Timebound

by Rysa Walker

  There was a long pause, while Charlayne just stared at me. “Okay. I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t lie to me, Kate. So that leaves insanity, heavy drugs…” She paused. “Or you’re telling the truth. I’m going to need more than the ‘let me sum up’ version to figure this one out.”

  “We can figure it out together then, because I’m not entirely sure myself.” I pulled the diary out of my backpack. “I’m really hoping this will help.”

  Mom wasn’t the slightest bit surprised that we wolfed down pizza, then grabbed sodas and headed back up to my room. That’s what we always do when Charlayne stays over. She also wouldn’t have been too surprised to see us hunched over books, since we often do homework together. She might, however, have been a bit confused if she had peeked in and seen us side by side, holding a lit match to a single page of what appeared to be a very old diary.

  I blew out the match. “Okay. You can’t burn it either.”

  “But the fire does make it smell kind of funny,” Charlayne noted. “And the cover—you can burn the cover, write on it, whatever. That’s weird. Why wouldn’t they make the cover at least as strong as the pages inside? The cover is supposed to protect the book.”

  “True.” I thought for a moment. “But… have you ever slipped a different book jacket around something that you wanted to read in order to make your mom or your teacher think it was something you were supposed to be reading?”

  “Well, yes. But…”

  “Maybe the writer was trying to make other people believe this was just a plain diary. Look at the date inside the cover: 1890. This doesn’t look to me like something that should have been around in 1890.”

  “Doesn’t look to me like something that should be around today,” Charlayne said. “Can’t you just call your grandmother and ask?”

  “I could. But she did say that this would probably give me more questions than answers. I get the feeling she wants me to dig around a bit and see if I can figure it out on my own.”

  Charlayne reached over and scratched at a small nub that was sticking out of the fabric on the spine. “What is this? There’s something stuck in the cover.” She had to tug a bit but eventually pulled out a small bright yellow stick, about twice the thickness of a toothpick, with a pointed black tip. “It’s a tiny pencil.”

  I took the stick to look at it more closely. “It looks like a pencil, yeah, but—look, I can’t scratch anything off the pencil lead. I think it’s a stylus. Like the one on my mom’s old PDA. You’ve seen them. You just tap the screen, like this…”

  I took the book and tapped the tip against the first page. The lines of handwritten text started scrolling slowly upward. “Aha. It’s not a book. It’s some sort of portable computer.”

  Charlayne looked puzzled. “But why?” she asked. “Why not just carry a laptop, or iPad? This doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Unless it’s 1890 and you don’t want to attract attention.” I closed the cover and it once again looked like an old diary. “Unless you don’t want people to know that you aren’t one of them.”

  “Weird. I’ve never seen anything like this technology. How would your grandmother have something like this? You said she’s a historian—like your mom, right?”

  I flipped open the diary again and ran my finger across the name printed on the inside of the cover:

  Katherine Shaw

  Chicago, 1890

  “It could be a coincidence that my grandmother’s name is Katherine, but I don’t think so. And yes, she’s a historian, but I’m beginning to suspect that being a historian means something very different to her than it means to my mom.” I turned to a random page and tapped the top edge with the stylus thingy and watched as the text scrolled downward, stopping at the beginning of the entry.

  May 15, 1893

  Chicago, Illinois

  We arrived around sunrise and merged with a crowd coming from the train station. The calculations were correct, although the area was not as isolated as we might have hoped. The city is packed and we landed near the entrance to the most popular attraction, so another entry point might be advised in the future.

  People from all over the world have flocked to Chicago to see the new wonder—an enormous wheel surrounded by closed carriages that will carry passengers high into the sky as it spins. It will not open for another month, but a large crowd is always present to view the giant wheel, created by Mr. George Ferris. The hope is that it will be magnificent enough to outdo the marvel of the previous Exposition in Paris—the fabulous tower of Monsieur Eiffel.

