In Times Like These (21 page)

“You are at the tip of the iceberg
, Benjamin. I’m not going to tell you that it is worth all of the risks, because I know I haven’t told you all of the dangers. I’m afraid I’ve only just begun to tell you and your friends all the potential threats you face in doing this, but my years in the education system have taught me enough to know that scaring you all witless isn’t going to help you learn, or help you get home.” He slides his hands into his pockets and leans against the glass pane with his shoulder, facing me.

“That being said, I can say for me, that despite the innumerable dangers I have encountered to date, it has been incredible. I may
not have seen my face on
Time
magazine but I have been amply rewarded.”

The glass in front of me has fogged from my breath. I trace my finger through it in little swirls. “Do you regret leaving it all behind? Did you
ever try to go back to your life?”

“I visited again a few times. There were people I cared about
that I wanted to see. I haven’t abandoned them. My disappearance was not total, like the media believed. Professionally I disappeared. Oddly enough it wasn’t as hard as I had expected to leave that behind. My colleagues were a competitive bunch, and there were only a few that I really missed working with.”

“I know what that’s like.” I turn my swirls into a sun and some planets.

“I’d known for a while that I was going to succeed with the gravitites. I was not rushing to get my results publicized because I always had other more practical intentions for this work. I rushed things a little obviously or I would never have involuntarily displaced myself, but I don’t regret the result. On the contrary, getting lost in time was the best thing that ever happened to me, for more than a few reasons.”

“So you don’t plan on ever going back?”

“Not currently.”

I finish drawing a comet on the glass and take a step back to look at my little cosmos. It’s small, but it’s growing.
“How did you figure out these chronometers?” I fiddle with the dials on my wrist.

“Ah, well there I cannot take all the credit. After my first serious time traveling experience, I had the great fortune of meeting a marvelously talented watchmaker named Abraham Manembo, who worked with me on designing them. He was able to take my bulky eq
uipment and streamline it into what you have on your wrist. His innovations are what have made time travel so much more efficient than anything I had previously dreamed up. ”

A lightning bolt crosses the sky above us and it is only a few moments till the boom of thunder.

“During my experience last night, I realized what a fragile position I was in. Without the chronometer, I would’ve been in much worse trouble, especially if I ended up somewhere more dangerous. It made me wonder if you had any more specific survival type skills you could teach us.”

“Survival skills are all I have been teaching you so far
, if you think about it. It has all been about surviving.”

“Well yeah. I see what you’re saying, and that’
s true, but what I was thinking was more worst-case scenario type stuff. I mean, I spent most of last night either running away from people, or wandering around lost, or trying to get around barefoot in the city with no money. It was great exercise, I can say that, but I don’t think I was very efficient.”

“I certainly do have plans to get to some of
those types of scenarios with you. I had not expected you to need them quite so soon, but I should have factored human error in better. That was my fault, and I hope you will forgive me. As a teacher of anything it is often difficult to remember that just because you have covered something does not mean it has sunk in properly, or really been processed to the point of understanding. Perhaps I shall have to devise some more quizzes or checks.”

“My other question was
 . . . would you teach me how to build a chronometer?”

Dr. Quickly’s
eyebrows rise a little. “That’s a big thing to ask, Benjamin. Having chronometers floating around unaccounted for has really never been a part of my plans for helping get you home. Time traveling is a serious business. All manner of chaos can ensue from careless use. What is your motivation for wanting to learn to build one?”

“Well, I had first thought that it would be good to know how to
repair these in case one gets damaged. I wouldn’t want to get stuck halfway back and not be able to contact you. The idea of being stuck somewhere in a time I don’t want to be in really worried me, and it made me think it would be a good way to feel safer doing this if I knew how to get myself un-stranded. Plus, some of it is sheer curiosity. I think they’re amazing. Working on one of these would be way more interesting than fixing boats.”

“It’s a fair thing to ask. There are a million possible scenarios where you might need to know. Yours could be damaged as you said, or lost, or stolen. It is a valuable item. The knowledge is an even more valuable commodity however. I have not really addressed this issue with your friends yet
, but we’re going to have to broach the subject soon. We’re going to have to discuss your plans for what you will be doing once you make it back to your own time.”

Quickly places his hands against the glass
, to feel the impact of the rain beating against the other side. “I had intended that these chronometers would be a loan, and that you would return them to me once you succeeded. If you are starting to think you want to continue time traveling, then we are having a different conversation, and there are more concerns to bring up. One major one is the fact that there are a great deal of people who would go to possibly unpleasant lengths to get their hands on this technology.

“
I have been around long enough to know that the amount of people who can posses this knowledge and not want to use it for illegitimate gains is smaller than one would hope. The more you know about this subject, the larger the target you may become for people who would like to gain this ability. I would say that you and your friends would already be quite valuable to a lot of people. A drop of your blood alone would now hold enough gravitites to keep innumerable scientists happy in research for decades. That is something you’re going to have to live with now anyway, but the more you learn here, the more dangerous things may become for you.”

“That sounds like more of a reason to have an escape plan to me. Couldn’t having this ability be a great defense against those types of people?” I say.

Dr. Quickly smiles at me. “If you keep coming up with all these valid arguments I’m going to have no choice but to train you.”

I grin back.

“We don’t have to figure it all out right now,” he adds. “Let’s go get lunch. You may have had two breakfasts, but I missed mine this morning. I don’t think my stomach will stand for much more of it.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and we turn and head back to the others.

