DaVinci grinned. “I guess you could hire Bucephalus out as a stud to that neighbor with the mule. She offered you, what, six grand?”
The neighbor in question had offered ten thousand once, when she’d had too much to drink at the Applegate’s Post-Fiesta party.
“I would never,” murmured Jillian.
“Mules can’t breed,” said Halley. “Can they?”
“Herodotus records an instance,” said Edmund.
“Jillian’s neighbor’s mule did,” said DaVinci. “And she’s had her eye on Bucephalus ever since, right Jillian?”
Jillian didn’t reply. If she ever accepted stud fees, it would be for live cover of a champion, not a mule.
“Suit yourself,” said DaVinci, now examining her phone. “Okay. Check this out. According to their website, housing and one meal a day are provided for you at ‘Il Pane Perfetto,’ so you’re covered there. I mean, a meal a day is pretty rough, but Halley’s done it before.”
Jillian’s brows furrowed. “You have? Halley, why didn’t you say something?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Halley. “I eat three meals a day now,” she added.
“Sometimes four,” added Edmund.
Jillian sighed. “Listen, I know I’m not good with spending. And I am worried about emergencies.”
“Don’t have any,” suggested Halley.
“Welcome to our world,” said DaVinci.
“But seriously,” said Halley. “You’re talking about a complete change in your style of living. Are you sure this is what you want?”
Jillian felt tears forming as soon as the question was asked. “Yes,” she said quietly. “More than anything. I have to at least try it. I don’t mind giving up . . . all this.” She plucked at her sweater, ran a hand over her couch, indicated an expensive watercolor on the wall. “Stuff doesn’t make a person happy,” she said softly.
“Amen,” said DaVinci. “Although I wouldn’t mind trying it.”
“Three to four hundred a month is probably a hundred more than you’ll ever need,” said Halley.
“Um, Jillian? Tuition?” DaVinci held up her phone screen. “This place is expensive.”
“I sold my car,” Jillian explained. “That gave me enough to cover tuition and a plane ticket to Italy.”
“Oh,” whispered DaVinci. “Hmm.”
Jillian looked up in time to see Halley glaring at DaVinci, to see DaVinci give a tiny apologetic shrug, to see Edmund looking more puzzled than ever.
“I don’t fly,” she said in explanation to Edmund. “I mean, I haven’t. And I have to fly to go to the school in Italy.”
“What about a cruise ship?” asked DaVinci. “Like when you went to France?”
“I’m short on funds,” said Jillian. “Besides, the only combinations of Amtrak and Trans-Atlantic crossings that would get me there in time depart the West Coast a week before Christmas.”
“Oh,” said DaVinci, eyes wide. She turned to Edmund. “You don’t even want to know what her mom would do if she missed Christmas. Dropping out of school is one thing, but if Jillian absented herself from the ho-ho-ho?”
“Flying is my only option,” Jillian said softly.
“Have you Googled ‘fear of flying’?” asked DaVinci, tapping her phone screen. “There are, like, a million websites devoted to getting you over it.”
Jillian could feel her heart rate picking up at the mention of millions of websites devoted to the fear of flying. At the thought of millions of people just like her, too scared to get on an airplane.
“DaVinci,” murmured Halley.
“No, that’s a great idea,” said Jillian. “I’ll look into it.”
Halley and Edmund left for Los Angeles Saturday evening to avoid Thanksgiving-weekend traffic on Sunday, and DaVinci had promised to take her younger siblings to Solvang to see the holiday decorations, which left Jillian alone with plenty of time to investigate websites offering aid for the flight phobic.
Some sites attempted to normalize the fear of flying, while others categorized it as a psychological disordered behavior. After several hours combing through sites, however, Jillian wasn’t feeling very encouraged about her flight the following day, and by ten p.m., she began to worry she was feeding her fears rather than abating them. She decided to go to sleep and hope for the best.
