Stolen Time Page 14

  She and her mother had been performing a variation on the fiddle game at a small bistro in Salt Lake City. The con was simple. The two women would enjoy their meals separately, pretending to be perfect strangers. Then, when she was brought the bill, Loretta would make a big show of looking for a wallet she clearly did not have. She’d promise the restaurant owner she’d run straight home and return with payment. As collateral, she left behind an old family heirloom—a gold broach worth little but valuable to her.

  Dorothy’s job had been to watch this exchange from across the restaurant. The moment her mother left, she’d approach the owner, pretending to be a fashionable young woman of means. She’d tell him the broach was a rare piece from an important designer, and she’d leave a (fake) name, promising some exorbitant payment should he decide to sell. Inevitably, when Loretta returned moments later, the restaurant owner would offer her a few hundred dollars to part with the worthless piece of metal.

  They’d performed the con a dozen times before. Dorothy could do it in her sleep.

  But that night had been different. There’d been a waiter. Sandy-haired, with a wide, easy smile and shoulders that were . . . well, they were quite nicely shaped. He brought Dorothy an extra side of breadsticks and told her dumb jokes. He spent the entire night laughing at the witty things she said. He accidentally brushed his knuckles against the back of her hand when he took the menu from her. He never once told her how beautiful she was.

  Dorothy missed her cue to approach the restaurant owner, and the whole con had been ruined. Her mother had been furious.

  “You thought that boy really liked you?” she’d hissed, when Dorothy told her what had happened. “He was only flirting with you to get you to leave a bigger tip. How many times have I told you—men lie. Everything is a con.”

  Dorothy hadn’t believed her. But when she’d gone back to the café the very next night, the boy had been laughing at some other pretty girl’s jokes.

  The memory sent something unpleasant flipping through her chest. Ash was like that. Joking, teasing her, pretending not to notice her beauty.

  And she liked it, just as she’d liked it when the waiter at the bistro had joked and teased her. But she knew enough now not to trust it. She touched a finger to the locket at her throat.

  “The Second Star is moving into position for departure.” Ash said.

  The ship began to hover.

  The anil looked like nothing more than a gathering of clouds, the beginnings of a tornado forming deep in the ocean. Lightning flashed inside, its faint reflection bouncing off the swirling gray walls of a tunnel.

  Anil, Dorothy thought. And though she hadn’t said the word out loud, she imagined she could taste it on her lips. It was a dry, acrid taste, same as the smoke that had filled the clearing where she’d first seen Ash’s time machine.

  It was mad that something so incredible could exist out in the open like this, just a few miles away from the city, where anyone might stumble upon it.

  Its only protection was its otherness. Even now, looking at it for the first time, Dorothy could tell that it was powerful.

  Ash brought the Second Star to the mouth of the tunnel and then stopped, his time machine hovering above choppy gray waves.

  He raised his voice so it could be heard over the engine. “Everyone doing okay back there?”

  He’d addressed them all, but he was looking at Dorothy, his eyes reflected in the mirror hanging from the Second Star’s windshield.

  There hadn’t been any more discussion over whether she’d come with them. Ash had simply come back into the kitchen and said, as though something crucial had been decided, “We leave now.”

  Dorothy had wondered what he’d been discussing out in the hall with the others, but she’d bit the questions back. If Ash wanted to keep his reasons a secret, that was fine—so long as he didn’t keep asking after hers.

  She wouldn’t have been able to explain her reasons, anyway.

  More, she thought, and something prickled over her skin. It was what she’d always wanted, the reason she’d run off on her fiancé and her mother and everything she’d ever known. But she’d never dreamed she’d find this.

  Time travel. Other worlds. Entire cities underwater.

  The possibilities set Dorothy’s mind on fire. Did Ash really think she’d be content to stay here—or worse, return to her own time—when there was all of history to explore? She didn’t think she’d ever be content again. Not until she’d seen it all.

