Time Meddlers

by Deborah Jackson

  Chapter 13

  Caught in the Mousetrap

  It was Friday night, nearly zero hour, and the house had finally grown quiet. Sarah’s dad had flicked off the TV to turn in for the night. When he peeked in the door, Sarah snored at headboard-rattling volume. He snuck in, smoothed the covers, kissed her lightly on the forehead, then tiptoed out again. Her eyes flashed open.

  She lay in bed, waiting. It seemed like hours, but only thirty minutes had passed when she heard slow rhythmic breathing coming from the master bedroom. She heaved the covers back and pulled on a black sweatshirt and a matching pair of jeans. Hey, if you’re going to do the spy stuff, you might as well dress the part. Silently, she donned her parka and boots, grabbed her backpack, which she stuffed with mitts, a scarf, and a water bottle, and crept out of the house.

  Matt was waiting for her. He tiptoed from the mansion like a cat burglar, barely leaving impressions in the snow.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “I guess,” said Sarah. “Is she asleep?”

  “Dead to the world. As I wish she really were.”

  “Let’s go.”

  They set off down the street, which slumbered like their guardians—hardly a car invaded the quiet suburban neighbourhood. At the end of the block stood the lone glass bus shelter beside an open field. The wind swept in over the corn stubble and snowdrifts and whipped through their coats, making them shiver and stamp their feet. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to wait too long.

  After fifteen minutes of huddling together to keep warm, the garish-looking city bus finally appeared. A travelling billboard, logos and advertisements crammed every available white space on its broad exterior. Inside, the seats were practically empty, except for a couple of giggling passengers in the back. The driver raised his eyebrows as Matt and Sarah climbed aboard, but didn’t ask any questions. People rarely did.

  They transferred twice before they reached downtown. When they arrived at Laurier Street, a main thoroughfare, they got off the bus and trotted uphill towards the steel-girded fortress of the city centre. More people wandered the street in this part of the city—club hoppers and night crawlers. Sarah was surprised to see so few homeless people, but Matt explained that they usually haunted the ByWard Market area because it was popular with tourists.

  A few minutes later, the co-conspirators reached the alley. Matt stopped in front of the door and motioned Sarah to follow. He slipped his hand into his pocket and extracted the keycard.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I took it from her briefcase while she was in the shower tonight. She doesn’t lock it as much since she’s been mooning over your dad.”

  Sarah clenched her fists, but she willed herself to relax. After all, Dad didn’t seem the least bit interested in Nadine, especially after she’d revealed how little she cared for Matt when they’d fallen in the cave.

  Matt inserted the card, disengaging the lock with a resounding snick. The Star Trek doors slid open.

  As they stepped through the doors, they found the lights on, but not a whisper of activity in the silent halls. The only sound was the squelch of their boots on the carpet.

  “The lights probably activate remotely when someone opens the door,” said Matt. “They were on last time, remember?”

  “Yes,” said Sarah. “I hope you’re right. I hate to think what Nadine would do to us if she caught us in here.”

  “Danger is my middle name,” said Matt, creeping up to the solid laboratory doors.

  “Right.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Let’s do it.”

  Matt placed his eye in front of the retinal scanner. The mechanism flashed and the seal snapped, popping the steel door open.

  “Welcome, Mr. Barnes,” said the computer in her synthesized voice.

  “Thank you,” said Matt.

  He fumbled with his backpack as he approached the computer and withdrew the sacred disc.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said, as he inserted it.

  Loud clicks and whirrs echoed in the chamber. The portal doors slid open like a pair of metal curtains. The machine hummed.

  As Matt stared intensely at the portal, something flashed on the screen behind him. Sarah turned to the computer.

  “Failsafe,” she said. “What do you think that means?”

  Matt blinked and swivelled back around. He gazed thoughtfully at the monitor. “It’s a backup.”

  “For what?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t program this thing.”

  The word blinked out.

  “Where would you like to go, Mr. Barnes?” asked the computer.

  Matt raised his eyebrows and looked at Sarah.

  “Atlantis,” she suggested. “That’s where we saw him last.”

  “Atlantis,” said Matt into the microphone.

  The computer hummed. “Repeat destination.”

  Matt cleared his throat. “Atlantis,” he said loudly.

  “Time?” the computer asked.

  Matt looked at Sarah again. “I have no idea,” he whispered.

  “Ten thousand BCE. Hopefully we can catch him before the earthquake and the tidal wave.”

