Nothing But Time
Angeline Fortin
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Angeline Fortin
Acknowledgements
For my wonderful husband who claims that, beyond the magic and mystery of the romance, some things simply can’t just happen. There must be a plausible, scientific reason. For him, I give you a story with a plausible, scientific reason. Theoretical… but plausible.
If it’s not plausible enough, then the magic is always there.
Chapter One
ISIS Science & Technologies Facility
South of Oxford, England
January 2012
“David, I don’t think that we’re supposed to be in here.”
“Nonsense, Kate, it’s my lab. I can come in here whenever I want to.”
“Let me rephrase then, I don’t think I’m supposed to be in here,” Kate Kallastad returned as her date continued to pull her along by the hand, pausing only to swipe his facility I.D. card through the wall-mounted scanner prompting yet another door in the restricted section of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to slide open with a beep of welcome. “I don’t have the clearance for this sector and you know it.”
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, or RAL as it was called, was a research facility funding projects in everything from nanotechnology to orthopedic implants. It was probably fair to say that half of the facility had no idea what the other half was up to. Most certainly, in many cases, they weren’t authorized to know. Some projects under government funding were simply classified as outside of one’s pay-grade. Dr. David Fergusson, Kate’s date for the night, worked in a high security, quantum physics division of the RAL’s ISIS lab in Oxfordshire. That was all she knew and Kate was completely comfortable with that, having been lectured thoroughly on the rules of the lab when she’d begun her job at ISIS just six months before.
Her work was in another, less secure sector in biomedical chemistry with a team currently working on cures for any number of viruses including meningitis. While her team’s project was well funded by WHO, the World Health Organization, Kate knew the dollar value of hers was no match for David’s, even though she had no idea what he did.
The nature of his work was deeply classified and this field trip into his lab went way beyond typical first date confidences. These were the ‘so where are you from?’ moments in dating not the ‘I have a major revelation for you’ ones.
Kate hadn’t been in England for long. She was an American newly hooded with her Master’s degree in biochemistry from MIT and just starting her first big job. She was focused on her career and success, for herself, her team and their project. Because of that focus, she knew almost no one in England beyond the few friends she had made at work and David, who she had met about four months before while having lunch with a couple of mutual associates. He had expressed an interest in Kate right away but she had put him off, citing her new job and responsibilities. However, he’d been persistent, repeatedly asking her out. Her new co-workers and friends had added their voice. They all agreed Kate needed to get out and get a life outside the lab and her studies.
They wore her down and, eventually, Kate had agreed. What would it hurt anyway? Dr. Fergusson was perhaps eight to ten years her senior but pleasantly handsome in a lean, British fashion. With his wavy blond hair and crisp accent, he was attractive in that English way that appealed to a large majority of American women.
To her surprise, the date hadn’t been too bad. They had a nice dinner at a curry house – an Indian restaurant – on the London Road in Oxford where Kate had found a nice flat to rent not far from Oxford’s campus where she spent her free hours doing research toward her PhD. David had been a perfect gentleman if a bit over eager to impress. He had droned on and on about his achievements and awards until Kate had finally asked him what other things he liked to do. That led to a more moderately interesting introduction to polo, a sport Kate knew little of but found interesting. After all, if it was good enough for royalty, how bad could it be?
Things had been going along pretty well until halfway through dinner David had insisted she come take a look at his ‘breakthrough’. All Kate could think about was – if David had had a breakthrough – she was the last one who should be getting the first peek. There were reasons the RAL had rules…and I.D. scanners. It was to keep people who weren’t authorized out. Like Kate. “Really, David. Let’s get out of here.”
“No, no!” he insisted, still pulling her along behind him, his hand tight about hers. “It’s just through here and it’s so thrilling. You must see it!”
“David, I don’t even know what you’re working on,” she reminded, “and I’m sure I’m not supposed to. Won’t you get in trouble for showing me?”
“They needn’t know. It’ll be our secret. I wanted you to be the first to see it, Kate. I’ve been looking forward to this moment and the timing is just perfect, don’t you agree?” He shot her a smile as he swiped his card yet again at a door with his name on a plaque next to it. David’s lab was a tidy space, large and open, all gleaming white walls and stainless steel. Everything had a place and it was all where it was supposed to be. Clearly, he leaned toward the anal side of cleanliness, Kate thought as she tentatively looked around the lab. His words about sharing the moment with her had given Kate a bit of an unpleasant chill and, for the most part, she just wanted to go home.
However, David grabbed her hand once more and pulled her into the lab. The center of the room was dominated by an enclosed space of walled in steel that, to Kate, gave the impression of an air-lock or space ship fuselage. A room within the room.
The door had a locking mechanism similar to one aboard a submarine or on a bank vault. It was standing open and that was where David was towing her.
Realizing his intention, Kate stopped mulishly in her tracks pulling him back with both hands. “No, David, I don’t like this.”
“Fine,” he relented, a frown marring his normally handsome face with childish petulance. “Let me tell you about it first then. Are you familiar with wormholes?”
“Sure. Physics 101.” Kate shrugged, beginning to think that David worked more in science fiction than straight science. “A bridge through space-time. The Einstein-Rosen bridge first dreamed up back in the 1930s proposing that space and time were not flat but in folds and that, rather than travelling around it, you could sort of go through the middle of the folds thereby getting across space faster. But, David, that’s just science fiction. Theory. It’s not real.”
“Au contraire, my dear,” David returned with a smirk of superiority and a hint of condescension in his English tones. “Scientists have been working on this idea for generations. We know that it is possible; we just haven’t figured out how to do it yet. But, Kate, I figured it out! I found the key! I’m going to be famous! Look!”
