“Da Vinci?” Casey’s voice was sharp.
Lucy nodded. She could hardly see his light eyes in the dim room.
Brad tried to calm himself. He cleared his throat. “If the book is right, this machine could be more important than you’ve been thinking, Colonel.” Was Brad excited only to prove himself to Casey? Maybe.
Casey’s hard eyes reassessed her. “And you, Dr. Rossano, know what it is.”
She nodded slowly. Well, at least he’d never believe her. “Yeah. It’s a time machine.”
“A time machine,” Casey snorted. “Right. Are you crazy, Steadman?”
“No, you’ve got to see the book, Colonel,” Brad protested. He hurried to a long table that faced the machine and switched on a small work light. “Luce, bring the book and show him.”
Lucy hefted her bag off her shoulder. The book wouldn’t help a military guy believe. Huge girders loomed in the ceiling far above her. The place had that peculiar sterile environment that left only a faint metallic odor. She pulled out the book and spread it open. Casey leaned over it. Lucy pointed. “Leonardo’s signature.” She flipped pages to show the diagrams on assembly, key notes in the margins, mathematical equations. Then she flipped to the full drawing. Casey drew in a breath. She paged back. “Here’s where he says that time is a vortex. And here . . . he says the jewels focus the power.”
“How do I know that’s what it says?” Casey asked softly, his eyes darting over the text.
“You can check it with another expert in archaic Italian.” There. That would buy time. She could feel the machine looming above her, heavy with . . . with purpose. That was bad.
“How do you select a time? There are no dials or settings we could see.”
Lucy smiled. This would seal his disbelief. “It says in the book that you pull the handle and just think about the time you want to be in.”
Casey blinked once and chuffed a disgusted laugh. “Oh, great. I get the really good assignments.”
“Okay. I know it sounds a little out there,” Brad admitted. “That’s why we’ve got to try it. If we’ve spent a lot of someone’s money powering a machine that doesn’t do anything, better to know that now. If it’s a hoax, all the Italians have is a fortune in tourist dollars when they put it on display in the Uffizi. But if it’s not, then we’ve got something everybody is going to want.”
Lucy was dismayed at Casey’s look of speculation. He couldn’t be considering powering up the machine, could he?
“And then this wasn’t such a crappy assignment after all,” Brad continued. “In fact, you can probably name your next one.” Brad really struck a chord with that. Casey thought he’d drawn a crappy assignment and he was now thinking how nice it would be to come up with something incredible no one ever expected. “So why don’t we test it out? Right here. Tonight.”
No, no, no. Definitely not. Lucy looked around wildly. The machine seemed to be vibrating in satisfaction. “Wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t that be bad scientific method? You should do a . . . a controlled experiment.” Brad was always talking about controlled experiments.
“Well, we’ve got a problem,” Brad said, his eyes on Casey. “We can’t go to my boss, or your boss, and tell them we’ve got a time machine. We’d be laughed out of the office.”
“Well, yeah,” Casey said, dripping sarcasm. “I guess we would.”
“Unless we had proof. Come on, Casey.” Brad was on a roll. Sure of himself. “You want prestige and power. If it works, you’re in like Flynn. A time machine built by Leonardo da Vinci and powered by our project?” It must have killed him to share the credit for the project.
Casey was becoming convinced. He’d gotten that speculative look, in spades. “Your little lunch box over there works?”
“Of course it works,” Brad said through gritted teeth. “We successfully moved the gears today using a fraction of the power it’s capable of.”
“Could you go to the future?” Casey stared at the machine, even though he was addressing Lucy. He was caught by the possibilities. He would be the one to use the machine tonight. Maybe that was okay. But it didn’t feel right. She shook herself mentally. What was she thinking? She had to get out of here or something . . . momentous would happen.
But she answered anyway. “I don’t know. Leonardo was more interested in understanding the past. I guess if time is really a vortex you could go either way.”
Casey continued to stare. “What if you can’t power up the machine again once you’re there?” Oh yeah. She’d been through that possibility in her mind a thousand times.
