Time Travelers Never Die Read online

  Maybe it wasn’t just his father’s problem at that.

  HEAVY Hitters was running commercials. Take this to increase your sexual prowess. Take that to get rid of arthritic knees. The moderator returned, posed against the standard background of the Capitol dome, inviting everyone to be with him tomorrow when his special guest would be Elizabeth Staple, who was head of the House Judiciary Committee. Then he was gone, and the nine o’clock show, The News Room, started, with its discordant theme that suggested the world was going mad. Host Bob Ostermaier appeared behind his desk with a handful of papers. “Tonight,” he said, “Washington has a brand-new sex scandal involving a senator who’s spent most of his career running on family values.”

  Shel turned it off.

  He sat in the sudden stillness. He could hear music somewhere.

  It was two minutes after nine.

  He picked up the phone, put it in his pocket, and went out to the garage. Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into his dad’s driveway. Under the basket. The house was dark, save for the security lights.

  HE waited an hour. He sat in the car with the converter on the seat beside him and the cell phone in his pocket, and he realized he’d done the wrong thing. Shouldn’t have caved in. Should have insisted he be allowed to go along. But of course he’d always caved in to his father.

  He took out the cell phone and punched in Dave’s number. It was late, but that was what friends were for.

  Dave was in a restaurant somewhere. “Hello, Shel,” he said. He took a minute to speak to someone else. Then he was back. “Anything wrong?”

  “Yeah. You teach Greek and Latin.”

  “More or less.”

  “How’s your Italian?”

  “It’s okay. Maybe a little shaky. Why? You headed for Rome?”

  “Dave, are you doing anything Saturday morning?”

  “I’ll be on the run. What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve got a problem.”

  “What do you need, Shel?”

  “I want to show you something.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Americans generally do the right thing, after first exhausting all the available alternatives.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL

  DAVE was at one of those stages in his life where nothing special was happening. He’d gotten bored with classroom work. He spent most of his evenings grading papers, preparing seminars, and watching old movies on TV. There were a few women drifting around the fringes. But none for whom he could work up any passion.

  Except Helen. His heart fluttered every time he saw her. Every time he thought about her.

  She’d been the reason he’d hesitated when Shel asked about Saturday morning. She usually ate a late Saturday breakfast at the Serendip on Cleaver Street. He’d seen her there occasionally and had planned to run into her. Accidentally, of course. Why, Helen, nice to see you. He’d liked her for a long time, but her reaction to him had always been not exactly cool, but indifferent. He’d asked her out a few times, but she’d always found a reason why she couldn’t manage it. Next time maybe, she’d told him. But the message was clear enough: Take the hint, Dave. He was accustomed, though, to pretty much getting his way with women. If he stayed with it, he was sure he could win her over.

  Discovering that Shel was on her track had come as something of a shock. He should have informed Shel that first night, at the show, of his interest. But ultimately that would have required him to admit his lack of success with her. Couldn’t let that happen. No way.

  He’d known Adrian Shelborne all his life. They’d gone to the same schools, hung out together, even been in Scouts together. Once, they’d chased the same girl. She’d eventually run off with one of the male cheer-leaders, embarrassing them both. Short of combat, nothing can bond males like being dumped by the same young woman.

  Shel’s father had money, and prestige, and had helped Shel get to Princeton. Dave had gone to Temple, a local school that his family could afford. But he’d done well, discovered a facility for languages, and learned Greek so he could read Homer in the original. Ho phylos esten allos autos. A friend is a second self. He’d gone on to master Latin.

  There was something majestic in the classical tongues, a sense of dignity and power that, somehow, didn’t surface in English. Maybe it was simply a matter of too much familiarity. Whatever it was, he eventually found himself immersed in Hellenic and Roman culture, acquired French and Spanish along the way, and was now in the process of learning Italian. Two years earlier, he’d published Speaking in Tongues, a treatise on the development of language and its connection to social mores.

  Shel had always been a wild type, a guy who’d been everywhere, who had pictures of himself standing in front of the Vatican, riding a camel around a pyramid, standing on a rope bridge in Turkestan. He’d once played a guitar with the Popinjays in Dallas, and had apparently fit right in. How could Dave, whose folks thought hanging out in the Poconos was a big deal, keep up with that?

  Nevertheless, they’d remained close friends over the years. Despite his advantages, Shel was a solid guy. No pretense. No illusions about self-importance. And the last person who was likely to suffer a blackout and wake up two hundred miles away. That business Wednesday had sent chills through him and left him with a sense that reality was coming undone. It was like an experience he’d had when he was about ten. His folks had taken him to see a magician perform at the Walnut. The guy had made basketballs flo at through the air, put a woman into a cabinet and taken the cabinet apart and she wasn’t there anymore. They’d put chains around the magician, put him inside a narrow box, and hung the box from the overhead, so there was no way he could have gotten out of it without being seen, and when they lowered the box and opened it, he was gone, and in his place was the woman who’d disappeared from the cabinet.

