The Wells Bequest

by Polly Shulman

  That wasn’t particularly surprising. They still play that song all the time. But as I kept turning the clock’s hands backward, the songs got older and older. After a few turns of the hour hand they were playing oldies, then jazz, then scratchy ragtime and opera.

  Then I turned the hand counterclockwise one more circle of the dial and the music stopped dead. Nothing but static.

  Could it—no, that was crazy. Was it really . . . ? Impossible!

  When I attached the radio to the clock with the conceptual coupler, did I really make a time-travel radio? The static would make sense then—it would mean I’d gone back so far in time that they hadn’t invented the radio yet.

  Did Dr. Rust know I’d built a time-travel radio? Why was I the only one freaking out?

  If this really was a time-travel radio, it should play the future, too. I started spinning the clock’s hands forward.

  Dr. Rust stopped me hurriedly, picking up the radio and unplugging it from the coupler. “Thanks, Leo. You clearly have the touch, but I think that’s enough for now.”

  “Wait! I want to see what happens when it goes far enough forward,” I said.

  “Another time, perhaps. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Tomorrow is another day. Now, when can you start? Monday? Wednesday?”

  “But—” A time-travel radio was a huge big deal! If I tuned it to a news station in the future, could I find out tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers? Could I predict the next earthquake and save lives?

  Then my mind processed what Dr. Rust had just said. “Wait—do you mean I got the job?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh! Thank you!” I would be working at the repository with Jaya! Maybe soon I would find the time machine!

  “So when can you start?” asked Dr. Rust again, patiently.

  I thought about Jaya’s hours. “I could come Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays,” I said.

  “Good,” said Dr. Rust. “Come in Tuesday after school—does three thirty suit? Ask for Ms. Callender.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Stiletto, a Niddy Noddy, and a Serpent

  My parents were pleased when I told them about my new job, even though it wasn’t in a lab. “Are you working in the science collections, Lyonya?” asked Dad. “They’re pretty famous.”

  “I’m not sure yet. Probably,” I said.

  Sofia wasn’t impressed, though. “That’s that weird place on the Upper East Side where they keep all those old flowerpots, right?” she said. “Why would you want to work there?”

  “Have you ever actually been inside, So-So?” I used to call her that when I was a baby. She pretends not to mind—she thinks I won’t use the name so much if I don’t know how much she hates it. I save it for when she’s really bugging me; I don’t want it to lose its power through overuse.

  “No, but the theater geeks always go there to borrow their props and stuff,” she said. “And believe me, there’s nothing geekier than Cooper Tech theater geeks.”

  “Really? Is that why you were so upset when you didn’t get that part in West Side Story last year?”

  She sighed elaborately. “You know what the trouble with you is, Leo?”

  I left the room before she could tell me.

  • • •

  My first day on the job, I went up to Stack 6 to look for Ms. Callender. I got that quiver of excitement again when I went through the Staff Only door. It opened into the middle of a long room with rows and rows of shelves and cabinets stretching away in both directions.

  Three librarians sat at large carved oak desks, only a little less elaborate than Dr. Rust’s. Simon was putting objects on a cart.

  “Ms. Callender?”

  “Yes?” said one of the librarians. She had round cheeks that bunched up into apples when she smiled at me.

  “I’m Leo Novikov, the new page. Dr. Rust said to come find you.”

  “It’s good to have you here, Leo.” She introduced me to the pages and the other librarians—Rick Reyes, who I already knew, and a thin, unsmiling woman named Lucy Minnian. “Here’s Jaya, our head page,” she said. “She can show you what to do.”

  • • •

  “New blood! I love breaking in pages!” said Jaya, grinning. Her crooked canine tooth looked razor sharp.

  “Be nice,” said Ms. Callender.

  “Me? I’m always nice.”

  All three librarians laughed, even stern Ms. Minnian.

