Caught (Missing) (21 page)

He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. Familiar objects began to swim into focus. A desk. A table with a lace tablecloth. This did look like 1903—1903 in the apartment Albert and Mileva had left behind in Switzerland, not 1903 in the bedroom in Novi Sad where Albert still stood frozen.

Jonah blinked again.

“Are you
sure
we have to come here first?” he asked Mileva, who’d landed flat on the floor beside him.

“Yes—er—ah—” Mileva began gagging.

“It’s just timesickness you’re feeling,” Jonah said encouragingly. “Swallow hard, and you’ll feel fine in a few minutes.”

Mileva stumbled to her feet and weaved unsteadily toward the kitchen. Jonah could hear her retching into the sink.

“I’m pregnant, remember?” she called back to him. “It’s like there was more than a century of morning sickness waiting for me back here. Ohh . . .”

She leaned over the sink again.

Jonah tried not to listen for a while after that. He struggled to his feet and went to the farthest window. Looking out, he could see the picturesque scene on the street below: the flower boxes, the trolley cars, the men in suits, the women in long dresses, everyone in a hat—and everyone frozen in place.

Time was still stopped here.

“I thought people were much more open about talking about pregnancy in your time,” Mileva said behind him. “In the twenty-first century.”

Jonah turned around.

“Well, I guess they are, but—nobody likes hearing somebody else vomit,” Jonah said. Then, just in case she wanted to talk about this a lot more, he added, “And I’m a thirteen-year-old boy. I bet there isn’t any time period where thirteen-year-old boys like hearing about pregnancy symptoms.”

“I guess I should have thought of that, because of my brother,” Mileva said. “But I was away so much by the time he was thirteen . . .”

She looked so haunted that Jonah mumbled, “Sorry.”

What was it like for Mileva to know that in a decade or so, her brother would go off to war and be missing for years? That the family would give him up for dead—and that even when they found out he wasn’t dead, they’d
get word that he didn’t want to come home?

How could Mileva bear knowing that she was facing so many awful moments in her future?

“Maybe . . . maybe you should try to forget everything that you saw back in the time hollow,” Jonah said gruffly. “You could give me the Elucidator right now, and let me freeze you in time with everyone else from 1903. Maybe that would keep you from thinking about things you shouldn’t know . . .”

Mileva shook her head resolutely.

“You need me to imitate Albert’s handwriting, remember?” she said.

Jonah walked toward the table in the middle of the room. Just as before, it was covered with papers full of Albert’s scribbles.

“A
chicken
could imitate this handwriting,” he joked.

He touched the top sheet of paper and stopped.

“What if we’re wrong?” he asked. “What if this doesn’t work?”

“We have to try,” Mileva said. Jonah couldn’t tell if she was fighting back more pregnancy nausea—or fighting back tears.

He nodded, and lifted the top sheet. He looked back and forth between the sheet in his hand and the ghostly version of it still remaining in place on the table.

The ghostly version—the paper’s tracer—held completely different words, different numbers, different ideas.

He let out a deep sigh of relief.

“Is it there?” Mileva asked hopefully.

“Yep,” Jonah said. It was still so weird to him that Mileva couldn’t see the tracer page, since it was from her own time period. To further reassure her, he added, “It’s just like when Katherine and I looked before. The tracer page shows exactly what Albert would have written, if time travelers had never intervened. If he’d hadn’t gotten distracted thinking about time splitting . . .”

Mileva was already sitting at the desk, a pencil poised over paper.

“Start reading it to me,” she said in a brisk, businesslike voice.

“What if I don’t know some of the symbols?” Jonah asked.

“Describe them to me,” Mileva said. “Or—here.” She handed him a piece of paper and a pencil of his own. “If it’s something that’s too difficult, draw it as best you can, and we’ll work it out together.”

“Okay, then,” Jonah said. “This one starts with the word ‘capillarity’. . .”

“Capillarity?” Mileva repeated in amazement. “Albert
was supposed to be thinking about that in 1903? I don’t remember him expressing the slightest shred of interest in capillarity during that time. Why would he care?”

Jonah just looked at her.

