The Wells Bequest

by Polly Shulman

  I found her the next day in the little room next to the library, which used to be a coatroom. She was grading tests, bent over in a student desk chair, the kind with a big flat arm for writing on. Ms. Kang gets cold easily, so she’s always tugging the sleeves of her sweaters down over her hands. She has very dark, slightly purplish red hair, which is kind of strange—don’t most Korean people have black hair? Maybe she dyes it. Her lips are the same color as her hair, but I’m pretty sure that’s lipstick.

  “Hi, Leo,” she said, pushing aside the tests. “What’s up?”

  “Hi, Ms. Kang. I need to ask you something,” I said.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  I suddenly felt self-conscious, so instead of asking about time travel, I said, “Why do you hang out in this little room instead of the science office?”

  “I miss being near the library.” Ms. Kang used to be the school media specialist before she switched to teaching science. “And nobody knows where to find me here, so I can actually get my work done.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  I started to leave, but she caught my sleeve. “Not you, silly! Sit down. Is that what you wanted to ask me—why I work here?”

  I sat in the other chair. “No, not really. I wanted to ask . . . What do you know about time travel?”

  “That’s more like it.” She rubbed her hands together. “Well, I know that we’re all traveling forward in time together, at a rate of one second per second. But that’s probably not the kind of time travel you mean. Why do you ask?”

  “I was thinking about my science project.” That was true, anyway. “Has anyone ever made, you know, a real time machine? Like you could use to go backward and forward in time?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” said Ms. Kang. “But some physicists think it might be possible. If you could build a faster-than-light spaceship, theoretically you might be able to arrive before you left.”

  I nodded. “That’s what my sister says.”

  “Or you could try to find a wormhole in the space-time continuum.”

  “A wormhole! Where would I look?”

  “Nobody knows for sure, but I have some books that you could start with. There’s a good one by Stephen Hawking. The thing is, nobody knows for sure whether time travel is possible. Like Hawking pointed out, if there really are time machines, why haven’t we ever met any time travelers?”

  “Yeah, but . . .” Yeah, but I have!! I wanted to say. I met two of them yesterday! And one of them was ME! If I said that, Ms. Kang would think I was crazy. “Maybe this isn’t where they want to come,” I said. “I mean when they want to come. Or maybe there just aren’t that many of them. I’ve never met any travelers from Iceland, but that doesn’t mean the Icelanders don’t have airplanes.”

  “True,” said Ms. Kang.

  “So do you think I should . . . I don’t know, try and make a time machine myself?”

  “You mean for the science fair?”

  I nodded.

  Ms. Kang tilted her head. “No harm in trying. I wouldn’t count on getting it done for the fair, though. The deadline’s at the end of the semester.”

  “If it took longer, I could use the time machine to go back in time and show myself how to finish,” I said. “I could even make an extra time machine and carry it back in time to my present-day self.”

  Hey! Was that what I had been doing yesterday?

  No, probably not—in fact, I’d seemed to be trying very hard not to tell myself anything about time machines.

  Ms. Kang shook her head. “Wouldn’t that be cheating? The other kids only get a few weeks to work on their projects.”

  She was right. Plus, that would be changing the past, and the one thing Future Me seemed completely certain about was that I/he shouldn’t change the past.

  But wait. If the only reason I wasn’t changing the past was that Future Me was dead set against it, then by influencing me to not change the past, Future Me was doing exactly what he didn’t want to do: changing the past. So in order to save Future Me from changing the past, did I have to change the past myself?

  “You okay there, Leo? Your face is all scrunched up.”

  “Sorry. I was just trying to think the whole time-travel thing through,” I said. It’s all right, I told myself. I hadn’t needed Future Leo to tell me changing the past was dangerous. I knew that already, all by myself. “So if I can’t build a time machine, got any other suggestions?”

  “But Leo, you’re usually so full of ideas! Remember that time you used mirrors and fiber-optic cables to project the view from the roof into the auditorium? Or when you and Jake tuned the toilets to play chords when they flushed? Why don’t you do something like that?”

  “For my science fair project? But those things weren’t real science! They didn’t discover anything new or test any theories. They were just . . . fun.” That was one great thing about Poly. It may not be as rigorous as my siblings’ schools, but the administration can be surprisingly tolerant. Any other school would kick you out for messing with the plumbing.

  “The science fair is supposed to be fun too,” Ms. Kang pointed out.

  I shook my head. “Not if you come from my family. Science fairs are deadly serious. If I do some silly gag project, my brother and sister’ll disown me.”

  “Wow, that sounds like a lot of pressure,” said Ms. Kang. “You’re not your brother and sister, you know. You have your own unique talents and interests.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

  “I can’t see it as a problem. But if you really don’t want to build one of your fun inventions, have you considered submitting something in the History of Science category?”

  “History of Science? Is that even a category?”

  She nodded, tugging down her sleeves. “Sure. It’s not as popular as some of the more hands-on ones, but it’s on the list. You’d look at how some aspect of science or technology developed over time.”

  “Like, write a library research paper instead of doing an experiment?” I liked that idea. No plants or mice to die on me.

