Time Snatchers (6 page)

More important, she has Claude’s attention now. He stares at her for a moment, turns to me and whispers, “There is something seriously wrong with your sister.”

“This has happened once before,” I say without skipping a beat. “We must get her to higher ground immediately. That is the only way she will snap out of it.”

Then I step behind Abbie and grab her underneath her arms. “Is there a second floor, monsieur?”

He nods.

“Quickly, help me get her up the stairs.” As I say this, I’m mentally crossing my fingers, praying that Claude will play ball.

He hesitates for a moment, then bends over and bridges his arms underneath her legs. Despite all this, Abbie impressively manages to hold her pine tree pose.

Together, we drag her to the foot of the stairs.

“Good work, Cale. Just don’t drop me, okay?” she mindspeaks.

“Your safety is assured, madame,” I mindspeak back, although I can really only vouch for my end. If Claude spots one of those three-colored beings, all bets are off.

Slowly, we carry Abbie’s rigid body up the stairs. As soon as we stop on the second floor landing, Claude abruptly lets go of his end.

“Open Hades’ gates,” Abbie cries out as her legs land with a
thump. But she recovers quickly, resumes her pine tree pose and starts reciting more Gothic poetry.

There’s a scent of rotten eggs in the air. Four worktables are covered with strange-looking pieces of equipment. I spot some flasks and beakers filled with green and gold liquids. Maybe the smell is coming from one of them.

We’re in a large room about the same size as the entire first floor of the house. The light is dim, and all of the windows except for one are covered with plywood. At the center of each boarded-up window is a small wooden box. I know from the briefing materials that the box is called a camera obscura and that when light passes into it from outside and hits the metal plate inside the box, this triggers some kind of chemical reaction, causing an image of whatever the camera is pointing at to form on the plate.

In the dim light, I almost miss seeing him. But there he is, bent over a contraption resting on a table in a far corner of the room—Nicéphore Niépce. He looks exactly like his file holo—aquiline nose and bald as a bowling ball. Like his brother, he’s elegantly dressed in a waistcoat and high-collar white shirt.

Without looking up, he shouts, “Come quickly, Claude, the image is beginning to form!”

But Claude seems more interested in looking out the only window that hasn’t been boarded up.

“My God, the clouds are about to burst open! They will be here soon!” he says.

I ignore Claude and stride over to where Nicéphore is bent over a metal plate fixed in a vertical position over a silver basin. He has a glass in one hand and is slowly pouring its green liquid contents over the plate. As he does this, a dark rectangle emerges on the plate’s silver surface.

“Do you see how clear the image is?” says Nicéphore without glancing up. “Half a glass of bitumen of Judea with a few drops of lavender oil, that’s the key! Such a mixture is much superior to silver chloride. And do you know what is best of all, Claude? The weather does not matter!”

Well, it may not matter to you, but it sure has your brother worried. I don’t especially want to be here when Claude announces that the three-colored ones are seeping into the house through cracks in the walls.

I gaze at the image as it continues to form on the plate and compare it against the one in my mission file. This is definitely it—the side of the barn is taking shape and a bit of the pigeon house too.

You can’t beat a moment like this. Here I am watching the world’s first photograph develop. Too bad Abbie is missing it.

“Two hooks hold the plate in place,” I relay over my mindpatch. “You won’t need a tool, but you’ll have to make sure you hook the replica in exactly the same way. Also, the plate has to be wet. You’ll see two glasses on the table. I’m pretty sure the one on the left has water in it. Once you have the replica hooked in, pour some water over it.”

“Got it,” she mindspeaks.

I glance back at her in admiration. Of all the classic yoga poses, I like pine tree the best, but there’s no way I can hold it as long as Abbie. I’m about to suggest that she try some other kind of tree to give her muscles a break, when Claude yells, “Nicéphore!”

Nicéphore looks up and sees me standing next to him.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“My name is Robert,” I say. “I am your brother Bernard’s wife’s sister’s son.”

