A Sword in Time

by Cidney Swanson

It went without saying that DaVinci came from a long line of rule-breakers and instruction-ignorers, but she would not be following in the family’s footsteps today. This was no time for artistic license. DaVinci read through the instructions for safe operation three times. At the bottom, Jillian’s rocketry-obsessed boyfriend, Everett, had written “Launch Readiness Checklist” in orange Sharpie.

  DaVinci shivered. If you thought about it, this sort of travel had to be at least as dangerous as a rocket launch. Why had she thought this was a great plan, exactly? She wiped clammy palms against her jeans and tried to find her courage, which had apparently snuck off for a nap.

  This called for more Princess Leia.

  Opening her wallet, DaVinci pulled out a trading card she’d had since she was fourteen. Worn around the edges, cracked in the middle from the time Yoshi had folded it in half and threatened to eat it, this was DaVinci’s favorite image of Leia, dressed as General Organa in her vest and boots, older and wiser and probably a little heartbroken, but still ready to kick some First Order butt.

  So. What would Leia do if her courage was catnapping?

  DaVinci frowned. Leia would think about the worlds that would be destroyed if someone didn’t blow up the First Order’s death-dealing planet. Leia would zip up her vest and start giving orders.

  DaVinci forced herself to remember the Caterpillar, to think about her home reduced to shredded lumber and cracked cinder blocks.

  And there it was: her courage. She was ready. The Leia protocol was awesome like that.

  She mounted the platform of the time machine, a cool smile forming on her thin, tight lips. What would Leia do?

  “She’d punch the freaking controls,” muttered DaVinci.

  And then, asking Thomas the Doubting Apostle to put in that good word, DaVinci launched herself and her $600 back to spring break 2016.

  Six Months Earlier

  January

  4

  • KHAN •

  Nebraska, January

  Jules Khan was driving across Nebraska in a vehicle he’d stolen from, well, himself, and looking for signs indicating Omaha was getting close. Fortunately, the freeway was clear of snow and ice. There had been snow in Reno and ice outside of Salt Lake City. How he’d pined for Santa Barbara’s mild climate driving through Utah. But even if Nebraska’s stretch of I-80 was free of ice, it wasn’t free of the occasional law enforcement vehicle, so Khan was keeping his speed at only seven miles over the posted limit. He couldn’t afford to get pulled over. If a state trooper ran the plates on his BMW, he’d be thrown in jail for burglary and grand theft auto.

  The problem was, he was a duplicated Jules Khan—an identical version of himself, created by the vagaries of space–time during a little inadvertent time travel. He had tried passing himself off as the same Jules Khan who owned the BMW and the rest of the vast estate in Montecito, California, but it had not gone well. His lawyer, or rather, the lawyer of the dead Jules Khan, had seen right through him, remarking that the so-called “real” Jules Khan was much older. And missing a section of his pinkie finger. The lawyer had then called him an imposter and threatened to charge him with the murder of the actual Jules Khan. Murder! Well, it put grand theft auto into perspective.

  But Khan didn’t intend to be charged with either. His plan was to sell the BMW, thereby obtaining cash for what he really needed: parts to build his own singularity device. Because once he built a singularity device and could time-travel at will, he would have the means of getting all the money he needed for, well, anything. He wouldn’t need the dead Jules Khan’s stupid estate or his stupid lawyer or his stupid anything.

  There was, of course, the issue of locating a car buyer with . . . flexible morality—someone who wouldn’t ask questions about the vehicle’s provenance—but in Khan’s experience, people with flexible morals weren’t impossible to find. He’d found one in Omaha, hadn’t he?

  Selling the BMW in Omaha was a better option than crawling back to his former postdoctoral employer, Dr. Arthur Littlewood. His former employer—whom he’d held at gunpoint, mind—seemed willing to forgive and forget. In fact, Littlewood had called twice a day for a week and even dangled the tantalizing prospect of scientific glory in front of Khan, promising to introduce him to all the right people at all the right conferences.

