Kendra landed in the secret hallway just outside her lab. Rolf and William stood with their backs to her, looking in the other direction. Immediately she began to inspect the lab for some sign of communication from Alex, but in an instant her two guards whirled to face her.
“What are you holding?” asked William.
At the same time, Rolf asked, “What are you looking for?”
“Proof,” she said as she looked at William, and “Nothing,” she replied to Rolf.
“It’s breakable,” she said, and tossed the bundle of stinking outerwear toward William. As he caught it, curiosity mixed with disgust. The combination did interesting things to his face. Kendra could not recall ever having seen a pair of eyebrows and a mouth move so far apart. She wished that she had a camera.
After he caught the smelly bundle, William seemed reluctant to open it on the clean lab bench. There were few other horizontal surfaces in the room. He stood uncertainly.
Rolf snapped, “Just open it on the floor, you fool.”
A thin booklet laid on top of Kendra’s stained over-dress. It had been printed by an early sort of press that imprinted each letter deeply enough in the thick on ivory paper that ink was hardly necessary. The loopy, uneven lettering threw Kendra off. She had made out only the first word of the title, Prosopopoia, by the time William exclaimed, “Spenser’s Mother Hubberd, and it looks practically new!”
Rolf’s expression, as he knelt next to William, showed a similar mix of excitement and revulsion. “Really?” He lifted it reverently from William’s hands. “But it stinks!” Disgust dominated his face. “How could you have wrapped it in those stinking rags?”
Alex planned this so well. There had been no time for him to tell her the details before she left. He had just thrust what he carried into her stinking wraps, and told her what to do. It was the silly grin on his face that had sold her on the idea.
“I did not choose the method of delivery,” Kendra explained. “He said to tell you this. ‘You show yourselves old enough to have a proper appreciation for historical accuracy, yet too young to value a lady’s sense of refinement. Reap, then, what you have sown.’”
Rolf stood, furious. Mother Hubberd skidded across the floor. “You told someone in the past about time travel?!”
“Rolf, please! The manuscript!” William wailed, and hurried after the little booklet.
“William! Akhom must know of this.”
“Fine, I’ll tell him on my way to find some museum glass to store this in. Regis must have some.”
“No! I’ll go. You stay here with her and that stinking little book.”
“I’m afraid that won’t work, Rolf.” Kendra shook her head. “I’m going to my rooms to shower and sleep. Akhom gave me a job to do, and I need to stay well enough to do it.” All that was true, but what Kendra really needed was some time away from her guards.
Faster than she could blink, Rolf stood an inch from her face. “Get to work!” he snarled, fangs extended.
Kendra shrank away. Oddly enough, until that moment she had not thought that being bitten might actually happen.
“Fine.” She sat in front of her computer, and woke it from sleep mode.
Rolf stalked out of the room.
Kendra let William tut and fuss over the manuscript for a couple of minutes while she checked the data from her most recent jump. It was the fastest yet. 90 seconds had elapsed, though she’d been in Cambridge all night. Her body felt all the time it had lived through.
“The manuscript isn’t breakable,” William looked up from Mother Hubberd to complain.
“That was a joke, William. Lighten up.” Kendra yawned. She stood to stretch, then walked around the lab, pretending to wake herself up while she searched unobtrusively for the secret means of communication with Alex. Was he in the conference room in this iteration of the present?
William regarded her with suspicion after she made one unproductive loop through the lab, so Kendra returned to her computer. Her stomach growled. She dug a protein bar out of a drawer. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner of scientists everywhere. She minimized her data log, and in the next instant, tried not to show the surprise that she felt. Her computer desktop had changed.
In place of the usual photo of the rest of the galaxy stood a mock-up of the first page of American Missile’s website. Like AM’s actual site, a row of elegant white missiles stood with a blue sky in the background. It was all done in half-tones, with bold text in the foreground. In the place of one of the missiles stood a sketch of the time travel detector that AM had designed. Alex. Is this the communication then?
Kendra clicked on the sketch. A block of hexadecimal computer code appeared on her screen. She made a show of peeling her protein bar, and surreptitiously checked to see if William could read her screen. He was still immersed in Spenser’s manuscript. She ran the code, then read the message it formed.
Vampires cannot travel back in time. Electrons in the dead differ from those in the living. I have not been able to build a compact time travel detector. I persuaded Akhom to let me ‘negotiate’ for same with American Missile. Be ready for anything. Love, Alex.
So the present had changed after her most recent jump. Of course it had. Kendra wondered if Alex had meant to imply that vampires could travel forward in time. Hmmm. She moved on to the question that really pestered her: Love, Alex. Did that mean--?
“Akhom wants to see you. Now,” commanded Rolf.
Kendra hadn’t heard him come in. She immediately maximized the view of her data log, and hoped he hadn’t seen the message.
Akhom looked even more giant in the lavishly appointed apartment that Regis and Thomas shared. Kendra thought of the two lovers, chained together in a basement dungeon, and shivered. Rolf forced her forward, out of the foyer and into the living room. On a wall perpendicular to a large, ornate fireplace hung a well-preserved tapestry featuring a unicorn. It had been woven, probably in the fifteenth century, with deep shades of red, green, and gold. Kendra remembered the dozens of overlapping tapestries in Alex’s room in Elizabethan Cambridge, and hid a smile. Compared with Regis’ stately decorating, Alex’s old room definitely resembled a modern teenager’s bedroom, plastered with posters.
“Ms. Tanagawa,” Akhom’s voice somehow managed to boom even in a room as padded and upholstered as Regis’ living room was. Kendra, surprised by the sound, made the mistake of looking right at him. She felt the pull at her mind again. She fought it so hard that her clenched teeth ached. By the time she finally pulled her mind free, she panted with the effort.
“You did reveal time travel to Alexander Sterling in 1593.” Akhom slapped his giant hand against a doorframe. A painting fell off the adjoining wall. Its frame split when it crashed against the travertine tiles. “This changes everything. I have sent a traitor into the enemy camp.”
