plans,” replied Littlewood, a little more eagerly than Khan thought warranted. “Bad night’s sleep compounded by too many shots of your excellent tequila. I didn’t feel up to a day on the water after all.”
“You look like hell,” said Dr. Jones, frowning at Littlewood.
Littlewood laughed nervously.
“Come with me for just a moment,” said Dr. Jones. “There’s someone you must meet.”
“I’m a bit busy,” replied Littlewood, shifting his G4 so that the screen wasn’t visible to Jones.
“No, no. I won’t take no for an answer,” said Jones. “It’ll just take a second, then you can go back to complaining about the bad coffee or whatever it is you’re wasting my postdoc’s time with.”
Littlewood laughed again. Khan smiled blandly. Jones grabbed Littlewood’s arm. “Come on, come on. Just a quick second.”
“I’ll wait for you,” said Khan.
Littlewood reached for his laptop.
“Oh, leave it!” said Jones. “I just want to introduce you, not exchange state secrets.”
Another of Littlewood’s nervous laughs sounded as Jones dragged him out the door.
And then Khan was alone with Littlewood’s laptop. Alone with his intriguing paper, or whatever this was. Khan hesitated for only the briefest of moments and then sat down at the desk. He toggled back to the beginning of the document and began reading.
It was . . . fascinating.
Littlewood had been withholding; he hadn’t explained the half of it, of his interest in the equation or Khan’s theories or potential rifts in space–time. This was more than fascinating. Littlewood wrote of things that were, or should have been, impossible. Littlewood had taken Khan’s argument that the space–time continuum could be manipulated, could be focused, and drawn the argument into an elegant proposition for the construction of a device meant to . . . meant to what, exactly? Focus the singularity? Did Littlewood believe he could pull at the very fabric of space–time itself? Create a pocket into which objects could be inserted and transported? Barely able to contain himself, Khan scanned ahead. Littlewood wrote as though he had done . . . the impossible. As though he’d already created a singularity through which to focus space–time and perhaps—good gods—perhaps even tried it out experimentally. Khan felt suddenly faint.
This changed everything. Everything.
A chill ran along his shoulders. This was too important to ignore. He needed pictures. Proof. Khan reached into the pocket of his ratty sport coat, which held a small camera he’d used to grab photos of the presenters. Another lovely bit of grunt work. But as he fumbled for the camera, he found instead a small wrapped package. It was a brand new Lexar USB flash drive from the Lexar table at the conference, given to Dr. Jones by the sales rep, doubtless in the hopes it would generate orders. Jones, however, had instructed Khan to pass it on to the keynote speaker, along with bottles of local wine, olives, and preserved figs.
Khan had a much better use for the flash drive. He tore open the packaging.
Quickly inserting the USB stick into the G4, he proceeded to download not just Littlewood’s paper, but the entire contents of the folder in which it was stored. As he turned to watch the door, he inadvertently brushed against Littlewood’s jacket, sending it falling to the ground along with several of Joyce’s letters.
Khan cursed and began to collect the fallen documents, sorting them as best he could and then bent down to collect Littlewood’s coat.
“Hmmph,” grunted Khan. The coat was an actual Harris Tweed. “Of course,” he muttered to himself.
Khan gave the jacket a quick shake to straighten it before setting it down. As he did so, he accidentally dislodged a small slip of paper, which fluttered to the ground like a drunken starling. This, too, Khan recovered. Had it come out of the breast pocket or an outer pocket?
He could hear Littlewood outside making his excuses: “I really must return—”
Khan ejected the flash drive (now successfully loaded) and tried to decide which pocket the slip of paper—an ATM withdrawal receipt—belonged in. Before he had decided, he noticed a tiny detail on the paper: the date. It was from June 28, two days ago. But it was not from 2001. The slip of paper read “6/28/2017.”
Khan’s eyes grew wide, and he pulled the paper closer in case he’d misread.
He hadn’t.
“Impossible,” he murmured just as Littlewood rounded the corner and reentered the office. Hastily, Khan stuffed the receipt in his own jacket pocket.
Khan examined Littlewood with new interest, noting the creases to the sides of his eyes, a gray hair or two at his temples, the paunch at his waist. This wasn’t the same fit and vibrant man who’d given a talk yesterday about the intricacies of space–time. The man before him was too old.
