“Answering that would require divulging the nature of the department—which I cannot do until you accept employment.”
Wanda rolled her eyes. She was this close to getting up and leaving, but two things stopped her. One was that this was a fine office. These people had a lot of money to throw around, and probably would pay a lot better than any temp job or library job or clerk job or waitress job.
The other was that she really wanted to know how they knew so much about her.
“All right, how much you payin’ me?”
Isabelle smiled. “Enough.”
Wanda was getting seriously sick of this nonsense. “How many dollars in an ‘enough’?”
“Put it this way—you will have comfortable lodging and unlimited access to whatever food you might want, as well as a company credit card that can be used for whatever you might need, within reason, for the entire term of your employment.”
“Which is for how long, exactly?”
“Ten years.”
Wanda’s eyes went wide. “Say what?”
“And after that ten-year term has expired, you will receive a lavish pension that I assure you will allow you to live your life in luxury for the rest of your days. In addition to that, we will pay a stipend to your mother and grandmother that will keep them living well in your absence.”
“Absence? I can’t be doin’ this job at home?”
“No, the job will require a great deal of travel. You will spend considerable time away from home.”
“Hold up. No. This ain’t gonna work.”
Isabelle frowned. “What do you mean? We’re aware that you’re the primary source of income for your household, aside from your grandmother’s social security remittance.”
“That ain’t the problem. You can’t be givin’ no money to Mama. She’ll just go out and drink it all down and get her fool self killed, and that’d just break Grams’s heart.”
“But not yours?”
“Mind y’damn business! Point is, I don’t let Mama touch the money never.”
Isabelle nodded. “Then the payments can all be given to your grandmother. It will arrive on a monthly basis, concurrently with the social security money.”
Wanda shook her head. “Grams can’t go to the bank on her own. She needs me to deposit the checks! Mama can’t be doin’ it…”
“Not an issue. We can arrange to have the money deposited directly into her account at—” She flipped through the folder. “—at Chemical Bank. For that matter, we can arrange to have her social security deposited in the same manner. And don’t worry, that bank will remain intact for several more decades, though they’ll change the name to Chase when they buy Chase Manhattan in 1996.”
Wanda stood up, the L’Engle book clattering to the floor. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Please sit down, Wanda.”
“I wanna know what the hell is goin’ on!”
“What is going on is that we wish to hire you to use your skills in certain sensitive matters. In essence, we want to hire you to talk people down from difficult situations. Just like you did in Mr. Charles’s office. Just like you did during the blackout. Just like you did at the diner. And just like you did with the parking ticket hearing.”
Finally, Wanda sat back down. “Ain’t there, like, diplomats for this kinda jive?”
Shaking her head, Isabelle said, “No, you don’t understand. We’re not going to be putting you in situations that trained professionals would normally deal with. These will involve normal people in normal circumstances. These are occurrences that are beneath the notice of police or politicians—or simply away from their notice, as was the case with the incident at Hooper’s.”
Wanda just stared at Isabelle for a few seconds. “And you’ll pay me enough.”
“Yes. You and your family will be comfortable for the rest of your lives. We know how difficult things have been since the accident.”
“Wasn’t no accident,” Wanda muttered.
“Excuse me?”
She spoke louder. “I said it wasn’t no accident. An accident is somethin’ that just happens and it ain’t nobody’s fault. That was a damn car crash.”
Isabelle nodded. “Either way, since then, things have been difficult. We can ameliorate that difficulty.”
“If you got all these resources and stuff, why not cut through the red tape for Mama’s disability?”
“I’m sorry?” Isabelle sounded confused.
“Mama’s been tryin’ to get disability for months. Well, she started tryin’ months ago, anyhow. She gave up, but we should be gettin’ it.”
“Wanda, your mother has been receiving monthly disability checks from the Social Security Administration for the past three months.”
For several seconds, Wanda just stared at Isabelle. Then she just said, “You’re jiving me.”
“I’m not.” Isabelle handed Wanda a Xerox of three checks, one for each of the past three months, like Isabelle said. They were from the SSA, just like Grams’s checks, made out to Martha Jackson.
Wanda leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Least now I know how she’s payin’ for them drinks. Worst part is, I ain’t even surprised.” Then she stood up. “I can’t just say yes yet. If I’m gonna be away from home for ten years—”
“You will, of course, be able to visit your mother and grandmother—and your father in prison, if you wish.”
“I do not wish, thank you very much. That cat can stay locked up forever and never see this pretty face again. For that matter, I ain’t all that cool with seein’ Mama right now, neither, after what you just showed me.” Wanda let out a long breath. “Still, I can’t be makin’ this decision without talkin’ to Grams first. I gotta make sure she’s gonna be right with it, you dig?”
“Of course.” Isabelle stood up and held out her hand again. “But be advised that this offer is only good for twenty-four hours. If you’re going to accept the offer, you must be back in this office tomorrow no later than six p.m. If you don’t accept, of course, simply do not bother to return, but if you arrive after six, the offer will be null and void, and you will not be permitted on the premises.”
