Time Snatchers (13 page)

It’s a fascinating story. I glance at Abbie. Her jaw is clearly in the down position.

The camera zooms in on Uncle’s face. “Your mission is to snatch the Xuande vase from Expo 67 before it vanishes,” he continues, and now his tone is all business. “You will depart tomorrow and timeleap to six fifty-five
P.M.
local time on July 8, 1967, landing one hundred yards from one another.”

A staggered landing. Standard operating procedure on important missions. The theory is that one person suddenly appearing out of thin air attracts less attention than two people.

“You must complete the snatch by seven-thirty
P.M.
local time,” he continues. “If you are unable to snatch the Xuande vase by then, I will allow you a one-time grace period of fifteen minutes for this mission. But for the sake of your physical health, I wouldn’t recommend relying on the grace period.”

I raise my eyebrows. It must be an important mission for Uncle to allow us to go over the usual limit and risk time fog. I like the way he puts it too: “for the sake of your physical health.” Very caring.

The camera stays zoomed in on Uncle’s face. His thin lips are set in a tight line, and his ice blue eyes are gazing right into mine. Which
is quite a trick, since he’s just a hologram, after all, and until now I’ve never known a hologram to look me in the eye.

“Don’t fail me, Caleb,” he says.

“I won’t, Uncle,” I answer. My injured wrist throbs in agreement. It isn’t lost on me that he didn’t say anything to Abbie about
her
not failing him. My personal theory is that he expects more of me than he does of Abbie. Again, it goes back to Uncle thinking of me as his first adopted. But there’s more to his remarks than just that. He believes Frank’s lies.

“That is all,” says Uncle. “Nassim will answer any other questions you have.”

The screen goes dark. My palms are sweaty, and I wipe them on my pants.

Nassim turns to us. “Any questions, guys?”

We shake our heads.

“Good,” he says. “Then I will see you in the morning.” He heads to his office, probably to work on his crossword puzzles.

“What happened to your wrist, Cale?” Abbie asks once we’re alone.

“I had a little run-in with Shu Fang,” I say.

“Who?”

“One of Uncle’s snapping turtles. He’s very territorial,” I say. “Don’t worry. It looks much worse than it feels,” Now, why did I just say that? To make Abbie feel better? I don’t want her to feel better. I want her to feel worse. Or at least sorry for me. No, not that either. What I really want is for her to pay me a little more attention and pay Frank a little less.

“Hey, you never told me about how your meeting with Uncle went,” she says.

I shift to face her. “Okay, I guess. He showed me his new aquarium and talked about withering souls. Then he mentioned some great new vision he’s got, treated me to a jelly bean and I left. Oh, yeah, and he wants me to be more like Frank.”

“Wait, back up … what great new vision?” asks Abbie, switching to mindpatch, which is probably a good idea, since it’s a safe bet Uncle has listening devices in here.

“Well, he didn’t get into details,” I answer over her mindpatch. “Just some talk about expanding Timeless Treasures, that he can’t do it all himself and that he needs generals.”

“Okay. So what’d you say?” she asks.

“About what?”

Abbie rolls her eyes and says, “About what? About what we’re talking about, Mr. Space Zombie. Didn’t you tell Uncle that you thought it was a great idea?”

“Well, no,” I answer. “I mean he didn’t exactly ask me for my opinion. Just told me what was coming.”

“I can’t believe you!” Abbie says. “Don’t you see? He wasn’t telling you all that just to make pleasant conversation. He wanted to know what you think. And you know what else? If you’d shown the least bit of interest, I’m pretty sure he would have offered you a new job—a promotion—helping him with the expansion.”

“How do you know for sure?” I say.

Abbie stands up from the couch and glares down at me. “I don’t!” she says, this time out loud. “Nothing is for sure! You know what your problem is? You
think
way too much. If you want something in life, you’ve got to go for it!”

Like you going for Frank
, I want to say. But I bite the words back just in time.

“Maybe you’re right,” I say instead. Truth is, I don’t know what I
want. But there’s one thing I’m sure I don’t want, and that’s moving up the corporate ladder and becoming Uncle’s second-in-command.

“Good night, Cale. I’m going to bed,” she says. “I suggest you do the same. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“Okay, I will. Good night.” I watch her leave the lounge. I’m tired, but there’s no way I’m going to bed yet. Something’s bothering me about our conversation. Abbie got really angry when I said I didn’t go gaga over Uncle’s expansion plans, like I didn’t get what he was talking about. Oh, I got it, all right. Got it and want nothing to do with it. But she thinks I was just being thick. Maybe she’s worried that she can’t count on me anymore, that if I can’t even follow a simple conversation with Uncle, then for sure my brain won’t be able to function properly when we’re out on missions. If that’s what she really thinks, then she and Frank deserve each other.

But no. I refuse to believe that. Maybe she truly thinks that I want to be number one with Uncle and now I messed it up. Which means she really doesn’t know me at all. So why should that surprise me? I hardly know myself these days.

I’ve got to stop all these negative thoughts about Abbie. But my brain isn’t listening. The nasty thoughts keep bubbling to the surface.

Another reason I’m in no rush to go to bed is that as soon as I enter the dorm, Frank will no doubt grill me about my big meeting with Uncle. And Raoul will want to get his two cents in by way of snores, throat clearings and other assorted noises.

