In Times Like These (46 page)

“Yeah, that’s where stuff gets complicated,”
Bob says.

“But if we were to find something, something from our time, we could use it t
o get home?” Blake asks.

“Yeah, provided you were in range of your chronometer,” Bob replies. “And provided you don’t change your home timestream by your arrival.”

“And there won’t be two of us there?” Blake asks.

“Not if it’s the timestream you originally left from. You’re still missing there. It will stay that way unless you make it back.”

“Good,” Blake says. “I’ve had enough of my other selves already.”

Cowboy Bob straightens up and puts away the charts. “The bad news is, I’m not headed to the November Prime in 2009 anytime soon
, or I could give you a lift. I might pass the N on the way back, but it wouldn’t be till wherever it intersects the L. I think that happens decades back.”

“We’re actually planning to go back to 1986,” I say. “We
left some things undone there that we need to fix.”

Bob nods. “I could probably get you there without much trouble. I’ll be going that way anyway. Any day in particular?”

“We need to get back to the day the lab burned.”

“I see.”

“Where are you going?” Francesca says.

“I’m actually going back to 1910 or so, if I can make it.”

“Wow. That’s really far back,” I say.

“Yeah, but for me that’s home.”

“You’re from 1910?” Francesca’s eyes widen.

“More or less. I was a kid then. I was actually born in 1899.”

“Seriously?” I say. “That’s so cool. How did you end up here?”

“That’s a long story, but Harry and Mym found me when I was a kid. Life wasn’t going too great for me at the time when they picked me up. Mym was a little kid then too. They were on the way b
ack from a trip to the mid 1800s. I guess Harry had a soft spot for orphans. He treated me like family.”

“T
he Parson’s, who owned this ranch, weren’t really your parents?” I ask.

“No. Hank was an old school friend of Harry’s. Hank and his wife never had any kids but always wanted some. Harry thought Montana would be a good place for me to grow up without too much culture shock while he trained me. Things around here haven’t changed all that much in the last hundred years.”

“Why are you going back to 1910?” I ask.

“Just need to fi
gure some things out.” He closes the cupboard door and leads us out of the office. “Come on. I’ve had enough of the house.”

A barnyard cat is lounging in a patch of sun at the end of the porch and looks at us sleepily as we emerge from the house. The crunch of dry dirt under our feet changes to hollow thumping as Bob leads us onto the porch of the ranch hand apartments. Reaching Levi’s door, he g
ives it a few raps with his knuckles. There’s no response.

“He’s probably out checking the livestock in
the north pasture. I guess you guys get to help me with the balloon.”

It takes us over an hour to get the balloon and gondola out of the barn and ready to be inflated. Bob takes care to show us the different burner settings and how the parachute rele
ase valve works. We help move his storage bins into the basket and Bob grabs some last minute things from the house. I throw our pack into the basket as well.

A
n enormous fan, run by the barn generator, channels air into the balloon, to get it in a position where we can fire the burners. Bob is patient with us as we ask questions and generally slow down his progress. Once we have the balloon upright and the gondola loaded with our necessary belongings, Bob has me untie the last of the anchor lines. I have to sprint to make it to the gondola before it floats too far off the ground, but I make it in time, and Bob and Blake help pull me over the side. I tumble awkwardly to the floor of the basket.

“Onward and upward,” Blake says.

“Or upward and backward.” Bob smiles.

I scramble to my feet
and grip the burner mount railing breathlessly. My heart is pounding.
No problem. I got this
.

We drift over the town of Scobey with a lazy southerly breeze. I join Bob at the side of the gondola and peer cautiously over the edge.
“So where’s Mym?”

Bob is leaning on his elbows watching the horizon. “She hopped off in 2020. She had some things she wanted to do up there.”

“Oh. Did you get to the Olympics?”

“Yeah, we did actually. Rio was a great time. We ended up skipping London though.”

“So . . . she just took off after that?”

Bob turns to face me. He considers me a moment.
“Mym’s not one to be pinned down.”

“Yeah, I kind
of got that impression.” I look down at a red-and-yellow combine making its way through a field of grain. The driver gives us a wave. I wave back. “So . . . how do you get a hold of her? Like if you want to call her for some reason.”

Bob plucks a toothpick out of a box in his pocket and begins working it through his teeth.
“Do you have a tachyon pulse transmitter?” His laughing eyes already know the answer.

“Must h
ave left that in my other pants.”

“Guess you’ll just have to wait till she finds you then.” He smiles and returns to contemplating the horizon.

Cowboy Bob moves us back to May of 2001 on our first jump. The second gets us to June of 1993. Blake and I help him switch to a spare set of batteries at that point. We’ve drifted pretty far south, but on our last jump of the day, Bob de-gravitizes an iron ring and secures it to the cable before lowering it to the ground as his anchor. When we jump, we find ourselves back in the field behind the barn, anchored to one of his tie-down points.

We’re back.

“Voila,” Bob declares. “1986. As you commanded.” He moves to the instrument cluster and double checks the indications. “It is now May 3rd, about two in the afternoon. We’re still a couple months ahead of when you left, but the last bit should be comfortable enough to do by chronometer.”

Bob
signals Blake to pull on the cable to start our descent. In a few minutes we’re back on the ground. Blake and I vault over the edge of the basket to tie off the balloon, but Bob doesn’t get out of the gondola.

