In Times Like These (56 page)

Francesca sets the ice pack down on the table and gets to her feet. “Can we at least say goodbye? To Mr. Cameron
, I mean?”

“If we get you there after the three of you have left for Boston, it will be a new timestream from there on out. You can do what you like after that point, until we take you home,” Quickly says.

Francesca smiles. “Good. I like the sound of that.”

Chapter 25

“‘Time is Money’ is an inaccurate statement, unless you are using it in the early twenty-first century connotation of the word, meaning ‘outstanding’, or ‘excellent.’ In that case, I’d be pretty ‘money.’”

-Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly
, 2009

Carson, Robbie and Mr. Cameron are still in the backyard, staring at the space around the bike handle, when we walk around the corner of the garage. Carson bends down to pick up one of the anchors we left behind. Spartacus barks and bounds over to us at full speed. Francesca has to fend off his licks until he gets distracted sniffing Dr. Quickly and Mym.

“That was quick,” Robbie says.

“It really is like magic,” Mr. Cameron says. “You even multiplied.”

“You know
, you guys,” Carson shakes the piece of chain link fence he’s picked up, “there’re fines for littering in this state. You really ought to learn to clean up after yourselves.”

I’m too happy to see him alive and breathing to come up with a response. I walk over to him, grinning, and give him a hug.
“Good to see you too, dude,” Carson says. “It’s been a long five seconds.”

“Oh man, you have no idea,” I say.

Dr. Quickly extends a hand to Mr. Cameron. “It’s good to see you again. This is my daughter, Mym.”

Mr.
Cameron shakes her hand and smiles. “How do you do, young lady?”

Mym smiles back. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot of great things about you.”

“Clearly from gullible parties.” Mr. Cameron winks.

I fist bu
mp Robbie. “So what happened?” he says. “It didn’t work?”

“Oh, it worked all right,”
Francesca says. “Well, most of it.”

I scratch Spartacus behind
the ears as he leans against me. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“The important part is we met you in your forties,” Francesca says.

“Really?” Robbie says. “What was that like?”

“Pretty bizarre,” I say. “You were really happy though.”

“Yeah, and you had a hot wife,” Francesca adds.

“Really?” Robbie says. “Huh. You sure she was mine?”

“You had the ring to prove it,” I say.

He smiles. “D
amn. Sounds like a fun trip.”

“It had its moments,” I say.

“Why are you guys back so soon?” Carson says. “Did you really miss us that fast?”

“We came back to get your punk ass,” Francesca says. She stops and hangs her head just a moment
, then looks back up. “Sorry. You see what you do to me?” She walks forward and gives Carson a hug. He looks to me in surprise as he pats her on the back.

“Is the world about to end or something? What’s with you guys?”

“How about we tell you inside?”

Mr. Cameron invites us indoors, and he and Dr. Quickly and Mym take seats in the library while the rest of us linger in the kitchen.

“All right, tell us what’s up,” Carson says.

“Yeah,” Robbie says, pulling some cups out of the cupboard. “Explain the speedy return trip.”

I take one of the cups Robbie offers and open the refrigerator to pull out a pitcher of water. “Okay, so the short version is this. We went home, only it was the wrong version of home. It turns out time is a fractal, and you can go to all kinds of parallel timestreams. We went to the wrong one.” I pour water for the others as they hold out their glasses. “The other versions of us were still in the other timestream, because we never left from there. Robbie was old and married.” I look at Carson. “You moved to L.A. to become famous, but you died.”

“Famous for what?” Carson says.

“You missed the important part of that sentence,” Francesca says. “The ‘you died’ part.”

“Well okay,” Carson says. “But what was I famous for?”

“Robbie said you produced
Independence Day
but it sucked,” I say.

Carson shakes his head. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“In any case, we had to come back,” I say. “We had to stop Stenger from killing Carson.”

“Stenger? That guy is a tool. I could totally take him in a fight,” Carson says.

“He obviously pulled some sort of shady shenanigans, because you died,” I say. “But we got him. He’s dead now. At least the one from here is.”

“You got him?” Robbie says.

“Yeah,” I say. “But there’s a problem.”

“What?”

“If we want to go home, we’re going to have to go home to the time when your grandpa died when you were a little kid. That’s what happened in our timestream. There’s no changing it if we want to get home to where we came from, and not another alternate reality.”

Robbie sips his water slowly,
then looks toward the library. “He can’t come with us?”

“I don’t think so, unless Quickly can find a way to turn him into a time traveler somehow. I don’t know how that works.”

“Huh. But you said in the other timestream I got old?”

“Yeah, you stayed and kept living here and never went back.”

“And I was okay with that?”

“You seemed pretty happy,” Blake says.

“Actually, you gave us a message to tell you,” Francesca says. “You said to tell you that everything was going to be okay.”

“So what am I supposed to learn from that?” Robbie says. “Am I supposed to go or stay?”

“I don’t know,” I reply.

“That future sounds kind of lame if you ask me,” Carson says. “I can’t see me messing up a movie like that, but I guess I’m more of a music guy
 . . .”

I walk to the door of the library and poke my head in. Quickly and Mr. Cameron are laughing about something.
“Excuse me, Doctor?”

“Yes, Benjamin.”

“Would it be possible to take Mr. Cameron back to 2009 with us if he wanted to go?”

