As she stared at the words, something tugged inside her belly.
Not a quitter.
She wasn’t a quitter. Not when she really wanted something. Her mother was right about that. Jillian picked up the card, trying to read it with more objectivity. Some day you will thank your father . . . No, she didn’t think she would. If you quit college now, you’ll always regret it. No, she didn’t think she would. The problem was, her parents, and especially her mom, barely knew their daughter anymore. And as busy as they were, they didn’t have the time to get to know her. Sure, they recognized she “wasn’t a quitter,” but her mom seemed convinced Jillian would be happiest staying at Cal. How could anyone who knew her believe that?
Her parents were wrong about what would make Jillian happy or grateful or fulfilled. If there was one thing she was sure about, it was that marketing was not what she wanted to spend the rest of her life doing. She read the letter again and saw it in a different light. It was a little manipulative. Pushy. Insistent. Jillian shook her head. She had no problem believing her parents loved her, that they wanted what they thought was best for her, but the truth was, they didn’t know her. And that meant they didn’t know what was best for her.
Tossing the card into her trash, she repacked her overnight bag and drove to the Santa Barbara Airport.
Jillian’s pulse picked up as soon as she saw the exit sign indicating the airport. Small steps, she told herself, flicking her blinker and exiting. Her stomach began to twist when she left her rental car, following signs to the terminal. Small steps, she told herself again.
But by the time she’d entered the terminal itself, panic had set in. She couldn’t stop thinking about Wilbur Wright’s plane. It didn’t seem to matter that Wright had landed safely. Jillian was stuck in the emotion of the memory and not in its outcome: the shock of the engine shutting off, the terror of the wheels failing to extend.
Shortness of breath, hammering heart, nausea, consuming terror—all of it descended on her without mercy. She told herself to think about something else, anything else, but her mind replayed the moment in Le Mans again and again, and her nervous system continued to respond to the memory with panic.
In the end, she couldn’t even get herself in line for security.
Her condition was getting worse, not better. Her small steps were taking her in the wrong direction. She left the building and crouched in an out-of-the-way corner, shivering in the sunshine, waiting for the panic to recede.
By 12:25, having watched her plane depart without her, she’d recovered enough to rent another car to drive back to Berkeley. US 101-N moved like a slow river, swollen with Thanksgiving traffic creeping along at thirty miles per hour, giving her a long, long time in which to consider her failures. Her failure to get on the plane seemed as illogical as ever, but she was able to see that her lack of sleep might have made things worse. Just north of Atascadero, she switched to considering her failure to meet with Wilbur Wright. It still seemed like a brilliant idea, but Jillian had to admit she’d been a victim of poor planning. For a consummate planner from a long line of consummate planners, this was evident.
She should have known better. She’d gone back in time with virtually no plan, counting on a conversation with someone who’d been dead for over a hundred years, someone who didn’t know her, someone she had no ability to compel to take ten minutes out of his busy day to soothe her fears. She crept toward Gilroy, thinking of everything that had gone wrong. It all came down to poor planning. She hadn’t had the time or the information necessary to make a solid plan. She would have needed to know Wilbur Wright’s exact schedule that day, but if the records existed, she didn’t know where to find them.
But it wasn’t only that she didn’t know Wright’s schedule. Even if she had known it, she was a stranger, and Wright had lived in a formal age. She wouldn’t have gotten far without an introduction. An introduction Everett might have provided . . .
She’d rather not think about Everett.
Not about his clear blue eyes tipped up to the clear blue heavens. Not about his gravelly laughter. Not about the fresh scent of citrus that clung to him. Not about the scarf she’d tossed in her bag without questioning whether it was a good idea or not.
No, she’d rather not think about Everett. He might be hot . . . okay, he totally was, but in the end he was nothing more—and nothing less—than an entitled abuser of children’s rights.
