The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) (11 page)

Dr. Mooney addressed Nate. “Wherever they have gone, whether it’s the nineteenth century or the fourteenth, the new STEWie basket we send after them may very well return at once and leave you stranded. I’m not sure you understand the significance of that, Chief Kirkland. If they make it back to the STEWie basket first and leave you and Officer Van Underberg behind—”

“And me as well,” I threw in.

“I suppose I could join, too, if you feel you need me,” Dr. Payne said, “though I doubt that my expertise in the history of this continent, extensive as it is, would be of any use in chasing down Mr. Olsen and Dr. Holm.”

“So we’d get stuck there for a while,” Nate said. “But you’d know where to find us, Professor Mooney.”

“Only if you stay in one place. You could be trapped for hours or days under unknown circumstances. If I were you, I wouldn’t step into that basket without adequate food and water.”

“It’s not a good position to be in, but we’ll deal with it.”

“There is no way around it,” Xavier said. “Unless—hold on, I’ve thought of something.”

He pushed his chair back and left the room without another word. The conference room door closed behind him with a click.

“The student prank story won’t hold long,” Dean Braga said into the silence. “Julia, let’s plan on releasing a statement explaining that there was a STEWie malfunction and that we’re trying to locate the basket, which is lost somewhere in time. That’s not inaccurate.”

“I suppose not,” I said. I liked this new side of her. If
Dr. Payne hadn’t been present, I would have told her the rest of the story then and there.

Dean Braga, noticeably more at ease now that she knew that she wouldn’t be the one climbing into STEWie’s basket, glanced in my direction again. “Did I understand correctly, Julia? Your husband wanted you to take him into the past? Is this why you were asking me about the runestone?”

Nate, too, was looking in my direction. It was hardly the moment to spill the beans about Quinn’s attempt at blackmail, not in front of the others. I’d have to tell him about that part later. “I have no idea why he thought I would do it,” I said. Which was true. How could Quinn have entertained the notion that I would sneak him into the TTE lab, even if it were in my power to do so?

Nate continued staring at me, then leaned back in his chair and said easily, “Perhaps he didn’t realize that only researchers at the school are given STEWie roster spots.”

“And that each run uses significant resources,” Dean Braga added. “Most people don’t seem to realize that.” She was checking her phone to see if the news had leaked yet.

“You’re a geologist,” Nate said to her. “Is the runestone real or not? It looked real enough in the museum, but I’m no expert.”

“It’s a hoax,” Dr. Payne answered for the dean, “and not a very good one at that. Being displayed in a museum does not make something of genuine value.”

Dean Braga put her phone down, looking a little annoyed that Dr. Payne had given his opinion when hers had been sought. “Like I told Julia earlier, it’s not anything I’ve worked on personally. But I believe that what little geological testing has been done has come down on the side of the farmer who found the stone. I tend to trust the hard sciences more, don’t you, Dr. Payne? In any case, I’m not sure it matters at the moment,” she added. “The important thing is to bring back Julia’s husband and Dr. Holm safely before word of this gets out. At the very least, we’ll need to revisit our security procedures.”

“It matters,” Nate said. “If this thing is real, the stakes are higher.”

Dr. Payne leaned forward and rapped the table with a bony fist. “We
could
debate the lines and cut of each rune on that stone. If I pointed out that it’s unprecedented to find pentadic numbers and Hindu-Arabic place value notation on a fourteenth-century runestone, you would counter by saying that the Norsemen had learned these things from their travels to the far corners of the Old World. If I pointed out that it wasn’t typical to put a date on a runestone at all, you would tell me that this is the atypical case that proves the rule. I could say there is no evidence in the form of other artifacts, and you would tell me we need to look harder. So the argument I like to make is the simplest.” He gave a smoker’s cough and brought up one of the counter-arguments on the list in my shoulder bag. “It’s too much of a shiny coincidence for a runestone supposedly carved by Scandinavians to be found by a Scandinavian immigrant. Had an Italian or Chinese immigrant been the one to make the discovery, I’d have been more open to entertaining its validity.”