Sleep, however, proved even more elusive than a cure for the fear of falling out of the sky. She rearranged her pillows and focused on her breath: in and out . . . in and out . . . in and out. Still wide-awake at one, she got out of bed and made a nest for herself on the RELAX couch. She’d heard that thinking about pleasant things helped with insomnia, so Jillian thought about making piecrust with Branson. It was easy, now, to laugh at herself for having been afraid of ruining the Thanksgiving pies. Branson had made that impossible with his unique approach. He’d broken crust construction down to its most basic parts, and once she’d understood what could go wrong and how to prevent it, her fear had evaporated.
Jillian’s eyes flew open.
Maybe this was how she should approach her fear of falling out of the sky. Break flight down into its most basic parts. Learn what kept things in the air, Understand what could go wrong and how it was prevented. She frowned. Who was going to teach her that? It wasn’t like her parents kept Orville and Wilbur Wright on retainer for their travel needs.
She tugged her comforter up around her shoulders. Stared at the outline of a row of palm trees out her window. She could try hang gliding, maybe. There was some sort of hang gliding school that launched people off La Cumbre Pass. She googled “La Cumbre Hang Gliding.”
Jillian shuddered. Running off the edge of a cliff didn’t sound like the right way to deal with a fear of falling. She could barely handle the little “fall” that came with time travel. Although, she’d made some accidental progress there, when she had forgotten to “steel herself” after Edmund and Halley’s wedding . . .
Jillian’s eyes, which had drifted shut, opened again. She had an idea. A better idea than hang gliding, at least. It was probably not a good idea. It was probably a bad idea.
As she sat up, a memory returned, sharp and poignant.
She’d been afraid to let her Dad take the training wheels off her bike. It had only been a few weeks since the fire, and many things had felt scary—things she hadn’t been afraid of before (or since). The problem with her training wheels was that she was embarrassed about them. She wanted to invite her new friends, DaVinci and Halley, over to ride bikes up and down her long drive, but what if she was the only one with training wheels? She had to get them taken off.
But as soon as her Dad had removed the training wheels, Jillian had demanded a demonstration that her bike would, in actual fact, work without training wheels. Her father had obligingly sat on the sparkly purple bike and ridden it around in circles until seven-year-old Jillian had been satisfied.
Eyes wide in her darkened room, she pushed her comforter away. This was what she needed: tangible, physical proof. Not anxiety apps or breathing exercises. Not physics texts or lectures about the principles of flight. Jillian had always liked tangible proof, liked seeing things firsthand. She needed to see someone take off the training wheels and ride the bike in circles around her.
That was going to be expensive, hiring a pilot to put on a private demonstration.
Her earlier idea tickled at her brain again. Her earlier idea would be free.
Swinging her legs out from her nest of blankets, Jillian knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to time travel to witness the first airplane flight and ask the inventors a question or two.
She was up and half-dressed before second thoughts began to assault her. Should she be doing something like this alone? Unrested? What if she got caught? The last fear, at least, was a bit ridiculous. Jules Khan was dead. The place was empty and had been for the past fifteen months. No one was going to “catch” her.
And no one—no one—was more qualified to travel by herself
than she.
The more she considered her idea, the more desperately she wanted to try it. She sure as hell hadn’t gotten the kind of help she needed from the Internet. She needed something real. She had to give this a try. If she did it right now, then by tomorrow at noon, she could step onto her flight with confidence instead of terror.
She grabbed her phone and did a search, discovering the first powered flight had been in December, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Setting down her phone, she reached for her jeans and a bulky sweater and then laughed at herself. Regular clothes weren’t going to cut it in 1903. Fortunately, she had the solution in her attic: a collection DaVinci had called the “Downton Abbey” gowns, assorted wedding and honeymoon outfits that had belonged to Jillian’s great-great-great aunt Beverly. Almost a year ago, at the request of Jillian’s mother, Halley had put tags on the garments, labeling them for date, fiber content, and care instructions.
