Darkness Creeping (14 page)

When they’re done, a cloud of dust hangs in the air like fog over a swamp, and the machines within that dusty swamp appear like hunched monsters ready to pounce. All they need is someone to plug them in.

Ford sits at the table and studies the old professor’s notes and lab reports. But Marla is studying something else—the knobs and switches on the grotesque and fantastic devices are what grab her attention. They might not find Wilmington’s body down there, but Marla is happy. This is already more interesting than anything she has done in quite a while.

She joins Ford at the scarred table, going through the professor’s old notes page by page.

It makes little sense to them, and Ford has to keep looking things up in a dictionary.

At last, with the help of the professor’s notes, they’re able to figure out what most of these machines are supposed to do.

The one with a metallic eyeball looking down from a tall stalk is a waterless shower that can dissolve dirt from your skin by sonic vibrations. But according to Wilmington’s footnote, it doesn’t work; it dissolves your skin, instead of the dirt.

The device with iron tentacles growing from a steel pyramid is supposed to turn molecular vibrations into electricity. It works, but unfortunately it also electrocutes anyone who happens to be standing within five feet of it.

Another device—a hydrogen-powered engine—was supposed to revolutionize the automotive industry. According to a letter the professor received from the chairman of one of the big car companies, the engine nearly blew up half the plant when they turned it on.

In fact, none of the things Wilmington made worked properly. Not the refractive laser chain saw, or the lead-gold phase converter, or even the self-referential learning microprocessor.

“No wonder no one from the university ever came by to collect all this stuff,” Marla complains. “It’s all junk.”

Then Marla sees the doorknob. She hadn’t noticed it before because it’s in a strange place—only a foot or so from the ground, half hidden behind Wilmington’s nonfunctioning nuclear refrigerator.

When Ford sees it, his jaw drops with a popping sound. “A tiny door! Do you think Wilmington’s shrunk himself?”

“Don’t be a complete gel-brain,” says Marla, brushing her wild hair from her face. “It’s just a root cellar. But Wilmington might be in there . . . what’s left of him, anyway.”

The temptation is too great. Together they push the heavy refrigerator aside, grab the knob, and swing the door wide.

An earthy smell of dry rot wafts out, like the smell of a grave. The door is two feet high, and inside it is pitch-black. Marla and Ford crawl into the root cellar and vanish into darkness.

Through ancient spiderwebs they crawl until they find a dangling string. When they pull it, the room is lit by a single dim bulb that hangs from an earthen ceiling six feet from the ground.

There are no dead bodies down there. The smell is a sack of potatoes that have long since gone to their maker.

But what surrounds them is enough to make their hearts miss several beats.

Razor-sharp gears, knifelike spokes, and huge magnets are frozen in position. The entire room has been converted into one big contraption, and in the center of it is a high-backed chair, its plush upholstery replaced by silver foil.

It looks like the inside of a garbage disposal,
thinks Marla.

In the corner sits a pile of dusty notes, and on a control panel is an engraved silver plate that reads:

“What is it?” wonders Marla. She looks to Ford, whom she has already pegged to be a whiz at this scientific stuff.

Ford swallows a gulp of rotten, stale air. “I think it’s a time machine.”

It takes a good half hour for them to find the nerve to actually touch the thing. Ford sits on the floor most of that time, reading Wilmington’s notes.

“This guy has page after page of physics formulas,” Ford tells Marla. “He must have thought he was Einstein or something.”

“But does it work?” she asks.

Ford furrows his brow. “I have no idea.”

“There’s one way to find out,” she says, grabbing Ford’s sweaty hand.

Together they run upstairs and find the perfect guinea pig; Ford’s baby sister’s teddy bear, Buffy. They bring Buffy down and set him on the silver chair.

“I don’t know,” says Ford. “Maybe we ought to know everything about this machine before we start throwing switches.”

“You can’t ride a bike unless you get on and pedal,” says Marla, “and you can’t travel through time unless you throw the switch!”

“But—”

Marla flicks the switch. The gears begin to grind, the electromagnets begin to spin and hum. They duck their heads to keep from being decapitated by the spinning spokes. Static electricity makes Ford’s greased hair stand on end like Marla’s. The dangling bulb dims.

There is a flash of light, and Buffy the bear is gone, leaving nothing behind but the stinging odor of ozone in the air. The machine grinds itself to a halt.

Ford and Marla are left gasping on the ground.

“In-totally-credible!” screeches Marla. “Now let’s bring it back!”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” explains Ford, catching his breath. “According to Wilmington’s journal, time travel only works one way. You can go forward in time, but you can never come back.”

“That’s ridiculous! That’s not the way it happens in the movies.”

“Maybe real time travel doesn’t work the way it does in movies,” suggests Ford.

