Time Trapped

by Richard Ungar

  As he says this, my mind flashes to the events in the subway tunnel. The last time I saw Uncle, he was lying on the subway platform. But he wasn’t dead, was he? In fact, he was reaching for something.

  “I gathered up my courage and walked the remaining few feet to his office door,” continues Dmitri. “The door slid open, and I stepped through.”

  I glance over at Abbie. All of her attention is on Dmitri.

  “The office was devoid of furniture and any other signs of use. Four bare walls, a ceiling and floor, and nothing else. Excuse me, three bare walls. The fourth wall was taken up by a huge aquarium. But that too had been emptied.

  “I turned to go, but as I did, something caught my eye: a single piece of yellow paper, resting on the windowsill.

  “As I reached for it, my mind conjured up a hundred different possibilities as to what it might be. My first thought was that it was an invoice of some sort, maybe from the movers who had packed and moved everything. Or an eviction notice perhaps. But what I was really hoping for was a note explaining what had happened there and why.

  “As it turned out, it was none of those things.” He stands, walks over to the fireplace mantel and fishes a yellow piece of paper out of a blue ceramic jar.

  “Perhaps you will have more luck than I’ve had in solving it,” he says, crossing the room. “I have gotten as far as determining that it is a word puzzle of sorts.”

  Dmitri hands me the piece of paper. I angle it so that both Abbie and I can view it at the same time.

  Two lines are written on it:

  One Down, Six Letters: “One who is off to the races . . . again.”

  Eight Across, Nine Letters: “One who is good at pulling strings.”

  I stare at the words for a second before it hits me. Then I break out into a huge smile.

  Abbie’s also grinning.

  “Nassim!” we shout at the same time.

  “Who?” asks Dmitri.

  “Nassim,” I repeat. “He was Uncle’s assistant before Luca. Nassim was obsessed with crossword puzzles. I escaped with him and another recruit to 1967. But by the time I thawed, he was already gone. He left a message with Abbie, though, saying he was ‘off to the races.’”

  “I see,” says Dmitri. “But what about the second clue? To me, ‘good at pulling strings’ refers to one who is adept at getting things done.”

  “That’s true,” Abbie says. “But it also has another meaning, right, Cale?”

  I nod. “A puppeteer is good at pulling strings. Nassim left this crossword for us to tell us that he was the puppeteer at the Mother Shipton play in Sir Isaac Newton’s mother’s garden. He used the Mother Shipton puppet to warn us about Frank.”

  I stare at the words on the page, and my eyes go wide.

  “There’s more here, Abbie!”

  “Really? What?”

  “Do you remember the gypsy fortune-teller? When she was telling my fortune, she said I had an important decision to make and that one six eight nine trusted I would make the right choice. I wondered for a long time what she meant by that. I figured it had something to do with time traveling to the year 1689.”

  “And it doesn’t?”

  I shake my head, point my finger at the paper and recite, “One Down, Six Letters, Eight Across, Nine Letters . . . one six eight nine!”

  “Nassim told her to say that!” Abbie shouts.

  Something else occurs to me: it must also have been Nassim whom I glimpsed for an instant skating on the Charles behind Luca just before I was nabbed. And at the other times too, when I felt I was being watched. My fingers trace the surface of the sheet of paper, and I feel a warm tingle. Nassim is out there somewhere, and he’s been watching over me.

  “What happened after you found the note?” Abbie asks Dmitri.

  “I returned to the Compound,” he says, continuing his story. “The subway car was as I had left it, undisturbed. I climbed on board and checked the controls. I had no idea whether they would still work. I immediately entered the coordinates to return to here, the time/place where I left you. But nothing happened.

  “I tried entering other coordinates, but with a similar result. And then something occurred to me. When I had first reprogrammed the controls during Operation Exodus, I had set as a default midnight on April 4, 1978, Kiev, Ukraine, knowing that, like all of the other recruits, I was going to go home to my own time/place. So, in my last attempt, I pressed the default sequence.”

  Dmitri stands up, walks over to the table and studies the sandwiches before selecting one with chicken salad. Then he sits back down and takes a small bite before continuing.

  “Luckily, it worked. I arrived back at my home three days after the cruise was supposed to end. My parents, as it turned out, were still in Oban, Scotland. They had stayed there following the cruise with other worried parents, meeting with the police and trying to find me and the other missing children. When I showed up at home, my aunt contacted them, and they took the next flight back to Kiev.

  “As you can expect, they had many questions for me, as did our neighbors, who awoke the morning after my return to find a broken-down subway car in our yard. That was the last timeleap I took. I spent years trying to repair it, to make it work once again as a time machine. But sadly, it was beyond my ability.”

  Dmitri takes another bite of his sandwich. “As I mentioned, I had a fix on where and when I dropped you off. The year was 2043, and the location was fifty-three miles southwest of Kiev. When I returned to my home it was 1978, and I was eleven years old. And now . . .”

  “And now it is 2043 again,” Abbie says. “That would mean that you are . . . seventy-six years old!”

