by Peter Clines
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Eli said with an absent nod.
Harry tapped her nose twice. “Protecting it was the faceless men’s only reason for existing. When the dream was stolen, it was their greatest possible failure. They became zealots, obsessed with getting it back.”
“Okay,” said Eli, “but that’s good, right? I mean, if this thing’s the foundation of the country, then it can’t be a good thing that it’s gone.”
“Not at all.”
“So if they want it back…well, why are you even getting in the way?”
She shook her head. “We’re not. I said they were fanatical about protecting the dream. Their priorities have…shifted.”
“Shifted how?”
Harry twitched on the bench. She rolled her shoulders, and with her grip on the wheel it swung her body forward and back. “They searched for the dream for a hundred years,” she said, “through almost three hundred years of American history. And somewhere in there, amidst all those rumors and stories and sightings of faceless men, the first searchers found out about the dream too.”
“Okay.”
“Some of the searchers are not, shall we say, as cautious as others. They see the travel itself as a means to an end, manipulating events to serve their own needs.”
“But isn’t that…” Eli tapped his knee. “Isn’t that just making more ripples, like you were talking about before?”
“Exactly,” she said with a sage nod. “Some of them are more devious, but the searchers who make extreme changes are hunted down by the faceless men as well.”
“Okay. So they guard the dream and they guard…the timeline?”
“History,” she corrected.
“Right. But I still don’t get what the deal is. If you’re not messing things up in history, and you all want the dream found, they why aren’t you—”
“They stopped looking for the dream,” she said, shooting another glance at him. “That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you.
“After a hundred years of being unable to find the dream they—” She paused to clear her throat. “They decided to focus more on the ‘protecting history’ aspect of their duty. And they decided that anyone traveling through history was a risk.”
“Even if you’re not doing anything?”
“Precisely.”
“Well…why keep doing it then?”
“Because someone has to find the dream, Mr. Teague. How long can a house stand without a foundation beneath it? Even in your era, you must be able to see the unity of the nation coming apart.”
“I guess, yeah.”
“When the dream is found, the country’s underlying bedrock will be restored.”
“And you’ll get your three wishes, or whatever.”
“Someone’s going to affect the shape the country takes, yes. Would you rather it be someone like me or some greedy little weasel?”
He shook his head. “This is nuts.”
“And yet, still the truth.”
“As you were told it.”
“Yes, there is that.”
Eli watched the endless night roll by, then focused his gaze on the bright space the headlights formed ahead of them. “It almost makes sense,” he said, “in a weird sort of way. I mean, once you get past the fact it’s nuts, a lot of it does sort of line up.”
“It does.”
“Still, I think I’ll leave that part out when I tell people where I’ve been for the past week.” He sighed. “I guess I’ll be leaving most of this out.”
In the dark, her face shifted.
He saw the movement. “What?”
“You won’t be able to tell anyone.”
“Well, I’ll have to tell them something,” he said. He shook his head and pictured the questions from Robin and Corey, from his mom, from Bill at the bank as he begged for his job back. “I’ve been gone over a week. People are going to ask questions.”
The tip of Harry’s hat shifted back and forth in the dark. “I thought you understood,” she murmured, half to him and half to the road.
“Understood what?”
Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel, the same half-familiar rhythm. “You’d already caught their attention. They’d taken note of you because you’d spoken with me twice before. But once they saw us together in Pasadena—once they saw us leave together…”
Something twisted low in Eli’s belly. Not quite nausea, not exactly a tightening. “What are you saying?”
“I’m not just answering your questions, Mr. Teague. I’m trying to teach you. You need to know all this if you’re going to survive on the road.”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t. I’m not on the road. I’m just…I just want to go home.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “You can’t. When I said I was stuck with you, I didn’t mean for the short term. They’re after you now too.”
16
Eli’d never been anywhere so dark before. No houses, no streetlights, no moon, only a few faint stars that didn’t seem to cast any actual light. The whole world had faded away as the car drove on, leaving nothing but a few dashboard lights and a bright oval of pavement.
He glanced over at Harry. They hadn’t spoken in almost half an hour. Even then it had just been twenty minutes of back-and-forth apologies from her and denial from him. Denial that, even he had to admit, had gotten a bit pleading at the end.
He cleared his throat. “Are we going to stop for the night?”
Harry glanced at him. “I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Are you good to keep driving?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You aren’t tired or road blind or anything?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Road blind?”
“Sometimes, when I have to do a lot of driving, I zone out and go on automatic. Just sort of lose focus and then realize I haven’t really registered anything for the last ten or twenty minutes. Especially when it’s monotonous like this.” He gestured out at the black.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “I’ve just never heard it referred to that way.”
“Ahhh.”
“I am a bit…road blind,” Harry admitted. “Road nearsighted, perhaps.”
“Do you want me to drive for a while?”
Her eyes flicked toward him in the dark. “Have you ever driven a Model A before, Mr. Teague?”