We spend the rest of the afternoon debriefing from our jumps. By the time we make it home to Mr. Cameron’s house
, I’m exhausted. I plop into one of the armchairs in the library and close my eyes for a few minutes, until I feel Spartacus lay his head on my knee.

“Hey
, Bud. How are you doing?” His tail thumps the floor as I scratch behind his ears. Blake comes in and takes a spot on the loveseat.

“Hey
, man.”

“Hey.”

“Sorry I almost left you hanging on that roof jump today. I was worried that if I didn’t get back in time, you’d be stuck there not wanting to move, in case I appeared all of a sudden.”

“No worries
, man. I’m just glad you were okay.”

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m all right. I’m glad we’re getting to the point of making real jumps. It makes the waiting easier if I feel like there is progress at least,” he says.

“You know if we manage to do this right, Mallory isn’t even going to know you are gone. Do you plan on telling her about it all?”

“Yeah, definitely. We tell each other everything, so there’s no way I could keep something like this from her. I might edit out the fact that I may have gone a little bit crazy with all the stress of waiting to get back to her.” Blake pulls the ring box out of his pocket and opens and closes the lid a couple of times.

“I don’t know. That is probably romantic. That might be the best p
art of the story as far as she‘s concerned.”

“Yeah, maybe. I really won’t care what happens once we get back. I feel like I could deal with anything just so long as I get back to her okay. I keep thinking I just want to find the most permanent thing I
can, set this chronometer to twenty-three years, and zap myself back as fast as I can get there.”

“I don’t think these can go that far in one shot,” I say, holding my chronomete
r up and checking my own dials.

“I know,” Blake responds. “Ours don’t go past five, and Quickly said they require external power for anything beyond one, even fully charg
ed. I bet his could do it. Have you had a good look at his chronometer? His has all kinds of settings that ours don’t have. I would bet it could go a lot farther too.”

“We’ll get there, man. I know you’re anxious to get back, but this isn’t something we should be rushing through. It sounds like we got pretty lucky, considering our alternatives.”

One of the parrots flies into the room and alights on one of the curtain rods. I recognize it as Mercutio. “This place is pretty cool,” Blake agrees, watching the bird pace back and forth on the open part of the rod. “I wish Mallory could meet Mr. Cameron. He’s an interesting guy.”

“Yeah.”

Francesca walks past the library door, and after a moment, I hear clicking noises coming from the front door. “What are you doing out there Fresca?”

She reappears at the doorway. “I’m making sure all these locks work.”

“Because?” Blake asks.

“Because there’s a firebombing serial killer loose in the city! Are you not worried about this?”

“Oh. Yeah. But there’s no reason he would be coming after us.”

“He’s a psycho serial killer. You really think you know who he’s after?”

“That’s a good point,” I say.

“What are we going to do about him?” Francesca asks.

“Do about who?” Carson appears in the doorway Blake entered from, with a fork and a plate of blueberry pie in his hands. Robbie appears behind him a moment later, also bearing pie, and squeezes past him to take a seat in the other armchair.

“We’re talking about what to do about Stenger,” I say.

“That guy is crazy,” Robbie garbles over a mouth full of pie.

“What can we do
really?” Blake asks. “We’re not the cops. And you were saying we should probably steer clear of them too, considering our circumstances.”

“That is true. I’m not super excited about having to explain our situation to them, but we may be the only ones who know who he is and what he’s capable of. I suppose we should probably warn somebody.”

“What if we just call in an anonymous tip? People do that, right?” Francesca suggests.

“Yeah, we could try it,” I say.

Blake frowns. “What are you going to tell them? ‘Hey, you have a killer from the future loose in the city?’ It’s not likely to sound very convincing.”

Francesca takes a seat in the other armchair, and as she sits, Mercutio flutters down from the curtain rod and alights on the back of her chair.

“You could tell them about the convenience store thing last night and hope they can catch him for that,” Robbie suggests.

“Yeah, the store manager could back you up on what he looks like,” Carson adds.

“Getting him arrested for something would be a start, but unless they find more on him, he won’t stay in jail long. Especially if I’m the witness against him, and I’m anonymous, and we all disappear in a couple of weeks anyway.”

“They might be able to connect him to the van murders. That would be more serious,” Francesca says.

“That’s true,” I reply.

“So we need to contact the police without having to meet them, or explain who we are, but convince them we know who killed the guys in the van,” Robbie says.

“Yeah, probably not easy, but they should at least listen to what we have to say. It can’t hurt their chances, even if they don’t believe us,” I say. “But we should probably ask Mr. Cameron how he feels about us getting involved in this since we’re living in his house.”

“He’s for it!” Mr. Cameron’s voice carries through from the next room where he’s obviously been listening. He appears in the hallway behind Francesca and leans on the doorpost.
“I don’t think there is really any choice in the matter. A criminal like that needs to be stopped. It is our duty to do whatever we can. It’s our duty as good citizens.”

“As long as good citizenship doesn’t get us all locked up, then
I guess I’m for it,” Blake says.

Robbie and Mr. Cameron offer to make the anonymous call to the police the following day.

The morning’s lessons with Dr. Quickly seem to drag by as I wonder what the police said in response. Quickly seems to sense my distraction and begins to give me more work. The four of us are working on researching jump locations. He has us planning multi-location jumps, using objects and photos from his array of cubbies along the second balcony. The goal is to find locations and items that exist not more than a couple of years apart, so that the amperage of the electricity required for the jumps doesn’t have to be too high.