The Far Time Incident

by Neve Maslakovic

  “Kamal is right, unfortunately. We have to let them go,” I said in what I hoped was a firm voice. “There is nothing we can do.”

  But my words didn’t matter. Sabina had picked up on our anxiety and would not leave without her new friends.

  More slowly than we wanted, one foot in front of the other, together we wound our way back to Secundus’s shop, Sabina not quite sure what to make of our antics as we crossed streets for no apparent reason and made unexplained detours to go where History would allow. Kamal had picked up Celer, grasping the squat, brown animal firmly in his arms. All the while, the dirty gray cloud billowed up from the mountain—rising slowly, cruelly, like an accidental toxic release from a factory smokestack. Higher and higher.

  We made it back to Secundus’s shop as ash and the pumice Xavier had mentioned—white, hard, and dangerous—started descending from a suddenly overcast sky. The smokestack cloud had flattened into a wide disc that blocked out the sun—the umbrella pine described by the young Pliny, who was watching from across the bay, I thought in a detached way. Pumice began to rattle down onto roof tiles like an especially loud hailstorm. We ran inside through the garden gate and into the back room where Faustilla’s mixtures and salves lay unattended—she was not there—and into the shop. At the counter, Secundus was wrestling the shutters closed as debris rained down on the cobblestones of the street fronting his shop. The graduate students and I turned to leave so that we could meet up with the others, but Secundus called out something and pointed upstairs.

  Xavier looked up, lit lamp in hand, as the three of us stumbled into his room. He seemed calmer, like he had accepted what was happening. “Good, you’re here,” he said in a businesslike tone.

  But I suddenly realized that something else wasn’t. The cart and the donkeys had not been in their place in the hay-strewn stable downstairs.

  23

  Abigail and Kamal stared at the professor as if this entire experience was a project he had assigned and they needed a little help to finish it. The professor, for his part, looked like he needed some help himself, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had hoped that Nate and Helen had already taken the cart to the Nola Gate, but Xavier just shook his head when I asked him. We would have to make our way out of town on foot. We were helping Xavier light the rest of the lamps in preparation for facing the dark volcanic night when Nate burst into the room, covered with a fine layer of ash and breathing heavily. “Helen—” He paused. “Why are you all still here? Why haven’t you headed for the gate?”

  I closed the door behind him and asked, “Where’s Helen?”

  He looked around the small room wildly. “She didn’t make it back here? I ran all the way to the Nigidii tomb and back, didn’t see her, but it was damned hard to spot anyone with all the people running about in the ash.” He took off his felt fedora, which he must have picked up back at the tomb, and shook it, dislodging a shower of ash onto the wooden floor. “All of our stuff was gone except for the hat, which was on the ground outside the tomb—Helen must have dropped it. You don’t think she’s gone to the fig tree on the slopes of the mountain to fetch our overcoats, do you?”

  Xavier stopped what he was doing to answer Nate. “Helen might just be foolish enough to do that.”

  “Could she have headed straight for the gate?” I asked.

  “Does she have the cart?” Nate asked.

  “Faustilla has it,” Xavier said, passing a lit lamp to Nate. “She took it this morning. She should have been back by now.”

  The first time we had seen Faustilla, she had taken the cart to the villa that rested high on Vesuvius’s slopes, higher than the fig tree, to personally deliver an ointment. Disliking her as I did, I still hoped that today’s visit had taken Faustilla in the opposite direction, farther inland to Nola, perhaps, where we were planning to go ourselves, or Nuceria, in the hills. I didn’t necessarily like her underhanded method of trying to get her way. But her position in life—being wholly dependent on her son—was such that it might have seemed like the only course of action available to her.

  The missing cart was not a good development, but it had eased my conscience somewhat. I had been worried that we were depriving Secundus and his family of their only means of escape. (Xavier had negotiated a price for the cart—all of his silks—but the silks would do little to help the merchant if he didn’t survive the explosion.) Now we were all in the same boat.