  I presented my letter of introduction to the Board of Lady Managers this morning and it was accepted without question. Background request on “the Infanta.” Several of the women were discussing her upcoming visit to the Expo.

  “What’s that?” Charlayne pointed to a small star in the margin. I shrugged and tapped the symbol once with the stylus. Nothing. I tapped twice, and then a small information window opened on top of the handwritten page:

  Infanta Eulalia (1864–1958): Daughter of Queen Isabella of Spain and Francis, Duke of Cadiz. Full name: Maria Eulalia Francisca de Asis Margarita Roberta Isabel Francisca de Paula Cristina Maria de la Piedad. Expressed progressive views on women’s rights in her later writings. Caution: Infanta’s visit will ruffle feathers of Chicago society. Was often found eating bratwurst or smoking a cigarette at German Pavilion when scheduled to attend official functions. Spouse found most evenings on the Midway Plaisance.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Charlayne said when we’d finished reading the entry. “If Katherine had the answer here, why did she make a background request?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she added it later?” I closed the pop-up window and we returned to reading the diary entry.

  I am spending the afternoon at the Woman’s Pavilion where the World’s Congress of Representative Women is scheduled to begin its session. The Woman’s Pavilion is viewed as something of a wonder in itself—it was designed by a female architect, Sophia Hayden. Saul may attend later in the day, as there are scheduled speeches on the topic of women in the ministry, but he will spend most of his day at the other end of the fairgrounds, attending a planning meeting for September’s Parliament of the World’s Religions.

  P.M.

  Saw only a few activists; either have not arrived or (wisely) opted to skip this session. The welcome addresses were even longer in person than they seemed in print. I thought the introductions of the various foreign dignitaries would never end.

  Submitting speeches and crowd view of Midway Plaisance.

  CHRONOS File KS04012305_05151893_1 uploaded.

  CHRONOS File KS04012305_05151893_2 uploaded.

  Personal File KS04012305_1 saved.

  I tried tapping each entry with the stylus, but there was no reaction and no little symbols appeared in the margins. “If the files are linked, I can’t figure out how to open them. I’ll have to ask Katherine later, I guess.”

  “The second set of numbers…” Charlayne pointed at the file names. “Those are the date of the entry, right? May 15th, 1893.”

  I turned a few pages and clicked the top, scanning quickly through the entries. Each of the pages that had been used contained the entries for an entire year. Most of the entries contained a CHRONOS file upload, and the last numbers always corresponded to the date. There were usually several sets of daily entries and then a gap of a month or so. Most were written in Chicago. The last two were from New York, on April 21st, 1899, and San Francisco, on April 24th, 1899.

  “The KS must be her initials,” Charlayne said. “And… the first group of numbers also follows the format for dates, but…” She reached out for the diary and I gave it to her, along with the little stylus.

  After a few seconds, a frown creased her forehead. “It’s not working.”

  She pulled the stylus along the edge of a page, just as I had done, but the text didn’t move. It looked like a static page of handwritten text. “Maybe there’s a dead b
attery or something?” she asked.

  I took the book from her and slid the stylus along the margin and, once again, the page shifted.

  Charlayne looked a bit annoyed that she couldn’t make the diary work, but she shrugged. “Maybe it’s just sensitive—like the touch pad on my brother’s laptop. That never works for me, either.”

  I scanned back through the entries, and Charlayne was right about the dates. The first two digits for each entry were always 01 through 12, and the second two digits were always between 01 and 31. “So we seem to have someone trying to blend in with the crowd in the 1890s by disguising a high-tech device as a handwritten diary. And we have two sets of dates, one from the past and one from the future. If we’re reading this correctly, and if this isn’t some elaborate forgery, this would suggest that these are entries about the 1890s recorded by someone in 2304 and 2305.”

  Charlayne nodded. “If this isn’t some sort of elaborate forgery, then yes. I’m not ruling out elaborate forgery, however.”