“No need to tie me off, this is where I leave you fine people.” He slaps the frame of the burner rig. “I think she’s still got one more good move in her before I have to stop and charge the batteries. I’m going to see if I can make the seventies tonight.”

“Will we see you again?” Francesca asks.

“Oh, I’m
sure you will,” Bob replies, offering his hand to help her over the side. Francesca slides over into the grass. “I do have something for you before I go.” He leans over into one of the storage areas, hands a cardboard tube to Francesca, and then tosses something small and colorful at me. I catch it with both hands and open them to reveal a completed Rubik’s Cube.

“That will get you to the time you want to
go. Keep the red side up. It’ll put you in Quickly’s lab in one of the jump rooms.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“We really appreciate everything,” Blake says. “You’ve been a life-saver.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Bob replies. “Feel free to come back and see me anytime.”

“I hope you have a good time in 1910,” Francesca says. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Cowboy Bob nods to us and ignites the burner. We back away from the tether line and watch the balloon climb. As the tether cable grows taut
, Bob leans over the edge of the basket and gives us a salute. We wave and he vanishes.

I stay looking at the sky for a few moments
, just watching the vacant space he’s left behind. Francesca breaks the silence. “You know that scene in
The Wizard of Oz
when Dorothy climbs out of the balloon to chase Toto, and the wizard can’t take her home because he floats away without her?”

“Yeah.”

“I think we’re Dorothy.”

“Tha
t’s okay.” I lower my gaze to the ranch around us. “We’re not going home yet. We still have our witch to melt.”

Chapter 20

“Time travel is a very effective way to sober up. It does however involve trying to make precise calculations while inebriated. I have visited some unexpected new places that way, but I can’t say I’d recommend it as common practice. ”

-Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly
, 1975

“We need a plan,” Blake says.

We stride through the grass toward the barn. The mare in the corner of the paddock eyes us suspiciously as we make our way through the gate into the barnyard. We stop in the shade of the barn to consider our options.

“We know where Stenger is the night the lab burns,” I say. “And Carson and I got his gun, so after that point he should be unarmed.”

“You want to try to get to h
im then?” Blake asks.

“Seems like the best time to find him.”

“And then what do we do with him?” Francesca says.

“I don’t know.
I think we probably need to kill him.”

Francesca frowns. “I’ve never plotted to kill someone before.”

“Me either, but I don’t know what else to do. I figure it’s like self defense, because we’re saving Carson.”

“Even if he’s unarmed?”

“He was unarmed last time and I let him go. That was obviously a mistake.”

“Yeah.” Francesca nods. “We owe it to Carson.”

“We’re going to need some kind of weapons then,” Blake says.

“And we’re going to need to use Bob’s gravitizer,” Francesca adds.

“We should have asked him if he had a gun we could borrow.” I shift my pack on my shoulder.

“We could try to buy one?” Blake suggests
.

“We don’t have any ID,” Francesca says. “Or a car.”

The screen door on the house slams and I look around the side of the barn to see Connie on the porch, feeding scraps to a pair of cats. As she tosses them bits of food, a few more materialize out of the bushes until she’s feeding half a dozen. When we walk toward her, she looks up. “I hoped I might see you all again.” She tosses the last of the scraps to the cats and wipes her hands on her apron. She comes down from the porch to greet us.

“At least you didn’t say I told you so,” I say.

She smiles. “You young people seem to run off a lot, but I like it better when you come back. Is Bobby with you?”

“He actua
lly just dropped us off.”

“He was going back farther to see some family
, I think,” Francesca says.

“Oh. Okay.
I’m glad he brought you three back. Did you have a good time?”

“Um. Well
 . . .” I mumble.

“It was educational,” Blake says.

Connie seems satisfied with that. “Why don’t you come inside, and I’ll fix you up a snack.”

“That’s nice of you,” I say.

The kitchen is full of baking supplies and fruit. The oven is on and something smells delicious. Francesca slides up onto a stool at the counter. Connie checks on the oven and I glimpse two pies inside before she shuts it again.

Pies are great
, but we need a gun
.

“W
e actually could use some help with something a little more serious today,” I say.

“Oh? What’s that dear?” Connie gives us her attention.

“We actually really need to borrow a gun.”

Connie’s smile fades. “A gun?”

“Yeah, we have something to do a couple of months ago that might involve some shooting.”

“Oh.” Connie fidgets with s
ome spoons on the counter. “I know Levi has a rifle for the coyotes, but I don’t know if he’d be willing to loan it to you. What is it you are trying to shoot?”

“One of our close friends got murdered by a really bad man,” Francesca says. “We need to keep that from happening.”

Connie watches Francesca’s face with concern. “Well that is terrible . . . I don’t know if we have anything . . . I think Bob has his dad’s gun upstairs, but I don’t know how he would feel about it being used for something like that.” The conversation seems to have drained the joy out of her face. She moves an eggbeater to the sink and straightens her apron front.

This was a bad idea
.

“It’s okay,” I say. “We can figure something out. We don’t mean to bother you with it.”

“Okay. I can talk to Levi about it,” she says.

“Your pie
s smell amazing.” Francesca sits up straighter on her stool.

“Oh, thank you.” Connie
brightens a little. “I have an apple and a . . . a peach. I have a book club meeting later, and Bob’s kitchen is so much bigger than mine at home.”

We won’t be able to fit a rifle into the gravitizer upstairs. Levi’s gun won’t work. I wonder what Bob has?