“According to Leonardo, the machine can’t stay in another time forever. It’s too much pressure on the flow of time. It’ll snap back to where it came from with you or without you.”
“If he knows what he’s talking about. And if he doesn’t?”
She took a breath. “You get stuck there, along with your machine.” There. That should make them think twice about using it.
Brad looked desperate. He wanted the project to succeed that much. “Look,” he said. “There’s always risk. Somebody has to be first. Chuck Yeager had to go up and fly fast even though nobody knew what would happen when you broke the sound barrier. John Glenn had to go up in Friendship I. Sometime, somebody just has to do it.”
Casey peered at the illustration in the book, then straightened. “I agree.” He turned to Lucy. “How about her?”
Both Brad and Lucy were stunned. “She isn’t even part of the team,” Brad sputtered.
“She’s perfect. She’s obviously read this book a hundred times. She knows how it’s supposed to work.” Here Casey looked at Brad. “And we have plausible deniability. We were doing tests and she pulled the handle while our backs were turned.” He’d gone through all the permutations in his mind. One: It didn’t work. Nothing lost. Two: It did work and she went back and returned. He won big. Three: She went back and only the machine returned. He won. He didn’t care about her. Four: She went back and neither she nor the machine returned. That was bad. They’d have to admit that she hoodwinked them. But it was one in four. Odds were with Casey. Really with Casey with how big the odds were that it wouldn’t work in the first place.
Lucy felt the lab almost tremble with intent. Brad’s face was a comical combination of eagerness and guilt. He wanted so badly to try the machine. Badly enough to risk her life? Apparently. “Brad?”
He took a long breath. Fear flashed across his face before he pulled down a mask over both the fear and the eagerness. “You’ll be okay, Lucy.”
So that was it. He did want it that bad, but he didn’t have the courage to use it himself.
Casey looked at her. Brad looked at her.
It all came down to this moment. The months of obsession, the feeling of her life being without purpose, stale, and tasteless since her father died, her fascination with how happy Frankie Suchet had been. If she walked out now, what would she be walking out to? She had nothing out there. A successful business, maybe even wildly successful since Frankie and Henri had directed all their friends to frequent her shop, but it didn’t mean anything to her. She had no friends except a crazy old loon of a landlord and Brad, and Brad didn’t look to be a great friend right now. She had nothing but her obsession with the book. And if she walked out, they’d never let her take the book with her. That left . . . nothing. Her life beyond the walls of this lab had not a shred of magic in it. But here, in this sterile place, magic hung in the air, delivered across time by a magician named da Vinci.
A thrill of . . . expectation made it hard for Lucy to breathe. How long since she had had expectations of life? A feeling of rightness washed over her. Everything was about to change, and that was as it should be. Her breathing calmed. “Okay.” She turned to the machine. “Rev up your lunch box, Brad.”
Brad looked back at Casey. Casey nodded. Brad took a breath and turned to the machine. “Get me more light,” he called over his shoulder.
“Nix. That’d attract attention,” Cas
ey snapped. He turned off the light on the table. “Only the work lights.”
Brad knelt in front of the machine without further protest.
“Let me watch you,” Lucy said, leaning over him. “I’ll have to start it up myself to make it back.” She watched him flipping lighted switches and murmured the pattern to herself. “Blue, then the two whites from left to right, twice, and then the red.”
The machine began to hum. Vibrations just at the edge of her awareness filled the room. She steadied her breathing. She was going to do this. How . . . miraculous was that? The right feeling pushed her fear behind some kind of curtain in her mind. She knew all the things that could happen. She could get stuck in the past. She’d probably be burned as a witch. A red-haired witch. It was an insane risk. She just didn’t care anymore. All this was meant to happen. “Okay, to you two it will probably seem as if only a moment has elapsed before I reappear.” She closed the book, tucked it into her bag, and slung the bag on her shoulder. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“You should leave the book here.” Brad was trying to sound like Casey. Not.