Jillian clambered up the narrow attic stairs, but as she uncovered the garments and began reading the tags, she saw a flaw in her plan. The honeymoon trousseau was from 1910, not 1903. She remembered Halley saying that fashion had undergone a complete upheaval from 1900 to 1912. If she showed up at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in clothes from seven years in the future, it would be the equivalent of holding a huge “Does Not Belong” sign.
Frowning in frustration, Jillian sank to the attic floor in front of a gorgeous traveling costume—her favorite of them all. She reached for the tag.
“1910, 100% undyed cashmere, brush gently to clean.”
The waist nipped in and angled to a point in front, closing by means of a row of self-fabric buttons. The skirt, smooth in front, was pleated in back and long enough to trail behind. Jillian remembered the swooshing sound the skirt had made when she’d tried it on before. Why couldn’t her great-great-great aunt have gotten married in 1903?
Jillian’s head tilted to one side. Or maybe she could travel a few years later. . . .
She reached for her phone and did another search. This time she learned that although the Wright brothers’ first flight had been in 1903, they’d kept it a near secret. As late as 1906, Scientific American had all but claimed the brothers were liars. It wouldn’t be until 1908, in Le Mans, France, that the world would learn the truth.
1908 . . .
The more she read, the more she realized 1908 was a much better choice, and not just because it would help her avoid a fashion faux pas. The crowds that had turned out in France in 1908 had numbered in the thousands, compared with less than a dozen eyewitnesses in 1903. She could blend in much better in France, wearing clothes that were only two years ahead of fashion. Weren’t the French the leaders in fashion, anyway?
Jillian’s heart began to beat more swiftly. This plan was perfect. She was doing this. Grabbing the cashmere costume, she ran downstairs and out to her rental car.
12
· LITTLEWOOD ·
Wellesley, Florida, the Present
Khan’s question rang in Arthur Littlewood’s mind: Why would you assume I plan to return to 2001?
It had been three hours since Khan had emphatically stated he would not return. His reasons were understandable, if self-centered. That Jones undervalued Khan was plain enough. That Littlewood might achieve far more, far more quickly, if Khan stayed in 2018 was also plain. So if Khan stayed, everyone would be happy, in theory.
But how would this affect history? Littlewood needed time to think through the implications. He needed time to do a little timeline sleuthing. To keep Khan occupied while he sleuthed, Littlewood handed Khan several of his earliest theoretical treatises. The more practical ones—those involving the construction of the singularity device—Littlewood did not share, suspecting Khan would have no scruples stealing his ideas.
Likewise, Littlewood had a feeling Khan wouldn’t have scruples about damaging the timeline if, by remaining here, he did damage the timeline. Littlewood would have to shoulder the burden of the decision.
In the hours after Khan’s arrival, Littlewood hunkered down and examined critical events in history as he knew it. After finding not a single alteration, it occurred to him to check on Khan’s existence from 2001 to the present. What if Khan was actually missing from the historical record after 2001? That was a disturbing thought. Disturbing because Littlewood knew he had contacted Khan in 2006 and again in 2007, asking for his opinion on the stability of history. Khan had rebuffed him at the time, claiming there were no practical applications for temporal rift theory and that he’d left temporal studies altogether, and so would Littlewood if he valued his professional reputation.
In history as Littlewood knew it, Khan was a part of the timeline for at least some of the years between 2001 and the present. But in this timeline, in 2018, was there evidence Khan had existed after 2001? If Littlewood couldn’t find the 2006 and 2007 e-mails, it would indicate Khan had never returned. If he did find them, would the contents of the e-mails have changed, now that Khan of 2006 would have experienced time travel firsthand? It made Littlewood’s brain hurt trying to parse it all.
He checked his e-mail only to find he’d dumped everything prior to 2010. There was no telling what the e-mails might have said, no telling if they’d existed, much less been responded to. Google searches then. That was all he had to establish Khan’s historical existence—and any “proof” Khan would or would not return.