  I gave her a tight smile. “You weren’t on the train today. Those two guys just vanished.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t just scare them off with the Ice Princess stare, like you did Nolan?”

  I tossed a pillow at her head and she ducked, laughing. Nolan, a friend of Charlayne’s brother, was the victim in her most recent attempt to fix my love life. Nice guy, really cute, with nothing in his head other than soccer. I could have been friendlier, in retrospect, but I didn’t see the point in leading him on, especially when it was clear by the time we’d finished our pizza that Nolan and I were a total mismatch.

  I put the diary back into the ziplock bag and tucked it into my backpack. “We need to sleep. I have at least a thousand questions to ask Katherine after school tomorrow anyway, and it will just add to the list if we keep looking through this diary. And if you show up with bags under your eyes tomorrow, your mom will never let you stay over on school nights.”

  It was a long time before I fell asleep, however. Each time I tried, the vivid sensations from the medallion came flooding back to the forefront of my mind, and a pair of disturbingly passionate dark eyes followed me when I finally slipped into dreams.

  Morning came much more quickly than either Charlayne or I wanted. I inhaled a breakfast bar as I ran to the Metro, which was so packed that I had to stand. The crowd thinned out as the train headed away from the city. I sank into the first open seat, plugging my iPod into my ears to muffle the subway chatter.

  I didn’t see the pale, pudgy young man at first, probably because he was behind me. A few minutes after I sat down, however, I caught a glimpse of the left side of his face in the security mirror. I shifted slightly to get a better view. He was wearing the same shirt as the day before and didn’t seem aware of the mirror or of the fact that I had spotted him. I glanced around to see if the tall, dark guy was near, even pulling out my hand mirror on the pretext of fixing my hair, but I couldn’t locate him. Pudgy, however, was clearly watching me.

  The next stop was not mine, but I stood just as the last of the passengers were leaving and headed for the closest door. Before I could reach the exit, Pudgy was right beside me. I felt an arm around my shoulder and something cold and hard digging painfully into my ribs as the last few passengers getting off at the stop pushed past me.

  He spoke in a low whisper. “Give me the backpack and you can walk away. I don’t want trouble. Just pull it off your shoulders and give it to me.”

  Normally I would have just given it over, no questions, no hesitation. Lesson one of self-defense is that you don’t argue with the man holding the gun. But the diary was in there.

  Pudgy’s face was suddenly inches from mine and I felt a crushing pain in my toes as his heel ground into them. He whispered into my ear, “I can shoot you and be gone before anyone knows what happened.”

  “Doors closing. Doors closing,” the automated voice chimed. The sound of my pulse echoed in my ears as Pudgy pulled me toward the door, slipping the foot that had just mangled my toes between the subway doors to keep them open. I glared at him, then slid the backpack from my shoulders and handed it over. He squeezed his chubby frame through the door, pushing me backward into the train, hard, and then disappeared in a flash of blue light.

  I fell against two other passengers. One had on earphones and must have missed the entire exchange—he just looked annoyed at my clumsiness. But the woman had clearly been watching. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Should I call security?”

  “Kate!” The voice from behind me was deep and the slight accent unfamiliar, but I knew who it was before I turned. My first instinct was to run—not that there was really anywhere to go in a closed subway car—but as he moved closer, I glimpsed a familiar blue light shining through the fabric of his shirt. He reached out to take my arm and pulled me toward a seat a few aisles away, out of earshot of the woman who had offered to help.

  I sat, then whirled to face him. “Who the hell are you? Why are you following me and why did your friend take my pack? And how did you get that from my grandmother?” I poked the spot on his shirt where the light of the medallion showed through.

  He paused for a second, processing the barrage of questions, and then gave me a small, slightly crooked smile. “Okay—I’ll answer them in order. I’m Kiernan Dunne,” he said. “I was not following you. I was following Simon. I’m not supposed to be here. Simon—the guy who took your bag—is not my friend, Kate. And this key,” he finished, pointing at the medallion on his chest, “is not from your grandmother’s collection. It was my father’s.”

