I sighed. “Fine. Let’s go. I know you’ll collapse if you don’t get some nicotine into your lungs at least twenty times an hour.” I followed him out and closed the door behind us, eyeing the empty nameplate suspiciously as we walked away.
***
I was tired of breathing in second-hand cigarette smoke, so I told Rob I was going to go to the library, and that I’d meet him back outside in twenty minutes or so. I had a little bit of digging I wanted to do in there. I’d been without access to a phone, a house, or internet connection for days, so I needed to use the library’s free facilities to not only check my email, but to do a quick search on “Robert Smith”.
“This must have been what it was like in 1974,” I said to myself as I walked towards the entry of Fisher Library. I wondered why Rob was so reluctant to talk about where he was from, or track down people he would have once known. After all, it had only been 40 years. A long time, sure: almost two generations in fact. But it wasn’t a lifetime. Surely some of his family, friends — or even his fiancé for crying out loud — might still be alive.
And that was exactly what I was going to the library to find out. I smiled cordially as I walked through the doors, nodding at the familiar desk staff, who recoiled in wide-mouthed horror as I walked by. Oh well, I thought, no time to explain myself right now. They could watch the news if they wanted any gossip.
I headed down two flights of stairs to the archives level, where all the historical records and old academic journals were stored: basically all the boring things that no one except people who worked at the university cared about. As long as my student log-in still worked, I would be able to access electronic birth and death databases as well. The University of Sydney library had one of the best research subscription services in the entire country.
I walked down to the computer lab that was located the furthest toward the back. I thought I would be the only person using at that time in the morning. But as I walked into a half-full room I remembered that it was now actually the last week of semester, the week when final assignments and essays were due, and the most difficult time of year to find a spare computer. If it were later on in the day I would probably have had to have queued for anywhere upwards of an hour before one became available.
But I found one in the corner with only one neighbouring computer, to my right. There was a young guy on it frantically bashing at a keyboard as fast as his hands could reasonably move — whatever assignment he was working on was probably due by 9 o’clock that morning. I was hoping he’d be preoccupied enough with his own deadline to not glance up from his own computer screen to look at mine.
It took almost five minutes for the computer to start up, but when the screened finally flashed alive I entered my username and password, praying that my details had not been erased from existence during my stint as ‘presumed dead/presumed to be having an illicit affair with her thesis supervisor’. I had to wait to find out as the computer froze for another three minutes, trying to process my log-in. I rolled my eyes at the ancient state of the Fisher computer and internet service, neither of which had been updated in over a decade.
I let out a sigh of relief as my log-in worked and I was presented with the student home page on the screen. Phew, now time to get to work. I glanced at the clock. I wouldn’t be able to leave Robert alone for too long, before he came looking for me, so I set about getting to work quickly.
Just as I had feared, “Robert Smith” was an extremely common name. The very first thing I did was perform a simple Google search for ‘Robert Smith, missing Sydney 1974’, hoping that some old news report or paper would surface. Maybe a follow-up missing person’s story had been done on him some time over the years. But there were no results.
Not too surprising, really: people went missing all the time, and the disappearance of a 31year old man in Sydney wouldn’t have made too many news reports: at least none that would still be notable enough to warrant archiving all these years later. But it was still disappointing, because my next option would have to be to enter the generic name ‘Robert Smith’ into the other databases that my university log-in gave me access to. And I’d more than likely be presented with a tonne of unrelated info to sort through.
I sighed and double clicked on an icon that would allow me to access birth and death records. I did the maths quickly in my head. If Robert Smith had been 31 in 1974 than he would have been born in 1943. And I supposed that he would have been presumed dead in 1974. I shivered I tapped ‘Robert Smith, died 1974’ into the database: after all, he seemed so young. Not to mention alive. I mean, he was still young and alive. He’d just...skipped 40 years of linear time. But I felt sad over the fact that he should have been alive in the present time, but as a 71 year old. It seemed so strange to think that, if he hadn’t been sent through time 40 years — most likely by my father’s equipment that time as well — then I could have just wandered over to a Surry Hills nursing home and bumped into the elderly version Robert Smith right then. He would even probably be dressed in modern, appropriate attire.
I waited a few minutes for the results to load, impatiently tapping my fingers and watching the clock in the bottom right hand corner of the computer screen. I’d already been gone ten minutes and I’d told Robert twenty.
Approximately twenty-eight pages of results turned up on the screen. I knew they wouldn’t all be exact matches, but I would probably have to wade through them all to narrow it down.
I scrolled down the first page of results briefly, my eyes scanning down the screen to quickly take in all of he details. “Rob Smith, b 1942”, “Robert James Smith, b 1943,” “Robert L. Smith”... Damn it, I thought, I should have asked his middle name as well. Though that would have been a bit weird, and might have made him suspicious.
