In Times Like These (15 page)

I look around at the wall of cubbies, each one holding an anchor and a packet of photos, and realize how much time and research Dr. Quickly has put into making this particular collection. I imagine that even with help it has taken decades.

Busy guy.

During the afternoon’s lesson, we are each given cameras and spend time learning to precisely photograph anchors on stands and den
ote the specifics of the anchor’s location. Quickly makes us take measurements using a tape measure, compass and a watch before he eventually lets us try out his camera, which he calls the Anchor Shot Pro or ASP. We scribble notations in individual logbooks of our various measurements and locations, making frequent corrections as Quickly critiques our work.

“Is this right?” Robbie slides hi
s chair over to mine to show me his logbook.

“I think you have your height mislabeled as feet,” I whisper. “Pretty sure that’s supposed to be eighty-seven inches.” Robbie nods and slides back.

“Now these have all been practice notations,” Quickly explains. “In the next few days we’ll begin logging actual usable anchor shots. It’s essential that you grasp the basics well, or all the more complicated knowledge I teach you will be useless. It’s no use bestowing the theory of transverse timestream navigation on someone who is going to teleport themselves in front of a steam-roller on their first jump.”

I look at the pages of scrap paper I have accrued with the dozens of crossed out entries on them.

We’re all going to die
.

When we make it back to the house, we’re excited to fill Mr. Cameron in on our new education over dinner. He has barbequed, and we enjoy a delic
ious dinner of ribs and chicken while Spartacus weaves between our legs under the table, snatching up the scraps we sneak to him. We’re finishing up the last of the ribs, when the phone rings and Mr. Cameron goes into the other room to answer it. I hear him chatting for about ten minutes before he makes it back to the table.

“That was Mollie. Seems you caught a crab today in the Tortugas
, Robbie,” Mr. Cameron says. “It apparently didn’t go well for your fingers.”

“I remember that,” Robbie replies. “I think I hated crabs for a while.” He smiles at the memory and listens to Mr. Cameron continue on about his family’s vacation experiences, but I can see him grow more somber as the conversation continues. I’m not surprised when after we’ve finished the dishes and are up in Blake and Carson’s room, Robbie tells us he’s not going to attend Quickly’s lessons tomorrow.

“I just need to be here for my own peace of mind.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Francesca asks.

“No. It’ll be fine. Go ahead. I’m just going to spend some time with Grandpa. I’ll let you know if anything happens.”

Mr. Cameron’s voice carries up from the stairwell as we’re talking.

“Benjamin? There is someone at the door for you!”

I get up and tromp down the stairs. Carson and Francesca follow. When I get to the door, I see the dark figure of Malcolm in the doorway. Mr. Cameron stands aside so I can talk to him.

“Hey, man. What’s up?”

“I require your assistance again,” Malcolm says.

“More beeps on the beepy box?”

“Just more
 . . . questions,” Malcolm replies.

“D
o you need me again, or do you want more of us to go along this time?”

“I only have transport—
”

“For one,” I finish for him. “Yeah, I know. One of you guys
want to take this one?” I ask Carson and Francesca.

“No. It’s all you
, dude,” Carson says.

“Yeah, it’s freezing out there,”
Francesca says.

“Okay. Let me grab a jacket.”

Malcolm’s scooter is parked on the curb in front of the porch. He hands me a pair of goggles to wear this time. We don’t have far to go to reach our destination. Malcolm pulls us into a rental storage facility and revs his scooter over the track after the gate opens. The rows of doors in the metal buildings are painted orange.

Malcolm steers us to the far back of the facility to a building marked Q. We dismount the scooter and he walks up to the door of unit 112. He pulls a flashlight from his bag and dangles it from his mouth by its lanyard as he fiddles with the lock. He’s not using
a key, but rather a set of lock-picking tools.

“Whose unit is this?” I ask.

“Someone who isn’t going to be very happy,” Malcolm mumbles through his teeth as he bites the lanyard. He pops off the lock and tosses it on the ground. The beam of light from the flashlight bounces around as Malcolm pulls up on the door. I step forward to help him lift it. A powerful stench assaults my nose as the door rolls up. I take a few steps backward.

“Oh God. What is that?” I say.

Malcolm pulls a handkerchief out of his bag and holds it over his nose and mouth as he shines the light into the unit. I pull the front of my T-shirt up to my face as I walk closer. Malcolm’s flashlight illuminates a crowded space full of furniture and boxes. A wooden china cabinet is inserted into the center, along with a mattress set and some portable fans. Battered cardboard boxes bear labels like “Kitchen utensils” and “Dining room.” A deer head with a large rack of antlers stares at the ceiling from atop the china cabinet

“There.”

I step next to him and follow the beam of light to where he’s pointing. “I don’t see . . . oh. Oh man, what is that?” A flesh-colored protrusion juts from the mattress set and joins the back of the cabinet. “Is that an . . . elbow?”

Malcolm sh
ines the light to the left of the mattress and I follow it to see a human hand jutting out the top, with a few of its fingers imbedded in the cardboard box next to it. The box is labeled “Kitchen appliances.”

I back away. “That is disgusting.”

Malcolm is watching my face. After a few moments, he shuffles some more of the objects around and slides himself in front of the china cabinet. I walk to the right a few steps to see what he’s doing. Moving a painting of a sad clown, he reveals a human torso in a peach bathrobe. There are used facial tissues protruding from one of the pockets.

He pries open the set of cabinet doors closest to us and shines the light inside. The head of a woman is staring blankly out at me. One of the glass shelves of the china cabinet is passing through the side of her head. There is no blood. Her face looks almost serene.