“Oh,” says Nicéphore, sounding about as excited as someone who has just watched a button fall off of his pantaloons.

“Nicéphore, it is starting! We must take action!” Claude shouts.

Nicéphore sighs and walks over to where Claude is by the window.

“There is nothing there,” says Nicéphore, in a weary tone that suggests this is not the first time he has uttered these words to his brother.

“Snatch time,” I mindspeak, and see Abbie already moving quickly toward the worktable.

“Look carefully, my brother. The tricolored beings are clever. They hide in the rain.”

“I am looking carefully. The only things out there are trees,” says Nicéphore.

Abbie is standing over the worktable and pulling out the replica. This is the critical moment. If either brother glances back right now, she’ll be caught red-handed.

I run up to where the men are standing and point to the sky. “There!” I say. “One of the tricolored beings. I see him!”

Claude and Nicéphore crane their necks in the direction I’m pointing.

“What color is he?” asks Claude, his voice shaking.

“Orange and blue,” I whisper, recalling how Claude had described them earlier, “with a touch of red.”

Claude has a smug smile on his face. Nicéphore’s eyes are narrowed to slits as they search the sky.

I glance back quickly at Abbie. She is arranging her dress over the snatch object. She takes two steps to the right and resumes her pine tree pose.

“This is sheer lunacy,” says Nicéphore finally, turning away from the window.

As he turns, he spots Abbie and says, “Who is this girl?”

She ignores him and chants:

“She’s my sister,” I pipe up. “Please excuse her. She is not well. I must get her even higher. Is there access to the roof through the house, monsieur?”

Nicéphore looks from me to Abbie to Claude. I can almost see the gears working in his brain. Poor guy. He must be wondering if it’s just his imagination or if everyone around him is losing their marbles.

“That way,” he says, pointing to a set of rough wooden stairs near the last window.

I consider asking Claude for a hand, but he looks occupied.

“Come along, sister,” I say. Abbie keeps her palms together and walks stiffly with me up the narrow staircase.

The attic only has one tiny window. I stoop to avoid hitting my head on the overhead beams. The room is completely bare except for a simple table and chair. Set into the slanted ceiling directly above the table is a hatch that I almost miss seeing.

I’m about to touch my wrist when Abbie stops me. “Wait, we’re not on the roof yet.”

“No need to,” I say. “We can timeleap from here.”

“True,” she says. “But who knows when we’ll be back in France? C’mon, let’s see what the view is like from up there.”

Checking my fingernail, I see we’ve still got eight minutes left. “All right.”

I climb on the table and tug at the hatch. On my third try, it opens and light spills into the attic along with some fat raindrops.

Abbie scampers onto the table, and I boost her out to the roof.

“Climb up and join me, Cale. It’s glorious out here!”

I grab hold of both sides of the hatch, hoist myself up and then crawl on all fours to a spot beside her.

She’s right. It’s a great view. The road winds past the village into a forest, emerges on the other side and then finally disappears between some distant hills.

It’s raining hard now. If we don’t timeleap soon, we’ll both be completely drenched. But since it’s a warm rain, I don’t mind it so much. Besides, it feels good to be up here, just the two of us, the snatch under our belts.

Just then Abbie stands up and thrusts her hands to the heavens.

“The spire shudders under the cries of travelers gone mad,” she chants, “while the demon’s ill-gotten rubies lie undisturbed beneath still, deep waters.”

I smile at the sight of her.

I can’t help noticing how wet she is and, more to the point, how her wet dress is clinging to her body. While we’re on the topic, I also can’t help noticing how different her body looks from the way I remember it to be. There are definite curves there. Female curves.

New feelings swirl through me. I look away, embarrassed. But it doesn’t seem like Abbie noticed anything. Or, if she has, she’s not letting on.

After a moment she sighs. “I’m ready to head back now. You?”

“Sure,” I say.

I catch a last glimpse of Abbie as she touches her wrist and is gone.