“Khan,” said Littlewood, hastily packing up his G4, “It’s been wonderful meeting you, and I would love to talk more, but I’m afraid there’s somewhere I need to be.”
“Wait,” said Khan, but then he hesitated. What, exactly, was he going to say or ask or do?
“Thanks very much for your insight,” said Littlewood, almost apologetically. “I’ll be in touch.”
Should he let him go? Should he demand an explanation? Khan hesitated. As he thought about it, he realized it might be better to let Littlewood go, to simply keep the information he’d stolen to himself. Wasn’t this, perhaps, his opportunity? His singular moment?
If Khan wasn’t losing his mind, Littlewood would disappear back to the future, in which case Khan could get nearly a two-decade jump on the research that Littlewood had given him. Well, that he’d stolen . . . But upon such small chances hung how many great advances? This was a localized destabilization, but globally, the implications were clear: someone, somewhere, sometime, would be the first to manipulate space–time, just as someone had ended up being Columbus or Caesar. And why shouldn’t it be Jules Khan, here and now?
The thoughts passed through Khan’s mind in a matter of seconds, during which Littlewood had snatched both jacket and laptop and crossed out of the office. Dazed, Khan didn’t pursue him at first. But then doubts assailed him. What if he was mistaken and the slip of paper was just a . . . a misprint, the time travel wholly imagined? What if this was his last chance to ask Littlewood for a postdoc?
Khan swore. He needed time. He needed to calm down. His heart was pounding painfully in his chest. He needed to ask Littlewood a few probing questions, because it might all be theory. It was probably all theory. It was one thing to postulate travel through the space–time continuum. It was quite another to believe in it.
But in that moment, Khan found he didn’t care if Littlewood thought he was crazy. Didn’t care, even, if Littlewood suspected he’d stolen the secrets nestled in the PowerBook. All he cared about was talking to Littlewood and finding out the truth: Had he done it?
Khan strode out of the office and was about to pursue a path back to the main hall when a subtle shift of light in his peripheral view made him turn to the men’s lavatory instead. The door had just closed, blocking the flicker of a malfunctioning fluorescent tube. He dashed into the men’s room. Under the harsh light, Littlewood looked pale and exhausted. He stood clutching the sides of one of the sinks, eyes shut, but his eyes flew open when he heard Khan entering.
Littlewood smiled the awkward smile of acquaintances meeting in the lav and then turned for one of the stalls with doors. Khan felt suddenly desperate to know the truth.
Littlewood exhaled in exasperation. “Just give a man a moment?”
Khan grabbed Littlewood, compelling him to stop. Khan was high on adrenaline and ready to do whatever it took to get Littlewood to provide a few answers. Littlewood tried to shrug free and the two grappled awkwardly. Khan was the stronger of the two.
“I just want to talk,” said Khan, breathing heavily, grasping Littlewood tightly.
But in the next moment, something happened that would forever change the life of the individual known as Jules Khan. Space–time wrenched the single man, Jules Khan, into two men, both Jules Khan, neither aware of the split.
One Jules Khan felt himself frozen in the grasp of the temporal rift as he hurtled forward through time with Dr. Littlewood. The other Jules Khan remained in 2001, standing in the lav, staring in shock at the empty space where, moments ago, Dr. Arthur Littlewood had stood.
1
• JILLIAN •
San Francisco Airport, 2018—The Present Day
A culinary course brochure clutched in one clammy palm, Jillian Applegate stood in line and examined her boarding pass. “SFO–SBA.” Just a short hop from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. Just a quick trip home for Thanksgiving. Just another UC Berkeley student escaping her sophomore year. People did this. People flew. Lots of people. All the time. And if they could do it, so could she.
She could. She would.
It wasn’t a question of bravery; everyone knew Jillian was brave. She’d been the kind of four-year-old who got right back on the pony that threw her. The kind of college student who stood up to her Berkeley-alumni parents and said, nope, I’m doing something else. She squeezed the baking school brochure tighter, rumpling its smooth surface. It was just preflight jitters. She’d read about them. Perfectly normal.
The man behind her wheeled his suitcase into Jillian’s Achilles tendon for the third time.
A Thief in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 1) Page 25