Portals in Time 3

by Michael Beals

  “Lily!” Kat scolded. “What kind of upbringing did you have?”

  Lily laughed again. “My husband used to do it when he was a college kid. They all used to do it. It was called joyriding.”

  Kat looked at Dore. It was hard to imagine him stealing someone’s car from a gas station. Then again, if he could drop a grenade into a German tank, which they’d both done on many occasions, it wouldn’t be too much of a push to drive away in someone else’s car.

  “OK. I’ll be up for that. When?”

  Dore shrugged. “How about tomorrow morning?”

  “What are we supposed to do while all this is going on?” Giselle asked.

  “Well, if you’re still able to walk after another night with Jock, you can wander about Central Park. You’ll probably find an ice cream parlor down by the lake. If you see Rostock hanging around, I doubt if he’d recognize you in those clothes.”

  It was 11:30 in the morning when Kat ushered Dore out of Bloomingdale’s in 2024. It had taken an hour to buy Dore pants and shoes, and she was itching to get on with the business of stealing a car. But first, they had to time travel to 2025, catch a train to Queens and then find a suitable gas station. They’d studied a map of the city, and at first, Brooklyn seemed the best bet. But neither of them had been there before. Also, it might only be a twenty-minute drive from Manhattan, but it would almost certainly be full of traffic stops, allowing the owner of the car they stole to chase after them.

  So they decided on Queens. There was a direct line from Penn Station, and there were fewer traffic lights. They also agreed not to stay the night in a hotel. It was a waste of time and money as they had the time machine. All they had to do was park the car on a meter in the street where Kat had seen Grantham’s Aston Martin, time travel to August 17, feed the meter again, and wait for Grantham to appear. It should be simple.

  Except that nothing is simple if you’re a stranger to New York City. Catching a train was easy enough, they left every few minutes, but when they got out at Rockaway Station 30 minutes later, it took a while to find an off-ramp into the city. Then they had to find a gas station, which turned into a ten-minute walk. Dore wanted a coffee, so for a while, they sat in the gas station coffee shop and watched people gassing up their cars. It turned out to be a lucky break because they were able to study the vehicles. The last time they’d lived in the real world, American cars had been large and easy to drive, but the vehicles they were seeing were noticeably smaller, many of them from Japan or Europe.

  “I refuse to drive a Japanese car,” Dore said, as he watched a small Nissan pull into the traffic. “Not after what everyone went through during the war. And I’d rather not drive a German car, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Jock, we’re stealing it,” Kat whispered. “We’re not buying the damned thing. We should be looking at the people, whether they’re overweight and how fast they walk. All the cars will be automatic. It won’t matter who made them. All we have to do is get to Manhattan, which won’t be easy.”

  “That’s not quite true,” Dore retorted. “We’ll also be following Grantham to Long Beach, or wherever the hell he’s living, and he’s driving an Aston Martin. We can’t just steal some old heap.”

  At that moment, a Bentley pulled into the gas station, and Dore sat up.

  “No, Jock. Not a Bentley. We’ll need a car that is a bit more aggressive in the event Grantham speeds away.”

  Dore relaxed again, but moments later, a red Corvette convertible pulled into the forecourt. It was being driven by an elderly man, who climbed stiffly out of the car and took such a long time to unhook the hose and undo the filler cap, they began to wonder if he’d ever succeed in gassing up the car.

  “Holy crap! That car looks like a small jet on wheels. That should do quite nicely in keeping up with Grantham.” Kat whispered, slapping $5 on the counter. “Let’s pinch this car, and as lily says, let’s go for a joy ride.”

  Dore gave Kat a crooked smile and said, “I thought you said, a lady doesn’t pinch.”

  Kat raised her eyebrows and said, “whoever said I was a lady?”

  Pretending to read the papers at a newsstand, they took their time, waiting until the man was hobbling across the forecourt before walking briskly over to the Corvette. Amazingly, the engine was still running. The old man had forgotten to switch it off.