“Right on.” Wanda returned the handshake and then left her office, went down the shiny corridor, rang for the elevator, and went back out onto Fifth Avenue.
The noise of Manhattan hit her like a slap, and it took her a few minutes to realize that she was back on the street surrounded by smog and slush and noise after being in that office. She checked her watch—it was only a quarter after, but it felt like she’d been up in Limbus for hours.
She headed toward Broadway to catch the 1 train at 50th, then switch to the express at 72nd and go home.
It was gonna be a long talk with Grams tonight. And with Mama, if she was sober.
3
It took a lot of thinking for Wanda.
By the time she got home, Grams was already in bed asleep. Mama still wasn’t back from wherever it was she’d decided to go. Probably out drinking with the money she’d been hiding from Wanda.
The super’s apartment in the building was a one-bedroom, but they’d converted the living room to Mama’s bedroom and the dining room to Wanda’s. It meant, of course, that Wanda was stuck with a cot in a room that was open, but she didn’t care that much as long as Grams had her own room and Mama got at least a little privacy, since she could at least hang a curtain over the living room entryway.
Wanda lay on her cot in the used-to-be-a-dining-room and tossed and turned on it all night. She couldn’t sleep for more than a minute or two. In fact, only time she lay still was when Mama finally came home, singing at the top of her lungs. Wanda couldn’t talk to Mama right now sober, much less while she was drunk.
Eventually, Mama fell asleep, which Wanda knew because she was snoring loud enough that the neighbors probably thought there was a buzzsaw on high in the apartment.
The next morning, Mama was still snoring in the used-to-be-a-living
-room. Grams got up and made breakfast like she always did. Wanda had given up trying to get her to quit. Grams always said, “Breakfast is the most important meal, and I always fed my children breakfast. Not about to stop now.”
“Good morning, dear,” Grams said as she stirred the grits.
“Mornin’, Grams.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Not really.”
And then she told Grams what happened, ending with, “What do you think I should do, Grams?”
“What kind of a fool question is that, dear?”
Wanda flinched. Grams hadn’t talked that sharply since Wanda was a little girl.
“Of course you should take the job. Why would you even doubt it?”
For a second, Wanda didn’t say anything, because she didn’t want to say it out loud. It was why she didn’t just jump at the job as soon as Isabelle offered it.
Then she finally said it: “‘Cause I don’t wanna leave you alone with Mama.”
“Dear, I’ve been putting up with that child’s nonsense since I popped her out. It hasn’t gotten any better, and it won’t get any better until Jesus finally takes me. Or takes her, which will probably happen a lot sooner if she keeps carrying on like she did yesterday.” Grams looked over at the closed door to the living room, which wasn’t enough to keep them from hearing Mama’s snoring. “I’ll be fine. If these people will take care of us, then you should take the job.”
Wanda smiled, and relaxed for the first time since she’d seen the shuttered entrance to Charlie’s law firm. “Right on, Grams. I will take it. Now let’s have some of them grits.”
4
The office was the same as it was yesterday, but the view was different.
Isabelle sat at her desk, and this time she was wearing a green pantsuit that looked just like the maroon one. All the folders were gone, but the other stuff—the weird keyboard-and-tee-vee thing and the little rectangular piece of plastic, and the old-fashioned phone, and the two typewriters—were all there.
The view out the window seemed the same as it had been yesterday: downtown. But it didn’t look right to Wanda. There were a bunch of buildings she didn’t recognize, and some of them looked wrong.
But there was something more basic that was bugging the crap out of her.
Isabelle put a big pile of papers in front of her.
“This,” Isabelle said, “is a confidentiality agreement. Once you sign it, I can tell you the full nature of the department.”
“Right on.” She started to read the contract.
Isabelle smiled. “I’m impressed. People usually just sign without reading.”
“Yeah, Rondell did that once. Cost him a thousand bucks he didn’t have. Ain’t lettin’ that happen again no way no how.”
Wanda would never admit this to Isabelle, but most of the contract made absolutely no sense to her. But she read the thing anyhow. Took her and Rondell a year to pay that thousand off.
Finally, she got to the eleventh and final page of the contract. “Groovy. You got a pen?”
To Wanda’s surprise, Isabelle opened a drawer in her desk and took out one of those feather quills and a bottle of ink. She unscrewed the bottle, dipped the bottom of the quill pen into the ink, and then handed it to Wanda.
She took it with her left hand. “This place is outta sight.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“If you want.” The line at the end had the words WANDA WILHELMINA JACKSON under it. She used the pen to just sign her first and last name. “Wilhelmina” was Grams’s name, so she kept it to honor her, but it was a really stupid name, and she didn’t want to admit to it anymore than she had to.
She handed the pen back to Isabelle. “Now what?”
Isabelle placed the pen down on her desk and closed the ink bottle. Then she got up. “Come with me, Wanda.”
As she got up, she finally figured out what was wrong with the view. “Where’s all the smog at?”
“Excuse me?”