He looks from me to Mr. Cameron and back. His eyes grow serious.
“The process of infusing a human being with gravitites is pretty dangerous, Ben. Robert here has just been through a rather serious medical condition. I’m not sure his body is in a state to handle that kind of additional trauma.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility,” he adds. “But I wouldn’t try to do it at the moment.”

“I see.”

Mym catches my eye and smiles briefly. Then she looks back to the others.

Still gets me with that
.

I return to the kitchen. I tell Robbie what Dr.
Quickly said and he nods his head. “Maybe we could try it later on,” he says. “You never know what might happen down the road.”

“Do you want to come with us then?” Francesca says.

Robbie shifts his feet. “I don’t know. I don’t think so just yet. We just got him back from the hospital. I’m not sure I should leave him alone. I know it’s been a while for you guys, but we just had this conversation last night. We decided I should stay.”

“You just want the hot wife, don’t you?” Francesca says.

Robbie reddens. “No! I mean, that doesn’t sound terrible, but I mostly just want to make sure he’s okay. I’m kind of the reason he didn’t die. I think I need to stick with my decision.”

“It’s okay. We understand,” I say.

“What are we going to tell your family back home?” Francesca says.

“Oh,” Robbie says. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

Mr. Cameron emerges from the library and asks us if we would like to stick around for some lunch. We agree and he starts getting out barbeque fixings. Over the next hour, we mill about the kitchen, helping prepare the food and running things up and down the stairs to the veranda where we’ll be eating. As I carry a pair of drink pitchers through the glass doors, I find Mym setting out silverware on the table.
Finally I get her alone for a moment.

“So
what’s next for you now?” I ask. “More meteor showers with Cowboy Bob?”

“Hmm. That was years ago,” s
he replies, as she straightens a place setting.

“Oh. Well it was only a couple of days for me.”

She glances up and nods, then goes back to setting knives around the plates. I set my pitchers down and realize I’m out of excuses to be standing there. “Maybe I should grab a broom and sweep this veranda off a bit. There’s a lot of leaves.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t look up this time.

When I get back to the veranda with the broom, I’m disappointed to find that she’s gone again.
Our conversation under the stars that night was so effortless. What happened?
I sweep the leaves off the veranda with a little more violence than necessary.

Lunch is delicious but I don’t get as much enjoyment out of it as I should, since I keep casting glances down to the other end of the table. Mym is chatting happily w
ith Mr. Cameron, but seems to avoid looking my direction. On the couple of occasions our eyes meet, she immediately looks away.

After dinner, Blake and I are doing the best we can to wash some dishes with only two good hands between us
, when he suddenly changes the topic of conversation. “Hey, you okay, man? You seem a little off.”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I say. “J
ust feeling clueless again.”

Blake sets another plate in the drying rack. “Don’t worry
. If women made sense, it would take all the fun out of it.”

“
Hmph.”

Dr. Quickly rounds us up after we’re done cleaning.
“It’s decision time.” He looks to Robbie first. “Have you decided what you would like to do?”

“Yeah
. I did.” Robbie walks over to the roll top desk and picks up an envelope. When he comes back he hands it to Francesca. “Will you give this to my mom? I know she’ll be upset, but I explained everything as best I could. Maybe you can help her understand.”

“Okay,” Francesca says.
“I will.”

“And you never know. This is time travel
, right? I might still get back someday.”

Dr. Qu
ickly takes the envelope from Francesca’s hand, and setting it on the desk, scribbles an address on the front and hands it back to Robbie. “That’s going to need gravitizing and I don’t have anything with me. Mail it to that address and I’ll make sure Francesca picks it up on the way.”

Robbie reads
the address and nods. “Okay. I can do that.”

Dr. Quickly turns to Carson. “And how about you?”

Carson looks at Robbie, then turns back to Dr. Quickly. “If you can promise that you’ll help this one out if he ever needs it, then I guess I’ll go back with you. Lord knows he’s gonna need some serious help though.”

“Hey,” Robbie says. “Watch it.” But he smiles.

Carson grins too. “I’m gonna miss you, man.” He moves toward Robbie and gives him a hug.

Francesca’s eyes are wet. She steps forward and hugs both of them. A moment later
, Blake and I join in and we have a five person group hug. From in the middle, Robbie laughs. “All right you bunch of hippies. Let me out.”

We break apart but Robbie is still smiling. Mym and Mr. Cameron come downstairs and join us.

“I guess this is it,” I say. “Again.”

“We get to say goodbye to you twice in one day,” Mr. Cameron says.

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. For all I know
, you might be back again for supper.”

We shake hands again and then it’s time to go. Dr. Quickly pulls one of his glass anchors from his pocket. He also extracts an extra chronometer and hands it to Francesca. “I figure you might want your own again.”

“This one won’t leave my sight,” Francesca says.

“Now if we can get five of us around this thing, it will get us to my office in Belize in
’92. I’ve got a great collection of November Prime anchors there. Should be more than enough to get us all to 2009.”

His math doesn’t add up
. I look to Mym standing by the roll top. She has her hands in her pockets. “Wait, you’re not coming with us?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve got some things I still need to do around here.”

“Oh.”

Francesca steps over to Mym and gives her a hug. “Thank you so much for everything.” Blake and Carson shake her hand as well. She looks at me. The others are gathering back up in a circle around Quickly and his anchor.
I can’t leave it like this
.