No, it’ll be much better to wait until later. With any luck, they’ll both be asleep, and I can just sneak in.

I stretch out on the couch and, after a few moments, close my eyes. And fall fast asleep.

R
ise and shine, Cale,” Abbie chirps.

“Already up,” I mutter, which is partly true, because I’m half slouching on the couch.

“Hey, did you sleep here?” she asks.

I grunt in the affirmative. It’s still too early in the morning to put together complete sentences.

Abbie’s already dressed for the mission. She’s wearing oval, pink-tinted sunglasses, floppy hat, tie-dyed T-shirt and faded blue jeans. She looks pretty, in a 1960s hippie sort of way.

She hands me a blue denim knapsack with a large white peace symbol painted on. I don’t have to ask her what’s in it because I already know: an exact replica of the Xuande vase that we’ll leave at the snatch zone when we steal the real one.

I push myself up to a sitting position and take stock of my various body parts. My neck is sore, and my left arm is tingling. I dreamt that Shu Fang leapt out of the tank, crept down the hall and bit me while I was sleeping, infecting me with slow-acting venom that started in my arm and was making its way to my heart. Right before I was about to die, I gave all my worldly possessions, consisting of my knife and my carving, to Nassim, who placed them inside a manila envelope neatly labeled “The Last Earthly Possessions of Caleb the Time Snatcher.”

“C’mon,” says Abbie. “Time to get going, sleepyhead. We’ve got Operation Blue Bird!”

“Operation what?”

“Blue Bird. Don’t you remember that beautiful phoenix on the Xuande vase? It was painted in cobalt blue. Hence, Operation Blue Bird!”

“Hence?”

“Are you making fun of the way I speak?” she says.

I shake my head because it takes less effort than talking.

“Get up. We’re going to Montreal,” she says.

“Really?”

“You know very well we’re going to Montreal, Mr. Stalling for Time. But I bet you didn’t know that it’s my favorite city in the world.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because it’s beautiful, and it’s the city of romance!” She winks at me, and for the hundredth time, I wonder what she’s really thinking when she says stuff like that. Better not to analyze.

I’m standing now, which I consider quite an accomplishment. I definitely deserve a reward. How about another hour of sleep?

“Let’s go, Cale. I’ll be waiting for you at the fire escape.”

“All right,” I say, still groggy.

“À bientôt!”
she says.

“A … what?” I ask.

“That’s French for ‘see you soon,’” says Abbie.

I try to dredge up something clever to say, but before I can, Abbie’s already on her way out of the lounge.

I trudge to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. There are circles under my eyes, and I’ve got a serious case of sofa hair. I step out of my clothes and clap on the shower. Water shoots from the
jets, already preadjusted to my personal preferences for temperature and pressure.

I hold my bandaged wrist out of the way so that it stays dry. The shower feels good. For a blissful moment, I close my eyes and let the water wash away the stress of my meeting with Uncle, my run-ins with Frank and my less than smooth conversations with Abbie. Lately I’ve been feeling like my life is spinning out of control. And the most frustrating thing is that I don’t really know why it’s happening or what I can do to stop it.

I make the water as hot as I can take and stand under it for another minute before finally clapping it off. With the towel draped around my waist, I jog back to the lounge. There’s a Rolling Stones T-shirt, blue jeans and a pair of Adidas sneakers laid out for me. Perfect for a trip to the 1960s.

On my way to the fire escape, I chug the last bit of orange juice straight from the container.

If I stopped to think about things, I’d probably be nervous about this mission. After all, it’s not every day that we get a personal briefing from Uncle about a snatch. And even more rare is having Uncle as the customer. Not to mention his little warning to me about not screwing up.

Well, then, it’s a good thing that I’m not thinking about any of those things.

“All set,” I say as I step outside.

“Groovy, man,” says Abbie, flashing me a peace sign.

Still smiling, she taps her wrist and disappears. Just before I do the same I see a bird, a sparrow I think, soaring high above me, heading west. Following it with my eyes, a feeling of exhilaration passes through me. I tap my wrist and am still thinking of the bird when I leave 2061.

I
land in a narrow lane bounded by a building on one side and a row of tall shrubs on the other. There’s a nice fragrance in the air—jasmine, I think. As soon as the time freeze passes I walk around to the front of the building. It’s much more impressive from the front: big and white, with huge, rounded red doors and a green tiled roof. From my briefing data, I know it’s the Republic of China Pavilion. Either it’s a very popular pavilion or they’re serving free food inside, because the line to get in looks impossibly long.

Just then I feel a prickling sensation on the back of my neck—as if someone’s watching me. I do a slow turn, pretending to take in the sights but really trying to spot my silent watcher.

Nothing. Just the usual crowd of camera-toting tourists.

Maybe I just imagined the whole thing. That wouldn’t surprise me, given how jumpy I’ve been lately.

I walk briskly along the line, on the lookout for Abbie. There must be three hundred people here. Standard operating procedure says that we should mindlink each other if we don’t establish visual contact within thirty seconds of landing, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, I continue along, keeping my eyes peeled for Abbie’s big floppy hat.

“You’re getting warmer, Daddio,” she hippiespeaks over my mindpatch.

I glance up and spot her about ten feet away, close to the front of the line. I have no idea how she managed to land that far up the line without anyone noticing, but Abbie is an expert at melding into crowds.