It was several seconds before Annie looked him, her brow furrowed. “What?”
Bradshaw laughed. “I was trying to make you smile. I said we could join the circus, get naked . . .”
The professor’s words were cut short by a sudden wail from the lab. They both jumped up and ran for the lab. Annie reached it first but had to stand aside while Bradshaw fumbled with the cipher and thumbprint reader. Annie watched intently, nervously shifting her feet. What the hell did Grandfather do? When finally he was allowed access the two of them rushed in and nearly ran into Charles who had just burst from the door to the power plant.
“Can you stop it?” Charles yelled over the scream, pointing to the far end of the trailer.
“Stop what?” Bradshaw yelled back and then saw Robert in the chamber, knees drawn up, head down, light radiating around him. “Son of a . . !” Putting his hand up to shield his eyes he rushed to look at his monitor and then swung to Robert’s. “No! I can’t! It’s too far along!”
The high-pitched whine seeming to grind into her bones, Annie found her earplugs in her pocket and put them on, followed by her goggles. The others did the same and then the three of them, along with Howard Grae via closed circuit video, watched as Robert Hair disappeared.
“Where the hell is he going?” Charles demanded.
Thomas sat down at Robert’s station to analyze the settings. “Boston.”
“1976, I’ll bet,” Annie said.
Thomas looked up at her. “Yes.”
“He’s gone back to the day his wife died,” Annie said.
“How in the hell could he have done that?” Charles’ face was red; he was almost spitting. “The system should have anticipated an overload and shut down the plant. The fail safe failed!” He turned around and slammed back into the power plant.
Thomas changed chairs and checked his own monitor. He shook his head. “62.2 kilograms.”
“Are you sure?” Grae challenged over the intercom.
“Yeah, I’m sure!” Bradshaw yelled back.
“That’s only 137 pounds,” Annie said as she lowered herself into her grandfather’s chair, her mouth hanging open.
There was a long silence and then Professor Grae announced, “We hit 103% of max load. Fail safe would not have kicked in until approximately 105%. Everything appears to be fine.”
Bradshaw pulled his fingers through his hair. “I can’t believe this! Howard, take it down to hot idle like we did with Annie while we waited for her signal.”
“Already on the way there. Any idea what the hell he’s up to, how long he plans on being on his little adventure?”
“No idea.”
“Wait!” Grae said. “We don’t necessarily need to wait for his signal. As long as he has the seeker we should be able to pull him back, right? We could do it right now before he has a chance to get his bearings. Just lock on him and activate SMUDDWAGEN.”
Bradshaw looked up at the ceiling for a time and then said, “Maybe, but most likely not. First, if he’s moving we can’t lock. Second, if he’s not ready to come back all he has to do is drop the seeker and step away from it at first indication that he is being fingered.”
“Maybe, but it’s worth a shot. We might get lucky.”
“If we don’t get lucky all we would get is the seeker which would put us in deep dodo. We’d have no way to ever bring him back.”
Annie and Professor Bradshaw stared at each other for a time and then Annie suddenly made a face and jammed a hand into her jacket pocket. “Holy crap! Grandfather has no intention of coming back.” She held up the seeker. “Unless he has another one of these.”
“I think we’re in deep dodo,” Charles said.
For a very long time, except for Charles, whose heavy breathing came through the intercom like a Darth Vader clone, the lab was deathly quiet. Not even a chair squeaked.
“What are we going to do?” Charles finally said.
“I don’t know,” Bradshaw said. “It would help me think if you’d back away from your microphone.”
“Sorry.” Darth Vader went quiet.
“Nothing has changed,” Annie said.
Bradshaw looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“History has not changed. If it had we wouldn’t even be here. He has to come back or else his younger self would cease to exist permanently.”
Bradshaw considered the implications of that and then nodded his head. “Okay. That makes sense. How?”
“I have to go get him.”
Bradshaw’s head went back and forth. “No way. Has to be a different solution.”
“There’s no other solution, unless one of you guys have suddenly lost about fifty pounds, or a hundred and fifty in Charles’ case. Someone has to go after him and I’m the only one. There is no way you can argue with that.
“Professor Grae?”
“I think she’s right, Thomas. We’ve got to get him back. How are we going to explain his disappearance?”
“The only family he has is Annie and her father. Who else is going to pay any attention?”
“The university. His colleagues. There’s no way to explain it away unless we say he went for a hike and never returned. That’d launch a manhunt and we’d have all kinds of official people in our camp asking questions; all the way from the local sheriff to the FBI because of his high level security clearance. We certainly don’t need that.”
“How the hell did you guys let this happen anyway? He had to have activated SMUDDWAGEN and then dashed into the chamber. You could have shut it right down.”
“We weren’t watching the monitors, Thomas. We have other duties in here besides watching you guys pick your noses.”
“What I can’t figure out is how you could have had your fingers in your ears and one up your ass at the same time.”
“Next time why don’t you come into this sweat chamber with chubby here and I’ll sit out there where it’s nice and comfy.”
“Listen, Howard. I . . .”
“Stop it!”