Just before I timeleap, I gaze out at the horizon. The rain is letting up and the sky is definitely brightening. I wonder if there’ll be
a rainbow. But I don’t stick around to find out. Tap, tap at my wrist and I leave 1826 far behind.

I land in the same place we left from—the alleyway beside Headquarters. Abbie is already there, just coming out of her time freeze.

“I’m going to go ahead and hand in the snatch object, okay, Cale?” she says. “I need to get out of these wet clothes as soon as possible.”

I grunt in the affirmative, which is about all I can do until I’m out of my time freeze. As she turns to go, I try not to look at her. That is, I try not to look at her in the same way that I was looking at her on the rooftop in France. Why is that so hard to do? After all, this is Abbie we’re talking about. She could be my sister, for all the time we spent together growing up.

As soon as my time freeze thaws, I follow Abbie’s trail of drips to the sidewalk and then up the front walk to Headquarters.

“Don’t young people these days have any respect?” says Phoebe as soon as I step onto the elevator. Her persona is a little gray-haired woman who looks like she’s being swallowed up by a huge armchair. She’s knitting something, but I can’t tell what it is just yet.

“How do you mean?” I say.

“Just look at your feet,” she says, stabbing a knitting needle in the direction of the floor.

I look down. A small puddle, a souvenir from France, is forming near my boots.

“Er … sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

“When?”

“I don’t know … in a few minutes. As soon as you let me off on four, I’ll look around for a rag or something and then come right back.”

“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” she says.
“You’re not the only one who uses this elevator. I get a lot of traffic, you know. They’re all going to think I had a little accident on the floor. How can you do this to your grandmother?”

“You’re not my grandmother, Phoebe. In fact, you’re nobody’s grandmother.”

She falls silent, and I grind my teeth. True or not, did I really need to add the second bit about her not being anyone’s grandmother?

“You hurt my feelings,” she says predictably.

I’ve got to stay calm and work this out. Otherwise, I’ll never get to the fourth floor. I wonder what Abbie did about her drips? She was even wetter than me.

“All right, what would you like me to do? Wipe it up with my sleeve?” I say.

“Is your sleeve dry?”

I run my fingers along my sleeve. The outside is still pretty wet, but the part closest to my body is bone dry. “Half and half,” I say.

Phoebe’s persona looks up from her knitting and gives me a grandmotherly smile. “Well, then, you may use the dry half.”

I drop to the floor and wipe the puddle away.

Finally, the elevator starts to move.

“What are you knitting, Phoebe?” I ask to lighten the mood.

“A noose,” she says, and we ride the rest of the way in silence.

T
he couch squeaks in protest as I sit and press the Access button.

The opposite wall retracts, revealing the reception area for Timeless Treasures. It’s totally lit up, but even so, before I move, I ready myself. Although Nassim prefers to strike under cover of darkness, he has also been known to launch surprise attacks with all the lights on.

All is quiet, though, when I step through. He must still be with Abbie, completing the paperwork for Operation Shutterbox.

No one is in the hall or in the lounge. Then I remember Frank saying something about going on a collection for Uncle and that the others had traveled back to 2059 on garbage duty.

I enter the boys’ dorm, kick off my boots, strip off my wet clothes and flop down on my bed. The room has two double bunk beds. Mine is the lower bunk nearest the door. Raoul, a junior time snatcher, has the bunk above me. Frank sleeps in the other lower. The top bunk above Frank has been empty for about two weeks. Johan, its most recent occupant, went missing during a mission to Renaissance Italy. The word around Timeless Treasures is that he tried to escape but Uncle found him working as a street musician in 1553 Florence and shipped him off to the Barrens as a punishment, leaving Raoul without a partner. Before Johan, there was Vlad, and before Vlad, there was Rudy, who used to sneak out of the dorm late at night and wander the streets of New Beijing aimlessly, carrying a lock of hair that
he said belonged to his dog. There were also a couple of others whose names I forget.