  Matt nodded and stated the time period. The computer flashed a series of strange codes. In the corner, framed by the metal doors, the machine rumbled. A dazzling light appeared between the two plates as they slammed together and a large translucent film developed.

  “Step into the foam, Mr. Barnes,” instructed the computer.

  Matt froze. “I don’t want to go there. I want to find my father, Dr. Nathan Barnes. He’s in Atlantis. You have to bring him back.”

  The computer rattled annoyingly, like tumbling coins in a dryer. “Very well. I will find him. Retrieving him will be more difficult.”

  The bubble swelled. Multiple images eventually became one, as if the machine could focus, but more likely it was expanding into the other time and place. Once again monumental pillars rose out of an island surrounded by a churning sea. People dressed in silky robes were ferrying in and out of this island metropolis on boats. A silver aircraft flew overhead and landed on a strip just outside the city.

  “Did they have planes twelve thousand years ago?”

  “We don’t know,” said Sarah. “Atlantis was supposed to be a myth.”

  “We know now,” said Matt. The bubble enlarged and the image was magnified. Sarah and Matt stepped back. The last thing they wanted was to be sucked into Atlantis. They’d both seen what had happened to it.

  In Atlantis a flurry of activity jittered before their eyes. Weird amber contraptions with exposed gears and miniature rotors throbbed and quivered along the streets as they trundled people throughout the city. The sounds suggested motors, but the vehicles weren’t belching exhaust.

  The city, itself, was constructed of stone, from the cobblestone pavement to the skyscrapers in the centre. People here created—buildings, vehicles, and roads. Boats departed the docks empty and returned laden with raw material.

  Matt was glued to scene, taking it all in, from the quarried rock to the gleaming metals.

  “Hey, isn’t that uranium?” he asked, pointing to the silver-white chunks of metal that some men were handling very carefully.

  Sarah studied the material, perplexed. “I wouldn’t know uranium if it came up and bit me, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  “I saw some pictures of it on the Internet when I was doing a science project on nuclear energy. Atlantis sank, didn’t it?”

  “That’s what it looked like.”

  “Or maybe it blew apart.”

  “You think they tinkered with a Manhattan Project?”

  “Could be. Looks like they advanced way beyond their intelligence.”

  “A little like now.”

  “Too much like now. Just like this time machine. Dad figured out how to build it, even figured out how to go back in time, but he was too stupid to make sure he could return to the present, first.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,�
�� said Sarah.

  Matt shrugged.

  “I mean, he’s a genius.”

  “Even geniuses have their failings. Look at me.”

  Sarah did look at Matt. She studied his intense green eyes and determined mouth. She examined the crease of his brow where intelligence teemed. She knew he wouldn’t set foot in that machine unless he had a sure-fire way of getting back. “It just doesn’t add up.”

  “Maybe it was an accident,” he suggested.

  “I suppose,” she said. “But even if it was, don’t you think he’d have a backup?” She and Matt looked over at the computer screen, remembering the flashing word.

  “If he did, it didn’t work,” said Matt. The babble from the scene made him turn back to Atlantis. “I think I see him.”

  Sarah gazed through the portal. There were so many people, milling about, like the packed halls of a crowded sports arena. Where could he have seen the professor?

  “There,” said Matt, taking a step forward. Sarah whipped a hand out to prevent him from getting any closer to the machine. “He’s walking back from the jetty. I recognize his hair.”

  Sarah scanned the pier, but it was like looking for a single ant in a swarming colony. Then she spotted him. Tawny hair, a scruffy beard sprinkled with grey. The vision grew. The computer had enhanced the image or perhaps redirected and enlarged the wormhole.

  “Dad!” Matt yelled at the film.

  The man turned around. His eyes connected with his son’s—a shocking moment that should have been sentimental but wasn’t. He goggled at him and his face turned white.

  “Can you get him out?” Matt asked the computer.

  “Of course, Mr. Barnes. We must destroy him first and recreate him here.”

  Matt paled. “Destroy him?”

  “Dr. Barnes is trapped in the quantum foam. The wormhole will not allow him to pass back into this lab. The only way I can extract him is to recreate him. Shall I do it now?”

  “Wait,” said Matt. “What if you can’t recreate him?”

  “I have his DNA,” said the machine snidely, if a machine could be snide.

  Matt turned to Sarah. “What do you think?”

  “This is crazy. What if he has part of his memory missing when the computer puts him back together, or the machine omits some crucial piece of his DNA? What if he’s just a clone?”