“I don’t give a damn what . . .” Howard started to say.
“Stop it!” Annie yelled a second time. Silence fell over the scene. “You two can go outside and have a fist fight for all I care. Right now we need to fix this and that means I’m going. And while I’m gone you guys are not going to fight about anything. I don’t need to be worrying about whether there is anyone conscious here to bring me back.”
More silence.
“Is that understood?” she added.
“Yes,” Bradshaw said quietly.
“Howard?” Annie said.
“Sorry, Annie. Yes, we’ll be civil. I lost a little of my head.”
“Charles?”
“I’m the innocent Chubby One Canoby.”
Bradshaw chuckled.
“I agree,” Charles added.
“Status of the plant?” Annie asked.
“Five by five,” Charles said.
“What does that mean?”
Charles laughed. “It means it is up and fully ready.”
Annie turned around in her grandfather’s chair, adjusted the time target and said, “When I have him I’ll signal twice just like before. I will make him sit still even if I have to knock him out. After he’s back here reach to the same spot for me. Got it?”
Thomas nodded. “Yes, we’ve got it.”
Annie then clicked on “Activate SMUDDWAGEN” and dashed into the chamber. Once settled she yelled over the whine, “See how easy that was,” and then rested her head and waited for the kaleidoscope of darkness to wash over her. Her very last thought was, don’t let this go wrong.
Chapter 68
July 3, 1976
Annie lifted her head and for a few seconds wondered where she was and why she was sitting on cold ground in front of a brick wall. She followed it up until it joined several others to frame a blue sky. She looked right. She was in a wide alley—actually a short, dead-ended street when she thought about it—that terminated in a small
parking area against a wrought-iron fence. She looked left. Thirty yards away an occasional car or truck passed by. Boston, 1976, flashed back at her. Where the hell are you, Grandfather?
She pushed to her feet and turned around. Somewhere in the middle of a pile of rags a face peered out at her, big white eyes in a dirty, weather-beaten face, hair resembling an old mop.
Great! We have a witness; fortunately, not all that believable. She looked both ways trying to decide in which direction to pursue, and then considered the witness. She pointed in both directions at the same time. “Which way did he go?”
The eyes blinked, but for a time there was no other response. Finally the head turned; the eyes followed.
“He went that way?” Annie asked, pointing.
The head returned to look directly at her and then nodded.
“Thanks,” she said and headed off at a trot. At the end of the street she paused to scan through the fence to an area of grass, flags, headstones and monuments. Not seeing her grandfather’s form she proceeded forward through the gates and onto the brick walkway that lead into the cemetery.
From behind a trash bin in the opposite direction, Robert Hair emerged brushing away dust, and whatever else clung to him. He coughed several times and then approached the pile of rags. He held out a twenty dollar bill, a perfect match to the one he had fed to the rags just minutes before. “Thank you. You did well.”
A hand appeared and seemed to graciously accept the bill. As Robert walked away another hand emerged from the rags, aged and grubby fingers wrapped around a paper bag the shape of a bottle. The bag tilted for a few seconds and then vanished back into the rags. The eyes closed.
At the opposite end of the street from where Annie disappeared, Robert paused. He had to admit that he would have been disappointed if she hadn’t come after him, but he wished she hadn’t. Sending her in the wrong direction, into the Granary Burying Ground, wouldn’t delay her very long, but maybe it would be long enough. She knew where he was going but the one thing he was fairly certain of was that she didn’t know downtown Boston all that well, even having lived in the greater Boston area all her life. He was also fairly certain she didn’t think to pull up a Google map before hopping into the chamber to chase after him, though he wasn’t so naive to think she wasn’t resourceful. She probably had a dozen relevant maps stored away in her photographic memory banks.
He looked at his watch and then swore, suddenly realizing he had no way of knowing the exact time. What was on his wrist was Montana time thirty-one years from now, which certainly wasn’t going to do him any good at this moment. In all his planning he had forgotten one small, but important, detail. He failed to synchronize the time. He swore again.
Robert had programmed the event to land him in Boston at 7:20 local, but how long did it take to negotiate with the homeless person, convince him, or her, that what he or she saw was not a hallucination, and then how long did he wait for Annie to show? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Certainly no more than that. That meant that he had maybe twenty minutes to get to the accident site. He had walked this route many times over the past few months after conducting painstaking research to determine the best landing spot, a place that virtually remained unchanged for three decades, and was pretty much devoid of people at 7:20 on a Saturday morning. On a good day at a good pace he had walked the distance in less than ten minutes. He pressed his hand against his chest, took a deep breath and felt the death rumble. Those good days were gone. On not one of those days had he run onto a homeless person, had not even considered that thirty years ago Tremont Place, the short alley-like street where he and Annie landed, might have been a homeless hangout, nor had he considered that his granddaughter would try to follow him, though he was proud of himself for suddenly having the insight that she might. The delay in taking the time to sidetrack her was not factored in. He should have just paid the person, gave instructions and headed out, but without the promise of more how would he know if the beggar would do what was asked?