  But Khan had decided he could wait for scientific glory. Something had shifted inside him when he’d seen the sprawling estate in Montecito that had belonged to his duplicate self. Why settle for acclaim in the scientific community when you could have limitless wealth and acclaim? He would put off recognition until the time was ripe. Until after he’d rebuilt the singularity device. Until he was financially secure and no longer on the run. He wanted fame, not infamy. A little patience and he had no doubt his name would make it into the history books alongside those of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein.

  No, he did not wish to rejoin Littlewood in that backwater Florida university of his. Jules Khan had his sights set a little higher than that, thank you very much. Not to mention, he had no intention of sharing the glory. Especially not with someone whose ambitions were so small-minded.

  All of which meant Khan had to sell the stolen BMW.

  He had assumed this sort of transaction would involve a dingy warehouse located in a part of town locals knew to avoid after sunset. Probably to someone named Mick with mob connections. In actuality, however, after posting a purposefully vague “For Sale” ad on Craigslist in Omaha, Nebraska, Khan found himself exiting I-80 and driving into a very ordinary suburban neighborhood to meet his potential buyer.

  Khan scowled as he drove past edged brown lawns and painted mailboxes. How was one to tell the good guys from the bad guys if the bad guys lived in neighborhoods with edged lawns?

  Even more insulting to Khan’s sense of decorum, his shady buyer turned out to be a clean-shaven guy named Mark, whose closest connection to the mob was probably watching The Godfather on Netflix. It was all very irritating.

  But also, Khan reminded himself, very necessary.

  Khan shared the story he had at the ready: the car was part of an estate left to him by his grandmother, who was terrible with paperwork, and he’d spent his last cent traveling to her funeral only to find her estate was being confiscated to cover her back taxes, and now how was he going to get home to Michigan? And yes, he might have driven off in Nana’s car without exactly asking permission.

  Whatever impression Mark’s neighborhood might have given, the man himself showed signs of having suitably flexible morals. Mark nodded at Khan’s story, kicked the tires, looked under the hood for an unconscionable length of time, and finally offered Khan $2,000 in cash. For a car worth easily four times that amount (Khan had consulted Kelley Blue Book).

  “It’s vintage,” said Khan, glaring at Mark’s tidy winter-brown front lawn. “It’s worth five times that.”

  Mark shrugged. “Not if it don’t have a clean title.” Then he grinned, revealing a single gold canine. “From what you’ve told me, your title’s as far from clean as a dog that likes chasing skunks.”

  Khan scowled.

  “Lemme see the pink slip.”

  Before Khan could stop him, the gold-toothed mongrel opened the glove compartment, at which point several things happened in rapid succession. A heavy something, wrapped in cotton wadding, fell to the floor with a thud, revealing what looked very much like a thick gold chain. Khan lurched to grab it, but Mark got there first, lifting the item, examining it, and then—unthinkably—biting it!

  “Hey!” shouted Khan.

  Mark, his eyebrows raised, muttered, “Huh,” and began picking bits of cotton fluff off a large, rather ugly necklace.

  “That’s not for sale,” snapped Khan.

  A knowing grin spread across Mark’s face. “Had a peek inside Granny’s jewelry box, did we?” Then, with aggravating slowness, he returned the item to Khan.

  “It’s mine,” Khan said, stuffing the necklace in a pocket. True, he had been unaware
of its existence until a moment ago, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t his.

  “That’s pure gold,” said Mark. “Soft enough it might be twenty-four karat—”

  “It’s not for sale,” Khan said coldly. At least, not to a plebian like Mark.

  The financial return on his BMW had turned out to be disappointing, but the necklace would net a pretty penny. The thing weighed over a pound and was set with precious stones. He would sell it—oh yes, he would sell it—but he would do some research as to its value first. Khan was no expert on antique jewelry, but he’d flipped through his duplicate self’s sales ledger. The other Khan had been in the habit of snatching valuable items from the past, and none of the jewelry—mostly small rings and pins—had been sold for less than five thousand.

  Mark might have just uncovered a small fortune for him. His luck was beginning to improve.

