Claude could see that the device was more complex than he’d first thought. Underneath a layer of wires and knobs was a complicated-looking memory board. There was also a palm-sized keyboard.
“Is there an on switch?” he asked.
“Don’t see one,” Maya said, looking it over carefully.
“Hey, look at the pattern,” Carolien said. She pointed to two round metal fittings. They looked like clamps or arms of a vice, as if they were meant to hold something between them. On each was a distinct pattern—the same pattern that had been on the watch. “My grandmother’s ring… It has the same design.”
Claude looked at Carolien in frustration. “I feel like everything’s a clue, but I’m too stupid to know what any of it means,” he said.
“What are these for?” Maya asked. She’d poured the contents of the velvet bag into her hand: several small cylinders of what looked like highly polished gold.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Carolien said.
“They might fit between these things,” Maya said, gently placing one of the gold pieces between the two arms of the vice.
The gold began to rotate slowly, as if powered by a tiny battery.
Maya opened the little logbook. As she read, Claude and Carolien stared at the particulator as if expecting it to perform tricks. Maya reached for a pencil on Jonathan’s desk and then bent over the keyboard affixed to the particulator’s base.
“Do you know what to do?” Claude asked.
“It’s password protected.”
“Do you know the password?”
She shook her head. With the tip of the pencil she punched various numbers into the keypad, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, the piece of golden metal continued to spin quietly between the clamps.
A clatter of hooves in the courtyard drew their attention. Claude ran to the window.
“Who is it?” Carolien asked.
“I don’t know.”
Carolien pulled out her knife. “Maybe we should turn off all the lights and shut the doors,” she said.
“Good idea,” he said.
They moved quickly. Claude went to Maya’s office and retrieved Mars. Carolien shut the department entrance and flipped the bolt. Then they returned to his dad’s office and shut the door.
In less than a minute, they heard whispers in the outer room.
Her breathing audible, Maya continued to punch the buttons on the keyboard. The idea flashed through Claude’s mind that maybe his father was among those on the other side of the door, and, for a moment, the entire scenario struck him as absurd. They had seen too many sci-fi moving pictures: the particulator didn’t really work, and his dad almost certainly wasn’t trapped in the past.
Maya muttered softly, “Got it.”
“What?” Claude whispered.
“The password is the speed of light—186,282 miles per second,” she said.
The particulator was whirring to life, the gold spinning faster and faster until it was a blur.
A beam of blue shot from a small opening in the circular tube, throwing a bright circle of light on the wall next to the door.
“What’s it doing?” Claude whispered.
Carolien pointed to the doorknob, which began to turn.
The circle of light expanded, covering the whole wall. Only it seemed as if the wall was no longer there. Instead, like a mirage, there were trees and sunshine—a forest.
A loud cracking sound made everyone jump. “What the Hades?” Claude said, heart pounding. He pulled out the lever weapon and aimed it at the door. A second crack rattled their eardrums, and the doorknob fell to the ground.
“Go,” Maya said. Despite her terrified expression, her voice was steady as she pointed at what appeared to be a window into another world.
“But… ” Claude began. But what? What choice did they have? He lifted the PAL with one arm from the table and walked up to the wall.
“Go,” Maya repeated, waving her hand frantically. The door shook but didn’t open. Someone—was it Millstone?—cursed.
“You’re coming, too, right?” Claude asked.
“Of course,” she said. She pushed the instruction manual and velvet bag into Carolien’s hands.
Claude looked at Carolien, who nodded, and together they stepped through the window.
The ground was lower than he’d expected and he fell, his cheek landing on earthy, damp soil, his arm still wrapped around the PAL. He lifted himself quickly. Carolien was next to him, on her knees, still clutching the bag and notebook.
Behind them was a circle in the air only it was much smaller than the portal they’d passed through, and, to his horror, he realized it was shrinking. It was now no larger than a dinner plate. “Maya!” he shouted.
Her face appeared at the window. “Here,” she shouted. She shoved her arm through the circle. She clutched the particulator in her hand. He lunged and grabbed it, and she yanked back her arm as Claude heard a man shout “stop,” and the circle shrank to nothing, as if it were a balloon that had lost all its air, leaving Carolien and Claude alone on a sunny day, in a strange forest, far, far from home.
Read a Preview of Part 2
The Escape
Carolien jumped to her feet. Claude, still on the ground, looked too amazed to move.
“Where’s Maya?” she asked.
“She didn’t make it,” he said.
“What?”
“The opening shrank too fast. Didn’t you see?”
“No. Scheisse! What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “What can we do?”
“Get up will you?” she said, making a 360-degree turn. The forest was thick with the sounds of crickets, locusts, buzzing insects and a cacophony of whooping, tweeting birds. A few seconds earlier, they’d been in Claude’s father’s office at the university and now they were… where? and when? “Is this really 1849?”
“I don’t know.” He reached toward her with an outstretched arm, and she pulled him to his feet. He looked slightly ill.
“Are you OK?”
“Dizzy and a little freaked. You?”
She felt jumpy, a mix of agitation and fear. “Would I know if I was in shock?”
Smiling faintly, he picked a few pine needles from her hair. “Probably not.”
“This isn’t right,” she said.
“Right or wrong, we’re here,” he said.
“But back in time?”
