by K W Taylor
The girl’s heart-shaped face grew ashen. “Damn,” she exhaled, her smile melting into a frown. Her bob of shiny black hair fluttered as she turned to look at the wall clock. “It’s way past time.”
Ben and Kris stared at each other, eyes wide. The unthinkable had happened—Brimley Wheaton failed to appear for his retrieval.
Ben felt an uncomfortable moistness that he knew from experience would overwhelm his carefully applied cologne. When Ben was experiencing the very heights of panicky stress, which was more frequent than he cared to admit, he had the embarrassing tendency to sweat through all his layers of cotton, silk, and velvet.
Since giving up his dissertation, Ben’s stresses were minor, to do with getting the paychecks out on time and being impeccable in his customer service or attempting—and usually failing—to chat up an attractive lady at the local tearoom. It was years since he had broken things off with Lily, and there was no one serious since.
At the agency, problems had arisen before, but not this specific one. Doctor Vere was reticent on the matter, but several weeks earlier, a client had some difficulty returning from Roanoke. Vere had still been able to retrieve her, but the debriefing session was cancelled. Kris, in particular, voiced her disappointment.
“Trust me, Miss Moto,” Vere had instructed, “what our client was endeavoring to do was unpleasant. She has no more information about the mystery than we do even at present.”
But that was the only hiccup in several years of providing services. To have another—perhaps more serious—glitch was dire. If this one involved a botched retrieval, anything could have happened to the missing Mister Wheaton.
Ben’s mind raced with the possibilities. Death? Death in an era without medicine, when leeches were cutting edge, when people drank from the same rivers they let their cattle excrete in? This was the kind of danger they’d subjected an innocent civilian to.
What the hell am I doing with my life? What right do I have to endanger these people?
~
For the next twenty-four hours, there was a flurry of panic and yelling and sleeplessness. No one went home. No one ate. It was all full of stress and bloodshot eyes and half-finished cups of coffee. Telephone receivers were lifted and put down without numbers being dialed. There was no precedent for this level of disaster, nothing in the company manual. What to tell the next of kin? Ben dreaded the conversation that might follow. A new flash of sweat beaded up on the back of his slim neck. He fished out a handkerchief from a trouser pocket and mopped under his collar.
“You’ve got to get him back,” Vere said. “Son, there’s nothing else for it.”
Ben was just beginning to make the preparations for installing himself in the machine, much to his reluctance, when a whooshing sound came from the direction of his office.
At first, it was a great relief to Ben when his client appeared in a puff of soot and cinder. What surprised the agency’s director were the man’s location—the top of Ben’s desk—and his state of dress, which was something resembling either a very short monk’s robe or a very long potato sack. Wheaton’s feet were bare and dirty, and Ben cringed at the thought of twelfth-century detritus being smeared across his fresh ink blotter. Ben’s cat looked from Wheaton to Ben and then gave a disgruntled hiss.
“Well, that’s a weight off.” Ben said. He tisked the hissing cat. “Hush, Bodhi.” He urged the feline away from the desk, strode to the older man, and held his hand out to him. “We’d given you up for dead.” Ben hoped the client read his coldness as casual, even as a strangling panic seized his body. What could have happened to delay Wheaton?
Wheaton’s eyes darted, rabbit-scared, around the room. “Where am I?” His gaze fell on Ben. “Oh, Mister Jonson, thank goodness.” He took Ben’s hand and let himself be helped down from the desk. Once on the floor, Wheaton bounced from spot to spot, his gait springy despite his size. He beamed at the younger man. “My, but that was a heart-stopping turn.” Wheaton was filthy, covered in muck and dust and God knew what else, and for a moment Ben felt pristine by comparison in his sweat-soaked business finery. Wheaton grinned at Ben. “It was exhilarating, that’s what it was.”
Ben looked at his client. “You know in a bit I’ll have to suppress the memory,” he reminded him. “We can discuss the events at length, and we’ll replace it—”
“I recall the sales pitch,” Wheaton interrupted. “I’ll think I had a restful spa weekend or some such.” He nodded. “I know, but blimey, the things I saw.” He elbowed Ben in the ribs. “The ladies. I know I wasn’t there for the ladies, but what a lovely surprise.”
