The Wells Bequest

by Polly Shulman

  • • •

  I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I headed upstairs to the Catalog Room. Mr. Reyes was sitting at his desk under his beam of sunlight.

  “Mr. Reyes, does the repository have its own subject thesaurus?” I asked.

  “We mostly use a modified version of the LCSH—the Library of Congress Subject Headings—over there at the end,” he said, pointing.

  That wasn’t exactly an answer.

  “So there aren’t any specialized thesauruses here?” I asked.

  “Not for any of the collections you’ll be using.” That sounded evasive too. Did it mean I was on to something?

  The LCSH was a big book in several volumes. I looked under Time. No time machines. That was a disappointment, but not a surprise.

  I put the volume back and scanned the nearby shelves. There were dictionaries of this and that—music, biography, medicine, slang—and some volumes in languages I couldn’t read, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a subject thesaurus.

  Then the clouds shifted in the skylight and a beam of sun hit a shelf above my head. I saw bright motes of dust doing their Brownian-motion dance in the sunbeam. The light was illuminating one of the books I’d thought I couldn’t read. Had the words on the spine changed? Before, they’d looked like some kind of snaky foreign alphabet, but now I saw they were written in ordinary English characters.

  They said Special Collections Thesaurus.

  My hands shook as I pulled the book down. It had little round cutouts along the edge of the pages, with alphabet tabs, like a dictionary. I flipped quickly to the T’s. Taxi, telescope, timbal.

  There: Time machine: use anachronizing apparatus.

  I stared at it. It was really there.

  I blinked hard. It was still there.

  Mr. Reyes was staring at me and the sunbeam. I shut the book and put it back on the shelf. The sunbeam faded.

  I hurried over to the card catalog and pulled out the A–Ap drawer. Afterburner, aglet, ambergris.

  And there it was: Anachronizing apparatus. I * WB 530.11 Z8485.

  With trembling fingers I copied the call number onto a call slip and hid it in my pocket.

  • • •

  On my next shift, Ms. Callender put me on Stack 5 again with Jaya.

  “Hey, Jaya.” I took out the time machine call slip, then hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I have to ask you something.” I hesitated again. She would think I was crazy.

  “What? Come on, Leo, spit it out.”

  I handed her the slip.

  “What’s this?” she asked. She read the call slip, frowning. She turned it over, then turned it back again, looking worried. “Well?” she said.

  I took a breath. “Remember how I was thinking about doing my science project on time machines? So I thought—I know this sounds crazy, but I thought if time machines really did exist, maybe they’d have one here in the repository. So I did some research in the Catalog Room. And I found it.”

  “How did you know what search term to use?”

  “I looked in the Special Collections thesaurus.”

  “Who gave you that?”

  “Nobody. I found it myself.”

  “You found the Special Collections thesaurus? All by yourself, without any help?”

  “Yes, it was right there in the Catalog Room. It was weird—I couldn’t read it at first, until this strange sunbeam shone on it. So is it true? Is there really a time machine here?”

  Jaya looked at me for a long time, like she was trying to make up her mind. At last she said, “Yes.”

  Yes. She’d said yes.

  Not “I can’t believe you fell for that ancient gag.” Not “Get away from me, you dangerous lunatic.” Yes.

  “Have you seen it? Have you used it? Where did you go to—when did you go to? How does it work? Where is it? Can I borrow it?” I was gabbling. A time machine! My time machine! I wasn’t crazy—I really had seen myself riding a time machine!

  “Calm down, Leo. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.”

  “How do you know? You’ve tried it?”

  She nodded. “We all have.”

  It couldn’t not work! “Then we’ll fix it,” I said. “I’m good at fixing things. I know I can get it to work—I know for a fact.”

  “It’s never worked,” said Jaya. “It’s been in the repository since the 1930s, and nobody’s ever been able to get it going. What makes you think you can?”

  “Because I saw myself,” I said. “I saw myself riding it—my future self. And you were with me.”

