It's About Time

by Charlotte Douglas

  He settled back against the seat. “Uncle Cyrus would have never approved such reading matter. He wouldn’t have thought it—”

  “Practical?” She smiled when he nodded. “I feel I’m getting to know your uncle well.”

  “He wouldn’t have approved of you, either, and you can take that as the compliment it’s intended.” He lowered the volume on the banjos. “Now, what were you saying about Angelina?”

  “Emma told me Angelina had quarreled with her lover and when she died, she lost forever the chance for reconciliation.” The absurdity of her situation mocked her, talking about ghosts with a man from another century. She might be stone-cold sober, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t crazy.

  “So if you can convince Angelina her lover is also dead, you believe she might cease and desist from her haunting?” he asked.

  “It’s worth a try. She’s popped into my life every night since Jill’s wedding. It’s a habit I’d like to break.”

  “If she holds true to her pattern, you’ll have that chance tonight.”

  Tonight. By that evening they’d have seen Smallwood, and Rand would have learned that his quest was futile. Then he’d have to uphold his part of the bargain and prepare for the Money Man campaign. Just as well. Being busy would keep his mind off his disappointment.

  A scratching sound drew her attention to her passenger, who scribbled rapidly in a small notebook.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Just some notes and calculations for my meeting with Jason Phiswick this weekend. I plan to earn us both a great deal of money.” He continued to write, covering page after page, stopping now and then to gaze at the ballpoint pen with amazement as he clicked the button that operated the nib.

  “Isn’t there anything—anyone in your life except business?” she asked.

  His writing slowed, then stopped. “There was once. It was a mistake.”

  “It?”

  “She.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Selena. But I’d rather not talk about her.” He stared at the highway for a long minute, then resumed his scribbling.

  Did he find talking about Selena painful because he still loved her? Was it this Selena, not his love of making money, pulling him back to his own time?

  A Carolina freight truck roared past, buffeting her car in its vortex. She glanced at her speedometer; she was driving well below the limit.

  Delaying your arrival? her conscience taunted her. Afraid Smallwood might have the answer to sending Rand back?

  She pressed the accelerator, pushing the car up to speed, stifling her inner voice with a silent declaration of a strictly business interest in Randolph Trent. When they stopped for coffee in Greenville, she’d call Kristin and arrange an immediate meeting for Rand with her staff.

  He flipped shut his notebook and tucked it into the pocket of his sports jacket. “Turnabout is fair play.”

  She abandoned her mental cataloging of instructions for Kristin. “What do you mean?”

  “Is there anything in your life except business?”

  The heat of his gaze targeted her like a laser. “I date—occasionally.”

  “But what about marriage? Family?”

  She searched for hints of derision in his tone but found only curiosity. “Things have changed in the past hundred years. Not all women want to marry.”

  “But without husbands, who takes care of them?”

  She grinned at his assumption. “They take care of themselves. Women today have jobs outside the home. Many own their own businesses, like me, and others are professionals—accountants, lawyers, doctors—”

  “Female doctors?” He sounded doubtful. “I’ve heard of a few, but no one takes them seriously.”

  From the corner of her eye, she caught his dubious expression. “They do now. Female doctors aren’t unusual, not with over fifty percent of all women engaged somewhere in the work force.”

  “But if over half the women are working, who’s having the babies?” He gazed out over the congested interstate. “There’re too many people for the birth rate to have dropped in the last hundred years.”

  “With modern methods of birth control, women can plan their pregnancies.” She blushed, remembering his Victorian sensibilities. “They’re still having children, but in their own time, not by accident.”

  “And their husbands agree to this?”

  “If they have a husband.”

  His expression turned incredulous. “Children are still conceived...the same way?”

  Mischief tugged at the corners of her mouth, and she struggled to keep a straight face. “For the most part.”

  He leaned toward her, searching her face as if doubting her truthfulness. “There’s another way?”

  “Women who want children without a husband opt for artificial insemination with donated sperm.” She tried to imagine the impact of such knowledge on his Victorian mind and failed.

  “Children without fathers? Would you consider such a thing?”

  She shook her head. “I believe children need a mother and a father.”

  He lay back against the headrest as if the conversation had exhausted him. “It’s reassuring to know the family hasn’t gone completely out of style.”

  She smiled, remembering. “My parents were two of the happiest people I knew. Jill and I are lucky to have had such a warm and loving family.”

  “Then surely you plan to marry and have children someday?”

  She thought of her mother. “No. I’ll never marry.”

  “Then you’ll be—”

  “An old maid?” She spoke the words before he could. “But I’ll be a wealthy, successful old maid with a thriving company to keep me busy.”

  “But will it keep you happy?”

  His question probed too deep, angering her. “You’re a fine one to talk.”

  He shifted in his seat, stretching long legs before him, reviving memories of his body pressed against hers in the night. “It’s different with me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a man.”

  “Of all the chauvinistic, old-fashioned—” She bit off the earthy expletive that sizzled on her tongue, one she doubted even men used in his day, and searched her vocabulary for an appropriate Victorian response. “Balderdash.”

