A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2)

by Cidney Swanson

  “It’s funny,” said Halley, “but I always thought the Tudor era was supposed to smell bad, and I haven’t noticed much of that. Except for that first trip to London.”

  “People just assume it smelled bad,” DaVinci said authoritatively. “I mean, yes, the running sewers in the streets of London, for sure those reeked, but people probably didn’t smell that bad, in spite of all the garlic breath and stinky pits we’ve been told to believe in.”

  Jillian raised an eyebrow.

  “The Elizabethans had strict oral hygiene regiments,” continued DaVinci. “They used cloves and mint to keep their breath sweet.”

  Jillian raised her other eyebrow at the novel use of culinary herbs and spices. Although, now that she thought about it, modern toothpaste came in cinnamon and mint.

  “My English professor,” said DaVinci, “actually followed a Tudor hygiene regiment for three months, right down to wearing fine woolen undergarments that never got changed. Apparently wool keeps your pits from stinking, even without daily washing or showers.”

  Jillian tried not to look appalled.

  Halley shrugged. “Makes sense. Wool is very hygienic and breathes well.”

  “Which is more than I can say about this corset,” murmured DaVinci, tugging at her bodice. “Although, beauty before comfort. Only got another few minutes in this crazy outfit, right?”

  Jillian heard the stairs creaking again. “Here comes Edmund,” she murmured. She hoped he’d brought a few of the Yule pies and puddings along with the ale DaVinci requested.

  But when the person climbing the stairs rounded the corner, it wasn’t Edmund. Or . . . not quite Edmund.

  “Ho-la!” said a boy of nine or ten, a small dagger raised in one hand. “Who are you?”

  “Edmund?” whispered Halley, her eyes wide.

  Jillian stared in shock. It was Edmund. Nine-year-old Edmund. Nine-year-old Edmund who needed to go away. They were just minutes away from vanishing into thin air.

  7

  · LITTLEWOOD ·

  Wellesley, Florida, the Present

  He’d brought someone with him. Arthur Littlewood had brought Jules Khan from Santa Barbara nearly two decades ago to Wellesley, Florida, in the present. What did it mean? Thus far, his biggest risk had been to bring back a newspaper from 2007. Well, that and a piece of gum annoyingly stuck to the bottom of one shoe. But this was a person. What were the implications? The repercussions? What had he done?

  And that was quite apart from the question of Khan’s intentions a minute ago.

  Had Khan . . . attacked him? It was too unsettling an idea. Much better to imagine Khan as having demonstrated an enthusiasm out of proportion with normal interactions. Still . . .

  Not trusting himself in such close proximity to the man, Littlewood moved off the platform, leaving Khan to recover at his own pace. Time travel was physically demanding, but Littlewood, a habitué, knew what to expect. Jules Khan did not. This should give Littlewood a minute or two to himself.

  The first order of business was to ascertain whether his inadvertent hitchhiker had caused any changes to the timeline. Methodically, Littlewood began asking his phone the same questions he’d made a habit of checking whenever he returned from the past. (Who was the president of the United States? What was the price of a barrel of crude oil? What was the Dow at?) By the time Littlewood had his answers, (all unaffected by his tagalong, it would appear) Khan had recovered enough to speak.

  “What time is this?” Khan asked, his voice a thick whisper.

  “Ah.” Littlewood hesitated. He had in fact been preparing to answer the question where am I? But Khan hadn’t asked where he was. He hadn’t even asked what time it was. He had asked, What time is this? How oddly perceptive. Littlewood ran a hand nervously through his salt-and-pepper hair.

  “What’s the year?” asked Khan, effectively clearing any doubt in Littlewood’s mind as to Khan’s grasp of the situation.

  “2018,” replied Littlewood. There was nothing to be gained by lying. And then, because Khan looked a little off, he added, “How are you feeling?”

  Khan gave his head a swift shake. A smile appeared on his face. Threatened to consume his face, in fact.

  Placing both hands on his hips, Khan replied, “Vindicated.”