  “But if it’s the only way of getting him back . . .”

  Interrupting their thoughts, the man inside the bubble spoke. His words were faint and barely intelligible but he was obviously trying to communicate through the wormhole.

  Both Sarah and Matt leaned forward and strained their ears, their noses centimetres from the film.

  “Matt,” he said.

  He waved and gesticulated. He mouthed words they couldn’t hear.

  Sarah squinted, trying read his lips. His gestures seemed so urgent. What was he trying to say?

  She got it! “Danger. He’s saying we’re in danger.”

  “From what?” asked Matt, scanning the room. The computer didn’t pose a threat.

  “From me, Matt,” said a voice behind them.

  Sarah and Matt whirled around. The voice that scraped their eardrums, like nails on a blackboard, was unmistakable.

  Nadine stepped from behind a bank of processors, her mustard hair loose and wild, her eyes narrow and hard, her mouth tight and malevolent.

  Sarah and Matt stepped backward, almost into Atlantis.

  “Do you think I’m a fool, boy? Do you think I would let you bring him back after all I’ve done to keep him bottled up?”

  Matt’s mouth dropped open.

  “Do you think I would let him interfere again? He was never a father to you, anyway. Why would you want him back?”

  Matt shook his head, but he drew himself up. “Anything would be better than you.”

  “Matt,” Sarah warned, but he was beyond listening.

  “It was you, wasn’t it!” he yelled. “You kept him trapped in this time machine all my life! You were the reason he couldn’t come back!”

  Nadine smiled crookedly, her head tilted to the side.

  “You cooked the machine, didn’t you? You kept him in the past so you could take all his money. You even took his son.”

  “The only thing I didn’t want,” said Nadine. “But you don’t understand the full story, little man. Yes, I may have wanted a better lifestyle than my ratty old apartment. I may have been jealous, but it was your father’s arrogance that drove me to extreme measures. I argued with him about all of this.” Her arm swept the room. “But instead of listening, he was going to fire me.”

  “Probably what you deserved,” said Matt. “How did you keep him away from me? How did you mess up the machine?”

  Nadine laughed. “Oh, Matt. You think you can just bring him back and life will be rosy. You’ll finally have a daddy. But he never really cared about you. He was too busy with his pet.” She stroked the computer console. “It was all he cared about.”

  The bubble behind them rippled as Dr. Barnes’s image ballooned. “Not true!” he shouted.

  “Isn’t it? Let me show you something. Computer, activate tape 537.” She smiled. “Dr. Barnes at work.”

  A video projected onto a screen at the far side of the room. It showed Dr. Barnes hard at work on his equations in front of this very computer.

  “Dr. Barnes,” a stout grey-haired woman interrupted. “They called from the hospital. Your wife just went into labour.”

  “Humph,” said Dr. Barnes.

  “Should I send flowers?”

  “Humph,” said Dr. Barnes.

  Matt gripped Sarah’s arm. His eyes were riveted on the screen. His muscles stiffened into tight cords.

  As the video played on, the woman disappeared and Dr. Barnes resumed his typing. A self-satisfied smile bloomed on his face.

  “We’re almost there.”

  The door banged open again. “Dr. Barnes?”

  “I’m working, Gena,” he barked.

  “Your wife is having difficulties, Nate.”

  Dr. Barnes looked up. “My wife?”

  “She’s having a baby.”

  “Very good.”

  “And she might not make it.”

  “Quite right,” he said.

  The dreamy expression returned to his face.

  “I’ve got it,” he exclaimed, once again hunching over the keyboard.

  “Seen enough?” asked Nadine, stopping the film.

  Matt glared at her, his fingers digging into Sarah’s skin. “I don’t believe it.” He looked back at the bubble, at his father, who was shaking his head with his hands outstretched.

  “Even with proof? You’re as bullheaded as he is. No matter. You’ll be able to sort it all out yourself. Computer, scan the two minors and program the wormhole to transport them.”

  A beam of light projected from the computer and traced the pattern of Matt and Sarah’s bodies. It was just a light brush of warmth, like that of a sunlamp, but the roar in the room grew louder. Goosebumps sprang up on Sarah’s arms and legs as energy charged between the two plates in the machine.

  “This should only take a few minutes,” said Nadine. “Goliath here is quite fast.” She patted the processor.

  “My name is Isabelle,” said the computer in a haughty voice. “Opening wormhole. I have Matthew Barnes’s DNA already on file. Should I collect the female’s in case we have to reconstruct?”