“You ever see her before?” Malcolm says.

The smell gets to me and I turn around and vomit into the runoff drain between the buildings.

Damn it. Those were really good ribs.

Malcolm clicks off his flashlight. I hear him kicking a few of the boxes back inside the unit so he can shut the door. I keep leaning over, holding my knees and spitting the taste of puke and barbeque sauce out of my mouth.

“What the hell was that, Malcolm?”

“A fusion event.” He pulls the temporal spectrometer out of his bag and takes a reading. He shows me the screen. The lines and squiggles on the graph mean nothing to me. “She has the same temporal frequency as you do. Just like the van.”

“You can’t possibly think I caused that,” I say, pointing to the closed door. “I don’t even know what that was in there.”

“No. That was caused by temporal matter fusion, two objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time. Looks like she was using some kind of kitchen appliance when she got zapped. I just thought you might know her. She’s from your time.”

“I’ve never seen her before.”

Malcolm puts the spectrometer back in his bag and pulls out his note pad. “This is the sixth fusion event I’ve recorded this week. All of them have your same time signature. They’re likely all victims of the same incident. So far, you and your friends are the only ones I’ve found alive.”

“This is some job Quickly has you doing,” I spit again into the drain. “Time travel crime scene investigator. Do you put that on your resume? You could make yourself quite a reputation. Time travel around, solve homicides.” I straighten up.

Malcolm pauses a moment before he responds. He looks away to his scooter as he speaks. “Dr. Quickly requires that I stay here. I do not time travel.”

“Why’s that?” I ask. “You don’t get a chronometer to go with your temporal beepometer?”

Malcolm eyes the chronometer on my wrist.
“Dr. Quickly requires that I stay ‘constant.’ He says that there are already too many variables. He needs someone he can rely on to stay steady for his calculations.”

“Is that what my friends and I are to you?” I say. “Variables?”

“Yes. You come and go. Time travelers are always variables.”

I check my jacket to make sure I didn’t get any vomit on it,
then zip it up the rest of the way. “Okay. Where to next, Constant Malcolm? I could use a drink, or at least something to wash my mouth out. Unless you want me breathing vomit breath at you the whole ride home.”

Malcolm sta
ys quiet but nods. We climb onto the scooter and get back on the road. A mile or two down the street I spot a dive bar with an open sign. We park the scooter near a group of Harleys and I smile at the bikers standing by them as we walk in. One of them consents to giving me a nod. Malcolm keeps his eyes ahead as we go inside.

We g
rab a booth, and a petite, dark-haired server glides over to take our order. One of her giant hoop earrings is slightly tangled in her permed, black hair. Malcolm gets momentarily distracted by her low cut T-shirt and mumbles something about needing a moment. I order a beer and a dozen wings.

“You owe me my dinner back,” I say. Malcolm gives me a cool stare but then nods. He orders an iced tea.

“So what kind of other investigations have you been doing? Tell me about what else you’ve found,” I say.

M
alcolm lays his messenger bag on the table, pulls a manila envelope out, and slides it toward me. “Mostly they’ve been fusion events. One was more interesting though. Last night a coed at the law college got murdered in her dorm. She wasn’t a time traveler, but I found evidence of a temporal anomaly around her building. I couldn’t get in the dorm because they had it cordoned off by police, but eventually I’ll get in. I’ll see what kind of signature I can pick up.”

I pull some photos and a couple of reports out of the envelope. “A
re these police reports?”

“Yes. I have many contacts in the police department.”

“Did you tell them about Stenger?”

“No. I haven’t had any evidence of this person yet.”

“You have a van with murdered people in it, and no one knows where it came from. That’s pretty substantial don’t you think?”

“Not conclusive enough to point to a specific suspect,” he says. “If I go to my police contacts, I want to have something conclusive to offer them. I want them to take me seriously.”

I enjoy the beer when it arrives. Malcolm eats most of my wings when they show up, but I don’t mind. Looks like he needs them more than me anyway. Plus he’s buying.

When Malcolm drops me back off in fr
ont of the house I hand him his goggles. “Let me know if you find anything else conclusive about that law student murder. I still think you might be looking for my guy. I don’t know why he would be murdering college girls, but the guy is crazy, who knows what he’s up to. You should be careful.”

“I’ll see if I can find him,” he says.

“I’d bring a big-ass gun,” I say.

Malcolm nods and rides away.

Or a grenade launcher.

<><><>

Dr. Quickly seems unaffected by Robbie’s absence in the morning and plunges us into lessons as soon as we arrive. I’m given the same tape measure I used for the previous day’s lesson but today we’re each given new chronometers.

“These are fully functional chronometers with timing pins installed,” Quickly explains. “I want you to get used to dealing with the real thing. Exercise extreme caution with them. You know what they are capable of.”

Quickly also gives us each a box with four anchors in them. Each one is unique in its coloring and design, though the internal symbols are identical.

“I had these anchors made specially for each of you. None of them have ever been used. It will be your responsibility to take care of them and take detailed no
tice of their existences. You’ll be using these anchors to make real jumps through time. Their security is vital to your safety.”

Quickly leads us into a part of the lab on the second level that we’ve never been to before. It’s a long
hallway with doors on each side. The rooms appear to be empty with the exception of an occasional table or anchor stand. I notice that each room has more than one door. On each of the rooms we pass the doors are green. We enter one of the rooms and I notice that the interior side of the door we pass through is painted blue and there is again a green door on the far wall. I’m curious about the reasoning, but assume it will be explained.

“I would lik
e you all to note the time we entered the room,” Quickly says. We do as he instructs, hastily scribbling the time into the “Location in” column in our logbooks.