  “Okay, then,” said Mark. “So do we have a deal on the vehicle?”

  Khan frowned as if contemplating his options. With the necklace in his hands, getting a good price on the BMW mattered less. Although he still needed to put as much distance as possible between himself and the stolen vehicle.

  “You might do better finding someone willing to strip it for parts on your own,” said Mark. “You’d have to nose around a little.”

  Mark had taken Khan’s hesitation for reluctance to sell at such a low price.

  In actual fact, Khan did not wish to “nose around a little,” seeking out chop shops, or whatever they were called.

  “I’ll take your offer,” snapped Khan. Better to accept cash here than to risk his neck in some dark alley. He still had the necklace to cover the balance for the parts he needed to rebuild the time machine. He’d heard Littlewood say parts for the device in Florida had run close to fourteen thousand. Khan, however, was clever and thrifty and convinced that anything Littlewood built for fourteen thousand, he could build for twelve. He had two thousand and a necklace that had to be worth at least a pair of those $5,000 rings he’d seen in the ledger.

  After completing the transaction, Khan took a bus to Kansas City (the farthest destination he could reach by bus for under fifty bucks), where he checked into a hostel, occupying the top bunk in an out-of-the-way corner. Legs crossed on the mattress, he opened his computer to make a parts list from the plans he’d copied onto a thumb drive. It was then that he realized he hadn’t seen his thumb drive for a while. In fact, he hadn’t seen it for a long while.

  He patted his pockets—front, back, interior, exterior—checked his wallet, searched the small messenger bag containing the sum of his earthly possessions and nearly two thousand in cash, but the drive was nowhere to be found. A bead of sweat ran down the back of his neck. He needed that thumb drive. It contained his only copy of the schematics for building a new time machine. He’d left Florida in haste, without taking the time to transfer the information from the thumb drive to his computer. After all, when was he going to need it? He’d only transferred the information to a thumb drive in the first place because it amused him to steal information from Littlewood while the man was standing right next to him in the lab, droning on about his favorite, missing, fountain pen. It had been one of many petty acts, that transfer. And while he’d made a point to grab the thumb drive before leaving Florida, he hadn’t expected to need it, or not so soon.

  Methodically, he searched a second time, and then a third time, rather less methodically, and a fourth time, quite frantically. It was only then that the truth sank in. The thumb drive was gone. He’d lost it. He’d lost the instructions to rebuild the device upon which his future rested.

  Which meant he had two options: crawl back and ask Littlewood’s forgiveness, or break into the Florida lab and take what he needed. Only one of these options was remotely appealing.

  The Present

  July

  5

  • DAVINCI •

  California, July

  DaVinci had timed her arrival into 2016 with care. It had to be after the leak in the pipes under the kitchen had been discovered and diagnosed, or she wouldn’t be able to tell the plumbing contractor that, yes, they’d like to go forward with getting it fixed. It had to be while her family was away, or Mom and Dad would notice the plumber hammering (or whatever plumbers did) and chase the plumber off, insisting there was no money for the repair.

  She’d chosen to send herself back to spring break of her senior year in high school, a few days before her family returned from their annual drive to Baja California for lobster and plein air coastal painting.

  DaVinci strolled inside her quiet 2016 house. Or almost quiet house. Was it her imagination, or could she hear water dripping? She shuddered, horribly aware of the leak that was literally destroying her house while she stood there in the kitchen. Picking up her avocado-green landline phone (long since gone), she called the plumber.

  The call went straight to voice mail. Which really sucked, because if Jillian’s time chart was any good, space–time was going to haul DaVinci’s butt back where it belonged in less than three hours. What if the plumber didn’t call back before DaVinci’s time in 2016 was up? She was not loving the idea of using the machine over and over until she finally got the plumber on the phone. There had to be a better solution. One that involved less messing around with space–time. The plumber’s “leave a message” was followed by a beep.