  Jaya hit me—hard. It wasn’t as much fun as it looked when she did it to Francis.

  “What?” she yelled. “You saw me riding a time machine and you didn’t tell me?! Where did you see us? How old were we? What were we doing?” She hit me again on the word doing.

  “Hey!” I rubbed my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to think I was crazy. I wasn’t completely sure I wasn’t.”

  “I’m not completely sure either,” said Jaya. “But not because you saw us riding a time machine. That’s not crazy. If you saw it, clearly it’s going to happen.”

  She believed me! I would never believe me myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. She must know the time machine actually existed!

  “Let’s go, then,” I said. “Let’s get it. Let me see that slip. Where’s I * WB 530.11 Z8485? Come on, let’s find it!”

  Jaya caught me by the sleeve. “Settle down, Leo. We can’t. We’re working, remember? We have to run call slips.”

  “But there’s a time machine! A time machine!”

  “A nonworking time machine. It’ll still be there when we finish our shift. Still nonworking, too.”

  “How can you be so calm about this?”

  “You newbies are so cute,” said Jaya, smiling patronizingly. I wanted to hit her myself. “Now, tell me about this time machine you saw us riding. Where did you see it?”

  “In my bedroom. I don’t know what we were doing—we didn’t tell me.”

  “We came back from the future on a time machine and we didn’t tell you anything? Not even the winning lottery numbers? What was the matter with us?”

  “The time machine only stayed for a few seconds. You wanted to say things, but I stopped you—Future Me stopped you. Future Me said it was dangerous to change the past. I’m sure he’s right. I’m sure I’m right.”

  “When were we coming from?”

  “Like I just said, I don’t know—we didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Well, how old were we?”

  “We looked like the same age we are now. Which means we’re obviously supposed to find it soon. Let’s go!”

  “All right. We’ll talk to Dr. Rust after our shift’s over.”

  “Okay, but at least tell me what other crazy stuff they have here in the repository. Do they have beam transporters? What about interstellar rockets? Force fields? Invisibility shields?”

  “I can’t talk about any of that.”

  “Come on! I could find out myself, easily, just by looking in the Catalog Room.”

  “Then look in the Catalog Room. After our shift is over. Meanwhile, run this slip.” She handed me a pneum that had just thudded into the basket.

  • • •

  I don’t know how I made it through the rest of the shift. When it was over at last, we went upstairs and Jaya knocked on Dr. Rust’s open door. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure, come in. What’s up?”

  Mr. Reyes was sitting with Dr. Rust.

  “Leo has—well, I’ll let him tell you himself.” Jaya elbowed me.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what part she wanted me to tell. “I was looking in the card catalog and I found a time machine and I asked Jaya about it and she said I should ask you.” I held up the call slip where I’d written the time machine call number.

  “Is that what you were looking up in the Special Collections thesaurus?” asked Mr. Reyes.

  “
Rick was just telling me you’d found the thesaurus,” said Dr. Rust.

  “Yes, but that’s not the important part,” said Jaya. “Go on, Leo, explain about how you saw us,” she told me.

  “Oh, okay. That was why I was looking up time machines in the first place. Before I knew about the repository, when I was first working on my science project, a time machine showed up in my bedroom. We were riding on it—me and Jaya. So I thought, since time machines really exist, maybe you would have one here. Maybe that’s where we got it. The one we were riding.”

  “How did you know it was a time machine?” Dr. Rust asked. “Did your future self tell you?”

  “No, not exactly. There wasn’t much time before it disappeared. But what else could it be? If it wasn’t a time machine, why would there be two of me? And Future Me told Then Me to read The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells,” I said.

  Dr. Rust and Jaya exchanged significant looks.

  “Well, there are plenty of possible explanations for multiple yous,” said Dr. Rust. “You might be visiting from a parallel dimension, for example. Or it could be a shape-shifter.”

  Parallel dimensions! Shape-shifters! Did those really exist too? If I hadn’t seen a time machine with my own eyes, I would have thought they were messing with me.