  “You are a good mathematician,” Dmitri says, chuckling. “So as you can see, I did finally manage to catch up with you. But I had to do it the old-fashioned way . . . by aging. Well, not entirely. As I mentioned, this place is fifty-three miles south and west of my real home. I purchased this cottage and retired here. And have been waiting for you ever since.”

  Wow. That was quite a story. I have a million questions for him, including whether he has his own family, but before I can ask, Dmitri gets up.

  “I have another surprise for you,” he says. He walks over to a weathered cabinet and swings the doors open, revealing a screen.

  “Peekaboo!” says an all too familiar voice.

  November 27, 2043, 9:18 P.M.

  Near Kozhanka, Ukraine

  Phoebe’s persona is dressed in a tank top and jeans and is sitting on the side of a highway. Her thumb is out, and in her other hand, she holds a sign that says FRESNO OR BUST.

  “Phoebe?”

  the one and only!”

  “I taught Phoebe some Ukrainian. And now she speaks better than I do.”

  “Say , Caleb,” Pheobe says. “I’m the one who told Dmitri where to put this cabin.”

  I stutter.

  “You’re welcome,” says Phoebe cheerily.

  This is all so unreal. I look around the room. Most of the recruits are still slouched near the fireplace. Some are fast asleep.

  “Come on,” Dmitri says, removing two thick coats from hooks near the door and handing them to Abbie and me.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I want to show you something,” Dmitri answers.

  We follow him out into the night and soon find ourselves on a wooded path. The snow crunches underneath our feet, and the air is so cold it almost hurts to breathe.

  “Do you know what my granddaughter said to me when she was out here last week?” says Dmitri. “She said, ‘—Grandfather, I want to grow a big beard like yours so that my chin will stay warm’.” Dmitri lets out a big belly laugh.

  “You have a grandchild. That’s wonderful,” I say.

  “I have sixteen grandchildren!” says Dmitri proudly. “Seven boys and nine gi
rls. But only one of them, boys included, wants to grow a beard!”

  Dmitri continues telling us about his life as we walk. At one point he says the word perfunctory and I smile to myself, reminded of the eleven-year-old Dmitri who used big words like that one.

  Finally, we arrive at an old barn. The door is secured with a large padlock. From the depths of his coat, Dmitri pulls out a silver key. With shaking hands, he inserts the key in the lock and turns. The click of the lock opening echoes through the crisp night air.

  He looks back, smiles and gestures for us to follow.

  The barn is pitch-black and has a faint musty smell. Dmitri flicks a switch, and the entire barn is bathed in electric light.

  When I see what is there, my breath catches in my throat.

  It’s old and rusted. But the shattered window looks the same. Faded letters say NEW YORK CITY TRANSIT COMMISSION on the side.

  “I can’t believe it,” I say.

  “Yes. It cost a pretty penny to move it here from Kiev,” he says, stamping his feet against the cold.

  We stare at it for a moment and then Dmitri says, “Let’s get back to the cabin. We can finish our conversation there.”

  He leads the way back along the path. Abbie’s hand brushes mine, and our fingers twine together. Her hand is warm and soft.

  The recruits are exactly where we left them, sprawled out on the floor and the couches. Judith is the only one of them still awake.

  “Dmitri, do you think . . . ?” I begin to ask.

  “Nothing is for certain,” he says. “But with your arrival, there may be a chance that for a short period I can make the subway car operational again as a time machine.”

  I feel a sudden lightness; it’s as if someone has lifted a hundred-pound weight off my chest. He can make it work again! Don’t get your hopes up, my brain warns me. But it’s too late for that. My hopes are as high as the moon.

  “What do you need to make it work?” asks Abbie.

  “Well, do you have any neurofiber cable?”

  Abbie and I shake our heads. There go my hopes. They’ve left the moon’s atmosphere and are now plummeting back down to Earth at warp speed.

  Dmitri smiles and says, “Not to worry. That was wishful thinking on my part. I did not really think you would have any. But you may have brought with you a material that I can use as a substitute.”

  “What is that?” I ask.

  He glances around the room at the sleeping recruits. “Are those Timeless Treasures–issued shoes they are wearing?”

  “I think so. Why? Do you need their shoes?” I ask.

  “Not the shoes. The laces,” says Dmitri. “You see, laces in shoes in the 2060s were sometimes coated with specially formulated gallium arsenide to reduce friction.”

  He’s losing me. “Gallium who?”

  “Don’t worry about the name. The important thing to know is that the coating from the laces can be used to make semiconductors, provided there are enough laces and that we can scrape off enough of the compound to make it work. I believe I can use that to make the connections function once again.”

  “Okay. How can we help?” asks Abbie.

  “You can start by taking the laces from their shoes,” says Dmitri, “and bringing them to me in the barn.”

  He moves toward the door and grabs his coat from the peg.

  “We’re on it,” I say. “How many laces do you think you’ll need?”

  Dmitri looks up and scrunches his eyebrows. “That is difficult to say. I have never tried this before. So I would say all of them.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  Abbie and I move among the sleeping recruits, collecting their shoelaces.

  “Why don’t you stay here with them, and I’ll bring this stuff to Dmitri,” I say.