  Ash’s eyes lingered on her for a second. Dorothy thought of the boy from the café and felt her pulse quicken. The moths in her stomach stirred, feeling more like butterflies than they had before.

  She told herself she was ashamed of the memory, of her naïveté.

  But this didn’t feel like shame.

  She curled her fingers into the sides of her chair, gathering her courage. “Ready,” she said.

  As though waiting for her command, the Second Star shot forward, disappearing into the crack in time.

  Part Two

  Dark Star: Noun. A starlike object which emits little or no visible light. Its existence is inferred from other evidence, such as the eclipsing of other stars.

  —Oxford Dictionary of English

  20

  Ash

  THE PUGET SOUND ANIL

  Darkness closed around the ship. Ash felt the pressure change with a pop in his ears and a deep ache throbbing through his teeth. His world became very small: the black waves churning outside his windshield; the control panel’s blinking red lights. Water crashed against the Star’s windshield in thick sheets, making the glass creak.

  And then they were through the water, into the anil itself.

  The waves thickened into gray clouds that broke apart as the Second Star hurtled through them. Lightning lit up the purple walls of the tunnel, but it was far off yet, not more than a flicker of purple in the mist. Ash didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath, until the lights on the control panel seemed to dim. He gave his head a hard shake and sucked down a lungful of air.

  It’s fine, he thought. Everything’s fine. Wind speed was only up to 45 knots, and the EM was holding steady at a quarter capacity. The exotic matter had stabilized the anil better than he could’ve hoped. This might even be a safe flight.

  But nerves still prickled over his skin. Maybe it was because he could feel the prememory moving, shadowlike, around the edges of his mind, searching for a way inside. He saw a flicker of white and tightened his grip on the yoke, directing the Star to the center of the tunnel. He’d only ever experienced the prememory when he was alone, when he didn’t have to worry that anyone might see him shake, or wonder why his skin had gone pale and damp with sweat. If he lost control now, with the rest of his crew and Dorothy here to watch . . .

  His pulse beat in his palms, warning him not to let that happen.

  Zora knocked a fist against his arm. “Everything good?”

  “All clear,” Ash said, his eyes still trained on the windshield. He tried to cover his nerves with a smile. “Don’t worry. This’ll be easy.”

  Zora leaned back in her seat. “It’s going better than I expected.”

  “You expected us to explode into a thousand fiery pieces on entry. Anything’s better than that.”

  “True.”

  Ash caught Zora’s face from the corner of his eye, but she only stared straight ahead, her expression unreadable as ever.

  He shifted his gaze back out the windshield, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand. Things seemed calm now, but weather inside an anil could change in the blink of an eye, especially when the EM reading was so low. They weren’t out of the woods yet. The prememory should be the least of his worries.

  Wind howled outside the windows, but it wasn’t strong enough to break the protective bubble the EM had created around the Star and blow the ship off course. The roiling clouds that made up the sides of the tunnel flickered with lightning, but it never got close enoug
h to the ship to cause trouble.

  Ash gazed out the windshield without really seeing any of this. A thought had just occurred to him: they were going back in time to find the Professor. Maybe that meant he wouldn’t get the prememory at all this time. Maybe the events they were setting into motion right now had already changed the future.

  It was too much to hope for, and yet Ash could feel himself start to ease up, each of his muscles unclenching, one by one.

  Maybe.

  “I was able to find the book the Professor mentioned online so we should have all the same information he was working off of,” Willis said. “I’m seeing building schematics, security details . . . whoa, there’s even a list of the firepower the soldiers were packing before the place was shut down.”

  He was tapping the screen of a sleek, silver tablet. Ash had brought it back from the year 2020, when well-made tech was still easily obtained, and, as such, it was one of the most advanced models of tablet the world had ever seen—perhaps would ever see. Wireless internet didn’t exist in New Seattle any longer, so Willis had used the crappy dial-up connection back at the school to download everything he thought they might need. The connection was spotty at best, but sometimes they got lucky.