David pointed into the chamber where a device that looked suspiciously like a nuclear bomb sat on the floor. About three feet long, it was shiny steel, largely tubular with four rubber-tipped legs that kept it stable. It reminded Kate of one of her grandpa’s cigar tubes…only much bigger and infinitely more menacing.
On either side of the tube, large metal panels stood upright like sentinels on guard. From the ends of the tube, thick wires snaked across the floor before connecting to the panels. Other cables led to a laptop that was sitting on a nearby table. David was already typing something into it as he began his lecture. “Like hundreds of physicists around the world, my sector has been funded for years to develop a viable wormhole technology.” He waved his fingers as if a magician revealing the mystical powers of the universe. “The creation of a trans-space teleportation device that will allow us to transport matter from one location to another. We always knew that they randomly appear, but initiating one, controlling the destination has always been the key.”
“And that’s it?” Kate raised a skeptical brow at the malevolent-looking piece of machinery. While it looked capable of mass destruction, it certainly didn’t appear to be a breakthrough in space travel.
“It’s not just an ‘it’, Kate. It’s a quantum zero-point energy siphon. The siphon pulls zero-point energy directly from the raw underlying power of the universe at a sub-quantum level. With it connected just so, a quantum vacuum is created opening a stable wormhole between the two plates.”
“And it works?” she asked.
“Of course it does. I transported an office chair over there today,” he answered absently, jerking a thumb back towards the door.
Kate turned to see a generic swivel chair sitting near a desk. “Are you sure that that chair wasn’t already there? You have a half dozen of that same chair in here.” ISIS purchased the generic chair in bulk; she had several of the same in her lab as well.
“Well.” David frowned then before admitting, “I’m not absolutely certain that it was the same chair. I don’t remember it being there before, but the one I had in here definitely disappeared. Isn’t that great? I transported a solid object through space!”
“Doesn’t help if you don’t know where it went,” Kate told him wryly, crossing her arms over her chest. While Kate knew that she was being rude in the face of David’s enthusiasm, it all felt so very wrong. She had a very bad feeling gnawing in the pit of her stomach.
“You don’t understand!”
“Maybe not, but what I do understand is that I shouldn’t be here and that you shouldn’t be telling me all this,” Kate insisted. She didn’t want to lose her job over this. She’d worked to long and too hard for it. Getting caught in this lab might be enough to see her sacked. “It’s time you took me home.”
“No!” He stomped his foot. “If you’ll just let me show you!”
“I don’t want to see it, David!” she repeated. “I don’t have the clearance for this.”
“Look! Look!” He pushed another chair between the two plates and raced back to the laptop, punching in one last command. “I’ll send it over to Dr. Raney’s office,” he announced as he hit the ‘Enter’ key with definitive pleasure. The machine did nothing. It emitted no sound, no light, no lasers. However, after a moment a black spot appeared between to the two metal plates. It was so small that she almost hadn’t noticed it until the area around the opening began to refract in the light and then visibly bend, startling Kate.
“Well, that’s different,” she murmured under her breath in astonishment as the vortex expanded and began to emit a wind-blown sound. A dull, train-like roar that, in her experience, usually preceded a tornado. It wasn’t loud at all. Kate thought it was rather like being down in the cellar when the tornado hit. “Why is it windy?”
“That’s not wind at all,” David told her. “Merely the gravitational pull against the room. You see, it’s not blowing so much as sucking…”
A pen on the table flew through the air before snapping into the vortex.
“Geez, David! We shouldn’t be in here with that thing on! Who knows what it could do!” Kate turned intending to flee the room, not wanting to be there when the storm hit. She needed to get out and shut the door with or without David but just as she reached the portal, David cried out.
“Aha! Look!”
Just as she turned, Kate watched the chair stretch and elongate then disappear with an audible pop. Astonished, Kate’s jaw sagged. Well, who would have really thought it would work? She certainly hadn’t.
An undeniable suction filled the room. Kate clung to the doorframe as David’s sport jacket began to pull away from him. He stumbled away from the table only to struggle to return to it. “Okay, David, turn it off!” she yelled. “You’ve proven your point! Turn it OFF!”
Looking worried for the first time, David caught the edge of the table and pulled himself back toward laptop that had also began to buck and wobble across the table toward the vortex that had widened to encompass the entire area between the panels.
“Hurry, David!” Kate tried to pull herself the rest of the way out the door but her strength was no match for the pull created by the eddy.
“I’m trying, Kate,” he complained tightly as he typed into the machine. “It won’t shut down.”
“Damn it, David, just pull the…David!” Kate screamed as David stumbled away from the table. He tried to throw himself back toward the machine but was pulled toward the siphon instead. His body elongated in a surreal fashion as the storm pulled him inside as if he were a cartoon character being stretched like a rubber band. His yell of surprise echoed her own then, with a pop, David was gone. Another pop sounded right on top of the first as the siphon was ripped from its cables and disappeared. The laptop was dragged off the table as its cable was swallowed by the wormhole until it was gone was well leaving behind the table which was safely bolted to the floor.
As if satisfied by its meal, the forceful drag began to abate but Kate’s grip on the doorframe wasn’t enough to defy the lingering pull. Her hands slipped and her feet slid across the floor.
So this is what it’s like to be a deer in the headlights, she thought as it pulled her in, all her fight diminished by fascination as she stared into the whirl of colors formed against the steel wall beyond like churning thunderclouds at dawn. Grays and whites and silvers all swirling together like some monochromatic frappuccino.