  “Okay, but on one condition,” she says, handing me her pile of laces.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  She takes a brown furry hat with earflaps off of a hook.

  “That you wear this,” she says, pulling the hat on me and adjusting the flaps. “There, you look like a true Ukrainian.”

  “But I’m not Ukrainian,” I protest.

  “Oh, well. Wear it anyway,” she says, shooing me out the door.

  “I’ve got them,” I say to Dmitri, laying my bundle of laces on his worktable in the barn.

  “Good,” he says. “Here is a knife and pan. Start scraping.”

  I sit down on the floor and get to work. At first my fingers are cold, but the movement warms them up.

  We work alongside each other in silence. My thoughts turn to Razor. What happened to her was my fault. No, I can’t think like that or I’ll be good for nothing. And that won’t help the recruits, will it?

  So I try to clear my mind of everything except for the task at hand.

  The barn doors bang open, and I almost drop the knife. It can’t be good news. Good news is something I left behind in 1968 with Zach and Jim and Diane.

  I expect to hear Abbie’s voice, but instead it’s Gerhard.

  “Caleb, Abbie needs you,” is all he says. His face looks pinched, and he can’t seem to stop blinking.

  I look up at Dmitri and then, at the same time, we both look at our pans. Is it enough?

  “Go,” he says. “I’ll take it from here.”

  I nod and leave the barn with Gerhard. He studies the ground as he walks, apparently taking care not to step in any footprints he made on the way out.

  When I get to the house, Abbie is sitting on the hearth, gazing into the fire.

  “What is it?” I say even before I take off my coat and hat.

  “We’d better talk in there,” she says, tilting her head toward the kitchen.

  I glance at the recruits. Some of them are awake, fiddling with their laceless shoes.

  As soon as we are inside the kitchen with the door closed, Abbie looks at me, grim-faced.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Our supply of anti-time-fog pills is gone,” she says. “I was carrying the bottle in my pocket. It must have fallen out onto the tracks during our escape.”

  My mind races. The recruits don’t need the pills because they don’t have wrist implants. But Abbie and I need them for sure. The last dose we took, good for three hours, was right before the escape. As soon as that dose wears off, we’ll need to take another pill each or risk time fog. The other option is to have our wrist patches removed. But I don’t think I could ever cut out Abbie’s patch the way I did Frank’s.

  “How long do you think we have?” I ask.

  “In fifteen or twenty minutes, we’ll feel disoriented,” she says, “and thirty minutes from now, it will hit us full force.”

  Thirty minutes! Even if Dmitri could fix the subway car in a minute, there still wouldn’t be enough time to get all the recruits home before Abbie and I really start to suffer.

  Just then, the door bursts open and Dmitri comes in. His eyes look wild. “We are all set,” he says.

  “Really? You’ve got it working?” I ask.

  “I am not certain, but we will know soon.”

  Abbie, Gerhard and I wake the recruits and help them to their feet. A couple of the younger ones are still too sleepy to walk under their own steam so we wrap them in coats and carry them.

  “You go on ahead,” Dmitri says. “I must lock up the cabin.”

  Minutes later, we are all assembled in the barn. Dmitri enters, carrying a backpack.

  “Drop me off in Hawaii,” says a voice from inside the backpack. “I’ve always wanted to dip my toes in the Pacific Ocean.”

  “You don’t have toes, Phoebe,” I point out.

  “Spoilsport,” she snorts.

  “Everyone on board, please,” Dmitri says.

  As soon as we are all inside, he presses a button and the
doors close.

  “Hang on,” Dmitri says, “and saying a prayer would also be encouraged.” Then he ducks into the control booth.

  I close my eyes. The lights of the car blink out.

  The car begins to shake.

  And then goes still.

  Thirty seconds go by.

  Nothing.

  The lights come back on.

  “Dmitri?”

  “It didn’t work,” he says from the control booth. His voice sounds tense.

  “What happened?” asks Abbie.

  “I’m checking now.”

  A wave of dizziness passes through me. I thought Abbie said it would be another fifteen minutes before we start getting time fog symptoms. Well, maybe stress brings them on sooner.

  A few of the recruits begin to whimper about the cold. We won’t be able to keep them here for much longer unless we bring blankets and food from the cabin.

  I poke my head inside the control booth. “Any luck?”

  “Yes and no,” says Dmitri.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have identified the problem. Simply put, we do not have enough ‘juice’ to power the subway car through time.”

  “But I don’t understand,” I say. “There was enough to get us here in the first place.”

  “True,” says Dmitri, “but during our escape, I was able to draw some power from the car’s own operating system. That operating system is now sixty-five years older, and for nearly all of that time, it sat unused and was subjected to natural deterioration.”

  “So how do we get more power?” Abbie asks.

  Dmitri shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve already sucked out all the power I can from the wristbands and Frank’s wrist patch. I’m also drawing some power remotely from your and Abbie’s patches. That’s all we have.”

  I think for a minute and then say, “What if Abbie and I gave you our wrist patches? Would that be enough power?”

  He looks at me and says slowly, “Perhaps. But all of that is moot, isn’t it? After all, we don’t have the facilities here to surgically remove your patches.”