  Dorothy stared at the tablet like it was a strange and somewhat frightening animal. “What is that?” she breathed.

  “Type of computer.” Willis tapped the screen again. “I’ll let you play with it when we get back.” He paused, and then added. “If we get back.”

  “How about a little faith?” Ash called over his shoulder. “When have I ever gotten you into trouble?”

  “Do you want an itemized list?”

  “How long does it take to travel through time?” Dorothy asked.

  She leaned forward, and Ash felt the sudden warmth of her body next to his arm. His skin prickled. He cleared his throat. “Half an hour, give or take a hundred years.”

  Chandra groaned. “Ugh. Total dad joke.”

  Ash’s eyes flicked to the mirror hanging from his windshield and caught the tail end of Chandra’s eye roll before his gaze moved to Dorothy. She was staring out the windshield, at the roiling purple clouds and distant sparks of lightning, and her smile was wide, childlike. Her eyes glistened.

  The awe on her face brought her beauty into fuller focus, and Ash felt the corner of his lip twitch, unable to suppress a smile of his own. He’d forgotten this would be her first time seeing the anil. Not everyone got how amazing it was. Chandra had spent her first trip through time squeezing her eyes shut, too scared to look out the window. Willis didn’t seem able to pick out the specific shades of purple and blue in the clouds and, as such, thought the experience underwhelming. But Ash had always seen the anil for what it was. Remarkable.

  No, more than that: holy.

  Staring at Dorothy’s face just now, he wondered if she felt the same.

  “Ooh!” Chandra squealed, clapping her hands. “Should we play a road-trip game?”

  Dorothy blinked and shook her head, a spell breaking.

  “This isn’t a road trip, Chandie,” Zora said.

  “What’s a road-trip game?” Dorothy asked. “Is it something to do with time travel?”

  “No,” said Ash. Dorothy caught his eye, and he quickly shifted his attention back to the swirling madness in front of him. “They’re games you play while riding in an automobile. So you don’t get bored.”

  Dorothy said, incredulous, “Who on earth could get bored riding in an automobile?”

  Ash’s lip twitched—almost a smile. He remembered feeling the same way when his dad bought their first family car, back in 1940. Just driving around the block felt like the most thrilling thing in the world. “Hate to break it to you, but cars get pretty boring after a few years.”

  Zora swiveled around in her seat. “How do you even know about road-trip games, Chandie?”

  Chandra was practically bouncing. “I was watching old episodes of this television show about how this guy meets his kids’ mom by drinking a lot of beer or whatever, and whenever they’re in the car they play a game where they count how many dogs they see outside and then they yell ‘zilch dog’ really loud, and I think they punch each other on the arm.”

  “There are no dogs in here,” said Willis. “We’re in a tunnel hurtling through space and time.”

  “Duh. I know that, but we could count something else. Like how many times we see swirly gray clouds.”

  “Or lightning,” added Ash. “We got a lot of lighting.”

  Dorothy was suddenly leaning past him, one hand gripping his arm, the other pointing at the windshield, “Zich lightning!” she called, breathless.

  “It’s zilch, not zich,” Chandra corrected her.

  “That’s what I said!” Dorothy was still holding Ash’s arm, her fingers soft and cool against the heat pulsing through his wrist. He could feel his attention shifting to the place where their skin touched. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

  Ash had always hated the types of guys who chased after pretty girls. He figured they were like dumb dogs with their tongues hanging out of their mouths, racing after a stick without ever stopping to wonder why. Did they really want the stick? Or did they just enjoy chasing it?

  Ash would not be a dog. He reminded himself that, pretty though she might be, Dorothy was trouble.

  And he was supposed to be avoiding girls, anyway, so what was he even thinking?

  He shrugged her off. “Watch where you’re grabbing, sweetheart. I know I make this look easy, but one wrong move and the whole ship goes flying straight into the pretty lightning.”