  “None of the dates listed in the medieval manuscripts are right. Curious, isn’t it?” Xavier said, crouching by the bed as he filled the last of the lamps. “I had assumed that one of them must be right. History never fails to surprise me.”

  Nate put a hand on Xavier’s shoulder. The professor looked up at him, a numb look on his face. Our plan, so carefully crafted, had fallen to pieces.

  “So, no cart,” the chief said. “We head out on foot, then. You’ve prepared lamps, good. We’ll need pillows and blankets, too.”

  “Xavier,” I said, squeezing around Nate to crouch by the professor. “Did you have a plan B?”

  24

  I raised my voice as the clatter of the pumice hitting the roof above our heads intensified. “What were you going to do if you decided not to stick around for the eruption after all, Professor? It would have been hard to find a spot on a merchant ship in a hurry and impractical to rely on a donkey cart. You have some sort of portable version of STEWie, don’t you,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  My head was pounding, loudly—the volcanic storm outside was making it difficult to think—but I rather suspected I was right.

  “What is this?” Nate said, the first time I’d heard his voice vibrate with anger. “Professor, what is this?”

  Xavier hesitated slightly before pulling out a chamber pot from under the bed. He retrieved a bundle from behind it, and unwrapped it to reveal a rectangular black box, bigger than the Callback, like a chunky briefcase with knobs and displays all over it. “It’s meant for one—a personal, portable STEWie. I have been doing some local sightseeing with it—that’s how I went to Misenum. Yes, it could get one of us safely to Rome.”

  “One of us?” I said.

  “Yes. The battery—a little something the Engineering Department came up with for me—still has some life. Enough for one person to make a short hop up the coast. Rome is one of the destinations I had preprogrammed.”

  Kamal had cracked open the door and was looking out onto the balcony. Cupping his lamp with one hand, he watched the strange, thick, gray snowfall, one that brought darkness and heat, not cold. An early night had descended on the town. He closed the door and turned to face us, his face illuminated by the flickering flame of the lamp like he was telling a campfire story. “I’ll be the one to say it first. Yes, we could use your portable STEWie to send one person to Rome, Professor, while the rest of us try to make our way out of Pompeii on foot. Here’s the thing, though. If we send Julia because she isn’t feeling well and is the least likely to make it out”—he stopped me from protesting by raising a hand—“it still may not help her. Julia’s hand is getting worse. She needs antibiotics. And if the rest of us manage to make it out on foot—a big if—we’re more likely to get time-stuck somewhere than meet up with Dr. May. I don’t want to live some half life where I can only take roads History allows and where I may never find a wife. I don’t want my parents to think I’m dead. I want to eat a hamburger and drink Diet Coke in an air-conditioned restaurant and see the next Ewan Coffey flick with Abigail and the other TTE grad students at the St. Sunniva theater—yes, I’m admitting that I like his movies, sappy though they are. I want to get a flu shot and have a dental checkup. I want to write my thesis and get a job somewhere continuing your work, Dr. Mooney, and Dr. Rojas’s, too. And, Dr. Mooney—you know we won’t need much battery power, not if we’re heading in the direction of home. I don’t know if your device can accommodate all of us. I say we find out.”

  It was a rather long speech for Kamal, and we had all stayed silent
as he spoke.

  Something crossed Xavier Mooney’s face. “It’s not that simple. Look, using the portable STEWie to try to get home would be tantamount to—to surfing ghost zones.”

  25

  “Dr. Mooney,” Nate said in his best security chief tone, the one that made everyone stop and listen. He had to practically shout because the pumice hail continued unabated, and a new element had been added to it: the sound of tiles breaking and slipping off the roof. “The roof will soon be in danger of collapse and the air is only going to get more toxic. We need to come to a decision.”

  “I second the motion that we go back to see the next Ewan Coffey flick. I’ll even buy the popcorn and the drinks,” Abigail said. “And Dave was going to teach me how to play golf.”

