The Accidental Time Machine

21

The cop had a silly-looking tall bowler hat, a walrus moustache, and an amused expression. “And you’d be from the circus.”

“That’s right, Officer,” Matt improvised. “We’re truly lost. Could you direct us to Kendall Square?”

“You’re on the right track.” He pointed with his club. “Goin’ through this mud’s a bad idea, though. It gets deep. You go on back to the bridge, go right on Massachusetts Avenue there, and right again on the second street. It’s a longer walk but won’t take half the time.

“So you’re acrobats?”

“Tightrope walkers.” That was sort of how Matt felt.

“What are you doing on this side of the river? Is the circus coming to Cambridge?”

“No, no—we just got lost,” Matt said, Martha nodding emphatically.

The officer scowled in a comical way. “Well, you know you should put on some actual clothes.” He stared frankly at Martha and chuckled. “Miss, another policeman might arrest you for immodest dress. Allow me instead to express my gratitude.” He touched the bill of his hat with his billy club. “Just a word to the wise, you understand.”

He turned and walked away, whistling.

“That was close,” Matt whispered. He took Martha’s arm and steered her toward the bridge.

It looked brand-new, with forest green paint. In Matt’s time it had been an antique; Martha remembered it as being partly collapsed in the middle, from a bomb in the One Year War, with horse traffic taking turns each five minutes, in and out of Cambridge.

“Where are we going to get clothes without any money?”

“I’m not sure,” Matt said. “A church?” He knew the way to Trinity Church, but wasn’t sure whether it was Catholic or Protestant—just that it was old and beautiful. It took them about twenty minutes to walk there, disrupting traffic, attracting stares and the occasional rude comment, and meanwhile they made up what they hoped would be a reasonable story. They had come into town to audition for the circus, but while they were practicing, someone stole their luggage, along with his wallet and her purse. They didn’t need nice clothing; just something to cover them up.

Matt had been hoping for nuns, and was surprised to find that Trinity had a few, even though it was Episcopalian.

A calendar said 1898.

The nuns received their story with a grain of skepticism, but rummaged through the poor box and found worn but clean clothes that sort of fit, which they would loan them until they were gainfully employed. The nuns also gave them a loaf of fresh bread from their kitchen, which they gratefully took down to the water’s edge, where there were park benches looking out over the river. They were more or less across from where MIT would start growing in a decade or so.

“I like this dress,” Martha said, rubbing the fabric. It was a burnt orange long-sleeved affair that covered her from ankle to neck. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” He had faded patched blue jeans and a worn gray flannel shirt. “I’d rather see more of you, though. Seems funny.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Martha had packed two bottles of wine and two cups, which were made of some unbreakable polymer but looked like glass. They might have some trouble explaining a bottle of wine that cooled when you unscrewed the top, and stayed cold, not to mention the plastic containers of fish salad that did the same when you pinched a corner. So they didn’t invite anyone to join them.

Money was the first problem, of course. “Could we sell the gun? We don’t need it.”

“It has only one bullet left, anyhow. But I don’t know whether they made this kind in 1898. The cartridge says ‘.38 Special,’ but I don’t have the faintest idea what made it special. The taxi driver probably wouldn’t be carrying around an antique.” Though it did look old and worn.

“The Lincoln note ought to be worth something, but the 2052 letter of provenance, the guarantee that it’s authentic, is worthless, of course.”

“The sexual teaching box, too,” she said seriously.

“Probably get us burned at the stake. If they still do that here.”

He sat back and sipped on the cup of wine. “Once we do have some money, I could multiply it easily by betting on sure things. Like, I don’t remember who was elected president in 1900, but it’s almost certain that I would recognize his name and not his opponent’s. Likewise, investments in new companies that we know are going to succeed.”

“Invest in groceries first, though, and a room. I wonder how you go about getting a job?”

“Newspaper. If they have want ads in 1898. Advertisements for things you want.”

To find a free newspaper, they trudged back up the hill to the Boston Public Library, across the way from Trinity Church. It was a huge granite structure, still new enough to shine.

There were newspapers on spindles in the reading room, and a cigar box with scrap paper and stubs of pencils.

Not much work for quantum physicists, since Neils Bohr was only thirteen, and Planck’s Nobel Prize was a generation away. He found offers for laborer, roustabout, stable hand. None too exciting.

He struck pay dirt, so to speak, in the third newspaper: a janitor needed at MIT.

“Look at this,” he whispered. It had a Boylston Street address, not far away. “I knew the ’Toot was in Boston for a while before they moved it across the river to Cambridge.”

“Let’s go try it. Maybe they’d have something for me, too.”

It didn’t take long to walk down to the west end of Boylston, and there it was, an imposing four-story building in Classic style. Matt could visualize what this part of Boylston would look like in 150 years—this wonderful building replaced by boutiques and a two-story ranch bar.

But that was then, and this was now. So to speak. That was yet to be, and this was back then.