  “Jaya’s our pet dragon,” Ms. Callender told me. “Don’t let her burn you to a crisp.”

  “Oh, Leo and I are old friends,” said Jaya.

  “Great. Off you go, then.”

  I couldn’t quite believe my luck. A whole afternoon with Jaya! I followed her downstairs to Stack 5.

  She led me to a clearing in the middle of the floor, where the cabinets and shelves stopped. There were little elevators, a sink, a cabinet full of boxes, gloves, and cleaning and packing materials, and a few chairs and tables. Pneumatic tube pipes snaked across the ceiling.

  “When a call slip arrives in a pneum, you go find the item on the shelf. Check the call numbers—it’s not hard.”

  We sat down to wait for call slips.

  “So how long have you been working here?” I asked. “The librarians all seem to treat you like family.”

  “I guess they do. Well, in a way I am family. My big sister used to be a page here when she was my age, and my dad’s on the board of directors. I’ve been coming to the repository since I was tiny. I’ve been here longer than some of the librarians. I’ve only been a page for a couple years, though.”

  “Do you think you would want to work here when you grow up?”

  “I’m not sure. I love this place, but it’s all about preserving old stuff. I think I might want to work with new stuff instead.”

  “Like doing what?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll be an angel investor, like my aunt.”

  “Your aunt’s an angel?” It wouldn’t completely surprise me.

  “An angel investor. She funds start-up companies in England. Or maybe I’ll start a think tank. I like to be in charge. I’m very bossy.”

  I laughed. “You think?”

  “Admit it!” she ordered.

  “Okay, okay, I admit it! Don’t fire me!”

  “I won’t, as long as you always do exactly what I say.”

  “Yes, boss. I know—you’re the next Thomas Edison. You’ll found a new Menlo Park.”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t Edison invent the lightbulb and the phonograph? I’m not really an inventor myself.”

  “Actually, there already was a lightbulb—Edison just improved it. His big thing was hiring other inventors and telling them what to do—like Tesla.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll start an idea incubator. What about you—what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. Everybody in my family is a scientist, but I don’t think I have the patience and discipline for it, and I don’t have the grades, either. I’m much better at coming up with crazy, out-there ideas.”

  “That’s perfect,” said Jaya. “You can come work for me in my idea incubator.”

  “Okay. What ideas are we incubating?”

  She considered. “I’ll hire the best engineer in the country to come up with a way to stop earbud wires from tying themselves in knots. That would be a real service to humanity.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “Make them wireless.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll hire the best engineer in the country to find lost wireless earbuds.”

  “I see your point,” I said.

  “You know what else I’d like? A hands-free umbrella. It’s pretty much impossible to hold an umbrella and open a door at the same time without dropping your cell phone. Sticking the umbrella under your chin just dumps water down your shoulder.”

  “I’ve seen umbrella hats,” I said. “Like a sunshade, only bigger.”

  She shook her head. “No good. You’d poke out people’s eyes. Everybody wo
uld have to wear goggles. And goggles would get all steamed up in the rain. No, the solution has to involve some kind of force field.”

  “I wonder if you could repel the raindrops ultrasonically?” I mused, tugging at my hair. “Or break them up before they hit you.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” she said.

  Something banged in the pneumatic pipes. With a scudding thump, a pneum fell into the basket.

  Jaya jumped up. “Here, want to run your first slip?” She pulled it out of the pneum and handed it to me.

  I unfolded it and read, “V T 746.12 S53. Niddy noddy. Oak. Massachusetts, 1780s. What the quark is a niddy noddy?”

  Jaya laughed. “It’s a handheld spinner’s weasel. Don’t you even know that?”

  “Now I do,” I said. “What’s a spinner’s weasel? And don’t say an un-handheld niddy noddy.”

  “Okay, I won’t. Go fetch! The 740s are that way.” Jaya pointed to the left. She got a book out of her backpack and started to read.

  I walked past rows of closed cabinets and open shelves, scanning the numbers on the ends.