Eli shifted on the wooden bench. “Once, but the owner was walking me through it. We never even left the parking lot.”
“I think we’ll preserve her gearbox for a bit longer, then,” Harry said, patting the steering wheel.
They came up over a rise and a cluster of red lights appeared in the distance. A big truck, plowing its way across the desert. Harry swung the wheel, brought them up alongside, and then past it. She reached an arm out and waved as they settled in ahead of the truck. Two quick baaaaahs from the big rig’s horn echoed behind them.
Eli glanced back. They were already past the circle of the truck’s headlights. He squinted at the dashboard. “How fast are we going?”
“About seventy. The steering gets wonky past that, so I prefer not to go faster in the dark.”
He leaned back and studied the car’s dash in the dim light. Harry had added a wooden dashboard over the classic metal one, putting some space between herself and the back wall of the gas tank. A not-uncommon rebuild for a Model A. She’d carried over the steel “clover” of instruments the Model A classically had. The cylinder speedometer and gas gauge. The ignition key had been replaced by a series of silver switches. Nine other switches had been added next to the clover in a three-by-three grid. The small orange light, now calm and dark, sat at the top of the clover, just above the gas gauge. She’d created an interesting design, keeping it balanced even though the car hadn’t been designed with much of a dashboard.
“How fast can it go?”
“She can get close to ninety on a straightaway,” said Harry. “The speedometer only goes to se
venty-five, though.”
Eli smiled. “A 1929 Model A business coupe that hits ninety miles per hour.”
“Stranger things in heaven and earth,” she said.
“You’ve made other modifications, haven’t you? Past the carburetor.”
“A few, yes. A carbon-fiber timing gear. Some better electrics. But that’s nothing new. People customized Model As for decades, yes?”
They drove on in the darkness. A car appeared in the distance. It flashed its headlights, high-low-high-low as it approached. Then it roared past them in a gust of sound and wind.
“Can I ask you another question?”
“I suppose it depends,” said Harry. “What about?”
He gestured at the steering column. “Your car.”
“Then, yes, Mr. Teague, you may ask a question.”
“The car has a Garrett carburetor.”
She glanced at him. “Yes.”
“How?”
“How did we get a carburetor?”
“How did you get one that runs on water?”
Harry sighed. “Someone revisits the idea in…2027? ’28? The original conversion was done in 2029, and then we had the carburetor upgraded in 2034.”
The dates went back and forth in Eli’s mind. He tried to think of all the things that could’ve been invented in the years till 2027.
“Garrett’s basic design is fairly correct,” she continued, “he just didn’t have the right materials. Imagine if you tried to make a catalytic converter with wood and ceramics. It wouldn’t function, but that wouldn’t mean the basic idea of a catalytic converter is flawed.”
Eli let his breath huff out through his nose.
Two more miles slipped by under the Model A’s wheels.
“Okay, then,” he said, “what about this? Why not just get a better car?”
Harry’s eyes gleamed wide in the dark. “Better how?” She patted the steering wheel again. “Ignore him, girl.”
“If you can travel into the future,” Eli asked, “why not get…I don’t know, a flying car or something? I thought the future was going to be all electric cars and jetpacks and stuff.”
She snorted. “And what would I do with your fancy automobile when it ran out of electrical charge in 1830? How would I repair it when it broke down in 1787? How could I replace batteries or motors or computer-chipped ignition keys? After 1985, automobiles just become too complicated. Too many things to go wrong.” Her fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “Older is better. Anything goes wrong with Eleanor, I can fix ninety-nine percent of it with a crescent wrench and a hammer. Tools I can carry with me.”
“That kind of makes sense.”
“In addition,” she said, sounding like a schoolteacher, “there’s the blending-in issue. Old automobiles are an oddity, but they stand out much less than future ones. There’s almost 130 years of American history where a Model A barely rates a second glance. Something like a Tesla Model X, though? That’s going to stick out like a sore thumb. There’s barely three decades where it won’t attract attention.”
Another mile vanished beneath Eleanor’s wheels.
“If blending in and attracting attention are real issues,” said Eli, “maybe you should rethink your wardrobe.”
He saw the tricorne tip down for a moment. “Frock coats are worn for almost two hundred years, Mr. Teague,” she said. “Even in eras when they’re not fashionable, they’re not unheard-of garments.”
“Even for women?”
“As I mentioned earlier, the unfortunate truth is that most of American history is not terribly friendly to women, especially those traveling alone. When we first met and you mistook me for a young man, it was not entirely because of your own ignorance.”
“Thanks…I guess.”
“It’s a camouflage which has helped me more than once since I started traveling the road on my own.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“That you have to…I don’t know, put up with that. That you have to hide who you are.”
“It’s the way things are. There’s no point apologizing for the past. We can only learn from it and try to be better.”