I flicked through the second and third pages of results as well, but I was beginning to realise that the search was almost entirely pointless unless I had the time to investigate each of them properly to weed out the results which were clearly wrong — the entries with the wrong year of birth or death, the name spelt differently, etc. I needed more information from Rob: his second name perhaps, the name of his fiancé, his street address, all of that would help. But right now I didn’t have the time or the resources to continue on. I reluctantly clicked on the icon that shut the computer down and pushed my chair back, leaving the stuffy computer lab to meet Robert again on the outside.
***
I made my way down the outdoor steps of Fisher Library, my heels tapping on the concrete as I descended. Outside, in front of me the university was still a wasteland: after all, it was not yet even 8:30, and apart from students on deadline in the computer labs, the campus wouldn’t start to fill up will 9. Only super keen students like Naomi were there that early. I couldn’t help thinking about Connie Hung again. She would have been there that early. I pushed the thought away again,
Even though it was early the sun was already hot and blazing down on us. I put my hand over my eyes to shield them and so I would be better able to grab sight of Rob. I couldn’t see him where I had left him, out the front of the coffee cart. I scanned the horizon, trying to catch sight of my six foot glam rock friend He would be hard one to miss even in a crowd, let alone a deserted campus.
But Robert was nowhere to be seen. There was a straggle of students coming up the hill, one or two strolling along Eastern Avenue, a couple heading into Fisher. But no signs of my 70s man. I walked down the road that led away from Fisher, and headed back up towards the Physics building, which I figured he might have retuned to. Maybe he had wanted to do some more snooping around in there. I glanced to my right as I walked along, towards the main student lounge and bar, Manning. It was possible he could have gone there to hang out, but I knew from experience that the bar didn’t start serving alcohol, till Midday, despite my best efforts to get them to make the opening time 10am. I mean, back in my undergrad days there were so many morning classes that would have benefited from a quick beer beforehand. But
they disregarded my advice. So I dismissed Manning as an option, for the moment: I’d check there next if he wasn’t back in the physics building.
My heels clomped on the pavement as I hurried to get to the Physics department. I cursed the fact that neither of us had mobile phones: Robert because they hadn’t been invented in 1974 and me because half of my belongings had disappeared when I had travelled through time three months. How the heck did people ever survive without mobiles? I thought, as I quickened my pace to a jog. I wished I had given him an exact location to meet me at, instead of the vague ‘out the front of the library’. Technically everything in the world was out the front of the library, depending on which angle you viewed it from.
I pushed my way in through the glass, wood-panelled doors that housed the entry to the physics building and I began to jog down the corridor towards the former office of Martin Anderson, which now apparently belonged to one John Raymond. “Rob?” I called out, though I wouldn’t have usually ran through department buildings screaming people’s names. I only did so because the place was deserted and I was beginning to panic. What if something had happened to him?
I knocked on the door of the office which now belonged to John Raymond. Just as a courtesy, in case the man himself had actually shown up while I had been researching Robert in the library. “Rob?” I called out. “Are you in there?”
“No,” a deep cool voice called back. “But, Anna, please: come in.”
Chapter Twenty-Four.
I stood still, frozen in time, unable to move. I knew that voice.
“Oh no.” I said, backing away from the door.
John freaking Raymond was the man in black.
I turned on my heels and ran out of the building, almost knocking Naomi over on my way out the door. She was carrying a tray off coffees in both hands, which almost ended up on the floor. “Whoa, are you alright?” she asked, balancing the tray so that it didn’t spill.
“Um,” I said, catching my breath. “Yeah.” I looked around, flustered. “Sorry, I was just, in a hurry.”
She looked me up and down with something resembling pity. Oh great, pity from Naomi Stone, the school’s worst student. She used to be afraid of me for crying out loud! She patted me on the arm. “I guess it’s a bit scary for you being back here.” She gave me a little smile. “What with everyone talking about you and everything.”
“I thought you didn’t know about the gossip...” I began.
“Just what you told me earlier.”
“Right.” I smoothed down the creases on my black dress, trying to calm myself. I wished I hadn’t been running through the department halls like a lunatic. It had probably been caught on closed circuit TV. That would hardly do my case any good. I looked back towards where I had come from, John Raymond’s office. “The guy in Martin Anderson’s old office...” I began, hoping that Naomi would have some information about him. Like, where the hell he came from and, you know, when he might be expected to return to whichever land of evil he had come from.
“Doctor Raymond.” She perked up at the mention of his name and nodded down at her coffees. “These are for us.”
“Those are for you? What, you and him?”
She nodded. “Doctor Raymond is going to be my Honours’ supervisor next year.” She beamed up at me.
“How did you qualify for the Honours’ program...” I began. “Never mind. Who is he? When was he hired?”
Naomi looked uncomfortable. “After you and Doctor Anderson ran off...err, disappeared. And Connie...died.” She stared down at her coffees. “Sorry, I don’t really like to talk about it.”
“So he just took Martin’s job?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. Everything was sort of in chaos for the weeks following everything. I think they were desperate. But Dr Raymond is SO brilliant.” She was grinning again now. “I’m telling you, he is so smart, and, like, he really takes the time to get to know his students, and he gives us all so much attention...”