  The niddy noddy turned out to be a wooden stick the length of my forearm, with two shorter sticks attached at the ends at right angles. The wood was smooth and dark, as if generations of hands had worn it down.

  “Found it?” asked Jaya when I got back.

  “I think so. But I still don’t know what it is.”

  “I’ll show you.” She took it and waved it around in front of her.

  “It’s for rowing boats?” I asked.

  “No, silly, it’s for winding yarn.”

  “Oh! Obviously,” I said. “Why is someone borrowing it?”

  “To wind yarn, I would think,” said Jaya, handing it back. “Initial the call slip and send it upstairs.”

  I ran three more call slips—a stereoscope viewer, a lathe, and an embroidery stiletto—while Jaya sat with her legs out in front of her, reading.

  “It’s fun having a new kid to train,” she said when I came back with the stiletto. It was a thick needle as long as my pinky finger.

  “Is that what you’re doing? Training me? Wow, training people looks a lot like reading a book.”

  “Is it my fault you’re a quick study?”

  “That’s because I have such a good teacher. What are you reading, anyway?” I asked.

  “Jules Verne. Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours,” she said, with a perfect French accent, waving the book at me. Show-off! It was an old paperback with a picture of a hot-air balloon on the cover.

  “Around the World in Eighty Days, right? I read that,” I said.

  “How is it in English?”

  She wasn’t the only one who could show off. “I wouldn’t know. I read it in Russian.”

  “Really? Why Russian?”

  “It was my dad’s copy.”

  “Is your dad Russian?”

  I nodded. “He’s from Moscow. What about you—where are your parents from?”

  “Chomalur, in southern India.”

  The pneum basket thudded again. Instead of a single call slip, the plastic tube held a whole sheaf of them, all canceled with pages’ initials, including the four I’d run myself. “What do I do with these?” I asked.

  “Those get filed. I’ll show you,” said Jaya.

  The call slip file was a big wooden box with compartments. I watched Jaya’s long, dark fingers dancing through the papers. Her fingers were just a little too long—they looked a little sticklike. They fascinated me. I wondered what it would feel like to hold her hand.

  “And now it’s time for my break—I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” She pulled on her ridiculous hat.

  • • •

  The stair door opened a few minutes after she left. It was Francis. “Hi, Leo,” he said. “Ms. Callender sent me downstairs while Jaya’s on break in case you run into trouble. This stack’s usually pretty quiet, though.” He sat in Jaya’s chair.

  “What are the other stacks like?” I asked.

  “Oh, not that different from this, mostly. My favorite’s Stack 4, musical instruments,” he said. “Except for . . . no . . . well, yeah, Stack 4. I like to play the instruments.”

  “You’re allowed to do that? Use the objects in the stacks?”

  “We’re not really supposed to, but the librarians don’t mind if you’re careful,” he said. “And nobody minds how loudly I play in the stacks. Except Simon FitzHenry—he always tells me to ‘lower the volume a touch, if you wouldn’t mind.’” Francis imitated Simon’s accent.

  “What a grudgebucket,” I said.

  “I don’t think he likes me very much,” said Francis.

  “Does he like anyone?”

  “He likes Jaya. He likes her a lot.”

  I felt a twinge of jealousy. I changed the subject. “What instrument do you play?”

  “Lots of things, a little. I’m teaching myself the serpent.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a medieval wind instrument. It has a great sound.”

  “Do you like the theremin? I made one the other day,” I said. “When Dr. Rust gave me my page test.”

  “Oh, nice! Do you play anything?”

  I shook my head. “I used to—violin—but I sucked so bad my parents let me stop. Which if you knew my parents, you’d be impressed with my suckitude.”

  He laughed. “Really? Are they musicians?”

  “No, scientists. But they’re big on persistence and success.”

  “Maybe violin just isn’t your instrument. Maybe you’d be better at the serpent. Or the krummhorn, or the guiro, or the African thumb piano.”