  Dore ran over to the driver’s side and opened the door. He peered inside, then turned to Kat. “You wouldn’t have a shoehorn on you? This jet seems a wee bit tight.”

  Kat slipped into the passenger seat without difficulties. “It’s the haggis. Doctors have proven that haggis goes directly to the butt. So get your fat ass in the car.”

  Dore spent a good minute squeezing into the cockpit. Once in, he found it unusually roomy and comfortable. “What a fabulous car. If Grantham decides to put his foot down, it won’t be hard to follow him. Better still, it’s all gassed up. Would you be a love and guide me into Manhattan?”

  So she unfolded the map and guided Dore into the city. It didn’t take long, but Dore sighed with relief when they pulled up at a meter on West 87th Street, less than a hundred yards from the park.

  “God Almighty! Talk about traffic. I’d rather live in 1866.”

  “Well, you’d better brace yourself. In the next few minutes, we’ll be following Grantham, and we’ve no idea where he lives.”

  “Well, I hope he lives somewhere nice. I could do with a break from all this traffic.” Climbing out of the car, he stood there for a moment admiring the Corvette he’d stolen while Kat programmed the time machine, then she too climbed out and put her arms around him.

  “You ready for this?”

  He snorted. “I’m never ready for all this time travel stuff. Go for it.”

  She tapped her wrist. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then she heard a faint swishing sound and for a moment felt slightly dizzy, but it soon passed, and she realized that the light had changed. She peered down the street and saw Grantham’s car. It was August 17, and in the next hour, Grantham would climb into his car and drive away.

  Putting more coins in the meter, they closed the roof on the Corvette, climbed back into the car, and waited. But the minutes ticked on, which felt like an eternity. A traffic cop drove by, and they tensed when he slowed to peer at the Corvette, a group of children passed by at the end of the road, a young man squinted through the window of the Aston Martin. Otherwise, the street was quiet. So they waited. When Dore threatened to fall asleep at one point, Kat shook him awake.

  “Stay awake, Jock. It’s 9:30. He’ll be here in a minute.”

  And then at precisely 9:45, Grantham turned the corner. He was walking briskly, his long strides carrying him to the Aston Martin in a matter of seconds. Kat watched Grantham unlock the driver’s door. Grantham looked calm, not even bothering to look around as he climbed into the car. And then, to her amazement, she saw a woman in a tracksuit turn the corner. It was hard to believe Kat was looking at herself. She’d never realized how young she looked. Throughout the war, she never thought of her age, but the woman who crouched down and plucked a child’s crayon from the gutter looked in her twenties, far too young to have been through a war, or more pertinently, what she’d been through in the last few weeks.

  She heard the thrum of the Aston Martin starting up, and then the deep throb when Dore started the Corvette.

  “Wait until he pulls out, Jock.”

  “Don’t worry; I’ve got this.”

  Moments later, they were following the Aston Martin through surprisingly light traffic. Of course, it was a Sunday, and she was beginning to realize why Grantham had chosen that day to meet the escapees. Nevertheless, Dore looked tense, and she could imagine him wondering how he was going to get back if they didn’t have Grantham to guide them. But once they were on the highway, he seemed to relax. They were on I 495, heading east. Grantham wasn’t driving fast; he was staying strictly within the speed limits. She gazed through the window. She
could see planes taking off and landing, and she suddenly realized that they weren’t heading for Long Beach at all. They were on the Long Island Expressway, and there were signs for Old Westbury. She’d been to Old Westbury when she was a child. It was full of old houses and stately homes.

  She tapped Dore’s leg. “Grantham isn’t going to Long Beach. He’s going where all the rich people live, Old Westbury, or West Hills.”

  “Makes sense. I was beginning to wonder about Long Beach.”

  “You’re going to have to be careful, Jock, once we leave the highway. If he’s heading for somewhere like Old Westbury, we’ll have to keep our distance, or he’ll know he’s being followed.”