Caught. Fascinated. She couldn’t look away.
Chapter Two
“Ahh, right on time!” David’s voice cut through the dizzying nausea that had Kate scrunching her eyes tightly together as she lay curled in a fetal position on the ground clenching her stomach. “Just breathe! The nausea will abate,” he advised in a cheery voice.
Having no choice but to take his advice, Kate inhaled deeply noting that the air was cool and fresh, a balm to her whirling dizziness. Encouraged, she tried it again. “David?” Kate moaned still squeezing her eyes to block out what seemed to be a very bright light. “What was that? I feel as if I’ve been put on the rack!”
“That’s the effects of spaghettification, Kate,” he said cheerfully. “Fascinating isn’t it? Your body was stretched to be thin enough to move through a microscopic singularity.”
“Microscopic singularity?” she repeated mindlessly. What was he talking about? Kate clenched her fists against the pain and nausea surprised to feel grass beneath her palms. “This isn’t Dr. Raney’s office, is it? Oh, God, where did you send us?”
“Oh, we’re still right here in Didcot,” he answered referring to the location of the ISIS campus twenty-four kilometers south of Oxford.
Feeling the cool, dampness of earth and grass beneath her cheek, Kate cracked her eyes. “Did you send us outside?”
“Well, not exactly,” he hedged a bit and even through the nausea and confusion, Kate could hear the awful hesitation in his voice.
“What do you mean ‘not exactly’, David?” Dread tightened in her core as she clenched her teeth. Whether they were clenched in irritation or to keep her dinner where it was, Kate wasn’t sure.
“There seems to have been a little mix up with the device. We are exactly where we left from. Exactly,” he reiterated.
“What do you mean ‘exactly’?” Drawing a deep breath, Kate rolled onto her back before pushing herself into a sitting position. Opening her eyes, she found, not the bright fluorescence of office lights that had burned at her closed lids, but rather dim twilight darkening the rosy horizon to the west. A quick glance around proved that she wasn’t in the lab or in anything more impressive than the middle of a pasture. There were actually cows grazing nearby! In addition, an old-fashioned, black carriage stood nearby complete with a horse to pull it. It looked suspiciously like one she’d seen in Robert Downey Jr.’s new Sherlock Holmes movie just a few weeks before; however, it didn’t seem to be a prop.
Dread washed over her, an ugly foreboding that she wished she were coward enough to just close her eyes against and deny. Instead, she faced the inevitable. “What did you do, David?”
“Here’s the thing, Kate,” he began in a gentle tone that Kate equated to using with startled horses, abused dogs and lunatics. “You are in exactly the same place that you were five minutes ago, the problem is that you’re not in the same time.”
“Not in the same time,” she repeated dumbly as if the words had no meaning. “Not in the same time?”
David squatted before her taking her hand in his and gently patting it. “It seems that my device didn’t necessarily travel through space itself as it did through space-time. The zero-point energy siphon drew more power than I had calculated and created a run-away quantum vacuum between the plates. This, in turn, created a microscopic singularity spinning at near light speed that manifested itself as a wormhole – which I expected, of course – bridging two points in time and space rather than space alone. Though I had anticipated that any object set between the plates would be sent through, the gravitational pull of the microscopic singularity grew when it wasn’t immediately shut down. It drew me in and, I gather, even ripped the siphon from its cables. I had hoped that the singularity would immediately evaporate after that, but since I could not be certain, I knew I had to wait for you to get here, just in case.”
Kate lay stunned on the grass trying to absorb the nonsense David had just spouted. “In English, please.”
“A time machine, Kate. I’ve created a time machine! Isn’t it wonderful? Can you imagine the awards I’ll get for this? Maybe even the Nobel Prize in Physics next year!”
“What?” Kate questioned, locked still on the statement that came before all of his self-glorifying ramblings. “What do you mean ‘not in the same time’, David? A time machine?”
“We’ve traveled through time, Kate!” He beamed at her. “Isn’t that exciting?”
“David, if you don’t shut it and explain to me exactly what happened right this instant, I swear to you I will make a woman out of you!” she snarled. “Now talk!”
“Americans!” he muttered under his breath. “Fine then,” he replied, indignantly crossing his arms over his chest to make sure she knew she had upset him. “The siphon cut a hole in the fabric of time sending us backward, of course, since everyone knows that you can’t travel forward. Instead of measurements of distance, the siphon calculated days and years. We are now standing one hundred and thirty-six years in the past right where my lab will someday be.”
“We traveled back in time one hundred and thirty-six years,” she repeated, hating herself for sounding like an idiot but for some reason the concept would not take hold. “This is one hundred and thirty-six years ago?”
“That’s right!”
“In England? One hundred and thirty-six years ago?”
“Yes.”
“One hundred and thirty-six years.”
“Yes,” David answered again, the corners of his mouth turning down as they tended to when he was annoyed. “Really, Kate, I thought you were cleverer than this.”
“You’ll excuse me, David, if I have just a little problem digesting all of this!” she snapped at him, taking another look around trying to absorb what he was telling her. Finally, she looked back at David. “What are you wearing?”
“Do you like it?” he asked, standing and jerking down the bottom of his jacket before smoothing his hands down the front. “It’s new.”
Kate looked over his suit. It was dark brown, maybe wool with a white, high-collared shirt. A striped tie was knotted around his neck. Underneath the jacket, she could see a vest of striped gold and red with a wide lapel that crossed low into a double-breasted closure. A gold watch-fob dangled across the front. The suit was horribly old-fashioned but might have fit right in during the 1800s.