  He heard the scowl in her voice. “I told you—”

  “Don’t call you sweetheart.” Ash couldn’t say why he didn’t want to call Dorothy by her name, only that it felt like a truce, somehow, like admitting that having her climb on board his ship wasn’t the worst thing in the world. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction—yet, anyway—so he grumbled, “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

  He pulled his eyes away from her and squinted through the darkness instead, searching the tunnel walls for the markings the Professor had grilled him on. Time had landmarks, same as anything. Slight discoloration marked decades, certain whirls in the smoke only occurred during certain years. Ash knew that the clouds at the side of the anil only got that bluish-gray cast to them in the mid 2000s. He’d know they’d entered the twentieth century when he saw darker whirls cutting through the gray. It was like following a map.

  Zora’s voice cut through his thoughts. “We could play the movie game.”

  “Movie?” Dorothy said. “You mean like a moving picture?”

  “Yes,” Willis said. “But they have sound now.”

  “Oh, I love moving pictures!” Dorothy said. “Do you know Florence La Badie? She’s absolutely divine.”

  Willis’s eyes lit up. “Did you see Star of Bethlehem?”

  Dorothy, aghast, exclaimed, “It doesn’t come to Seattle until next month!”

  “Never mind,” Zora muttered.

  They sped past the 2010s. Ash decreased the Star’s speed to 2,900 knots. Wind slammed into the side of the ship. Everything trembled.

  “What was that?” Chandra’s voice sounded smaller than it had a few minutes ago. Lightning flared very close to their windshield.

  Ash tightened his grip on the yoke. He tried moving the Star left, where wind speeds were weaker, but it listed right. He swore under his breath and pulled back, aiming its nose upward—

  The Star plummeted. The sudden drop made his stomach flip.

  Someone released a nervous yelp from the cabin. Zora was talking, but her voice seemed far away. The wind howled and screamed, sounding alive.

  Ash dragged the yoke into position, shoulders and arms burning with the effort. Sweat broke out on his forehead. They’d just passed the early 2000s. They were getting close.

  Something crashed to the floor, but Ash didn’t dare turn his head to see what it was. He searched the tunnel walls. He could se
e the smoky clouds of the 1990s straight ahead. . . .

  “What’s happening?” Zora shouted. A gust of wind slammed into them before Ash could answer, sending a tremor through the ship. The walls shook. Ash’s knuckles went white around the stick. He tried to steer the Star over to one of the cloudy tunnel walls, but the winds were too strong.

  The EM was failing—just like they’d known it would.

  Lightning forked through the air in front of him—too close. The brief burst illuminated roiling purple and black clouds.

  Chandra was shouting, but Ash couldn’t make out her words over the roar of the storm. He glanced at the rearview mirror just as something slammed into the side of them, causing bits of metal to fly off the walls and scatter to the ground. One of Chandra’s restraints snapped, and she lurched forward, an arm jerking before her limp body.

  “Chandra!” Willis shouted. Chandra’s eyes had rolled to the back of her head, her mouth gone slack. Her second restraint snapped in half, and she went hurtling against the curved metal wall of the ship. Ash heard a sickening crack.

  He grasped for the yoke, relief flooding through him as his fingers closed around stiff leather. They were passing 1985 now. Ash could tell by the slight thickening of the clouds, the way the purple edges had dulled to gray. Only a few more minutes and they’d be in 1980. He started searching for the more subtle variations that hinted at which months they were passing. Thin, wispy clouds meant spring and summer . . . heavier clouds for autumn . . .

  “Willis, don’t!” Zora was shouting.

  Ash glanced away from the anil, eyes flicking to the mirror. Willis was unsnapping his own restraints. Chandra lay on the ground in front of him, unmoving.

  “Willis!” Ash warned.

  “She’s hurt, Captain.” Willis’s fingers trembled as he worked his buckle. It snapped open—

  The effect was immediate. Willis seemed to be sucked out of his seat. He flew up against the ceiling, his head thudding against the metal.