  “But marriage and children are an integral part of woman’s nature,” he insisted.

  “Men in this century have acknowledged the importance of love and family, too.” She flung the words at him, seeing too late the trap she’d set for herself.

  “Then we’re a pair, aren’t we, Victoria Caswell?” His voice caressed her with understanding.

  She lowered her window slightly, and the frigid air cooled her flushed face. But emotions continued to tumble within her, uncomfortable feelings, dangerous feelings that threatened the secure monotony of her life.

  He pointed to a sign as they whizzed by. “You missed the Greenville exit.”

  “We don’t have time to stop.”

  The sooner they reached Raleigh, the sooner they could return and begin work on the Money Man project. And the sooner she could rid her life of Rand Trent, who threatened her tranquillity with questions of love and children and memories of his body melded with hers.

  * * *

  TORY’S DECISION to press forward proved wise because the trip took longer than she’d counted on. As she exited the interstate onto Hillsborough Avenue in Raleigh, the dashboard clock registered ten-thirty. She continued down the traffic-thronged street, past Meredith College on a hilltop to their left, past shops and stores, and headed into downtown, toward the Capitol.

  The smokestacks and massive brick buildings of North Carolina State University rose on the right, spread out upon a campus of dead grass and leafless trees, a dreary sight even under the brilliant blue of the February sky. She turned onto the campus at a street beside the bell tower and pulled into visitor parking near the administration building.

  “I have to
make a call.” She pointed to a pay phone against a nearby building.

  Rand exited the car and stretched. “I’ll find out where to locate Dr. Smallwood.”

  As she placed her call to Kristin, she watched him take the steps to the administration building two at a time. A cluster of passing coeds stopped to admire his lean body and dark good looks, and their giggling words floated toward her on the crisp winter breeze.

  “Nice buns,” observed a tall slender girl in jeans and a down-filled vest.

  “He’s so fine, he could park his shoes under my bed any time,” suggested another.

  A short dumpling of a woman in a brief skirt and tights tossed long hair over her shoulders as she watched Rand disappear through the double doors. “I wouldn’t mind making a love connection with him myself.”

  Her tall friend jabbed her in the ribs with an elbow. “In your dreams.”

  The plump girl flipped her hair again. “On second thought, maybe he’s too old for me. He must be at least thirty.”

  The laughing girls passed Tory as she finished her call. She could understand their reaction. His extraordinary good looks invited instant attention, but the man’s attraction was more than skin-deep. An aura of confidence and integrity surrounded him, proclaiming him a man you could trust. The perfect Money Man for her campaign.

  The perfect man to love. She jammed her fists into her jacket pockets. She refused to surrender her independence, even for the perfect man.

  In minutes he joined her. With the sun glinting off his hair, his eyes reflecting the pearl gray of his turtleneck sweater, the muscled contours of his body filling out his blue jacket and dark slacks and his handsome jaw jutting aggressively into the wind, he made passing college men appear awkward and immature by comparison.

  “Smallwood’s office is in Cox Hall. It’s just a short hike across campus,” he said.

  “Good thing I wore comfortable shoes.”

  The excitement on his face worried her. How was he going to feel when Smallwood dashed all hope of returning to his own time? She longed to drag her feet to delay the moment, but he grasped her arm and led her off at a quick walk between towering dormitories and classroom buildings toward the campus center.

  When they entered a large quadrangle, he halted and took his bearings. “There’s the library and opposite it the round building they told me to look for. Cox Hall, the physics building, is just past there.”

  Pulling her along, he skirted the cylindrical structure, striding toward Cox Hall in long, purposeful steps.

  She stopped, winded, and grabbed at the stitch in her side. “Out of shape,” she huffed. “I haven’t jogged since before Jill’s wedding.”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking—” His face fell with remorse.

  She held up a hand to staunch his protests. “It’s okay. I’ve caught my breath now.”

  When he started forward again, he moved at a more accommodating pace and she had no trouble keeping up with him, even as they climbed the steep stairs to the second floor of the physics building. The hallways, smelling of steam heat, chalk dust and musty books, flooded suddenly with youthful bodies as the class hour changed. Rand flattened himself against a wall and drew her alongside him as a nearby doorway erupted with students.

  When the tide of humanity ebbed, he took her hand as they followed the corridor to its last doorway. Her fingers clasped the warmth of his flesh, and she regretted the loss of contact when he dropped her hand to knock.

  No one answered. She glanced at her watch. “It’s eleven on the nose. Maybe his morning class ran late.”

  “Maybe he’s the typical absentminded professor and forgot we had an appointment.” He balled his fist and knocked again.

  From behind the door came a muffled exclamation and the sound of books hitting the floor. Then the door swung open and a fresh-faced young man with short-cropped, sandy hair and wire-rimmed glasses peered out at them. “Yes?”

  She thrust her hand forward. “Victoria Caswell. We spoke on the phone yesterday, Dr. Smallwood.”

