Jaclyn the Ripper (25 page)

Earlier, he had dismantled 'Dusa's laptop intending to computerize the Destination Indicator, hoping that with twenty-first-century technology it wouldn't fail again. He planned to arrange its tiny components inside the Destination Indicator's damaged but serviceable housing and was wondering how the software would react to its new environs when he discovered—much to his horror—that there were no wires on the laptop's motherboard. He tilted it in the light, gaped at it. Yes, he knew about the concept of microchips and the miniature batteries that energized but how the devil did these flat little things talk to each other? No matter. The motherboard was modular and was as alien to his time machine as a jet aircraft was to the
Kitty Hawk
.

At a loss, frustrated at the nineteenth century for not being ahead of its time, he put 'Dusa's laptop aside and reached for the mechanical alarm clock she had given him. He went back to work, and soon a melodious riff from William Boyce sang sweetly in his head him as he wired the clock to the Destination Indicator. He calibrated it, making sure the clock would run only when the time machine was “in flight” and that the rotation of the engine would keep the old timepiece tightly wound. Finally, he synchronized it all with his pocket watch, gathered his tools and remembered the bicycle lock. He opened the small door to the reversal housing, found the little beauty up inside, took it off and gave the gear a half-spin just to make sure. He pocketed it and grinned, realizing that pondering the nuts and bolts of time travel relaxed him and made him feel good. It was much less puzzling than thinking about technology for its own sake or global warming run amok.

Or the death of Amy. Or going to resurrect her in a machine that had been running haphazardly with hardware from three centuries, counting the alarm clock.

______

 

Amber sashayed in with a bag of food, a brave smile on her face that said she was resigned to staying behind. She sat cross-legged on the floor, spread out paper towels and napkins, opened up barbecued ribs, chicken and slaw, their spicy-sweet aromas hanging, lending a festive air to H.G.'s imminent departure. She opened two bottles of Guinness, and they silently toasted his trip. He picked up a rib, tentatively dipped it in barbecue sauce, took a bite.

“My God,” he said happily, “it
is
soul food.”

 

After they'd eaten, H.G. sipped his beer reflectively and thought about changing the sequence of events in the past. He would have to be damnably careful; Fate wouldn't deal gently with the whim of a mere time-traveler, a speck of a speck that could ruffle her cosmos. Once again, witness that awful scene in John McLaren Park thirty-one years ago; witness the capricious slaughter of Amy's friend Carole. Therefore, he had to enter yesterday inconspicuously, yet be bold enough not merely to save Amy, but to stop the Ripper and then go graciously, gloriously home, never to venture out in
The Utopia
again. He no longer had illusions of taking Leslie John Stephenson back to Scotland Yard to face justice in 1893. Instead, he would buy a firearm, shoot him in 2010 and be done with it.
Face it, “O realist of the fantastic,” as Conrad spoke of you, the only “Utopia” you'll find in this world is in the dictionary.

Amber had gone in the exhibition again and was coming back in the center gallery wearing a hurtful look.

“Why didn't you tell me about the modus vivendi you had with Amy?”

His face fell.

“When all along I thought you guys had a normal marriage?”

“The modus vivendi is null and void,” he snapped.

“I feel totally dissed.”

“Translate, please.”

“You made an agreement with Amy in 1900 that both of you could screw anyone you liked and stay married, and here I thought—oh, how noble, he's trying to be faithful to her.”

“I
am
trying to be faithful to her.”

“What about last night?”

“Forget last night!” He sighed. “Look, 'Dusa, it's entirely possible that Amy ran from 1906 because of the damned modus vivendi. . . . Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, the modus vivendi is null and void.”

“Wait.” She slid her arms around him, gazed at him, smiled radiantly. If she kissed him, he might just crumble—he might just stay here, love this girl into oblivion, into the manifestation of his lover-shadow. She didn't. Instead, she leaned back, her smile mysterious, yet disarming.

“D'you know where you're going to?”