He turned right onto Beacon Street, crossed Tremont Street at the corner, and kept on going east as Beacon changed to School. At the Washington Street intersection he turned left. Within a few minutes he had the west end of the Old State House within view. The nearly 300 year-old, three-story red brick building looked grossly out of place among glass and steel skyscrapers; a museum artifact all within itself. It was on the northeast corner of this historic building where his Rebecca was struck and killed. He’d petitioned Boston’s historical society to place a small plaque on the corner of the building, in her memory. The letter he received in return spoke of centuries of American history, of great men who had graced the sacred ground, of battles and proclamations, and on and on. They simply stated at the end that such a thing would not be in keeping with its history and thus not appropriate. They were probably right. What would have been the point? The place of her death was important to no one but him.
Robert had actually decided to scrap the entire plan to go back and save Rebecca’s life, until just three hours before. Annie had shown up detailing how she had awakened on top of her covers in January, naked, how that had convinced her that she had to visit Tony because she had already done it. It was during her little speech and argument with the others that he recalled his daughter knocking on his bedroom door on that fateful morning in 1976, telling him that there were police at the door. He remembered being shocked because he had slept so late and because he was on top of his covers, naked. He never slept naked. Subsequently learning of his wife’s death drove it completely from his mind until Annie revealed her own experience. He was meant to do this because he had already done it.
A coughing spell suddenly overtook him. He placed his hand flat against the building to steady himself and for thirty seconds could do nothing but let his diseased lungs hack more life out of him. When he finally pulled himself under control and the pain in his chest subsided to a level he could ignore, he looked at his watch again. Either he was taking longer than he figured or he was unable to do the mental calculations. The accident happened at 7:58 according to the police reports. He wasn’t positive if he had ten minutes left or something way less. He pushed from the building and began running.
Annie stood in the middle of the cemetery trying to get her bearings. She knew exactly where she was—Boston’s famous Granary Burying Ground—but was unable to grasp north from south, east from west. She stared at Franklin’s Tomb—not the place where many mistakenly assumed Benjamin Franklin was put to rest, but where his parents resided—trying to determine if that, or anything in the historic graveyard, could provide a clue.
She had been told once, by her grandfather many years ago, where her grandmother had died. A woman had been driving south on Congress Street. As she approached the light at State, she had a stroke. Her foot slammed down on the gas pedal, and the car, a white convertible, shot forward across the intersection and struck her grandmother who was waiting at the crosswalk in front of the Old State House. The impact threw her into the air as the car slammed into the corner of the building. She died instantly. The woman driving the convertible died several hours later.
Annie had never actually visited the spot, though she had been inside the building on a school trip. Being the site of her grandmother’s death didn’t occur to her at the time. She was able to form a mental picture based on what he had said and from the few times she had been in downtown Boston. East end of the Old State House. A school trip had also taken her to the Granary Burying Ground. She was a science nerd, found history boring enough to gag her. She’d paid no attention when she arrived, only getting excited when the bus carried them back to Cambridge. Damn! Which way is north?
She looked up at the three buildings defining three sides of the graveyard and suddenly became aware of how the sun was lighting up the top of the center building. She whipped around and placed her back to Franklin’s Tomb and that building. She was looking out at the passing street and the sun just beginning to rise above the
skyline.
East!
While her mind searched for a map, she negotiated her way along the pathways to the gated entrance and out onto the street. By the time she was standing only feet away from traffic, she had a map in her head, and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. In her mind’s eye she was standing in her grandfather’s home office looking at a map of downtown Boston. It was a year and a half ago when she had gone to visit him and tell him of her engagement to Tony. Thumb-tacked to his wall, the map appeared as though it had been folded and unfolded hundreds of times. There were a dozen felt-tip circles with X’s over them and one without. That one circle was heavier and thicker and obliterated the middle of the short street in which he and she had just landed. It was Tremont Place, a short lane that dead-ended at the cemetery. A green highlighted line ran from that circle to where the lane spilled out onto Beacon—the bundle of rags lied to her—east to Washington, north to the Old State House and then around it to the far end. In pencil was written the name Rebecca.
“Holy crap! Grandfather’s been planning this for years.”
“Pardon?” An old man who was just then passing had stopped and addressed Annie’s comment.
“Sorry,” Annie said. “I’m a little crazy is all. Talking to myself.”
“Oh,” he said. “I do that too, and all this time I thought it was old age.” He laughed and returned to his walk. “Good to know I’m just crazy.”
Annie turned her attention from him, sprinted across the street, turned left, jogged to School Street and turned right. She knew exactly where she was going now. What she didn’t know was how much time she had and what she was going to do when she caught up with him.
Robert had fantasized dozens of times, maybe hundreds of times actually, about how he would stop her death and how they would be a family again, how maybe this one act would change everything. He envisioned shoving Rebecca aside and taking the hit from the car himself, and how he’d make sure his face took the first impact so that she wouldn’t recognize him, even as he lay on the street dead or dying. He carried no identification so there was no way anyone would suspect who he was. She’d go home to her husband, his younger self, and their daughter and tell the story about how an old man came out of nowhere and saved her life.
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