  He raised his hand and I flinched instinctively. His eyes grew sad and his smile faded as he moved his hand, more slowly now, to brush the right side of my face with his fingertips. “I’ve never seen you this young.” He reached around and pulled the band loose from my hair so that it fell to my shoulders. “Now you look more like my Kate.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up his hand and continued, speaking more quickly now. “We’re close to your exit. Go straight to your grandmother’s house and tell her what has happened. At least you still have this.” He touched the black cord around my neck. “Keep the CHRONOS key on you at all times.”

  “CHRONOS key? I don’t have…”

  “The medallion,” Kiernan said, again touching the cord.

  “I don’t have a medallion.” I pulled the cord out of my blouse. At the end was the clear plastic holder that contained my school ID, a Metro pass, a few pictures, and two keys—one for Dad’s cottage and one for the townhouse. I flipped the holder around so that he could see the plain silver keys through the back. “And these are the only keys I have. Could you stop talking in riddles?”

  The color drained from Kiernan’s face and panic filled his eyes. “Was it in the bag? You should keep it on you.”

  “No,” I repeated. “I don’t have a medallion. Until now, I thought there was only one, and to the best of my knowledge it’s at my grandmother’s house.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Why in bloody hell would she send you out with no protection?”

  “I don’t know how to use it! Yesterday, I nearly…” I blushed, thinking back to the scene in the kitchen. “I saw you when I held it. Why? Who are you?”

  The train began to slow. Kiernan closed his eyes and rubbed his first two fingers against his temples for a few seconds before looking up and shaking his head. “I didn’t plan for this, Kate. You’re going to have to run. Take a cab. Steal a car. Whatever you do, get to her house as quickly as you can and do not leave.”

  He moved us both toward the doors and then turned, pulling me toward him. “I’ll try to stall them—but I don’t know exactly what they’re planning, so I have no idea how long you have.”

  “How long before wha—” My question was silenced as his lips met mine, gentle, but urgent. My body was swept with the same sensations I had felt earlier when I held the medallion—heart pounding, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to think.

/>   After a moment he pulled away, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “This wasn’t supposed to be our first kiss, Kate. But if you do not hurry, it will almost certainly be our last. Run. Run, now.” As the train decelerated, Kiernan reached into his shirt and closed his hand around the medallion. The dark green band that he had pulled from my hair was now on his wrist. And then he vanished.

  The subway doors chimed open and I ran.

  There was, of course, no cab outside the station. A glance at the schedule told me that a bus wouldn’t arrive for twenty minutes, and I wasn’t sure that I could run over three miles in my current state. On top of everything else, my toes hurt like hell from being stomped by Pudgy. I hobbled three blocks in the opposite direction to the Marriot and, after a panicked look at the empty cab stand, was relieved to see one just pulling up to the curb.

  I slid into the back and gave him the address.

  “You got money hidden somewhere, kid? ’Cause I don’t see no purse or no wallet and this is rush hour.”

  “This is an emergency. It’s just off Old Georgetown in North Bethesda and I need to get there as quickly as possible. My grandmother will pay you.”

  He looked as though he planned to protest further, but something in my expression must have convinced him to start the cab and pull back onto the main road. He drove as fast as traffic allowed, which was often only slightly faster than I could have run. I clenched my teeth in frustration.

  “Sure you’re not runnin’ from the cops or something?” he asked, peering back at me through the rearview mirror. “You look like you’re runnin’ to me.”

  “I was running to catch a cab to take me to my grandmother’s house. She’s… sick, okay?”

  “Yeah, right.” He took a left at the next corner and then said, “Okay, Red Ridin’ Hood. I’ll get you to Grandma’s house ahead of the Big Bad Wolf. But she better have some money in her basket or I’ll be calling the cops myself.”