  “But the Wells reference certainly is indicative,” continued Dr. Rust. “What did this purported time machine look like?”

  “Kind of like one of those electric wheelchair-scooter things, only really old-fashioned. It was made out of metal, with gears and knobs. We were riding on a leather saddle.” I remembered how Future Me had been hugging Future Jaya and blushed slightly.

  “Hm. That does sound like ours. Jaya, would you mind asking Ms. Minnian to join us? She’s on Stack 6.”

  “Sure thing, Doc,” said Jaya.

  When she was gone, Dr. Rust said to me, “Well, what a . . . what a surprising young man you turn out to be.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, don’t apologize. We like surprising at the repository. It’s one of our favorite qualities.”

  Jaya came back with Ms. Minnian, the unsmiling librarian.

  “What is it, Lee? Jaya says you wanted to see me?”

  “Yes, thank you, Lucy. It seems our newest page has had an experience you’ll want to hear about. Leo, tell her about the time machine.”

  Ms. Minnian listened silently to my story. When I was done, she said to Dr. Rust, “How do we know this isn’t a ploy to get into the Special Collections? Remember that trouble a few years ago with the Grimm Collection? A page was involved—several pages.”

  For some reason that made Jaya mad. “Yes, several pages were involved!” she said fiercely. “Several pages saved the Grimm Collection! And it almost got them turned into dolls forever—including Anjali! I almost lost my sister!”

  “That’s exactly why I’m urging caution,” said Ms. Minnian.

  That made Jaya even madder. I could see why Ms. Callender had called her a dragon. I could easily imagine her breathing fire.

  “It’s okay, Jaya—no one’s questioning your heroism, or your sister’s,” said Dr. Rust. “Lucy, I see your point, but this doesn’t seem like a very effective ploy. If Leo wanted to gain access to the Special Collections, all he would have to do is work and wait. This way he draws attention to himself. He puts us on our guard.”

  “Leo’s our kind of page,” said Mr. Reyes. “He found the Special Collections thesaurus by himself. When was the last time a page did that? The only other one I can think of was Anjali.”

  “He did an impressive job with the assembly test too,” added Dr. Rust.

  “I’m not trying to gain access to anything,” I said. “Not with a ploy, anyway. I’m just trying to figure out what I’m going to do and how. I mean, if I used a time machine to come back from the future, that means I’m going to use a time machine to come back from the future pretty soon no matter what, so why not get started now?”

  Dr. Rust laughed. “You’re right. Shall we pay a visit to the Wells Bequest?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Wells Bequest

  The five of us took the elevator to the basement. We walked past several doors with letters stenciled on them and stopped at one marked *WB.

  “Lucy, do you have your key?” asked Dr. Rust.

  Ms. Minnian opened her purse and took out what looked like an old remote control. She pointed it at the door and punched a bunch of buttons. I heard a soft click.

  “Thanks,” said Dr. Rust, pushing the door open.

  The room looked like any other room in the repository stacks, with the same fluorescent lights and rows of shelving, but for some reason my heart started pounding. I took a deep breath. “Is this the Wells Bequest?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Rust. “May I see your call slip, please, Leo?”

  I handed it over.

  “530.11 Z8485,” Dr. Rust read. “That’ll be with the oversizes.”

  Jaya started down the room through the rows of shelving. The librarians and I followed. We walked past cabinets with ancient-looking padlocks on the doors and open shelves with neatly tagged machines lined up on them. Some had exposed brass gears and steel rivets. Some had complicated antennas and coiled electrical cords.

  The place gave me an excited, tingly feeling. It felt like the moment just before you solve a math problem or figure out how to fix a machine, the moment when you can feel the solution arriving, before you quite see what it is.

  I paused to look at one of the machines close up, but Ms. Minnian said, “Don’t touch anything, Leo. It’s dangerous.” She hurried me forward by the shoulder.

  We caught up to Jaya, Mr. Reyes, and Dr. Rust at the end of the room. They were facing a blank wall.

  “Lucy, will you do the honors?” asked Dr. Rust.