Oh boy, I thought, zoning out during the rest of Naomi’s gushing speech. I recognised the signs of a student with a crush on a teacher. Not from first hand experience, mind. From Connie, mostly, and other wide-eyed undergrads who clearly had a thing for Martin, staying back after class to talk to him, visiting him during after hours. Not me, obviously. My reasons for visiting him were always purely academic.
“Well that’s wonderful,” I replied, cutting in. “I’m glad you’ve found a teacher you love so much.”
She blushed. “Well, only because he’s such a good lecturer.”
I nodded, pretending I believed her. I was mostly just desperate to get out of the building, so that I could somehow find Martin, to let him know that not only was the man in black after his life, he was also after something far more serious: his job.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Without a phone to aid me, I had to track Martin down the old fashioned way. I figured that the most likely place to find him would be at his house: after all, he owned it, so even in his absence no one should have sold it or done anything to it. I stopped for a second and wondered who actually would have been in charge of taking care of Martin’s possessions while he was missing. I had no idea about who his family was, or if there even were any. I mean, there had been Kate, his fiancé, but...
So I decided I would walk the 20 minutes east, across campus and across the neighbouring suburb of Glebe to get to his house. Which wasn’t ideal, but I wanted to save some of my money to buy us all phones. How were we supposed to solve time travel mysteries without them?
I wondered, if after all of this settled down, whether the three of us would actually continue working together, solving time travel mysteries. After all, Martin already had more than enough experience at it. And then there was Robert – a time travelling veteran by that point. And me! And expert on time travel, having researched it full time for years, and now having actually done it. By this stage we were probably the leading world experts on the subject of time travel. Maybe we could help people: other people who had had their lives displaced — or even totally destroyed — by unwanted time travel. We could track them down, make sure they were okay.
But I was probably getting ahead of myself, I thought, as I began the hike across campus towards Parramatta Rd. First of all we had to solve the mystery of what had actually happened to all of us, and to Connie.
Before I left campus I took one final look around to make sure Robert wasn’t anywhere in sight. I sighed. He’d probably gotten distracted and wandered off and gotten lost. I figured at some stage he would make his way back to the hotel though, so I wasn’t too worried. I would meet up with him back at the Novotel later that night, once I had sorted out this business about Dr John Raymond stealing Martin’s job. Not to mention stealing his life.
***
I had made it about half a block up Glebe Point Rd – about ten minutes away from Martin’s house by that stage — when I suddenly stopped in my tracks out the front of a cafe called ‘Badde Manners’.
My mouth almost hit the pavement as I stood there in shock: there Martin was, sitting up in a booth, happily chatting away to someone without a care in the world. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to find, but it was something more like, him sulking away alone in his house, in a state of distress and despair over the ruined tatters of his life. I didn’t expect him to be merrily sipping a cappuccino in Badde Manners with a mysterious female companion.
I just stood there staring at the two of them. Right, this confirmed — as if it hadn’t already been confirmed — that whatever Robert had said about Martin being “in love” with me was a complete and utter falsehood. I mean, he had left me alone, barely breathing, in a hospital bed in Newcastle, to come back to Sydney to go on coffee dates with some blonde woman. Not that I was jealous, mind you, just indignant. He hadn’t even tried to track me down, to make sure I was okay! Sure, I didn’t know how he was supposed to have contacted me, but still: this was pretty heartless. He didn’t even seem
to care about me as his student, let alone as anything else.
People were starting to glance up at me, clearly wondering what this angry brunette girl standing in the middle of the street staring into the cafe with her hands on her hips was actually doing. I straightened myself up and cleared my throat, then strode into the cafe and right up to the table where Martin and his date were sitting.
“Dr Anderson,” I announced, being formal. “How great to bump into you...”
“Anna!” he exclaimed, jumping up and almost spilling both his and his date’s coffees over in the process. “Oh my god.” He immediately wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me so tight that my already tenuous oxygen supply was in danger of being cut off.
After ten seconds or so he broke the embrace and backed away the merest amount, looking just slightly embarrassed and quickly looking around to see if anyone we knew was in the cafe. After all, the place was littered with students at all times of the day and night, and we were already the topic of hot gossip. But the look on his face said he didn’t care too much about that. He rested his left hand slightly on my arm. “Thank god you’re alright.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say at first. I had been so prepared to be angry at him. I was definitely expecting a less... Enthusiastic response from him. I guess I really had convinced myself that he didn’t care what had happened to me at all, despite what Robert had said...
I just nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said quietly. Then I reassessed that evaluation. “Well, I don’t know that ‘fine’ is the word for it, actually. My whole life has kind of been destroyed...”
Martin nodded, but he wasn’t taking any of this the way I thought he would. He seemed far too happy, considering the amount of trouble we were in. “I want you to meet someone,” he said, gesturing to the blonde woman who was sitting below us at the table. She looked up at me and smiled, waving at me.
Allergic To Time Page 15