A lump lodged in her throat prompted Kate to swallow deeply taking a moment to digest everything David had just told her. His wormhole device was actually a time machine. A time machine…really? Her mind lingered there for several long minutes before another question nudged its way into her mind. “Why one hundred and thirty-six years?”
“Well, yes, the matrix I had developed for the destination was perhaps flawed in a small way. I had thought it was measuring distance when in fact it was measuring time. It took me quite some time to figure that out after I arrived, I can tell you. But the whole thing is brilliant, don’t you think?”
“No, David, I don’t think!” Kate bit out as she got to her feet. She was light-headed and reeling now, not because of the machine’s effects but rather because of the enormity of what was happening. “Are you telling me that we’re stuck in the past? And why are you dressed like that? You only left a second before me.”
“That actually took me a bit of time to decipher as well. I mean, first of all, I had to repair the laptop. The screen was damaged in its fall. Without LED technology available, I had to go back to basic CRT development to create a screen. After that, I was finally able to calculate the delay in arrival which I’ve been able to determine was due to the time dilation effects near the event horizon of the singularity.”
“English, David.”
“Goodness, Kate! You are a scientist!”
“I’m a scientist with a colossal headache,” she returned. “Boil it down for me.”
“Those items entering the wormhole arrived here at a time difference exponentially larger than the difference of when they fell into the wormhole,” he told her. “Is that simple enough? The pen and chair arrived first, I imagine several months before I since I haven’t seen them. That was probably the actual computation of distance in the device. Then I arrived,” he explained. “Even the siphon itself, which entered the vortex a split second after myself, arrived days after I did. But never worry, Kate, I can get us home.”
There was no denial in Kate at all. No head-shaking insistence that it wasn’t true, that it was all some prank. That he was just making it all up. It felt true. The ground beneath her felt very real. To her, science was filled with mysteries to be solved and scientists solved them. Sometimes accidentally as David had done. Think penicillin. Science fiction of the past often became the future’s reality.
Of course, this was one area of study she’d never considered a breakthrough of this sort in, but still…
No, it was all too real. She had seen the siphon at work and still felt the results. Unless David had somehow drugged her and kidnapped her to a place without any modern structures and… No, it wasn’t a joke. As Sherlock Holmes had long claimed, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. God, she was such a geek if she recalled such a thing so vividly. “Well, get us home then!”
“I can’t…yet,” he verbally stumbled and Kate’s heart skipped with trepidation. “But I can and will. I had hoped to have the problem solved before you got here but I haven’t quite mastered it yet.”
Kate’s heart sank before she suddenly thought to ask, “How long have you been here? How long have you been trying to figure it out?”
“Well, I did have to wait for you, you know…” he replied testily.
“How long?” she bit out having taken all of David’s superiority that she could hold.
“Three hundred forty-nine days, four hours and…” he checked his watch, “thirty-eight minutes. Give or take. It surprised me at first that it wasn’t still December when I arrived as it was in our time but rather May and the spring air–”
“You’ve been here for almost a year?” Kate drew back in shock, her mouth gaping like a landed fish for a few moments as she digested that bit of information. “How is that possible?”
“It’s rather interesting really. As I mentioned, delay in entry was exponential upon arrival. Every sixtieth of a second of delay on entrance to the singularity at our end amounted to a difference of approximately one day on exit. This was obvious from the arrival of the machine and I calculated, given the rate of pull from the vortex and your position in the room, that you would be no more than five to six seconds after me, which brought me here tonight!” he finished triumphantly.
“So you came here tonight, this single night, to get me?”
“Well, actually I did arrive earlier in the week in case my calculations were off and planned to stay the week as well,” he admitted. “Couldn’t have you standing around wondering what had happened, eh?” David chuckled merrily at his own wit.
“Oh, yeah,” Kate wrinkled her nose, feeling an unaccustomed nastiness welling up inside of her. It was one thing to be stuck in the past, but quite another to be stuck there with someone who considered it all a good thing. “I feel sooo much better knowing that you screwed up and sent me back in time rather than standing around wondering about it. What a relief! So what now, Einstein? When do we go back home?”
“Now, Kate, you’re being a bit snippy, don’t you think?” he complained in petulant tones.
“Under the circumstances, I think I’m allowed a few moments of snippiness, don’t you think?” she snapped back. A wave of panic washed over Kate as reality settled in. She didn’t want to be featured on a Reality Channel episode of When Science Experiments Go Wrong. Dr. David Fergusson had sent them into the past. Quick arithmetic put the year at 1876 or so and Kate was not an old-fashioned girl. David needed to get them out. NOW! “When? When can you get me home?”
“I’m working on it. It shouldn’t be long,” he assured her with his hands spread in a pleading fashion. “I am sorry, Kate! I didn’t intend for this to happen and once I solve the power problem, we’ll be off.”
“Do I even want to know what the power problem is?”
“Electricity isn’t a common power source in this time, you know,” he waggled a lecturing finger at her. “Parts are hard to come by and, because of that, I’ve had to fabricate the torn power cabling myself – which isn’t easy, by the way – that is, of course, after I fixed the computer monitor. The cabling available cannot stand the power. We are talking about the raw underlying power universe…”
“At a sub-quantum level, I know,” Kate finished for him. “Yes. You mentioned that.”
David sniffed haughtily at her lack of appreciation. “Each time I’ve tried to run it, I’ve melted my cables. Nevertheless, I’m almost there! I swear! Another week, maybe two…or so.”
“Then, what now?” she asked, her heart sinking as his time estimates grew. Whether he admitted it or not, they were clearly stuck here. “What do I do until then?”