Ben’s face grew hot. At a loss for words, he gestured to the outer room. “Let’s have a chat, then.”
After a short rest, Wheaton was much more appropriately attired in a loose white dress shirt and mock equestrian breeches. He lounged by the enormous fieldstone hearth for his debriefing. The rest of the staff of Jonson’s Exotic Travel was there as well. Doctor Vere joined Ben on the settee opposite, cups of tea placed into their waiting hands by their assistant. After serving, Kris proceeded to splay her lithe form out on the rug, half-reclined into something resembling a modified supta baddha konasana position, legs tucked to her sides. Bodhi nestled beside her and began to purr.
Ben marveled at Kris’s impossibly bendy young form, but then quickly shoved the thought away. Not only was she his employee, the young ladies who occasionally squired her away to mid-afternoon tea made it clear to Ben that he was decidedly not her type. Still, he loved the beauty of how her hair shone blue-black in the firelight.
“So did you find out whether the kids were aliens or not?” Kris asked Wheaton.
Vere allowed his foot to swing into her arm.
“Ow! I was just asking what we were all thinking.”
“Young lady, that was impertinent,” Vere said.
“Miss Moto doesn’t care about being impertinent,” Ben pointed out to his colleague. That was what they all loved about her, after all, even Vere, despite his gruffness toward the young woman. “Mister Wheaton, please,” Ben continued. “In your own time.”
Wheaton sat up straighter, squaring his shoulders and putting his teacup down. “As you know, I grew up near Woolpit. I lived with the legends of the green children my whole life, and when I came into my inheritance, I wanted nothing more than to find out the definitive answer, once and for all.”
“But you went out on the town with a bunch of old-timey chicks instead?” Kris asked. She slid out of Vere’s reach when it looked as if she would be kicked again. “I swear, man, you’re gonna lose a limb,” she warned.
Vere waved a hand at Kris. “My dear, I could earn a Nobel Prize in Physics without the use of a single finger.”
“I’ll give you a single finger,” Kris muttered.
“Sir, please continue,” Ben said to Wheaton. “If you don’t, I’ll have to listen to more of this and worse.”
Wheaton chuckled and went on. “Right, well. I found out what I wanted about the mystery.” He grinned, flashing a mouthful of tea-yellowed teeth. “And here I am, back safely to the twenty-second century, inquisitiveness fully sated.” He picked up his tea and took a long sip. “You’re welcome to do your bit erasing this knowledge, as I know is your process.” He sighed, gazing off at the ceiling as if examining constellations. “For it’s not the end result, you know, so much as the hunt for the knowing.” Another sip. “And now I do know, much to my immense satisfaction.”
Wheaton looked proud and inhaled the scent of his tea. “Ah, very good, Miss Moto. What do you put in this? Very fragrant.”
Ben cleared his throat. “It’s customary before we begin the process to at least, well—”
“Tell us,” Kris interrupted. “All the clients, they get mindwiped so it doesn’t get out into the world, all the conspiracy theories, cryptids, cults…but we get to know, usually.” She looked at Ben. “I mean, I guess it’s not a rule that we get to know, but I just always thought…”
“No o
ne hasn’t wanted to tell us before,” Ben said.
Vere tapped the side of his head. “Our minds are steel vaults, young man. We’re master secret keepers.” Vere didn’t meet Ben’s eyes but continued to look at Wheaton instead. “Rest assured we don’t divulge anything.” He leaned back in his chair. “Personally, I only care about the physics of time travel, so whatever unsolved mystery you unraveled is of no consequence to me.”
“Regardless,” Wheaton said, “it’s not a matter of trust. It just seems a bit unfair, you getting to keep the memory while I don’t. I mean, do I have to tell you?”
“Of course not, sir,” Ben immediately assured him. He rose. “If you’re ready, then, we’ll get on with the erasure.”