  It was the night in which Dave came to believe in magic. To conclude that anything could happen, that there were no rules. No boundaries. Wednesday had felt like that, too. The bewildered look in Shel’s eyes, the way he’d sat slumped in the car on the road back from western Pennsylvania, the way his voice shook when he tried to explain what had happened and discovered he had no idea what had happened.

  Sometimes it was just magic.

  Then the phone call: Something had happened again. Shel hadn’t admitted it, but it was in his voice. The guy was scared.

  SO Dave passed on Helen and the Serendip, and was dutifully waiting when Shel pulled up outside a little before nine. It was raining, one of those steady, bleak October drizzles. “What’s wrong?” Dave asked.

  “It’s hard to explain.” Shel was carrying a computer bag. He dropped the bag on the floor, took off his jacket, and fell into a chair. “Dave,” he said, “I know what happened to my father.”

  The room grew still.

  “Is he okay?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” The weather rattled the windows. “I also know what happened Wednesday.”

  Dave sat down on the sofa opposite him. “What happened?”

  “Okay, what I have to show you is off-the-wall stuff. I mean seriously off the wall. But before I say any more, I want you to promise it’ll go no further.”

  “Okay.”

  Shel’s eyes narrowed. “You promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it.”

  “Come on, Shel. I promise.”

  He picked up the computer bag, unzipped it, stopped, thought about it. He looked at Dave as if he were a stranger. And opened the bag. He removed a Q-pod from it. Or maybe one of those new game-playing devices that were always coming on the market. Dave had lost track of the technology years ago.

  Shel held it out as if it had special significance. “What is it?” Dave asked.

  “I’m not quite sure what to call it. My father called it a converter.” He handed it to Dave.

  Dave took it, turned it over, and shrugged. “So what’s it do?”

  “Lift the lid.”

  Dave complied and watched the converter l
ight up. A lot of numbers appeared on-screen. “Okay. What do you want me to do with it?”

  “I’ll show you. You’ll need a jacket, though.”

  “We’re going outside?”

  He smiled. But it was a dark smile. A smile that signaled way outside. “More or less.”

  Usually, Shel was straightforward. This kind of juking around was utterly unlike him. Dave felt his hair beginning to rise. The way it had Wednesday when he’d picked him up at the Chevron station. “Whatever that means,” Dave said. He got up and went over to the closet. Took out a lined plastic jacket and pulled it around his shoulders. Then he walked to the door.

  Shel shook his head. “Not that way, Dave.”

  “Shel—”

  He reached into the bag and produced a second Q-pod. “I don’t know how these things work. They’re above my pay grade. But just trust me for a minute, okay?”

  Dave frowned at the two units. What in hell was Shel talking about?

  “Hook it onto your belt. There’s a clip on the back.” He waited until Dave complied. Then he did the same.

  “What’s the thing do? We going to listen to a concert?”

  “You see the big black button?”

  “Yes.”

  “On a count of three, push it. Okay?”

  “Okay. But—”

  “Just be patient.” Shel checked his watch. “One.” He zipped his jacket. “Two.” Dave slid his thumb onto the unit and found the large black button.

  “What’s—”

  “Three.”

  DAVE, utterly puzzled as to what he was—as he thought—going to hear, pushed the button. The room began to fade. To grow darker. Momentarily, he thought he was passing out. But he didn’t grow weak. Simply became mystified. And scared. Then the lights came back, and he got knocked aside.

  A guy in a scruffy brown overcoat bounced away from him. Where the hell’d he come from? And the living room was gone. The walls had vanished, and he was looking at a street scene. At night. Horns blaring, music playing somewhere, lots of old-fashioned cars. The guy who’d collided with him looked back with a snarl. “Watch where you’re going, will you, buddy?”

  The world was full of moving traffic, streetlights, theater marquees. People crowded around him, moving in both directions. Some were trying to get across the street, waiting for a break in traffic.

  And it was cold.

  “You okay, Dave?” Shel was at his right hand. Just a foot or two away.

  “Where are we?” His voice squeaked. “What happened? How the hell did we get here?” His knees buckled, and he’d have fallen had not Shel grabbed him and prevented him from going down.

  Shel pointed at his Q-pod. “It’s a time machine.”

  “For God’s sake, Shel, where are we?”

  “David, we aren’t in Philly anymore.”

  “I can see that.” He was breathless. So much so it was hard to get the words out. The cars were all vintage models. Tall boxes with bumpers. An old-fashioned trolley was unloading passengers, guys with fedoras, women with their hair piled on top of their heads. A horse and wagon.

  “Don’t worry. We can get back home anytime we want. Just don’t lose the converter.”

  “I won’t.” He looked down at it. Grabbed hold of it. “Time machine? It’s not possible, Shel. It can’t be done.”

  “Look around you.”

  “My God.” Dave was having trouble breathing. “What happened to my house?”

  “We left it. It’s back in 2018.”

  They were in a theater district. But not the one along Chestnut and Walnut in Philadelphia. They were standing in front of the St. James Theater, which was showing Naughty Marietta. Across the street, the Imperial was running Laugh Parade, and the Schubert had Everybody’s Welcome.