Eleanor skimmed over a few more miles. It crossed Eli’s mind that, aside from being unnaturally fast, the car ran smoothly on the road. His infrequent experience with Model A’s before this had been a lot like trying to ride one of those massage chairs they sold in the big shopping malls over in Newington.
Harry yawned. She bit it off at the end and glanced in Eli’s direction. “Pardon me.”
He yawned himself. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
“I’m just fine.” She nodded too enthusiastically. “Don’t worry about me.”
A thought wiggled into his mind. He cleared his throat. “Is this because of me being here?”
Her fingers shifted on the steering wheel. “Truth be told,” she said, “we hardly know each other, Mr. Teague. It would be a bit improper, and all too forward for me to suggest we…well, that we…”
“Sleep?”
“Sleep,” she agreed. “Together. Sad to say, the only real clue I have of your character is from when you were a teenage boy.”
“I’ve grown up since then.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you have.”
Another mile of highway rolled by.
“If you want to stop for the night,” Eli said, “I’ll sleep on the ground and you can sleep here in the car.”
Harry coughed out a grim laugh. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she said, “but it’s almost impossible to sleep in here.”
“You have my word,” he said, “you’ve got nothing to worry about from me.” He thought about it, then added, “Miss Pritchard.”
The shadows beneath her nose shifted back and forth, up and down. “Very well,” she said. She glanced back over her shoulder. “There’s been no sign of them. We’re probably safe for now.”
The rumble of the Model A’s engine dropped an octave. She guided them closer to the edge of the road. The point of the tricorne turned toward the road’s shoulder.
“What are you looking for?”
“A good place to pull over for the night. No big stones or deep ditches.”
Eli looked out at the rolling desert. “Is there a reason we can’t find a motel?”
She barked out a laugh. “Even these days, that’s ten or fifteen dollars a night.”
“I’ve still got some cash.”
“Which won’t be printed for another twenty or thirty years, at best. You’d best get used to living tight, Mr. Teague. It’s been at least six weeks since I slept on a mattress.”
A few different thoughts bounced through Eli’s head, which he chose to voice with a simple “Ahhhh.”
Eleanor slowed, and after cruising for another two miles they found a spot Harry deemed acceptable. The Model A rolled off the pavement and onto the hard-packed dirt. It continued on for seventy or eighty feet, carrying them far clear of the highway. Harry flicked a few switches and the car shuddered to a stop.
“Here we are,” she said. She gestured at the outside.
Eli nodded. “Y’know, after a week of sleeping on buses and trains, the ground doesn’t look that bad.”
Harry pushed the door open, slipped out, and reached back to pull a battered olive-green bag from behind the bench. A duffel bag. Or a rucksack. He wasn’t sure what the correct term was for the upright bag. “Not just the ground, Mr. Teague. When you travel with me, you get all the luxuries.” She wiggled the clip loose on the rucksack, unfolded the top, and pulled out a wool blanket. “Would you like brown or gray?”
“Is there a difference?”
“The gray one also has some black stripes.”
He managed a smile. “Whichever one you don’t want.”
Harry tugged out a gray blanket and tossed it at him. She walked a few feet from the car, a slim shadow in the dark. The bag dropped to the ground, and she swung her blanket into the
air to open it.
Eli kicked a few stones into the night and spread his blanket on the ground a few yards from hers. The wool was thick enough to hide most of the bumps. He stretched out on one side and tugged the other half over himself as best he could. It wasn’t a sleeping bag, but it created a pocket of warmth in the cool night air.
On the other side of Eleanor, a big truck roared by on the highway. They were far enough off the road to muffle the sound of its engine. The headlights raced away, a cloud of light sliding across the desert, never reaching the Model A. Eli wondered if it was the one they’d passed a while ago, and tried to remember if they’d passed an exit or off-ramp of some kind.
Harry shrugged off her coat and balled it into a pillow. She stretched out a few yards away from him, lying on her side with her head far from his. She reached back and pulled the extra blanket up over herself.
The quiet stretched between them, broken by a car zooming by, then another big truck. He could tell she wasn’t asleep. Her breathing wasn’t right.
“Nice blankets,” said Eli. “Good weight.”
She made a sound almost like a grunt.
“I hate light blankets. You should be able to feel a blanket sitting on you.”
“They’re from an Army-Navy surplus store in Tulsa,” she said. “Somewhen around 1993, if memory serves.”
He thought about it, then repeated the year aloud.
“Yes,” she said, and echoed it back to him.
“So you really travel in time.”
“In history,” she said. “And yes.”
“And we’re in the 1960s right now?”
“We still are.”
Another big rig drove by on the freeway, headed west, back toward California.
“Can I ask another question?”
She let out a sigh. “Of course.”
“Your old partner, Chris…”
Harry twisted on her blanket, turning to face him. Her eyes glinted in the night. “He preferred Christopher. He considered Chris to be such a common name.”
Eli waited a moment. “You talk about him in the past tense.”
“Mr. Teague,” she said, “you may have noticed I have not brought this topic up before.”