She tried to think about finals. Her paper for History of Ethics in Business. Maybe she would research child labor laws in the 1900s. She occupied herself with this idea for a while, but it was no use; somewhere north of Gilroy, Jillian’s thoughts drifted back to her failed trip to 1908.
After replaying the trip in her mind six or seven times, she realized something. Something important. She had the information she needed to make a solid plan. She had it now at least. She knew Wright’s schedule—or at least part of it—for one day in 1908. She knew it because she’d been there. Armed with this information, she could make a plan. A better plan. A much better plan. And, yes, she could stoop to taking advantage of Everett. To get an introduction to Wilbur Wright, she could absolutely stoop. The Connecticut Randolphs? Why, yes, Mr. Randolph, the family name does sound familiar . . . we must have met at some debutante ball or wherever teenagers meet in the early twentieth century.
Her heart racing with excitement, she considered turning around for Santa Barbara, but then, with an enormous yawn, she admitted she was barely awake enough to finish the drive to turn in her rental car. If she wanted to do this right, she should start by getting enough rest. And then she should make a solid plan. A plan that laid out her activities minute by minute, the way her mother planned out Christmas Day. Between now and the end of the semester, there were three weeks. Well, two and a half if she left right after her last final.
She didn’t see herself sticking around after that last final. She couldn’t wait to say goodbye to Berkeley. A wave of frustration passed through her as she remembered her mother’s letter. Her mother’s insistence that Jillian would do what was right. Well, she would do what was right, and a degree and job in marketing was not right for her. That was her parents’ dream, not hers. It was completely unfair that she had this level of expectation from the two people who ought to have cared about her dreams the most. DaVinci’s parents didn’t try to make her do what they thought was best. Halley’s mom, well, Jillian supposed her parents came off looking great compared to Inga Mikkelsen. But still, Jillian’s parents pushed and insisted and wheedled instead of supporting her.
Everyone needs a degree nowadays, dear.
But this wasn’t true. Branson didn’t have a degree. What if Jillian’s ambition was to be just like Branson? She could imagine the storm that would follow that conversation. Her mother would cover her mouth with one hand, as though Jillian had used a bad word. Her dad would frown and lecture her about responsibility and privilege.
But that was the point! She didn’t want her privilege. Okay, it was handy to have unlimited charging privileges on her American Express, but the things she really wanted had nothing to do with unlimited spending. She struck the steering wheel of her rental car with the flat of her palm. She wanted to spend all day in a kitchen somewhere, experimenting with flour and water, yeast and milk. Creating the perfect frangipane tart. Enrobing dozens of identical petit fours with ganache. Turning a perfect loaf of sourdough out of a banneton. Sharing her creations with others. Watching as smiles of delight lit up their faces. She wanted the freedom to be Branson if that was what she chose!
A steady trickle of angry tears kept her awake for the remaining drive to the rental car return in Berkeley. By the time she’d taxied back to her apartment, one thing was clear: she was following her dream, not her parents’.
And that meant she had to conquer her fear of flying.
19
· KHAN ·
Wellesley, Florida, the Present
Littlewood steadfastly refused to allow K
han to travel in time, and Khan had grown more and more resentful of this as the weeks sped past. He kept his anger to himself, however, taking his small revenges with Littlewood’s favorite things. His latest theft, the prized fountain pen, sat in his pocket still, two days after it had first “gone missing.”
It had been the perfect item to take; it was personally engraved and irreplaceable.
It was also now a critical part of an experiment Khan was running without informing Littlewood.
Yesterday, Littlewood had finally broken down and brought something back with him—something other than Jules Khan, that was. He’d brought back a Mars bar from a journey to 1974.
“Delicious,” Khan had said, eating the evidence.
Littlewood had grinned. “And it answers the question of perishable matter from one time to another.”
“As if there were any question.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.”
He’d been all but certain items, as well as persons, would travel forward, leaving their original timeline. What he wanted to know was whether the same items also remained in their original timeline. Did space–time maintain historical continuity through duplication?