“Do you mean, when?”

“Okay, when.”

“This morning, I think.”

“How will I know who you are?”

“We'll have already met,” he reminded her. “Yesterday.” Then he started running through Monday's sequence of events in his mind, trying to decide exactly when he would start dueling with inevitability.

“Bertie . . . ?” Her embarrassment over assaulting him the night before had faded. The pleasure it had given her had not, and she remembered wondering about reformulation errors. If he had been altered, it certainly made for a nice fit. Her fingers lazily caressed his chest. “Why don't you go back to last night in the hotel?” She chuckled softly. “I mean, why waste the trip . . . ?”

Absolutely not. Tempting Fate was dangerous enough—tempting Fate with a temptress was no doubt suicide. Besides, unless
The Utopia
was physically moved to Room 529 at the Marriott in the next few minutes, he'd be arriving right where he was.

“ 'Dusa, please.” He extricated himself from her and started for the machine.

“Okay.” She hugged herself, did a hapless three-sixty, then spread her hands. “But what am I supposed to do? It's not like I can meet you here, for God's sake!”

“I'll find you.” He grinned. “I know where you'll be.”

He donned his coat and climbed up to the cabin, took the bicycle lock from his coat pocket, placed it by the chair.

“What's that?”

“A bicycle lock. . . . I merely hook the hasp through a hole in the central gearing wheel inside the reversal housing,” he said proudly. “It's my own nefarious way of making sure no one else uses the machine.”

“Huh.”

“To quote the exhibit—‘the machine was never known to have worked.' ”

“So the special key won't work unless you take off the bicycle lock.”

“Precisely.”

“Cool.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Very cool.”

He resumed going through his pockets, then stopped suddenly and did it again, his grin fading to a mask of horror. “Where
is
the bloody key?” He glanced at her. “ 'Dusa, what the devil did I do with the special key?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “You leave it in the dash?”

There it was.

He smiled with relief and nodded a thank-you, then added, “You might want to step behind a wall or something, my dear. The flash of energy will be quite intense.”

“Bye, bye, Bertie,” she said sadly. Head down, she walked from the gallery, disappeared around the corner.

He watched her go, then bent to the Destination Indicator. He paused and gazed off through the ridiculously old glass windows that someday he should replace with plastic.
When to, Wells?

He considered going back to Sunday's wee hours and intercepting Amy at the Getty, but since he didn't know where she had gone immediately after she'd arrived—or even if his modified Destination Indicator would work properly—he decided against it. Even if he did get there at the right moment and prevent her from sending
The Utopia
to infinity—where like an errant shuttle bus it would pick up Leslie John Stephenson—there was no guarantee that in the distant future or past some callow time-traveler might not make the same mistake. Better to kill the monster on Monday, June 21, 2010.

Yes, but when?

The museum would be closed because of the Teresa Cruz murder, so he didn't have to worry about arriving in the middle of a tour group.
The first few minutes would be furtive and critical, but once past that moment, he should be all right. He needed enough time to leave the Getty and get to LAX where he could slip back into the chain of cause and effect—anonymously, as if he were merely another arriving passenger. He wouldn't have to explain as much to 'Dusa, and instead of going straight to her flat and uselessly tinkering with her laptop, he could purchase a weapon. He frowned, annoyed with himself for not thinking of it before.

12:17
P.M
. popped into his head. That was the moment when he had gone to the loo at LAX for some solitude right after they'd come back from San Francisco. 'Dusa had complained that he had kept her waiting for so long she feared that he had “bailed on her.” Yes, coming from the loo would be the perfect time and place for a much wiser Wells to “meet” Amber Reeves and begin again.

When?