No one had asked for my input, but, carried away by Dr. Payne’s zeal, I found myself giving it anyway. “I’m no expert, but it seems like there is a simple argument for the other side of the matter as well. Vikings reached North America in the eleventh century and built a brief settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows.” I hoped Dr. Payne and the others would be a tad impressed that I knew about Lansey Meadows. “Isn’t it not only possible but likely that they went farther inland? All they would have needed is a boat and some luck.”

“It would hardly have been a simple matter, Julia. Besides, the preponderance of evidence must come from the side wanting to change history books. The runes on the stone—”

“I was going to ask Dr. Holm to explain the issues with the runes, but now…I guess she’ll get to see what really happened. And Quinn will tape it for his TV show.”

“What TV show?” Nate asked. “I thought you said this had to do with Quinn’s grandfather.”

“Didn’t I mention it?” I slapped myself on the forehead and explained about the reality show, adding, “I have no doubt that Quinn brought a video camera along to shoot footage for the pilot. That was his plan.”

“If he’s going to be the star of the show, wouldn’t he need someone else to film
him
?” Dean Braga seemed pleased with a scenario that didn’t involve kidnapping. She suggested, “Perhaps that’s why Dr. Holm came along. Could he have promised her a spot on the show?”

“It’s possible,” I said. “He offered me a spot.”

“It doesn’t explain the text message asking for help,” Nate pointed out curtly.

Behind him, the door to the room opened and shut.

“It’s gone,” Dr. Mooney said, sliding back into his chair. “They’ve taken it.”

“What’s gone?” Nate asked, his voice implying that he really didn’t need any more bad news.

“The Slingshot. I left it on a utility table in the lab. They must have taken it with them. You know what that means.”

“The Slingshot?” Dr. Payne asked.

“The portable version of STEWie. I’ve been working on it all summer.”

“Right, right. I’ve only used the lab proper myself.”

Nate pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Professor Mooney?”

“It means they’ll be able to jump around in the past without us knowing where.” Dr. Mooney took a deep breath. “Wherever
STEWie’s coordinates point to, they’re probably not there
anymore.”

Which explained what Dr. Baumgartner said when she hurried into the room a moment later, Dr. Little on the heels of her clogs. “This is really strange—they’re neither in 1362 or 1898. They have gone to Woodstock.”

11

I suppose if you needed a location to use as a stepping-stone in time, where suddenly appearing out of thin air would not draw much notice, the infamous 1969 music festival was the place to do it.

“Well, that certainly covers their tracks. No point in looking for them at Woodstock.” Nate tapped the table hard, rattling my yellow legal pad, which was still blank. “If Julia’s right about Quinn’s motives, they must have only been there for a brief period of time.”

“If I were them, I would have stayed to hear Janis Joplin, The Who, the Grateful Dead…oh, and Sha Na Na—” I said, with another of those inappropriate stabs of envy.

“Well, you’re not them,” Nate interrupted me.

He was right, although he didn’t have to be quite so rude about it. No, I hadn’t told him Quinn’s real reason for being in town. Yes, there had been a secret motive when I’d asked him to go look at the runestone with me. Well, I wasn’t perfect. I was new to being an aunt and having a young person under my roof. It seemed to have screwed up my priorities.

“Fine,” I said. “Woodstock doesn’t matter because I know where we’ll find them. In 1898 on Olof Ohman’s farm.”

“W
hy are you sure that they went to 1898 first and not 1362?” Nate wanted to know.

We were back in the TTE lab. Dr. Baumgartner had gone to change out of her period attire, and Dean Braga to the mid-afternoon unveiling of the new telescope at the Maria Mitchell Observatory. (The Maria part of the name was pronounced
Ma-rye-ah,
and the new telescope, mounted on the roof of the observatory, was the first large—that is, expensive—item purchased with the funds Dean Braga had procured in her new capacity as science dean. The unveiling was supposed to be a signal that we were starting to put behind us all of the bad publicity following the previous dean’s arrest for attempted murder. Leave it to Quinn to throw the Science Quad back into upheaval, I thought.)

“Why do I think they went to 1898? Because…” I waved my arms in the air, trying to decide how to explain it best. “Magnus—Quinn grandfather—died when Quinn was just a toddler. He never got the chance to tell him he believed him. How could he
not
go there first?”