He hoped the fountain pen experiment would provide a definitive answer.
The pen had been given to Littlewood upon the conferral of his doctoral degree by none other than Dr. E. D. Robertson, the Nobel laureate, and engraved with Littlewood’s name and the year of his graduation. Littlewood kept the pen in a leather pocket protector that shifted with his changes of clothing, but occasionally he left it sitting on his desk, which was how Khan had acquired it.
“By the way, did you find that pen you lost?” asked Khan, eager to push his experiment forward.
“No,” replied Littlewood, frowning. “I need to check at home. I probably left it there.”
Two days later, it was still missing.
“Where were you when you last remember using it?” asked Khan.
Littlewood crossed his arms and huffed.
“Just trying to be helpful,” muttered Khan. “You could always retrieve it like you did that Mars bar.”
Littlewood grunted something about the time machine not being a toy, but Khan smiled. The idea had been planted, and he was confident he could help it take root and eventually bear fruit.
Another day passed, and Littlewood still hadn’t found his pen.
“It’s just a pen,” said Khan. The remark was as targeted as a native shopping ad and rather more effective.
“It is not just a pen,” exclaimed Littlewood. “It was given to me by Dr. E. D. Robertson—”
Khan tuned him out, grunting sympathetically once Littlewood had finished his five-minute explanation of why the pen was not just a pen.
The next day, Khan had to endure accounts of how Littlewood had torn up his bedroom, his kitchen, his bathroom. How he’d scoured his study, his campus office, and, of course, his desk in the lab they both worked in.
On Day Eight, Khan handed Littlewood a “replacement” pen, the nib of which Khan may have slightly damaged to nudge Littlewood in the right direction. Littlewood tried to use it a few times before “losing” it down the storm drain at the bottom of the stairwell outside the lab.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Khan on Day Nine. “I can get you another—”
“No, no,” said Littlewood, raising a hand as if to fend off future gifts. “It’s just . . . I miss my pen.”
“I’m sure it was very special,” said Khan. “Where do you last remember seeing it?”
The lab was the last place Littlewood could remember having seen the pen. After nearly twelve days without it, Littlewood’s resistance to alternative methods of pen-recovery were sufficiently low that Khan judged he could force Littlewood to take the next step.
“If it matters so much to you, why not travel back to last week and retrieve it from your desk?” asked Khan.
Littlewood frowned. “To the last time I know I had it . . .”
Khan shrugged in what he hoped was a sympathetic manner.
Within another twenty-four hours, Littlewood had decided enough was enough and agreed the only sensible thing was to send himself back December 1, 2018, arriving at night so as to avoid alarming his past self.
“You’ll be stuck there for twenty-five and a half hours if you go back,” said Khan, who had already run the numbers.
“Twenty-five? That doesn’t sound right. I’m only going back two weeks. Did you account for the critical point?”
Khan froze. It was not like him to be forgetful, but he had been. He had completely forgotten to factor in the critical point—that point where, in visits to recent history, the length of stays achieved a maximum and turned a slight corner. Instead of continuing to grow at a steady rate, the length of stays shrank ever so slightly. Quickly he reran the numbers.
“Make that twenty-three point seven hours,” he said tersely.
And then, collecting himself, he added, “Are you sure it’s worth it? For a pen?” The taunt was just enough to settle Littlewood into stubborn insistence.
“It was a very special pen,” Littlewood replied. “Besides, I have final exams to grade. If I bring them along, I can do that as well on the first of December as I could today.”
“You could hole up in the spare office at the far end of the building,” suggested Khan. “So that you wouldn’t bother, uh, past us.”
“Yes. Good thinking. I can’t quite wrap my head around how it would play out, seeing oneself in the past—”
“Probably best not to think about it,” said Khan. “Maybe you should reconsider.”
Littlewood looked gloomy. “I want my pen.”