Wheaton put his teacup down and got to his feet. He sighed and got a faraway look in his eyes. “The legend said the green children came out of the wood and startled the village with their strange appearance, odd manner of speech, and gifts of precognition. Over time, theories changed from angels to aliens to visitors from another dimension.”
There was a sudden change in his movements, a shifting and turning and then a terrible clicking accompanied by a flash of metal. “They were green, after all.”
Wheaton trained the gun on all three of the agency’s employees in turn.
“I’m going to leave here with everything intact,” he said. His voice was even and his face relaxed, but there was a hint of hardness in his eyes. “And none of you will stop me.”
It was true. None of them did stop him as Wheaton sprinted out, still in full possession of the key to a piece of unresolved—if unremarkable—history.
Probably unremarkable. Hopefully. Yes, most likely totally insignificant. Still…
“That gun…did anybody else think that looked a little weird?” Kris asked.
“Kind of,” Ben agreed. “Well, yeah, weird. Not like any kind of thing we see these days.”
“I search everyone’s belongings upon check-in and -out,” Vere confirmed. “I can’t imagine where he was hiding it.”
Kris shuddered. “The green children gave it to him.”
“From their home planet?” Ben asked. “Kris, that’s just a legend. Research indicates those children were Flemish, not Martian. The citizens of Woolpit didn’t recognize their features or dialect so the kids only seemed alien.”
“Lots of nutritional deficiencies could give one a green pallor,” Vere added. “I’m sure it was all perfectly natural.”
“That was no Colt forty-five is all I’m sayin’,” Kris said. “You want to put words in my mouth and say I’m calling it an alien ray gun, I’m cool with that.” She held her hands up and gave her boss a little shrug. “So what we got for this afternoon, huh?”
Ben wandered to the window, lifted the lacy, sheer curtain, and gazed out. Somewhere, a man roamed the city streets with dangerous knowledge. “An FBI agent wants to know what happened to D.B. Cooper,” he murmured, sounding distracted.
“Do you think that’s for the best, Benoy?” Vere asked.
Ben let his hand drift off the lace edge of the curtain. “Probably not, Eddy.” He gave the doctor a weak smile. “Probably not.”
Friday, August 6, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE
Violet Lessep smoothed her skirt before ringing the bell. The building was unassuming and quaint, and that comforted her. She was already outlaying a lot of cash for this trip; to also be visiting some creepy underground lair or big shiny evil-looking glass-enclosed corporation would have just made her more self-conscious than she already was.
When she’d secured the last few hundred she’d needed for the down payment, her father was skeptical. “Kiddo, you already run around the world for the sake of truth, justice, and the Empiricist way. Can’t you be happy with your FBI work? Why you gotta have adventures in your personal life, too, huh?”
“Oh, Pop, you’re too damn practical.” Violet kissed his bald head and scampered out in a manner undignified for her age. But Violet never felt her age, and even with a fancy, important job with a fancy, important government agency, she was prone to whimsy and ebullience. And even if her down-to-earth dad disagreed with the expense of her vacation, he still loaned her the last bit of cash.
Such a softie.
A girl much Violet’s same height and build, though a decade younger, swung the door open. Eyes the color of Violet’s name greeted her, big ones fringed with thick black lashes and eyeliner that gave them a cat-like look. “Hey, you must be Agent Lessep,” the girl said. She took a step backward and held the door wider. “I’m Kris. Mister Jonson is expecting you.”
“Thank you.”
On her quick spin through the front parlor into a back conference room, Violet saw only a blur of knick-knacks and polished wood and brass. This area was more traditionally appointed in a business motif, all laminate plastic tables and uncomfortable, institutional chairs. The walls were a bland shade of off-white and there was the subtlest scent of ozone in the air, as if it were pumped in artificially.
Kris plopped down in a chair opposite Violet and put a thick binder on the table. “So, you want to find out what happened to D.B. Cooper,” Kris said. She paged through the first few sections of the binder. A scratching sounded at the door behind Kris. She sighed and rose to admit a cat, who proceeded to leap up on the conference table.