It took only a few searches for Littlewood to establish Khan’s historical existence post-2001. Khan had continued at UCSB in Dr. Jones’s group until 2004. After that, his digital footprint was harder to track, although there seemed to be a property in Montecito. . . .
Littlewood stopped his Google search. He had his answer: at some point Khan had returned. So in spite of what he said now, he would return. Littlewood wasn’t sure it would help his case to point this out. In fact, he was pretty sure that in Khan’s present mood, pointing out to him that he would eventually return might make him dig his heels in. He might refuse to return on principle, which would in turn have indeterminable effects on the historical timeline.
All in all, Littlewood thought gradual, gentle persuasion would serve him better than dictatorial demands.
“Well, Dr. Khan,” Littlewood said at last, “perhaps there are one or two things we could discuss before you go.”
13
· JILLIAN ·
Montecito, the Present
Jillian had made it all the way to Khan’s estate only to realize she’d forgotten her copy of the front door and basement keys. By the time she made it back, it was already after two in the morning, and she was feeling the pressure of time. She wanted to be away well before dawn, and she still had to figure out where in Le Mans, France, it would be safe to appear out of thin air in the year 1908.
Returning with the keys, she drove around to the side of Khan’s house and parked there, out of view to anyone approaching the estate. Not that anyone would, but it was a habit she and her friends had established long ago, just in case. It felt strange to be here without her friends. The place felt more abandoned. More . . . creepy. She pushed the thought aside as she crunched over the gravel. A sound caught her attention, and she froze in place. What was that? After standing completely still for a minute, she decided it must have been a cat or other nocturnal animal.
The motion detector lights by the pool flicked on, and she froze again, straining her eyes to search for anything human size by the pool. Hearing the unmistakable yowling of cats fighting, she breathed out a sigh of relief. A second later, one or both of the cats had flipped a lounge chair onto its side.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jillian strode over to the pool and righted the lounge chair. She didn’t want it looking like someone had been nosing around the estate. A chill ran along Jillian’s shoulders at the thought of what would happen if she were caught sneaking onto the property of a dead man. Not that anyone knew he was dead, but still . . .
When she flipped the chair, she noticed something odd. The
pool wasn’t as brackish-looking as she remembered it having been three days ago. It didn’t look inviting, exactly, but it was less disgusting. How weird.
She shook her head. She was wasting time. Dashing to the front door of the main house, she let herself in and crept down to the basement. She closed the door behind her and walked to the time machine’s podium screen. After a moment, she crossed back to the door and locked it. It was probably silly, but she felt better with the door locked.
Finally she got down to the business of figuring out coordinates for her “landing.” Only then did she realize the “when” was going to be a trickier thing to calculate. Once in France, she would have less than thirty minutes to accomplish two things: (1) observe Wilbur Wright flying his Flyer III and (2) ask him a few questions. But if daily records of his flights existed, she couldn’t find them. For six months, he’d flown demonstrations from the Hunaudières racetrack just outside Le Mans, but the best she could find were a few mentions of particular days he had or had not flown.
She opened the pocket watch she’d grabbed at the last minute. In 1908, it wouldn’t do to check her cell for the time. Her mother kept a collection of family pocket watches and had praised this particular one for keeping time well. When Jillian opened it, she startled. Inside was a picture of Aunt Beverly. Jillian smiled. It felt like a good omen. It must have belonged to her aunt’s husband. Noting the time, already 3:45, she snapped the watch shut.
She needed to get going. She chose a December date where Wilbur Wright had flown eight times. Hopefully she could observe one of the flights.
As Jillian stood on the platform, she felt a familiar excitement running through her. Except for the moments of “falling,” she almost, nearly, liked time travel: the marvel that allowed her to voyage to a world that ought to have been lost to her, recreated in all its tantalizing glory. A little physical discomfort was a small price to pay for a miracle.
A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2) Page 8