  “Even if we send Julia to Rome, it will be month’s before Dr. May gets there. Julia doesn’t have that kind of time,” Nate said. “An infection in a world without antibiotics is no joke.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that? I’ve been thinking of nothing else since I saw how bad her hand looked, weighing whether it’s better for Julia to take her chances here or use my device to try to make it home—”

  “I’m fine,” I protested. “Besides, antibiotics are made from mold, aren’t they? I’m sure they have mold in Rome. Once we get there, we just have to figure out what kind I need, where to get it, and how to make an antibiotic from it while we wait for Dr. May.”

  “Now it’s a different equation, right?” said Abigail quietly. “Not whether we’ll manage to meet up with Dr. May, but whether we can get out of Pompeii alive.”

  “Dr. Mooney, Abigail is right,” Nate said. “Would using the portable STEWie to reach home really be more dangerous than trying to battle our way out of town on foot?”

  “Possibly,” said Xavier. He retrieved a cloak from under the bed, at the other end from where the chamber pot and the portable STEWie had been stored. He threw it on the bed and added a blanket, a pillow, and another cloak to the pile. “Look, I’ve had a lot of time to think while I’ve been here. When I embarked on this journey, I was very sure I didn’t want to go back. However”—he threw another blanket on the pile—“I’ll admit that it hasn’t been as much of an adventure as I’d expected it to be. In the beginning, yes, but after a while you settle down to the minutiae of everyday life. It would appear that the university life suits me better than a trader’s life. Don’t tell Helen. Besides, I seem to be feeling healthier.” Having run out of things to add to the pile on the bed, he turned to face us. “Fine. Let’s go see if the basket will accept all of us and get us home.”

  Abigail piped up. “I’ve thought of a problem. Our basket left us under the fig tree, and returned back to the lab empty.”

  “Meaning we’re dead no matter what we do?” Kamal said. The flickering lamp in his hand wouldn’t be of much help outside, I thought, in the darkness of the ash and pumice rain. He added, “Otherwise our basket would have stayed. I’ve thought that all along.”

  “It returned because my basket was already here. Your basket wasn’t needed anymore,” Xavier said.

  “But that makes no sense, Professor. Your basket arrived back at the lab empty. We saw it,” Kamal said.

  I wondered how they were so sure—the basket was, after all, invisible; then I remembered how Dr. Rojas had once explained to me that the basket gave off a faint high-frequency hum that could be detected by sensitive instruments. Kamal meant that they had “seen it” on the lab instruments.

  “I figured out how to splinter off a small part—a Mooney-shaped piece, if you will, though not literally, of course—and send the rest back. That was all I needed for the portable STEWie. You didn’t notice anything different about the basket?”

  “Not a thing. I’m dying to see the theory behind your work, Professor,” Kamal added. It was perhaps not the best choice of words under the circumstances.

  “The basket must have stretched back out,” the professor said. “It is an interesting phenomenon.”

  “Maybe we could suggest it to Jacob as a thesis topic,” said Abigail.

  Nate threw a look in my direction. Like me, he couldn’t believe his ears. Why were they discussing the finer technical points of time travel? It was time to go. Only—I sat down on Xavier’s bed, next to the pile of blankets and pillows, my knees suddenly weak.

  Abigail put her palm to my forehead. Her skin felt cool. “Julia, you’re burning up.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “Here, Julia, let me help you,” Nate said, pulling me to my feet. “Where is the basket fragment?” he asked Xavier.

  “Where I left it. Just beyond the Nola Gate. In a tomb.”

  “These tombs sure are handy,” I said.

  Nate took one of the blankets and folded it roughly into a square before handing it to me. I realized he wanted me to balance it on my head, for protection once we left Xavier’s quarters and their illusion of safety. “We better tie something around our faces so that we’re not breathing in the fumes and ash,” he said. “And wet it with water.”

  “Yes—downstairs, in the back room. The silks I gave Secundus in exchange for the cart.” Xavier picked up the portable STEWie and clutched it in front of him like a shield. “I want to make sure everyone understands that I don’t have the coordinates to the TTE lab and we have no way of computing a safe trajectory. We’ll be jumping blind, so we’ll gravitate toward ghost zones. To put it bluntly, we’re going to fall into a few before we make it home.”