“I concur,” Dr. Little said from his workstation. At first I thought he was agreeing with me merely to spite Nate, but he went on. “That’s what I would do if I were in his place and there was some sort of family connection. You go to see the family member, find out what they were like. You carry their genes, right?” he said, sounding as young as Abigail for a moment. I was used to thinking of him in the faculty category, but the junior professor wasn’t much older than his own grad students. I noticed that he had bags under his eyes and made a mental note to ask him if his young daughter, Piper, was sleeping through the night yet.

Dr. Little went on, “Who hasn’t wondered what their parents were like when they were young, or their grandparents, or their
favorite movie or sports star? I’m not a sports or movie aficionado,
but if I could tie my research into it somehow, I wouldn’t mind going back in time to see Charles Babbage design his Analytical Engine, or the Polish and British codebreakers in action in World War II on the Enigma machine…We all have our own interests.” It was somewhat of a long and personal speech for the young professor, who was usually so focused on work. He had gone on a few runs, but for the most part his research involved running STEWie computer simulations that touched upon logistical issues for time travelers—for example, as a result of his research we knew that you couldn’t travel to a time period in which you existed already, and (relevant to our current situation) that two baskets couldn’t be present side by side in the same time period.

“I think everybody in the lab has had to fight the impulse to use STEWie for personal reasons,” Dr. Mooney said. “Don’t say it,” he added into the sudden silence. “I know I lost that battle. But I only had good intentions at heart. I thought I could be of more use by moving into the past and dedicating myself to documenting life in the Roman Empire than by sitting idle at my desk.”

I realized, right then and there, that I was no longer satisfied with being holed up in my office fielding other people’s requests for STEWie runs. I had gotten my shoes dusty in Pompeii, and I wanted to get them dusty again. There was only one problem. I didn’t know how I was going to make that happen. I couldn’t keep waiting for crimes to take place. I bent down to gather the scattered notebooks from the lab floor. “I don’t think we can credit Quinn with any altruistic motives.”

Dr. Payne had somewhat unexpectedly followed us back into the TTE lab. “If you ask me, to investigate this runestone affair properly, one wouldn’t jump to 1362
or
to 1898. A true historian doesn’t follow rumor and legend, only artifacts and verified written accounts. Trash sites, in particular, can be very illuminating. A proper investigation would begin at L’Anse aux Meadows, since that’s the only confirmed pre-Columbian site.”

“I thought Dr. Holm wrote up a proposal for a run to L’Anse aux Meadows,” I said.

“She wrote up a
linguistics
one. A historical run must come first. We should not use STEWie as a short cut to proper research—”

Dr. Little interrupted him, not rudely, but in an effort to get things back on track. “Let’s say they did jump from Woodstock to the nineteenth century. Keep in mind that terms like ‘first’ and ‘later’ lose their meaning when you’re talking about time travel—it doesn’t matter if they went to the fourteenth century first to look for the carvers of the stone or to the nineteenth to see it dug up, or vice versa, as long as they ended up in 1898 at some point—”

“Dr. Little?” Nate, in turn, interrupted him.

“Yes, Kirkland?”

“Get us to 1898, then. If nothing else, I want to watch this damned stone come out of the ground. If Quinn and Dr. Holm are there, all the better. If they aren’t, we’ll come back, regroup, and look for them in 1362. It’s unfortunate that they have the Slingshot.” He turned to where the gray-haired professor was, at the utility table that had held his creation. “Dr. Mooney, can you build another one?”

“Certainly, certainly.”

“Good. How long will it take?”

“A couple of weeks.” Then, at our reaction, “Well, it’s not like the parts are prefabricated and sitting on a shelf, are they?” The professor waved at the tools and instruments that covered the utility table except for an empty spot in its middle, as if to make it clear that everything he’d built, he’d built from scratch and that he was the only one in the world who could do so.

“Will they need to come back to recharge the Slingshot?” I asked. “I don’t remember battery life being a problem on our ride back from Pompeii. We did, what, five jumps?”