  “Hi, yeah, this is DaVinci Shaughnessy-Pavlov. So yeah, we want to have you, um, fix the leak under the house after all. Today. The one you said would be six hundred dollars? It’s an emergency. So like, now. Um . . . I’m going to leave the money on the kitchen counter in case, you know, no one’s home when you swing by. I hope that’s okay?”

  DaVinci grimaced. She sounded so unprofessional.

  “I might have to, uh, step out before you arrive. I’m leaving the back door unlocked, so you know, come by whenever. I mean, the sooner the better, obviously. Because it’s an emergency.”

  She grimaced again.

  “Okay. That’s everything. Bye. Oh, and thanks! And remember your money is on the counter waiting for you. No receipt needed. In fact, yeah, definitely don’t leave a receipt. Okay. That’s everything. Bye for reals this time.”

  She hung up before she said anything else even more stupid than all the stupid stuff she’d already said.

  Definitely don’t leave a receipt?

  Bye for reals this time?

  “Ugh!”

  She was no good at voice messages. She should have texted the plumber. She shook her head and strolled outside to sit on an exceptionally large boulder from which her family had painted, drawn, sketched, and etched views of the ocean since at least the dawn of time. It had butt-size divots that made it perfect for observing the ocean, two miles downhill.

  Home. She was home. Everything was going to be okay. She was home and she wasn’t going to lose it again. She would fix everything, and then she would always have a place to return to, a place where she belonged. A place where she never felt alone.

  She could sense her shoulders unclenching, her breath softening. Even her tightly coiled hair seemed to relax. Settling, she gazed at the ocean. There were maybe a dozen sailboats out this afternoon, tiny white sails bobbing in vivid contrast to the dark water. The ocean was showing off a little today, its surface rendered in shifting lazuli blues that reminded DaVinci of her mother’s blue sodalite wedding ring.

  DaVinci sighed with pleasure. She had a solid two hours until space–time yanked her back to the present. Two glorious hours to herself with nothing to do: no deadlines, no workshops to teach, no family home to save from destruction. Given her crazy summer, two hours without any responsibilities sounded like heaven.

  About thirty minutes later, the plumber, a muscled woman in her forties, showed up. DaVinci greeted her and let her in, going with the strategy of “say as little as possible.”

  As DaVinci headed back outside, though, a book on the kitchen table caught her eye. Janson’s History of Art, sixth
edition. Her missing book! It had been “misappropriated” by someone, and she hadn’t managed to replace it yet because the sixth edition was out of print, hard to find, and expensive.

  Grinning, DaVinci grabbed the book. Some of space–time’s duplicating behaviors weren’t so bad.

  Falling asleep on her favorite boulder with a copy of Janson’s History of Art, sixth edition, in her arms was lovely. Waking to the grip and grind of space–time as it pulled her forward through time, less so.

  Several uncomfortable seconds passed before DaVinci, now back in the Martian Chronicles suite, was able to pry her eyes open. The discomfort was just one of the things she hated about time travel. Not that she was complaining. She was grateful for time travel. She loved time travel. She wanted to pepper its face with kisses.

  As soon as her muscles were freed from the machine’s grip, DaVinci smiled.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” she said to the time machine.

  If her voyage to the past hadn’t exactly saved her life, it had certainly fixed her life.

  She hoped. She really needed to see it for herself. The not-rotted foundation. The not-demolished home.

  As quickly as possible, DaVinci finished shutting down the machine. She waited for its drone to die back to the decibel level of a garbage disposal before deciding it was safe to leave and drive home. Her real home. The home that no rich lawyer or plastic surgeon or app developer was going to buy and demolish.

  Had she done it? She would find out soon. Back when she’d first hatched the idea, she’d thought about consulting Jillian and Halley. But she knew they would just hem and haw and nothing would get done. Who was it who had gotten them all into VADA? Into art shows? Who had made a million decisions when the two of them couldn’t? DaVinci, that’s who. She’d always been the make-it-happen girl, deciding what things needed doing and doing them, and she didn’t need to hear a bunch of tired arguments against doing the right thing. In the end, she’d decided she wouldn’t tell Jillian and Halley about her plan until she’d succeeded.