“Well, first, you need to put this on.” He walked over to the carriage and pulled a bag from the boot. “We’ll need to take the train into London to reach my house and we can’t have you being seen dressed as you are, can we?” David waved a hand indicating Kate’s jeans and trendy blouse that exposed one shoulder. “Such attire will only upset the natives, you see? So, if you’ll just put that on, I have a coat for you as well. Though it is May, the nights are still nippy.”
Kate reached in the bag and pulled out a long, blue dress, followed by mounds of other frilly items she couldn’t identify. “You’re kidding, right?”
Chapter Three
St. John’s Wood, England
May 1876
“This is ridiculous,” Kate complained almost five hours later. After a long night waiting for the train and more than two hours on the train into London, she was simply exhausted. Though David had told her it was only just after ten in the evening, to Kate’s internal clock, it was a handful of hours following their dinner in Oxford, which had ended well past eight p.m. more than a hundred years apart from where she was now.
If Kate had any remaining doubts about David’s claims, her time in the train depot and during the journey had given her more visual evidence than anyone might need to be thoroughly convinced. There had been dozens of people aboard that train all dressed in clothing similar to hers and David’s. If that hadn’t been enough, the wail of the train’s whistle and the first chug and jolt of the engine had driven it home.
Kate hovered for a long while between shock and anger settling somewhere around pure angst. She’d not been very nice to David since her arrival – and, well, perhaps since the moment he’d insisted on showing her his lab – but she felt that she was handling it all quite well. Better than most, even. She hadn’t fainted, hadn’t harangued him at the top of her lungs and hadn’t yet resorted to physical violence, though she felt she might get there soon. A few choice words and a bitter tone should be easily dismissed given the gravity of the situation she’d found herself in.
Yes, she was taking it all very well so far, Kate thought.
She sat in silence for most of the train trip, swallowing against the unusual rocking motion. She would have given anything for some Dramamine. The light-rail in the Cities, as Minneapolis and St. Paul were commonly referred to, might not have been the smoothest ride but it was a swaying cradle in comparison. The upside of the upsetting ride was that it kept her mind from dwelling too hard on the reality of her situation.
But now the ride was over and, with a lack of cabs available at the West Hampstead train depot so late in the evening, she and David were walking the final half-mile or so. Childish complaints hovered at her lips and, in her fatigue, Kate couldn’t stop them from slipping out. “Are we almost there?”
“I’ve told you I’m sorry there was no hansom cab available,” David replied sourly. “My house is not much further so please cease your grumbling.”
“I’m tired, David,” she shot back as they trudged along. “And hungry. And supremely pissed off so give me a break, will you? I think I’ve handled all of this pretty well so far.”
Kate knew David thought she was being unreasonable and bad-tempered about everything, but, in truth, she felt unreasonable and bad-tempered. How could anyone be expected to act graciously in the face of such a revelation? He’d moved her through time, for Pete’s sake! Did he truly think she should be able to consider it all nothing more than some great adventure? It wasn’t an adventure! It was a nightmare! David had had the past eleven months to come to terms with it all and Kate suspected he hadn’t been all sunshine and roses in the beginning either!
Shaking her head, Kate looked around the neighborhood they were passing through. It was all pretty nice in general. Some streets were more upscale than others. One street might be lined with modest, red brick homes or double-fronted homes with matching bow front windows then the next would reveal larger, more ornate homes in a variety of sizes and styles. Despite the diverse economic range suggested from street to street, overall the area seemed to be one of the middle upper class. Homes where the owners were certainly comfortable if not well-to-do.
“How could you afford a house here, David?” she asked curiously, trying to keep her mind off the larger predicament.
“Quite nice, isn’t it?” he said with a superior smile. “Did you know that in our time a simple flat in one of these homes might sell for over a million pounds? A single family home like that one,” he gestured to one as they passed, “might sell for three or four million.”
“Well, I’ll assume that they aren’t that much now, but still,” she glanced up at him. “How did you afford it? These look pretty spendy even now.”
“It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t able to purchase it until just recently, in fact. Not surprisingly, there isn’t much work right now for a quantum physicist but I’ve found work as a tutor here and there to pay the bills. I’ve also become something of an inventor and made some profitable investments from time to time.” His self-satisfied tone reared Kate’s curiosity.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say that knowing how things are going to go has proven beneficial.” He shrugged modestly though his whole attitude reeked of self-satisfaction. “My compulsory university courses in history have paid off well.”
“What did you do?” A dreadful feeling was gnawing at Kate’s gut though it might just be hunger pangs.
“Nothing anyone in my place would not.”
“Since I doubt anyone’s yet been in your place, why don’t you tell me?”
“Nothing of importance!” David protested defensively. “Just speeding up the invention of a couple of minor items.”
“Define ‘minor’,” she insisted, feeling as if just one more bit of ugliness had been dropped in her lap. Apparently, Kate wasn’t as good with surprises as she’d always thought she was. “I hope we’re not talking about the telephone here.”
“Of course not,” came his offended response. “Just a couple things I needed to operate the siphon and computer, electric welding, cathode ray tube…that sort of thing.”
Kate just shook her head, dumbfounded. “You just ruined someone’s whole life.”
“Let’s not be dramatic about it, shall we?” he grumbled some more, clearly displeased with her lack of enthusiasm for his efforts. “I hardly see anyone beyond my students and their parents. I’ve kept it all very low-key.”
“Well, I hope you’re not warping some poor kid’s mind with tales of the future, David! You’ll probably get the kid sent off to an insane asylum or something,” she grouched, wondering what she had ever liked enough in David Fergusson to date him before remembering that she hadn’t really. She had given in to one of the oldest means of persuasion. Peer pressure. “You just can’t change the past, David! It’s against every ethical standard ever written.”