  Smallwood’s befuddled expression cleared as he shook her hand. “Of course, our appointment. I’d completely forgotten.”

  Rand shot her an I-told-you-so look before offering the man his hand. “Randolph Trent.”

  Smallwood stepped back from the door for them to enter. She squeezed first into the cubicle, smaller than her walk-in closet at home. Two large windows on the opposite wall threw feeble light into the narrow space, lined with bookshelves that overflowed into piles of books on the floor. She stepped around them toward a chair by Smallwood’s desk.

  Smallwood reached it before her, swiping a yard-high heap of student notebooks from the seat and stacking them precariously on the windowsill. From beneath another pile of what looked like debris, but obviously had some value from the careful way he transferred it, Smallwood extracted another chair for Rand.

  The professor settled himself into his creaking desk chair across from them, leaned back and laced his fingers across his chest. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  His wide blue eyes and smooth skin gave him the appearance of a kid playing grown-up. Was this the man Rand expected to help him leap a gap of one hundred years?

  “My firm,” she began, “has agreed to underwrite the production of Mr. Trent’s screenplay.”

  Smallwood’s sandy eyebrows peaked. “What kind of screenplay?”

  “An adventure,” Rand said.

  “Does this adventure have a name?”

  She glimpsed a flash of panic in Rand’s eyes. ”The Man from Yesterday,” she improvised. “It’s about a time traveler.”

  Smallwood leaned forward, his blue eyes shining behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Where do I fit in?”

  “We need some technical advice,” she said. “I’ve asked Mr. Trent to rewrite the ending, make it more plausible.”

  “Time travel plausible? You’re putting me on.”

  “I read your article in the Smithsonian about the potential of moving through time and space,” Rand said, “and knew you were the one to solve our dilemma.”

  Smallwood scratched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. “Exactly what is your dilemma?”

  “Today’s audiences are sophisticated,” Rand explained. “They no longer accept such concepts as being conveyed through time by a simple blow to the head. We have to present them with a situation that—”

  “Allows them to suspend their disbelief,” she said. “Otherwise the film may bomb, and my firm loses its investment.”

  She felt like a character in a movie herself, playing a part to keep her end of the bargain with Rand. She dreaded the moment when Smallwood ruined all his hopes.

  Smallwood leaned back once more with interest quickening in his eyes. “Tell me the story so far. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Rand cleared his throat. “A man awakens in a hotel room to discover he’s been projected one hundred years into the future. He has various adventures as he encounters the marvels of his new surroundings, but his main purpose always is to return to his own time.”

  “There’s a beautiful woman pining for him there, right?” Smallwood grinned.

  Her glance flashed to Rand. She noted his expression of discomfort and wondered at its significance.

  “Er, right,” Rand said. “Now our problem is how to get him back where he belongs.”

  She leaned forward, expecting Smallwood to deliver the coup de grace to Rand’s hopes. “In the context of our story, can the man really expect to return to his own time?”

  Smallwood grew very still and his gaze bored into her. “We’re speaking theoretically, right?”

  “Of course.” She squirmed under the scrutiny of Smallwood’s bright eyes, wise beyond their years.

  He tapped the tips of his fingers together, forming a pyramid with his hands. “Then the answer is yes.”

  “Yes?” Smallwood’s words struck like a boxer’s punch in her solar plexus. As she struggled to breathe, hope illumin
ated Rand’s face.

  “Could you explain how this time travel would be accomplished?” he asked.

  “Ever since Einstein’s theory of relativity was interpreted by Minkowski,” Smallwood began, “the science of physics has clearly dealt, not with two separate entities of time and space, but a singular entity—space-time.”

  The professor launched into a complex description of temporal cross sections, hypersurfaces, time lines bending back on themselves, black holes and quantum-mechanical aspects of time. Her head ached as she tried to follow.

  Rand interrupted Smallwood’s explanation of the findings of British cosmologist E. A. Milne. “Our audiences are sophisticated, but our story is intended only as entertainment. We don’t want to overwhelm them with anything too technical. Could you illustrate in layman’s terms how to send our character back?”

  Smallwood nodded, grabbed a piece of paper from the chaos on his desk and began to sketch curving arcs. “Timelike world lines can bend back on themselves. At the point where a line touches itself, a person could pass through the temporal cross section.”

  Rand’s eyes narrowed. “To the exact time and place he left?”

  “If he enters the cross section in the same place and time as he left it—it’s theoretically possible.”

  Rand nodded. “But our protagonist will spend several days in the future. Can he still return to the exact time he left?”

  Smallwood wrinkled his forehead. “Since our entire discussion is theoretical, I can’t assure you of that, but I believe he’d reenter his own time at least within a matter of days.”

  Tory’s head spun with scientific terms. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  A look of infinite patience crossed Smallwood’s face. “Let’s take the character in your screenplay as an example. He awakens in a hotel room and finds he’s traveled forward in time. If he wants to return, he must wait for the time line to bend back upon itself in that same room in order to go back to the space-time that he left.”

  “How soon would that temporal cross section open up again?” Rand asked.