“This is never going to work if you don’t trust me,” he said. “And it’s going to take forever if you challenge everything.”

Mileva gritted her teeth.

“Right. Capillarity,” she said. “Next word?”

It was long, slow, tedious work, reading every single word and symbol and equation from the papers spread across the Einsteins’ table, and waiting while Mileva copied them down. She was actually uncannily good at reproducing the same cramped, careless script that Albert had used on the original papers.

They were lucky that Albert had left the papers spread across the table, only a corner here and there hiding the words written on the paper below. The only problem was that Jonah couldn’t flip over any of the tracer pages to see whatever was written on the backs. He and Mileva could only hope that they caught enough of the original idea.

Of course, how good can our plan really be,
Jonah thought,
when it relies on outsmarting one of the most brilliant men in history?

“Must not vomit,” Mileva said through gritted teeth. “Must not vomit.”

They had just finished using something Mileva said was officially called Ancillary Dislocation Travel in Otherwise-Originated Massive Time Stoppages—ADTOOMTS, for short. Basically, that just meant that the Elucidator had whisked them from the apartment in Bern to Mileva’s room at her parents’ house in Novi Sad while time was still stopped in September 1903.

“Why don’t they just call it teleportation?” Jonah asked. “Or a ‘beam me up, Scotty’?”

“Because it’s such a precise form of teleportation, and time travelers have to be precise,” Mileva said. “And—‘beam me up’? Time travelers already pay homage to that
Star Trek
phrase. They use it to refer to any return to their
native time after being away . . . oh, crud,” Mileva moaned. She dived under the bed and pulled out a chamber pot so she could vomit.

Jonah took the all-important papers from her sweaty hands. He sighed, and held loose strands of her hair out of the way.

She finished throwing up and slid the chamber pot back out of sight. She sat back against the wall.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’ll have to forget everything you know about
Star Trek
,” he said.

Mileva wiped the back of her hand across her clammy forehead. Her face was too pale.

“I know,” she mumbled. “It’s just—Emily watched so many of those old reruns with her adopted dad in the twenty-first century. And I loved watching them too, back in the time hollow. I might have made some of my favorites repeat a time or two . . . so Emily and I could watch them together. Sort of. It felt like something I could actually share with my daughter, from the portion of her childhood she had without me. The
vast
portion of childhood she had without me.”

A familiar sadness crossed Mileva’s face, and she shook her head. Jonah could tell she was trying hard to fight the sorrow.

“Anyhow,” Mileva said, with forced cheer. “‘Beam me up, Scotty’—how can anybody not love that? It’s
so
much better than ADTOOMTS!”

Jonah tried to keep looking at her sternly.

“Really, I’ll make myself forget!” Mileva insisted. “Or, at least, I’ll never tell a single other soul about it. Not in any way that matters.”

“You have to stop saying ‘crud,’ too,” Jonah said. “That’s something you picked up from me. It’s not even the same word in German, is it?”

Now Mileva looked amused.

“Jonah, think! What language have I been using with you almost constantly since the time hollow?” she asked.

Jonah tilted his head to the side thoughtfully.

“English?” he asked. “You actually learned English?”

“I had to teach myself English in the time hollow, so I could understand watching Emily’s life in America in the twenty-first century,” Mileva explained. “I can’t believe you didn’t notice. You’re almost as absentminded as Albert!”

“I’ve had a lot else on my mind,” Jonah said defensively. “And—when you understand all languages, you kind of stop noticing any of it.”

Mileva punched him playfully on the arm.

“Show-off,” she said, treating him like a lovable younger brother. “‘I understand all languages, so I don’t
really notice,’” she mimicked in a fake-snobby voice.

“You’re the show-off, teaching yourself a complete foreign language without any of the time-traveler help I got—you’ll have to forget the English, too, remember? No speaking it to anybody in your real life by mistake!” Jonah commanded.

“I know,” Mileva said wistfully.

She took a deep breath, and carefully inched the papers out of Jonah’s hand.

“You think we should have Albert’s early thoughts about relativity near the top?” she asked in a quavering voice, as she rearranged the order of the papers. “That will draw him in right away, don’t you think?”