Dr. Mooney shook his head. “That was different. Let’s just say power could be an issue, especially if they jump all over the place.”

“Wait, I want to understand. Give me the one-minute spiel, please,” Nate said.

I could see Dr. Mooney considering how to frame his words in a way that would make sense to non-physicists like Nate and me. “When we were coming back from Pompeii, we were going
with
the arrow of time. Think of it as stepping off a plane. Gravity gets you home, but you need a parachute to slow and control your descent. The Slingshot served as our parachute, controlling our return to the present—badly, I know—but it got us home. The new version I’ve been tinkering with—Slingshot 2.0, if you will—is a step up. It can go
with
or
against
the arrow of time. It uses a little something the engineering department came up with as its power source. I presented the new design at the conference last week, but wasn’t ready to demonstrate it just yet, not until I worked out the final kinks. I don’t know how Dr. Holm knew that I had a workable device, or what she may have told Quinn—”

“Everybody knows,” said Dr. B, who was back, having changed out of the period attire. “You’ve gone from—if I may be blunt—drooping around the lab to humming in the hallways. We’ve all seen you testing the new Slingshot around campus, jumping from one side of the lake to the other.”

Nate had turned to Dr. Payne. “Are you up for this?”

“Oh, you want me to come along? I suppose, yes, though I have a class lecture to prepare.”

“Cancel it. We need a historian to help us find our bearings and weigh in on the stone finding. Julia, if you’re really coming along—”

I didn’t bother answering; instead, reflecting on how different Dr. B looked in her beige slacks and short-sleeve shirt from
the eighteenth-century outfit she had been wearing, I asked
Dr. Payne, “Should we change into nineteenth-century immigrant apparel?”

“We could,” Dr. Payne said, “if we wanted to blend in and interact with the locals. But if all we want to do is hide behind farmer Ohman’s barn and watch him pretend to find the stone, we’re fine as we are.”

“J
ulia and Nate, you remember History’s rules?” Dr. Baumgartner
asked as Dr. Little readied our coordinates.

How could we forget? I quickly rattled off the four rules of time travel: “One hour in the past equals 133 seconds here. History protects itself, not us. We should try and blend in, but even so, we may find ourselves time-stuck. And—there’s always a way back.”

The last one held—unless you encountered a ghost zone.

“We’ll need a fourth,” said Dr. Payne, who had returned with a folder full of relevant articles and notes that he’d gathered from his office. He had a video camera slung across one shoulder.

“A fourth rule?” I asked, confused. “The fourth rule is
There’s always a way back
.”

“While that’s correct, Julia, I meant that we need a
fourth person to come along.” He swung his folder through the air with a flourish. “I’m a historian. While I’ve been on quite a few STEWie runs, that hardly makes me an expert on the ins and outs of time travel—it sounds like we may be dealing with some unexplored territory here. Plus, what if the runestone turns out to be authentic and I drop dead from a heart attack?” The professor gave a mirthless laugh to show he was joking. “Another knowledgeable person should come along.”

I decided to overlook the implied insult. Nate and I had only been on one STEWie run, but it had been a doozy. Still, it hardly made us experts.

Dr. Baumgartner raised her hand. “I volunteer. To put it plainly, they messed up my run and I’d like to do something about it.”

That was certainly plain enough. I saw Nate throw her a look of understanding, mixed—perhaps—with a touch of admiration. I swept a hand through my hair and looked away.

“And let’s bring Jacob Jacobson along,” Dr. B suggested.

Nate didn’t seem so thrilled about
that
idea. I was with him on that. “I’m not sure we should be bringing students along. It might not be safe,” I said as Dr. B pulled out her cell phone to send a text to Jacob. She had been mentoring the second-year grad student while Dr. Rojas was on his sabbatical. I thought Nate would back me up on my “no students” idea, but he said, “I thought you told us there’s no chance that Quinn’s dangerous, Julia.”

“There isn’t. The worst I can say about him is that he’s a person who doesn’t like hard work. Or any work. He’s always looking for shortcuts.” I added, “I was thinking of other dangers. We may get marooned because of the double basket thing—you said, Dr. Mooney, that we could get stuck for a while.”