  Sure enough, when they reached the exit for Old Westbury, Grantham left the highway, and soon they were driving on tree-lined avenues, what looked like extremely expensive homes just visible through high iron gates. Dore eased off the throttle. Grantham was seventy yards ahead of them now and picking up speed. Had he spotted them?

  “Ease off, Jock. Ease off. We’re too close to him.”

  “I can’t ease off. Grantham’s taken four turnoffs in the last mile, and I have no idea where I am.”

  They were passing a row of mock-Georgian houses when Grantham’s car disappeared. One moment he’d been visible in the distance, then he was gone. They drove on, peering down long driveways, but there was no sign of the Aston Martin.

  “What happened?” Dore croaked, braking to a stop. “Where the hell has he gone?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kat stared at the empty road. They had stopped in a quiet residential street. On her left, at the end of a long, tree-lined drive, stood a mansion, one of many that they’d passed in the last few minutes. This was an affluent area; none of the houses were small. For Grantham’s car to disappear so completely could only mean one thing, but was it possible?

  “Can I ask you a hypothetical question, Jock?”

  “If you can explain how Grantham’s car just vanished into thin air, you can ask anything you like.”

  Kat was silent for a moment, thinking things through as the idea coalesced in her mind. She’d never really questioned Harper about inanimate objects; it hadn’t seemed relevant at the time. Now it was.

  “Did Grantham have time to turn a corner and stop?”

  “I think so. Grantham was a good quarter-mile ahead of us, but we were doing 40 mph, we’d have caught up with him in seconds.”

  “Not if he wasn’t there.”

  “Kat, even if he’d turned into a driveway, we’d have seen his tail lights.”

  “As I said, not if he wasn’t there.”

  “What do you mean, not there?”

  “I mean, not if he was no longer there, which is my theoretical question. If you attached a time machine to the dashboard of a car, you know, like a radio, would it be possible for the car to time travel?”

  Dore stared at her. “I don’t know. I thought only people could time travel.” He continued to stare at her. “That watch embedded itself in your wrist. It became part of your body.”

  “And your body, Jock. You came with me, remember? And it wasn’t just you and me, our clothes, and everything we carried, came with us. If you attached a time machine to a car, it would become part of the car… and everything inside it.”

  He blinked at her. “You think Grantham’s Aston Martin time traveled?”

  “All he had to do was program it to go back in time by a few minutes. Then he could safely drive to his house. None of us were here a few minutes ago. He’d have to be stationary, but as you said, he had time.”

  “Just. I was seconds behind Grantham.”

  She let out a sigh of frustration. “Well, either way, he’s gone. He’s either turned around and gone back the other way, which means we passed him on the way here, or he’s parked in his garage.”

  “You think it’s possible? Surely, Harper would have mentioned it.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know. Time travel is bizarre. When we were waiting for Grantham to drive away, I saw myself walking up the road.”

  “You saw yourself?”

  “I did. It was surreal. It was like watching a film.” She laughed. “I didn’t realize how pretty I was.”

  Dore gave her a funny look. “So we’re snookered. If Grantham can make his car disappear, and with him inside it, we’ll never find him.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. He can just do it willy-nilly. For a start, he might need to be stationary, and he needs to know there isn’t an obstacle in his path where he’s traveling to.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Well, we know more or less where he lives. We can drive back to New York and park in an underground parking garage, so we’ll have a car to use next time we’re here. It’s about noon. Why don’t we go back to the city and have lunch? There’s no hurry. With all that time drag coefficient, we don’t want to arrive back in the dark.” She grinned and slapped him on the back. “Hey, we can take the day off. You can tell me how it’s going with Giselle.”

  It took half an hour to work their way back to the highway, and by the time they’d got back to the city, negotiated the traffic and found an underground parking garage on West 88th Street, one street down from where Grantham had parked, it was early afternoon. So they walked into the park, which was fast becoming their favorite place. It was a beautiful day, and they were in the real world again… albeit seventy years in the future… so they decided to explore the rash of restaurants that had appeared. After much discussion, they finally agreed on The Loeb Boathouse, it overlooked the lake at the southern end of the park, and it wasn’t far from where they’d parked. It was a family restaurant offering a casual menu, and it was full of couples with their children, which only added to the atmosphere.