  “Oh. Yes. Quite.” Littlewood could readily imagine exactly how vindicated his unintended guest was feeling at such a moment. It made Littlewood smile, too. “I wanted to tell you, of course—”

  “Did you plan this?” asked Khan, interrupting.

  “Plan to, er, bring you along? Good heavens, no!”

  “Did you know it could happen? Have you . . . gathered . . . others?”

  “Of course not.” The question was a bit insulting. “I take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints.”

  “You really are worried about disrupting space–time,” said Khan. He was still standing on the platform where the two of them had landed only a few minutes ago.

  “Of course I’m worried about it. I risked coming back to a conference full of people who knew me just to show you my equation. To get your opinion.” He was on the verge of telling Khan that the Jules Khan whom Littlewood knew from 2007, his last point of contact, had pooh-poohed the very idea of actual time travel, but something made him hold back. There was a nagging in the back of his mind—a nagging he knew from experience should be paid attention to. He would have to think carefully what to say and what to withhold when it came to the things he “knew” about Khan.

  In any event, right now he had a very live and very real young Jules Khan to deal with. It was simply shocking. He’d had no idea that persons could be transported from the past to the present. And of all the people to bring forward, he had an eager, brilliant Jules Khan, who had practically attacked him for information. What was he going to do?

  He had no earthly idea.

  8

  · JILLIAN ·

  England, 1587

  After a quick glance to Jillian, Halley addressed the nine- or ten-year-old Edmund standing in the minstrels’ gallery before her.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be—I mean, art thou not . . . supposed to be in bed?”

  “Or, um, a-bed?” added DaVinci.

  The boy eyed them defiantly.

  “You have none of you answered me,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Cousins of . . . of thy mother,” said Halley, indicating the young Edmund’s mother below.

  “From Scarborough,” said DaVinci.

  “Scarb’ro?” asked the boy.

  “Mm-hmm,” replied DaVinci. And then, with a wicked gleam in her eye, she added, “Are you going to Scarborough Faire?”

  Jillian tried to cover her laughter with a fake sneeze.

  “What make you here, in the gallery?” the boy asked, less warily now.

  But before Jillian could think of a response (a nonludicrous response), the fully grown Edmund reappeared at the top of the stairs, carrying a tray of drink and food.

  “By God’s wounds,” he murmured, gazing at the boy.

  “Indeed,” said Halley.

  “Not to be a spoil sport,” said DaVinci, “but we’ve got an urgent appointment in less than two minutes.”

  “A most urgent appointment,” agreed Edmund. And then, with an odd look on his face, Edmund the elder handed Edmund the younger a slice of something stuffed with currants and raisins.

  “Your favorite pudding, unless I much mistake?” he asked the boy.

  “Aye,” said the small Edmund, accepting the pudding.

  “Now, then, get thee to thy bedchamber before Nurse finds thee gone,” said Edmund to the boy.

  “One minute, twelve seconds,” murmured DaVinci.

  The boy protested. “But I left hereby a paper of great worth—”

  “It is not here,” said the grown Edmund to the younger. “Thy pamphlet concerning the New World is e’en now fallen behind thy coverlet. Seek it there.”

  The boy’s eyes grew wide.
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  “Quickly, or beware thy nurse!”

  The boy turned tail and sped down the staircase.

  “That was close,” said DaVinci. “We’ve got seconds until we—” DaVinci, having neglected to account for the seconds during which they were frozen prior to travel, was cut off midsentence.

  Jillian, still inhaling the scents of a sixteenth-century Yule, forgot to steel herself for the falling sensation, thereby discovering that unsteeled, she experienced less anxiety than usual. It was something to remember for the future.

  Edmund was already speaking before Jillian had regained her balance in the familiar basement.

  “It was myself I saw when I was a boy! And thou,” he added, gazing at Halley. “And you as well,” he said excitedly, turning to DaVinci and Jillian. “Mine own friends!”

  “Less . . . enthusiasm,” muttered DaVinci, who was clutching her head. “And someone please, for the love of California, undo my top.”