“Now you’re really being over dramatic, Kate,” he returned testily. “Who's to say this isn’t the way that things are meant to be? The coincidence is simply too much to bear. Oh! I must tell you who one of my students is!”
Oh God! “Who?”
“He’s a boy by the name of Bertie. About ten years old and very bright. His father works as a gardener for some rich chap in town,” David babbled on. “But guess who I think he really is? I’ll give you a hint. His name is Bertie…Wells!”
Kate stopped in her tracks and gaped at him for a full minute while the ramifications of his words sunk in. “Have you gone completely insane?” she screeched. “Are you telling me that…that you think this Bertie is H.G. Wells? My God, David! Have you completely lost your mind? You can’t just come back in time and tell people about the future! Haven’t you ever heard of the Prime Directive?”
“The what?”
“The Prime Directive. You know, from Star Trek? That whole policy of noninterference?”
“That was only on the telly. It isn’t as if it’s a law or some such.”
“Well, it should be! You could really mess with these people, David. Think of what you’ve done to that poor kid in there!”
“Inspired him to write novels about the future?”
“OH! MY! GOD!” Kate screeched, clenching her hair in her fists and pressing them to her temples as she turned and stomped on. “You’ve been here almost a year, David! How many people have you told? I’m surprised they haven’t locked you up in the loony bin yet! We can’t stay here! You have to take me home NOW!”
“Will you keep your voice down?” he hissed at her. “You’re being hysterical and you’ll wake the neighbors. Besides, we’re here.” David gestured to a neat red bricked Victorian – Kate felt a jolt of hysterical humor shoot through her when she realized they probably didn’t call them that here. The house sat behind an ornate fence of brick and iron and had a charming white-painted portico over the front door. The door was flanked symmetrically by two wide windows with three matching windows across the second story. The one in the center was surrounded by a small balcony with a wrought iron railing.
It was neat and tidy, everything she might have expected from David. Reluctantly, Kate had to admit she was impressed… or would have been, had she approved of his methods. David pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door before stepping back with a gesture for her to precede him.
“Come, I’ll show you around.”
Kate stared at him dumbly for a moment. “No, David, we need to talk about this!”
“No we don’t,” he answered, turning into the room to his right, leaving her to follow or not. “I did what I had to do to survive here and, let me tell you, it’s been no picnic. So I deprived some unknown inventor his moment of notoriety and inspired a child with tales of the future. So what? I did it for you, too, you know?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I did what I did so I would have a good place to bring you and nice clothes for you to wear when you got here,” he explained in that illogical manner that told Kate his priorities were completely out of whack. “You should be glad I got here first, Kate. You have no idea how difficult it was to earn money so quickly. You know what happens to women here when they have no money, Kate?”
“You are completely mad, did you know that?”
“Not mad, Kate,” he replied, sending a hesitant smile over his shoulder. “Simply in love. I know this might not be the time to mention it, but I love you, Kate. I have loved you since the moment I first saw you. And look what I’ve given you! A home. A glimpse into the past and we can share it together! How many people get this kind of opportunity?”
“Oh, no,” she moaned, covering her face with her hands. This could not be happening to her. Getting stuck in the past she could almost handle, but getting stuck in the past with a delusional, lovesick man was just too much to bear. It was all her fault. She had known from probably their third meeting in the cafeteria that David was perhaps just a little too fanatical about her, a little too insistent on dating her. How could she not have seen this coming?
And now he expected her to live with him on top of everything else? She was just supposed to play house with him here in the 1800s until he managed to figure out the problem with the machine and then hope that it would get them home? What if it never happened? What if she were stuck here with him for the rest of her life?
“This is too much,” she muttered loud enough to draw his attention.
“Think nothing of it, my dear,” he replied, misinterpreting her words. “It’s all been for you, for us.”
Kate cringed away from his adoring eyes.
“You do look splendid in that gown, Kate,” he carried on softly. “It gladdens me to see that I was able to estimate your size so well and I have a dozen more inside for you to choose from. Come, let’s get you settled, shall we? It's been a long night and as they say, the sun always shines brighter after a good night’s sleep. You’ll see, it will all work out.”
He turned and lit an oil lamp on a nearby table that he then held aloft. “This is the parlor, obviously.”
Helplessly, Kate looked around at the room. It was everything she’d ever imagined of the era right down to the lacy antimacassars on the arms and headrests of the tufted back settee. Her grandmother had a dainty sofa that looked just like it. From there they went back through the center hall circling around a marble-topped table set with fresh flowers in a crystal vase, through a formally furnished dining room and into the kitchen. A long worktable dominated the center while a large trough sink with a long-handled water pump and huge cast iron stove sat against the wall.
Completing the rotation of the ground floor, David pointed out another informal parlor at the back of the house before turning Kate toward the stairs. “Everything is brand-new,” he told her as they climbed. “And not to worry, I’ve hired a cook to make our meals since getting a knack for the stove takes some practice.”
There were four bedrooms above, one of which David was using as his workroom. Stopping at the lone bathroom, David showed her the basic workings. “Spent the most time and money updating here and putting this in. Fairly new technology actually for the average home these days. That’s why I had to buy in a newer neighborhood with the proper systems available. But, and I know you’ll thank me for this, the loo flushes almost every time and we have running water. The cistern and boiler are above in the attic but not over your chamber so there shouldn’t be any noises to disturb your sleep.”