  “What?” said Nadine. “How can that be?”

  Matt blinked repeatedly, but Sarah understood.

  “Your dad logged your DNA, Matt. That’s why you could get into the lab.”

  “But why would he do that? And when?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It might have been when you were a baby. Don’t believe what Nadine’s saying. He must have cared for you to do that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter right now. We have to get out of here.”

  They raced for the door and tugged at it repeatedly, but it was seal
ed tight. “Computer!” Matt yelled. “Open lab door.”

  “Unable to comply. Wormhole is activated,” said the machine.

  “Open it, you bucket of bolts.”

  “Unable to comply. There’s no need to be rude, Mr. Barnes.”

  The rumbling resumed. Sarah met Matt’s eyes, seeing her own panic reflected there. What were they going to do?

  Nadine laughed. “You really think I could let you walk out of here after you’ve seen all this?”

  “Wormhole at full width,” said the machine.

  “Very good,” said Nadine. “Program the foam to slide them into Atlantis, same time. It’s a very good time,” she said. “Just before the flood.”

  Sarah and Matt turned. They tugged at the door again, to no effect. Nadine grabbed their shoulders and tried to shove them towards the portal. They kicked at her legs and beat at her arms until she lost her grip. But she’d brought them closer.

  Nadine charged at them, her teeth bared. She catapulted Sarah to the edge of the portal, tipping her into the foam. Matt leaped and grabbed Sarah’s hands. He wrenched her backward, but she didn’t pull free. The wormhole was like a magnet, dragging her inward. The two opposing forces were tearing her apart.

  The babble of people and the roar of engines threatened to rupture Sarah’s eardrums. Matt yelled at her, but his voice had grown fainter. Then the bubble burst. She tumbled to the lab floor, every muscle in her body aching.

  Nadine screamed and kicked a chair. “Darn that quantum foam,” she yelled. “Computer, re-quantify.”

  Sarah felt a flicker of relief. When the bubble had collapsed, Atlantis had disappeared, along with its crowds, machines and Matt’s father.

  “He’s shifted the foam again. Just when I’ve found him,” snarled Nadine.

  Matt suddenly grinned. “So you don’t have absolute control. Dad can shift from time to time, can’t he? He’s even come back here before, to protect me.”

  “He was too late,” Nadine said. “He discovered my adjustments, but he was too late to reverse them. All he can do is float in and out of different universes on the quantum foam. He can never stay anywhere for very long, especially here, because the computer can’t enlarge the wormhole the amount of time needed for his return.”

  “Then why does he do those videos,” asked Sarah, “if he knows about your double-cross?”

  Nadine smiled. “Because I have a hostage.” She smirked at Matt who bristled immediately.

  “You cheating, lying, double-crossing snake!”

  Nadine’s smile broadened. “Well, I suppose I won’t be able to lock in Atlantis, with his tampering. Where and when else should I send you meddling pests? Oh, I have it. Sarah seems to like the First Nations so much, how about Odawa in 1615? Computer?”

  “Searching.”

  “We’ll make it summer. No need to freeze before the Algonquin get you. And let’s see.” She tapped her chin. “In a cave. The Bear Creek cave. Even better.” Her eyes glittered.

  “Oh no,” said Sarah.

  “Wormhole dilated,” said the machine.

  Sarah glanced behind her. The bubble spewed out of the plates again. She shuddered as the image swelled, because it wasn’t an image of anything. Just darkness. “Not again,” she whimpered.

  Matt grabbed her hand. They tried to bolt for the door, but Nadine barred their path. She charged like a bull, tumbling them backward. Matt lost his balance and his hand plunged into the bubble. The suction was incredible; it pulled him irresistibly towards the void.

  Sarah gripped and yanked, using all her power to pull him out, but this time she couldn’t break the bubble’s hold. She quaked from the effort, every muscle straining, and she managed to pull him back a few centimetres. But Nadine’s hands captured her ankles and upended her into the wormhole.

  In one last desperate act, Sarah kicked backward, making contact with the bony woman. Nadine slammed to ground, Sarah’s boot in her hand, but Sarah had slipped out of it and into the rippling bubble. The room spiralled and she fell, downward, outward, inward, crushed beyond belief, but still holding Matt’s hand. She couldn’t find air, couldn’t snatch a breath, for the longest minute of her life. Then she landed, with a thud, on the soft limestone ground layered with bat guano.