  “So how’s it going with Ellie?” Kat asked through a mouthful of French fries.

  “She’s amazing. I couldn’t have found anyone more exquisite if I’d looked for a hundred years.”

  “She’s certainly beautiful.”

  “It’s not just that. Ellie’s a really nice person. I can’t believe Hades kept her in Hell for two hundred years. It’s so unfair. Can’t you talk to him?”

  “But she’s coming with us, Jock. Once we’ve started the agency, we’ll be spending most of our time in the real world. And she wouldn’t want to be reincarnated. She’d have to start all over again, and you’d lose each other.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a problem. Ellie wants children, but she can’t have them if she’s still got half a leg in Hell.”

  “I did talk to Hades about reincarnation for me. He said I had to change my attitude. He also told me he and Persephone don’t discuss resident situations… Sorry Jock, there’s nothing I can do.”

  Dore studied her for a moment. “Don’t you want children?”

  Kat took one of Dore’s fries and thought about it. Did she want children? She hadn’t exactly been living a motherly life. Kat did think about it a couple of times, but some people aren’t meant to go that route. She was one of them. It was a responsibility that would take her away from what she does best… Gutting bad guys… And that’s not a skill to be passed down to one’s children…

  “Nah, not my style. What about you? Having a wee one to teach how to be a manly man?”

  Dore reached across and poured more water into her glass. “I wouldn’t mind. I think it might be fun. Watch my wee man grow up and help him along the way. Yeah, I think I would.”

  Kat was feeling a bit uncomfortable. “Can we change the subject? You’re putting me off my lunch.”

  “Sorry. It was just a thought. So when are we going to see Hades?”

  “Tomorrow. We’ve got quite a lot to do if we want to start the detective agency. It takes Hades’ de Havilland all day to fly to the palace, and I want to talk to Cabot when we get back to New York. He can probably help us register the detective agency. Then we’ll have to go to 1954 Earth and do the same thing there. Then we can
time travel to 2025 and check Grantham’s address with the DMV.”

  Dore was momentarily distracted by a little girl who paused at the table and smiled at him. When she’d gone, he said, “I don’t think that’ll find him. He probably does live in Old Westbury, but I wouldn’t mind betting that the Aston Martin is registered to a fake address. We’d be better off sending Giselle and Lily down there while we’re back in Hell. They can cruise the area.”

  Kat shook her head. “We don’t even know the name of the streets. We were lucky to find our way back to the highway. Anyway, I’d rather they stayed safe in 1866.”

  “You think Giselle would be safe in 1866, with Rostock around?”

  “He wouldn’t dare hurt Ellie. Even if we didn’t vaporize him, Hades would. The worse that could happen is that he’d know we were looking for Grantham.”

  “Maybe we should take them back to Hell with us. While we’re talking to Hades, they can ask Cabot to help them set up the agency. It would save a lot of time. If Hades gives us the go-ahead, we can phone them from the palace.”

  “That’s a good idea, Jock.”

  Finishing their meal, they wandered down to the lake and bought ice creams. But Kat was restless now. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable wandering around as if they were on holiday. Then again, no one was keeping track of their time. There was no such thing as real time. Even if they didn’t get back to 1866 until tomorrow morning, when they teleported back to Hell, using the artifacts, they would arrive minutes after they’d left. It was hard to get her head around.

  So they followed one of the older footpaths until they were surrounded by trees and thick foliage, and there were no people in sight. Kat could feel a strange sense of reality pressing in on her. They’d been in 2025 for nine hours, and it was beginning to feel natural, as if they belonged here, as if 1954 was in the distant past. She’d got used to modern cars, the way people dressed, the way the children behaved, that they all seemed to have cell phones, that they were forever peering at.