Half an hour later, Littlewood stood on the platform between the Tesla coils, clutching papers to grade and murmuring justifications for his action right up till the moment he vanished.
Khan removed the fountain pen from his pocket and examined it. Scribbled his name on the back of an envelope with it. It was a nice pen. Now all Khan had to do was wait and see if the stolen pen disappeared or remained when Littlewood returned with the original pen.
20
· KHAN ·
Wellesley, Florida, the Present
Khan had nearly twenty-four hours alone in Littlewood’s laboratory. Nearly a full day of nerve-racking hours waiting for evidence that would either confirm or discredit what he was already thinking of as “Khan’s law of temporal inertia.” He needed something to do. A distraction. Unfortunately, it was far less entertaining to misplace Littlewood’s things when the man wasn’t there in the room with him.
Khan sighed. Twenty-three hours and forty-two minutes to go. Littlewood had left him with a task, and Khan turned to it. Anything to make the time pass until the fountain pen either returned . . . or did not.
He was supposed to investigate seismic activity in Santa Barbara, California, to see if it was at all similar to the sort of low-level seismic activity caused by their use of the singularity device. Last week, Littlewood had asked Khan to investigate seismic activity in Italy, Alaska, and Indonesia for the same reason. Khan had found nothing to suggest temporally induced mini-quakes in any of those places. He was sure he wouldn’t find it in Santa Barbara, either. Earthquakes were commonplace in Southern California; Khan had weathered two earthquakes in Santa Barbara. There must have been ten or twelve more in the intervening years.
It was only Littlewood being hypercautious. Again. There was no way Jones’s group had been secretly building a time machine—a singularity device, rather. (He hated when Littlewood called it a “time machine.”)
“Minus ten points for Slytherin,” he muttered, penalizing himself for the slip-up with a reference to a rather silly book Littlewood had foisted upon him for cultural literacy. What a waste of time that had been.
Khan sent e-mails requesting access to the geological activity data he would need to prove to Littlewood he’d conducted a thorough investigation. That done, he checked his watch.
Twenty-three hours and twenty-seven minutes to go.
He stared at the singularity device as though he could will it to drag Littlewood back earlier—or make time pass more swiftly. Why hadn’t he suggested Littlewood go back to his own stupid graduation and steal the pen from that time? It would have landed him back in a fraction of the time. In less than an hour, if Khan was any good at doing math in his head. He groaned at the thought. Why hadn’t he suggested it? But, no—it wouldn’t have worked. Littlewood wouldn’t have agreed to making a change so far back in time.
“Heaven forbid we disturb history by removing a pen from 1991,” Khan said out loud.
But that was the question, wasn’t it? Would the pen be removed from the historical timeline or not? Khan turned his gaze to the machine once again. And found himself wondering if he could hack into the controls of the singularity device. Could he simply disable the retinal scan? How hard could it be?
Within an hour, he had his answer: Not hard at all.
Glee bubbled up inside him as he stepped back from the device; its secrets were unlocked to him! He had an entire twenty-two hours before Littlewood’s return. What might he do? What might he see? Rising to pace off some of his excess energy, Khan spent the third and fourth hours of Littlewood’s absence contemplating where and when he wished to travel. To ensure he was back well before Littlewood’s return, he would have to travel farther back into the past; that much was a given. But how much farther? He could go literally anywhere! Well, there were some limiting constraints. If he chose to visit the Ice Age, for instance, he would have less than a minute before the time rift healed itself, hurtling him back to his own time. But he didn’t really fancy the Ice Age. Florida’s heat was quite unpleasant enough, thank you.
As he contemplated the possibilities, something else occurred to him. He didn’t need to wait for the fountain pen to return. He could travel to the past and have his answer now if he grabbed something important—something that was still in existence in the modern world. He could steal the Declaration of Independence if he wanted to! Why wait?
A Flight in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 2) Page 11