Kate knew she should be grateful for the efforts David had put toward her comfort, but she just couldn’t find that bit of generosity in her heart. She felt nothing but anger, spite and fear. This was all madness, like a bad dream, but Kate was all too aware of the reality. She was here in 1876…with David. Granted there were probably worse people to be stuck in the past with – Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber…certainly that Snooki chick – but it was still a bad situation.
The eager, loving looks he kept giving her spoke of an expectation Kate wasn’t ready to acknowledge, much less fulfill. She wasn’t prepared to move in with anyone, much less a man she’d been on a single date with. She knew nothing about him! How was she supposed to share so much with him?
And what guarantee was there that David would ever figure out the problem with the cabling? What if there were more problems, one after the other? What were the real odds that he could send them home…that is, safely home? Accurately home? Who was to say another trip through the machine wouldn’t just send them back to the Stone Age? Kate realized that she couldn’t rely on hope or on David Fergusson’s skills for that matter. She liked to think of herself as a realist and the realist in her said she was never going back to her own time. She was here for good and she had just better make the best of her situation.
Kate stumbled then, thinking of her parents back in Minnesota, her sister who lived in the Cities, her adorable nephew, Nate. They had all been so proud of her when she’d gotten her scholarship to MIT, had stood by with delight when she’d been hooded with her Masters. They had been thrilled when she had been offered the job at ISIS. When she’d gone home for Christmas a couple of weeks ago, they’d promised to visit her at next summer to see her home, visit her work. What would they think had happened to her? What kind of grief would David’s little stunt deliver them? She would be willing to bet he hadn’t even thought about that yet.
All of this was going through her mind as David showed her around her bedroom with its small desk, dressing table, the promised wardrobe full of gowns… and the door connecting her room with his. This last bit of information was accompanied by a smile and Kate winced again. She knew what David wanted from her. She’d known it for months because, even if his hints had been subtle – which they weren’t – they’d been plentiful and detailed.
His more broadly delivered hint upon their arrival had only cemented her dread. She wasn’t prepared for this especially with a self-satisfied guy like David, but Kate knew, when it came right down to it, she had no one to blame but herself – oh, not for this time travel incident but for not nipping David’s lovesick crush in the bud.
She’d known what he had wanted from her before she had agreed to go on this date with him and now she heartily regretted caving under the constant pressure and doing it. Now, David had set a whole scenario for them as a happy couple. He had probably spent the last eleven months building on his little fantasy and would most likely blow a gasket if she told him flat out that she wasn’t interested in him that way. She’d heard stories of what happened when things like that got out of hand. Boyfriends turned stalker. She couldn’t live with him here, couldn’t play into whatever expectations David had of her.
And, as far as she could see, if she was to be stuck in this time for the remainder of her life, the best thing she could do was get as far from David as possible before he lined up a priest for them and had her nestled away as the little woman.
She had to get away.
But where?
How?
Kate curled up on the bed without getting undressed. She needed to face the facts and the facts told her she had no idea what or who was outside those doors. Unlike David, she remembered little about her required history classes beyond wars and disasters. American wars and disasters. As with any egocentric country, she hardly learned a thing about what went on beyond US borders. This was 1876. It was the centennial of America’s independence. Thanks to her genealogy-crazed mother, she knew 1876 was the year her Norwegian ancestors arrived in America and moved to Minnesota to begin farming. However, as far as British history went, it might as well be entitled ‘the year in which nothing happened’. She couldn’t think of a single event from this year that could help her now.
So what was she to do?
Kate felt a shiver of child-like fear shake her. For the most part, at twenty-four, she considered herself mature if occasionally given to bouts of immaturity but – in that moment – she just wanted her dad to take her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.
However, her dad, the one she’d always gone to with her problems, was a lifetime away. Here, there was no one she could run to for help.
The only one who could help was Dr. David Fergusson. If there was a key to their return to the future, he held it. Only he could take her home.
And she had very little faith in him.
Chapter Four
Two Weeks Later
“What is it now, Kate?”
“I’m just watching, David,” Kate rested her elbows on David’s worktable and propped her chin in her palms, scrutinizing the work he was doing. Cables of different materials and diameter were strewn across the workbench as David assembled what was to be his third attempt at fabricating a sustainable power transfer cable for the siphon/time machine since she’d been there.
Two weeks now.
“Why don’t you–”
“So help me,” Kate cut him off before he had a chance to finish the thought, “if you tell me one more time to ‘run along’ and like a ‘good little woman’, I might have to kick you where you’d rather I not. This might be the nineteenth century, but please try to remember I’m not a nineteenth century woman. I want to help. I want to go home.”
“I’m used to working alone, so please just run…” David cast her a look from the corner of his eye before his gaze slid away. “Besides, you’ve already said you know nothing about power cables.”
She didn’t, but Kate was bored. Scared. Nervous. And tons of other things that she didn’t want to think about. Including the fact that she was rapidly losing whatever minuscule iota of faith she’d ever had in David’s ability to get them home…ever. After two weeks of watching failure after failure pile up, Kate could only wonder how many other attempts had gone to the wayside before she arrived. Not that watching him fail made things better, but Kate liked to think that progress was being made. She wanted to be witness to some sign that the big moment would one day come.
Besides, there was nothing else for her to do.
At first, she’d tried to take an interest in the new world around her – without treading as ruthlessly over Star Trek’s Prime Directive as David had. A couple of days after her arrival, David had let slip that they were mere blocks from the northern end of the Beatles’ famous Abbey Road. She had walked for miles up and down its length only to be strangely disappointed when she did not find that iconic zebra crossing from the album cover or even the zigzagging painted lanes or crosswalk that existed in her time.