“Hey, I’m not going back to who-knows-when without my references.”
“Let her take it,” Casey said. “Does us no good if the thing doesn’t work.” He nodded to her. There was respect in his eyes.
“I’ll go back far enough that they’ll be in awe of me and my machine.” She was wearing the outfit she’d worn to the Exploratorium, a flippy knit skirt and matching slinky jacket over a green shell, and ballet slipper flats.
“Better pick summertime,” Casey said, echoing her thoughts. “Hate to see you ruin those shoes in snow.” Was Casey kidding? How did you know with a guy like that?
“You got it.”
“Give her all your change,” Casey ordered Brad. “Just in case she’s there long enough to need to buy food and lodging. Silver is good.” They each piled a handful of coins into her bag.
“I won’t be there long. I’m going to figure out where I am, grab something to bring back with me as proof, and hightail it back here.” Was that true? She stepped up under the machine in front of the lever topped by that impossibly huge diamond.
Brad knelt by the lunch box again. “After you do the switch sequence push this chrome button here, and that will start the power.” It was a rounded pad you pressed with your palm.
She nodded and put both hands over the diamond knob. Brad slapped the button. The power hum passed out of hearing range, but she could feel it in her chest and throat. She pulled the lever down. No gears moved. The feeling of power in the air made it difficult to breathe. At last the big gear in the central portion of the machine creaked.
God, it was going to happen! She had to think of a time period. The small gears began to spin, faster and faster. Shakespearean England? Fin de siècle France? She spoke French pretty well. The gears whirred until they were only a blur. She couldn’t decide! A white glow filled the room. She thought Brad was shouting, or maybe it was Casey. She couldn’t make out the words.
What she really wanted was to go back to a time when magic was possible. Any time, it didn’t matter—a time when people believed in magic and it transformed their lives.
The gears seemed to stop; time hung suspended. Oh no! Did Brad’s lunch box not provide enough power? Or was Leonardo’s design flawed? The glow was cut by a hundred beams of light, colored like the jewels. They crisscrossed the ceiling, illuminating the girders above. What was happening here? She felt that possibility of magic she’d imagined receding. A sense of loss suffused her. . . .
Then everything happened impossibly fast. The sensation of time slowing changed in an instant to a feeling of being flung forward from a slingshot, and everything was a blur and she was screaming, only she couldn’t hear herself scream. . . .
Chapter 2
Her breath was knocked back into her as she hit the ground. Grass, punctuated with great gouged muddy places. The earth shook as the machine thunked in behind her. She blinked, disoriented. Around her shouts and screams reverberated. Dim figures leaned forward through the smoke. Were they peering at her? And what was that other smell? Like a butcher shop.
It was blood.
Lucy got to her hands and knees, clutching her bag. My God, it actually worked! Leonardo had built a time machine. In spite of all her obsession, all her daydreaming, she hadn’t really thought it would. Figures loomed out of swirling smoke, frozen, peering at the machine. Where in God’s name was she? A single bulky figure brought up a sword and cleaved another in the neck. The bearded man dropped to his knees with a scream. All around her men sprang into action. Steel clanged on steel.
She’d landed in the middle of a battle. And the fact that she’d appeared so suddenly had meant but a moment’s interruption in the carnage. She staggered to her feet. Giant men in chain mail and leather greaves with huge sharp axes and swords that looked impossibly heavy surged around her. Hair and beards flowed out from under peaked helmets with nosepieces. Saxons? Vikings? Maybe she was in the time of King Arthur. The smell of blood and sweat and smoke was almost overwhelming. Lucy choked as a giant of a man lunged for her. She screamed and pulled away. He turned to parry a sword thrust by another giant. She scurried to the shelter of the machine. Get this thing started and get out of here, wherever and whenever here is.
She crouched beside the silver lunch box. “Blue switch. Check. Two whites. Check, check.” Her voice trembled. She looked up at a shout and saw a man lose his head. She screamed. She’d seen it in movies a lot. But real was something else entirely. No comforting latex, no soothing CGI. Blood spurted. The body staggered forward even as the head thudded to the ground and rolled. The attacker whirled away, beset on all sides.