  The women wore jazz-age clothes, and a lot of them were wrapped in furs. Skirts were long.

  Shel’s hands were in his pockets. He stood quietly, gazing around, taking everything in, making no real effort to conceal how pleased he was. Behaving as if he did this every day. “Dave,” he said, “we’re in New York. On West Forty-fourth Street.”

  Dave’s voice had deserted him. He needed a minute to get it back. “Not possible,” he said.

  “It’s 1931.”

  “Come on, Shel.” Dave leaned against a doorframe.

  “December thirteenth.”

  He wanted a place to sit down. But there were no benches. They were standing outside a music store.

  “There was no way to warn you about this,” said Shel. “Or prepare you for it.”

  “Time travel—” Dave shook his head. “They only do that in the movies.”

  “You want to ask a cop?” Shel nodded toward a police officer strolling in their direction.

  The policeman took a quick look at them as he passed. And apparently decided they didn’t constitute a threat. Snippets of conversation caught Dave’s attention:

  “—I heard it on WEAF—”

  “—Hoover’s going to figure it out—”

  “—the Roadster. We’re all going.”

  Dave’s hand gripped the black device attached to his belt. “It really is, isn’t it? A time machine?”

  “Yes. And it’s how I got out into western Pennsylvania.”

  “And you didn’t know?”

  “The thing didn’t come with instructions, Dave. How could I have known?”

  “My God, Shel. Where’d you get it?” And suddenly he understood. “Your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s how he disappeared out of his house.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know exactly. He said maybe he was going to talk to Galileo. Maybe Ben Franklin. Maybe Albert Einstein. Hell, who knows?”

  Dave burst out laughing. “Galileo.”

  “It’s why I need you.”

  “He’s dead. They’re all dead.”

  “Come on, Dave. Stay with me.”

  “You’re going after him.”

  “Yes. I’m going to try Galileo first.”

  “And you need somebody who speaks Italian.”

  “Right again.”

  “Let me understand what we’re talking about here. You want to go back to the—what is it?—the seventeenth century to look for your father?”

  “You always were quick, Dave.”

  “Shel, I don’t know how to break this to you, but the Italian they spoke several hundred years ago isn’t going to be the Italian they speak today.”

  “Dave, you’re my best shot. Please—”

  “Do you know when?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know precisely when and where in the seventeenth century he was planning to go?” He frowned. “Listen to me. I sound like a nut.”

  Shel managed a pained smile. “No,” he said. “Only that he would go to see Galileo.”

  “Well, you have a time machine. Why don’t you go back and ask him?”

  “I’ve already done that. I don’t think I can do it again.” They were standing with a crowd at an intersection, waiting for the light to change. It did, and the crowd started across. A car making a turn tried to push its way through. There was some yelling.

  “Why can’t you?” asked Dave.

  “It’s complicated. But he says if I create a paradox, bad things will happen.”

  “What kind of bad things?”

  “Heart attacks, maybe.”

  “What?”

  “He lost a partner during an experiment. The event’s over. I can’t go back and change it.”

  “Shel, I can’t believe you’re willing to buy that story.”

  “After what I’ve seen these last couple of days, I’m inclined to be cautious.”

  DAVE would remember that moment the rest of his life. Crossing the street, the traffic, the people, Shel talking about heart attacks. “You know,” he said, “it sounds as if your father’s one of those mad scientists.”r />
  “I guess you could say that.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Nobody. He wanted it kept quiet.” They were still walking. Toward the Imperial and Laugh Parade. He noticed a familiar name among the cast members. Ed Wynn.

  Incredible.

  They walked, and stopped, and looked around. And walked again. They stopped at another traffic light. “Just installed,” Shel said.

  “What is?”

  “The lights. They were just starting to use them.”

  “Hard to imagine New York without traffic signals.”

  “They’ve also just finished the Empire State Building.” Somebody blew a horn and, as if on cue, the light changed. They started across and turned right onto Third Avenue. “Will you do it?” Shel asked. “Will you help me?”

  How could he not? “After we bring him back,” Dave said, “is that going to be the end?”

  “If we bring him back—” Shel shook his head. “If he didn’t come back on his own—”

  “—It doesn’t mean something happened to him. The device, the converter, might have broken down.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “I mean, if the Inquisition or somebody had grabbed him, he can get out just by punching a button, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So it has to be the converter. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

  “I hope so.” They were moving again, passing an Italian restaurant. Dave wondered how many of the businesses on that block would still be around in 2018. In his time. “Shel,” he said, “I still can’t believe this is happening.”

  Shel stopped a couple of women and asked if they had the correct time. It was, one of them said, consulting a watch she took from her purse, a quarter after ten.

  Shel adjusted his own watch and flagged down a passing cab.

  “Do we have an appointment?” asked David.

  “Yes, we do.” The driver pulled over and they got in. “Seventy-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue, driver,” he said.

  “Why? What’s going on there?”