  “Possibly,” I said. “I don’t think my parents would be too happy, though. They think if you’re not playing the violin or the piano, you might as well be banging on a toy xylophone.”

  “Hey, I love banging on a toy xylophone! Have you ever heard the band Flashcube? They have a great song for toy xylophone and bass guitar. And the lead singer is totally hot.”

  The door opened as he was speaking. “Who’s totally hot?” asked Jaya, coming in.

  “You, of course.”

  She laughed and hit him on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Francis, I know I’m not your taste.”

  I didn’t think it was possible to be jealous of someone for getting hit on the shoulder.

  “It’s only because my heart belongs to the lead singer of Flashcube,” said Francis. “Later, guys. Gotta go practice my serpent.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jaya Hits Me

  I was getting impatient to find the time machine. The next day at lunchtime I went to talk to Ms. Kang. She was in the school library. “So, you used to be a librarian. Can you give me some advice?” I asked.

  “Once a librarian, always a librarian,” said Ms. Kang, tugging on her sleeves. “What do you need to know?”

  “Well, there’s some stuff that I think should be in the repository, but I can’t find it in the card catalog. Is there someplace else I could look?”

  “There might be. Sometimes separate divisions have their own catalogs. The other thing you could try is looking for a special-subject thesaurus.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a book of synonyms that tells you how the librarians decided to catalog their holdings. Say you’re looking for books about cooking. Should you look under food preparation or cookbooks or cooking or culinary arts? Most libraries use the Library of Congress Subject Headings, but sometimes they have their own way of categorizing things.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Kang. That’s really helpful.”

  • • •

  “Hey, Jaya,” I said next time I saw her. “Is everything in the repository here in the stacks, or are there other storage areas? And do they have separate card catalogs?”

  “Well, some of the collections have special storage requirements, like the living material, so we keep them in special areas. But there’s only one card catalog.”

  “Wow, you have living thi
ngs here? Where?”

  “Most of them are downstairs in . . . I guess you could call it sort of an interior garden.”

  “I would love to see that!”

  She looked uncomfortable. “It’s one of the Special Collections. They’re restricted access.”

  “Is that where they keep the stuff I’m not allowed to borrow yet, like that Czech robot from Rossum’s?”

  Jaya nodded. “That’s in one of the Special Collections.”

  “Are the Special Collections in this building?”

  “Yes, down in the basement on Stack 1.”

  “I see.” If there really was a time machine in the repository, I bet that’s where they kept it. I would have to figure out some way to get down there.

  • • •

  The problem, it turned out, wasn’t getting down to Stack 1—I just took the elevator on my next break. The problem was getting into the Special Collections once I was there.

  Abigail was on Stack 1 with Francis. It was a long room like the other stacks, with the same buzzing fluorescent lights, but for some reason it felt different. It felt dangerous.

  “Hi, Leo. Do you need something?” asked Abigail. She didn’t sound like her usual friendly self.

  “No, I was just getting familiar with the stacks. I’ve only really been on Stack 5 and Stack 6. What’s down here?”

  “These are the Special Collections.”

  “What’s in them? Can I take a look?” I asked.

  “They’re locked,” said Francis.

  “They’re restricted access,” said Abigail.

  “But what’s in them? Is it, like, a big secret?” I asked.

  Abigail and Francis looked at each other. “You have to ask Dr. Rust,” said Abigail at last.

  “Okay.” I turned to go.

  “Sorry! I didn’t mean to be rude, Leo, it’s just, we’re not supposed to—it’s one of those things where you need permission,” she said.

  “Talk to Dr. Rust,” said Francis.

  “It’s okay, I understand.”

  But Dr. Rust wouldn’t tell me either. “There’s no point in getting ahead of yourself. Your exam was quite impressive, but let’s give you a chance to settle in first before you go messing with the Special Collections.”