  A particularly loud thud overhead signaled the descent of a large rock. The professor’s didgeridoo slipped and we watched it fall to the ground. The roof had started to sag in that corner.

  “What about Helen?” I asked.

  “Let’s hope she’s waiting for us at the gate.”

  “Lead the way,” the chief said, sliding a pillow over his fedora.

  “A night blacker and darker than any other,” quoted Xavier. “Gaius Pliny.”

  The ash came down hot and thick; the pumice—no longer white but gray—was bruising and dangerous. Tongues of thunder crackled on the mountain and fires were bursting forth all over the upper slopes, like flames seeping out from hell itself. The ground shook. I realized that the donkey cart would probably have been useless in any case—the street was already ankle deep in pumice and other debris. Scorched rock bounced off rooftops and landed by our feet. One hit the blanket I was balancing on my head, jolting me and making me pick up the pace. It took all my concentration to keep within an arm’s distance of the others; I couldn’t see even a few paces ahead, my eyes gritty, teary. The ash felt hot on my sandaled feet and the rotten-egg stench of sulfur permeated the cloth around my face. Figures passed us like ghosts in the night, their flickering torches and lamps disembodied halos of light, calling out as they tried to meet up with relatives or friends. Others peered out at the strange phenomenon from within their rooms and shops as if they were trying to decide what to do. We passed a man who was calling something out over and over again, as if all traces of sanity had left him.

  But many of Pompeii’s citizens were hastily throwing their possessions onto horses, wheelbarrows, and carts. A steady stream of people headed with us in the direction of Nola and safety.

  In the passageway of the Nola Gate, Xavier stopped, straining to see in the dark volcanic night. There was no sign of Helen. He hollered through the cloth wrapped around his nose and mouth. “Let’s move a bit farther down. We’ll have to go tomb by tomb until we reach the one we need. I’m having trouble orienting myself—”

  A fiery rock whooshed past us, shattering a statuette on an altar.

  “Hurry,” the chief urged, as if we needed any human encouragement.

  “There.” Xavier pointed.

  One by one, we stumbled into a tomb barely large enough to hold us all. Sabina hesitated by the door as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to come in. Xavier made the decision for her, pushing her inside.

  We had not meant to bring her wit
h us.

  With a lamp in his hand and a blanket over his head, her father had left to look for Faustilla, but not before entrusting Sabina to us.

  Xavier had attempted to explain that we ourselves were leaving, urging him to follow us out of town, but to no avail. Secundus, resolve firm in those deep, dark eyes of his, had been adamant that he needed to find his mother. He would not, in any case, want to leave his shop. If the gods decreed it to be so, he would die in peace as long as he knew that Sabina was safe. Besides, he had added in a sudden burst of practicality, who could guarantee that the gods’ anger didn’t extend to Nola as well?

  We had no answer that we could give.

  Still, he had seen the STEWie device slung over Xavier’s shoulder by its leather strap—had even extended a calloused hand to touch it. Plastic was two millennia away and the device with its wires and buttons and display screens had held his attention for a long moment. Perhaps it was that more than anything that had made him place Sabina in our care. “Friends, take her with you to a safe place,” he had said, looking straight at me for a long moment before turning to go. “Diana will keep an eye on her.”

  And so we had brought Sabina with us, and she had brought Celer.

  As we helped each other swat ash off our clothes, Xavier turned back toward the tomb archway. “Wait here. I’ll go back outside to see if I can find Helen.”

  Nate pulled him up by the shoulder. “You’re the only one of us who knows how to operate that portable STEWie of yours, Professor. I’ll go. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes…” He tied the cloth back around his face, grabbed a pillow for his head, and, bending his head, headed back out through the tomb archway.

  “Hurry,” Xavier yelled after him, but Nate probably didn’t hear him above the clatter of pumice on the tomb roofs and street stones.

  I was having doubts, serious ones. “I don’t think we should do this on my account. This portable STEWie thing sounds very dangerous.”