“Maybe.” Claude’s color was starting to return. A few slow, deep breaths seemed to calm him. Cautiously, almost reluctantly, he looked around. “This is pretty fucking incredible, isn’t it?”
She was dripping with sweat. “I think I’m in shock,” she said.
He opened his arms and gave her a hug, squeezing tight. “Don’t worry,” he said.
Hugging back, she felt better. They may not know where the Hades they were, but at least they had each other. “Thanks,” she said.
Pulling apart, he took her hand. “C’mon. Let’s look around,” he said.
“Which way?”
He pointed to a break in the trees. “That looks like a clearing, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said.
They walked over a carpet of spongy pine needles until they reached the edge of a farm. Rows of knee-high plants stretched nearly to the horizon, and scattered among them were men, women, and children hunched down, pulling things off the plants and tossing them in baskets at their sides.
“I don’t believe…,” Claude whispered.
“Cotton,” Carolien said.
The women wore long skirts that nearly touched the ground, their heads in scarves, the knotted ends poking up like rabbit ears or dangling down their necks. The men’s shirts and trousers were threadbare and patched. The children were half naked, wearing nothing but tattered shirts that reached their knees.
“Are they…?” Claude said, hesitating.
“Must be.” It was one thing to hear Grandma Bets talk about
slaves or learn about them in history class; to see actual slaves was horrifying, frightening, sickening.
“Is this the plantation where your great-great-great… was a … ?” His voice trailed off.
Where else could they be? And yet she didn’t want to believe. She leaned against a tree. The sky was a pristine blue, and sparrows swooped in and out of the branches. Colors seemed brighter, the air clearer. Even the people seemed more vibrant, as if the air were an amplifier, making greens greener, browns browner. “Must be.” Everything confirmed it: the abundance of insects, the freshness of the air, the lack of dirigibles or cell tones or neon-colored jumpsuits or holographic advertisements, and, of course, there were the people, whose demeanor and appearance made clear they were slaves.
She closed her eyes and recited to herself the prime numbers: two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three. The numbers helped order her thinking, and suddenly she understood.
“It’s us,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
“What’s us?”
She pictured her grandmother in the kitchen telling the story of Molly and Moore’s escape. Grandma Bets had said that two oddly dressed strangers, a brown woman and a white man, had helped them flee. “Verflixt, Claude. We do it. We free them.” She felt dizzy and rested her head on the trunk. A welter of feelings vied for dominance: awe, fear, confusion.
He looked at her worriedly. “We free who?”
“Molly and Moore.”
“Those are your great-great… great… ?” his voice trailed off.
She nodded. “Don’t you get it? Grandma Bets talked about a white man and brown woman. They’d acted odd. They’d looked odd.”
“A white man and a brown woman?” he repeated tentatively.
“That’s right,” she said, realizing why he looked so bewildered: he hadn’t watched the moving picture she’d made of Grandma Bets telling the story. “My grandmother said a white man and a brown woman rescued my great-great-great-great-grandparents from slavery.”
He bit his lip. “You think she was talking about us?”
She opened her arms, as if the answer were obvious. “I don’t imagine anyone else fits the description better.”
“Scheisse,” he said, stunned.
c c c c c
The Escape, Part 2 of Khronos Chronicles, is
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Acknowledgements
It takes a universe (alternate or otherwise) of supportive family, friends, and colleagues to write a book.
I’m grateful to members past and present of Jennifer Belle’s weekly writing workshop for their advice, support, and comraderie. They include Donna Jean Brigitte Brodie, Meryl Branch-McTiernan, Leena Soman, Nicola Ruiz, Lisa Smith, Mike Pyrich, Mario Gabriele, Felicia Campbell, Barbara Miller, Chris Miele, Aaron Zimmerman, and, of course, Jennifer Belle.
Three people merit special shout-outs for giving feedback on multiple drafts: my dear friend since college Suzanne Waltman; my brother (who was my chief guide to the world of science fiction when I was growing up) Kevin Wolf; and my colleague/friend/fellow fan of young adult literature Justine van Straaten.
A number of other beta-readers deserve huge thanks, including Lisa Smith, Carolyn Turgeon, Patrick Nash, Paul Zeigler, Liisa Pierce Fiedelholtz, Rachael Bild, and my dad, Herbert S. Wolf.
My team of teenage advisors offered especially helpful feedback: Max Friedman, Sophie Friedman, Sam van der Poel, and my go-to guy who never ceases to amaze me with his intelligence, humor, and high standards, Levi Orenstein-Wolf.
I have had the good luck to know over the course of my life teachers and mentors who’ve helped me grow as a writer and person. By shaping me, they helped shape this book. They include Robert Boyle, Phyllis Raphael, Bette Ann Moskowitz, David Rakoff, and Greg Berman.
A big thank you to my agent, Mitchell Waters, editor Meredith Hays, graphic designers Roy Migabon and Joseph Rutt, and to many other friends and family members, who are too numerous to name individually.
Neither this book, nor anything else would be possible without my husband, who also happens to be my number one supporter, advisor, and friend, Dru Orenstein.
The Author
Rob Wolf lives in New York City with his husband, son, and two cats. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, from the New York Times to the literary journal Thema, and he has received awards from the New York Public Library, The Missouri Review, and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
He welcomes feedback at www.robwolf.net.
The Alternate Universe Page 15