“You know him a lot better than I do,” Jonah said.

Mileva stood up and turned to face the frozen Albert.

He was standing in the same awkward, ungainly position they’d left him in before zooming into the time hollow.

Mileva reached for his hand.

“Wait!” Jonah said. “How are you ever going to be able to pretend you still love him after everything you saw in the time hollow? After the way he treated you—I mean, how he will treat you—”

“Jonah, I do still love Albert, even after everything I saw,” Mileva said evenly. She turned her head and looked straight at Jonah instead of her husband. “You have to
understand—I’m really angry about the way he’s going to treat me and Hans Albert and Tete in the next two decades, but even then I’ll love him.” She shook her head. “I can’t blame you if you can’t follow the logic there. I wouldn’t have understood at thirteen either. Maybe you’ll understand when you’re a grown-up.” She paused. “No, I hope no one in your life treats you in such a way that you’ll ever have to understand.”

“But, Mileva—,” Jonah began.

“Here,” Mileva said, pulling the Elucidator out of her pocket. “Let’s turn you invisible first. Just as a precaution.”

Jonah thought he could
feel
himself disappearing. He glanced down quickly to make sure it had really happened.

“Oh!” Mileva said, as if something about the process surprised her. “So
that’s
what it looks like.”

“What?” Jonah said.

“Since I’ve become a time traveler myself, I can see you now even though you’re invisible—just barely, just the slightest hint . . . ,” Mileva said.

“You knew it would be like that,” Jonah said. “You read all the fine print about the ins and outs of time travel, the way time travelers’ lives are changed forever. You probably know the rules and the explanations better than anybody else. And—”

He was about to add another stern warning:
And that’s
something else you’re going to have to forget after today. Or, at least, never talk about again.
But Mileva was looking at him so strangely.

“What?” he said once again.

“You look like glass,” Mileva murmured. “So fragile. It just made me realize—everyone’s fragile, everyone I’m trying to protect.”

She touched his arm, just the slightest brush against his sleeve.

“Just to be sure you’re safe, why don’t you hide behind Albert?” Mileva asked in a choked voice.

Jonah thought this was as crazy overprotective as some of the things his parents told him to do, but he didn’t argue. He handed her the papers he’d been holding and stepped behind Albert’s back.

Mileva tucked the Elucidator back into her pocket and got into position. She took Albert’s hand once again, as if ready to tug him toward the end of the bed where Emily had once sat. That spot was completely empty now, just as the chair where Katherine had once sat was completely empty.

“Voice commands, Elucidator,” Mileva said. “Resume normal time.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then—

“—I-I’m worried about you,” Albert said, his first word
stuttering ever so slightly, exactly like a recorded voice starting up again after being paused.

Jonah stared at the dust motes dancing in the sunshine around Albert’s left arm.

Movement,
Jonah thought.
Normal movement. Keep going, keep going . . .

Albert turned his head to squint at Mileva.

“You’re acting strange,” he complained.

“I feel so much better, just seeing you,” Mileva said, pulling him forward. She looked back at him over her shoulder. Her cheeks were rosy, almost feverish.

“What did you want to show me?” Albert asked. “I mean—who?”

Mileva stopped in the center of the floor. Jonah thought it was almost exactly the spot where he had tripped on the carpet and fallen toward Mileva and Katherine and Emily.

“Can you feel our daughter’s spirit here?” Mileva whispered. “This is the spot where she left us . . . left Novi Sad . . . left this world. I miss her so. But I know she’s going to be in a better place.”

Albert’s face twisted. Was it a sign of regret? Grief? Confusion?

Or—suspicion?

He seemed to be deciding to humor his wife.

“Perhaps . . . ,” he murmured. He huddled with Mileva,
hugging her tight. They clung to each other. Albert opened his mouth, but seemed to be thinking hard for a moment before he actually spoke. “I’m sorry I never met her. Will never meet her. I wish things could have been different.”

He didn’t sound like a soon-to-be-famous scientist. He didn’t sound like someone who’d figured out time travel and the secrets of the universe. He just sounded awkwardly, unbearably sad.