  Halley rushed to DaVinci’s assistance while Edmund continued with an identical level of enthusiasm. “I remember the meeting most well,” he said. “I had not recollected it happened upon this same Yuletide!” He laughed and shook his head. “But I remember how, as a nine-year-old, I thought the ladies and gentleman were strangers, and I demanded to know of them what business they had in my grandfather’s house.”

  “You were a bossy little kid, all right,” murmured DaVinci. Then, with a wink over her shoulder to Halley, who had just finished getting her bodice unlaced, she added, “But he totally turned out okay. So, did any of that grog or whatever it’s called survive the bumpy ride home? I’d like to toast the bride and groom.”

  Edmund handed her a half-empty tumbler of something foamy.

  “It’s called ‘lambswool’ for the fizzy layer on top,” explained Halley, accepting a goblet.

  “To the most adorable couple in four centuries and two continents,” said DaVinci as soon as everyone had a cup. “May you live long and prosperous lives with a dozen or so earls and earlettes to cheer your days.”

  After that toast and a few more, the lambswool was gone, and Jillian turned to Edmund. She was still trying to wrap her mind around the very strange “time loop” her sixteenth-century friend had experienced. “So you can actually . . . remember meeting all of us? Remember from when you were a kid?”

  “Indeed, lady,” replied Edmund. “The young lord, as I then thought him, told me true where I might recover my lost treatise on the New World.”

  “But . . . you were the one who, um, told yourself, weren’t you?” asked Halley.

  “Aye,” replied Edmund.

  “How did you know where it was?” asked Halley.

  “Because he’d already told himself,” answered Jillian. “Our visit was a part of the timeline. Khan speculated such a thing was possible. That you could meet yourself. That a sort of unbreakable loop would be created.” She shook her head. “And you’re sure you already knew this . . . this past before it happened just now?”

  “Indeed,” he replied.

  “He told us about it before it happened,” said Halley. “Remember? About the ladies and gentleman taking over his private hangout?”

  “And I do recollect most clearly how the gentleman directed me to where my paper lay hidden. After he had given me a slice of our cook’s excellent Yule pudding.”

  “This is so crazy,” said Jillian.

  “In fact,” said Edmund, “I knew, even as I was rounding the stairwell to rejoin you, that I would discover there my young self. The memory returned unbidden before it happened.”

  “Because it had already happened,” murmured Jillian.

  It was hard to grasp. No wonder Khan had been so tentative in his discussion of the subject. Jillian felt a sudden yearning for ten minutes of Khan’s time—for the chance to ask a few questions. But even as she wished it, she realized what she was saying. The man had been just crazy enough to kill someone for knowing what she knew. She shuddered, grateful that there was no chance any of them would meet Jules Khan again.

  9

  · KHAN ·

  Wellesley, Florida, the Present

  In his second year as a bright, young graduate student, Khan’s advisor had helped him get a paper accepted into a conference titled “Nonlinear Dynamics, Chaos, and Fractals in Engineering Science.” The conference had been held in London, which had necessitated a passport and a trip across the Atlantic. While his advisor drank his way across the ocean seated up in first class, Khan had slept in the back of the same aircraft, claiming three of the four seats in his row before the other person in the row thought to do so. Khan had always been good at ensuring his needs were met.

  When he’d arrived in London, he’d felt like a fish out of water. He’d gone to sleep flying across a country where he knew the social customs, knew the laws, knew how to pay for things, and knew which side of the road cars drove on. He’d woken up in a country where he knew none of these things. And yet everyone around him spoke English, and the engineers and physicists were no different than if he’d been in Austin or Pasadena instead of London. It had been the oddest combination of things expected alongside things unexpected.

  Gazing around the 2018 laboratory of Dr. Arthur Littlewood, Khan experienced the same strange mixture of the familiar and the incomprehensible. At a casual glance, it looked like a lab. Like any lab. An ordinary lab. In any university or research facility.