They went up the slightly worn marble steps into a large hall punctuated with Doric columns. To the left was the president’s office; to the right, the secretary’s. That might be the right choice.

Matt paused before the door. “I don’t know what’s proper,” he whispered. “Do I open the door for you, or precede you?”

“You first, Professor.”

He stepped in to confront a stern-looking woman in a starchy gray-and-black dress. “May I help you.” Her tone said she was sure she could not. Matt, accustomed to dressing like a graduate student, was suddenly aware of how poor he looked.

“You, uh … there was an ad in the newspaper for a janitorial job.”

“Janitorial?” A tall man stepped out from behind a bookcase. He looked like the old twentieth-century comedian John Cleese. “That’s an odd locution for one who aspires to be a janitor.”

“Professor Noyes, I can—”

“No, please, Vic.” He looked at Matt with his brow furrowed. “You aren’t from Boston.”

“No, sir. Professor. I was born in Ohio. Matthew … Nagle.”

“You sound educated.”

He took a deep breath and started to lie. “Home education, sir, and the library in Dayton. Science and mathematics. Someday I’d like to take some courses at MIT.”

Professor Noyes raised an eyebrow. “That is its name, of course. Most people call it Boston Tech.”

Matt thought it safest just to nod.

“What kind of science are you interested in?”

Local asymmetries in gravity-wave induction probably wouldn’t do it. “Physics, some astronomy.”

Noyes smiled. “I’m a chemist, myself. You know the atomic weight of hydrogen?”

“One.”

“The brightest star in the constellation Orion?”

“Betelgeuse.”

“If x squared plus two equals 258, what is x?”

“Plus or minus sixteen.”

“The integral of e to the x?”

“That’s e to the x. Plus C.”

“Miss Victoria, I think he knows enough science and math to be a janitor here.” He smiled at Martha. “And you, ma’am?”

“I don’t know any of that, sir. I’m Martha Nagle.” She swallowed. “His wife.”

Matt tried not to react.

“We offer free classes for women, you know, in the evening. You should join a few and show him science isn’t all that hard.” He lifted a top hat off a rack by the door. “You can take care of it, Vic?”

“I will, sir.” She watched him leave, smiling. “Goodbye. ” There was no “sir” in her voice.

After the door closed, she pulled a sheet of paper, a printed form, out of a drawer, and carefully dipped a pen in a crystal inkwell. “Matthew Nagle—is that G-L-E?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Middle name?”

“None.” She wrote his name in a precise Spencerian hand.

“Birth certificate or some other identification?”

“That was in our luggage … which was stolen. Off the train.” Hoping MIT and Trinity didn’t compare notes.

“You’ve notified the police?”

“At the station. We’ll check downtown tomorrow. It seemed prudent to start looking for employment. My wallet and Martha’s purse were in there, and we’re—we have no money.”

“Really. It’s usually good advice, to put away your purse before you go to sleep on a train. But they took everything?”

“Everything,” Martha said.

She dipped the pen again. “Any address here?”

“No.”

She left the pen in the inkwell and opened a bottom drawer and lifted out a metal box. “You didn’t ask what the salary would be.”

“I assumed it would be fair.”

“I don’t know. This is not my usual function.” She opened the box and counted out ten silver dollars, then added two more. “I’ll make a note of this advance. Come in tomorrow at eight and I will introduce you to the supervisorof maintenance. You don’t mind working under the supervision of a Negro?”

“No. Of course not.” Vic slid the stack of coins over. “Thank you. This is … extraordinary.”

“Boston Tech is extraordinary.” She gave him a rueful smile. “I am President Crafts’s first line of defense, so to speak, and as such I am supposed to be a good judge of character. As I judge your character, there is a small chance you will take the money, and I’ll never see you again.”

“I—”

“There’s a larger chance that someday you will be one of my bosses. Now go and find a place to stay. The rooms on Commonwealth and Newbury are nicer; the ones on Boylston are cheaper and closer.”

“Thank you.” The twelve cartwheels rattled a heavy cascade into his pocket.

“Martha, this isn’t Ohio. They won’t let you stay with your husband unless you have a marriage license. Or at least a ring.”

She reddened, and evidently decided not to make up a story. “We’ll take care of that.”

She nodded perfunctorily and put away the cash box. “It was when you said, ‘Plus C,’ Matthew. Most of his undergraduates would just say ‘e to the x.’ ”

They walked all the way to the street in silence, before Matt brought it up. “You don’t have to marry me. We’ve only known each other—”

“Three million years or so.” She took his arm. “Matthew, in my time, love isn’t part of marriage. Sometimes it happens, and some people are happy and some are jealous. But our husbands are chosen by our parents, and we make the best of it.

“I think I love you, which is a better deal than I would have gotten at home. And really, in the time we’ve known each other, these few million years, we’ve done more together than most married couples ever do.”

He chuckled. “That’s true. Been more places, had more adventures.”

“Except the one.”

He stopped walking and looked her in the face. “I wonder how much a marriage license costs. I wonder whether we could get one today.”