But to Marla it doesn’t matter at all. The point is that however time travel works, it
does
work.

Ford looks to see where the dial is set.

“According to this,” he says, “we sent the bear three days into the future. If the bear reappears in that chair three days from now, we’ll really know if this thing works.”

“I hate waiting,” says Marla as she impatiently picks her rhinestoned nails.

Two days later, Marla’s parents read her the riot act. That is to say, they sit her down and demand she change her ways, or else.

“Your mother and I are sick and tired of you being so disrespectful,” says her father.

“What’s to respect?” she growls at them. “Is it my fault I was born into a family of cave people?”

That makes her parents boil.

“That’s it,” says her father. “From now on you’re going to stop acting like the Queen of Mars, and you’re going to start acting like a normal human being. From now on, young lady, no more neon-blue lipstick. No more ultraviolet hair. No more radioactive eye shadow. No more automotive parts hanging from your earlobes.
N-O-R-M-A-L
. Normal! Do you understand me? Or else you get no allowance! Zero! Zilch!”

“You’re so backward!” screams Marla, and she runs to her room and beats up her pillows.

Alone with her thoughts, it doesn’t take long to decide exactly what to do. Without so much as a good-bye, she takes a final look at her room, then climbs out of the window and heads straight to Ford’s house.

The sky is clear, filled with a million unblinking stars, and a furious wind howls through the trees. It’s a perfect night for time travel.

“Marla,” Ford says. “I’ve been reading Wilmington’s notes, and there’s something not quite right.”

“Don’t be an idiot!” Marla shouts in Ford’s face. “The machine works—we saw it! We’re going and that’s final.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” says Ford. “I’m not into future stuff, okay?”

“It figures,” huffs Marla. “I’ll go by myself, then.”

She pulls open the basement door and stomps down the stairs. Ford follows, trying to talk some sense into her.

“There’s lots of stuff I’m still trying to figure out,” he says.

“Oh yeah?” She whirls and stares impatiently at him. “Like what?”

“Like the name of the machine,” Ford says. “It bugs me.
Tempus Syncro-Epicyclus
. I looked up the word ‘Epicyclus’ in the dictionary. It had something to do with Ptolemy.”

“Tommy who?” asks Marla.

“Not Tommy,
Ptolemy
. He was an ancient astronomer who believed the earth was the center of the universe, and the sun revolved around it!”

“So?” she hisses.

“So, he was wrong!” shouts Ford.

Marla shrugs. “What does that have to do with a twentieth-century genius like Wilmington? At this very moment,
he’s
probably in the future partying away, and I plan to join him.”

Marla impatiently crosses the basement toward the root-cellar door.

“Marla, the last person to touch that machine must have been Wilmington—and it was set for three days! If he went three days into the future,
why didn’t he come back
?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know!” says Ford. “I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will! Listen, at least wait until tomorrow. If the bear comes back on schedule, you can do whatever you want.”

“I can’t wait that long. I’ve got places to go!” shouts Marla.

“You’re crazy!” Fords shouts back. “You’re the type of person who would dive headfirst into an empty pool, just to find out how empty it is!”

Marla pulls open the root-cellar door, but Ford kicks it closed. The house rattles and moss falls from the peeling walls.

“This is my house, and that means it’s my machine,” he says. “I won’t let you use it, so go home. Now!”

Marla turns her Day-Glo-painted eyes to Ford and grits her teeth. “Why you slimy little sluggardly worm-brain! How dare you tell me what I can and cannot do! You think I care what you say, you
Leave It to Beaver
dweebistic troll? Marla Nixbok does what she wants,
when
she wants to do it, and if you won’t throw the switch on that machine, I’ll throw it myself!”

Still, Ford refuses to budge, so Marla takes her nails and heartlessly scratches his face, a maneuver she often uses when words no longer work.

Ford grabs his face and yelps in pain. Then he takes his foot away from the door.

“Fine,” says Ford. “Go see the future. I hope you materialize right in the middle of a nuclear war!” With that, he storms to the stairs.

Good riddance
, thinks Marla. Maybe she ought to travel fifty years into the future, just so she can find Ford as a shriveled old man and laugh in his wrinkled face.

Marla bends down and crawls into the root cellar.

At the top of the basement stairs, the truth finally strikes Buford Planet with such fury that it nearly knocks him down the stairs. If Marla uses that machine, her future won’t be nuclear war. It’ll be far, far from it.

“No!” he screams, and races back down the stairs.

In the root cellar, Marla turns the knob to
One Year
. One year is a good first trip. After that, who knows? Decades! Maybe centuries! At last she’ll be free to travel to whatever time and place she feels she belongs. The Queen of Time. She likes the sound of that.