The eyes are still blinking. It felt like someone else was thinking that. She was frozen, staring at the head as, behind it, the body toppled. Her breath started to come fast and shallow. Darkness threatened at the edge of her vision. Get hold of yourself, Lucy. Got to get out of here. With a wrench she pulled her gaze away from the head. The lunch box began to hum. Be quick. Please be quick. Quick. Quick. Now for the chrome button.
A hand on her shoulder pulled her away from the machine. Hard eyes examined her from behind the battered helmet. The man had bad teeth and worse breath. She struggled, but this time the grip was iron on her arm. He said something guttural. German?
“Let me go,” she screamed as though he could understand her.
A shadow loomed out of the smoke behind her attacker. The shadow roared something, and her attacker turned and met the descending sword by thrusting up his small, round shield. As the two engaged, the one who had been gripping her thrust her away. She plunged back to the power box and pushed the chrome button. The feeling of energy in the air thumped in her chest. She pushed herself up and went to the lever. The two giant men were hacking at each other, parrying and thrusting not two feet away. The younger of the two, who had attacked the one with bad teeth, seemed to be getting the better of the struggle. The rest of the battle was closing in on the machine. Huge men everywhere, sharp edges of steel, leather and sweat and blood. She reached up and pulled the lever down. The gears began to spin. Several men staggered away from the machine, pointing. But any lapse of attention could be punished with a killing blow, so the fighting sputtered but didn’t stop. The two giants stumbled even closer.
Machine! she thought. Get me out of here. The gears were really whirring now. In moments she would just disappear the way she came. November 9, 2009.
Beside her the two men grappled with each other. The younger one thrust the one with bad teeth away. He fell right at Lucy’s feet. The younger one hurled himself on top, but the older man got his axe up and the blade cut the younger one’s thigh. Blood seeped through a long cut in the leather. They rolled and staggered up. But now the older man was like a fury, swinging the axe again and again. A white glow from the machine permeated the smoke. The older man picked up a mace lying over a dead body and swung it at the youn
ger man’s helmet. It clanged. The helmet drooped. The older man reached across the body of his adversary for Lucy. His axe dripped blood. But the younger man pushed up with his sword and it found his adversary’s hip joint. The younger man struggled to his feet in front of Lucy and faced the one with bad teeth, now bared in rage. Was he protecting her?
Things began to slow. Oh, dear. It was happening. She had to focus. November 9, 2009. She hadn’t brought anything back with her. Except the bruises she’d have from that guy’s grip. The colored beams of light crossed wildly through the smoke like a demented circus. The old guy thrust at the dazed man between them and sliced his shoulder. The younger man fell slowly against Lucy. Warm blood soaked her. In this time a wound like that was a death sentence. No S.F. General Trauma Center to stitch up those arteries. The older man raised his axe. It came down toward Lucy, oh, so slowly. She ducked, even more slowly. The axe head hit the huge diamond on the lever and crashed down onto the lunch box. The axe reverberated, sending the attacker back a pace.
Then everything sped up.
November 9, 2009. She looked down at the man leaning against her, gore welling from rents in his chain mail. He really needed a hospital. The sensation of being flung forward engulfed her. All was light and sound and whirling vortex. . . .
“That story is . . . is balderdash.” Brad could see Jensen’s veins bulging on his forehead. Jensen ran the Super Collider Lab, but he was about to retire. Brad had thought by delivering an actual working time machine he’d become a shoo-in to get the job. That wasn’t exactly how it was working out. “There is no such thing as a time machine, and no mere girl could have stolen it.”
“Then how does a fourteen-foot machine just disappear without anyone noticing?” Brad was fighting for his professional life here. “No guards saw it being taken out, no reports in the neighborhood of trucks hauling huge cargo. But the guards did see Lucy.” Blaming it on Lucy was the only way to get clear, he told himself.
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