  Ms. Kang nodded again. “It could be book research, or you could do some hands-on history. You could look at how scientific tools changed over time and how that affected the science. Like telescopes or clocks. Maybe you could build a model.”

  “The library has lots of books about science and history. But where would I find a bunch of antique telescopes and clocks?” I asked.

  Ms. Kang said, “Have you ever heard of the New-York Circulating Material Repository?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The New-York Circulating Material Repository

  Before I did anything else, I had to follow Future Me’s advice. That afternoon I hunted down The Time Machine and found a nice sunny corner in the public library with a beat-up chair to sprawl in.

  It’s a good book. The hero, an inventor, builds a time machine and uses it to travel to the distant future, where humans have evolved into two separate species—the happy, peaceful Eloi and the downtrodden, apelike Morlocks. The Morlocks catch him and he almost doesn’t escape. The story gets pretty exciting, but what excited me most was the time machine. The description sounded a lot like the one I’d seen.

  I read it carefully, looking for hints about how to build it, but the book didn’t really give any. While I was at the library, I also checked out books about science to get ideas for my project.

  On Wednesday, I found myself walking through misty drizzle to the address Ms. Kang had given me. I’d finally decided to do my project on the history of robots. Maybe I could use some ideas from old technology to build a new model—that might be more fun than just writing a paper. As long as my model didn’t go crazy and decide to kill all humans.

  The building was a row house on the Upper East Side with a brass plaque beside the door that read The New-York Circulating Material Repository. I pulled open the heavy doors. Inside was a big room, way wider than the house itself.
<
br />   I stood in the entryway staring around me, trying to figure out how the inside could be bigger than the outside. It bothered me so much, the feeling seemed almost physical. It felt like an itch.

  A girl a little older than me was sitting behind a big wooden desk reading a book. She looked up. “You look lost,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I’m doing a history-of-science project, and my teacher said there were old scientific instruments here?”

  “You’d better ask the reference librarian. Go up to the top floor and follow the signs for the catalog room. Elevator’s that way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure.” She went back to her book.

  I took the creaky old elevator and walked down a long hallway to a door marked Catalog Room. It opened onto a wide room with high, arched skylights. The sky was bright blue with fluffy white clouds bouncing around it—the kind of clouds angels sit on in Christmas cards.

  But wait—wasn’t it raining outside? I hadn’t seen any sign of the rain letting up. Was my mind playing tricks on me—was this more evidence of Loopy Leo?

  A broad beam of sunlight shot through the skylight and fell on a desk where a man was filing cards in a box. It looked almost on purpose, like a spotlight aimed at the desk.

  Rows and rows of wooden drawers lined the walls, with big, thick books on shelves above them. One man had pulled out a drawer and was flicking through the cards inside it. A woman was standing on a ladder, reaching for one of the big books. I didn’t see any computers anywhere.

  I paused in the doorway. Which of the people was the reference librarian?

  I randomly picked the one in the sun. “Excuse me,” I asked, keeping my voice down, the way librarians like. “Are you . . . is there a reference librarian here?”

  “That’s me,” he said. “What can I do for you?” He was short, with broad shoulders and crinkly eyes. He had a slight Spanish accent. He looked like he’d just finished laughing and might start again any second.

  “I’m doing a history-of-science project, and my teacher told me I could find historic robots here,” I said.

  “Nice,” he said. “Did your teacher explain about the repository?”

  “She said it was like a library, only with objects instead of books. She said you would have different robots I could compare.”

  “That’s right. We have plenty of robots.”

  “So where do you keep them?” Clearly not in this room. The drawers were way too small.

  “Downstairs on Stack 5, mostly, but the public’s not allowed in the stacks.”

  “What are stacks?” I asked.

  “The rooms where we store the objects. You have to look up your objects in the catalog and write down the call numbers on call slips. Then you’ll give the call slips to a page in the Main Exam Room and someone will go get your items for you.”

  “Oh, okay. How do I find the call numbers? I don’t see any computers.”

  “No, we use traditional card files. Here, I’ll show you.” He shut the box he’d been using and came out from behind his desk. As he did, the beam of sun faded away. I looked up at the skylight. It was still filled with blue sky and fluffy clouds, but the sun had gone behind one of the clouds, turning it gold at the edges.

  Where was the rain? Had it stopped?

  That was the obvious explanation, but as I looked up at the sky I got the distinct feeling it wasn’t the correct one. It felt almost like I was looking up at a different sky—the sky of some other world.

  “Wasn’t it raining?” I said. “The sun . . .” I stopped. I didn’t want him to think I was crazy.

  The reference librarian looked at me closely. After a moment, he said, “The card files are this way. Come.”

  I followed him to the left-hand wall of drawers.

  “R for ‘robot’—here.” He pulled out a drawer labeled R–Rom. “See? Ringbolt . . . ripsaw . . . ritual object . . . road map . . . There you go.” He flicked through the cards until he came to one labeled robot, then stood aside so I could look through the drawer myself.