  But as he looked more closely, he saw things that weren’t ordinary. At least not ordinary to someone from 2001. Littlewood seemed to have an extremely slim PalmPilot that was voice operated, no stylus to be seen. Improbably, it seemed to double as a cellular telephone or some sort of walkie-talkie. When Khan looked around the room for PCs, he saw only laptops. Slimmed down versions of the laptops he knew. He saw something he thought might be a printer, but again, it was smaller, slimmer than he would have expected. It felt as if he’d stepped onto the set of Star Trek: Voyager.

  And then there was the time machine. The time machine! Littlewood, who was now glued to his Palm Pilot (or whatever it was) had asked Khan to step away from the machine while he made some calls. Khan was at present physically restraining himself to keep from touching it. He’d tucked both hands under his upper arms while he waited for Littlewood to finish whatever he was doing.

  While Khan waited, feeling like a racer awaiting a starting gun, a series of questions began to trouble him.

  Could he return to 2001?

  What would happen if he did? What would happen if he didn’t?

  And most importantly: did he want to?

  He wasn’t going anywhere until he’d had a good look at 2018, that much was certain. He strolled over to the single window in the room. It was the sort of window placed in a basement to allow a small bit of daylight inside. Sure enough, the window looked onto a sunken stairwell. As Khan looked outside, he noted some of the ugliest university buildings ever constructed. He frowned. There wasn’t a tree or shrub to be seen in any direction. It didn’t really look like a university at all. In fact, the buildings outside looked more like industrial warehouses. Or maybe light manufacturing. Where was he?

  He glanced back to Littlewood, who was murmuring something he’d already said seven or eight times. Khan had stopped counting the repetitions of “What have I done? What have I done?”

  But if one took the question purely as expressing curiosity rather than regret, it was an interesting question. Khan’s brows drew together. What had Littlewood done? Khan had obviously been transported with Littlewood because they’d been in physical contact. Had Littlewood failed to foresee this possibility? Khan thought back to the document he’d skimmed through. If Littlewood had managed to tug open a pocket into the past, there was no reason that pocket might not expand to contain them both. Littlewood ought to have anticipated this possibility. Not that Khan was complaining about his glimpse into the future.

  He was, however, growing impatient for a few answers.

  “Dr. Littl
ewood,” he said, as soon as the professor finished his most recent “call” (the PalmPilot had to be a cellular phone).

  But before Khan could decide which question to ask first, Littlewood strode to his side.

  “Away from the window, I think,” he said. “Just in case.”

  Khan wasn’t sure why it was important no one see him, but he allowed himself to be led away from the window. Maybe Littlewood wasn’t concerned with Khan being seen, though—maybe he was worried about what Khan might see. Which would be ludicrous. The only things worth his attention were surely to be found inside the lab and not outside.

  “We need to discuss your . . . situation. This is all rather new to me. I had theorized space–time would refuse outright to transport a person out of the time in which he belonged. . . .” Littlewood broke off, as if distracted by his thoughts on the subject.

  “How many times have you traveled?” asked Khan, taking advantage of the break. “How far back can you go?” It would be something to see the origins of the known universe, the big bang itself. . . .

  But rather less survivable without a habitable Earth from which to observe it.

  “2001’s the farthest I’ve attempted so far,” replied Littlewood.

  Khan raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t very adventurous. Khan tried to imagine where he would go first, what he would want to observe.

  “Err on the side of caution is my motto,” Littlewood added. “Speaking of which, as long as you’re here, I thought we might discuss a few issues in temporal inertia theory? If you don’t mind staying an hour or two? I’ve cleared my schedule.” He smiled nervously. “That took some doing. It’s the third week of classes here. Almost October. Do you mind? Staying?”

  “No,” said Khan, absorbing the fact that Littlewood seemed to assume going back was possible. That was comforting. Although . . . why should he be in a hurry to return to checking coffee urns and distributing gifts to keynote speakers when he could engage with a real temporal scientist? There was a talk he was supposed to give, more of a poster session Q & A, really. No one would miss him if he didn’t show.