“Ignore him,” Kris said. “You’re not allergic, are you?”
“Hmm? No, no,” Violet replied.
“You were saying, about Cooper, you wanted to know what happened to him?” Kris asked.
“Well, no, not precisely,” Violet said. “It’s not so much the what as who.”
Kris nodded. “That’ll make a difference when we send you,” she said.
“Not where?” Violet asked.
“Did you not…” Kris’s voice trailed off and she laughed. “Oh, wait, wait. What…we thought you’d gotten a referral here.”
Violet squared her shoulders. “I did. One of my supervisors used your service.”
“Oh, but if they’ve already been here, no wonder you don’t know exactly…” Kris whistled. “Hoo-boy, you’re in for some interesting news, lady.” She flipped the binder shut and patted it. “You’ll want to start reading this, cover to cover. There’s more training after you’ve read that. We leave clients with an urge to refer inquisitive friends here, so you must know someone who had a great trip he can’t remember.”
“But wait, training? For a conference on profiling?”
Kris shook her head. “No,” she replied. “Training for time traveling.”
Kris rose and exited the room. Violet heard the door snap shut and then lock from the outside.
What the hell was this? Violet’s boss, Jason, came back from what he claimed was a profiling conference with all kinds of new inspiration for cracking cold cases. “And it was all thanks to these guys,” he’d said, handing Violet a card. “It costs a pretty penny, but it’s worth it.”
Violet thought of Jason, of their hands touching as the business card passed from his palm to hers, of his sandy hair and sad, soulful eyes. If this was real, if this place was what it said it was and Jason had sent her here…where did he go? For how long? She tried to remember if he’d had more laugh lines when he returned than when he left.
Maybe. Just a hint. And was there a streak of silver in his hair that wasn’t before?
Violet scrabbled around in her purse now for the card. “Jonson’s Exotic Travel,” same as the sign outside. “For the adventure of a lifetime.”
That’s when Violet noticed that the final four letters of the last word were in a slightly heavier font.
Time. Adventure. Exotic. Oh, jeez, this can’t be real.
She swung the binder over to the expanse of tabletop in front of her. There was nothing on the cover, nothing pronouncing the mystery within, and yet the first page laid it all out.
“By now you’re probably thinking we’re con artists,” it read, “but we’re excited to announce that it’s true. Ti
me travel is real. It’s possible. And you will be in another month, day, and year in the past before sunset. You may spend hours or weeks there, but when you return, you’ll resume your old life as if nothing ever happened.
“But you will, actually, be changed.
“Because at Jonson’s Exotic Travel, we specialize in the knowledge-hunter, the thrill-seeker, the person with a nagging desire to know the unknowable.
“We help you solve a mystery.”
Violet exhaled, not even realizing she’d been holding her breath as she read. My God, was it true? Everything in her training told her no, this was a con, this was a scientific impossibility. Didn’t some people with a particle accelerator prove decades ago that nothing could move faster than the speed of light? And didn’t you have to go faster than the speed of light to travel in time?
“You’d think so.”
Violet jumped. A young man stood in the now-open doorway, studying her. He was of South-Asian descent and had wild dark hair and thick eyebrows. His velvet blazer looked soft to the touch but also somewhat frayed around the hems. His voice was deep, deeper than Violet imagined someone with his boyish looks would have.
Violet blinked. “Was I thinking out loud?” she asked the man as she stood up.
He smiled and nodded. “You wonder how we actually do the time travel thing, hmm?” He strode across the room and stretched a hand out to her. “I’m Jonson, Ben Jonson.”
Violet shook his hand. “You own this?” she asked.
“I own the building and the business,” he replied. “But my partner owns the tech.”
“Tech,” Violet said. “So…”
“Yes. It’s true. My partner owns and operates a time machine.”
“You think so, but I’m a rational person, Mister Jonson. I have a really hard time believing that.”
“It’s easier to think I’m crazy?” Ben asked. “Go ahead. Sometimes I think I am, but I know too much.”