With the exception of a few missing modern residences, a dramatic lack of cars and those distinctive zebra crossings of her time, St. John’s Wood didn’t seem to have changed much in the intervening years. The Bobbies looked essentially the same as well. Overall, it was still a quaint residential area. Occasionally it was almost even easy to forget when she was.
In just a few days, Kate had seen all there was to see within the limited range of her ramblings. After that, she’d stuck to the house and indoors when spring rains came daily making outdoor excursions impossible. In these two long weeks, she’d read every scrap of reading material in the house. She’d tried to cook on that big cast iron stove, managing to burn every meal she’d attempted – she’d never take temperature control as a given ever again in her life – and had even asked their part-time cook to teach her how to knit.
There was nothing else for her to do.
It was endless. Tedious.
Kate could hardly imagine living the next two days in the same manner much less the next two weeks, months or even years until David figured out how to get them home. She’d go simply mad without something to occupy her time.
And David was right. She couldn’t help him. So it would need to be something else.
“I think I might look for a job then,” Kate said as the idea formed in her mind. “So I won’t be around to bother you.”
“What?” David’s head popped up. “You’re joking, right?”
Kate’s brows rose in surprise. “No, I’m not. I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing and you don’t seem to like having me around.”
“Kate, I love having you here,” he argued. “But you must understand, if you truly want to go home…”
“Of course, I want to go home! Don’t you?” Kate asked, thinking the question nothing more than rhetorical, but when David didn’t answer immediately, she studied him hard and was scared by what she saw there. “You do want to go back, don’t you, David? Don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” he answered finally. “But what’s the rush?”
“What’s the rush?” Kate gaped at him. “Are you kidding me? My parents probably think I’m dead, David. I want to go home, I want my life back.”
With a wave of his hand, David dismissed her concerns. “When we get back, it will be as if we never left. No one will ever know we were gone. We should have our fun here while we can.”
Fun? Kate’s mind nearly scrambled at his indifferent attitude. There was nothing fun about being here, while back home was everything she lived and worked for. Couldn’t he see that? Clearly, not. Surely, there must be something… “What about your time machine, David?” she asked. “Don’t you want to go back home for all the kudos that will be waiting for you when they find out what you’ve invented?”
With a wistful sigh, David nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“So…?”
“But, on the other hand, I have so enjoyed the time here. Sometimes I feel that this is where I was truly meant to be.” David had a gleam in his eye as he studied Kate up and down, taking in another of the gowns he’d bought for her to wear. It was all Kate could do not to shudder. She knew exactly what he thought when he looked at her like that. David was definitely an old-fashioned guy. He would have done – ha! he was doing well – in this era of ‘barefoot-and-in-the-kitchen’. She simply could not figure out how he thought she played into that fantasy because she certainly wasn’t an old-fashioned girl! “This is exactly how I hoped things might be when you arrived. I think it’s all been rather wonderful.”
Kate grimaced. She hadn’t found it all as wonderful as David did. In the evenings – those long, long evenings – without a TV or movies to fall back on, they had taken to playing cards or chess together. Admittedly, it hadn’t been as bad as she initially imagined it would be. As if sensing that he’d gotten close to completely alienating her with his talk of love and a future together, David had backed off his declarations of love and become once more the moderately interesting date he’d been back in Oxford.
However, Kate didn’t want to date him every night. She didn’t want him thinking that those evenings were going to fill the remainder of their days. She couldn’t imagine spending the rest of her life just like that. The monotony of it all might be the end of her.
“I know you enjoy the quiet life, David,” Kate began slowly, thinking that she’d rather tell him she had no plans to rub his feet and cater to him the rest of her life. “But I’m used to having more to do than that. I used to rock climb, run, bike or go camping and fishing with my dad. I’m just not used to long days and longer nights sitting in a house with nothing to do. I can’t even research my dissertation here. If nothing else, at least a job will keep me busy.”
David just shook his head with a snort of amusement. “And what do you think you will do? No university here will hire a woman to do research even if there is a subject matter that would interest you.”
“I could teach,” Kate shot back.
He scoffed. “Unlikely given this day and age. No one will hire a woman as a teacher.”
Kate couldn’t stop herself from bristling as she blinked at him in surprise. “Are you telling me that you think I can’t get a job because I’m a woman?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” He grinned down at his work before picking up his tools and refocusing his attention on his task. “I told you when you arrived that women with no prospects usually end up in the very worst situations.”
“I am a bright, educated woman, David!” she told him with her hands on her hips.
“Mmm.” He smiled even more broadly with a patronizing nod.
“I have dozens of marketable skills,” she went on. “You just wait. You’ll see. I bet I can go out there and get a job just like that!” Kate snapped her fingers.
“Ten pounds says you couldn’t get a job for anything better than waiting tables at the local pub,” David told her snidely.
“You’re on.”
Chapter Five
London, England
Two Days Later
It seemed Kate had no marketable skills. It was quite lowering for a woman who had spent the better part of her life educating herself.
David had given her money for a hackney and an address where he thought he recalled an employment agency being located. At eight o’clock on Monday morning, Kate rolled along in the back of the creaky old hack southeast in the direction of London’s center. If the thickening population of church spires had not provided direction, a smoggy haze clearly marked that more populated area. Upon arriving at a busy business district, it hadn’t taken much asking around to find an employment agency within walking distance. Kate had to sit on a hard wooden chair in the offices for over an hour before she had been called in. That long period had provided her ample time for reflection and also an opportunity to wallow in a little self-pity and grieve for her future and family.