10:00
A.M
. should give him enough time to make his way to the airport and the Southwest Airlines men's room. He set date and time on the Destination Indicator, strapped himself in the chair, automatically checked his pocket watch, took a deep breath. He took one last gander at 11:57
P.M
. Monday night, June 21, 2010; he wasn't sorry he was leaving. If he were rude and crude like so many here, he might have borrowed their obscene gesture and waved his finger out the cabin door. Instead, he shoved the Accelerator Helm Lever forward until it locked in the flank position. The engine whined, the machine began spinning. H.G. closed his eyes and hoped he was doing the right thing.

An explosion of blue energy rocked the pavilion.

He was vaporized.

Once again in the loo at LAX—again in Rodin's “The Thinker” pose—H.G. was on the verge of panic. He had been confident his foreknowledge would guide him well on this, the second time around, except that when he had arrived at 10:00
A.M
., he'd had trouble climbing down from his time machine. The world was out of focus, all fuzzy. He hadn't counted on a reformulation error. He hadn't counted on going blind.

He had groped his way to the garden, then—by its ugly snarl—found the leaf blower. With sign language, repeated words and a blur of twenty-dollar bills, he'd convinced the Hispanic gardener to give him a ride to the airport; then, with the help of a skycap and another blur of cash, he had made his way into the Southwest Airlines men's room with no idea of the time. He was supposed to wait until 12:17
P.M
. so that he would leave the restroom the same time as before, but when he looked at his pocket watch it was fuzzy golden thing that he couldn't read.

He heard someone come inside.

“Do you have the time, my good man?”

“Almost half past twelve.”

Great Scott, I'm late.
He stood, zipped up his trousers, stopped suddenly. Whoever had answered him had a thin and reedy voice, and
sounded very British, very . . . familiar. He cocked his head and repeated, “Do you have the time, my good man?”

“I already told you, it's almost half past twelve.”

He rushed out of the stall, the door banging behind him, and ran into himself.

“Sorry.”

“Ah. What a surprise,” said himself, his carbon copy, “so it was us in there. You're a tad late, aren't you?”

“I can't see anything!”

“Blasted reformulation errors,” himself said and chuckled.

H.G. gasped, realizing that he had bumped into an H. G. Wells from a different universe. He hadn't thought it possible, not even theoretically. He had always assumed that the same mass or set of molecules could not exist in the same place at the same time. Obviously, there were exceptions to the rule—if there were in fact any rules at all. Suffice it to say that he had no idea what had happened—whether
The Utopia
had somehow taken him into a flux where universes overlapped or where one universe was rotating faster than the other or—
Blast it, to hell with physics! I'm blind!
He spread his hands helplessly, was about to ask himself for assistance, but the incarnation spoke first.

“I'd love to help you, old boy, but I'm superfluous in this universe. Good luck with the girl.”

Himself disappeared.

Shaking with worry, H.G. felt his way out into the terminal. He didn't see 'Dusa—not that he would recognize anybody other than himself—and shuffled toward the escalators. Out of habit, he looked at his pocket watch again—now the blur included his hand—and he wondered if 'Dusa had given up on him and left. He saw figures, but couldn't read faces anymore. People jostled him. He didn't know which way to go to avoid the crush. He was terrified.

“I say, has anyone seen a Miss Amber Reeves . . . ?” he shouted.

“Bertie . . . !”

He spun around.

Her voice was beautiful. Her close proximity was salvation. He made out dark hair and a woman's form rushing toward him.

“You walked right past me!” she cried. “What were you doing in there, anyway? I thought you'd bailed on me!”

“ 'Dusa, I can't see!”

“What?”

“Take me to those chairs over there.”

“Take you?”

“All I see are
shapes
!”

She took his hand and led him across the terminal to the plastic chairs, had to raise her voice above the din of people, the PA system and jets roaring overhead: “What's going on?”

“Remember what I said about reformulation errors?”

She nodded.

He took a deep breath, stared closely at her, still couldn't focus. “I've just come back from tonight . . .”

She smiled and thought he was joking. “Was it good for you, too?”

“ 'Dusa, I'm being quite serious.”

She cocked her head, looked at him quizzically. “Wait a sec. . . . You've just come back . . .”