  “Thanks,” I said, sticking my finger in the spot to hold my place and flicking ahead past robot after robot.

  “Here, you’ll need these.” The librarian handed me a bunch of small, blank forms, along with a stubby little pencil. “Fill out a separate call slip for each object. When you’re done, take them to the Main Exam Room and give them to the page on duty. Down the hall to the left.” He went back to his desk. As he sat down, the sun came out from behind its cloud and fell in bright squares on his desk.

  • • •

  A card catalog may not sound all that exciting, but as I flipped slowly through the robot section, my heart started to pound. I couldn’t believe what I was reading! They had working models of three Mars rovers. The deep-sea robot that found the Titanic. The first robotic vacuum cleaner. These things were robot superstars!

  But everything listed under robot in the catalog was from the twentieth century or later. For my history-of-science project, I was going to need to study earlier ones too. Where were all the older robots?

  I was about to go ask the reference librarian when I noticed a card at the beginning of the section that said See also: android, automaton, cyborg.

  I pulled out the A–Ap drawer. Most of the androids were fairly recent too. Then I pulled out Aq–Az and flipped to automaton. Bingo! Some of these automatons were thousands of years old.

  I couldn’t believe people had invented robots so long ago—and I couldn’t believe such fragile machines had made it through all those centuries. My own stuff usually breaks in a matter of months.

  Not that it matters—I can always fix it.

  The earliest automaton in the repository’s collection was from ancient China, made by a man called Yan Shi. I copied its description and call number onto one of the paper slips. I chose four others to start with: a steam-powered bird from ancient Greece, a hand-washing maidservant made by a twelfth-century Kurdish inventor, a mechanical knight designed by Leonardo da Vinci, and John Dee’s wooden flying beetle from the sixteenth century. I copied out their call numbers and info onto call slips and took them down the hall to the Main Examination Room.

  • • •

  Once again, I was blown away. It was like walking into a landscape made of light.

  All four sides of the Main Examination Room up to the ceiling were filled with brilliant stained glass. But that doesn’t even begin to describe it. They didn’t look frilly or churchy. They hardly even looked like windows. The scenes were so vivid they seemed alive.

  I turned around slowly to take it all in. On one side, the window showed a rain forest. Brightly colored birds peeped through the branches. At least, they looked like birds—but some of them had very strange shapes, with four wings or spiky crests and skin like lizards. Not birds—maybe . . . dinosaurs!

  I felt like I had one foot in a library and the other in a primordial forest. Or like I’d walked into the paleontology room at the natural history museum and the dinosaurs had suddenly come to life. Why had I never heard of this place before?

  In the next window, snow was falling across a wide white valley. A herd of shaggy mammoths with lumpy foreheads was crossing the valley. I felt a wisp of cold air, as if a distant breeze were blowing toward me from the faraway tundra.

  On the third side, a horse and two foals stood on a carpet of glowing autumn leaves, frozen like deer when you startle them. I got the strangest feeling they would leap away as soon as I turned my back.

  No, not horses. Horses don’t have spotted stripes, and these animals were too small. When I looked carefully, I saw they had toes.

  The last window showed a rocky orange desert. There were dunes, canyons, and craters, crisscrossed by riverbeds that looked like they had been dry for eons. Something about that landscape felt creepily alien. I stared at it, trying to decide where it was supposed to be. Arizona? Africa? It could be anywhere. . . .

  Or could
it? Something about it bothered me intensely. What a freaky place this library was! I stared at the window, trying to figure out why it felt so off. Was it the shadows? In the picture, the sun was setting and the moon was rising.

  No, not the moon. A moon.

  The scene in the window couldn’t have been anywhere on Earth. In the sky there were two moons. I was looking at a landscape on another planet.

  I shook myself slightly. Come on, Leo, I told myself. It’s not an actual planet, just a picture. Why should stained-glass windows always show boring, terrestrial scenes? Why not dinosaurs and alien planets sometimes? And the horse looked pretty normal, anyway. Except for the toes.

  I turned back to the horse and her foals. They were still there, frozen. But I was pretty sure the left-hand foal had had his head down, just a minute ago. Now he was looking right at me.

  A shiver went straight through me, from my scalp to my own toes. This was crazy! Animals in stained glass windows don’t move. I had to have been mistaken. I had to.

  I pulled my eyes away from the glowing scenes in the windows and looked around. The rest of the room looked like any fancy library reading room, with rows of long tables and carved wooden chairs. People were sitting here and there, examining objects and writing in notebooks.

  It didn’t sound like a library, though. In the background I heard a quiet whooshing, gurgling sound, like a stream. Every so often something would rustle and thump, like an animal in the bushes. Were the noises coming from the windows?

  Get a grip, Leo! I told myself. The noises weren’t coming from the windows—they were coming from an area in the center of the room, a sort of big wooden booth where a guy and a couple of girls were filing papers and handing objects to the patrons.

  That must be where I was supposed to give my call slips to what the reference librarian had called “the page on duty.”

  I went up to the big window in the front of the booth. The page on duty was a girl. Once again, I was in for a surprise. Not a girl—the girl.