  “Of course,” said Ms. Minnian.

  “Let me!” said Jaya. “Please? I’ve been practicing.”

  “Successfully?” asked Ms. Minnian in her discouraging voice.

  “Well, no, I haven’t actually gotten in yet. But I’m sure I will soon,” Jaya admitted.

  “On the way out, maybe,” said Dr. Rust. “Going in is more complicated. Lucy?”

  Ms. Minnian ran her hands over the wall as if looking for cracks. Apparently she found some invisible irregularity. She probed the spot with her fingertips. Her fingers actually sank into the wall—at least, that’s how it looked.

  Then she did something I couldn’t quite understand. She sort of shook the wall and flipped it, as if she were turning a shirt inside out. It felt as if the whole room was turning inside out. It felt as if I was turning inside out.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed hard, feeling queasy.

  When I opened them again, the four of us were standing in a vast, dim room surrounded by shadowy shapes. The repository seemed to have disappeared.

  “Where are we?” I asked. Something was wrong with my voice. It came out squeaky.

  “I’m sorry, Leo. I should have warned you,” said Dr. Rust.

  “Warned me about what? What happened?” I was still squeaking.

  “We’re in the Wells Bequest Oversize Annex, that’s all,” said Dr. Rust.

  All around us were rows of big machines. They ranged in size from a motorcycle all the way up to an ocean liner. There was a huge metal sphere on three spiderlike legs, as tall as a tree. There was a gigantic mechanical elephant—gigantic even for an elephant—harnessed to a house on wheels. There were streamlined machines and boxy machines and machines with knobs and tubes and propellers. And from where I stood, I could see at least five things that looked like rockets.

  “But where did the repository go? How did we get here?” I couldn’t quite catch my breath.

  “I did a birational transformation,” said Ms. Minnian.

  “Nice, isn’t it? I know, it takes a little getting used to,” said Mr. Reyes.

  “It was Lucy’s idea. So elegant,” said Dr. Rust. “It allows us to store large ob
jects in minimal space.”

  “You mean we went into another dimension or something?” I asked.

  “We’re in the projectivized tangent space,” said Ms. Minnian, as if that would mean something to me. I bet Sofia would know what they were talking about.

  “But where’s the repository?”

  Ms. Minnian waved her hands around vaguely.

  “We’re still in it,” said Dr. Rust. “We’re just . . . more deeply in it, you could say.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Leo. This is just sort of a storage area,” said Jaya.

  “A storage area for what? What is all this stuff?”

  “These are the Wells Bequest Oversizes—objects that don’t fit in the main *WB room,” said Mr. Reyes.

  “Okay, but what’s the Wells Bequest? Nobody’s actually told me.” It’s not that I minded being birational transformationed into a projectivized tangent space—I mean, I wasn’t scared or anything—but I wished somebody would explain.

  “The core of the Wells Bequest is a collection of objects assembled by the great industrialist Alfred P. Steel,” said Dr. Rust, not really answering my question. “His collection passed to us in 1931, according to the terms of his will. We’ve added to it over the years, of course.”

  Jaya interrupted. “Hey, why isn’t it called the Steel Bequest, then? I’ve never understood that.”

  “Mr. Steel chose the name,” said Dr. Rust. “He acquired a number of objects from H. G. Wells. He was a big Wells fan.”

  “H. G. Wells the writer?” I asked. “The author of The Time Machine?”

  Dr. Rust nodded.

  “What did Mr. Steel get from Wells?” I asked.

  “Well, the time machine, for one thing,” said Dr. Rust. “Though there’s some question about its authenticity—there’s no record of it ever having worked. We also have a small sample of cavorite, along with some Herakleophorbia IV, a heat ray, and a black smoke. And a flask of invisibility potion, but no antidote. There’s a tripod too, over there.” Dr. Rust waved at the three-legged spider-sphere.

  “What’s cavorite?” I asked.

  “A gravity repellant. Wells describes it in The First Men in the Moon.”