“On the radio this morning, they said there was a smog alert. Days like that, you can’t even see across the damn street. But look at that—it’s all clear.” Then she peered at the window more closely. “Where the hell’s the Twin Towers?”
“If you’ll come with me, I’ll be able to answer that question for you.” Isabelle was now standing near a small door that Wanda hadn’t noticed before. It was on the far side of the big set of bookshelves, right next to the window.
“Ain’t no way the World Trade disappeared overnight.”
“You’d be surprised,” Isabelle said grimly.
She opened the door, and they went down a long, empty hallway. No windows, no paintings, no lights—but it was all brightly lit anyhow.
At the far side was another door, and she opened it up and led Wanda through. As she went in, Isabelle said, “I will explain everything now, Wanda, but I must ask that you not interrupt me until I’m finished. I’ll be saying a lot of things that will surprise you or not make sense to you.”
“So just like every other conversation we’ve been havin’ the past two days.”
Isabelle smiled. “Even more so.”
The room they went into was huge. Wasn’t very long, but it was wide. The far wall was only a few feet away, but it was about fifty feet high and it had a whole bunch of little tee-vee screens on it. There were so many, she couldn’t even figure out what was on all of them. It was just too much.
“As I told you over the phone, Wanda, Limbus Inc. has considerable resources. We have branches all over the globe and beyond—”
“Say what?”
“What did I say about interrupting? This will take forever unless you simply wait until I’m finished, all right?”
Wanda nodded, but her head was spinning. Beyond the globe?
“One of those resources is a collection of devices that, when combined, allow one to travel through time. Those devices are put to use by the department that now employs you. The use of these devices is severely proscribed, and very few people even know of the department’s existence. It’s why the NDA—the confidentiality agreement—that you signed was so extensive. No one beyond the dozen or so people who know of the department can ever learn of its existence. As it is, we risk quite a bit every time we use it.”
“So why do you use it? Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” she added quickly.
“No, it’s actually a reasonable query. Limbus has interests. Sometimes those interests are furthered by manipulating events, which is a simple enough matter to do in the present, much harder to do in other times. But we can, though we do limit it. You asked how we obtained a copy of A Swiftly Tilting Planet when it won’t be released until July of this year. In fact, the edition that you picked up was a 2028 edition, released on the 50th anniversary of the book’s original publication. The view of the New York skyline you saw in my office a few minutes ago was from 2004, just three years after the World Trade Center was destroyed in a terrorist attack.”
Wanda’s jaw fell open, and she only didn’t interrupt because she couldn’t really believe what she was hearing.
Isabelle pointed at the big wall with all the tee vee screens. Wanda saw that they were from all different times. It looked like a bunch of movies—but they were all in full color and good quality. No movie she’d ever seen looked as sharp as what she was seeing right now.
“What is shown on these walls,” Isabelle said, “is one of our devices, which provides images transmitted by nanocameras that we’ve sent into various time zones. That’s how we knew about your efforts at Hooper’s in July of 1977.”
“Wait, hold up, stop. I know you said don’t interrupt, but this is messed up.”
“What is?” Isabelle sounded all confused.
“You can do all this!” Wanda waved her arms at the screens. “This is some seriously heavy stuff.”
Isabelle smiled. “I’m aware, believe me.”
“Then what the hell you need me for?”
/> “The technology is very useful, but it’s the use of the technology that’s important. As I told you from the beginning, your negotiating skills are what is required.”
“Get Henry Kissinger, then!”
“He’s a bit too high-profile for us.” Isabelle chuckled. “Come with me.”
They went out another door and into a nice lounge. There were several sofas and chairs. Wanda didn’t even wait for Isabelle to ask her to sit, she just flopped down on one of the sofas.
Isabelle sat down next to her. “We aren’t attempting to change the course of history. The negotiations we require are with people who aren’t world-changers or heads of state. We just need you to talk people into making a different decision in their lives that they may not have made otherwise. Are you familiar with Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’?”
Wanda shook her head. “Read Farenheit 451 in high school.”
“Well, in that story, people travel back in time, step on a butterfly, and that completely changes the future. We’re trying very hard to avoid stepping on any butterflies. We just want to push small things in different directions.”
“Okay.” Wanda was feeling more than a little overwhelmed. “So what do I gotta do?”
“For now, let’s get you something to eat and drink. You look like you could use it.” Isabelle got up from the sofa.
“Damn right.” Wanda got up, too, and Isabelle led her out the door.
“You’ll find we have a fantastic restaurant. It got the most positive Yelp! reviews in 2017.”
“What’s a yelp?”
5
Two months later, Wanda had her first assignment.
The eight weeks leading up to that was all about the orientation and getting her used to how Limbus did things, and how the department worked.
She spent all of it in 1978—and, man, that was a funky way of thinking about things—so she got to visit Grams a few times. Mama wasn’t home any of the times she went. After the third visit home, Grams had said, “It’s all right, dear, your mother’s just upset that she doesn’t get to see you.”
Limbus, Inc., Book III Page 18
